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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34198-0.txt b/34198-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f5cd3e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/34198-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7613 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 34198 *** + +THE WILL TO DOUBT + +AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE + +GENERAL THINKER + +BY + +ALFRED H. LLOYD + +Truth hath neither visible form nor body; it is without habitation or name; +like the Son of Man it hath not where to lay its head. + + +LONDON + +SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim. + +25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C. + + +1907 + + + + +PREFACE. + + +The chapters that follow comprise what might be called an introduction +to philosophy, but such a description of them would probably be +misleading, for they are addressed quite as much to the general reader, +or rather to the general thinker, as to the prospective student of +technical philosophy. They are the attempt of a University teacher of +philosophy to meet what is a real emergency of the day, namely, the +doubt that is appearing in so many departments of life, that is +affecting so many people, and that is fraught with so many dangers, and +in attempting this they would also at least help to bridge the chasm +between academic sophistication and practical life, self-consciousness +and positive activity. With peculiar truth at the present time the +University can justify itself only by serving real life, and it can +serve real life, not merely by bringing its pure science down to, or up +to, the health and the industrial pursuits of the people, but also by +explaining, which is even to say by applying, as science is "applied," +or by animating the general scepticism of the time. + +That this scepticism is often charged to the peculiar training of the +University hardly needs to be said, but except for its making such an +undertaking as the present essay only the more appropriate the charge +itself is strangely humorous. One might also accuse the University of +making atoms and germs, or, by its magic theories, of generating +electricity or disease. Scepticism is a world-wide, life-wide fact; even +like heat or electricity, it is a natural force or agent--unless +forsooth one must exclude all the attitudes of mind from what in the +fullest and deepest sense is natural; scepticism, in short, is a real +phase of whatever is real, and its explanation is an academic +responsibility. Its explanation, however, like the explanation of +everything real or natural, can be complete only when, as already +suggested here, its application and animation have been achieved, or +when it has been shown to be properly and effectively an object of will. +So, just as we have the various applied sciences, in this essay there is +offered an applied philosophy of doubt, a philosophy that would show +doubt to have a real part in effective action, and that with the showing +would make both the doubting and the acting so much the more effective. + +But it may be said that effective acting depends, not on doubt, but +rather on belief, on confidence or "credit." This will prove to be true, +excepting in what it denies. To be commonplace, to write down here and +now what is at once the truism and the paradox of this book, a vital, +practical belief must always live by doubting. Was it Schopenhauer who +declared that man walks only by saving himself at every step from a +fall? The meaning of this book is much the same, although no pessimism +is either intended or necessarily implied in such a declaration. Doubt +is no mere negative of belief; rather it is a very vital part of belief, +it has a place in the believer's experience and volition; the doubters +in society, be they trained at the University or not, and those +practical creatures in society who have kept the faith, who believe and +who do, are naturally and deeply in sympathy. And this essay seeks to +deepen their natural sympathy. + +Here, then, is my simple thesis. Doubt is essential to real belief. +Perhaps this means that all vital problems are bound in a real life to +be perennial, and certainly it cannot mean that in its support I may be +expected by my readers to give a solution of every special problem that +might be raised, an answer to every question about knowledge or +morality, about religion or politics or industry, that might be asked. +Problems and questions, of course the natural children, not of doubt, +but of doubt and belief, may be as worthy and as practical as solutions. +Some of them may be even better put than answered. But be this as it +may, the present essay must be taken for what it is, not for something +else. It is, then, for reasons not less practical than theoretical, an +attempt to face and, so far as may be, to solve the very general problem +of doubt itself, or say simply--if this be simple--the problem of +whatever in general is problematic; and, this done, to suggest what may +be the right attitude for doubters and believers towards each other and +towards life and the world which is life's natural sphere; emphatically +it is not the announcement of a programme for life in any of its +departments. + +The substance of chapters I., II., III., IV., and V. in small parts, and +VI. and VIII. was given during the summer of 1903 in lectures before the +Glenmore School of the Culture Sciences at Hurricane in the Adirondacks, +and except for some revision chapters V. and VII. have already been +published--Science, July 5, 1902, and the journal of Philosophy, +Psychology and Scientific Methods, June, 1905. + +To Professor Muirhead, the Editor of the Ethical Library, I wish here to +express my hearty appreciation of his interest and assistance in the +final preparation of this volume for publication. + + A. H. L. + + THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, + ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + I. Introduction + II. The Confession of Doubt + III. Difficulties in the Ordinary View of Things + IV. The View of Science: its Rise and Consequent Character + V. The View of Science: its Peculiar Limitations + i. Science would be Objective + ii. Science would be Specialistic + iii. Science would be Agnostic + VI. Possible Value in these Essential Defects of Experience + VII. The Personal and the Social, the Vital and the Formal in Experience + VIII. An Early Modern Doubter + IX. The Doubter's World + i. Reality, without Finality, in all Things + ii. Perfect Sympathy between the Spiritual and the Material + iii. A Genuine Individuality + iv. Immortality + X. Doubt and Belief + Index + + + +THE WILL TO DOUBT. + + +[p.001] + +I. + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of +doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different +departments of life one sees doubt. And one sees, too, some of the +blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that +one sees. There is heat everywhere in the physical world, but not +necessarily only arson or even destructive fire. Morals, however, social +life, industry, politics, religion, have suffered somewhat--and many +would insist very seriously--from the prevailing doubt. Moreover, if the +outward view shows doubt everywhere, the inward view is at least not +more reassuring. Who can examine his own consciousness without finding +doubt at work there? We would often hide it from others, not to say from +ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. Other times +may also have been times of doubt, but our day, as the time to which we +certainly owe our first and chief [p.002] duty, is very conspicuously +and very seriously a time of doubt. + +Now there are some, and they are many, who would decry the discussion of +such a thing as doubt, for they see only danger ahead. Doubt they +compare with death or disease, and to dwell upon any of these is idle, +unnatural, morbid. Why not let such things alone, and look only to what +is pleasant, to what is good and true and beautiful? Then, too, doubt, +the confession of doubt, is the royal entrance to philosophy and the +risk of an entanglement with philosophy, which seems to them the source +of much that is harmful, the essence of all that is impractical, is +altogether too great. Doubt for them is even less to be played with than +fire, with which already it has been compared here. Again, as others in +matters political and industrial, so they in matters intellectual and +spiritual resent anything that appears likely in any way to disturb the +standing credit of the country. To doubt is just to join the opposition, +and the opposition is made up of heretics and agents generally of mere +destruction. To treat doubt as real and positively significant, as +having any true worth in human experience, as being even a proper object +of will, is to stop permanently, not the wheels of commerce and +industry, but the wheels of the present life in all its phases. In a +word, perhaps one of the words of the hour, Christian Science has not +wished to be more inhospitable to the reality of disease than have these +believers to the reality and usefulness of doubt. + +Yet all who feel in this way are short-sighted. Their contentions, like +those of their cousins, perhaps [p.003] their country cousins, the +Christian Scientists, may have worth for being corrective, but at very +best they are only one-sided. In a fable, never in real life, a man +might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize +the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the +alarm of fire would involve; but doubt is not less real nor less +dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful +applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, +then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook +or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a +part in real life? The negative things of life can be so only +relatively. Death itself cannot possibly be absolute, and doubt, not +unlike death, indeed perhaps only one of death's messengers, must be +even a gift, or an agent, of the gods. Some things, dangerous when +hidden, are wonderfully serviceable, when recognized and controlled. +Sometimes men really have entertained angels unawares. + +And so throughout these chapters, although some may think me and those +who follow me morbid, and although we may have to enter the dangerous +parlour of philosophy, the doubt of our time is to be squarely and +fairly faced. In all candour, we are from the start to be confessed +parties to it, hiding nothing intentionally, and at the same time trying +always to give nothing undue emphasis. The doubt that all seem to know, +that many really feel without perhaps clearly confessing, and that some +confess or even actually boast, we shall face and examine closely, +[p.004] trying as we can to find its true meaning and real worth. In +short, the confession of doubt, of our doubt, and the fruits of +confession are the burden of these chapters. + + + +[p.005] + +II. + +THE CONFESSION OF DOUBT. + + +Our confession must, of course, be thorough-going, and can be made so +only through a complete statement of every possible reason that +experience affords for the attitude of doubt. To the end, therefore, of +such a statement we shall consider in this chapter certain general and +easily recognized facts about doubt itself, while in chapters that +follow we shall continue the confession by examining, first, our +customary or "common-sense" view of things, and then the view of +science, and having brought together in each case numerous +incongruities, or contradictions, which ordinarily are at best only +casually noticed or timorously overlooked, we shall find ourselves +facing in a peculiarly telling way, not only certain strong reasons for +doubt, but also some of the real issues that doubt raises. As no issue, +moreover, can be more central or crucial than the meaning of the +contradictions found to pervade our views of things, before completing +our confession we shall allow ourselves some reflections, that should +prove useful to us in the end, upon the possible worth of contradiction +in human experience; for even to casual thinking contradiction, although +good ground for scepticism, suggests some positive advantage and +opportunity; the advantage of breadth, [p.006] for example, of freedom +from special form, or the opportunity of personal spontaneity and +initiative as against the restraints of formal consistency, of class, +and of institution; and if these things, among others, can be associated +with our case for doubt, our reflections will certainly not have been in +vain. Then we shall close our confession by seeking the companionhip of +a great doubter of modern times, and by learning what we can from him of +doubt itself and of the doubter's natural world. And finally, as a +result of all our own efforts, supplemented by his help, we shall be +able to reap some of the fruits for life and thought that a confession +so fully made may fairly claim. + +From start to finish, moreover, of this study of doubt we have to +remember that there can be no important difference between what is +possible and what is real. Thus anything whatsoever that can possibly be +doubted is really doubtful. Also, if anybody is amazed to hear mention +of facts about doubt, as if doubt should not somehow submit to its own +nostrum, let him merely reflect that, strangely enough, nothing is quite +so indubitable as doubt, nothing so convincing as the reasons for doubt. +Let me not be too subtle, but to doubt doubt is only to affirm it, and +somehow--whether for good or ill need not now be said--all the negative +things of life possess a peculiar certainty, and are all most easily +proved. A great Frenchman once put the case quite plainly when he said, +after canvassing very carefully the whole field of his consciousness, +that his doubts were the only things there, the only things he could be +quite certain about, and these were so very real that they left him +absolutely [p.007] nothing but belief in himself, in his all-doubting +and ever-doubting self, to rest upon. His was surely a sweeping +confession, and his residuum of belief may not at first sight seem very +promising or very substantial, but quickly, I think, we shall find +ourselves in agreement with him, at least as to the reality and the wide +scope of our doubting, and it is also a possibility well worth +foreseeing that we may even find his belief in the reality of an +ever-doubting and all-doubting self a rock for our own saving. + +So, to turn now to those general and easily recognized facts, which were +to be the special interest of the present chapter, in the first place: +_We are all universal doubters_. We are all universal doubters in the +sense that every one of us doubts something, and there is nothing which +some of us have not doubted. Who would be so rash as to say that what a +fellow-being had questioned might not be questionable to himself also, +or that, if anything in his own experience had ever been subject to +question, all the other things might not also be subject to question? +But the merely dubitable is the already doubtful. In this sense, +therefore, not so abstruse and formally logical as it may appear, we are +all universal doubters. + +Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, +some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and +science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive +things these verities are! How shallow, or how hollow all of them are, +or at one time or another may become. To take a rather minute case, such +as it is [p.008] always the philosopher's license to make use of, a case +that is, however, quite typical in experience; here is a word--any word +you like--that has been spoken and written by you for years. Always +before it has been spelt correctly and clearly understood, but to-day +how unreal it seems. Are those the right letters, and are they correctly +placed? Is that the true meaning? What has happened, too, to give rise +to these unusual questions? Well, who can say? And who has not +substantially asked every one of them, not merely with reference to some +long-familiar word, but also with reference to much larger things in +life? Self and society, love and friendship, mind and matter, nature and +God have again and again been subjected to essentially the same +questioning. The verities of life, all the way from simple words used +every day to the great things of our moral and spiritual being, have +lost, sometimes slowly, sometimes very suddenly, the reality with which +we have supposed them endowed, and although we may still bravely believe +we find ourselves crying out passionately for help in our unbelief. +There certainly are the verities; not one of them can possibly fall to +the ground; yet these very verities are never quite in our experience. + +Still the world has its thoroughly confident people. Every one of us has +met some of those estimable beings to whom doubt seems wholly foreign, +people who assert with trembling voice and sacred vow that their +convictions, political perhaps or religious, are unassailable, and that +they must hold them to the grave. But, whatever may be said of political +convictions, religious convictions have often been [p.009] regarded as a +contradiction of terms. How can one be sure and religious at the same +time? Moreover, positive people under any standard are notoriously as +fearful as they are dogmatic. Fear is often, if not always, the chief +motive of dogmatism, and fear is hardly the most natural companion of +genuine confidence. The part which the emotion of fear has had, both in +the personal life and in the doctrine of the dogmatic among men, would +make a most instructive study. + +If, then, dogmatic people are slaves to their fears, while more +thoughtful people, as has not needed to be said, seem to get no reward +from their self-consciousness but the uncertain reward of their doubts, +then only such as live quietly, asserting nothing, depending on nothing, +and even assuming nothing, but simply taking what comes, are left to +represent genuine belief. Yet how many such are there? A few may seem to +approach the ideal, if ideal it be, but the class itself in realization +must be said to be a hypothetical one, and few, if any, of us could ever +really envy or strive to imitate its supposed manner of living; for, in +spite of all the dangers and all the doubts and fears, only the +constantly examined life can ever really lure us. Doubt, besides being a +general condition of life, seems to be also incident to what gives life +worth. + +But, furthermore, not only are we all universal doubters; the case for +doubt in the world is, if possible, even stronger; for also--and this is +the second general fact: _Doubt is a phase, nay, a vital condition of +all consciousness_. To be a conscious creature is to be a doubting +creature. + +[p.010] In so many ways psychology is teaching us to-day with renewed +emphasis that we are conscious of nothing as it is, and that more or +less clearly we all know our shortcoming in this regard; or again, with +still more directness and emphasis, that for us there is no such thing +as a state of consciousness which does not indicate tension, or unstable +equilibrium, that is to say uncertainty, in our activity. Nor have we +need of the testimony of science to these facts, since common personal +experience is well aware of them. In small things and in great +consciousness transforms or refracts. In small things and in great +consciousness marks a moment of poise between an impulse to do +something, and more or less distinctly recognized conditions or +relations that would put restraint upon the doing of it. Even the law of +relativity, a psychological law only in its definite formulation, in its +idea a simple fact of everyday experience, true for all conscious states +from the crudest perceptions of the organs of sense to the most highly +developed ideas of critical reflection, by binding as it does all the +details of actual or possible experience into a whole, every part of +which acts upon the other parts, points very directly to this fact of +poise and instability, besides indicating also that knowledge never can +be literally or objectively exact, and that at least with some clearness +every knower must know it cannot. How can there ever be even a single +stable or a single finally accurate element in the consciousness of a +creature whose experience, in the first place, can comprise only +related, interdependent parts, and whose nature, in the second place, is +an essentially mobile and active [p.011] one? Moreover, as just one +other way of suggesting the inexactness and uncertainty of consciousness +and the balancing, tentative nature of all conscious life, we always +think, and think properly, of conscious creatures as having will, as +doing what they do purposely or from design. The new psychology, +however, to which we naturally turn, and which again has only formulated +what we can recognize from everyday experience, declares that the +purpose in conscious activity is not a developed, but an always +developing one. Purposive action is action that never finally knows, but +is ever finding out its real intent, purpose being identical with the +progressively discovered meaning of action. A volitionally, purposively +active being is always a seeker as well as a doer. Indeed, any doing +would itself be empty, or idle, if it were not a seeking, and so if it +were not subject to conditions of some uncertainty. In so many ways, +then, through the necessary inexactness of consciousness, through the +unstable equilibrium of all conscious activity, through the law and fact +of relativity, and through the tentative and provisional nature which +must always belong to purpose, we see how doubt must be a phase or +condition of all consciousness. + +Illustrations are abundant. Thus, once more to take a somewhat minute +case, which is really more significant for being minute, with regard to +conscious activity being in a state of tension, visual sensations always +involve muscular sensations, and these are incident not only to +expressed, but also to possible, yet restrained, movements. The eyes may +have been [p.012] moved and the head turned, but in spite of the +impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the +observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been +raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines, +although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always +present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. Or, +again, to adopt an illustration used for a different purpose by +Professor William James, so simple a process as the spelling of a word +is complicated with all sorts of diverting and unsettling impulses as +each letter is expressed. Let the word be _onomatopoetic_. Can I really +spell it correctly? And what a gauntlet of dangers I have to run. The +initial letter _o_ tempts, perhaps with childhood memories of the +alphabet, to _p-q-r-s-t_, etc., or to indefinite words or syllables, +actual from my past or possible to my future experience, such as _of, +off, opine, October, -ology, -ovy_, and so on, or, to suggest mere +possibilities, such as _ontic, oreate, ot_, or _ow_; and every +succeeding letter is equally a scene of combat, a place of dangers +met--safely met, let us hope, and triumphantly passed. Worthy the boy, +or the man, who reaches the end unhurt. And what a voyage of +uncertainties, what a course between hope and fear, confidence and +doubt, the spelling of words or the spelling of life as a whole always +is. One's whole vocabulary, real or possible, or one's whole repertory +of acts is more or less directly involved, whatever one does. As to the +tentative nature of purpose, which seems the only other point here that +can possibly require illustration, the right we all [p.013] reserve to +change our minds in the different affairs of life tells its own story. +We never do do, or can do, exactly what we consciously would do; and +recognizing this, men, as well as women, insist on the right of a change +of mind, and sometimes even of conscious misrepresentation or of +disparity between their seeming and their being in thought or in deed. +That such a claim has its dangers does not now concern us; it has also +its opportunities; but the fact of it and the ground for it are quite +evident. Even jurisprudence, for which loyalty to established and +visible forms is peculiarly sacred, has its ways, direct and indirect, +of recognizing that purposes develop, that the returns are never all in, +that any purpose or meaning must sooner or later assume a new form, and +so may even now be other than it seems. Bequests for institutions, for +example, are allowed to continue in force, although, with the demands of +a more enlightened day, the formal conditions under which they were made +have been openly violated. In short--for it all comes to this--"Not the +letter, but the spirit," is an inevitable comment, or at least an +inevitable feeling about everything that is done. A man vaults a fence, +and then, even if he get over fairly well, vaulting is not what it was +for him. He may continue to use the old word, or the same arms and legs, +but with a changed meaning and a changed feeling of limb and muscle, and +so with a new purpose and a new body to control and modify his next +performance. And what is true for vaulting is true also for making boxes +or tables, for writing essays, for talking, for thinking, for founding +colleges or theological seminaries, or finally, for [p.014] what we so +indefinitely call living. An activity such as throughout its length and +breadth ours is, conscious activity that must for ever heed the call: +"Not the letter, but the spirit," an activity that never is, therefore, +and never can be without the elements of the game, since it must ever +wait on its own revealed consequences in order to grow into an +understanding of its real meaning; such an activity, among other things, +cannot but fasten doubt upon us as a most natural heritage. As man is +conscious, to doubt is human. Other things may be human, too, but doubt +is so certainly and conspicuously. + +Thirdly, in this presentation of general facts: _Doubt is inseparable +from habit_. Habit is usually associated with what is permanent and +established, but just here lies its undoing. As we usually understand +it, habit really deadens what it touches by leading to abstraction or +separation from actual conditions. Conservative as it surely is in +things important and in things unimportant, in things personal and in +things social, it sets him who is party to it behind the times, for no +act in its second expression, no simply repeated act, no mere habit +could ever be up to date in the sense of really meeting all the +emergencies of its own time. Personal habits make fixed characters; +social habits make customs and laws; religious habits make churches and +creeds; intellectual habits make schools; and of all these products, +which for the sake of the single term we will call institutions, it must +be said, however paradoxically, that in being made they are also +outgrown, for the habitual turns formal and unreal and so unsatisfying. +A growing nature has [p.015] her ways of making even conservatives keep +pace with her. An institution in the sense of an acquired manner of +action, personal or social, can never really be an end in itself, +although to a narrow view it may often seem to be; it is at best only +the manifested means to a newly developed or developing end which must +eventually transform it. In so large a thing, for example, as political +life, the institutes of monarchy have become the instruments of +democracy, and this conspicuously ever since the French Revolution; in +the history of thought, of man's intellectual life, the objective dogmas +of one time have been only the subjective standpoints of the next, the +metaphysics of one time has made the scientific method, the working +hypothesis, of the succeeding time; and in so small a thing as a child's +vocabulary, the oft-repeated and finally mastered syllable _ba_, or some +other equally intellectual, has become in time only one of the means to +a whole word, say _baby_ or _bath_, or even _basilica_ or +_barometrograph_. In all life the thing we get the habit of is only a +tool with which we strive towards something else. Some one thinking no +doubt of Hercules has called the institutions of life a great club which +the irresistible arm of society, always a hero when looked back upon, +swings fatally against the present. + +So intimately is change seen nowadays to be related to habit, or +indirectly involved in it, that in technical science a new account of +habit has been formulated. To cite but one case, Professor Baldwin, +says:[1] "Habit expresses the tendency of the organism [p.016] to secure +and retain its vital stimulations," and such an account, placing the +interest of habit in so general and so changeable a thing as "vital +stimulations," is designed to make habit fundamentally, not merely a +tendency to repetition or imitation, but instead a demand for constant +adaptation or differentiation. In the doctrines of inheritance, also, +always moving necessarily in close sympathy with those of habit, a +similar departure has been made. Both habit and inheritance are in fact +seen to belong to life in a world of change, or variation, and they have +assumed what I will style a protective colouring accordingly. The habit +of always being adapted is at least as radical as it is conservative. + +With this reform in the account of habit we have not only analogous +reforms, as was said, in the account of inheritance, but also in the +scientific view of character, custom, law, creed, and the institution +generally. Moreover, if in scientific theory we find these new views, in +practical life there are at least signs of the same standpoint. What may +be called a new conservatism--the most truly conservative thing being +taken to be the most thoroughly pertinent or adaptive thing--has for +many years been getting possession of us, and is now quite manifest. Our +political constitutions are amendable constitutions; our religious rites +and doctrines are recognized as only symbols; our theories are only +standpoints. + +So, once more, because change is at least an ever-present companion, if +not actually an integral part of habit, doubt must be as real and +general as habit. [p.017] Change must make doubt. Sociologically, +institutionalism must always imply a contemporary scepticism; the +conservative must have an unbeliever for his neighbour. Indeed, to add +an important point, some go so far as to say in general that change, +that is, something new and different, is not only a necessary incident +but also an actual motive in all activity, and when all is said they +seem quite right. Perhaps habit, as always an interest in adaptation, +would imply as much. Certainly novelty is a universal motive, and as for +society there can be no question that it has a very strong predilection +for lawlessness in all its forms. True, it may be objected that at times +men, individually or collectively, seek not something else, but simply +_more_ of something already secured; more money, it may be, or more +learning, or more territory, or more pleasure. There is, however, in +spite of man's many conceits to the contrary, no change that is purely +quantitative. _More_ is also _different_ or _other_. Accordingly, we +both always find, and, what is even more to the point, always seek a +real change whenever we do anything. To speak again in most general +terms, the motion in the outer world, which is the fundamental stimulus +of all 'consciousness, both physically, that is, literally, and +figuratively, is more than merely an outer stimulus; something there is +within the nature of the subject which answers to it with perfect +sympathy and makes it equally an inner motive. Forsooth, could any +stimulus ever produce a response without its being in accord with an +existing motive? Life, then, is a game, and the game of life, doubts and +all, is a real interest as well as a necessity. We are [p.018] creatures +of habit, but we have, and we cherish, no habit stronger or more +essential than the habit at once of adaptation and variation.[2] + +A fourth general fact, very closely related to the foregoing, is this: +_Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience_. Doubt is +but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real +life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the +challenge finds expression. The doubter is a questioner, a seeker; he +has, then, something to overcome; he fears, too, as well as hopes. + +Were all things settled once for all, were all things clearly known and +freely executed, or were the consequences of the things to be done +always capable of being accurately foretold, there would be no real +[p.019] living, there would be nothing really to do. In such case life +in general, or in any of its different expressions, religion, or +politics, or art, or science, or industry, or morals, if one may suppose +for a moment that any of these differences could ever develop, would +consist in a purely passive condition, a mere fixed status; it would be +a wholly static thing falsely called life; its movement, if movement +there were, could be only the rest or routine of strictly mechanical +motion. + +To a real life, then, doubt, as an evidence of challenge and resistance, +is absolutely necessary, and appreciation of just this necessity is +certainly an important part of our present confession, and the +confession is important, because it is sure somewhat to brighten what +heretofore may have seemed a dark horizon. Confession often changes +night to dawn, and here the association of doubt with real living, with +a world in which there is always something to do, awakens emotions that +such words as relativity, and instability, and change, and even game, +have discouraged, or even wholly suppressed. Leasing, perhaps better +than any one else, has given expression to these emotions, and has at +the same time reflected what in his day had certainly begun to be, and +what in our own time very widely and very deeply is, the ideal spirit. +Thus, as he wrote:-- + +"Not the truth that any one may have or may think he has, but the honest +effort which has been exerted to compass it, makes what is really worthy +in human life. For not in having, but in seeking truth, are those powers +developed, in which alone man's ever-increasing [p.020] perfection +consists. Possession makes us inert, lazy, proud. If God held in his +right hand the perfect truth, and in his left the ever-restless struggle +after truth, and bade me choose, although I were bound to be ever and +always in the wrong, I should humbly select the left, saying: 'Father, +give; surely the pure truth is for Thee alone.'" + +This is a splendid utterance, and it has touched a responsive chord in +human nature the civilized world over, not so much, however, for the +humility of the choice as for the zeal in a life of seeking and +striving, or for the idea that knowledge is itself a dynamic thing, a +living, moving function, not a passive possession. The knower is made +also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, +forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within +him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the +condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary +to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, +proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even +putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever +living. + +Still others may be quoted in the same vein. Socrates made life, +particularly mental life, if this may be supposed distinct, essentially +active or dynamic when he identified true wisdom with self-conscious +ignorance, with a power in one of always finding oneself in error, and +in modern times Hegel has done the same thing as effectually, though +perhaps not in general so intelligibly, by finding a principle of +negativity or contradiction the very mainspring of all [p.021] +consciousness, of all thinking. Known truth is at once imperfect or even +false, being necessarily partial, relative, and at best only tentative, +very much, let us say, recalling something already remarked, as an +established form of life is no longer the real life, but merely the +developed means to a revolution, a life that is passing even as soon as +it has come. + +For the rest, the positive value of doubt to real life can hardly need +further emphasis. In one form or another the idea, as important as many +may find it commonplace, must constantly recur in these pages. We turn, +therefore, to our fifth, and for the present, last general fact, with +which we shall find ourselves still in sight, perhaps even in clearer +sight of the brighter horizon. We are all universal doubters; doubt +underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace +would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or +contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper +and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: _As man is +dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or +rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt_. Witness the +fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, +the company of his fellows, the company of God. + +Of course the social impulse, thus to be associated with doubt, is only +one of the phases of its dynamic and life-giving character, for a social +life, a life of dependence on what is without, of real relations beyond +self, must be a life of real and constant movement. Nothing so much as +such relations gives [p.022] vitality. This special phase, however, of +the place of doubt in real life is a very interesting one, and it +suggests, besides, so much that is of positive value as almost to +transform what so far has been in large part a sceptic's confession into +a sceptic's boast. + +Thus, in the first place, doubt seeks the company of nature. "Return to +nature!" has time and again in human history been the cry of the human +heart. Has civilization lost its hold, seeming unreal, artificial, +formal? Has morality become hollow? Has a lover suffered the shattering +of his dearest hopes? Has a creed lost its credibility? Have you and I +wearied of our study or our labour, whatever it be, and come to wonder +if it, or anything, is worth while after all? Have friends, ideals, and +God Himself deserted us? We turn, and all people turn to nature. Exactly +so the homesick traveller takes himself homeward, or the prodigal arises +and goes to his father. And your experience and mine, and the poetry of +all literatures, which tells so deeply the experiences of all men of all +times, are a constant witness to the comfort, and forgiveness, and +renewed confidence in self that nature imparts. Nature is our infancy, +in which all things are possible; she is our untrammelled will; she is +infinitely hopeful for us and infinitely kind; her necessity is so wide +and so open that its very law, so different from any human law, is our +greatest opportunity. True, our resort to nature is sometimes, perhaps +in greater or less degree always, by the way of moral dissipation, or +political anarchy, or intellectual suicide, or religious profanity; but +even these dark ways to the home and the great mother-heart of [p.023] +us all have never been hopelessly misleading. If history and literature +and personal experience can be trusted, even they have led to a kind +nature. Have you never failed in anything and become reckless, and then +profited from the very knowledge of yourself which the recklessness +uncovered? Personally and socially recklessness, return to nature that +it is, is always a helpful assistant to nature's great teacher, +experience. Great is the pathos, but also, as it is understood, great is +the inspiration of Rousseau's passionate outcry that his will was +perfectly good. He was incapable of a single wholesome relation in life, +yet, so he said, no man was better than he! Rousseau, philosopher of +revolution, spoke for nature. Out of her great love, nature always takes +the will for the deed--and perhaps she alone should have the privilege +of doing that; for she knows that the deed, however violent, however +bad, is sure to leave at least the will good. + +But intellectually, as well as morally or politically, or as well as in +any of the departments of the practical, emotional life, when trouble +comes we turn to nature. Nature has a mind as well as a heart, and when +state, and church, and social tradition have lost their validity and +infallibility, their various formulæ being no longer reasonable to us, +when we have to depose them from their position as our accepted +teachers, then we become scientists, which is to say, intellectual +prodigals. Science, the open-minded study of nature, is only a +homesickness for truth seeking relief. Does the scientist doubt? He is +one of the princes of doubters. He doubts, as in due time we [p.024] +shall more fully appreciate, even to the extreme position of +agnosticism. He doubts all things human that always he may be learning +of nature. + +So the companionship of nature for the comfort and pardon which she is +sure to give, and for the deeper knowledge which she is certain to +impart, is a passion of the doubter. True, no passion is free from +dangers; yet this passion, at least this passion, has somewhat of hope +in it. + +But, secondly, the companionship of one's fellows is not less strongly +desired. Huddling together in time of distress is by no means peculiar +to the animal world; in human life it has more than once made distress +seem richly worth while. "We have each other" in word or thought has +been the comforting reflection of many a family, or many a community, +when the money has gone, or when in other ways, possibly through a great +fire, or a great earthquake, or the ravages of a disease, afflictions +have come, and "Now we know how others have suffered" has been not less +common. Indeed, it is my own conviction that these two reflections +always rise together. The distress or affliction of doubt, however, is +certainly no exception to the rule. Doubt often separates an individual +from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified +himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, +or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his +loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social +relations. Benedict Spinoza may have been better than most of us, but he +was not in any other way different, and though maligned and insulted, as +earlier in history [p.025] another of his race had been, for his doubts +and heresies, and though exposed to the dangers of the assassin's knife, +and finally, when other measures failed, with special cruelties +excommunicated by his synagogue, he loved his people, and all men +besides, as few have loved them. Doubt makes one dependent; isolation +gives a sense of loss; and, if ever a solution of the doubt comes, in +the life and consciousness which it enjoins the lost companions, whether +they will or not, are included with oneself. In many ways this is an +important fact; yet it must suffice that we see the affinity of the +doubter for society. Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. +Dependent man and doubting man must have society. + +That doubt, furthermore, not only creates a motive to social life, even +to the restoration of lost companions, but also by weakening the +barriers which have divided some class, a sect perhaps, or a party, or a +nation, or a race, from some other class, puts social life on a broader +and deeper basis, is also an important fact, and full of significance +beyond our immediate interest. Thus, to suggest indeed how those two +reflections mentioned in the preceding paragraph are inseparable, +besides his wish to retain or recover his wonted companions, the doubter +would also associate them and himself with new companions, I venture to +say, as if in a figure, with Gentiles as well as with Jews, and this +gives to doubt, or to those who experience it and adequately use it, a +most significant rôle in the evolution of society, the rôle of mediation +between old friends and new, between the past and the future, the narrow +life and the broader [p.026] and deeper life, what is conservative and +what is progressive; but at least for the present it is again enough if +we see that doubt, not only by its personal losses gives the motive, but +also by its removal of barriers gives the larger possibility of society. + +And, in addition to the company of nature and the company of man, doubt, +springing as it does from man's sense of insufficiency, seeks also the +company of God; yet not of the God of any theology. As here conceived, +God is that which lies at the back of nature, and at the back of man in +the sense of being in character broader and deeper than either of these, +and quite superior to any difference between them; he is the single, +all-inclusive, wholly indeterminate reality upon which the doubter +depends, and must depend; he is as nameless and unspeakable as he is +indeterminate and all-inclusive, and he is real and perfect only as so +nameless. To theology, God is determinate; to doubt, imperfect if +determinate. At times, perhaps only half in earnest, or at least not +clearly knowing if he is in earnest or if he wishes others to think him +so, the doubter speaks of nature as his God, of the hills, or the +fields, or the sea, or the sky, or the busy street as his church, or the +great book of the universe as his Bible. At times, with the deepest +emotion and with open avowal, nature and God are fully one to him, and +the poetry, or the science, or the philosophy, to which his doubting +leads him, is veritably a religious revelation. But always his doubting, +as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to +nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to +others like himself who, by sharing, [p.027] may lighten his distress +and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; +to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he +has known; to a mind and a heart, such as he knows must be present in +that which surrounds him and moves within him, in knowledge more +enlightened and in emotion more inspired, than his doubting mind and +faltering heart have ever been; and such a life or such a mind or heart, +whatever name it be called by, is God. Can mind appeal to anything but +mind, or heart to anything but heart? And doubt--can it be doubt without +the appeal? + +The doubter who refuses or hesitates to speak the name of God may thus +be a protestant, but plainly he is no atheist. A mere name, in any case, +is quite as likely to obscure as to illumine the reality; the +chiaroscuro effect must ever belong to it. Doubt is no road to atheism. +As a way to theism it may be beset with hardship, and its goal may be +quite beyond the horizon; but the doubter is not by nature an atheist; +quite the contrary. As no other, feeling dependent, he is a seeker, and +even a confident seeker after what is perfect. He truly and confidently +seeketh, for he seeketh after what hath neither visible form nor body, +what is without habitation or name, what, like the Son of Man, hath not +where to lay its head. He seeketh, what his very seeking itself is, not +a God, but the life of the God. + + * * * * * + +The general facts about doubt are now before us, and although much needs +yet to be said in explanation, and a further fact is reserved for a +[p.028] concluding chapter, still not so darkly as it began this first +chapter in our confession of doubt has come, perhaps somewhat abruptly, +to an end. We have next, entering more fully and critically into the +conditions of our human experience, to scrutinize closely our ordinary +habits of mind, those common-sense views of things that on the whole +prevail among men. In these ideas, impulsive, unreasoning, above all +often flatly contradictory, we shall find some of the strongest reasons +for our doubting nature. + + +[1] _Mental Development of the Child and the Race. Methods and +Processes_. By James M. Baldwin. Macmillan, 1895. + +[2] Let me add, that if certain people, struggling in the present maze +of educational theory, and objecting, with a zest and a combativeness +that fairly belie their contentions, to the use of interest as the +primal educational motive, if these people would only recognize change +as always a part of interest, their greatest trouble would be removed. +They refuse to have education easy or pleasant; interest, they insist, +must make it so; and doubtless the advocates of interest are in part to +blame for this view; but change, which to my mind is involved in all +interest, includes resistance and struggle; change is ever a challenge +to effort; and, such being the case, an education led by interest is not +necessarily easy or idly pleasant. The real meaning of the interest +theory, at least as I have to understand it, is simply (1) that the +natural child or the natural man always has something to do, and (2) +that education should promote that something. It is far from meaning +that there should be no compulsion or discipline, no pain or +self-denial. Whoever honestly over expected to do, or ever did any thing +without these? The interest theory, then, would not eliminate hardship +or discipline, but, to my understanding, by making education serve +actual life, would substitute a natural for an artificial and externally +imposed hardship. Not hardship, but real achievement makes the educated +man. + + + +[p.029] + +III. + +DIFFICULTIES IN OUR ORDINARY VIEWS OF THINGS. + + +If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences +against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the +jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it +would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the +different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be +offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the +consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. True, for some +reason lying deep in human nature, a defence that ends by convicting the +jury of error, is hardly likely to lead to the immediate discharge of +the prisoner; judges or jurymen are not in the habit of taking a rebuff +in that way; but in course of time the prisoner will be justified, and +his justification, however tardy, is all that now concerns us. To his +defence, therefore, and the discomfiture of his judges, but to the +latter without any malice, we turn at once. + +And where shall we begin? Our predicament in this defence is something +like that of the small boy, bewildered over the task of "picking up" his +nursery. [p.030] "I can't do it," he says. "There are so many things; I +can't tell which to take first." Poor little fellow! If he halts now, +what will he do when the littered room--I had almost said the littered +playroom--of his later life confronts him? Contradictions under foot +everywhere are certainly not less confusing than blocks, horses, papers, +trains, marbles, picture-books, and the like--or unlike--scattered over +a nursery floor. + +Here, for example, in practical life is the natural, physical world. How +real, brutally real, it is; its very law is fate; its forces are no +respecters of persons, inexorably ruling and compelling all alike, +giving life and taking it, full of the grimmest humour, raising hopes +only to cast them down. Is some one rash enough to suggest that things +physical are only so many ideas, real only as states of mind, of God's +mind possibly, in some way coming to consciousness in the senses of men? +The practical man knows a thing or two about that. He kicks a stone, or +strikes his fist loudly upon a table, and so ends the matter, laughing +the mad idealist away. And yet, prestissimo change! What do we hear him +saying now? This brutally real world of physical things and powers is +but a fleeting show; a thing only of space and time. What is really real +and abiding is the spiritual that is everywhere and always. Another +world there is, not to be spoken of in the same breath with this present +world, a world compared with which this is but a mist before the eyes. + +In so many familiar ways this duplicity towards what is real is +manifest. People go to church to do such a wonderfully strange thing; +nothing more [p.031] nor less than to save their real souls from an +unreal world, or sometimes to hide a real worldliness under unreal rites +or symbols. "You may think me worldly, selfish, sensuous," says some +one, "and I can not deny that often I do seem so, but this life of mine +is ever only a yearning after the things that are spiritual, for which, +as you see, I pray so earnestly, and which have nothing at all to do +with one's worldly life." Yes, we do see, and particularly we see that +things spiritual are often an impertinence in worldly affairs. The "real +self" never does the things that are really done. Only this, just this +is where the duplicity lies. Again, from some one else, a practical man +presumably and an accuser of the doubter, we hear the following: "Only +the spiritual life is real; look to it that you fear, as I fear, deeply +and constantly the material world hanging like a sword over us all." Can +it be, as would certainly appear, that superstition is still among us, +that so readily we can give reality to unreality, that belief in ghosts +still holds our human minds? Once upon a time--at least once--the +Christian Church rose in bitter resentment because a certain man, by +merely questioning the separate reality of the physical world, +threatened to deprive the holy priesthood, with all its time-honoured +prerogatives, of its heaven-appointed labour. Yet what is to be said of +a church that prefers to think of an independent physical world, by +which man is bound and damned, in order to save for itself the task, +either hopeless or useless, of rescuing him? Labelling a man "rescued" +or "Christian" does not make another-world creature of him. In political +history, too, what [p.032] a paradox it is that kingship by divine right +has always been also kingship by physical might. The practices of an +avowed supernaturalism have always been strangely materialistic. + +So, in high places and in low, in the affairs of men now and in the +past, the physical and the spiritual have ever been in a most remarkable +relation; each real in and by itself, but with a most unusual courtesy +also unreal at the slightest motion from the other; each now supreme, +and now wholly subject; each now the whole life of man, and now the very +opposite, the antipodes of all that is human; and each self-existent and +independent, yet never without its real need of the other. Here surely +is contradiction, or vacillation, in experience that is, to say the +least, very confusing to him who reflects.[1] + +But, to take up something else certainly not less confusing to the +ordinary mind, "practical," and unaccustomed to reflection, this is a +world of separate, individual things, of chairs, hands, atoms, eyes, +stars, men, stones, books, leaves, rivers, lives, mountains, relations, +notions, distances, days or years, and so on, [p.033] indefinitely and +above all indiscriminately; a world, moreover, into which in part God, +in part man, defying an equally powerful agent of chaos or dissipation, +has put at least for a time a certain kind of order, an order that might +be said to be good enough for all practical purposes. Yet with all its +indiscriminate manifoldness, and with the irregular, uncertain conflict +between chaos and order, it is nevertheless a single world, in short, +just one more individual thing, one more example, perhaps outdoing all +others, of the marvellous license with which human beings are wont to +speak and think of a "thing." Chairs, hands, mountains, men, stars, and +the whole universe, are all "things," and in this world of things, that +is itself another thing, or, should I rather say, _apart from_ this +world of things, that is another thing, there are two, at least two, +discordant powers taking turns at making order and disorder. + +Confusion indeed! Nor have I exaggerated it. The loose association of +chairs, distances, and days; the easy assumption of two supreme agents +working against each other; the certain uncertainty about these agents +being in the world or out of it, of it or not of it; and the readiness +with which the whole universe, the all-inclusive thing, is treated as +only one more thing to be included: these habits of the ordinary mind +show a confusion that seems like insanity. Can we even face them safely +and soberly? + +For special regard I select just one, perhaps the central one; the habit +of treating the universe, the unity of all things, as but one additional +thing, the whole, as if it were only another part, the complete [p.034] +and infinite as if distinct from or outside of what is finite or +incomplete; or again, in good old philosophical terms, the One as if it +were another and so in effect, but one of the Many. Now some there are, +and their number may be large, who never have thought of the +contradiction and consequent confusion in the notion of a single world +made up of many single things, yet itself another thing, or of the +Infinite as external to the Finite, or of the One as not in and of the +Many, but the contradiction is there, and can scarcely need more than +mention to be seen. + +Even in theory, scientific or philosophical, the wholeness or unity of +the many things of the world has sometimes been taken for just one more +thing, as when Anaximander taught that it was "that thing which is no +one of the world's things," or for one of the many things supposed by it +to be unified, as when Thales so naïvely declared all things to be +water. Anaximander and Thales were only ancient Greeks, albeit very wise +and enlightened Greeks, living as early as 600 B.C., but in very recent +times they have had followers. Electricity has been taken as the one +force of all other forces. Our chemists, some of them, have been hunting +down the one element among the rest. Statesmen and churchmen have often +dreamt of one man as somehow in his single person expressing the unity +of all human life, and more than once they have even imagined him +present in the flesh. God, although the Being in whom we, as ourselves +persons, live and move and have our being, has Himself been another +person. Society and its supposed component individuals have made two +orders [p.035] of existence. Life and living creatures; history and its +many events; the solar system and its planets: nature and all her +various kingdoms: these have also been held apart, making amazing +dualisms. But, simply to repeat from above, taking the whole or the +unity of all things as itself an independent thing, as itself one more +thing, is a contradiction that needs only to be stated clearly to be +appreciated. Let me hope that I have stated it clearly. + +Nor is this particular conflict in our ordinary ideas yet before us in +all its fatefulness, for--as if to defy the principle of consistency to +the very last degree of its forbearance--we are often, if not usually, +given not only to unifying our world of things in terms of just one more +thing, or of persons in terms of just one more person, but also to +thinking of this one more thing, or person as _sui generis_, as +altogether different in nature and substance. So do we mingle our +duplicity about reality with that about the unity of things. The many, +for example, are physical or of the substance of matter; the one is +ideal or of the substance of mind or spirit. The many persons are merely +human, the One is divine. Strange, indeed, that men should ever take one +more as the unity of all the rest, but if possible it is at least, at +first sight, stranger that this one more should be relegated to a sphere +wholly apart and peculiar. In the madness of such compounded +contradiction there may lurk real method, but of the contradiction and +of the compounding there can be no question. + +Even the soul, a something, an entity, that each one of us has been in +the habit of claiming for himself [p.036] and of holding very sacred and +inviolate too, has been subjected to the same way of thinking. +Doubtless, since God has not been spared, we should hardly expect the +soul to escape. We view the soul so materialistically, even while we +insist that it is not material. We say, we think, that it is something +in the body; yet, of course, we are at our wit's end to tell just what +particular place it occupies there. Similarly, God is supposed to be +somewhere in the Universe, yet in no assignable place, and the chemist's +universal atom is somewhere also, though surely not in the same place, +and, wherever it be, waiting with its own, yet certainly a divine +patience that ought to be inspiring, for experimental discovery. But +with regard to the soul, although the life and unity of the body, +although one of the things in the body, the soul itself is not bodily at +all; it can enter the body and is important--who dares say how +important?--to the body, and it can, as at death, leave the body, but +though for a time in, it never is of the body. A strange standpoint +certainly, but men insist that it is quite as true as it is strange. It +seems very much like saying that when you build a house, in order to +ensure it real solidarity, to give it real permanence and integrity, you +should make a special point of putting your bricks or your lumber +together, not with clinging, well-set mortar, or strong pins and +straight-driven nails, but so much more sensibly, because so much +further from what would be like the material bricks or lumber, or like +the equally material mortar or nails, with those real and really compact +things, absolutely continuous or indivisible, or at least indestructible +[p.037] even when disintegrated, empty space and pure uneventful time. +With such space and time there would be union indeed I But, again, +strange as such a procedure in building a house would be, men insist or +at least I can readily imagine their insistence, that houses are built +in that way, and built successfully. The method may seem absurd, but +they insist that it is not madness. Are not abstract plans and such +seemingly unsubstantial things as mathematical formulæ, which are very +near to being made of empty space and time, the real strength and +integrity of all our great modern structures? And the soul, whatever be +said of its being an immaterial thing, is nevertheless, even for being +both immaterial and thing, the very sinew of the body. + +Here may be method, then, and sanity, but there is always contradiction, +obstinate contradiction, compounded contradiction! The soul, unity of +the body, is only another thing or part in the body, and at the same +time, though in the body, it is after all not really of the body. +Possibly, perhaps necessarily, such patent contradiction, and, more than +all, such compounding of contradiction, like doubling a negative, make +for what is without contradiction, but this wholesome result is not +consciously intended, and in the face of all, whatever our hopes or our +beliefs, we must feel grave doubts and confess our doubting. Those who +do build better than they know, if enlightened, would not again build in +the same way. Two contradictions may be better than one, but even two +make us wonder. + +Closely connected with the contradictions in our [p.038] customary ideas +of reality, and ideas of wholeness or unity, there is the way in which +we calmly take opposite sides in our notions about space and time, and +about that very fundamental factor of our experience--causation. These +are, all of them, so general and fundamental as possibly to seem too +abstruse even for mention in this place, since throughout these chapters +we are courting simplicity, but of space, and time, and causation, only +what is very simple needs to be said. Thus to the ordinary consciousness +how fatally things are separated from each other by conditions of space +and time. Then is not now. Here is not there. Space and time are only +physical and as brutal as all things physical, separating this from that +with a finality that knows no degree. Lovers, continents apart, despair +over the cruel distance. Time tears us ruthlessly from those dear to us. +What is to be, as well as what was, though in the next moment, is +absolutely beyond our grasp. Could anything be freer from dispute than +the reality and the separating brutally of space and time? Yet, almost +at a whisper, all distance and all duration become as nothing. Do not +the lovers write to each other, flatly and passionately denying that +they are far apart? Do we not constantly forestall the future and retain +the past? Indeed, when all is said, a thousand years are as one day, and +all the places of the earth are one. So real, and so vast, and so +physical to us but a moment ago, space and time have now passed into +mere phantoms of the imagination. We live, then, not only in a world +that is brutally spatial and temporal, but also, and at the same time, +[p.039] in a world that is not spatial and not temporal at all; and +living here--or there?--we have again to wonder and to doubt even in our +belief. To our own constant amazement we find that we make our life a +bridge over what would seem to be an absolutely impassable chasm. + +As for causation our temerity is not less surprising. Wet and dry moons, +unlucky Fridays, holy and unholy numbers, haunted houses, so-called +providences, free in the sense of indifferently, irresponsibly free +wills and fiat deities with their suddenly made worlds may not be +generally in vogue at the present time, at least among the better +educated, the enlightened and not infrequently conceited classes, but +even among the wise and the consciously informed they have their natural +offspring, and I am not so sure that many of them might not be found +almost intact, at least in the more retired parts of the consciousness +of my readers. To illustrate, for some if not for all of us, this is a +world of many free and independent causes, yet also it is the single +effect of one cause; it is again, our mood having changed, the single +effect of two absolutely unlike beings or natures, each of them an +all-powerful cause; it is a sphere here and now of causal, creative, +productive activity, but it was itself created once for all long ago, at +a date which the exegete hopes--in the equally distant future!--to +determine for us; it contains some things that are only causes and some +that are only effects, or some, or all, that are both causes and +effects; it has parts that are the accepted causes of other parts; it +has causes, those acting now and the one original cause, that are +temporally [p.040] antecedent to their effects; and, not to make the +list longer, it is variously a world of one last effect, of one first +and only cause, of an infinite series of causes and effects, and in +whole, or in part, it constantly shows something made out of nothing or +nothing resulting from something. A wondrous world most assuredly; and +yet at first statement this record of our various notions of causation +may not appear as a very serious arraignment of the consciousness which +it exposes. Moreover some people actually glory in such a wonder as it +presents. But, to be plain, though also monotonous, the uncaused cause +or the effect that is only a part of the whole, or the cause or the +effect that refuses to share in the other's nature, or finally the +causation that is now so individual and so manifold and so effective, +and that was once so single and so complete, is something that must give +any thinker pause. Can a moving body move an immobile body? Can some +things in the universe be mobile; others not? Can the moving body and +the moved body belong to different moments of time? Can motion lead to +rest or rest to motion? But our ordinary ideas of causation would allow, +or even require, an affirmative answer to every one of these questions. + +Alas! Shall this labour proceed? Can we afford to continue it? The +defence of the doubter is getting almost too successful; it is becoming +too personal to be pleasant. The task of picking up the room of our +ordinary life grows harder, not easier, as it moves forward. Every thing +that we touch tells of a spirit of violence in our nature. Even the +small boy can not have been more lawless, for his toys were all [p.041] +battered perhaps, but not, like ours, all broken. Can we afford to go +on? Afford it or not, we simply can not help ourselves, for our +self-confidence is already shattered; our attention to the disorder is +already beyond our control; each one of us is the doubter we would +defend. + +Here close at hand, where we have to see it, is another contradiction +common in all human experience. It inheres in our conceits about +knowledge. For us, on the one hand, the world we know not only really +is, the tree out yonder or the planet miles and miles away being really +and actually there, but also is just the world which our knowledge +reports to us. What we have knowledge of is in our belief a real thing +in and by itself, and we know it literally and directly, not +figuratively, not afar off through symbols; we know it as it is; we know +a real world, and we know it face to face. Yet, on the other hand, with +all this simple confidence in our knowledge, what are we also given to +saying, or assuming when we do not say it? Even in the moment of our +confidence we humble ourselves with the cry of our utter foolishness, +making our recognized foolishness only a counter-conceit. What but +perfect folly is our knowledge before God's knowledge! "Illusion! The +dream of a few hours or a few years!" is so often the best we can say of +the whole fabric, past and present, of human consciousness. Not now, but +only in the hereafter are we to see reality face to face; now we see +only very darkly, if at all. + +Some one here protests strenuously, raising an objection that might very +properly have been raised [p.042] before. Thus, I am told that only +different people, or only the same people at different times, ever hold +two opposite views, whether about knowledge or any thing else; never one +and the same person at the same time holds them both; and so the present +arraignment can not be as serious as it is made to appear. Well, with +this objection I can agree in part, for there is at least a half-truth +in it, but by no means does it tell, either in general or in particular, +that is, with regard to the special case of the conceits about +knowledge, the whole story of double living or double thinking among +men. Indeed the easy way, in which men make the distinctions of society +or the distinctions of time bear the responsibility for what must always +in the end be the conflicts of their personal lives, is but another +illustration of the difficulties besetting their ordinary views of +things. Duplicity of view, like anything else in experience, must always +be more than a matter of different people or different times, for the +simple reason that, whether directly personal or not, it is present in +the environment of the individual person. So, even if those two +positions, confidence in worldly knowledge and religious trust and +humility, for the sake of argument be momentarily associated only with +different persons or social classes or times, our present point will +really be just exactly as pointed, for there is always a third person or +class or time into whose direct single experience the duplicity or +contradiction is bound to enter. Consider, for example, the case of a +child. For a part of the week he is perhaps at school; on Sunday at +church; and the life in which he thus takes part must [p.043] appear to +him, there being in all probability little or no reservation on either +side, to be hopelessly divided against itself. Now is knowledge power; +now hindrance and greatest danger. Now he is to learn all he can; now, +on the other hand, to forget what he may have learned. So is the +conflict about him made his personal conflict, and exactly as in his +case, so in all human experience the individual must share personally +whatever the environment affords. + +The individual and the environing society are the closest of blood +relations, though we often allow ourselves, all too easily as has been +said, to lose sight of the fact; they live under the same roof, and rely +for sustenance on the same fare; and while to some the contradictions of +life may be overlooked as personally impertinent and unimportant, being +referred wholly to the environment, they are plainly the unavoidable +heritage and the personal responsibility of every individual that counts +himself a member of the human race. The objection, then, that was raised +does not remove contradiction as a cause of doubt, but merely emphasizes +what in a subsequent chapter must occupy us, the social aspect of +experience.[2] Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our +view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, +but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a +matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of +the single person's inner responsibility. Society in its manifold +classes, in its conflicts and in its history, may help us to see the +whole of experience, the unity [p.044] of experience on all sides and in +all parts, but it never does, and it never can, relieve the individual, +or deprive the individual, of any side or part of what makes up an +experience-whole. Grown men and women may be more definitely set in +their lives and their ideas to certain specific things than children, +but in no one, young or old, can such specialism ever be wholly +exclusive of any of the other things. + +To return to our immediate interest, if men are given to being doubters +in their views about reality, spiritual and material; about unity or +wholeness; about space and time, on the one hand fatally vast and +independently real, and on the other formal and illusory; about +causality, so actual and positive now, and yet so complete yesterday, or +ever and ever so long ago; and about knowledge, so perfectly wise and so +thoroughly vain and foolish; if, I say, men are double in all these +different ways, in their moral judgments they seem, if possible, even +more confused, and the confusion, the division against themselves, is +the more serious for being with regard to what so directly concerns +personal life and human fellowship. + +To begin with, as will indeed readily appear, the offences of our moral +judgments, which often, if not always, are largely influenced by +religious or rather theological conceptions, are only a peculiar +expression of the two-faced attitude towards causation, human persons or +wills being the causes specially involved. In general the causes of the +universe are of three sorts, those of natural force, those of +supernatural agency, and those of human agency, and although toward them +all essentially the same attitude is [p.045] assumed, it is worth our +while to consider particularly the causation that is commonly adjudged +to belong to the human will and the moral ideas that spring from it. + +For the purposes of the moral consciousness we translate the two +conflicting powers of our world, or the spiritual reality and the +material, into two agents of good and evil respectively, each having a +power of doing whatever, true to its peculiar character, it may will to +do, and then, as if in accord with this way of thinking, we find two +distinct selves, a good self and an evil self, within each one of us, +and we also divide the body social into two exclusive classes, the class +of those who are identified with the righteous life and the class of +those given to the unrighteous life, the sheep and the goats, the elect +and the damned. But, to say nothing of the fact that these three ideas +of the two powers, the two selves and the two classes, cannot be made +really to accord with each other, although they possess an outward +agreement, is it not clear that any attempt to take the good and the +evil as two mutually exclusive things, be they spirits or selves or +classes, is to destroy at once the real substance of virtue and the real +value of the consciousness of evil? In practical life this means, what +everybody knows so well, that an isolated, unduly holy righteousness, a +sort of touch-me-not goodness, is bound to be empty, to be only +ritualistic and aristocratic or pharisaical, and in any one of these +respects it appears decidedly unrighteous; while an isolated +unrighteousness, besides having at least the moral worth of a protest +against its counterpart, is in itself exactly like the original [p.046] +sinfulness of the theologian; being unavoidable, it is wholly without +any warranted opprobrium. Indeed, it all but comes to this, that +righteousness as a fixed thing, fixed to a part of the universe or to a +part of the individual self or to a part of society, is really in just +so far evil, and the direct opposite of such righteousness is +proportionately good. Good and evil, then, may not mix well, but certain +it is that contradiction results from the common attempt of men to +regard either as untainted or untempered by the other. + +Still, not upon this real difficulty in our moral judgments would I now +lay greatest stress, although it is real enough and important. In yet +another way our moral consciousness is at war with itself. In estimating +the worth of human conduct, so far as this is determined by its +initiation, we are in an almost hopeless tangle. We are more than likely +to think of other people as influenced by their environment in what they +do, of ourselves as quite original and responsible, as independent of +any such influences; or, more fully and more exactly, we are given to +referring our own bad deeds to environment, our good deeds to ourselves, +while for others we are prompted to do just the reverse, referring their +good deeds to environment, their bad deeds to themselves. Such is human +nature--not, to be sure, at its best, but common human nature; and even +when we escape the foregoing personally invidious distinctions, we +still--and this is the main point--treat self and environment as two +naturally conflicting, altogether independent sources of conduct. Two +different and independent sources of anything, [p.047] however, can only +make for conflict and contradiction. If only our courts of law could +judge responsibility either wholly from the determinations of +environment or wholly from those of personal will, or again, if only the +will and the environment could be seen as not so radically opposed, what +a simplification would ensue, and how much freer and more certain +justice would be. To venture on a variation of an aphorism, where +there's another way there is always a loophole; where there's +environment there is always a shifted responsibility; where there's a +"free will" there is always a will taken for some unperformed or +imperfectly performed deed. + +So the double origin of conduct offers a very serious difficulty, which, +when it is understood, is not unlike that of the two powers or selves or +classes, but even more is to be said in exposure of our moral judgments. +Thus we have the confident conceit of freedom, of our own freedom in +good or our neighbour's freedom in evil, or in general of man's freedom +to act without regard to the determinations from environment, but we +have also a strange though possibly a fortunate way of qualifying the +very freedom that we claim. We claim freedom only to avow, almost in the +same breath, duties and responsibilities. We have the freedom, but only +the duties make it worth anything. A startling paradox this, so familiar +to us all: "I am free to do all that I ought to do," or, "I am free to +carry out certain necessities of my true life." A startling paradox; +and, above all, a strange way of escaping the necessities of +environment, unless, forsooth, it really opens the door, or supplies a +secret door, by which the [p.048] necessities of environment and the +necessities of one's true life can come together? If freedom demands +law, why should it hold aloof from the natural law, the law of +environment so definitely present? Possibly, then, as once before +suggested, one contradiction in experience may be the corrective of +another, the paradox of freedom and duty only correcting the +contradiction of two sources of conduct, personal will and environment. +In the case, for example, of the disposition to distinguish between +one's own acts and another's, with respect to their initiation by will +or by environment, to mingle duty and necessity with one's own supposed +freedom is equivalent in effect to denying one's neighbour's freedom +because of the restraints of his environment. But such considerations, +however promising for future reflection upon the conflicts in our moral +consciousness, are not of immediate interest. Our doubts may once more +find hope in the reflection that the faults of experience may balance +themselves, but we have no occasion to abandon our doubting as idle or +meaningless. Contradictions that balance each other, errors that are +mutually corrective, are still contradictions, are still errors. + +So, to reduce our moral judgments, confusion and all, to small compass, +we are free, others are not; they are free, we are not; and our freedom +is bound by duty, by duty to the moral law, while their freedom, unless +a hopeless lawlessness, is bound by the environment and its law. Again, +good and evil are each unmixed, and moral acts serve two masters--that +is to say, spring from two sources. We may, therefore, [p.049] still +believe in morality--yet how can this be? And freedom--yet how is +freedom possible? + +But finally, as last to be examined, there is the idea of law, just now +brought to attention. This idea is a focus for a good many conflicting +views. Witness the familiar argument from the knowledge of law in nature +to fatalism, an argument as absurd as it is widespread, for the bare +fact that we know the laws of nature really emancipates us from the +blind fate to which the argument points. Can knowledge ever mean +anything but freedom? Certainly no law can ever be known unless the +sphere of its operation accords with the nature of those who have the +knowledge. Simply to know is to share in and be at one with whatsoever +is known, and the clearer and more cogent or rational the knowledge, the +truer and realer is this participation or union. The law we know, then, +must have all the meaning and the natural authority of a law of our own +enactment, and so must actually have the sanction of our will. Will, I +say, cannot help sanctioning knowledge, for knowledge is always true to, +because conditioned by, the natural action of the knower. But no such +message of freedom, or say of human opportunity in natural necessity, is +commonly received by men at large from the evidences of law in nature. +Superstitiously they see only fate. Clear knowledge and blind fate! + +Nor are we commonly satisfied with only so much superstition. We go +still further and make the case as bad as possible by treating the law +we know as if in its spirit, if not in its letter, it were final. In +other words, we view nature, with some of whose ways we [p.050] have +become conversant, not merely as a source of blind fate, or external +necessity, for our lives, but also as essentially and ultimately a +sphere of strictly mechanical routine. Yet here again we are surely +reasoning beyond our premises--the very essence of superstition--for the +routine we know can never answer substantially, or even formally, to +nature as she really is. Our positive knowledge, our knowledge that +arrives at specific formulæ, even though these formulæ reach the noble +dignity of mathematics, is bound to be in terms of some particular +experience, personal or national or racial; it is relative and special; +it is partial knowledge; and he is superstitious, and does, indeed, +argue beyond his premises, who takes the whole, whose law he does not +know, to be literally analogous to the part, whose law he thinks he +knows, but can in fact know only partially. No whole ever is one of its +parts, or merely analogous to one of its parts; _a_ law never is _the_ +law, or even in its lawfulness literally analogous thereto; and +mechanicalism, whether as a popular or a philosophical "ism," has no +justification save just this false analogy. + +And the prevalent confusion in the notions of law or lawfulness is of +course reflected in the corresponding notions of lawlessness. Here, as +with other negative terms, men forget that negatives necessarily are +quite relative to their positives. All specific, definitely manifest, +known and positive lawlessness simply must have some place in _the_ law +of things; it can no more be an absolute lawlessness than any human +routine can be supposed final; and, on the other hand, there can be no +positive law whose breaking has not some [p.051] sanction; there can be +no lawfulness which does not warrant some lawlessness. This truth, +perhaps as nothing else could, must show the error in the notion of +mechanical routine as affording an adequate description of the ultimate +nature of things. Where the whole always gives point to the negation of +any of its parts, where _the_ law always sanctions some breaking of any +law, to think of the whole in terms of its parts may be human, but it is +of the human which is prone to err. Those who would still insist upon +seeing only routine in law, and upon judging lawlessness as only +relative to such seeing, might do well, rising above their ordinary +views, to remember with some real appreciation that once upon a time the +law-breakers and the reformer were very closely associated; they were +associated in life, and at the end they were crucified together. +Whatever may be one's theology, there is a deal of food for thought in +those deaths on Calvary and in the several lives which they closed. + +Lawlessness suggests the supernatural. So many have promptly concluded +that just as with the knowledge of law in nature human freedom must be +resigned, blind fate taking its place, so anything or anybody at all +supernatural, Satan--for example--as well as God, must once for all +withdraw. If law reigns, God can will whatever he wills only because the +law is so; the law is not so because he wills it; and this in common +opinion only makes him decrepit, without real initiative, dead. Yet, +once more, what superstition! The knowledge of law has never robbed man +of his freedom, nor even slain his God; or this at least: the loss of +freedom or the death of God, for [p.052] which any law that man has had +knowledge of has been responsible, has always been only the forerunner +of a larger and fuller freedom and of his God's resurrection and +glorification. This or that law may rob and may kill, but this or that +law, let me reiterate, never is _the_ law, and why common opinion has to +judge all things in heaven and earth, as if it were, is hard to +comprehend. Neither nature nor God, if these two need to be thought of +as two, is law-bound; each rather, with a meaning which I must hope now +to have made clear, is law-free. The law in which nature is free is as +infinite, as transcendent of any particular human experience as the +ever-developing freedom of man or as the will of God. And God, or the +Supernatural, is not confined to the narrow sphere of what man knows, as +man knows it; this stands only for what man calls nature. God is the +all-inclusive sphere or source of the absolute law, for which knowledge +can be only a constant striving, or which is itself even a party to the +constant striving. Somehow _the_ law must be a living thing, not a +routine: the supernatural must be not nature as she is known, but +nature's fullest and deepest life. + +Very emphatically what has just been said about nature or God being +law-free, or about _the_ law being infinite, or not analogous in form or +substance, in spirit or letter, to any thing in positive knowledge, is +no argument for the Jonah story or even for the miracle of the wine at +Cana's wedding feast; and yet time and again people who apparently +should have done enough thinking to know better, to the great +satisfaction of thousands have used the infinity of [p.053] nature's or +God's lawfulness, which is to say the only partial and tentative +character of all human knowledge of law, as a clinching proof of all the +miracles in the Bible. Can they not see that like what is lawless in +general, the miraculous must be in the premises only relative to the +experience of the time? Even chance is not less so. The spiritual +meaning of those miracles may persist, for the miraculous we must always +have with us; but if even our relative, imperfect knowledge stands for +anything, if it be even a tentative knowledge, a working standpoint, the +literal truth of most, or even all of them, disappeared long ago. +Miracles, like laws, come and go; only the miraculous, like _the_ law, +goes on forever. + +And this leads to something else, to something also very common, perhaps +the reverse of the foregoing. With what an unaccountable delight many of +us have accepted naturalistic explanations, for example, of the sun +standing still, or of the retreat of the waters of the Red Sea, or of +the Immaculate Conception, or of any of the many other marvels in either +the Old or the New Testament, and have thought that so our old beliefs +are to be preserved. I have myself heard honest and earnest men, even +members of an academic community, appeal to parthenogenesis as a fact in +nature which would at least make the miracle of Christ's birth +scientifically plausible as well as spiritually significant; but such an +appeal, besides being, in my opinion, positively irreverent, is as blind +religiously as it is ignorant scientifically. Cannot such men +appreciate, and cannot all others who do as they do also appreciate the +fact that naturalistic explanation of [p.054] any miracle, if really a +genuine explanation, may prove the fact, but must in just so far +destroy, I do not say the miraculous, which is indestructible, but the +particular miracle? + +The lawful miracle, then--lawful, of course, so soon as explained--is +one more contradiction in our prevalent notions about law. That it +exemplifies, too, a habit of mind which is exercised by us in many +directions besides that of interpretation of the arbitrary things of the +Bible can hardly need be said. In life generally the arbitrary is +peculiarly fond of going to law, sometimes to what is called nature's +law, as when revolutionists of all sorts--strikers and radical +reformers--raise the cry of "natural rights," laying down the law as to +what men are by nature, and sometimes to "human" law, as when the +conservatives in government or business with their vested rights, be +these coal mines, oil fields, or political privileges, appeal for +"justice" to the courts or to the military. + +But, to say no more, with the lawful miracle, with law the strange +support of what is arbitrary, with this as a very good example of the +duplicity which in general we are all of us wont to allow in our +practical life, the present exposure of our ordinary consciousness must +come to an end. With regard to the real substance of things, or to their +unity, or to the nature of space and time and causation, with regard to +the worth of knowledge, with regard to our human conduct, to its freedom +and responsibility, or finally with regard to the place of law in nature +and in the life of man, our ordinary consciousness is manifestly +inconsistent and vacillating--nay, is grossly contradictory; and we are +[p.055] led at least to suspect that the disorder which we have found is +inherent and essential, having the nature of an original human defect. +Such a defect, however, is cause for doubt; so that man, above all +"practical" man, having inconsistency or duplicity as almost, if not +quite, an uncontrollable habit with him, should be himself a prince of +sceptics. + +And yet, although we have indeed found man spending at least his waking +hours in a room that seems disorder incarnate, and although before the +court of practical life the doubter seems thus to have been thoroughly +justified, while his too hasty judges are in turn condemned, +nevertheless the case for doubt is not of such a character as to leave +absolutely no hope for belief. Now and again in the evidence, as it has +been disclosed, have we not felt the presence of something, not yet +given its due weight, that would make man more than a mere doubter and +unbeliever? Have we not been led to suspect that somehow, without loss +of their reality and validity, the most cogent reasons for doubt, even +the contradictions in our views of things, might turn into bases of +belief, that an experience essentially paradoxical may not be as +hopeless as at first sight it may appear, that in all the madness there +is at least a chance of some method? The view of science, however, must +be examined before our attention can be turned definitely upon such a +possibility. Enough if in our present doubting we are still left with a +little hope. + + +[1] In the rise of Christian Science, against which I have no special +grudge, although I have already taken exceptions to its claims, there is +a special case, special because affecting a single, relatively small +class, of the popular hospitality to contradiction. Thus, the Christian +Scientists would reduce all reality to mind, but at the same time they +busily deny reality to a large group of mind facts, namely and notably, +the ideas of disease. Recently, it is true, according to the newspapers, +their healers have been told to "decline to doctor infectious or +contagious diseases," yet not because such diseases have any reality, +but because the illusion of them is so real as to make the "Christian" +treatment of them both imprudent and impractical. Philosophies and +religions of illusion are certainly weird, uncanny things! + +[2] Chapter VII. + + + +[p.056] + +IV. + +THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS RISE AND CHARACTER. + + +With science we usually associate accuracy and consistency, and at first +thought we are not likely to expect that the work and standpoint of +science can contain anything substantial enough for the doubter to base +his claim upon; but second thought is our first duty at this time, and +second thought always changes the view, and in this particular instance +it will show science in important respects to be quite as vulnerable as +the unreflective consciousness of practical life, for science also is +honeycombed with contradiction and paradox. + +More than once scientists themselves have turned sceptical about their +work and its results. The cry of bankruptcy in science, not merely as a +charge, but also as a confession, has been heard in the land not +infrequently; now perhaps low and uncertain, but again clear and strong. +And why not? Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other +men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? +Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally +different from the ordinary consciousness. The same eye is looking at +[p.057] the same world, only through microscopes and telescopes. The +same mind is measuring the same environment, only with carefully devised +instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and +rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness +highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps +without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say +that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the +inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple +sensations of a bird. The mechanics of flying, so elaborately present to +the former, are nevertheless also present in the latter, while with both +we have the same eye or the same mind looking and the same world seen. +The boasted methods and ideals of the one are but the only half-waking +instincts of the other, and whatsoever is essential to either belongs +also to the other. But, to mark the great difference between them, the +inventor has the disposition to treat flying abstractly--that is, as if +a thing by itself, as if for its own sake; and he goes even farther, +making abstraction of the mere explanation and mechanical expression of +flying; while the bird simply flies, and, if I may hope to be +understood, all things else, the sun and the wind, the trees, and all +living things, and you and I who follow his course are flying with him. + +But no poetic soaring such as this can satisfy our present needs. To +understand and appraise the view of science we must trace its rise as +clearly as we can, [p.058] and then critically examine its peculiar +conceits, its own ideal methods and attitudes. + +As for the rise of the scientific view, we may well return to the +definition of science given above: the ordinary consciousness highly +developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Perhaps development +of anything is always at the cost of abstraction; but be this as it may, +science certainly arises through an abstraction, namely, through the +abstraction of consciousness of one's world, through the treatment of +this mere consciousness as something to be cultivated quite for its own +sake; and the motive and the meaning of such a treatment are not far to +seek. Consciousness, to the exclusion or inhibition of direct, overt +action, becomes a matter for abstract, which is to say, exclusive +cultivation, with any serious change, with any upheaval in the familiar +conditions of life. A man--or boy, if you prefer--is taking a +cross-country run, and for a time all goes well; the manner of his going +suffers no interruption, or no serious interruption; but gradually the +undergrowth thickens from low bushes to higher brushwood, and at last, +perhaps quite suddenly, breaking through some wild hedge, the runner +finds himself at the very edge of a stream too wide and too deep for any +ordinary crossing. Thereupon his running, or at least his forward +running, say the running of his "real life," ceases, and looking takes +its place. He is now, in a familiar phrase, "looking before leaping"; +yet with his looking there is a good deal of running too, more or less +overt, but also more or less [p.059] instrumental or merely mechanical, +as, going from one point to another, he measures the relations of bank +to bank, or of possible stepping-stones to each other, or hunts for +fallen logs or for shallow places. But, finally, the measurements all +made, the peculiar conditions as fully as possible appreciated, in the +way found to be most feasible he crosses the stream and runs again. And +just in that "looking before leaping," with the accompanying check put +upon the forward running and with the change of the "real life" of +running into merely instrumental action, we get at least a glimpse of +what science is, of the sort of abstraction that its rise implies. + +Only science, specifically so called, is more than such a casual, merely +personal study of a new situation. Science is the distinct work of a +distinct class abstractly studying a new situation that has confronted +the progress not of an individual, but of a whole people, and in this +character it gets at once all the advantages and all the conceits that +belong in general to the life of a class. It gets, too, all the +limitations. Science, once more, is not strictly a personal experience, +although in personal experience, like that of the cross-country runner, +we can get a glimpse of just that which may develop into science. +Science is characteristically a profession. The runner withholds his +running for a time and merely looks and studies, yet his looking is only +for a time; sooner or later he will run again; and even while he studies +there is his continued moving about, his instrumental action, as we +called it; but the professional scientist waives all thought of possible +future activity. Although in reality [p.060] his looking is before +leaping, it is not consciously so for him; he is one who under the +constraints of his class merely looks and studies, making of these +processes things quite worthy in themselves. + +In other words, to enlarge somewhat on what has just been said, the rise +of the profession of science does indeed involve both the same check +upon the "real life" and the same reduction of activity to a purely +mechanical or instrumental character that we have pointed out in the +case of the runner at the bank of the stream, but a number of different +social classes divides the labour. In general, society as a means to the +expression and development of human activity, be the activity running or +living in a broader and fuller sense, always shows the different phases +or factors of the experience identified more or less exclusively with as +many different classes or groups, and, in respect to the particular case +here under consideration, upon the rise of science society appears to +delegate the work of careful observation and critical thinking to a +separate class, which, as already suggested, gives up any direct +responsibility to the real life. Another distinct class, arising +contemporaneously, is composed of those who do feel directly +responsible, or "practical," continuing the life of positive, overt +action. This second class maintains the vital processes, although in a +more or less consciously instrumental way, since its members have the +lives of others as well as their own lives to support. So society gets +its workers or labourers as well as its observers and thinkers. + +The rise of science, then, involves a disrupted society. Moreover, the +division is by no means so [p.061] simple as the foregoing analysis may +seem to have implied. Observing and thinking, for example, have often +made, too, separate sub-classes, and also there have been many distinct +groups among the workers, such as clerks, soldiers, artisans, +road-menders, and tillers of the soil. The simple analysis, however, has +been quite enough to show, what has seemed to need emphasis, that all +the passions of social life, or rather of social caste, are brought to +bear upon the profession of science, giving it the peculiar conceits and +advantages of class or caste, and also imposing upon it the peculiar +limitations. The advantages, among others, are the strength that lies in +union, and the long continuity and the imitation that always ensure an +accumulation of experience and a refinement of method and an attainment +to impersonal, impartial standards; the conceits are exclusiveness, +sense of sanctity or intrinsic worth, and consequent claims to +aristocracy; and the limitations, although possibly already quite +obvious, are hereafter to be pointed out. But whatever the limitations +or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social +conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of +science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but +the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of +action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake. + +Nor is this fact that science is an abstraction, intensified by the +conditions of class life, the only fact to which the rise of science +bears witness. There is something else equally significant--something, +indeed, so intimately involved in this as perhaps not [p.062] properly +to be referred to as another fact at all, being only a further +manifestation of what is already before us. _There never arises +abstraction without duplicity._ + +Plainly a disrupted society, such as has been seen to be incident to the +rise of science, means also a disrupted life. In general the corporate +life of any single class resulting from the division can be only +partial, I do not say in respect to "real life," since this phrase has +itself been associated with too narrow a meaning, but to human nature, +to human life in its entirety, in its real fulness, in its true breadth +and its true depth. All class life, I repeat, involving as it does +disruption and selection of some particular interest or relation, is +inadequate to any human being, and the life of science is no exception +to this rule. Membership in any class and conformity to its peculiar +life, which is partial and abstract as partial, have never satisfied +anybody, and the life of the professional scientist, again, is no +exception to this rule. Accordingly any abstraction in life, the +isolation of any specific interest, when seen in just the light of its +necessary inadequacy, of its definite, more or less exclusive +partiality, must imply in life a demand for reality and completeness, +and this the more as the abstraction is assertive, as the isolation is +insistent. Simply, the whole life will never brook an untempered neglect +from any of its always self-assertive parts. Plainly, however, as +plainly as a disrupted society must mean a disrupted life for each +resulting group, such a demand can be met only in one way, if the cause +for it continues; it can be met only by some form of duplicity, by some +way in which, however indirectly, the life of those [p.063] concerned +will always really be more than it seems or will always actually imply +what explicitly or formally it appears to exclude. No such narrow life, +in short, as must always characterize any social group, can ever be +without its compensating innuendoes or indirections for the life from +which it is outwardly aloof, and while the peculiar manner in which the +true reality and the wholeness of life are thus conserved will very +naturally always be determined by the particular class or the particular +class-character involved, being of one sort for road-menders and of +quite a different sort for scientific observers, the organization of +society seems bound at every turn to show that duplicity, compensation +as it always is for partiality, is an indispensable condition. +Duplicity, whatever may be its own special dangers, is always better, +being nearer to reality, than narrowness. + +Is not the road-mender also a good Catholic, or in some other way, +conventional or unconventional, religiously devout, piously doing, not +his own, but another's work? Does not the scientist give point to the +idea of another and different life, that is to say, of his life of +knowledge not being the whole of life, by the agnosticism which he not +only carefully asserts but also actually embodies as a factor in his +method? The road-mender slaves at his humble task, ignorant and yet +trustful, believing in an infallible wisdom and an absolute power, and +the scientist lives with great enthusiasm to know the world as it is, +but tells us at the same time with no less enthusiasm and with a meaning +that certainly ought to temper his exclusiveness that the object which +he studies and describes [p.064] is nevertheless really unknowable. To +quote Mr. Spencer: "The man of science ... more than any other, truly +_knows_ that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known." Surely there +is meaning for Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in other +fields besides that of morality. Class life must always involve its +members in a protective or compensating duplicity. + +But now, whatever in the life of other classes this duplicity, which +conserves the wholeness of life even when formally life is narrow and +partial, ought to be called, in the profession of science it often goes +under the name of dualism. Seen at different angles, it is now dualism, +now objectivism, now agnosticism. In each of these different ways the +scientist, quite outdoing or transcending his profession, recognizes a +sphere of reality or a sphere of activity, that is beyond that of the +knowledge which he makes his special business, and, as is very important +to observe, the peculiar manner of his recognition of this sphere, or +the peculiar character of his duplicity, is relative to just the +abstraction which makes his science what it is. Thus his peculiar +duplicity is one of conscious subject and unconscious, external object, +of observing man and objective nature, of real knowledge and unknowable +reality. + +Yet here, before discussing further the relation of dualism to science, +it is well to observe that the positive history of science justifies the +account of its rise which has now been given. The age of science among +the Greeks was coincident with the closing conflict between Greek +civilization and the general life [p.065] of the Mediterranean, and the +age of modern science began, not to attempt a long story, with the +discovery of America. All "looking before leaping" is transitional or +revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and +degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs +to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern +science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from +Christendom to--who can say to what? But not only does history show +science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life +of the time, in the first place, to be sharply disintegrated, its +different factors being separately and abstractly expressed through as +many different social groups, and, in the second place, in each of the +groups to be given to double living, to the storm and stress of being +one thing and seeming another. Always an age, conspicuously and +characteristically scientific, has been an age of clearly developed +classes and of a general duplicity in living. + +Thus, to give a striking, although possibly too philosophical an +illustration of the duplicity, Democritus, the great materialist and +atomist, and Plato, the great idealist, were contemporaries and equally +were creatures of their day and generation, and their century was the +century of great achievements in Greek science. Moreover, as regards the +coincident organization of society, we know at least of Plato that he +was keenly conscious of the divisions of society into distinct classes. +And in very much the same way materialism and idealism, not to mention +hedonism and rigorism, or naturalism and supernaturalism, [p.066] have +been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern +science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than +so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special +conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes +or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they +are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, +that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or +profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of +Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in +all the different and separately organized phases of life--moral, +industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the +conservatives and the radicals? And were there not also, as typical +individual characters, each of them revealing to everybody something +present within his own life, the only conventional loyalist and the more +truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and +the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously +impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity. + +Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of +science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor +yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a +thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or +idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as +means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all +activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental. +As we know, the disruption means [p.067] actual, when not also +intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been +division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of +the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than +things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes +and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and +independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to +give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the +conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people +instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as +some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, +and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the +instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to +be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power +to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, +the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of +society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way +is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites +conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost +notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the +Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for +pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be +questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or +purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the +Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks, +being too conservative, though [p.068] utilitarian, failed to make full +use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally +appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as +unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the +Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism, +which has characterized them throughout. + +One thing more, too, from the facts of history may have our attention, +although possibly this addition is quite unnecessary--the fact, namely, +of scepticism coupled always with a hopeful curiosity. A disrupted +society, dividing the labour of human life, is as sceptical as it is +conventional, and as given to experiment and exploration, which are +never without their sense of mystery, and even to conquest, never +without its risks, as it is utilitarian. Was it curiosity or mere +Hellenic conceit, the sense of adventure or the mere dogmatism of a +Greek, that took Alexander abroad with his armies, or that earlier +turned the attention of Athens to the possibilities of the West? And +which, curiosity or religious and political propagandism, a pagan greed +or a Christian piety, inspired the Western and Southern voyages of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Which gave rise even to the Crusades? +It would be interesting, if our present purposes only warranted the +undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of +scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity +has developed as but one expression of a general interest in +experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and +especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and [p.069] +confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as +it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some +given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a +mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet +willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those +activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of +course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it +never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of +art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective, left far behind. +But to follow out the line of thought here suggested would take us too +far afield. Let it suffice, then, that we see these two things: how +historically and socially the investigations of science, whatever their +relations to an antecedent art, such as that of the Greeks or of +Christendom in the Renaissance, are but an incident within a general +life of appeal to nature--that is, of exploration and conquest--and then +how the scepticism, involved in the inquiries of science, is intrinsic +to a life that, for reasons now clear to us, has become both +conventional and utilitarian, both formal--or unreal in itself--and +consciously only instrumental. The first of these brings to mind what +was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt +seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly +in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having +the evidence of history, we have next to turn. + +We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the +various factors in human [p.070] life, and to be itself, in particular, +the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the +totality of the manifest conditions of life. This abstraction has been +developed and intensified by the formation of distinct social classes; +and, in the special case of the consciousness of nature, by the +formation of a class of scientists, so called, who cultivate their +science for its own sake. We have found the rise of science to imply +also a general duplicity, evident within the field of science in what is +known as dualism. Duplicity is a natural accompaniment of all +abstraction, and it has, as we saw at least in part, a certain +protective and corrective function, which both the logic of experience +and the social and historical conditions of its expression and +development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found +that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional +and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or--let me now +say--experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general +abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for +utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, +formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set +of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions +themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so +fatal to all ideas that should give knowledge any visible form or +resting-place, was but the spirit of his time, the spirit of radical +inquiry become incarnate and assertive in public places. He was but a +visible, public exponent of the critical examination of life which the +self-consciousness of his time made necessary. [p.071] Indeed, no +organic form, no living creature, ever reflected the character of its +environment more fully, or more successfully effected an adaptive life +than the method, with its searching questions, and its subtle, logical +gymnastic, of that honestly and radically inquisitive Sophist. And the +standpoint and the procedure of science, in respect to the relation to +their environment, are closely comparable with the method of Socrates. + +Thus science seeks a complete abstraction of the looking consciousness, +and then with a timely duplicity it looks to a wholly external, natural +world. So in the field of its peculiar abstraction does science take the +character and colour of its surroundings. But, further, it presumes upon +the peculiar forms and conditions of its subjective, looking +consciousness, the activities of the mind, being mediative or +instrumental to the presentation of the external objective world, and it +uses also the activities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter +activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the +industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for +just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is +presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take +the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own +purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly +when we remember that, besides being experimental, treating the mind as +an instrument and life's activities at large as only aids more or less +directly pertinent to the mind's work, it is agnostic. Its peculiar +agnosticism not only reflects [p.072] its duplicity, as was before +suggested, but in addition shows how very abstract its knowledge is, +and--I know no better phrase--how timelily adventurous. A time of +science is a time when all things final are beyond; yet also, when all +things present, however mysteriously, are really leading yonder. + +Further, science always divides the field of its operations, and so, +besides greatly compounding its abstractness, reflects in its own way, +or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the +specialism of the contemporary social organization. There is division of +labour in this, but there is also a difficulty, which, among other +difficulties, is hereafter to be considered. + +And there is, finally, one more characterization of science which is +suggested by the conditions of its rise, but by something in those +conditions not yet brought into clear view. An age of science is an age +of a rising, although perhaps formally suppressed and disguised +individualism, and quite in sympathy, the method of science is +"inductive," science, though interested in classification, always having +regard for the natural rights of particular things, of single +individuals, reasoning from the particular to the general, as the phrase +runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much +misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of +inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has +been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any +discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that +the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I +would only assert, but I venture to assert [p.073] strongly, first, that +behind the conventionalism and utilitarianism of the life of a society +divided into distinct classes, behind the abstraction and the inevitable +duplicity, behind the sense of experiment and adventure, the individual +person is the real power, and secondly, that in induction science has +only translated this real individualism of its time into an attitude or +method for the conduct of its looking consciousness. In this way, as in +those other ways, has science been educated to its peculiar manner. + +We have thus seen how science arises, and how its rise gives it a +certain character. But already suspicion of limitations in the view of +science, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. +Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not +be unmixed. What the specific difficulties are, however, and how far +they really justify our doubting, must be reserved for the ensuing +chapter. + + +[p.074] + +V. + +THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS PECULIAR LIMITATIONS. + + +Limitations or opportunities? Error or truth? In the familiar +illustration the tracks which limit the locomotive to a certain course +are essential to its successful movement, and something of the same kind +may be true of science. A man's vices and virtues are never really far +apart, and, again, the same may be true of science. But for the moment +we are to approach science from the standpoint of its limitations; we +are to see how its own natural ideals, as suggested by our +characterization of the scientific view, are evidence of its inadequacy. +So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going +confession of doubt. + +Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and +genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science +must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether +personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or +religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, +the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but _persona grata_ +among scientific men; and (3) agnostic or "positivistic," all conceits +[p.075] about what is beyond positive experience, and even all dogma +about what seems really present to experience, being most arrant heresy; +and every one of these ideals, besides being derived from the habits or +instincts, commonly unrecognized and unappreciated, of the ordinary +consciousness, is wholly in accord with the conclusions of the preceding +chapter. The attitude of science, as there disclosed, involved a looking +to an external world--the objectivism; a division of the field--the +specialism; and an experimental, adventurous mind--the agnosticism or +positivism. It involved other things, too, but these three are now +selected, so to speak, as three determining points of science's +circumference. Consideration of them, to whatever results it may lead, +should meet all the demands of the present task. As for the results, +these will show fundamental difficulties, very like to those of ordinary +experience, to lurk in each one of the three ideals. The scientific +consciousness is abstract and just for being in consequence +objectivistic, specialistic, and agnostic it is artificial and unreal, +though perhaps only relatively or not unmixedly unreal, and especially +it is honeycombed with paradoxes and contradictions, with the translated +but not transcended contradictions of ordinary life. + +To the examination, therefore, of these difficulties, or limitations, we +must now turn, taking the three ideals in order. + + +I. SCIENCE WOULD BE OBJECTIVE. + +The ideal of a purely objective science is in many ways a great +delusion, for it may effectually blind [p.076] science to its necessary +subjectivism, so far as it gets any substance or content, and to its +necessary formalism, so far as it acts upon a merely external world. +With regard, for example, to the last point, just so far as the ideal of +objectivism is realized, science becomes merely so much technique. By +technique here is meant everything that makes scientific work purely +mechanical. A purely mechanical procedure is the inevitable, the natural +and necessary method of a pure objectivism. Scientists have their formal +etiquette about pre-empted problems or fields of research, their notions +about originality as dependent merely on working a new field--hence the +pre-emption to prevent transgression or theft of originality, their +conceits about bibliographical information, linguistic proficiency and +technical phraseology, their satisfaction over "publication," +"contribution," "production," and "research," and an almost +Gaston-Alphonse deference of each to each among the different branches +of scientific inquiry; and under technique all these things, as well as +the more familiar matters of method and apparatus and material, are here +included. Physicians, we are told, and not infrequently also their +patients, suffer from a professional ritual and etiquette, but they are +far from being alone in their misery. Scientists, would-be objective +scientists, and all who appeal to them, are a close second. Technique +must have its real uses, but plainly it has its limitations. It is one +of the enabling conditions, a _sine qua non_ of science, if science is +to be objective, but it takes the life out of science. A science that +gets no further, that is only "objective," that is, "pure" and +"inductive" [p.077] is wholly vain, being like a domestic animal which +is only a pet, or rather like a vigorous plant that runs luxuriously to +leaves, never bearing either flowers or fruit. Its much vaunted +observation and experiment may fill a good many pages and a good many +volumes, but material, even material in books, and experiments, even +carefully, minutely reported experiments, are neither roses nor apples. + +A fruitful science relates itself to something more than a mere +independent object. A fruitful science involves synthesis, not formal, +but real synthesis, as well as analysis, its decomposed object being +also only the separated details of some organizing activity. Indeed, +however unconsciously, or even however against its own avowed interest +and desire, science has that organizing activity in the real life. The +"real life" has seemed aloof, but science is truly an integral part of +this life. Science's very genesis in social evolution, in spite of, nay, +even because of its abstraction by a distinct class and the assumption +of a professional garb, is witness to this relationship. Again, fruitful +science is practical invention, not abstract discovery, and the real +life of a person or a society or a race is as important to it, as much a +warrant of its conclusions, as any object, however mathematically +described or describable, with which science was ever concerned. As for +the thing invented, the tool or the machine, in general the instrument +of adaptation to environment, this sometimes takes visible, wholly +material form; sometimes it appears as a method in the practical arts or +in the fine arts or in education or government; sometimes it is only an +[p.078] atmosphere or point of view, a habit of mind; but whatever it +is, it is useful, incalculably useful, and its invention as something +that is widely distinguished from mere receptive observation, if this be +even possible, or from mere accurate description, is science's primary +justification. + +But this, objects somebody, is sentiment, and sentiment of the sort that +quite destroys science, making real science, serious and accurate +science, quite impossible. Well, it does of course dispense with a +purely objective science. It suggests the idea, perhaps the +uncomfortable idea, that, as in some other departments in life, so in +science, death is a condition of success. Science must die to its +objective self before it is saved; it must lose its whole world to gain +its own soul. Or, to put the same idea differently, if the assertion be +not too much like verbal play, a subjective science is not hopelessly +unscientific. Is a man less interested in having a proper edge on his +razor because eventually he must use it on himself? Nothing but a keen +edge can ever ensure a "velvet shave," and nothing but the truth, the +more accurate it be the better, can ever set anybody free. + +Still, all questions of sentiment or of sharp razors or of the accuracy +that liberates aside, we can get support for our scepticism about a +science that, if purely objective, must be also empty and mechanical +from science itself. The consistent evolutionist is obliged to deny pure +objectivity to any scientific knowledge, just as in general he is +obliged to think of all consciousness as never something by itself, but +one of the positive conditions of organic development. To [p.079] be an +evolutionist, and at the same time to think of consciousness as only an +external ornament of life, or in its higher development as the exclusive +privilege of a distinct class, to think of it as an aside in life, +perhaps a sudden result without in any way being also a condition of +development, to suppose science to be solely objective and for its own +sake, is nothing more or less than simply to stultify oneself +completely. Even for the historian, whether avowed evolutionist or not, +whose great business is to remind us that what is here or what is now is +not all, the devotion to science for its own sake, which also in other +times has possessed the minds and hearts of certain men, can be at best +only a local and a passing phenomenon. Finally, apart from the +standpoint of evolution or history, it is to be said that human society +at large is sure to resent what may be styled the aristocratic temper +which pure, objective science is all too likely to acquire from the +exclusiveness of its ritual or technique, or say from its abstract and +academic dress, and the resentment of society is important evidence +always. Aristocratic temper, whatever its direction, is certainly as +desirable in social life as it is necessary; it is incident to the +development of all institutions--political, ecclesiastical, industrial, +ceremonial, educational, and, to add to the familiar list, +epistemological; but the resentment which it is sure to awaken is not +one whit less serviceable to society, ensuring as it does, among other +things, the extension of science, the translation of science into life. + +So, to gather the threads together, two difficulties [p.080] have now +appeared as affecting the objectivism of science. The first, that of +burial in technique, gave us our starting-point, and the second has come +to light with discussion of the first. Thus, not merely is a would-be +objective science, through its bondage to technique, made formal and +empty, but also, as perhaps only the other side of the same truth, a +would-be objective science materially--that is, for its scientific +doctrines--and formally--that is, for its motives and methods--is always +in practice dependent upon the demands and sanctions of real life, and +so not purely, or not dualistically, objective after all. There is, in +brief, no other conclusion. Either science must be empty, a matter +merely of dead rites and dry symbols and irrelevant ideas, or it must be +pertinent and practical; and, if the latter, its boasted independence is +gone. A purely objective science seems to get only subjectivity for its +pains. + +Yet this conclusion is easily misunderstood. It is far from denying any +meaning to such words as object or objectivity. The object is denied +only as an external independent existence. The object still remains to +experience as possibly of mediative value to its beholders, mediating +between the actual in their life and the possible, between the partial +life and the whole life, the old and the new, the social, which is +always narrow, and the personal. The whole must be always "objective" to +the part, the possible to the actual, the personal to the social; or, +conversely, the "objective," natural world can be only the convincing +witness to the part or to the actual or to the social, not that there is +an independent, wholly external world, but [p.081] that there is a whole +or a possible or a personal. "Truly, we are all one," writes Fiona +Macleod. "It is a common tongue we speak, though the wave has its own +whisper, the wind its own sigh, and the lip of man its word, and the +heart of woman its silence." We are all one. Man and nature, which man +beholds, or the subject and the object, of which the subject is +conscious, are one; but an objective science would hide this from us, +not tell it to us. + +But besides burying science in technique, and besides involving it in an +only disguised, albeit a socially significant subjectivity, the ideal of +wholly objective knowledge has also made science conservative in a way +that must have peculiar interest here. Reference is not now made to the +double truth or the double life which an objective science sanctions so +cordially that men can hold so-called advanced scientific ideas without +feeling them in any serious conflict with the traditional teachings of +religion and morality, but to something else perhaps not wholly +unrelated to this, and certainly not less suggestive of contradiction. +While science is commonly supposed to be advanced and radical and up to +date, if anything is, it is so only in a way which calls for a very +important qualification, for it manages to perpetuate, not indeed the +letter, but the spirit of old views. At its best a purely objective +science can give only a new material content, or a new arrangement +perhaps of an old content, to existing and time-worn forms of thought; +it cannot possibly do that in which real progress must always consist, +namely, develop, recognize, and adopt new forms of thought, new +categories; [p.082] it cannot do that without betraying its own ideal of +mere objectivism. Objective science--to give a commonplace example--has +said relatively to a certain doctrine of creation that spirit did not +precede matter, but instead matter preceded spirit, and--except for the +excitement of the drawn battle which such a startling declaration has +precipitated--this can hardly be said to have involved any great +advance. Cause and effect have indeed been made to change places by the +new deal, and perhaps in common fairness it was high time that a change +be made, but no new conception of causation itself has been recognized. +The new creationalism, the materialistic, has no essential advantage +over the old. Again, while deposing the First Cause, an objective +science has made all things causes after the same plan--individual, +arbitrary, antecedent causes; and this is only to multiply indefinitely, +perhaps infinitely, the offensive creationalism. "Not so," says some +one; "there is a splendid democracy in it, and it implies a great deal +more than mere multiplication. Indefiniteness, or at least infinity, +transforms anything or everything to which it is applied. By making all +things causes one forces into science the important principle of the +equation of action and reaction, everything being seen as acted upon as +well as acting, and this principle, as if by turning creationalism +fatally against itself, yields a new standpoint, that of mechanicalism." +Granted, and granted cordially, but has a purely objective science any +right to change its standpoint? + +Possibly this does not mean very much. Then approach the matter from +another side, risking a [p.083] reference to one of science's pet +conceits, the "question of fact." It has been for science a question of +fact, of mere objective fact, whether matter made mind or mind made +matter; whether this or that thing is or is not a cause of some other +thing; whether certain very low, perhaps unicellular organisms show +purpose in their activities or do not, are gifted with a natural +tendency to social life, a real interest in their kind, or are not so +gifted; or--to take just one more case--whether the changes in the brain +that precede bodily movement are or are not directed by consciousness, +consciousness being in one case in causal relation with the brain, and +in the other only an idle, external accompaniment, an "epi-phenomenon"; +but in each of these questions of objective fact we see the scientist +only standing in his own light, obscuring the view of what above all +else it is important to see. Are mind and matter, cause and effect, +purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such +well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the +scientist's formulæ, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all +that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, +to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to +assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as +blinding and ill-advised as could well be. It has the pleasing form of +open-mindedness, but only the form. It is very much as if some earnest, +yearning truth-seeker should exclaim: "I would see clearly; therefore I +will not open my eyes." No doubt it keeps the scientist busy, eternally +busy, dealing and redealing his facts or data, as busy indeed as the +playful [p.084] cat that so hotly pursues her own tail, but it does not +contribute much that is positive and progressive. The very best that one +can say for it is that it turns the kaleidoscope of human experience, +leading as it usually does to a new arrangement of hard, unchanging +things. To the question, for example, about lower organisms showing +purpose or social feeling in their activity, the scientist, after most +careful experiments, may answer in the negative, and be quite emphatic +in his answer too; but almost at once he--or some one for him--will +appreciate that mankind, when scrutinized and experimented upon in the +same way, under the same instruments and through the same laboratory +methods, is similarly deficient; and then, somehow, the wind is taken +out of his sails, since social feeling and purpose refuse to be so +easily disposed of. In this case, as in all cases, the question of mere +objective fact simply returns, as importunate as ever, for another +reckoning, with Shelley's cloud silently laughing at its own cenotaph. + +And what is the difficulty? Once more the difficulty is in the +assumption, so natural to an objective science, of fixed conceptions. +Are purpose and social feeling so fixed in their nature, and above all +so well understood, that their presence or absence can be established by +an experiment or two or ten thousand conducted on strictly objective +principles? No conceptions are fixed, and instead of questions of fact +we should have, what a strictly objective science cannot have, questions +of meaning. Thus, not: Are low organisms, or any organisms, social or +purposive? but: What, if anything, do the processes of their [p.085] +lives testify as to the real nature of society or purpose? + +The conservative character of objective science, or the view-point in +its question of fact which the conservatism determines, is the chief +source of the negative attitude of science so familiar to all and so +often an object of complaint. To take, perhaps, the most widely +interesting case, for science to suppose that God either is or is +not--because he must either be or not be the particular thing men have +thought him--is to beg the theological question altogether. Indeed, for +this question of God's existence and for any other question of objective +fact a negative answer is almost, if not quite, a foregone conclusion, +since the very putting of the question is, _ipso facto_, evidence that a +new idea of the thing inquired about--of God, perhaps, or purpose or +society--is at least just below the horizon of man's consciousness, and +so that the old idea has already lost its validity. Nothing ever is +where you seek it, or what you seek in it, for the simple reason that +your conscious seeking has changed it. Why, then, look--perhaps with a +telescope after a God in the skies--for what you should know you cannot +find? Why despair when a question meets a "no" of its own dictation? The +real questioner lives in a living world, in which all things change and +die, yet only for rebirth, while the "objective" questioner simply +cannot see that the negative of his answer can be only relative to what +is already passing. + +In so many ways, then, a would-be objective science is open to +criticism, and affords in consequence a cause for doubt. Only +subjectivity can make it fruitfully [p.086] and worthily scientific. +Only a change in the form of its question can make it substantially as +well as formally progressive. Only a tempering of its negative answers +to a merely relative meaning can make it honest. It is looking at what +is not, and in a way which is artificial, and it sees everything only in +the clear light of its own shadow. Surely to be scientific is human; to +be objective is to rival the lover's unselfishness. + + +II. SCIENCE WOULD BE SPECIALISTIC. + +But, secondly, there is the scientist's ideal of specialism, which is at +once not less earnestly cherished and not less strikingly at constant +war with itself. What specialism for science means is known at least in +a general way to everybody, and that an objective science must be made +up of numberless independent inquiries needs only mention, since the +objective world, if really innocent of all personal or subjective +relations, is necessarily manifold and discrete, being made up of a +number of wholly separate details, and being approachable in every one +of its parts from a number of wholly separate standpoints. The objective +world apart from a subject is like a workshop without a workman--a +collection of unused and so unconnected tools and materials each one of +which may have an infinite number of uses; and the objective scientist +views it very much as a stranger, perhaps a savage--may I be forgiven +that mark--might view the lifeless shop, seeing now this thing, now +that, but never the living unity of all the things. So, to repeat, as +soon as the self or subject is removed and the world is turned +objective, all things and all views of things must fall [p.087] apart, +and science as the observation of such a world can be only "special." +Not so clear, however, or at least not so commonly appreciated, is the +peculiar fallacy and contradiction of specialism to which attention is +asked here. Once more is science to be seen as in a sense standing in +its own light, since it cannot be at once special and directly and +literally true and adequate. + +To begin with, specialism makes vision, the mind's vision as well as the +sensuous vision, dim or distorted. It may even be said to induce a +species of blindness or, as virtually the same thing, to create in +consciousness curious fancies, strange perversions of reality, seen not +with the natural eye at all, but with the imagination, always so +ingenious and so original, and one might almost add so hypnotic, in its +power of suggestion over the senses. In ways and for reasons neither +unknown nor unappreciated by most men, specialism even closes one's eyes +and makes one dream. It makes the specialist among physicians see his +special ailment in every disorder, and every disorder in his special +ailment, and this so truly that merely to consult him may be to fall his +victim. True, he may never be, perhaps can never be, wholly wrong, and +his transgressions, conscious or unconscious, have often helped +discovery, but nevertheless his situation, not to say that of his +patient, is full of humour, and always among other troubles he is under +the error of partiality or one-sidedness. And in science generally the +specialist always does and always must dream. His dreams may be waking +dreams, but he is always transgressing his own proper bounds without +ever [p.088] clearly comprehending that he has transgressed. Nor, be it +admitted, can this necessity of dreaming be a wholly unmixed evil to +science. However unfavourably it may reflect on the final, literal +validity of any special science, it only shows nature, or reality, +preserving her unity against the attempted violence of specialism. It +shows that in spite of the specialist being all eyes for his own +peculiar object, the mind that is within him and that is above all +else--such, apparently, is the nature of mind--responsible not +exclusively to the special and sensuous, but to the all-inclusive and +essential, and is therefore bound to conserve for experience the +interests of an indivisible universe in every particular thing, leads +him, devotee that he is, patiently repeating his sacred syllable, into +most wonderful visions. For the sake of inclusiveness and reality his +mind projects his would-be special consciousness into regions of strange +subtlety and marvellous logical construction; as Oriental priest or +Occidental scientist he is a specialist, yet not without a mind, or a +real, ever-present world, which refuses to be special, and as he dreams +he comes to see, yet knows not that he sees, the whole universe. A +seeing blindness, then, is this specialism; a monomania too, but, of +course, conventional and respectable. + +Mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology and psychology, not to +say also the social sciences, all depend upon the far-seeing mystical +visions of the mind, if not of the eye, upon the subtle, logical +constructions which their would-be scientific specialism, their desire +to know all things narrowly, forces upon them. Each one may be special, +but each as it [p.089] gains precision and as it becomes truly an +account of the facts, under the guidance of an exacting mind that at any +cost must present the whole to consciousness, conserves within itself +the common universe of them all by developing under what is called the +"scientific imagination" all sorts of indirections, disguises, +abstractions, logical constructions for the things and view-points of +the others. Each to be veracious has no choice but to be also voracious, +and when, for example, a physical scientist insists on seeing his world +only physically, while in reality it is of course, to say no more, a +world of chemical process also, and even of vital and mental character, +he is sooner or later constrained to admit to his thinking what above +were called abstractions or logical constructions, but what also pass +under the name of "working hypotheses." These are formally true to his +physical standpoint, but any outsider in order to explain why they are +hypotheses that _work_ must call them compensating or conserving +conceptions--in short, logical constructions that are, or that in part +involve, substitutes for the neglected points of view, being, as it +were, the secret agents of a universe refusing to be divided. To +characterize them in just one more way, a science's working hypotheses, +results as they are of science's blind but brilliant dreaming, many or +all of them, are doors in the panelling by which the other sciences are +quietly admitted to a room seemingly tightly closed to all comers. Every +science, and this the more as it becomes scientific, must entertain all +the others, however unwittingly. Tennyson's "flower in the crannied +wall," so often plucked, is nothing in [p.090] all-inclusiveness when +compared with a well-developed special science. No science, physical or +psychical, biological or social, ever does or ever can live to itself +alone. It may will to, but it does not and it cannot. All the others +live with it and for it--nay, they all live in it. + +Yet in actual practice, what are these working hypotheses that work +because they are compensating conceptions or doors in the panelling? No +veracity without unrestrained voracity is interesting as a formula, but +how verify it? Verification, or illustration, is now imperative. +Illustration, however, is very difficult for a reason which the +scientists now on trial must allow me to mention. The scientists know +too much about the sciences, or at least of them, while I know too +little. Still, as too much knowledge is often the source of obscurity, +and so only a form of ignorance, my situation is not altogether +hopeless. Thus, while it is true that the scientists are likely to +insist, even in the face of a mind bound to preserve the unity of an +indivisible universe in all the varied studies and conclusions of +science, that physics is only physics and chemistry only chemistry and +biology only biology and psychology only psychology, and while also all +illustrations must come from the field of their special studies, and may +therefore only set them more firmly in the wilful blindness of their +specialism, still the principle of a conserving mind, or an eternally +conserved truth or an indivisible reality, is a disturbing influence +which they cannot evade. Then, too, I am forgetting and allowing them to +forget a very important fact in scientific work to-day. In these [p.091] +times the running together or merging of different sciences, as if +through something of the nature of a chemical reaction, is a very +familiar phenomenon. It is as familiar, although not so loudly heralded, +as that of the railroads and industrial companies; and it has been +taking place with such persistence and confidence as actually to suggest +a natural affinity, each of the sciences involved having the rich +experience of discovering itself already in the others. This fact, then, +must make illustration less difficult, since, in a way that must appeal +to the scientist as no merely theoretical considerations can, it proves +or goes very far toward proving what is to be illustrated. Moreover, +specific illustration is hardly necessary in the sphere of the different +physical sciences, or again, in that of the social or the psychological +sciences, for within each one of these groups the affinity but just now +referred to has been very clearly exemplified, as in the interesting +case of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which nowadays are one +science, not three, and which can be held apart only on methodological +grounds, not metaphysically. Illustration, accordingly, appears, after +all, to be needed only for the specialism that separates the physical +and the psychical sciences. + +Physiological psychology and physically experimental psychology, both of +them suggestive of nothing less incongruous than seething ice, are sure +to come to mind at once; but also there is a mathematical psychology, +comparable with a developmental mechanics and biometrics in biology, and +hardly a single field of science, however apparently distant and alien +in nature and interest, has not contributed something [p.092] to +psychology or to epistemology, the general science of knowledge. But now +it is likely to be objected by some one that just because sciences, +whether in clearly related or in widely separated fields, are useful to +each other, just because they can serve, as they do, in the rôle of +methods of each other, they are not necessarily in any real and natural +affinity. May not their association be purely one of utility, involving +no surrender of special individuality and requiring in any case only +temporary relationship? The question is absurd. Any means that really +serves an end must have something in common with the end it serves; and, +again, an end that really sanctions a means, whatever the means be, must +itself be, at least potentially, which is after all to say essentially, +in and of the means employed. Different sciences, then, even physics and +psychology, or natural science and theology, cannot be even temporarily +methods of each other without partaking in some way, under some disguise +or other, through some peculiarity in their conceptions or in the +relations of their conceptions, of each other's subject-matter. + +In view of this fact of mutual participation of nature and idea among +the sciences that use each other, I have myself conceived, and in +another place have given expression to, what appropriately may be called +a physical psychology or epistemology.'[1] This new hybrid science is +especially concerned with nothing more nor less than those substitutes, +disguises, or [p.093] indirections, really present in all the physical +sciences, for the peculiar nature, for the peculiar sort of unity, +intensive instead of extensive or qualitative instead of quantitative, +or say also even vital and spiritual instead of physical, which is +always associated with mind. In conservation of matter, energy, what you +will, in plenitude, in motion as only relative and so as always under a +principle of uniformity and constancy or even immobility, in motion too +as inclining to vibration, which suggests poise or tension, or to +rotation, in which we see rest as well as motion, and finally, not to +extend what might be a long list, in the infinity of space and time or +of quantity, the physical sciences have hidden entrances for the silent, +usually unnoticed admission of what is psychical. But I may seem to be +jumping too far, to be presuming too much. Then put the case in this +way--not quite so direct, but to the same goal. All of these +conceptions, so necessary to a "working" physical science, need very +little examination to be seen to be treacherous to the physical +standpoint and its peculiar categories. One might as well try to make +water unsupported assume definiteness of form as to conceive the +conservation of energy or plenitude or the relativity of motion in the +character of what is physical, or at least of what is properly and +conventionally physical. Being treacherous, then, to the physical +science that has conceived them, they are, as was said, doors for what +is not physical; hidden doors, perhaps, but certainly doors to be opened +at will; and by them mind is bound to enter the physical world and its +sciences. To those familiar with the history of philosophy, the +speculation [p.094] of the early Greek thinkers, notably Anaximander, +Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, will afford illustration of the physical +view running, in spite of itself, into treacherous conceptions, and +eventually reaching the discovery of their treachery and with it the +idea of mind or _Nous_.[2] + +So for science is the material world, what properly it is often said to +be, a sort of dark mirror of man's inner life, of his psychical nature. +Physical science as consciousness of the outer material world is not, +and has itself shown that it cannot be, merely and exclusively physical. +By virtue of its working hypotheses, which are as secret doorways, it is +psychical also. Though darkly and indirectly it is our human +self-consciousness. Perhaps it is our self-consciousness rendered +impersonal or the self seen through the mirror of not-self or through +the disguise of what a photographer would call a "negative"; and, if it +may be so described, we are reminded of Burns:-- + + O wad some power the giftie gie us, + To see oursels as others see us! + It wad frae monie a blunder free us, + And foolish notion. + +Only the bonnie Robert himself was too much of a specialist in poetry to +see that natural science was the very thing he prayed for. + +And just as there is thus a physical psychology, so [p.095] in like +manner there is a psychological or epistemological physics, which in its +turn is concerned with the indirections, or doors in the panelling, +present in all the psychical sciences, for those very physical things +quantity and matter. The devil will have his due; even an optimistic +theology has to recognize him. And psychology has a sensuous self, the +self of the purely sensuous consciousness, which has always involved it +in a curious psychical atomism, a projection, in a word, of the physical +on the plane of the psychical. Sensationalism, too, as a psychological +theory in the history of thought has always been associated with +materialism. + +With regard, then, to the separation even of the psychical and the +physical sciences, which obviously has at its base the distinction +between mind and matter, we observe that our principle of affinity and +mutual participation still holds. By a sort of projection or +reproduction mind and matter both appear, the one openly, the other in +disguise, in each kind of science. However unawares, the physical +entertains mind; the psychical matter; and specialism, so far as +standing for anything more than scientific method, has to withdraw from +its last stronghold. The very dreaming of the scientific imagination is +its undoing. + +For other evidence against the integrity and adequacy of specialism, +showing how mind defies specialism and conserves its indivisible +universe, there are the following simple but certainly interesting +facts. All the different sciences, however special and however +apparently alien in subject matter, are wont to use the same general +methods--as, for example, the laboratory or experimental method or the +historical [p.096] method, the fatal consequences of which to the cause +of pure specialism may easily be inferred. History is famous for +overcoming differences. The common interest in mathematics must also be +mentioned, for mathematics, through its latest developments in danger of +turning into a pure logic, is quite independent of all those material +differences that separate the different sciences. It is formal and +universal, not special; so that the special science that would also be +mathematical appears somehow to be at least in aim as universal as it is +special. Perhaps mathematics more than anything else has fed the +voracity which we have seen veracity to exact. Has it not been the chief +agent in the virtual annihilation of the barriers between physics and +chemistry? This particular mingling of the special sciences has been +mentioned here already, but mathematics is threatening the party-walls +of all the other sciences also. Further, what are we to infer from the +idea that all sciences seek law? Certainly law is not special as science +has seemed to be. Somehow law is not many, but one. Many laws can only +be different phases or cases of one law. The very essence of law is to +be one and single and all-embracing. To put the case theologically, +could any one suppose that God made the laws of chemistry and sociology +and psychology as so many separate and independent enactments? On such a +supposition he had been a strange God indeed, lacking the very thing, +unity of being and character, which men have come to associate with +divinity, and what theology demands of God, science, even against its +own specialism, must demand of its object. Again, [p.097] the way in +which by implication, when not openly, one science is given to handing +over its hardest problems to another is very instructive as well as +amusing. Not many years ago I was present at a joint meeting, a +good-natured and doubtless honestly ambitious conference of biologists, +physiologists, and psychologists, and the addresses then made have often +reminded me of one of Thomas Nast's famous cartoons: A closed ring of +political grafters, none other than the notorious Tweed and his +followers, each pointing to his neighbour and putting on him the +responsibility of a very embarrassing situation. "Find the rogue" was +the artist's inscription; but with apologies for the association, we can +easily change it to "Find the special science." And, lastly, in this +list of the simple evidences against an adequate specialism there are +the conspicuous analogies other than those of common method or common +interest in law, which are always easily traced among the sciences, even +the sciences in the opposite camps of matter and mind, of any particular +time. Atomism in physics is contemporary with atomism in psychology and +with individualism in political philosophy; a monarchical politics with +an anthropomorphic, creationalistic theology and an also monarchical +physically centred astronomy, whether heliocentric or geocentric; and a +Newtonian astronomy, which really makes a law or force instead of an +individual body the centre and control of the solar system, with +democracy or constitutionalism, and with inductive instead of deductive +logic and naturalistic instead of dogmatic theology; so that at no time, +whatever the scientist's special interest, whatever his [p.098] special +syllable, can he fail to have at least a formal sympathy with others. +Such analogies among the sciences, so often recognized and so +absorbingly interesting to the students of the history of thought, if +not exactly doors in the panelling, may be said to make the panelled +partitions at least translucent if not unsubstantial and transparent. + +But the most important fact in illustration of our case against +specialism is yet to be considered, and unfortunately it takes us where +to some the waters may seem dangerously deep. Not only for reasons +already given and emphasized is the special science a misnomer, a +contradiction in terms, except in so far as specialism be taken merely +as an incident, not without its humour, of scientific method, but also +for the same reasons (and chiefly because the truth and reality of the +universe are bound to be conserved) every special science must sooner or +later develop its doctrines either into direct paradoxes or into tenets +that oppose and contradict each other. Thus, as has been shown, +specialism in science is itself a paradox, and, as now asserted, every +special science assuming precise form and real validity becomes a home +of paradoxical or contradictory doctrines. Indeed, these doctrines just +through their opposition appear be the most effective agents of that +compensation for neglected points of view, or conservation of all points +of view, which we are insisting is for ever forced upon the scientific +specialist. In the cases of physical epistemology and epistemological +physics we have already seen doctrines working to this end. In those +cases the real treachery to the avowed [p.099] standpoints lay in +virtual when not open contradiction. And, for the general principles, is +it not quite clear that nothing so surely as contradiction in any given +point of view, or in the specific doctrines developed under it, can +serve the interests of any other points of view? I have heard it said, +but by whom originally I do not know, that a paradox or contradiction +was only the mind on tiptoe struggling to look over a very high wall. + +The point is just this. The special science, because special or partial +and because at the same time courting scientific character or validity, +that is, conformity with reality, must be relative, formal, abstract, +artificial, unreal, but also for exactly the same reason it must +contrive to admit to its conceptions other view-points than its own. Its +own peculiar view-point is relative, but that it may attain actual +validity it is bound to overcome its relativity by admitting, secretly +perhaps yet not less truly, other points of view; and paradox or +contradiction is the natural door for such admissions, the original +view-point being tenacious to the last. Physics says: "I will be physics +through thick and thin; I will be physics though the heavens fall and +though dreadful paradoxes arise"; and in like manner psychology cries +aloud: "I will be psychology though I suffer from a splitting dualism +for my pains." Have you, gentle reader, never held and held and held to +some particular notion about things, modifying the details perhaps +little by little, but always imagining yourself strictly loyal to the +old, old view, and then suddenly discovered your consciousness alive +with contradictions? If you have, you know, possibly [p.100] too well, +the natural history of every special science, and also you can +sympathize deeply with the hen and her cherished chicks that proved ugly +ducklings. The special science, I repeat, must be hospitable, however +grudgingly, to strangers, though at the expense of becoming thoroughly +divided against itself. Such hospitality is an obligation--call it +logical if you will, or moral or metaphysical, for the name matters not +if it only suggests coercion--which is not less binding upon the +scientific spirit than upon the spirit of racial unity, always urgently +present in you and me. You and I may be so special or exclusive as to +drive strangers from our doors, but an impulse to call them back and +give them entertainment always follows--an impulse that is only the +necessary reaction of the expulsion. Humanity is indivisible in spite of +our asserted exclusiveness, and nature is indivisible, too, in spite of +specialism. Partiality of any sort, along any line, in any field, can +never long persist without, though often darkly and indirectly, though +by the way of bold, unrecognized, or unconfessed paradox, receiving from +outside all that it would exclude. I am not merely repeating. At first, +we saw only that the scientific imagination brought to the special +science as its working hypotheses certain conserving or compensating +conceptions; then, that these conceptions involved treachery to the +science that harboured them; but now we are face to face with the fact +that their complete, their most effective form is the paradox. + +Would that I had the ability to write with the penetration and the +clearness of statement that the [p.101] subject should certainly elicit, +upon the strange equanimity with which mankind, in science or in +practical life, receives and faces a direct negative or an open +contradiction. Perhaps the habit of easy division into positive and +negative, the ready resort to dichotomy, explains the mystery; perhaps +the fact that negation or opposition is and can only be in kind, that +there never is or can be any real change or need of change in a mere +negation, is at least an important factor in the case; perhaps, again, +the very hopelessness of the dualism, which a flat, unequivocal negation +plainly involves, is also to the point; but, beyond all peradventure, we +do accept the direct negative with a patience, even an indifference, +that may greatly assist our natural conservatism, whether of thought or +life, but that on being recognized certainly does arouse our wonder. +Good and its opposite evil, true and false, real and unreal, unity and +plurality, life and death, the indivisible and the divisible, rest and +motion, plenum and vacuum, immaterial and material, actuality and +illusion, lawfulness and lawlessness: these and so many other opposites +are the common stock-in-trade of our living and thinking, and we accept +and use them with a complacency that cannot easily be exaggerated. Yet +the negative in each and every one of them holds the future of the +universe in the palm of its hand. And the special scientist before his +inevitable paradoxes is as conservative and as complacent as the rest of +us. + +But it is one thing to say, or even to reason out cogently and +satisfactorily in every way, that the [p.102] special science, if both +persistently special and honestly scientific, must be sooner or later +inwardly contradictory and treacherous to itself, and it is quite +another thing to show the contradiction in actual cases. The actual +cases, however, are more easily found than many are likely to suppose, +and at mention they may even seem like forgotten memories, like things +which at some time we have noticed but become callous towards. Thus the +atom is through and through a self-contradiction, being itself only a +part of a divided reality, yet at the same time itself real only because +indivisible; and a science harbouring such an atom can hardly be said to +be unmixedly physical. The vibration, too, already referred to here as +motion in poise or at rest; infinity as one more quantity that is +significant because not quantitative; the sensation, a component element +of consciousness that cannot possibly be composite; the plenal physical +medium, which can be physical only if displaceable by other material +things, and so plenal only if not physical, and which has served besides +as an immobile yet infinitely elastic basis of motion or its +transmission; and, to give just one more instance, in moral and +political science the person, a self-existent, actively free being or +entity whose every deed as well as whose every thought is responsible to +something, being adaptive and therefore social, social with other +persons and with nature, and whose every virtue implies dependence and +an existence shared with something else: these are all also +self-contradictions. And in view of them who must not see how the +special sciences are always more than special, ever correcting [p.103] +in ways that may be unappreciated by themselves their partiality of +view, ever responsible to the totality of things even while they would +observe things only under selected view-points. Such contradictions, +once more, show mind loyal to what students of logic are familiar with +as the "universe of discourse." Even in science you cannot discourse +about anything without at least implicitly discoursing about everything, +although in order to do so you must speak in such paradoxes as the atom, +the person, the biologist's "vital unit," the vibration, the plenum, and +the like indefinitely. + +Nor is the scientist the only dreamer of paradoxes among men. Ordinary +practical life, as we have seen, teems with paradoxes. But, for purposes +of illustration, not to say also of giving greater breadth and depth to +the view, a reference to the situation in the religious consciousness +will have peculiar value here. A religion that supplements reverence for +a personal God, working miracles and caring for the elect, who even +nowadays are more or less elect, with belief in a devil, even nowadays +more or less personal, is clearly a blood relation to science, and it is +besides by no means so unnatural or irrational as is often declared, +particularly by the scientists. Its two errors, just because opposed, +conserve what is real, and no science can claim more than that. Indeed, +a science, notably a special science, like a theology, might well be +described as a system of mutually corrective errors, of abstractions +that, because abstract, distort the reality of things, but that also +because being at difference with each other and eventually [p.104] +falling into contradictory and so counteracting pairs are at least +parties to what is real and true. By hook or crook, by the hook of +abstraction or the crook of contradiction, every science gets in touch +with the universe as a whole, and so even with its errors is a "working" +science. The errors of many a religion, by their working together, have +not failed to save men. + +So we may return to the assertion that in its specialism, as well as in +its demand for objective knowledge, science is self-contradictory, and +with this conclusion established the exposure of science already offers +a very strong case for the doubter. Yet it does this only to the extent +and in the sense that contradiction warrants doubt. After all is said, +have we been only exposing science? Has attack been our only procedure? +Do we not find, as we reflect, that in our exposure there has also been +something very near to defence? Or, once more, through the science to +which we have taken exception have we not seen a science in which we +could believe? In the examination of science's objectivism we saw that +technique buried science, but--though we did not say this in so many +words--that there might be a resurrection. If fruitful in inventions +serviceable to life, science was justified in spite of its cultivated +objectivism, and the objectivity itself, besides an aid to accuracy, has +further significance as possibly an earnest of wider social +relationship, of broader and deeper life. The question of fact, too, if +appreciated and so made subordinate to the question of meaning, was even +allowed, and science, although at once formally conservative [p.105] and +materially negative and destructive, seemed after all to be the promise, +so to speak, of a new dawn for the very things denied. And now in what +has been said of the specialism of science, the same turning of the edge +of attack is all but manifest. Every special science is narrow and +relative--it is in the form of an unreal dream; but reality somehow +gives form to the dream, for there are always the compensating +conceptions. The contradictions by which the compensation has been +effected are, then, interpretable not more as causes of doubting science +than as reasons for confidence in it. Thus, to be tedious again, the +special science is relative and formal; it is a peculiar system of +ingenious abstractions that in so far are also errors; but its formal +character includes also contradiction; its errors are so related as to +correct and balance each other; so that, even in the face of our +necessary scepticism about it, science has been evident to us, as also +was the consciousness of ordinary life, as somehow always building +better than it knows or than its methods or ideals and doctrines viewed +only from without would lead one to expect. Moving in it we have +certainly felt the presence of, something, not yet called by name, which +is very like a principle or power of validity, preserving the reality of +things even in and through the relativity and contradiction under which +the things are seen. While the letter of our knowledge, even of our +scientific knowledge, must ever have an indeterminate future; while rest +or stability, ultimate reality or consistency is quite impossible to it, +still its inner, active spirit seems a source of faith that is +inviolable, that cannot be shaken. Different [p.106] quantities, such as +four and two, and sixteen and eight, do not make the same sum, much less +are they the same digits; but they are in the same ratio, and similarly +the truth of science would seem to lie in the ratio, the working +together, of the errors of science. Outwardly and materially changing +with time and with people, assuming ever new forms and comprising always +new doctrines, science nevertheless, as an active force, as a positive +resultant, is at least now conceivably always the same and applicable to +the same life. Even the Babylonians of an ancient day successfully +predicted eclipses, the very errors of their astronomy working together +for truth, exactly as the heresies of pagan religion seem to have +balanced each other to the preservation and the development of the life +which we of the present day and the Christian civilization are pleased +to call our own. + +Accordingly the science we have to doubt is also manifest to us as at +least a possible object of faith. The very causes of our doubt before +our very eyes have turned, or are in process of turning, into possible +bases of belief, and our confession of doubt as it proceeds is proving +ever more worth making. We are trying to be such honest doubters. We are +indeed such penitent believers. + + +III. SCIENCE WOULD BE AGNOSTIC. + +Still we have, thirdly, the agnosticism of science to consider and +appraise. Agnosticism confines knowledge to actual positive experience, +and in its form of "positivism" to an only tentative acceptance of +actual experience, and it is thus in effect an admission of [p.107] just +those limitations which have been found to belong to science as +objective and special. Objectivism and specialism have both shown +science to be standing in its own light, or at least to be standing in +the way of any direct and positive knowledge of reality. Whatever they +make possible to our virtual as distinct from our positive +consciousness, whatever indirectly or implicitly may through them belong +to our conscious life, formally and visibly, positively and directly, we +cannot know reality. In a word, science must and does recognize an +unknowable, or at least an unknowability in things, and agnosticism is +accordingly important among the three determining points of science's +circumference. But here is now our problem: Does science put the right +value upon, does it ascribe the right meaning to, its agnosticism? Is +the implied scepticism of the sort that we can cordially accept? +Especially, does science have any due appreciation of the negative, not +to say of the suggested dualism, in the opposition between the knowable +and the unknowable? + +Now both objectivism and specialism plainly involve aloofness, which is +perhaps only another word for what in the preceding chapter was called +abstraction. By the first of these two "isms" science is held aloof from +life; by the second, through the many divisions, from itself, that is to +say, part from part. Men who would be scientists withdraw, as we hear +them boast, from affairs, and as they withdraw it is also as if they put +on distorting and even discolouring glasses, through which in one and +another "special" way they would behold the "objective" world. Their +withdrawal [p.108] is thus not merely physical; it is also mental. To +look out of the window one must turn one's head and lift one's eyes and +adjust both head and eyes in other ways; but looking in general, whether +from the needs of an objective or a special view, also demands certain +pertinent adjustments, and the demanded adjustments make the resulting +experience just so far aloof, just so far discoloured and distorted. +Granted that these terms can be only relative in significance. To be +aloof from something is to have it equally aloof from you, and you +should be no more discredited by the separation than it. To be distorted +and discoloured is to be so only with regard to something that in its +own peculiar way may be equally transformed. Such relativity, however, +cannot deprive the differences involved of real significance; it can +only emphasize the general instead of the narrow, local application of +the terms found to be relative. What is relative is not unreal; it is +simply shared, like cousinship. So science, the looking of science, +means real aloofness and real disfiguration. + +The truth of this has already been apparent to us in a general way, but +it will be worth while here to be more specific. The space and time, for +example, in which scientists observe things are widely different from +the space and time of will and action. In ordinary life a difference is +felt between the world we know and the world we live, but the extreme +professional attitude of science greatly widens the differences. For +science space and time are quantitative, divisible, formal, +mathematically correct, and independent of what is in them, their +reality or qualitative [p.109] value to active life being hidden or at +least only very indirectly presented--I suggest, in the constant +opposition of their finiteness and infinity--while for will and action +they are qualitative, indivisible, inseparable from what is in them. Who +ever did anything in a composite, divisible space and time? Action in +such a sphere would be hopelessly jerky; with Zeno's flying arrow it +would just always rest _in statu quo_, though its _status in quo_ might +have an indefinite series of positions. Again, the scientists reduce +causation to mere uniformity of co-existences or sequences, which is no +real causation at all, being only so much passive existence or +mechanical process, while will or action is causation, the positive +interaction of things, the active relation, the vital unity, of what was +and is and is to be. It is true that here, too, the causation of real +life is darkly presented by science in a constant opposition between a +single first cause and an eternal series of causes, for such an +opposition makes real causation in an important way quite transcendent +of the mere differences of time; but, setting this concession aside, who +ever did anything in a world either of one cause active long ago or of +an infinite series of causes? And, once more, science needs elements, +while will or life is the eternal denial of elements or anything like +them. Says a well-known writer:[3] "It is one of the greatest dangers of +our time that the naturalistic (or scientific) point of view, which +decomposes the world into elements for the purpose of causal connection, +interferes with the volitional point of view of real life, [p.110] which +can deal only with values, and not with elements." The danger involved +will occupy us in a moment, but the bondage of science to elements, to a +composite world, to a thoroughly "decomposed" reality, will hardly be +questioned. Through contradiction, again, as in the chemist's component +atom, itself not composite; or the biologist's "vital unit," which bids +fair to be the master paradox of the day, science may darkly and +indirectly preserve the world of real life, the world that is neither +one element nor many, but in this case as in the others the indirection, +after all is said, only emphasizes the aloofness. + +So science is aloof, and in being aloof it disfigures and defaces +reality, and the argument for agnosticism is consequently unassailable. +No one more effectively has shown this than Immanuel Kant, although one +may question Kant's final appraisal of the fact. Here certainly is no +place for an exposition of the Kantian philosophy, but, briefly and +simply put, that philosophy has characterized space and time and the +relation of cause and effect, not to mention certain other very general +data of experience, as the _a priori_ forms of all valid, objective +knowledge, and being translated this is to say that these so-called +forms are the enabling attitudes of the merely looking consciousness or +the peculiar glasses which, as it were, the mind puts on whenever it +turns just to look. The typical Boston girl, according to the +cartoonists, is never without her glasses. In like manner the typically, +professionally correct looking consciousness, the observing, scientific +mind, is never without those enabling attitudes. Do you ask if they are +then only subjective attitudes? [p.111] They are subjective only as they +are relative. They are subjective only as they express the aloofness of +the scientific observer. And they are subjective, lastly, only in so far +as can be consistent with Kant's further characterization of them as in +every instance imbued with essential opposition or "antinomy." Remember +that an attitude that harbours opposition is always tip-toeing to +overcome the bounds of its own natural vision. Such an attitude cannot +be unmixedly subjective. + +But what now is the danger of science's agnosticism, of science's own +admission that being "objective" and "special," or being under the +constraint of certain enabling attitudes, or being at best only +tentative in all its doctrines, it is not and cannot possibly be +formally realistic? One might imagine, or expect, that confession of its +limitations would be good for the soul of science, and in truth we shall +certainly find some advantage resulting from the confession, but even +science's agnosticism is faulty in a serious way. The writer quoted +above has told us that the great danger always threatening science is +that the scientific will interfere with the volitional point of view, +and this is equivalent to fearing, in the interests of science, that the +scientist will forget his agnosticism and try to render what he cannot +know in terms of what he does know, or that the man of affairs will look +to science for his programmes of action. Such a fear, however, may play +to the professional conceits and the professional isolation and +abstraction of the scientific point of view, but it is very far from +grasping the true import of the conflict between knowledge and +unknowable [p.112] reality. I should myself assert, in partial if not in +complete opposition to Professor Münsterberg, that science's very +natural danger is that the scientific and the volitional point of view +will be kept apart, that the professionalism and the formalism and what +Kant called the phenomenalism of science will prevent their +interference. At least, this danger is just as great, and just as +seriously a danger, as the other. Most people know well enough that +keeping science and life or theory and practice apart has the effect of +making the former lose itself in a highly morbid intellectualism, and +the latter in the dead monotony, of a mere existence, sometimes +presumptuously styled "practical life," but such a result seems not to +trouble either Professor Münsterberg or the conventional scientist whose +cause the vigorous professor has espoused. In other regions, +fortunately, a formal disparity is not accepted as arguing to a natural +divorce, but is even considered, let it be said, a reason for +association; and as for the disparity between science and will, it is +quite true that life without science is lifeless and that science +without life is meaningless. + +Perhaps the crowning fault of the agnostic scientist is his lack of +humour. He takes himself too seriously. The lover, when his fair one has +formally disagreed with him, rejecting his suit with her outspoken "No" +and promising lasting friendship and good-will even to assurances of +assistance in his next venture, takes hope, smiles grimly within +himself, and feels sure still that she and he, however disparite, are +meant to live together for better or worse. But the rejected scientist +takes the unknowable's "No" as if it [p.113] were final, and then, +retiring to his study or laboratory, proceeds, though in a morbid, +abnormal way, to mingle the scientific and volitional standpoints every +time he writes a line or makes an experiment. We watch him as he goes, +and find his case not without its humour. If the true lover upon being +rejected were satisfied thereafter with caressing the lady's photograph, +then he and the agnostic scientist would be in the same class. + +But, as is needless to say, I am not writing a novel. So, romance aside, +unquestionably the forms and doctrines of the scientific consciousness +are peculiar, being, as has been shown, logically subtle, imaginary and +innocent of direct practical realism, being, in short, the inhabitants +of a world quite their own, and to impose them intact upon active life +cannot fail to bring disaster, the usual disaster of a misfit. Yet, let +us bring to mind, in the first place, that the scientific consciousness +is not essentially different from consciousness in general, and that +consciousness in general deals, and always must deal with artificial +forms, with symbols, constructions, and transformations; and in the +second place, that it always knows with some measure of sophistication +that what it deals with is symbolic or constructed. Conscious creatures, +from the moment they begin to draw breath, are trained to see one thing +objectively and to understand or construe quite another thing for active +expression. There is no visual sensation without muscular sensation, and +most men, if not all men, have really learned in the long years of their +own and their race's experience to get along without _seeing_ [p.114] +and yet also without foregoing the sensations in their muscles! Man's +long training, in a word, has taught him to use what he sees as not +direct reality, but only a symbol of reality, and so in volition always +to allow for the "practical" unreality of the objects before his +consciousness. The mere words bread and butter, for example, or even the +visible things in a restaurant window, have never brought satiety to a +hungry child, nor do I myself fear that they ever will. Moreover, the +long training that is the surety against danger, and that at the same +time has made man keenly awake to the value as well as the humour of +symbolism, is just what has rendered the high development of +professional science possible, and is also what makes possible and +properly controls the application of science to practical life. + +It may now be asserted that the facts are not in accord with the view to +which I have just given expression, that sometimes, and very of ten too, +the forms and doctrines of science are imposed without modification or +translation upon practical life. Thus, though the names for edibles +themselves as present to the eye--or to any other sense--are not normal +substitutes for food, nevertheless some people, whether from poverty or +from indigestion, have fed on them, just as they have taken long +journeys with maps, time-tables, and guide books. In education, too, the +formal conditions of science have suggested object-lessons and pure +induction; in political organization we have had programmes of extreme +elemental individualism, of lawless democracy, and of abstract communism +and Christian Socialism; in religion God [p.115] has been like a thing +seen, perhaps a tree walking or a man working, whether with hoe or rake +or with other implement, perhaps a trident, and belief has been +identified with an articulate dogma or formula; and many a realistic +novel, treating the details of life as a scientist might treat them, or +many a psychological novel, more problematic than artistic, has been put +upon the market. But what can all this mean, undoubtedly true as it is, +save that science belongs to life, yet is applied to it with difficulty +and only under conditions of conflict? In the case of the edibles, +poverty or illness, both of them incidents of conflict, is responsible +for the unnatural substitution, and in cases of education, politics, +religion, and literature, the substitution is equally a makeshift which +the conditions of conflict impose upon life. An individualistic +programme will not work, nor will a purely socialistic programme work. +Mere induction will not educate. No visible God ever was divine, and no +articulate creed ever was true. Life is a game throughout; its vital +character, its very integrity is its experimental character; it is not a +settled, abstractly perfect thing. Life is dynamic, not static. +Accordingly it must move forward by its mistakes, or by storm and stress +of the incongruous and misapplied, being inspired, not by somebody's +complacent optimism, but by a sacrificial, always heroic idealism; and +its scientific practices, however truly a mixing of things formally +incongruous or disparite, are just aids to its reality. Moreover, those +science-formed practices are always in some measure sophisticated. Human +nature is rather a fine thing in its way, as [p.116] many a man has +flattered himself and his kind by saying. Witness the homeless, +ill-clad, starving child feeding over the odorous grating and before the +well-stocked window of the restaurant, and feeling, if not actually +saying: "As long as I cannot have and eat, it is good to smell and see." +Witness, also, the educator or the statesman or the priest or the +novelist. Each knows his makeshift and feels some of the humour of it, +and in his closet, when not before his public, acknowledges the violence +to which he is lending himself. + +And another fact, besides that of the actual applications of science, +which, however violent, prove the need as well as the dangers, and +besides the sophistication, perhaps also the sense of humour, which +always accompanies the applications and at least tempers their violence, +must also be mentioned. Those science-formed programmes always go in +pairs. Individualism and socialism, realism and mysticism, Epicureanism +and Stoicism, orthodoxy and heresy are inseparable, socially and +historically; and the effect of such pairing is plainly to correct +whatever of violence the sense of symbolism and the sophistication and +the humour of the time may be unequal to. Thus in the movements and +programmes of society for any given misfit there is always a +counter-misfit. Possibly human life, at least as socially organized, is +only a competition of misfits, its programmes coming, not through the +acquired supremacy of one side or the other, but through the constant +mediation, the balancing and interacting of the two, and the misfits are +perhaps exclusively the gifts of science or at least [p.117] of the +observer's consciousness generally, and man is at once serious and +humorous enough to impose what science gives on the real life of his +fellows, as a ready-made clothier might on a stray countryman; but is a +city, then, to have no Hyam, and is the life of society also to dispense +with the gifts of science because they are imperfect? There are worse +things than clothes not made to measure or than the men who sell or buy +them. There is the life that never changes its old clothes for new. +There are the clothes that never get on the market at all. + +Accordingly the interference of the scientific with the volitional point +of view is, to say the least, not the only danger which the scientist or +the practical man needs to recognize. There is also the danger that the +disparity between science and life, or between knowledge and the +unknowable, will be construed to mean that the two are never to live +together. Science may be innocent of any direct accord with reality, +being in form quite innocent of a real realism, but after all, whether +by itself or in its various applications or renderings in human life, it +is so innocent only in a qualified sense, only with reference to the +form of its specific doctrine and attitudes taken individually. As +itself a living whole, part acting upon part, each abstraction corrected +by some counter-abstraction or perhaps by some inner self-opposition, as +conscious too of its own conditions and limitations, as sophisticated +and even humorous, both for all logical purposes and for all purposes of +applicability in the life of society it is realism itself. As harbouring +what above was called, in so many words, an [p.118] inner active spirit +of veracity or power for reality, a constant agent of validity and +applicability, it is itself a party to the real life. + +But return to the idea of the divorce of science and life, which is such +an easy conclusion of agnosticism. If divorced, it was said, they are +lost, the one in a morbid intellectualism, the other in the dead +monotony of mere existence. Now, in view of the fact that many have +found such a divorce to possess the highest ideal value, it seems worth +while to remark that after all is said the separation can be only +apparent, not real. Even if we neglect wholly the writing and the +experimentation of the scientist, as volitional as they are scientific, +and the practical consciousness, moral or prudential, of the disciple of +the "real life," as scientific as it is volitional, we shall find such +to be the case. We know men who have what may be styled, and what +sometimes is abusively styled, a double life. They have their science, +perhaps their laboratories and their books and their own pet doctrines, +and they have also their social affiliations in business and in politics +and in religion; and, whether it be ideal or unideal, admirable or +reprehensible, their life certainly does seem double, because their +sociology and their business, or their political theory and their party +ties, or their biology and their religion simply will not mix; but their +apparent duplicity has apparently little or nothing to rest upon. It may +count as two, numerically, but such counting never makes being. Men +should count less and think more. On the terms of such a numerical +separation, as was said, the science can be only formal, the life only +dead; but such a [p.119] science and such a life make one existence, not +two; and, however amusing the conclusion may be, it is nevertheless true +that the science, for just what it is, has been applied, making the life +just what it is. Are scientific technique with its aloofness and logical +abstractions and a life that in its own special, affairs can be only +conventional and ritualistic, or say routine in the study or the +laboratory and routine in the church or market-place, are these so +different as really to be, whatever the appearances, independent and +distinct? They may count as two for being in just so many different +places, but the man, scientist or practitioner, is always necessarily +with himself, and in this sense never in more than one place, so that in +character and value the two routines are one and the same. Moreover, the +ennui which together they are sure to induce must end sooner or later in +a common cry for help, in a passion for reality that will turn each +toward the other with an irresistible appeal. + +Once more, then, there is danger for science not merely in the +interference, but in the obstinate independence of the scientific and +the volitional point of view. A protected science may have no less, but +also it has no more justification than a protected industry. Competition +with life and will may often bring science low, degrading its methods +and impairing its professional success, but protection involves at least +equal risks. Professor Münsterberg--but may he forgive me my Homeric +epithets--is a too zealous epistemologic protectionist. + +The difficulty as to the agnosticism of science may be presented in +another way. Dismissing all thought [p.120] of either interference or +divorce and all thought of the scientist forgetting his agnosticism or +taking it too soberly, we may say that the scientific agnostic, being +under the spell of the scientific way of dealing with things, is +disposed to treat the unknowable as if it were but one more thing or +fact among all the other things or facts with which he is wont to deal. +The world for him is then composed of two departments or groups, which +like a good scientist he classifies and labels, the knowable and the +unknowable; and nothing could be simpler or more natural. Though the +point of what follows may be lost in its appearance of mere wordiness, +so to speak, the world of his interest, of his formal knowledge, +includes, among the other things, that which he knows to be unknowable, +and with the inclusion and the knowledge of unknowability he imagines +his responsibility to the unknowable both to begin and end. Or, again, +the agnostic scientist regards the unknowable as something apart from +the knowable, as something not for him to know and also not having any +vital, intrinsic relations to what he does know, but something +nevertheless objectively presentable to a creature with knowing +faculties altogether different from his. The unknowable is thus for him +still the object of a looking and thinking consciousness, yet never of +his looking and thinking consciousness; it is knowable, and formally +knowable, yet not to him, not through any of the forms of knowledge, the +enabling attitudes, at his command. And nothing, I say once more, could +be simpler or more natural. But, properly and professionally scientific +as it may be to give to agnosticism this turn, it is very [p.121] +decidedly an excellent example of professional blindness, being a sort +of _reductio ad absurdum_, of the scientific point of view, for plainly +it treats the unknowable as a matter, first, of knowledge--the scientist's +knowledge of its unknowability, and as a matter, second, for +knowledge--the knowledge of the creature with the different faculties. +Surely such treatment is not honestly agnostic. Science, therefore, if +it would be honest as well as scientific, must forget its +professionalism and take the negative of the unknowable in another way. + +In what way? In making reply to this question I must resort to a +distinction, which I have frequently found useful, between the dogmatic +and the merely instrumental. Thus agnosticism may be dogmatic, as the +conventional scientist would hold it, flatly declaring for an +unknowable, or it may be instrumental, esteeming the unknowability in +things, not merely as relative to the existing conditions of knowledge, +but also as a constant demand upon science that it never rest in itself, +that it for ever treat its results as only a means to some end. So +viewed an instrumental agnosticism is also teleological, but not in any +sense of a fixed and static telos. Telic character or purposiveness and +fixity are like oil and water. Whatever the traditional theologian may +think or say, they simply will not mix. + +Of the two kinds of agnosticism, the first hardly calls for further +treatment, for it is plainly that which has been recently examined and +found to be more scientific, or at least more professionally scientific, +than fully and personally honest, and the second is [p.122] very nearly +akin to positivism, but must be scrutinized closely, for it certainly +leads beyond the usual bounds of positivism. The positivist in science, +as has been indicated above, accepts only actual positive experience and +accepts that only tentatively. The working hypothesis is thus the master +of his mind. What he knows, however well established in his actual, +positive consciousness, is at best only relative and mediative. But--and +just here appears the defect of his position, or just here we see him +still only the professional scientist--the mediation which absorbs his +interest is merely one of formal knowledge; what he knows always leads +him just to more knowledge; his formulated hypotheses as they are tested +are but aids to new formulations: whereas, besides this mediation, there +always is another at least equally significant, for knowledge under the +very conditions of its rise and formulation must for ever be a means to +something besides mere knowledge. Recognition of this other mediation, +accordingly, is all-important to any final appraisal of the meaning of +agnosticism, to an appraisal that is justified just through being +superior to the special interests of formal and professional science. Is +it not one of the functions of the various negatives in our human life +really to save life from the narrowness of its various professional +abstractions, and is not the attitude of agnosticism but one of these +negations? + +And now, if for a paragraph or two I may be even offensively abstruse, +the conditions of our positive experience, of our actual knowledge, are +such, and are commonly recognized to be such, that there must always be +an unknown. Every working hypothesis [p.123] by implication points to an +unknown. It is equally true, however, that the conditions of positive +experience are such that there is no fixity to this unknown; and the +unknown changes in consequence, both in possible content and in possible +quality or value, with every change in knowledge. But _always_ an +unknown which is _never_ the same unknown must mean something more than +merely a yet-to-be-known; yes, it must mean even more than an +infinitely, eternally remote yet-to-be-known, for its being always, or +its being infinitely distant, simply makes it something besides positive +knowledge actual or possible. It must mean something which, though not +knowledge, is nevertheless in knowledge, now and always; something +served by all knowledge but itself other than any knowledge; something, +then, which exceeds or transcends whatever the formal enabling +conditions of knowledge are capable of presenting, but is itself +intimately and vitally involved in the presentation; or, once more, +something which is not at all in the character of a separate unknowable +thing or sphere of things, nor even of a separate part in the things +known or knowable, but is in the character rather of an unknowability, +perhaps in a sense a relative unknowability, belonging to the very +things and to every part of the very things that are known or, let me +say, inhering in the bare possibility of all knowledge. Must there not +be a sense in which just that which makes knowledge possible is itself +quite impossible to knowledge? Who makes a law must be superior to the +law, or "legally supreme," and what makes knowledge possible can hardly +be fully and directly an object [p.124] of knowledge. Given actual, +positive knowledge, then, and there must always be not merely an +unknown, but also an unknowable; an unknowable, however, that is in and +of the knowledge, not in place or in character a thing by itself. + +I said I should be abstruse, and I have not yet finished. In fully +appraising agnosticism we need to consider at close range another idea +of the positivist. Thus for the positivist knowledge is not a having, +but a getting--on the principle that unto him that hath shall be given; +not a knowing, but a questioning and seeking; not a being, but a +becoming--that has its ground in a being so real as to be without fixity +of form. And this is plainly equivalent to making movement and action +essential to the very nature of the knowing mind or to making knowledge +dynamic instead of static, and infinitely plastic--even like life +itself, that is always greater than its cross-sections or specific +forms. But in general to an active nature nothing can ever be quite +external; to a truly active nature there can be no essential +impossibility. For reflect. The mere existence of anything external or +of anything impossible would in just so far remove and deny the +intrinsic character of the activity; in just so far it would set the +supposedly active being in fixity of life and definiteness of form. For +an essentially active nature, therefore, all things--all things in +heaven and earth--are both present and possible, and so, specifically, +if that active nature be the knowing mind there can be no unknowable +that is at the same time alien and altogether impossible to the knower. +Even the very forms of the knower's knowledge must for ever compass +[p.125] pass more than they may visibly present. The knowing itself in +its own right and nature must be more than formal knowing, or than the +"objective," "special" science, in which the formal knowing has its +professional realization. And the knower, as he knows, in and through +his knowledge must always be compassing just that which is not +impossible to him, but only unknowable--that is, impossible merely to +his direct, formal knowledge. Is the inedible or the invisible or the +impenetrable or the unbearable or the illegible or even the +unintelligible ever wholly impossible? Such negatives, and in fact all +negatives, besides saving life from the narrowness of its various forms, +do this positive thing: they open the door of life's wider, nay, of +life's infinite opportunity or possibility, and at the same time they +render those various definite forms really mediative or instrumental, +making them parts in an essentially purposive existence. With just this +meaning, then, a meaning larger and deeper than that usual to +positivism, the attitude of the agnostic is instrumental and +teleological. Agnosticism simply endows the knower--must we not even put +our conclusion so?--with a wider freedom than that of knowledge, and yet +also makes his knowledge both share and serve the wider freedom that is +given. + +Instead, then, of pointing to a known "unknowable," before which either +some non-human creature or some human vice-regent of such a creature is +not obliged to be so knowingly humble, instead of establishing the +conceit that knowledge or science is wholly for its own sake and so of +divorcing knowledge and real life, instead of making castes out of the +social [p.126] classes of those who look and those who do, the +unknowable must be taken to point to the necessary unity of knowledge +and life, of theory and practice, to the fact that all looking is +incident to a running and before a leaping, that all knowledge is +responsible to life, and that only life, however directly unknowable, +can ever inform knowledge. It even suggests I think with Carlyle that +"the end of man is action, not thought, though it were the noblest." +Yet, in truth, though its own emphasis may thus exalt action, it cannot +mean any depreciation of thought or knowledge, only their enlistment in +the service of life. + + * * * * * + +At this point it would be interesting to show in detail how action--that +is, volition or application to life as central to the meaning of +agnosticism--is not only the logically appropriate nor yet only the +sentimentally ideal, but also the inevitable, the inner and actually +real motive, the natural outcome of the scientific standpoint in each +one of its three attitudes. Such a showing might follow historical and +sociological lines, or it might appeal to psychology or it might be +abstrusely logical, but I can ask attention only to a few suggestions of +so general a character as not to be easily classified. + +The natural consequence of objectivism is something like that attributed +by many to modern militarism, since it ends by inducing the very thing +it claims to prevent. An objective science discloses the mechanical +nature of man's environment, besides making man himself also a good deal +of a machine. But a machine, whether environment or personal being, is +always a [p.127] tool whose fine, accurate adjustments are just so much +presented opportunity that by a sort of hypnotism turns the scientist's +consciousness into that of an effective agent in the world. Somehow a +real machine must move, and in the case before us with the movement the +asserted distinction between looking subject and seen object collapses +hopelessly. Witness such a collapse, as the runner, who has been +studying the stream before him, takes his leap, or in history as an age +of self-consciousness, conventionalism, and utilitarianism, is followed +by the rise of Napoleon. So does objectivism pass over into action. As +for the special Science, it may be impractical, because partial, but we +have seen how at least formally it loses its partiality, becoming even +all-inclusive, indirectly compensating for its narrowness of view and so +becoming virtually co-extensive with all its associates in science. The +dividing partitions may still stand, but only as unsubstantial forms +wholly transparent and ineffective, so that the undivided universe is +really present to consciousness. The undivided universe, however, as +present to consciousness, is a call for will, since it cannot be fully +realized in any formal consciousness. The natural decline of an asserted +specialism, then, or the development of specialism into a mere form +without substance, into a virtual universalism, makes science +applicable. It makes science applicable, for in the first place it gives +freedom from the bondage of mere special technique, just as, for +example, the decline of religious--or irreligious?--sectarianism, a form +of specialism certainly, is sure to free religion from the bondage of +ritual, and in the second place, as was the [p.128] fate of objectivism, +it makes the distinction between self and not-self, subject and object, +man and nature, only a formal one, since the real unity of the objective +world is exactly that in which the self has its true realization. In +like manner a religion turned non-sectarian shows man truly living and +moving and having his being, not aloof from God, but in God. Thirdly, +whether because of the freedom from technique or ritual or because, as +the waters of science become quiet with the union of its many streams, +the objective world does clearly mirror the image of the self, the +decline of specialism, like the decline of sectarianism, brings what +some are pleased to call the liberation of the human spirit. The +psychologist would call it the development of knowledge into will--in a +word, the application of science, and the historian would record it as +the dawn of a new era. Psychologically and historically the human spirit +is liberated and nature is let loose at the same time. Details can +always be observed objectively and specially or separately; the whole, +on the other hand, is bound to draw the observer into itself and so to +change the observation into motive and will. And, lastly, as for +agnosticism, suffice it to say, in addition to what has been said, that +the suppressed passion for reality to which agnosticism must always +testify ensures in good time the assertion of the volitional as distinct +from the merely scientific point of view. Whatever this may mean +psychologically, historically and sociologically it means that a time of +agnosticism leads to all sorts of applications of science, such as +those, for example, in legislation and in industry. In morals [p.129] +and religion, too, the same wish and will to use the results of science +shows itself, as in the social settlements, in scientific charity, in +the "institutional" church, and in the university extension movement. +Agnosticism, marking, as it always does, dissatisfaction both with the +uninformed and with the conventionally informed life, and also rendering +mere formal knowledge, however logically correct and thinkable, unreal +or artificial, calls for a larger freedom of life through the mediation +of knowledge. + +But interesting as such reflections as the foregoing are, and +interesting also as it would be to undertake an account of will in +general in its relation to a consciousness which in so far as scientific +is always artificial and symbolic, and is in particular, as we have +found, always a poise between opposing points of view,[4] I must bring +to an end this rather lengthy examination of the standpoint of science. +If I have not already tarried too long, the special task of this volume +certainly does not warrant further attention even to so important a +department of human experience. + +In conclusion, then, it is now quite apparent that science is a fruitful +field for the doubter. Science lacks self-sufficiency. Socially it means +the rise of a caste, and logically it involves abstraction and +consequent division against itself. Its most cherished ideals, as shown +in its attitudes and methods, are chimerical, or impossible. In general +and in particular it has a [p.130] paradoxical standpoint, being not +less given to contradictions than ordinary consciousness. + +But, as must be added, the case for the doubter of science has led also +toward a belief in science. Not infrequently in the course of the +foregoing discussion it must have seemed even as if belief rather than +doubt were the controlling motive. A little child has said that faith +consists in "believing what you know to be untrue," and our present +state of mind cannot be far from such a faith. Actually the science +which we may believe in is the science of which we are also confirmed +doubters. We doubt the formal attitude and the formal doctrines just +because they are abstract, phenomenal, paradoxical, but at the same time +we have to believe in the spirit--there seems to be no other word +available--as an ever-present agent of validity, because, in spite of +all, the very incongruities save these formal doctrines from their +apparent artificiality and abstraction, and put them in touch with what +is whole and real. And if, as was suggested, the scientific +consciousness is only the specially developed consciousness of ordinary +life, then we have gained also a new confidence even in the unreflective +paradoxical consciousness of everyday life. Yet, that we may more fully +comprehend what this means, we shall next consider at some length the +possible value of the defects in experience which have now been +observed. Ideas, which have appeared heretofore as little better than +hints or suggestions, can then be presented in clearer form. + + +[1] See an article: "Epistemology and Physical Science--A Fatal +Parallelism," in the _Philosophical Review_, Vol. VII, No. 4, July, +1896. + +[2] See articles: "Pluralism: Empedocles and Democritus," in the +_Philosophical Review_, Vol. X, No. 3, May, 1901; "A Study in the Logic +of the Early Greek Philosophy--Being, not-Being, and Becoming," in the +_Monist_, Vol. XII, No. 3, April, 1902; and "The Poetry of Anaxagoras's +Metaphysics," in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Method_, Vol. IV, No 4. + +[3] See Münsterberg's _Psychology and Life_, p. 267. Houghton Mifflin +and Co., 1899. + +[4] For an interesting account, mainly psychological in standpoint, of +will as involving such a poise, see Münsterberg's _Grundzüge der +Psychologie_, Vol. I, chap. xv., Leipzig, 1900. + + + +[p.131] + +VI. + +POSSIBLE VALUE IN THESE ESSENTIAL DEFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. + + +An original sin, or an essential defect, must somehow be for some good +purpose. At least, if a general faith in the ultimate propriety of all +things has any ground to stand on, such must be the case. The sin or the +defect cannot be unmixed; its very originality, its essentiality, must +line it, though it be the blackest of clouds, with some silver. Theology +has sometimes forgotten this, but an honest doubter cannot afford such a +lapse. + +Yet before examining the possible worth of the original defects of +experience, or, as some might regard the present enterprise, before +attempting to give the devil himself a "character," we must recall the +various steps of our general undertaking as it has progressed so far. We +have been, in the first place, occupied with a thorough-going confession +of doubt, with the greatest possible candour hunting down all the +reasons for the attitude of doubt which experience affords, and so far, +in the second place, we have found doubt justified, whether for good or +for ill, because of its potential when not actual universality among +men, of its character as a condition of all conscious life, of [p.132] +its importance to real active life and deep experience, of its intimacy +even with habit, and of its natural sense of dependence and consequent +impulse to companionship with nature, man and God, but more than +all--and this was the special interest of the last two chapters--because +of the paradoxical and self-contradictory nature of all human +experience. As regards the last point, our ordinary consciousness, the +often-boasted consciousness of common sense, was found to harbour a +widespread, very persistent duplicity towards such vital things as +reality, wholeness or unity, space and time, the causal relation, +knowledge, moral freedom and natural law; and science, to which many +when dislodged from their ordinary standpoint have been accustomed to +retreat with greatest confidence and hope, was examined with similar +results. Science was found in its rise to involve abstraction of +interest and disruption of life, and in its avowed point of view to +be--suppose I say at this point--impossible but contradictory. So, in a +word, as a clinching argument for doubt, as an argument that at least on +the surface has less of hope in it than any of the others, we are face +to face with the bare, hard fact that in the very nature of human +experience, besides the relativity and instability and subjectivity, +there dwells a spirit of positive violence. Contradiction is just one +phase of the error to which all men are said to be addicted. As a +background for the inconsistent theologian, the fickle woman, the +shifting politician and other equally double-faced monsters, we see +both-sidedness, individually and to a certain extent socially, to be a +basal habit of human nature, [p.133] and if the doctrine of original sin +is tenable at all, in just this fact it would appear to have its +strongest support. _Humanum est errare_ may be translated: Man is most +human when hopelessly divided against himself. + +But just here our confession of doubt has reached a critical stage; +since in experience apparently at its very worst, as if in a medley of +discords we have caught a promise of real harmony, and so something from +which to get genuine hope. In the very habit of duplicity or +contradiction we have again and again had suggestion of an agent of +validity, a power for adequacy in experience, which would hold even a +phenomenal, relative, partial experience to a real world. In short, +really the strongest reason for doubt is possibly a ground of belief; +or, as was said in substance at the close of the foregoing chapter, the +very experience of which we are already confirmed doubters is, after +all, just the experience which we seem to see our way to believing in. + +Since the time of the great Leibnitz, and probably since the time +self-conscious man drew his first breath, all genuine optimism has +caught its most assuring vision of what was good, not in something quite +apart from what was evil, but in and through evil itself, as if what is +evil must be ever building better than it seems or than it knows. Very +much as mathematics has viewed the negative quantity as an integral part +of the whole system of quantities, so in the person of +Leibnitz--statesman, historian, scientist, mathematician, and +philosopher--and I imagine in the person also of you or me, though we +may not claim the same [p.134] authority, the human mind has been wise +and deep enough to see evil, representing all the negative things of +life as an organic part of the best possible world, even of the world +created by an infinite God. At least since Leibnitz's time, I say, +optimism has generally justified itself, not by denial of evil in the +world, but in and through evil. Not long ago a young man who was perhaps +more profound and reflective in his habits of mind than wise in his +manner of statement, said to me that the most spiritual truth as yet +disclosed to him was the identity of God with the devil. A shocking +declaration, of course; yet, to say the least, not very far from the +very spiritual idea, welcome to most, if not to all, that the conviction +of sin is the beginning of salvation, or that the consciousness of +ignorance is the very ground of wisdom. And here, similarly, belief +within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only +in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory +experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has +certainly been leading towards. + +Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his +ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, +exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and +with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest +kind of sympathy. In fact, upon just this sympathy I have been depending +in the development of the argument of this book. But human nature, +however sympathetic, is really superior to any momentary discomfiture, +and most if not all men sooner or later come to value highly [p.135] +even their once discomfiting inconsistencies. "I am glad," we seem to +hear a fellow-being say, "that after all, in spite of myself, I did +recognize the other side. You abused me and called me double; yet so +doing you were double too. I see now that my duplicity saved me, not, +however, for your view or for another's, but for the both-sided and +true, which we both shared and served"; and exactly such a reflection on +the inconsistencies of experiences, in their less or in their more +fundamental manifestations, is the burden of the present chapter. Again, +to one who complained that with every breath he took he had to +contradict himself, respiration being as necessary to his breathing as +inspiration, just as in walking falling is as necessary as rising, we +might properly and satisfactorily reply: "You are really alive, sir," +and just this answer is also quite pertinent to any who might be +disposed in their doubting to despair over the essential duplicity of +human experience. Is not experience more than any one idea or any one +ideal? Being really alive, is it not infinitely more than this or that +thing, than this or that place or time, than this or that power or will, +than this or that point of view? And, if more, what so surely as +universal duplicity and self-opposition can ensure at once its vitality +and its integrity? + +I am not forgetting or wishing my readers to forget that there are other +defects in experience besides this of self-opposition, besides +experience's habit of never failing to induce its own conflicts; but no +defect seems to me so central or so conclusive as this, and none is at +the same time so clear in its testimony to the intimacy of doubt and +belief. [p.136] Subjectivity, relativity, phenomenality, artificiality, +partiality, and instability--certainly an imposing and appalling list, +though logically I must suspect it of being at least a +cross-division--are all noteworthy defects; but supposing the list exact +and complete, we must recognize that all these either beget +contradiction or are begotten by it. Contradiction is just the life or +the heart of the interesting family to which they belong, and so in +applying our thinker's stethoscope to that heart we shall have +determined the hold upon life of the whole race. + +Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem +worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they +seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they +warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we +may rest a genuine case for belief. + +Thus, for the first of the five, contradiction incites and even in +itself implies movement; it requires, or positively it is, action. As a +mode of thinking, as a logical form, it is the way, perhaps the only +possible way, in which the mind can, so to speak, make a cross-section +or take a picture of activity or give the semblance of fixity, the +formal appearance of static nature, to what is dynamic. The photographer +trying for a portrait of reality might ask it only to look pleasant, but +the logician, for whom reality was essentially dynamic, would demand +manifest opposition, for in no other way could his art, limited to +conditions of rest,[1] [p.137] be equal to its subject. Where experience +is contradictory, then, there is movement, whether for that which is +known or for him that has the knowledge. In your character or mine, so +like a lover's unselfish selfishness in its apparent inconsistencies, in +our double views about reality or unity or law, in a +subjective-objective science, in an agnostic philosophy, in all these +the contradictions are only the marks of essential unrest, of necessary +movement, that make the picture possible. For a world of opposites there +can be no peace. The very things opposed are themselves fluent and +unstable, and that third something, the _tertium quid_, a picture of +which the opposition tries to be or to which the things opposed +necessarily point, belongs, as Alice in Wonderland seems to have +discovered, to yesterday or to-morrow, never to to-day. + +But, secondly, contradiction, at least as here understood, is an +expression, or in experience a means to the expression, as well as to +the maintenance, of real unity. In general this is because real unity +cannot take sides, and so can never reside in anything that is, but must +rather be served by the co-operation of all things and in particular by +their mutually corrective or balancing differences. This no doubt will +appear to some readers as just one more example of a philosopher's +impossible subtleties, as a mountain with its top in so rare an +atmosphere that the common man would not dare to climb it if he could. +Yet, suppose together we rise to the heights of this seeming +impossibility by a little unprejudiced study of the conditions, +remembering that the summits of very wonderful mountains, plainly +impossible of ascent, have often been reached [p.138] from the other +side, and that difficulties of breathing are often due to a needless +exhaustion. To take a first step, then, contradiction is only +difference, or contrast, at its limit. Naturally there is some +opposition, some mutual resistance, in all difference, in that, for +example, between one man and another, or one thing and another, between +religion and art, red and green, or warm and hot, and often the +difference or the opposition seems very slight; but contradiction, so +called, is only this difference abstracted and unrestrained--it is +difference at its worst or best, difference as only opposition, or, once +more, difference where any possible unity of the things opposed has lost +all material ground or all chance of actual, visible form, and has +become, accordingly, at most merely an empty, abstract principle. +Contradiction, then, is difference so wide that unity seems wholly +betrayed rather than served or maintained. A real unity, however, +requires for its realization just the freedom from material form or +ground which such extreme difference would force upon it. It therefore +gains instead of losing reality by passing into the world of the +materially and visibly empty and abstract, or, say, by leaving behind +any hope of a finite residence and entering the sphere of the infinite, +to which difference, or at least contradiction, so cordially invites--or +expels--it. And, this being true, we can see how unity is served or +maintained, as was said, by the contradictions of experience. + +Commonly men have an idea that differences mean, or point to, unity, but +they are more likely to suppose that the unity is by mere contrast or +antithesis than [p.139] clearly to recognize that it is a most intimate +fact of the differences themselves. They will even see in a number of +things only so many varying aspects of some one thing, and will go so +far as to look upon the aspects as actually enriching and deepening the +unity, but they still fail fully to appreciate how the real unity is +immanent and immediate in the differences. Again, in all their thinking +they contrast, and may consciously observe that they contrast, only +objects or people that really have something in common, comparing, on +the other hand, only such as in some way are manifestly different, and +in their practical affairs they compete only with those who with them +are parties to one and the same life, a fundamental sympathy, indeed, +being a necessary condition of their rivalry, and actually and actively +hate only the beings whom because of a common humanity they might love; +but here, too, their appreciation lags behind the fact. + +In life generally, moreover, in small things and in large, extremes do +have the habit of meeting. A man's virtues are so near to his vices. The +widest variations in things are only relatively at variance. Even what +is cold is somewhat warm. Nothing is absolutely anything. In history a +single ideal, rising to influence, has always divided men into two +opposing camps. Witness the fact of bipartisanship, not in politics +alone, but in all of life's interests. Democrats and Republicans, +Radicals and Conservatives alike have loved their country and honoured +their country's flag and, regardless of party, their country's heroes or +patriots. Epicureans and Stoics--in recent times or long ago--have found +the same life worth living. The [p.140] Roman Law and the Roman Holiday, +working together, like the right and the left hand, different yet in +sympathy, made the great empire. Two men, furthermore, in active, open +conflict are in truth at serious difference with each other; but, as +they might even say, if their conflict were in the form of a debate, +where words instead of fists or pistols were the weapons, in the bare, +unapplied principle involved, or say in the abstract, in the final +success of whichever is the "best man," they do and they must agree. +Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no +idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the +manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common +relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is +it but a demand for real unity? And the common weapons, or for quite +general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition +is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, +only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, +even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, +truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at +most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is +intrinsic to a real unity. + +Where unity is real, then, there must be infinite difference, and +infinite difference is just what the contradictions of experience impose +upon experience and make it responsible to. Infinite difference gives to +everything an opposite and to all things unity; to every man a rival and +to human society, as a whole, solidarity. Against the material it sets +the spiritual; against [p.141] the particular, the general; against the +subjective, the objective; against the living, the dead; against the +lawful, the lawless; against the caused, the uncaused; and to all these, +the spiritual and the material, the subjective and the objective, the +living and the dead, the lawful and the lawless, the caused and the +uncaused, it gives place in a perfect unity; not, of course, in any +material unity, since such unity could not be perfect, but nevertheless +in a real unity. + +For our first step, therefore, in the ascent of that "impossible +subtlety," contradiction is only difference at its greatest limit; for +the second, difference in general, whether partial or extreme, marks an +underlying, or more precisely an indwelling unity; and for the last +step, real unity is served, not betrayed by difference. Moreover, the +wider the difference, the nearer it be to positive contradiction or +opposition, the more conclusive and effective is the service. Remember, +real unity can never take sides; in the world of things it must be +always both-sided. It cannot be here or there, now and then--be the then +in the past or in the future, this or that. In the words, used of truth, +perhaps an appropriate refrain for this book, it can have neither +visible form nor body, neither habitation nor name; like the Son of Man, +it cannot have where to lay its head. The particular opposition of life +and death affords a peculiarly serviceable illustration, for it is, of +course, at the bottom of many of the most searching paradoxes of our +human experience. Real life cannot be confined to any single organic +form or to any single group of organic forms. In fact, it cannot be +bound even to the organic as commonly distinguished from the [p.142] +inorganic world. So for the biologist, very much as for the theologian, +whenever life takes a residence, death must ensue sooner or later. Life +and death, then, as opposites, become the medium of real life. But not +only have we here a helpful illustration, also we have a suggestion that +should prevent an easy misunderstanding. In general, as so plainly in +this special case, the opposition, so necessary to reality in +experience, to a real life or to any real unity, can itself be complete +and effective, not through any single instance of extreme difference, +not through the opposition of just two distinct things, but only through +an accumulation or summation of all possible instances, so to speak, +from difference at zero to difference at infinity. In fact, a real +opposition or rather a truly infinite difference, could be only in such +a sum. Not the single climax of death, but the constant dying, to which +it is only a climax, is what makes real the opposition of life and death +and makes this the medium, as was said, of the real life. Death must +constantly condition all the movements and processes of life: it must +have all possible degrees. And, in like manner, extreme difference at +large, just to be real itself and to make for real unity, must be in and +through all possible degrees of difference. In other words, the perfect +opposition, or contradiction, upon which reality depends, like the +perfect death, is rather a continuum than the wide gap, or chasm, which +so many have thought it; it is a graduate difference, not a single +cataclysmic difference. Difference in gradation or degree, I have +sometimes heard it said, is not real difference; but this statement, +though by no means without warrant or meaning, is [p.143] misleading. +Surely a cataclysmic difference, a "difference in kind," can be only one +finite case of difference; the negative, or opposition, in it can be +only relative; whereas, when in degree, difference becomes necessarily +infinite. Accordingly, as we must not forget, from this point on through +the remainder of this book, the contradiction of which we have been +thinking and which we have found infecting experience at every turn, is +not, what at first and even second thought it may have seemed, just an +opposition of two things; between its lines, as it were, it is inclusive +of, or maintained by, all the manifold and various things in life and +consciousness; it is the completed, short-circuited sum of an infinite +series. An infinitely many-sided world is the only world that can claim +real unity, and a world of such real unity is the world to which the +habit of contradiction, which we have observed, relates our human +experience. + +So far, then, in estimating the possible value of this central and +essential defect of experience, we have found that it implies action and +that it makes for, or testifies to, real unity. Now, thirdly, perhaps +only to enlarge upon what has just been said, contradiction is an +absolutely effective correction of narrowness or partiality or +relativity or one-sidedness in life or consciousness, and so it makes +experience not abstract, but realistic. This is in truth only another +view of the worth of contradiction to integrity and vitality, to unity +and reality, but it would emphasize, what is very interesting at least +to the metaphysician, and cannot fail to be of some interest to the +moralist and the theologian, that where there is real unity there +[p.144] is also true reality. Only the One is. The One and Being are the +same. There can be but one substance, as also but one God. So men have +said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality +or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply +concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the +intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, +then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and +intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. Now +individual things or ideas always show life suffering in some measure +under tangential digressions from the circle of its real wholeness, and +only opposition can save them or can preserve the reality to which they +both belong and contribute. Has not Emerson, among many others, declared +with a cogency and a depth of meaning which quite defy the +superficiality and levity attractive to a few, that mere consistency is +narrow and confining? Any particular view-point or idea or ideal, any +particular thing or activity, simply needs an opposite to balance the +abstraction or digression which being particular must always involve. +Particularity, specific individuality, is certainly a necessary +condition of real worth in life, but with an equal necessity there could +be no life, no conservation and wholeness of life if the particular, +individual things stood unchallenged in the world, and no realistic +experience, if experience were not thus paradoxical and divided against +itself. Life, therefore, gets not only movement and unity from the +contradictions that lie at the very heart of experience, but in getting +unity it gets also contact [p.145] with reality, and the three together +may be summed up in the one word poise. Montaigne marvelled at the +hopeless folly of mankind as compared with the wisdom of God, but man's +folly is divided against itself and so imbued with God's wisdom; and +with countless others he saw the ideas of man to be only subjective and +unsubstantial and irresponsible, but man's ideas, though fanciful and +illusory, though subjective and imaginative, work against each other for +what is real and substantial. Man's ideas co-operate for their own +correction and so for communion or intimacy with a character that is not +less substantial or responsible than that of God himself. + +And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience +supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make +realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be +abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the +hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express +satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the +both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive +experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite +to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there +always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In +practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there +always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to +leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is +all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social +classes or parties, can never be confined to a [p.146] single individual +representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly +practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but +instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely +many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed +individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and +competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly +practical, whether of things or realities--for the metaphysician--or of +ideas or categories--for the logician--or of persons or classes--for the +statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the +truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which +is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life +must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding +over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real +leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a +labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences +and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or +"entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for +morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and +platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a +labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites, +that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which +is real and practical. + +It would be peculiarly interesting to examine further this principle of +a practical, truly realistic experience ensured to human life through +the inner [p.147] conflicts of experience. The history of morals and +ethics, for example, notably of the perennial conflict between hedonism +and idealism, could not but cast a good deal of light upon it; and the +history of political struggles, or the history of the great +controversies in science--such as that between vitalism and +anti-vitalism or that between atomism and energism; or in philosophy, +between dualism and monism; or in theology, between naturalism and +supernaturalism, would also be most illuminating; while, also perhaps +appealing only to the few, in the logic of the negative, as it has +developed from the earliest times, or in psychological theory--for +example, in the dispute of the advocates of the innervation theory and +the afferent theory, or in Hering's theory of vision, or, again, in the +life and movement of any one of the time-worn paradoxes of popular or +scientific or philosophical ideas, one might expect to find suggestive +illustration. In philosophy, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Zeno, Socrates, +Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel have all found negation, or contradiction, +necessary to any adequate account of reality. Explorations, however, in +their teachings or along any of the paths that were suggested, would +lead us too far astray. + +Fifthly, then, not only do the contradictions make experience realistic +and so practical, but also they make it essentially social. A life or an +experience that is contradictory has (1) movement, (2) unity or +integrity, (3) reality and poise, and (4) practicality; and then it has +besides, as if the medium through which these four things are sustained, +(5) social character, society being only the visible expression, the +[p.148] outer realization, of the both-sidedness, of the infinitely +differential unity or the divided labour, which an active, yet +thoroughly self-controlled, truly realistic, practical experience +requires. In a former chapter, it will be readily recalled, an impulse +to social life was found to be intimately connected with the attitude of +doubt, and here clearly we are confronted with only another view of the +same fact, since contradiction has become our most cogent reason for +doubt and is now seen to require the social relations. An individual +whose experience is ever divided against itself is, _ipso facto_, a +social character, his social environment, whether in its narrowest or +broadest manifestation, adding nothing to his nature or to the struggles +of that nature, but only making the division against himself constantly +and manifestly real. The social environment, as it were, just proves the +man, his struggle and all, to himself. Some have agreed that the +individual consciousness contained nothing on which to ground a positive +case for society, for direct positive social interest; but so long as +man's experience is necessarily paradoxical or contradictory, so long as +man is divided against himself, or as the labour of life and reality is +a divided labour, the case for society and for personal interest in +society is clear and conclusive. A basis for society lies in the very +nature of experience. Society is not something added to individuality +from without. + +Let us here beware of easy sentiment. Let not our thinking conjure false +sweetness and light. Experience is truly and essentially social; the +individual was not meant to dwell alone; but herein is no immediate +[p.149] cure-all, no promise of an unperturbed brotherly love, of a life +for one and all of simple peace and blissful quietude. On such a plan +society would hardly suit the individual with whom, and with whose +natural experience, we have become acquainted. To speak with the +extravagance of a counter-sentimentalism, the individual of our present +acquaintance is forever spoiling for a fight. In the life of the society +to which he belongs; in the life where he watches for his incoming ship, +there must always be hate and evil in all their forms, lawlessness and +destruction, illusion and error; but--and just here sentiment, the +sentiment of a really searching optimism, called once before a +sacrificial and heroic optimism, may find some assurance--never an +unmixed hate, never a wholly idle destruction, never an unmeaning error. +Can anything, indeed, that has another thing against it--that has, in +short, an opposite--ever be itself unmixed? The good or the evil in +society, being always opposed, is always also shared. So few people +recognize, or appreciate, what a great mixer opposition is. Death is the +passing only of inadequate or unworthy life. Hate witnesses only a false +love; sin, a pharisaical righteousness. Destruction marks an imperfect +construction. And in all its forms, evil is not so much something in and +by itself as an exposure and reproach of what is supposed to be +unmixedly good. Public crime, for example, is not so local as it +appears; it is only a generally, widely private vice made locally +manifest, and the respectable and law-abiding, who adjudge it evil, are +bound to feel as if adjudging and condemning themselves. In a word, the +individual's natural society [p.149] is never without evil, but in all +its forms the evil has somewhat of good in it; and although social life, +not less than individual life, must be one of conflict and discord, +nevertheless, because the various factors or factions, however opposed, +can never be unmixed, because the members of society must all be good +and bad, right and wrong--I almost said living and dead +together--instead of being hopeless for having evil in it, the life of +society is so much the more worth living. Shallow sentimentalism may not +so esteem it, but we need give little thought to shallow sentimentalism. + +So our use of the word "society" is not sentimental. Society means +conflict. It is just the natural sphere of life and reality as for ever +a divided labour, as for ever divided and laborious--divided even +between the powers for supposed good and for adjudged evil, and through +the conflicts, in which the division is expressed, what is true and good +and vital is being forever kept real. Or, to repeat, society is the +natural medium through which movement, unity or integrity, poise and +reality, and practicality are secured and realized in human experience; +it is that which makes the individual's division against himself +manifestly real and positively and progressively effective for a life, +yes, for his life, at once of vitality and perfect wholeness. + +But now that the five things are said, now that the contradictions of +experience have been seen to serve experience by giving it movement, +unity, poise, practical reality and social character, somebody is sure +to remark facetiously that on the evidence contradiction is something we +should all cultivate assiduously, and [p.151] that henceforth to face +both ways, the butt of so much opprobrium, should be one of man's +greatest ideals; in brief, that the inconsistent creatures in politics, +morals, and theology are the coming examples for mankind. Verily the +devil has been given his promised "character." But, alas! in the spirit +of such startling humour one would have to conclude also that because +crime has beyond all question been a means of social development, being +all-important to the awakening of the social consciousness and +conscience, all men should at once take thought and find it their duty +to turn criminals; or, again, that because death has a fundamental part +in the order of nature and is, moreover, of greatest spiritual worth and +significance, we should all morbidly seek it, being successfully +righteous only by being suicides. True, we do need to recognize the +positive function of crime in the progress of civilization, or in the +history of law, and also to be aware of crime as a possibility in our +own lives, and we need to be ready to die and to feel besides that dying +we are far from losing all that is worth having, but to court crime or +to seek death would certainly be to deprive either of the very worth +which has made it significant. And in much the same way we may very +profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or +social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on +that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always +blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly +courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The +both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and +conserves human life, is only [p.152] that which is maintained with a +tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every +side. + +So, although grossly misused if directly courted, this defect of +experience has its place, even its ideal value, in experience, and what +on the surface seemed an almost if not quite hopeless reason for doubt, +has truly become all but transfigured, seeming now a source of real +assurance. With Heraclitus of old, only perhaps seeing even more than he +saw, we can glory in a world of strife. Doubting all things, we can yet +believe that all things work together for what is real, for what is +good. + +But let me now put the result, so far secured, of our confession of +doubt in a new way. For a life in which every thing has an opposite, +every idea a counter-idea, truth very plainly, as has indeed been +frequently said, cannot be a specific consciousness nor reality a fixed +thing. Truth is not a creed, but a spirit. Reality is not a thing, but a +life. And for being a spirit truth is only the more realistic? For being +a life, reality is only the more substantial. Perfection, too, even the +Perfect One, with whom we associate the true and the real, is no +particular separate being in a certain established exclusive status, at +once infinitely and passively excellent, but a power ever dwelling in +the strife that makes for movement and poise. For being such a power, +too, he is only more surely perfect, only more certainly infinite and +excellent. + +Such terms as spirit, life, and power are confessedly somewhat dangerous +terms to use. Especially the first is liable to misunderstanding. Yet, +whatever [p.153] common usage may be, when I say that truth is not a +creed but a spirit, that reality is not a thing but a power, the +reference is directly to that agent or principle of validity which has +been found to hold our experience, naturally so faulty, to contact and +intimacy with the real world. A spirit of truth, a principle of validity +there is, to which the very faults of experience give witness, and in +view of this we who doubt, who doubt the particular things, the creeds +and the objects generally, the definite forms and ideas, the habits and +standpoints of our everyday life or our scientific theory, may yet +believe; we may believe in the real spirit, or power, which makes all +things parties to the divided labour of a real life.[2] + + +[1] This limitation is shown, for example, in the logical principle of +identity. + +[2] The worth assigned in this chapter to the contradictions of +experience involves a standpoint which apparently is at variance with +that of Mr. F.H. Bradley, whose book, _Appearance and Reality_, has +occupied such an important place in the philosophical study and +controversy of the last ten years. Of course, here is not the place for +final criticism of Mr. Bradley, since the present examination of doubt +is no such scrutiny of experience as his; it is far short of what would +make a complete philosophical argument. Nevertheless, a word or two +expressing the nature of the difference between his view and the view +advocated here can hardly be impertinent. Thus, if I read him rightly, +Mr. Bradley has argued from the paradoxes of experience to the complete, +hopeless phenomenality of experience, while in this study of doubt the +argument has been from the paradoxes of experience to a thoroughly +realistic experience. Again, Mr. Bradley's Absolute is able to include +the phenomenal, the relative and contradictory, only because this is so +unsubstantial as to offer no resistance, while here there has not even +been any question of inclusion. _All experience_, our position has been, +_is informed with reality; its very contradictions hold an otherwise +phenomenal, relative, changing experience close down to a real world_; +and this position, I repeat, is at variance with what Mr. Bradley has +_seemed_ to say. See, however, a short article, "Relativity and +Reality," in the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods_, Vol. I, No. 24, November, 1904. + + + +[p.154] + +VII. + +THE PERSONAL AND THE SOCIAL, THE VITAL AND THE FORMAL IN EXPERIENCE. + + +Contrasts such as those in the title of the present chapter, the +personal and the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are +always dangerous to clear thinking, and yet in spite of the danger no +thinking can avoid them. They can be only relatively true; the terms in +which they are couched cannot fail, sooner or later, from one standpoint +or another, to make an exchange of the very things to which they apply, +since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective +mixer, and therefore they can only punctuate the naturally chiaroscuro +character that belongs to all articulate thinking. Nevertheless, used +with self-control, they are distinctly serviceable. + +In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of +experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character +with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the +social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this +contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was +said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general +purpose. It was [p.155] said that society was nothing alien, or +additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society +lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided +against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a +divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in +society was clear and conclusive; but this was not fully to define the +parts that are played by the individual person and the social group in +the development and maintenance of human life. Some, for example, would +fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that +of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, +who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our +defences. + +Long ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, of the human +individual, to society, and so, too, Aristotle, though not to society, +but much more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the other +has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, +for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of +the implications of the idea has never been fully stated or appraised, +and this is much to be wondered at, since there is involved a strong +case for both the personal and the social in the maintenance of +experience.[1] + +Plato found reason, will, and sensuous nature in the individual and +analogously a thinking or law-making class, an official or military +class, and an industrial or [p.156] appetitive class in society; and +Aristotle, in very much the same way, found the parts of the individual +soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of +nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable +enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated, +with its mere statement. Still, in order to be sure of appreciation, in +order especially to get the reflected light on the relation between +individual and society, we must look to the facts and conditions which +are presented very closely. + +To begin with, such an analogy, dealing as it does with the relation of +a part to the whole, has and should have, for a reason not hard to find, +the freedom of the city of logic. Other than logical approval of it +might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychology might be called in +to give testimony. And out of the past, the more recent past at least as +known to the historian of philosophy, Leibnitz with his _lex analogiæ_, +or for that matter with the general import of his monadology, might be +appealed to. But without tarrying for assistance from these quarters, +highly respectable though they are, I make a simple, yet perhaps timely +and--with apologies for so much emotion--soul-satisfying reference to +the logic in the case, for after all biology and sociology and +psychology are always under the restraints of logic, as well as +alliterated with it; nor does the evidence of logic depend on mere +technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these +enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can +the true part of anything ever dare [p.157] not to have an analogy, even +a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which +it is comprised? And--this being, as in due time will appear, quite as +important--how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, +ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts +within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, +however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three +typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though +at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same +differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the +group-part or class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may +be known also as the faction, and which was so important to Plato in his +analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3) the +all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible ways--that +is, even between individual and individual, or individual and group or +group and group, as well as between either individual or group and +whole--an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original +differential operation will persist. Such, almost truistically, though +also perhaps somewhat subtly for ordinary purposes, is the logical +condition of division or differentiation. Difference, like its limit +opposition, is thus a great mixer, and division can be no mere +separation or isolation of parts. The saying comes to my mind from +somewhere, that though division may reveal distinct vertebræ, the +vertebra always conceal a spinal cord. + +Analogy, however, although thus universal, although [p.158] applicable, +as said, in all of the possible ways, must itself share in, must be +quite under the spell of, the differentiation; it must have as many +various forms as it has expressions. In every expression the relation +must indeed be one of analogy, but it can never be of the same order or +degree. That of the individual to the group or faction must be +qualitatively distinct from all others, say from that of the individual +either to another individual or to the all-inclusive whole. Nor can the +much used and frequently abused distinction between small and large +writings, as when history is taken as a large writing of personal +biography or a social institution of some special phase of personal +character, adequately represent the differentiation here in mind. +Consider how various, internally and externally, are all the terms among +which the analogies obtain. Thus, as of direct interest here, factional +differences are bound to be sharper or wider, they are inevitably more +deeply set and more openly exclusive of each other than individual +differences, and in consequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, +but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of +its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole +implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, +which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to +speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the +case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates +a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other +characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes +these on the whole only in a negative way, in [p.159] the way in which +opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always +implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which +it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in +one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only +potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the +primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively +active with all the different factors of the operation, and this in +spite of the restraints of any particular class-affiliation, and the +whole, though macro-cosmic with respect to the microcosmic individual, +is at the same time qualitatively distinct, as distinct at least as the +explicit from the implicit, the actual from the potential. Whatever a +merely formal logic might say, a real logic requires that at most +microcosm and macrocosm are only metaphors of each other. Even their +difference of size would be quite enough to differentiate them at least +as sharply as the difference of size differentiated imperial Rome from +her prototype the Greek City-State. Can the whole and the part be one or +many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be +material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in +qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but +without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the +whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the +operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on +analogy, must be various accordingly. + +But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the +case for both personality and [p.160] society, no idea can be more +immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of +experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those +tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but +within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither +more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the +experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other +words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general, +or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however +different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, +as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a +thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an +indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and +spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, +intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has +developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It +is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, +sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division +or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, +aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the +language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is +only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction +between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, +out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human +society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest [p.161] +social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual +person. + +And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still +undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential +operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of +experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In +him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with +some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual, +intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical, +all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without +the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may +become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the +universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of +any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the +religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any +particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any +particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the +physiological is universal--as universal, to repeat, as it is +indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the +lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has +been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it +is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism, +whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of +the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the +discussion of the rise of science.[2] + +[p.162] But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever +the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before +any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can +be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our +present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If +the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with +reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, +particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. +Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has +been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal +differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal +in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society +is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become +castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An +illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession +of science. + +Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the typical +relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or implied, +that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of the general +to the particular, of the whole to the part, and significantly that of +the vital to the instrumental. Yet, to say no more than this would be a +serious mistake, for at least in two ways this statement must be +modified. Doubtless the required modifications are directly consequent +upon the nature and origin of the relation, but nevertheless they need +to be carefully observed. Thus, logically and sociologically [p.163] +factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more +definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may +be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and +efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high +degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of +corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and +in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental +character. Between individual and class there is a difference very like +that between impulse and habit, or organic life and mere physical +process, or function and structure, or say human nature in terms of its +life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and in terms of its +establishments or institutions. Accordingly the relation of the person +to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part, but of the whole +in a state that is formally undeveloped to the part more or less highly +developed, and of the whole as a living, functional activity, the +differential operation of the unity of experience, to the part as an +institution or instrument. + +From all this it appears that the labour involved in the maintenance and +development of human life is divided between the person and the social +classes in some such way as follows. The class life stands for analysis +and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis +and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps +for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal +life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption +and the stagnation to [p.164] which specialism and its formal +establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and +instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. And while +so to define the distinction between person and class, or in general to +regard their relation as one of whole to part, even with the +qualifications that were promptly added, may involve some unavoidable +abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view +is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it +rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an +indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the +same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the +relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of +development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly +the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only +a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and +possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger +than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is +the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, +but also there is clearly a real place in social life at once for the +person and for the class. Factional life lacks completeness and +vitality, and personality, the living, integral expression of the unity +of experience, supplies these defects. True, a conflict of classes or +factions may always be counted on, since the unity of the total life, +which of course includes the classes, will prevent their ever being +indifferent to each other, and this conflict will make for both +completeness and vitality, but [p.165] negatively, indirectly, always as +if from outside. Only through the person can vitality and completeness +be secured positively and directly and immediately. Personality, on the +other hand, lacks definiteness and practical efficiency, and only the +special mechanical life of the class can supply these needs. So in the +two together we see a most indispensable co-operation. + +The person, furthermore, because of his particular class affiliation, +with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this imparts, +is always naturally under constraint not merely to overcome the +specialism, but also to apply the special training beyond the immediate +sphere of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. +Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by +the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and +the factional ritual, and taking this ritual--or special professional +technique--to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit +rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional +experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. Only +so can he be true both to his special classification and to his personal +wholeness. + +But an insistent question: Is such translation possible? On the +possibility the case for either personality or a class-divided society +must finally depend. On the possibility hangs also the worth of this +case to the general argument of this book. Logically, there certainly +can be but one answer, and that an affirmative one, since analogy, the +primal condition of translation, must be universal [p.166] among the +parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole. No two +parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, +but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and +the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any +acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, +however special and however technical, may and must have meaning +throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, +with the acquired freedom of any part, the metaphors, relating part to +part, may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person's +experience-world. The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, +of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very +crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative +illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches +height after height of the beholder's outstretched world. + +The conclusions of logic in this matter have sometimes been questioned, +if not defied. Quite properly, it may be, many people, and particularly +many among scientists, have been in the habit of distrusting the leading +of mere logic in the solution of their problems. But in this particular +matter I think that no scientist has ever succeeded in making out a +negative case. A few have tried to do so, have thought themselves for a +time successful, and then in the end, though not without some +reservation, have gone over to the other side. Probably their +undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes +entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate [p.167] people +to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of +things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class +of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or +physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral +truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special +training could ever be literally applicable beyond the particular sphere +of its attainment, the relation of part and part of human nature being +only analogous and metaphorical, and that in any scientifically observed +case special training, when artificially acquired, or when a result only +of a suggested and merely imitated routine, can hardly count as +conclusive evidence, the problem would lose much of its interest, and +science would be ready even to accept the logical solution. Logically, +then, the translation is possible, and scientifically there is no real +evidence against its possibility. + +As to the translation being positively natural or necessary, as well as +possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that whatever is truly +possible must be also real; that is to say, certain of realization or +rather somehow and somewhere, in some manner and in some degree already +in expression. Even the possible can never have been made out of, or +sprung up out of, nothing. Moreover, the translation here spoken of, +wherein one developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual +than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can +require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different +elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as +factionally manifested, shall be [p.168] forever true to their origin. +The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on +the ground of the analogies of the various parts being only metaphorical +instead of literal, for already in the original differentiation that has +made person and faction, that has separated the parts, these have been +overcome. The very nature of the person is their overcoming. The unity +of experience must persist assertive and inviolable, whatever the +divisions of experience. The distinct vertebræ must always contain a +spinal cord that has a common origin with them. + +And it remains to be said that since the person is thus at once the +living integral exponent of the unity of experience and the member of +some class or faction, translation is his most characteristic activity. +In this translation, too, we see him a leader, or a party to real +leadership, by nature. In it lies his true genius. Indeed, this +translation is just that which makes the great leader or the great +genius, for through it the person is ever showing himself superior to +his class and training, and to the formal institutions that have brought +him up. Factional life, as we know, develops through imitation and +repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the +flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special +development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological +term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the +practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other +special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to +be distinguished in this way--the one imitative, the other inventive. +Witness [p.169] the familiar antitheses between the typical and the +vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the really pleasant in +morality, the legal and the sovereign in politics, the orthodox and the +spiritually alive in religion, technical skill and originality in +science, and so on. These antitheses are all very important to the +understanding of human experience, particularly of its history, but they +are frequently seriously misapplied. More than anything else they show +the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the +living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order +that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate +and appropriate its acquirements. + +There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy +of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or +nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as +something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. +The rôles, too, that belong to personality and society are as distinct +and as real, besides being as organic to each other, as in general are +whole and part. But the person, at once a corrector of partiality and a +leader, a distributor of special development, holds a conspicuous place +and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority +to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions +as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal +experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or +contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to +this defect. Personality must bridge all [p.170] the divisions of +experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must +be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation +of that spirit of truth, that principle of validity and power for +adequacy, which has already come to our notice more than once. +Factionally experience is relative, phenomenal, divided against itself; +factionally, too, it is at once formal and contradictory; but personally +it reaches beyond the forms and contradictions, and is directly in touch +with what is true and real. So the contrast between the personal and the +social, the vital and the formal, shows itself quite parallel to that +between the real and the phenomenal, the true and the paradoxical. + +A business man says to a friend: "Personally, as you know perfectly +well, I should prefer to do what you ask, but professionally I simply +cannot, for you know also that business is business." A preacher +declares: "Personally I should just like to speak out clearly and +without restraint, but my church will not let me." Personally the +soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, +professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The +father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than +you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life--all are +all things together, and restraints that separate man and man are +lacking; but factionally there is always restraint, and open conflict +and inner inconsistency are unavoidable. The person is thus the medium, +not of an abstract universality, but concretely, through his factional +training and his leadership, of the universal life. + +[p.171] And, finally, the life of the person is gifted with a great +faith, for it is in touch with an untethered reality; but, factionally, +life is a constant doubting, for it is constantly narrow and it is a +constant contending. So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as +inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this +conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say +confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells +the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very +defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the +spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as +social, is also real and true." + + +[1] This paragraph, and many of the paragraphs that follow it, except +for considerable revision and adaptation, were published some time ago. +See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in Society," in the +_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. II, +No. 13, 1906. + +[2] Chap. Iv., p. 72. + + + +[p.172] + +VIII + +AN EARLY MODERN DOUBTER. + + +I referred in an earlier chapter to the great Frenchman who boldly +declared that his doubting was all that he could be certain about, but +that this, being so very real, being indeed universal, left him a belief +in himself, although only in his always doubting self. Descartes' belief +in himself has interest for us, for while his thinking followed lines +somewhat different from our own, he seems to have reached nearly, if not +quite, the same very personal conclusion, namely, the right of the +doubter to say: "I am." + +Descartes was born in Touraine in 1596, and for the larger part of his +life he was at least nominally a resident in the Paris of Louis XIV, +Montaigne, and the earlier Jesuits. He was educated at a school of the +Jesuits in La Flêche, and in the course of his mature life he published +works of importance not merely in philosophy, but also in science and +mathematics. His _Meditations_ and _Search after Truth_ are easily first +among his contributions to philosophy. He died in 1650. + +Yet not exactly with the Descartes of positive history, but with +Descartes as a doubter, as perhaps the most notable progenitor of the +modern confession [p.173] and the modern use of doubt, are we now +directly concerned; for without the license of this broader view we +might lose a large part of the advantage of the centuries that lie +between Descartes' time and our own. He had many disciples, and these +disciples uncovered much in the Cartesian philosophy that Descartes +himself failed to see, or saw only imperfectly. He was not without +faults, too, some moral and some intellectual, if the two are separate, +and these faults we shall not consider, though the conscientious +historian should never play to the sentimentalist by disregarding them. +But with our present task we can afford to forget the faults; just as we +cannot afford to lose the interpretations and corrections of the +disciples. With interests as vital and personal as ours, we seek +something more than matter of fact. Our interest is very near to that of +the historical novel, but needless to say, this book is an essay in +philosophy, not a novel. Past men and past times can be really useful to +us, only if, belonging as we do not to the seventeenth but to the +twentieth century, we really use them. What we ourselves are able to +find in any period or in any human career is always truer or realer, +possibly in a sense it is also better history, than what lay on the +surface at the time or than what was seen, however profoundly, even by +contemporaries. So much better did Descartes and all really great men +build than they knew or even willed. + +Descartes came into European life at a crucial moment. The period of the +Renaissance, with its rediscovery of the old world and its stirring +vision of the new, had culminated in the Reformation, not [p.174] merely +in the religious reformation that set Protestant against Catholic, but +in the reformation that appeared in every department of man's life--in +art, literature, and science, in morals and in politics, as well as in +religion. Man asserted his independence of established authority in any +form. Man, not king, not pope, not even God, became the real centre of +the universe. Justification by his own faith was simply overflowing with +a meaning that knew no bounds in his experience. + +But the birth of Descartes was fifty years after the death of Luther, +and by the time he had reached his intellectual majority, as might well +be expected, the Reformation had changed from a spiritual +enthusiasm--whether among those who were its great leaders or among +those who, not less devoutly, were bent on summarily checking its +progress--into a practical, thoroughly worldly situation. The two +opposing parties, without exaggeration, seem to have settled down to +real business, and not less in the thought of one than in that of the +other the end justified any means. + +The society of Jesus was definitely organized and began its notable +career in 1640, and although its members, the Jesuits, have given to +history many wonderful examples of devotion and heroism, Jesuitry itself +is synonymous with the extreme materialism to which the Roman Church +resorted in its desperate defence against the Protestants. And on the +other side, men became not less sensuous and worldly, giving as good as +they got. They simply met, or opposed, like with like. Reading the +history of the time with [p.175] its controversies and jealousies and +intrigues and persecutions, one can only conclude that the honours were +about even. If Catholicism felt justified in her acts of sensuous +brutality, of almost hellish violence, which culminated in the massacre +of St. Bartholomew, Protestantism was made the specious, yet not less +welcome, excuse for worldliness, general materialism, and sensualism out +of the Church and in it. Any religious reform, or reform of any sort, +must always bring an unscrupulous lawlessness with it, and the great +Reformation was by no means an exception to this rule. Extreme +humanists, naturalists, atheists, sensationalists, social and physical +atomists, Machiavellists, sceptics and opportunists of all sorts, +swarmed in every capital of Europe, and especially in Paris.[1] + +But the extravagant, more or less unconventional things of any time are +often the best signs of its inner life, since in them we see a few men +boldly, if not prudently, stepping over the bounds of custom, and +sometimes even of decency, and giving expression to what is actively +present, though often suppressed or concealed, in the lives of all. Thus +contemporary with Descartes, and from one side or another expressing the +materialism of his day, there were at least three very significant +movements, all of them endorsed by parties, of course under different +names, from both of the contending churches, or from their outside +echoes or reflections, and all of them at least in some degree when not +in great degree beyond the bounds of common conventional respectability. +These [p.176] movements in one church or in the other, or in neither, as +the case might be, were, first, a scoffing scepticism; second, a +dogmatic mysticism; and third, a most visionary gnosticism. + +1. Vanini (1585-1619) in Italy, Montaigne (1533-1592) in France, and +Bacon (1560-1620) in England, among many others that might be named, +were more or less extravagantly, not mere doubters, but satirical, often +derisive, scoffing doubters of everything in human life. Conceit of +knowledge, whenever asserted, in church or state, in everyday +consciousness or in science, was declared idolatry and held up to +constant ridicule. Could man's wisdom at its best be anything more than +a blinding folly? + +2. And religion, the religion of a few, as if in acknowledged sympathy +with these sceptics, surrendered everything but God--God being more a +longing than an actual fact; a spirit than a positive thing or person. +Even within the Catholic Church the Oratory of Jesus, a society +energetically opposed for good and sufficient reasons by the Jesuits, +was organized in the interests of a purified, truly spiritual +Christianity; and among those who had broken with the Catholics appeared +new sects of many names, such as the "Friends of God," "Collegiants," +and the "Brotherhood of the Christian Life," but with one ideal, the +direct untrammelled worship of God. "God is," they proclaimed in so many +words; "and God, just God, is all. Church and creeds and rites and +priests are hindrances, not helps, to true religion." This attitude, +commentary as of course it was on the conditions of the day, had almost +more satire in it and more doubt than any of the words [p.177] of the +most active scoffers; it was so unconscious; so quietly and so piously +it picked up the crumbs that the scoffers left. Indeed, the sceptics and +their devout, pure-minded contemporaries, Pierre Charron (1541-1603) and +Jakob Boehme (1595-1624), both advocates of religious purity against +theology and sensuous ritual, must be said not to have engaged in +separate activities, but to have shared the labour of a single activity. +Scepticism and such mysticism are but two sides of the same shield. + +3. But with the scoffing scepticism and its complementary counterpart, +the dogmatic mysticism of religion, there was associated also a most +visionary gnosticism. Thus the science of mathematics was heralded as a +key to all the secrets of the universe. A few simple applications of +mathematics to physical phenomena had been successfully made by the +scientists--for example, by Galilei--and ere long certain men in the +world of the intellectual life went wild over the possibilities of +mathematics. Obliged, as soon they were, to abandon every other field of +knowledge--theology, politics, material science, tradition, and +convention--they needed but little encouragement to give themselves +heart and soul to this last resort. Their enthusiasm for mathematics +doubtless had a deeper source than this simple account of its rise would +suggest, for an intellectual atmosphere in which just such a purely +logical, abstract science would develop was the natural product of +medievalism; but Galilei's successes may be said to have precipitated +the movement, and in any case for many mathematics became, both in its +principles and in its method, an intellectual [p.178] cure-all, and in +consequence not only were remarkable advances made in the science +itself, but men went to the extreme of applying the methods and the +formulæ of mathematics in every conceivable direction. Religion, +morality, and politics, as well as natural science, were all subjected +to mathematical treatment. Among the surviving monuments to this +activity the _Ethics_, so called, of Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) is +certainly the most noteworthy; a work of five books on God, mind, +emotions, bondage, and freedom--each with its special quota of axioms, +propositions, corollaries, scholia, and the like, and the procedure of +the whole amazingly consistent with that of Euclid. Excuse, also, a +personal reminiscence. I can myself recall how in the enthusiasm of a +first course in geometry I formulated a Euclidean proof of the +proposition: Knowledge is power. I, too, had my axioms, my special +demonstrations, my corollaries, and my final Q.E.D.'s. But any +present-day resort to mathematics or its methods is only a shadow, or an +echo, of the movement of the seventeenth century. At that time it was a +movement of last resort and all the passion of a deceived intellect, of +a mind given over to the most far-reaching doubts, and a disappointed +faith, once more acquiring hope, was present in it. The truths and +methods of mathematics--what but veracity incarnate, the very mind of +God made manifest to mankind! + +Nor, furthermore, does it take much reflection to appreciate that +mathematics was after all a very appropriate form for credible knowledge +to take in a time of scepticism and of religion turning to purism. +[p.179] Trustworthy knowledge of actual things--that is to say, real +concrete knowledge--being held impossible, there was nothing left but +knowledge of the strictly formal relations of things. Formal principles, +just like those of mathematics, are altogether innocent of the confusion +in actual things and persons, in particular events and current issues; +and accordingly in the seventeenth century, just by reason of this +innocence, they were peculiarly timely. Doubt seemed quite unable to +touch them; controversy was turned to agreement before them; and even a +truth-loving God, so to speak, could appeal to them in support of his +right to rule the minds and the lives of men. You and I might question +the reality of the things we count or the justice of the ratio between +our wealth and the wealth of certain others in the world, but we could +not easily question that two and two are four, or in matters of wealth +that one thousand and two thousand dollars are in the same ratio as two +million and four million. Such knowledge as this may not settle any +actual quarrels that we have, for example, over the number of acres we +own or the taxes we pay or the prices charged by our butchers or +grocers; but what of that? The quarrels are idle any way, and our +mathematical wisdom, being exact from the start and self-evident, is a +basis of perfect agreement between man and man and men and God. + +In short, mathematics is exact and universally credible just because it +is so empty and so logically formal, being always "in the abstract," in +that ideal, wholly blessed region, where there is no disputing, where +all men readily admit anything that can be [p.180] suggested; and its +being exact for this cause made it the only credible knowledge for +Descartes' time, a time at once of scepticism and mysticism. With +Vanini, then, and Charron, who were separately engaged, as was remarked, +in a single activity, we may associate the mathematicians of the day, +among whom none were more distinguished than Descartes himself and the +members of the Cartesian school. To Descartes we are largely indebted +for the Analytic Geometry, and Pascal did important work in the Theory +of Equations. + +In rough outline we now have the times of Descartes before us, and with +deepened meaning I may say again that Descartes came into European life +at a crucial moment. Materialism was rife, not merely theoretically +among a few scientists and philosophers, nor practically in some +isolated class of dissipated human beings, but really and more or less +openly everywhere in the whole life and feeling of society. Even the +devout played into the hands of the worldly by their very purism. And an +accompanying doubt, cropping out significantly, now in positive +irreverence, now in mysticism, now in intellectual formalism, appears to +have thoroughly possessed the minds of men. + +There was, too, in Descartes' day a growing sensitiveness to the +paradoxes of man's experience which have occupied so much of our +attention. Nothing was what it seemed. One writer boldly declared--not +much later--that France, nay, the whole world, could not be happy until +all should turn atheists. The boast of Louis XIV, "I am the State," +whether literally made or not, was hardly less startling. The sensualism +of [p.181] the Catholic Church or the Pharisaism of the Protestant was +flagrantly paradoxical, and was keenly felt to be so on all sides. Men +turned doubters perforce, and in the fact that with their scepticism +rose also a movement at once of individualism and cosmopolitanism, we +cannot fail to see how the course of history illustrates the conclusions +of a previous chapter. The time was one in which through its humanism, +or its cosmopolitan individualism, civilization was to reap the harvest +from the medieval organization of society. + +Descartes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his training at a school +of the Jesuits, seems to have caught the spirit, the real meaning of his +time, getting behind the mere letter of their instruction and of their +point of view. Only mathematics gave him any satisfaction, and he left +the La Flêche school in the first place conscious that he had learned +little or nothing, in the second place curious about the possibility of +men ever knowing anything, and in the third place evidently through the +influence of mathematics strongly prejudiced in favour of introspection, +or of thought conducted independently of things, as the only possible +way to certainty. This education, then, and its outcome, true as it was +to the life of the day, fitted Descartes for his life work, which was +nothing more or less than the erection of a system of philosophy on the +basis of a thorough-going confession of doubt. + +Descartes entered upon his great task by taking his day at its word. St. +Paul, addressing the Athenians, reminding them of one of their own +temples, and quoting their own poet Aratus, was not more tactful. +[p.182] Thus, as if speaking directly to the sceptics about him, +Descartes doubted everything, because he found, not only in his own +consciousness, become too reflective for implicit belief, but also in +the wide experience of his race, that everything was dubitable. He +doubted church and state, science and society; and he went even farther +than this. Also he boldly doubted mathematics, so long his own support +and the reliance of many others in his time. He did not know surely that +there might not be an evil spirit in the universe, a spirit of +deception, which even in mathematics was obscuring the mind's vision, +making it see things not as they are, but as they are not. Deception was +real enough and obvious enough in life at large to make such a suspicion +as this at least plausible. Moreover, the notion of an agent of evil in +the world had been a commonplace for centuries. It was just a part of +that medieval training. So although nothing could be said with certainty +either way, the plausible mischance had to be faced; mathematics went +the way of all doubtful knowledge, and man was left with literally +nothing but his doubt, his universal doubt. "_Dubito_," said Descartes; +"to doubt is my inmost nature"; and speaking so he at once marked the +first step in his reasoning, so important then and now, and in the +simplicity and directness of real genius reported a great, deep fact of +his own experience and of that of his time. + +But universal doubt is a _real_ experience, being real just because +universal. Nothing ever is real that is not universal. What is always +and everywhere is just the mark of something that really is substantial. +A real [p.183] experience, however, real because universal, be it of +doubt or of anything else, means a real self, so that in the always +doubting self Descartes found reality, or a real self; and this always +doubting self he further characterized as a thinking self. In other +words, the real thinker was for him the universal doubter, and, +contrariwise, the universal doubter was real, a real thinker, a real +self. Before Descartes' time, to speak generally, men had identified +reality with fixed condition or possession, with specific knowledge or +established power or definite prerogative, divine or human, and truth +was an object of faith rather than thought, say an unchanging programme +for life rather than a pure principle--there is such a wide difference +between a principle and a programme! But Descartes, as we have seen, +identified reality with loss or privation, with such an empty-handed +thing as doubt; he recognized no self but the thinker, and no thinker +but the doubter. We always feel the pathos of those who, suffering +constant privation, find and often declare that life is very real, and +yet the sense of reality that comes in this way--namely, in the way of a +privation that denies reality all residence in positive experience--is +especially strong, and the pathos we feel is certainly not all. +Something else hard to name appeals to us, too, and changes the pathos +into a nobler because a more positive feeling--good will, perhaps, or +honour--since the persistent holding to reality commands a deep respect. +Yet, putting this more positive feeling apart, only the pathos of +Descartes' real self, real because a thinker and thinker because a +universal doubter, can occupy us now. Enough if we see that [p.184] the +reality was as indubitable as the universal doubt, the self always being +real up to the reality of its experience, and that the pathos is not +more for him than for the sceptics and mystics and mathematicians of his +time. But, again, in the Latin words, burdened, as so often the Latin +has been, with the experience of all Christendom: _Dubito, cogito; ergo +sum_. I doubt, I think; I as doubter and thinker am. + +That "I am" seems a sort of epitome of the humanism, not to say of the +pathos of the humanism of the time. Man had lost everything but his own +self, his lacking, longing, always seeking self. Montaigne put the +situation plainly when he said in so many words, that portrayal of self +was the beginning and the end alike of physics, the science of outer +reality, and metaphysics the science of all reality. Man had been left +with his mere self, robbed of beliefs and traditions, and abandoned by +everything but his doubts and the empty companionship which these +afforded, but to that, an unshaped thing with an undefined activity, +real only for what it did not have, he clung tenaciously and often +enthusiastically. And Descartes spoke for him: _Knowing that I have +nothing, I am_. + +But in this self that was real only because always lacking, always +doubting, Descartes found a priceless treasure. Every one is familiar +with the principle of Christian theology, that the conviction of sin is +a real promise because the actual beginning of salvation, and every one +has some appreciation of this principle. It is a principle, too, that no +priest ever made or could ever unmake, belonging as it does to the very +nature of conscious creatures. In like manner, [p.185] then, Descartes +recognized in the consciousness of doubt, or say of intellectual error, +the real promise, because the actual beginning or even the very presence +of veracity in knowledge. The doubter, conscious of error as he must be, +was never without and never by any possibility could be without a sense +for truth, an idea of veracity. Doubting all things he must yet believe +in truth. Plato said centuries before that mere opinion, however false, +was nevertheless always in love with true knowledge, and this Platonic +love Descartes found in the doubter's conviction of error. In Plato's +spirit Descartes insisted that doubt was a constant yearning for truth, +a persistent faith in it. Doubt was informed with truth, with the idea +of truth, very much as one has the "idea" of a thing that one cannot +master. Man might be a doubter of all things, then, but in spite of his +doubt he must believe in the reality of things, not exactly in the +individual reality of each and every thing, but in reality in and among +all things. For him, doubting and self-conscious, there must dwell in +the world a realizing nature or power, an agent of perfect veracity, +checking any experience from being altogether deceptive. And, for the +present, to narrow our attention to a single phase of the doubter's +natural idea of veracity, as Descartes reasoned about it, truth and +everything that goes with truth, perfection and absoluteness in all its +phases, could not be solely human if to doubt was human. They must, in +consequence, be divine. So God, a spirit of truth and righteousness, was +real, as real as the real self of always doubting but ever truth-loving +man. _Dubito, cogito; ergo sum: etiam_ [p.186] _Deus est. I doubt, I +think; as thinker and doubter I am: and what is more, God, veracity +incarnate, is also_. + +And here begins or began a great controversy, nor can the issues of it +be said to have been wholly settled even to-day. What did Descartes +understand when in this way he proved to himself the existence of God? +Was only the God he seemed to have lost once more restored to him, and +restored intact? Did he merely justify, and so return to its old place +of authority, the traditional theology of his day? Was his doubt, as +some would view it, not his own genuine experience, but simply the +conceit and pretence of method? These questions need an answer, for +their answer affects not only Descartes' regained religion, but also his +regained real world in general. So many have been disposed almost to +laugh outright at the simple-minded Descartes for his doubting +everything from matter and mind to God, only in the end to get +everything back. They have seen him as one chasing the verities out by +one door only to welcome them with outstretched arms as they run in at +another that had been left open for their return; and this view of him +has been strengthened by the fact that conservatives in religion the +world over have made Descartes their victim by appealing to his proof, +borrowing for themselves his philosopher's robes, as if these could be +easily assumed and as easily put off. But as to the justice of such a +view there is little if any good evidence. Matter-of-fact history is not +our first concern here, as was said; yet, whatever may or may not have +been uppermost in Descartes' mind, the doubt of his day was both general +and very [p.187] genuine, and the final worth and validity of his +thinking lies wholly in that, not in his or any one's mere logical +gymnastic or verbal strategy. Moreover, for reasons which hardly need to +be given, the strong probability is that, notwithstanding his well-known +lack of courage in openly living up to or even thinking up to all the +consequences of his reasoning, he did feel in his philosophy not a mere +recovery of what had seemed lost, nor a cunning apology for the old, but +the birth of a new point of view; and, if this possibility should be +verified, among other things the conservatives, who have been borrowing +so much support, have been little if any better than parasites. Still, +even the probabilities in the case are relatively insignificant to us, +since the people of the time and of later times, and we ourselves from +the scepticism and mysticism of the seventeenth century, have learned to +think of God with a fulness of meaning never attained before, as--what +shall I say?--not a definite truth, but the living spirit of truth; not +a passive perfection, but a perfect activity; and not even a divine +person, in the sense of one more separate being of consciousness and +will to inhabit the universe, but the moving and conserving power of all +personality--the very active principle of reality present in the +vicissitudes and conflicts of our existence. And, such being the outcome +of history, we have to take it as really the meaning of the great +Frenchman's formulæ. We put aside the controversy, then, with the simple +reflection that results in history or anywhere else are at least very +hard indeed to conceive if they are anything more or less than realized +motives [p.188] perhaps the realized motives of a man or men building +somewhat beyond their clearest knowledge. Whatever has come about must +always be what more or less clearly men have been feeling after. + +The God whom Descartes really proves to his time, and still more +positively to us, must surely be the God not of a satisfied +unquestioning believer, but of the universal doubter who loves truth and +whose doubting and loving make him the always curious thinker; a God +without visibly or even quasi-visibly fixed or specific character of any +sort, since with his nature set to such a character, tethered like a +beast to a stake or like the sun bound to an orbit, he would not be and +could not be divine enough--which is to say, veracious or perfect +enough--for a universal doubter's curiosity; a God, then, who has the +divine character of true infinity, who is, too, a spirit in fact as well +as in word. Infinity certainly cannot belong to a being that is apart; +such a being would at once belie his nature; and "spirits," divine or +human, must not be supposed to be, like Elijah, the merely translated +beings of this visible and tangible world, for they can belong only to +the invisible and the intangible, which is in this world and of it, in +its knowledge, in its love and strife, in its changes of all kinds, in +its work and in its suffering. Yes, a truly living God, living here and +now, is the God of Descartes' proof; the God of just that world of +movement and conflict, of poise and reality, to which the differences +and above all the contradictions of experience, as examined by us in +preceding chapters, have already borne witness. Let us recall how we +were able to say that the very conflicts of human [p.189] experience +were the wisdom of God. And if this all amounts to saying, as apparently +it does, that only Descartes' universal doubter, who loves truth too +much ever to claim its final possession, can believe in a real God, then +we have reached something that will surely repay the most careful +reflection. + +Some have criticized Descartes for what they regard as a fallacy in his +reasoning. He jumped, they claim, without any real warrant, from the +idea of a thing as his premise to the actual existence of the thing as +his conclusion, from the idea of veracity, so necessary in the +consciousness of the doubter, to the substantial existence of a +perfectly veracious being, as if, to use their time-worn analogy, the +idea even of the very smallest sum of money would make the money itself +materialize in somebody's pocket. But, whether or not Descartes fully +understood his own thought, this criticism is very superficial, and it +gets only a specious cogency from the same matter-of-fact history that +we have already pushed aside. No idea, however clear, however necessary +even to the consciousness of a doubter, of perfect truth could ever +conjure into existence the unworldly, independently existing, +spiritually and intellectually isolated God of the Middle Ages; and for +that matter one might say, I think quite pertinently, that money not in +the pocket is something less than real money, or--which comes to the +same end--that the idea of money, if the pocket be indeed empty, must +imply some sense of the emptiness as well as of the money; and with such +an implication the idea taken for its full meaning is no such conjurer +as Descartes' critics have chosen to imagine it. After [p.190] all the +"mere" ideas, or the "mere" things in general, that appear in +controversies, are only ingenious ways of packing the jury. An adequate +idea--that is to say, an idea taken just for its full meaning, for what +it denies as well as for what it affirms, for the complete universe of +its discourse--does and must answer to existence; yes, and to +substantial existence too. So, again, the God that Descartes by the +doubter's idea of veracity proved to his time and to us, if not also as +clearly to himself, can have been no mere substantial existence wholly +outside the doubter's life and consciousness. In such case the universal +doubting would indeed have been only the insincere verbal strategy of a +conservative, the conceit of purely artful method, and the jump objected +to would have been quite necessary. But Descartes' God answered to just +the idea of truth which a universal doubter could honestly entertain; to +truth realized only in and through doubt; a God, living in and with the +seeking, struggling consciousness of the doubter. + +Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, +whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is +in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always +something else, something fuller and realer, something including and +using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"--for +such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and +hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him; +there can be no outer nature, but an including and developing nature, +and no transcendent God, but an indwelling, ever uplifting, [p.191] +forward-bearing God. Exactly such a being was Descartes' real self, the +self of his I _am_--"I as thinker and doubter am"--and this self had +need neither of struggling with nature nor of wrestling with God in +order to get one or the other on its side, for in its doubt, in its +constant confession of incompleteness, even--though this is a flagrant +paradox--of its own reality as in a sense always outside or beyond +itself, it had won the supreme victory at the start. Negatives are +always such very sweeping, comprehensive things; and to be, so to speak, +one's own negative, to be real and lacking, is somehow to include all +things within one's own life and interest. If I may apply an ordinary +phrase in an extraordinary way, to be always "beside oneself," always +doubting, always wanting, always striving, or to be, in the words of +earlier pages, ever and always divided against oneself, is to have +enlisted man and nature and God for ever in one's service. + +There is truly such a difference between programme and principle 1 It is +the difference between medievalism and modernism, between supposed +finality and recognized and asserted movement, between supernatural +authority and the authority of natural growth. Enthrone a programme, and +it is arbitrary and exclusive; it claims, as it must, the sanction of +another world; it hopelessly divides human nature as personally embodied +or as socially organized; it makes life and its sphere irrational and so +dependent on a blind faith: but a principle, enthroned, draws all things +into itself, using to its own constant realization even the changes and +differences of life, making faith [p.192] and reason lie down together, +and transfiguring both a brutal nature and an inhuman God by revealing +them as not indeed formally but vitally rational, and not indeed +mortally yet humanly alive. In Descartes' proof of God we see the birth +of modernism; the programme deposed; the principle set in the place of +authority. + +Finally, then, Descartes did not simply restore what had been lost. +Though we have been regarding only the religious aspect of his +philosophy, we can see in general that, just as not the old God, but +nevertheless God, remained to the doubter's life, so also not the old +verities at large, yet nevertheless the verities, or not the old +reality, yet nevertheless reality, remained also. Man, after all his +doubting, even because of it all, was enabled to return to the world of +all those "isms," the all-pervading materialism, the scoffing +scepticism, the dogmatic mysticism, and the intellectual formalism, with +a new spirit, a spirit of real confidence, a spirit of hope, a spirit of +life, that just by reason of its wants and conflicts believes itself not +only very real but also fully worth while. + +And travellers to-day visiting the streets of Paris or going anywhere +the doubting and despairing world over, would do well to imagine +Descartes, as the modern doubter, travelling and thinking with them. + + +[1] See an article by H.C. Lea in the _American Historical Review_, +January, 1904, "Ethical Values in History," especially p. 238 seq. + + + +[p.193] + +IX. + +THE DOUBTER'S WORLD. + + +The doubter's world is a world in which, as we journey, we shall +discover four features that are especially noteworthy and that accord +fully with the principles of Descartes as well as with the findings of +our own confession of doubt. Thus, in the order, or suppose I say in the +itinerary, here to be followed: (1) Reality, without finality, in all +things; (2) perfect sympathy between the spiritual and the material; (3) +genuine individuality; and (4) for whatever is indeed real, immortality. + + +I. REALITY, WITHOUT FINALITY, IN ALL THINGS. + +Doubt is only a particular state, or phase, of consciousness, and it is +worth while to observe that any state of consciousness whatsoever, any +attitude of mind, must assume or postulate something real. Indeed, this +assumption of reality is so positive that no consciousness is ever +without some will to believe, while no will to believe is ever without +some real object believed in. Can there be smoke without some fire, or a +seeming without some being? Were either of these things possible, then +by the same token there could also be a willing without some doing or a +wanting without some having. To be conscious of something, [p.194] then, +means not only that something is assumed and, if assumed, willed to be, +but also that something really and truly is. Of course, the +consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have +more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or +willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. +In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and +possesses, a real world; possibly not just the world formally presented +to it, but nevertheless reality, and reality, too, in which somehow the +presented world has a place and part. + +This may or may not be axiomatic, but at the very least it is very near +to being axiomatic, and, near or far, it quite agrees with the +conclusions to which, although along somewhat more specific lines, our +own thinking and Descartes' thinking have been constantly pointing. As +Descartes might have said, there is no consciousness without a +thoroughly warranted "I am," and no "I am" without an also thoroughly +warranted "The world of my consciousness is and is objectively real." +But in implications about reality the doubter's consciousness differs +from the believer's consciousness; not by any mere denial, for +unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the +doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar assumption as to what +the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken +as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. Thus, for +the distinct believer--that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic +believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, +[p.195] tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of +doctrine and to some specific manner of life--reality is always tethered +to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to +suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. For our +doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience +can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any +possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, +I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. Indeed, it could not be +either of these without being the other. For him nothing is _the_ +reality, just because all things must belong to reality. For him, again, +the world's reality is nowhere, just because everywhere; in no defined +thing fixedly and completely, just because in all things--in them not +merely distributively, it is true, but as they work together; and +invisible and intangible, indeed generally unknowable, just because any +consciousness is necessarily limited to the definite and inadequate +mediums, or forms, of positive knowledge. + +So the doubter has a real world, but his own real world. Moreover, in +the great freedom of its reality we see how all things taken +individually or distributively, must be, as the word is used, only +"relative"; and in the perfect inclusiveness, how nothing, however +"relative," can ever be unreal. Relativism and scepticism have been +perenially associated, but relativism is not a nihilistic, but a deeply +realistic philosophy; it is just the sceptic's natural realism. All +things are "relative," but only because reality is at once free from +anything, and yet inclusive of all things. What is relative is [p.196] +thus not flatly unreal, as is often supposed, but significantly both +real and unreal or neither real--not real to itself alone--nor +unreal--not without its part and place in whatever is real. The sceptic, +though always a relativist, is thus also a most profound realist, and +the nature of his realism must help us greatly to our view of the +doubter's world. + +Moreover, Descartes and his followers were also nativists or +intuitionists, and, at least for the freer interpretation here +permitted, their nativism was of a peculiar order, and it involved, +accordingly, a world which was real in a peculiar way. Usually nativism +has stood for the assertion of certain inborn and so necessarily valid +and unchangeable ideas or characters or powers; as when men contend that +particular ideas of God are unassailable because immediately intuited as +a part of man's very being, or again when men declare a particular +genius to be born, not made, or insist that a voice of conscience born, +not bred, in them, tells them explicitly to do and even to make others +do this or that specific thing, to live and make others live in this or +that specific way, to accept and make others accept this or that +specific programme of politics, morals, or religion. Furthermore, +nativism of this prevalent type not only has claimed final validity for +what is thus inborn--or given independently of the changing conditions +of experience--but also has commonly punctuated this claim by viewing +the inborn, or the intuited--for example, the dictates of conscience--as +direct, immediate, unequivocal signs and mandates of God himself. Genius +has been not human, but divine. The intuition at large has [p.197] +passed for nothing more or less than a supernatural revelation. But such +an understanding of the innate, though serviceable beyond measure to the +"specifically dogmatic believer," and though implying too, as of course +it should, the natural, appropriate world of such a believer, does not +agree with the principles of Descartes. + +Such an understanding of the innate can imply only a world not merely of +definite, substantial reality, but also of definite, substantial +unreality. How real to some people, how definite and substantial the +"unreal" is; how brutally fixed and yet how alien to what they are given +to finding real. They are nativists of the conventional type, and for +them the negatives of all things are as fixed and as really or as +substantially not this or that as the positives to which what is innate +for them bears its special witness. Their world, in short, is a world of +tethered error as well as tethered truth, of hopeless, unmixed evil as +well as a wholly untainted, unassailable--and why not say also +hopeless?--virtue, of absolute and effective lawlessness as well as an +unswerving law, of a free and omnipotent devil as well as a free and +omnipotent God; for, in simplest language, the rule is a very poor one +that does not work both ways. A world, however, which is so constituted, +calls emphatically for revision of the view that imparts its character +to it. Where the unreal is as real as the real, the evil as effective as +the good, the false as conclusive as the true, there is certainly need +of some second thinking. As some good Irish philosopher might put the +case, if just this is wholly good or true or real, and just that is +wholly [p.198] evil or false or unreal, then _the_ good or _the_ true or +_the_ real cannot be exclusively just this, _the_ evil or _the_ false or +_the_ unreal cannot be exclusively just that, and _the_ innate, +responsible for a world so made, cannot be just in terms of certain +fixed ideas or characters or powers. When, forsooth, has the manifest +existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of +political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not +shaken man's conceits about what is and what is right? The very +conceits--and this the more as they are definite and assertive--help to +make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in +making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly +manifested, cannot fail to assail and unsettle the conceits. + +According to the Cartesian nativism, on the other hand, particularly as +it was developed by such men as Malebranche and Spinoza, the innate, +which is always at once the final appeal of man's conceits and the +conclusive witness to what is absolutely real, was indeed one with the +divine or supernatural, but it was perhaps just by reason of its truly +divine or supernatural character and origin untethered. How could the +universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific +programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any +quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the +purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the +sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its +importance. The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, +and what is more he cannot be born without, a real [p.199] interest and +constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no +special experience can ever compass the length and the breadth, the +depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native +love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as +inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt; but the very +doubting in him forever saves both the truth and the righteousness from +being destroyed by satisfaction or crucified by any final embodiment. He +loves and he trusts with all his heart, and he lives in a world that +forever serves the truth and the righteousness of his love and faith. + +So, taken at least for what he promised, or for what he said between the +lines, Descartes was a nativist without the nativist's disastrous +bondage to form and creed, to fixed character and specific programme. He +was a nativist, but for him the innate lacked its self-destructive +definiteness; it was just a spirit or principle, or what I have also +called a life or power, ever present not in some, but in all experience, +and so at once sanctioning all things, and, because able to find +perfection in none alone, each single thing being relative, sanctioning +also a constant conflict between things as good or true or real, and +things as bad or false or unreal. Whatever is relative is necessarily, +so to speak, both-sided or divided against itself. The relativity is +such conflict. Before the judgment-seat of the innate, in short, all +things, being relative, must be parties to conflict both individually +and collectively, nor is their conflict anything but an old story to us. +All the paradoxes of experience have been evidences of it. The conflict +apart for the present, however, the meaning [p.200] of Descartes' +nativism is just this: truth in all experience, reality in all things, +and reality, or truth, a principle, not a programme. Just this, too, +discloses to us the nature of the doubter's real world. + +In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of God which the +universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and +cherish. We saw how in the proof of God Descartes, deposing the +programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in +consequence God became identified with all that was human, with all the +seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the +suffering, of man's life. God's nature just drew all things into itself; +the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of +experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, +or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world +as well as a God; and the doubter's metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds +from this simple creed: _Reality in all things_. So runs the creed's +supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally +familiar to us: _Reality without form or residence_--real as a spirit, +not a programme, and: _Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet +all things working together for what is real_. With this creed clearly +in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that +possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before. + +We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so +inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all +things must be "relative"--this we saw before, but have we ever quite +understood [p.201] stood the meaning of relativity?--and must be +relatively _at once real and unreal_. Perhaps I am still adding little, +if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and +emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually +are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus +relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being +also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the +relative _ipso facto_ puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And +so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent +conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a +genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but +instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, +that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true +and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only +employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly +interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines: + + All service ranks the same with God-- + Whose puppets, best and worst, + Are we; there is no last or first. + +All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could +not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things. +All men serving God are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, +could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and +unceasing. + +So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter--and +what a world it is! No [p.202] finality, because so much reality. +Conflict, forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity, +that is to say finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for +the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual +infinity. + +And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets +new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much +fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and +competition. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own +peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other. We cannot, +however, enlarge now upon this point. Another consequence of the +peculiar realism of the sceptic has a more pressing interest. + +Is our universal doubter naturally and honestly an evolutionist or a +creationalist? Of course, he may be neither, or he may be one or the +other with a meaning different from that usually recognized. Terms like +these are so very hard to control. Conceivably the doubter, a very +versatile character always, might even be both evolutionist and +creationalist. But, as the terms are commonly used, he must be said at +least to have his face towards an evolutional and away from a creational +view. The difference, again, is seen in that between principle and +programme. An evolutional world is the working out of a principle; a +created world, of a programme--the fixed design of some specified being. +True, one may speak with much significance of persistent, continuous +creation, of a creation active at all times and in all things, and it is +to the point that the Cartesians made much of a doctrine that was very +near to such a notion; but a truly continuous creation [p.203] could be +only an orthodox substitute, or disguise, for evolution. A truly +continuous creation could be bound by no programme; by definition it +could have neither date in time nor location in space. And, what is of +even greater moment, a continuous creator, ever present and ever active, +could never be more or less than the persistent reality of the world +itself. How could he be aloof or different? So have we come, once more, +to the immanence of God as a necessary idea of the sceptic. + +The doubter's world, then, is the scene, as realistic as you will and +perhaps we may say, too, without unwarranted enthusiasm, as bright +beneath the morning sun, of the ever present, ever active life of God +or--with the same meaning--of an evolution which we may call God or +nature as we please. From this thought, too, if only we remember that +nothing is unreal and no experience is without some contact with +reality, there is but a step to the idea that God and man are actively +parties to one and the same life. To repeat from above, the conflicts of +human life are the perfection, the perfect living of God. God is, nay, +God's life is, not what some, but what all men do, and the doubter's +world is just the world, the world of things always relative, the world +of constant conflict, in which alone this can be true. + + +II. THE PERFECT SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL. + +But we pass to the second feature of this world in which we are +journeying, namely, to the sympathy of the spiritual and the physical. + +[p.204] As a matter of course the sceptic, by his peculiar attitude of +mind, must imply something with reference to the relation of the two +worlds, or the worlds commonly supposed to be two, the spiritual and the +material, and because for him the reality cannot be exclusively one +definite thing or any number, small or large, of definite things, all of +them independent and exclusive, he must imply in the world of things, be +these two or as many as you please, that they always work together for +whatever is real. Such an implication at first hearing may or may not +appear to be a pregnant one, but at least it suggests that in some +genuine way there must be sympathy between the two things, the two +worlds--spirit and matter, mind and body. These two must work together +for whatever is real. + +But by this necessary sympathy between the spiritual and the material is +not meant a mere parallelism so called. Thinkers, present and past, have +tried to be satisfied with such a meaning. To be quite real, however, +sympathy must be substantial even to the point of unity, not formal. +Some friends, and even some married people, are parallel, life matching +life at each and every point, but not positively and vitally +sympathetic. Still, in parallelism, the very name for which is fairly +indicative of its import, there is a convenient approach to the meaning +here intended. Moreover, our Cartesian philosophers were much given to a +theory of parallelism in their views of the relation of the two spheres +of mind and matter; their specific doctrine of continuous creation, +already referred to, was parallelistic; and they found the human mind +and [p.205] the human body, though distinctly two, still "parallel." +Then, too, in more recent times, parallelism has been in evidence, +figuring conspicuously at least as a working standpoint in the +psychological laboratory, and figuring also, I venture to add, as an +important assumption in philanthropic work. Accordingly, although the +term itself does convey a good deal of its meaning, I shall try, in +words as simple as possible, to show exactly what the theory of +parallelism is. This done, we shall be able to see, or think through +parallelism to sympathy of a more genuine and a more vital sort. + +As was said, the doctrine of continuous creation, holding as it does +that the mental and spiritual life of God and the constant changes in +the natural world, the world said to be of his creation, are always in +accord, God in his relation to the world being, so to speak, always up +to date and having his attention on every place and part, is distinctly +a parallelistic doctrine; but, quite apart from any theological +reference, parallelism asserts that all states, or events, in the two +spheres of body and mind, of spirit and matter, are (1) equally real and +substantial, and (2) perfectly harmonious and consistent, in just the +sense that always in connection with any condition or change in one +realm there is an accompanying condition or change in the other, +although (3) between the two there exists and can exist no causal +connection whatever. Obviously to make either, whether by what is known +as causation or in any other way, the producing and wholly determining +condition of the other, or of anything in the other, would be at once to +unsettle the equivalence or balance of their reality, and _equally real_ +[p.206] _they must be_. Thus, in more detail, mind is denied any +independent part in the production or determination of anything in the +material realm, and matter is in no way the source of what transpires in +mind. Each is, so far as the other is concerned, quite its own master. +Each is absolutely without any arbitrary influence, any influence not +natural or sympathetic or co-operative, upon the other. So to speak, +neither imposes on the other a "must" that is not at the same time +already the other's "would." In other words, any state in one is always +the occasion, but, so far as an independent causation goes, the wholly +passive occasion of something quite pertinent occurring in the other. Is +there an idea, a state of consciousness; then, corresponding, there is +some real thing, some physical object adequate to the idea. Is there an +act of will; then, corresponding to it, some movement in the material +world. Were the relation different from this, were mind and matter ever +independent causes, not merely coincidents or perhaps co-operative +causes, of each other, then, as is worth adding, besides the disturbance +of the equivalence of reality, already referred to, there would be +implied a fixity of plan, or manner of action, and a definiteness of +possessed power in the nature of the supposed causes, and these +implications would also give offence. + +Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation--on some +plan--of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more +sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, +independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever +localized or with an exclusive residence. [p.207] In very much the same +way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression +contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an +exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute +monarchy or of an absolute institution, whether church or state. +Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain +conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily +involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and +value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable +conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of +the world must always be only one among other active things, each also +with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, +if not actually through their differences working together and +harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, +lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far +from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner +meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting. + +To give a single illustration, though this may be quite superfluous, +parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his +shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, +comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of +the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed +task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the +other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any +independent _ab extra_ causation, but [p.208] nevertheless at every +thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the +environment's mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within +itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in +perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so +practical? The credit here has usually been given to a _tertium quid_, +to God, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. God is the Great +Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met--how about that? +Are the workman's mind and his environment each at once acting and acted +upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the +mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some +being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as +was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot +be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a +long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its +assertion of the parallelism and in its view of God as mediator rather +than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have +seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the +fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not +openly assert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for +example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of +what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides +making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door +to recognition of such a view. + +In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as [p.209] I find myself +able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal +reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly +correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, +rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism +still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also +a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism--at +least the dualism of the medieval type--already in a shroud. Even +dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a +decent burial. With the passing of dualism, however, the sympathy +becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot +be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain +cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with +unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation. +Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism +metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical. + +Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it +is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in +human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a +somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of +question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant +and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the +beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on +historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, +too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily [p.210] +detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material +conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its +service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies +in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the +expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its +relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or +trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself +should be indeterminate--_always a tertium quid_--and, in the second +place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, +should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, +atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of assumed +unity or co-operation among all the elements--as, for example, by +Leibnitz's doctrine of pre-established harmony. + +But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of +parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the +doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new +things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and +matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no +longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical +world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete +correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be +changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is +not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more +vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is +difficult. Still, I submit that the [p.211] effect of correspondence, +whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in +the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and +teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with +the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to +something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each +other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, +self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, +to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, +and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if +this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world +mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, +not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or +mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, +being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world +man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, +that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose. + +As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved +from all danger of any _arbitrary_ interference from the physical world, +has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the +positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being +quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, +the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of +reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be +exemplified in the [p.212] natural world, or--as Hegel said, giving more +direct expression to the same idea--the real is rational and the +rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the +real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even +of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our +present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls +for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; +and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between +him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half +done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well +thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and +the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already +ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, +already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental +and the physical world.[1] + +Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker +in the doubter's world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to +develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions +which he reaches will be exemplified in his [p.213] world and so to be +able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious +misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is +no single individual developing some particular point of view, although +even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought. +Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader +than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the +life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious +life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, +articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own +peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and +mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and +broader than just what he sees, or--amounting really to the same +thing--only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual +accommodation with that of others. In the doubter's world the thought +that is at once free and fully applicable is social--just as we know +doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly +free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, +distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, +_though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring_, +but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, +is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,[2] and +in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, +when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, +makes up for its consequent [p.214] relativity and subjectivity by inner +paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by +open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and assumes +accordingly only the value of a means to an end. + +Much has been said in earlier chapters[3] of the paradoxical nature of +human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a +contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were +recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first +sight seeming to blast man's ordinary experience, and his science also, +these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience +movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the +individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon +they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were +witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity +moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free +thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is +such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of +veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the +single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but +the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing +beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only +more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all +individuals, these views always working together for what is true and +real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior +to [p.215] anything that is either merely individual or merely social. +The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows +or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, +consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the +practical experience of what is real. + +With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely +applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say +that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all +knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the +final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its +character as a general attitude or method. It is not strictly a science, +but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any +specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure +mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully +applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no +promise of future changes? But whatever has a history--can this be quite +"pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned +to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and +revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular +formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but +altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is +said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the +fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but +in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum +never is a point. The perfectly homogeneous lever, so [p.216] necessary +to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can +never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of +the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric +disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of +absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, +which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest +accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most +constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics +be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the +very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as +forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism. +Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, +Descartes, was almost the inventor of the Analytic Geometry, and that +this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly +to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a +doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the +application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to +say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So +Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying +doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his God or his +material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and +theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to +return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free +thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least +sometimes so called, as [p.217] a method or attitude exacting clearest +possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very +principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must +always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics--so much more truly +than any other discipline--is superior to anything that is either merely +individual or abstractly social. + +So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how +thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some +practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, +said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is +liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. +Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of +arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative +acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, +represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a +personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, +often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer +interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be +just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed +by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary +interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the +contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, +the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's +sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we +now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it. + +[p.218] And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature--of this +ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we +certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to +the different phases of the thinker's life, but discussion of them all +would take too much of our space and might seriously tax an already +tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The +truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or +thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his +could ever compass the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of +nature? + +Corresponding to the thinker's positive knowledge, to the specific law +or order, which at one time or another he finds manifest in his world, +there is the well-known, but often misunderstood, character of nature as +a great mechanism, moving of course under the law. But corresponding to +his only tentative acceptance, though always trustful use of what he +knows, there is the much neglected character of nature as not an idle, +unproductive mechanism, always doing exactly the same thing, but, if I +may so speak, a moving, developing, ever-productive one, serving some +end larger and deeper than the known law. Nature must indeed be a +machine if the thinker's knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an +instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a +merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the +knowledge itself is never final. + +The material, mechanical character of nature, as I have said, is often +misunderstood. The real meaning of it is lost, and with serious results. +In the first [p.219] place, it is taken as if it involved a wholly +external, physical nature, and in the second place it is taken as if it +represented this nature only as moving through its changes _according to +a certain law_ and as having in consequence nothing to do but keep up +the dead, strictly "mechanical" existence of its law-fixed character and +incidentally involve man in the tireless turning of its fatal wheels. +But nothing could be more superficial, or even more needlessly +superstitious, than this. Obvious facts are overlooked or, if seen, +forgotten. The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted +so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an +actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known +--of a nature not alien--ever have any but a relative value, a +provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of +her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though +what is known is always informed with the law of her moving; and this is +to make her more than a mere machine. Again, no known law is ever _the_ +law, and under _the_ law nature must be qualitatively different from +what under the known law she appears to be. To neglect this difference, +then, is seriously to misunderstand the mechanical character of nature. + +Yet some one promptly objects that I am not at all fair to the common +understanding of mechanicalism. I am told that no one ever thinks of +nature as revolving strictly in accord with any known law. All men who +give any thought to the matter concede that the really ultimate law must +be not anything that is known, but only what is yet to be known, and is +[p.220] merely like in kind to such laws as men have cognizance of. This +interesting concession, however, quite fails of its purpose, since it +does not meet the real difficulty here in question. It shows +mechanicalism, not indeed bound to any particular knowledge, but +nevertheless still conceiving the final lawfulness of nature _after the +analogy_ of a particular law, the merely known or unknown or unknowable +character of which matters not at all. The analogy is what misleads. The +analogy only serves to deaden what really lives. + +When will men cease to think of the whole after the analogy of the part? +Of _the_, as if it were _a_? When will God cease to be only another +person? And the universe only another thing? And the lawfulness or unity +of all nature only another formula? This or that formula may show nature +a mechanism as smooth running and as blindly given to dead routine as +could be imagined, but nature is ever more and other than known formulæ +of men, and as more and other, or say as answering to the free spirit of +truth that moves in the thought of men, she is as free in her real +lawfulness as she is infinite. By reason of her infinity there is no law +that she may not break. _A_ law may make her a mechanism, dead and idle; +_the_ law makes her an organism living and productive. How a +positivistic science, making all knowledge wait on actual experience, +and accepting all knowledge only tentatively, can ever be +mechanicalistic or appeal to the ordinary understanding as an argument +for the mechanicalistic view of things is hard to conceive. If one +reasons from known forms to uniform activities, must one not also reason +from the always provisional [p.221] and developing knowledge to +productive activities? Must not the mechanism evolve into something +more, adding something to man's life, realizing something for all life, +enlarging even the nature of God himself? + +Once more, therefore, corresponding to the law that men may know and +that they can know only as their working hypothesis, there is nature, a +mechanism moving and herself at work, while corresponding to the great +living fact of nature's final lawfulness, or to the thinker's sense of +truth as a spirit or principle, not a form or creed or programme, there +is the constantly, genuinely productive life of nature, the mechanism, +as has now been said several times, ever evolving beyond its form and +law. Her law is not a law, any more than the thinker's passion for truth +can be finally satisfied by a formula or than God's continuously +creative life can ever culminate in a single finishing act. The +doubter's world, in short, or so much of it as is said to be material, +is not law-bound, but law-free:[4] an organism, not a mechanism; and +upon the value of this vision of nature, upon the theoretical or the +practical value, whether to science or to philosophy, to morals or to +religion, to politics or to industry, it seems hardly necessary to +dwell. But, to add a word or two in very general appraisal of it, such a +nature, served as it is by every law, by every mechanical action, yet +bound to move, is active always from design; its life is essentially +purposive. Not that it serves the purpose of anything, or any being, +beyond itself, but in every part and movement it is itself always +maintaining an end, the end of its [p.222] its own untethered reality. +In words used before, and applied alike to the spiritual and the +material, it is at once dynamic and teleologic. + +Such a nature, be it especially observed, is the basic condition, if not +also the very inspiration of our modern industrialism. This industrial +age, struggling against the old-time militarism, in its religion, in its +art and in its literature, in its leisure and in its labour, in city and +in country, is an age of machinery; of machinery in all the manifold +forms demanded by all the various departments of human life, not of +wheels and belts alone; an age of the conscious employment, for human +purposes, of the resources of all sorts, the materials and the forces +which the natural environment affords. Freedom, not slavery, is +recognized as man's ideal portion, and in order to ensure the freedom, +not human nature, but physical nature is mechanicalized; or, with the +same intent, all the formal means, or instruments, of life are taken as +incidents of environment, not as essential to man. So is industrialism +supplanting the old-time militarism that sought, in all the relations of +life, to identify the human with the instrumental. Witness the values +now put upon theories and creeds, upon rites and institutions, upon +personal habits and social laws. All of these, to begin with, are means, +not ends; and, further, they are means whose devising--so man is +insisting, as never before--must be, as near as possible, true to +nature. The sovereign conviction of this age of industrialism appears to +be that the only sure way to human freedom is the way of nature; +employment of such instruments as she can supply; obedience to such law +as she may disclose. + +[p.223] But many have found this age of industrialism insufficient. It +seems to them so materialistic. It would view things so much from the +standpoint of cold naturalism. The attitude of _laissez faire_ as +meaning "Let nature do the work," has so widely possessed the minds of +men. If only we could get back some of our former idealism and regard +nature as once more subject to some supernatural will! Despair like +this, however, is blind and as needless as blind. Dependence on a +lawful, mechanical nature can bring to human life no loss of what is +truly ideal and personally worthy. Instead, it brings constant gain, for +the knowledge of law and the making of machinery do not rob men of +personal opportunity, but rather make the opportunity for personal +achievement only the more manifest. A mechanical nature is always for +man, not man for a mechanical nature; and its movement is always +productive for man. If, then, industrial life has tended, as it has been +supposed to tend, towards materialism and fatalism, the reason can lie +only in the blindness of such as refuse to see clearly this visible +fact. Not merely something always doing, but something always that man +is doing is the definite message of a nature that ever manifests herself +under the form of law. To the thinker, in no uncertain syllables, she +says: Go forth and do. And our age of industrialism, if hearing this +bidding, will lose its unnatural materialism, and find itself quick with +a moral and religious instead of a narrowly practical and commercial +motive. + +So in the doubter's world are the spiritual and the material genuinely +sympathetic. + + +[p.224] + +III. A GENUINE INDIVIDUALITY. + +Besides the reality, without finality, of all things in experience, to +which we gave our first attention in this chapter, and the perfect +sympathy of the spiritual and the material, which we have just seen to +give new dignity to the intellectual life, making thought free, and new +worth to the life and movement of nature, making nature not lifelessly +mechanical, but mechanically productive; besides these two features of +the doubter's world, there still remain two others to be observed by us. +For the first of these there is the fact of a genuine individuality. +Different persons, as well as different things, possess a substantial +worth to the real and the true. No one may be either real or worthy by +himself, but no one is unreal for being dependent on others. The +persons, like the things, that work together for what is real, find the +service its own reward. Reality, having no exclusive resting-place must +itself be dependent. It is dependent on an infinite multiplicity of +differences. Therein lies the person's chance for individuality; nay, it +is his right to it and assurance of it. + +Before the days of Descartes, to speak generally, the typical individual +in human society--and let me say also, though at the expense of running +into a rather violent metaphor, the typical individual in any class or +group whatsoever--was the soldier, a creature of another's will, doing +only another's work, and having reality only by virtue of characters so +apart from individual peculiarities as actually to imply existence in +another world. The individual, in other words--if [p.225] at once real +and worthy--was then an unearthly being. For a being so constituted, or +living as if he were so constituted, the creationalistic theology and +the analogous monarchical politics were of course largely responsible, +since in their different ways they took individual independence of +action from the general run of mankind. They imposed on men at large a +certain uniform of life and belief, and then, as it were, appeased them +for this suppression with a doctrine of another life in a world yet to +come. Plainly, then, the time was not one when personal individuality, +except as it was referred to the other world yonder and apart, was +recognized as of much positive worth. Under the regime of prescribed +routine, of life with regard to the hereafter, and of mysterious powers +of all sorts, more or less in good standing in the realm of the +unworldly, personal individuality, though in itself not without some +honour, was valued chiefly and primarily for the different conditions, +the different relations to the things of this world, and the different +views of these things, which men succeeded in overcoming, or rather in +completely denying and eschewing. A worthy individuality was thus +secured rather through self-denial than self-expression; through the +vassal's devotion to his lord, the gallant's submission to his lady, the +courtier's humility before his king, or the saint's self-abasement +before church and heaven. Just think a moment of resting your claim to +distinct personal worth on the mere fact of what you have eschewed or +escaped being in some way different, perhaps more worldly, more +dangerous, and more powerful, from what some others have eschewed or +[p.226] escaped, and you will be able to appreciate the main ground of +the ideally significant distinction between man and man in the days +before Descartes. + +But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its +appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, +and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and +the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. Authority came to +be placed not in a visible form, but in an abstract principle. Law +became superior to laws; monarchy to monarchs; divinity to Gods; truth +to truths, and righteousness to rites and habits. The abstract +principle, too, instead of being, as many might imagine, a wholly +shadowy thing, real only to the logician, stood for something vital and +substantial, for something wholly real, for an inner spirit or life or +power in the very things of experience. Authority, henceforth refused to +any specific thing, whether person or manner of life, institution or +formal belief, became a prerogative of all things together, of all +persons or all manners of life or all creeds; and, residing in the +working together of them all, it made personal worth consist no longer +in the denial of individual characters and relations, but in honest +assertion and open use of them. As some have liked to describe the +change, the "universal individual," the individual as an authoritative +and heaven-made type, that dictated a life and a belief to others +generally, passed away, and in its stead, instead of unity as itself an +individual, instead of an incarnate type, came unity as in the relation, +or the activity maintaining the relation, of all individuals. Instead of +a single planet, for [p.227] example, as the controlling centre of the +heavenly bodies, came the unity of the solar system through the force or +the law of gravity. Instead of a monarch or a book or a city the +self-sufficient ruler of human life and human thought, came unity +through the ballot; through freedom of thought--always loyal only to a +real unity and in being thus loyal also always tolerant; and through all +sorts of like means to individuality. The "universal individual" died, +and there arose, as it were, out of his grave the living unity of +manifold individuals, each one different, yet each quite essential. + +And the change brought a transfiguration. It was as if the human soul +had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. +Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise +of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical +interest in men and things the wide world over. With its valuable +accounts of the manifold experiences of different peoples and different +times, at last seen to be real parts even of the life present and at +hand, the study of history became wonderfully absorbing and inspiring; +and not less valuable than this travel in time was the travel in space, +the real travel or the imaginary, which accompanied it. Furthermore, +such ideas as balance of power and preservation of the worth and +integrity of the individual nation, and division of labour and right of +free speech and of political and religious liberty, developed into most +powerful influences in the life and consciousness of society. And, to +return definitely to the single person, he found himself, not in spite +of, but because of his [p.228] special place and special standpoint, an +active participant in the effective life of his time. Instead of being a +mere soldier as before, he found himself a mechanic; certainly the +proper inhabitant of a mechanically productive nature. + +Doubtless the term soldier lends itself more readily to philosophical +generalization than the term mechanic. Perhaps, too, distance in time +lends enchantment to the view, for the day of the soldier was, while the +day of the mechanic is. The day of the soldier has reached the stage of +romance and reflection, while the day of the mechanic suffers from what +is commonplace and prosaic, from the associations of a particular life, +from dust and smoke and factories, from tools and utilities. Yet the +mechanic must be the romantic figure of the future. He is the typical +individual of these modern times, of these times of the free because +practical thinker, and of a nature not lifelessly mechanical but +mechanically productive. Forget the grimy hands and the noisy machinery, +the overshadowing smoke and the apparent absorption in mere utility, and +think only of the man, who in his best moments feels himself +individually responsible and capable, who believes in himself as having +at once a peculiar and a necessary part in the real life of his time, +and who expresses himself through some skilful mastery over the +resources of nature, applying to them the principles his own thinking +has uncovered, and using her machinery to the ends of his own nature, +which, as we have seen, is bounded only by the "unity of experience." + +Remember, too, the mechanic of our modern world is [p.229] not the +factory labourer alone. Wherever in social life, whether in political +activity or in industrial management, in educational methods or in +religious effort, there appears a man who appreciates the need first of +observing natural conditions and finding natural laws, and then of +acting only in accord with the suggestions of the laws discovered, just +there is the mechanic, the responsible agent of a law-free but always +lawful nature. The soldier as creature of this world was only a passive, +wholly material part of a mechanism which depended for its movement upon +some outside power or will; but the mechanic, be he humble labourer +skilful in the use of tools, or political leader supporting no law that +is not, so far as can be known, in accord with natural life, or +religious reformer loyal to life as it is, shares positively in the +activity that makes the machinery go and in whatever this activity +produces. + +And yet one thing more must be said. Just as before we had to view free +thought in the light of a divided labour, the individual sharing in it +only as he treated his own peculiar experience as hypothetical, as a +means to an end, not merely an end in itself, or as he was subject to +the restraint and correction of the different experiences of others, so +now we must recognize that effective activity, not less than true +thinking or than realistic experience, is also necessarily the labour, +never of one alone, but of many. The successful mechanic--in other +words, the fully responsible agent of a law-free nature--is never an +isolated creature with merely such a sentimental concern for his +neighbours as might spring from the recognized chance [p.230] of meeting +them in that world of the hereafter, where all are to be equal and where +love and peace are to supplant the present hate and rivalry; he is, on +the contrary, one among others, different from him, it is true, and +often very positively at variance with him, but engaged with him in a +single activity and achievement. His difference works not against, but +with their differences for thoroughly controlled, truly effective +activity. As things are real, though never final, so men, at work in the +world, are individual and individually important, but never alone. + +The facts in the case, logically and practically, appear to be somewhat +as follows: The individual's view-point, and the special machinery by +which he undertakes to realize it, can be only tentative or provisional; +they have the character, and usually he knows that they have the +character, if I may use a somewhat extravagant term, of makeshifts; and, +such being the fact, he is bound always to be in a state of constraint +or tension, in a relation of suspense towards them and towards the +environment to which they refer or belong. He feels a positive +resistance, a something disposed to counteract what he would do, and of +course the feeling means that he is really party to a growing life, not +established in a completed life. Suppose a view-point, or a machinery +that was perfectly applicable, that worked perfectly, that never did and +never could give out, that might not even very suddenly go all to +pieces, and that therefore put no strain nor uncertainty upon him who +held or employed it; could such a view-point or such machinery be of any +service to a growing life, to productive [p.231] activity? Most +certainly not. Tension, or a strained relationship, is necessary to +every individual's conduct and to every individual's ideas. But this +strain, to be real, just to accomplish its own purposes must be not +merely of a person with his own ideas or with the outer world to which +the ideas refer, but of a person with other persons; not merely of +conscious man with a mechanical nature, but of conscious and +mechanically active man with other conscious and mechanically active +men. + +It is now an old story for us, but an important one, that there must be +society. A genuine individuality requires society. Society is a medium +not by which something is added to individual life, but by which +something in individual life is kept real and manifest. By maintaining, +as it were always from without, the natural tension of individual life, +it ensures to the individual the constant growth that is his legitimate +inheritance. The doubter is a social creature. The free thinker +accepting his ideas only tentatively, though at the same time using them +hopefully, sure that they will lead somewhere, is a social creature; and +the mechanic is a social creature, being one with others for whom life +is not routine but growth, and among whom the growth in which each has +his part induces constant tension, the tension of difference, the +tension of opposition and competition, the tension of mutual correction +and compensation, the tension, finally, of reality refusing to be bound. +Not the individual's provisional standpoint, nor yet the machinery that +he employs and that sooner or later must go to pieces, not these alone, +I must therefore reiterate, make the individual effectively [p.232] +active in a growing world, make him a worthy creature doing the work of +nature or of God; these have their place and part; but constant relation +to other individuals, the objects not less of hate than of love, not +less of rivalry than of friendship, is also essential. + +In the so-called material world all things, in and by themselves unreal, +get reality, yes, get individual reality, only as through their very +differences they work together for what is real. In the world of mind, +or thought, if this can be imagined apart from the world of things, all +thoughts or ideas, in and by themselves untrue for being subjective, +relative, and partial, get truth only as also through their differences, +so tense and interactive, they work together for what is true. And, +likewise, in the world of persons, if indeed this can be imagined apart +from the world of thought, all individuals, call them now mechanics or +what you will, though in and by themselves without personal worth or +real individuality, without freedom or immortality, get genuine worth +and are assured even immortality only as shoulder against shoulder they +work together for a life that is true and real, worthy and genuine. + +But in an earlier chapter, dealing with "The Personal and the Social, +the Vital and the Formal in Experience," a different argument for +individuality was insisted upon. Then the person was individual because +of his independence of particular form; now he is so because a real life +demands the particular and different, with which he is assumed to be +necessarily identified. Then he was the "living, integral exponent of +the unity of experience," free with the [p.233] genius of universality, +now he is one among all the particular conflicting elements of that +unity--or at least of the reality to which that unity refers. So there +appears to be even an inconsistency in my thinking. Yet, I venture still +to think, the inconsistency is only apparent. Certainly it should be +remembered that the person's asserted genius for universality was not +for the universal in an abstract sense, in the sense of the universal as +something by itself and apart from particulars; rather it was for a +constant enriching of the universal through particulars, for the +translation of any one particular relation and experience, which had +reached a higher state of development, to all the other actual or +possible relations of life; and this can mean only that the universal, +in which the personal individual has a place, is not denying or +betraying, but always holding and lifting up to itself all particular +factors or elements in the unity of experience or of reality. Simply, +though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the +particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, +therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either +side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a +tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound +to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a +genius for universality. Not in the sense of that conventional theology, +crudely dualistic and unthinkable, but in a sense that is not to be +gainsaid and that may give some meaning even to the conventional +theology, every individual is real only in having a body and a [p.234] +soul. The soul of a man is only his genius for universality, but for a +universality that works through, not that is independent of, the +particular. + +So the difference between this chapter and the former chapter is merely +one of emphasis. The double character of the individual, however, as it +is now before us, starts an inevitable question. Is the individual as +immortal as real? If he is immortal, does the immortality belong to both +sides of his character, to his body and to his soul, or only to one? +And, admittedly, this question offers more serious difficulties than the +suspicion of inconsistency. How can it be met? + + +IV. IMMORTALITY. + +To write a useful essay on immortality has long been one of my +ambitions, and, as regards the views in that essay, my faith and my +reason alike have so far brought me to this thesis: _Whatever is real is +immortal_.[5] "A most meagre contribution to the subject," I hear some +one exclaim. But is it so very meagre after all? "A most gloomy +contribution," says another, "for evil, and above all death, are real." +But is it so gloomy? Remember, not even death can be real alone. +Possibly, too, the meagreness will seem less and the gloom will be +illuminated if the need of the real being also the ideal, is brought to +mind. That the real must be ideal, that the world must be so [p.235] +constituted that the law of whatever is good will prevail in it, has +been a faith manifested among all men and expressed through history in +countless ways. True, no particular experience ever satisfies it. Not +even the particular things we adjudge to be best are adequate to it, and +the things we think evil, the suffering and the hardships of all kinds, +the always tragic death and the too often offensive life, seem its +eternal rebuke. Yet the faith remains, and you and I and all others are +forever calling out to it. Our very doubts are its altars; our honest, +rational thoughts, as they are uttered, are prayers; perhaps the only +prayers to which we have any right. + +So the real, which must be also the ideal, is immortal; and this, quite +apart from any particular questions about the body or the soul, makes a +world to live in and to hope in, whatever happens. Of body and soul, +too, it says something. These, in just so far as they are real, are +immortal, and any real relation between them is immortal also, for the +conclusive test of immortality is just reality, reality here and now. +Whatever is real in your life or in mine, whatever reality our present +personality may possess, be it physical or spiritual, be it both or +neither of these, that and only that is immortal. That and only that, +however, let it be said again, is now or never. The most serious error, +so it seems to me, in all the controversy about immortality, is the +notion, or the superstition, that something that is real now can pass +away, or that something real in the future is not real, not freely real +now. With this error corrected, of course at the expense of certain +attempts to bind reality to [p.236] something that is visible, if not to +the natural eye, at least to the eye of the mind, man has nothing to +fear. Reality will hold him to itself, will support whatever truly +inheres in his friendships or his family ties, in his best hopes or in +his personal conceits, for ever and ever. Reality can never betray what +it has ever harboured. + +And the whole trend of thinking in this book has been to make the +reality here spoken of a most hospitable harbour. So innate to all +experience is the spirit of truth, the principle of veracity, that life +can have no absolute illusions. True, life also can have no positive +knowledge final and exact, so that all things definitely manifest are +only relatively true or real. All things definitely manifest, whether to +the consciousness that looks without or that looks within, are mixedly +true or false, real or unreal. But just this impossibility, now so +familiar to us, at once of absolute illusion and of absolute knowledge, +is, as said so often, a condition of _the_ true and _the_ real, and it +means in this place that nothing which is ever defined, which is ever +hypostasized or apotheosized, which in any way is erected into a thing +or nature quite by itself, possessing determined or determinable +qualities, can ever be said to be either mortal or immortal, since it +must be as truly one as the other. It must be significantly, but never +purely and exclusively either. Not this hand of mine nor that picture on +the wall, not this body which, so to speak, I seem to wear, nor that +soul, which you or I imagine to be in the body and more or less loosely +connected with the body, is unqualifiedly immortal. Nor yet [p.237] is +any of these unqualifiedly mortal. Still, again, there is immortality, +and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole +body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a +part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just +named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just +one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any +thing, may say, "I am immortal." No one, however--to speak now only in +words directly applicable to man--may say, "My body is immortal," nor +even, "My soul is immortal," if, so speaking, he means only what he +seems to say. Body and soul alike, if two separate things, are _both_ of +them at once living and dying. They are equally mortal or immortal, for +only so, as two things, can they belong to the real self. Can parts, be +they two or many more, ever be unmixedly what the whole is? There is +immortality, then, yet nothing, not the body nor the soul, is wholly or +selfishly immortal. Reflect, to take an illustration from the practice, +if not from the conscious thinking of men, how through the centuries of +the dualistic view of human nature, the saving, or the losing, of the +separate soul has been a keen human interest, and how the separate body, +living, has been neglected and despised, and, dead, has been cherished +and honoured. Yes, man's immortality is deeper, and it is more +hospitable, than any distinction, be this invidious on one side or on +the other or be it not, between the physical and the spiritual. Even in +the case of the spiritual, _the_ cannot be _a_. + +The soldier and the mechanic have been mentioned [p.238] as types of +personal individuality appropriate respectively to the medieval and the +modern period, to the period of the "universal individual," on the one +hand, and of unity realized, not through a type, but through the working +together of different individuals, on the other. The type was of another +world; the living unity is here and now in this. For the mechanic, then, +death is not what the soldier has found it, and immortality is different +too. But how fully to describe the difference, and how above all really +to appraise it, I do not clearly know. Perhaps there is not enough of +the poetic in my nature. The soldier, as the political historian or as +the philosopher sees him, has had his appreciative poets, but the +mechanic has been little sung. The mechanic's death, however, and the +life following it, afford a theme that some poet of the future, let me +hope, will be able to do justice to. The soldier leaves this for another +world, by his violent death only fulfilling his extreme subjection here. +The mechanic, somewhat like the tools which he employs, actually +continues with the always productive life of this world, by his death, +natural rather than violent, even contributing to, as well as sharing +in, what is produced. Not less than the soldier's is his after-life an +appropriate fulfilment of his earthly career; each gains through death +the natural reward of his life's service. But though I find myself so +unable to say what I would, to express either in prose or in poetry all +that I seem to feel, there is just one thought that I must try to +articulate, and that will certainly assist the understanding of the +difference between the two deaths or the two after-lives. + +[p.239] Soldiers are companionable, of course, but they live less in and +with each other than in and with the will which they serve or than in +and with the separate world which at any moment may suddenly take them +to itself. Their lives, accordingly, or their deaths, are aloof from +each other, and are brought together only through their common +subjection or their common destiny, through something which is without. +But the mechanic is social in his own nature, in his own right. The very +reality, too, of the world in which he works is, as in so many ways we +have seen, maintained only by a divided labour. It is, then, a reality, +or a labour, that bridges the chasm between one man's life and +another's, as well as between all separate lives and the unity of all +life. It makes the many lives "parallel" and harmonious--nay, it makes +them actively and vitally sympathetic. Not, as is certainly true, at the +expense of any one's real individuality, for each man has his place and +his part, real and immortal, and not one falls unnoticed or unguarded to +the ground; but, nevertheless, whatever all have and do, they have and +do together. They live-and-die together. There is, in a word, but one +death, as well as but one life, the life or the death, which all share, +and which accordingly is definitely and specifically nowhere and +nobody's. And in the light of this supreme unity, while any live, none +can be merely dead, or while any die, none can be merely alive or living +to themselves or their time alone. And, living and dying together, in +and with each other, all are parties to the immortality of what is real. + +So, again, there is immortality for mankind--the [p.240] immortality of +him whom I have called the mechanic. There is immortality, mine and +yours and ours. We die, but not as dies the soldier, who leaves this +life for another quite apart, securing there a companionship denied him +here; we die a death that is never death alone, and we die as we live, +in a companionship that is real now and throughout all time. +Furthermore, our death is always, or always may be, self-denial, and +self-denial, too, in its supreme moment, the moment of its greatest +achievement, but our self-denial is also very different from that of the +soldier. + +There is immortality, then, but what results has all that has now been +said for the interpretation of history, for our feelings about the life +and death of our fellows, and for the relevant doctrines of +Christianity?[6] + +We commonly think of history as the passing of persons, nations, and +civilizations. Men come and go, but history goes on for ever. To be +sure, history accumulates, as if its gifts from humanity, innumerable +treasures, books, relics, institutions, buildings, machinery and the +like, but the donors, as we are wont to think, are lost to it, remaining +as ideal influences perhaps, but not as vitally active in the life they +once assisted. This common view, however, must now seem wrong. The past +must ever persist in the present, and not as an aside in some other +world, nor yet as merely so much ideal influence, but vitally as a party +to the present. Those that were must also live now. Have we their +literature? Yes, and their consciousness [p.241] too. Their +institutions? And also their life. Their achievements? And their power +and will. Altogether too fanciful, some one thinks; but give it meaning +from what has been said here especially about individuality. In the real +world there can be but one life and one death, and we individuals, +whatever our century, divide the labour of them both. Even our present +life and consciousness and our will must be said to belong, in return, +to those who have gone before; for it is wrong, it must be wrong, to +think of the life of the past and the life of the present as two lives, +as independent and perhaps even different in kind. Not those that are +now gone once lived and we live, but they and we are living, they in us, +and we with them; they in the world of our life, not in a world yonder +and apart. They live in us, to suggest a simple analogy, that is perhaps +more than a mere analogy, very much as our own past selves, our infancy +and our youth, are alive with us and in us to-day. If a physical +scientist can see the same force in the military weapons and engines of +ancient times that he sees in those of our own time, if a sociologist +can find the same social phenomena then and now, may not the historian +regard the older life in general and the newer life as not less +intimate? Did different winds blow in 1492 from those that blow to-day? +Was it a different sun that shone in 500 B.C.: from that which shone in +A.D. 500, or which shines, or tries to shine, to-day? We do not deny +that the animal nature is still alive in us as well as around us, +although at the same time we suppose it to belong to a very early period +in our development. Why, then, should we exclude what is [p.242] so much +more recent? Because it is too distinctly human to be so robbed of its +temporal independence, of its own date and place? That is certainly a +strange reason in view of the fact that men have insisted on erecting, +in their minds, for the human nature that has passed away, a place which +is altogether timeless and eternal. Why not dignify human nature, then, +by making it, and all that it bears, eternal in its own natural life, +not in a sphere that is unnatural? It is sheer materialism, in letter or +in spirit, either to entomb the historic past, as some would, in books +and monuments of all sorts, or, as others would, to lay it aside in a +so-called immaterial world. Who does either of these things forgets how +the books are written and how the monuments are erected, and how in +general the things of the past come to be. The future is always a party +to whatever is done. The men who have ever achieved anything have always +been, in their character and in their work, as if made by the future, +"ahead of their times." An uncanny phrase, unless one can think of the +deeds and men of any time as in a vital unity with the deeds and men of +all times. A man is great only as he identifies himself with some social +force, with some actual movement of his day, fulfilling it out of a long +past, bringing it to focus and so making it definite and manifest, and +as the life around him which gave him birth, adopts his will and repeats +his achievement. History has many cases of human societies repeating in +their lives as a whole the careers of great men. Only it is not +repetition exactly; it is resurrection and continuation. Great men make +history, but they make it only because they [p.243] are alive in it +before their birth and survive in it, in its doing and in its thinking, +after they die.[7] Would history be even thinkable without such +continuity? Could we honestly call it history? What good American to-day +is not, convinced that he has a share in what Washington and Lincoln +accomplished years ago, and also--and this one may, or may not, +regret--in the doings of Benedict Arnold and Booth? And, to put a very +practical question, would it not be well if in the popular consciousness +great men, good and bad, were really identified with history instead of +being treated as fixtures outside of it? Make them separate fixtures and +you make them oracles, the spirits of quite another world, with which +the demagogue, as if a medium, can excite the people; but identify them +in a vital way with history and they must grow with it, speaking quite +as much out of the present conditions as out of the past. Hero-worship +is too often idolatry, and for my part the literalism of it is only +"spiritualism" trying to be respectable. Every extravagance, of course, +has to have its lawful or conventionally respectable expression. + +But what, now, of friendship and family ties? Can we view these in the +same light? I think we would; I think we can; I think we must. True, it +is easier to speak in this large, "philosophical" way of history and of +the men who have had part in it, inventing and effectively using the +machinery that has enabled its progress, than of such matters as +friendship and [p.244] family. In these latter matters the heart more +than the mind is addressed. Still, the relations of friendship and +kinship are not themselves born, nor do they die and all friends abroad +and kin at home live and move and have their being only in these. Does +it destroy or even weaken the meaning or the reality of friendship to +have it said that the relation is as universal as particular or local, +and as eternal as temporal? Is a relationship worth less than any one of +its manifestations? Why, the universality of the relationship gives +meaning or reality to any manifestation. Friendship, then, or kinship, +for this person or that, cannot be separated from the experience in +general. Separate it, and one's friends or kin surely do die, remaining +after death, like the characters of the older history, as only ideal +"influences," or as unearthly spirits that sometimes idly chatter. But +in reality, friendship, or kinship, is one, not merely many, all of its +members labouring together for, and forever surviving in, what it truly +is. The friends, then, or the kin that lived, live still. In others +about us? Yes; and in ourselves too; or rather in the relation of man to +man or in the unity of all that lives. Not literally in others, then, +although the meaning intended was a genuine one, nor yet literally in +ourselves, for nothing crudely like transmigration of souls is in my +mind, but--to repeat--in the living relationship of friends or kin. +There is indeed a truth in transmigration, as also in other related +notions; witness all the facts of inheritance, of historical succession +or continuity, of social growth and personal character, of evolution; +but it is the truth, or is near to [p.245] the truth, of a reality that +is conserved even in its changing. The soldier of the past, let me say, +at his death was "translated," but the mechanic of to-day is transmuted. +The latter word may be stranger and harsher in sound than the former, +but there is truly less violence and more honour in its meaning. So, +again, friends and kin that ever lived, live still. Friendship and +fatherhood and motherhood and all the relations of kin, nay, all the +relations of life, that make our individuality real, that make it +personal, that make it social, that make, it natural, have been from the +beginning, live now, and must survive forever, and by their survival +hold for the present and the future life all who have ever been. Where +would faith go, and where worth and responsibility, if birth really +created and death destroyed, or if birth were a coming from no one knows +where, from a realm unlike and apart, and death the return? Birth cannot +create or introduce; it can only express, revealing and realizing. Death +cannot destroy or "translate"; it can be only fulfilment at a crisis. + +The mere wordiness of a philosopher! Possibly. And yet Christianity has +very nearly implied, if indeed it has not actually said, and said or +implied again and again, exactly the same thing. To science, I know, we +are peculiarly indebted for the conception of the organism, or the +organic, which enables us to bring together the universal and the +individual, the eternal and the temporal, the omnipresent and the local, +without losing the worth or the reality of either, and of course--for so +they would not be together--without erecting separate quarters, or +worlds, for their [p.246] occupation; but, when all is said, science has +only applied at large the very special and personal doctrines of +Christianity, and has therein helped Christianity to a better +consciousness of itself. The Resurrection, the Immaculate Conception, +the Divinity, the Immediacy of the Kingdom, the Sacrifice, and the +Brotherhood of Man are doctrines which one and all testify quite +directly that our real individuality, our real being, lies not in a +separate existence of any sort, here or hereafter, but in the abiding +relations of the actual life now. In these the Christ resides, the +always living Christ. What else can the following mean? "In as much as +ye have done it unto one of these, my brethren, even these least ye have +done it unto me." And again: "For whosoever shall do the will of my +father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and +mother." The living Christ, one of the dogmas of our day, is more than a +fancy and more than a dogma, and for no one so truly as the scientist, +the evolutionist. Christ was too great, too deep-lying, too far-reaching +in human history not to be more. The letter of Christianity, we are +often told, has got to go, but it is quite as true that the real letter +of Christianity has got to stay, has yet to come: the real letter, I +say, not the parody of a mere physical appearance and reappearance +nearly two thousand years ago. If Christ was really not born as men are +born, if he did not really die, if truly he still lives in and with our +lives to-day, if Christianity honestly means the brotherhood of humanity +and the divinity of man, then simply the Christ was more than a pagan's +messenger from another world, and [p.247] more than the creature of a +single moment in history or a single place; also he reveals to us more +in ourselves than any of these things, and instead of resorting to such +notions as parthenogenesis and trance to explain the birth and the +resurrection, we must rather recognize in him, and in ourselves, an +individuality that has, not in spite of, but because of, birth and +death, a share in, a place and a part in the immortality of what is +real. Now I am not a good preacher, plainly, nor am I exactly a +sympathetic theologian, and also I know too well the defects of argument +through scriptural quotation; but I have to hope, as personally I +believe, that in the foregoing paragraph, given in conclusion to the +discussion of immortality in the doubter's world, I have suggested what +at least is not an unchristian appreciation of Christianity. + + * * * * * + +Our journey in the doubter's world here comes to an end. All things are +real, yet none final. The spiritual and the material in life are +sympathetic even to the point of being vitally at one with each other, +thought being free and practical, and material nature being lawful but +law-free, and mechanical but productively so, and being in her +productiveness definite opportunity, not blind necessity, to human life. +And, the "universal individual" being dead, having returned to the other +world from which he came, all particular individuals have real and +personal shares in the life that is, in the work that is ever to be +done. Living or dying, the individual, as we have found him, is the +mechanic of to-day, not the soldier of yesterday. + + +[1] The last few sentences seem like a paragraph from some psychologist +of the day. My colleague, Professor W.B. Pillsbury, for example, has +just published a book on the attention, in which appears the following +statement: "It seems that the problem of voluntary activity is largely, +if not entirely, a problem of the attention ... . The processes which +are effective in the control of a man's ideas are _ipso facto_ in the +control of his movements," and this, besides being the current +psychology, is quite in accord with our doubter's vision: "Well thought +is well done." (See _Attention_, chapter ix. London, 1907.) + +[2] Chap. VIII., pp. 177 seq. + +[3] Chaps. III., IV., V., and VI. + +[4] See also an earlier discussion in this book, chap. III., pp. 49 seq. + +[5] Two preliminary efforts have already been put in print. See the +Appendix, "A Study of Immortality in Outline," to a book: _Dynamic +Idealism: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Psychology_ (McClurg, +1898). See, secondly, an article: "_Evolution and Immortality_," in the +_Monist_, April, 1900. + +[6] Except for a few changes, the next few paragraphs are taken from my +article, "Evolution and Immortality," in the _Monist_, April, 1900. + +[7] In a small book, _Citizenship and Salvation, or Greek and Jew_, +published some years ago, I have tried to show this of Socrates and +Christ. + + + +[p.248] + +X. + +DOUBT AND BELIEF. + + + There was once a brook that ran, at times slowly, at times more + rapidly, through fields and woods, under trees and over rocks. At + every chance, whatever the obstacles in its course, it fell, much + or little, as it could; but impatience and uncertainty filled its + life as the minutes and the hours passed. Had life nothing more in + store for its troubled waters? Was this groping downward all? Were + the memory and the accompanying hope, which haunted every thwarted + move, of no avail? Would true fulness of life never be attained? + + But a great moment for the brook came, rewarding it at last, + bringing assurance in place of threatened despair. A precipice + intervened, and the waters fell hundreds of feet; a glorious fall + --spray, sunlight, colour, eloquence. + + "Now," spoke the brook from the deep, smooth pool below, "now I + have lived; now I know that my life was real and that my life was + good, for I have found myself, I have found my world; and I have + found them where I thought them not. And, speaking so, the brook + flowed on contented. + +The confession of doubt, which we set out to make with all possible +candour, is now nearly concluded even to the harvesting of the promised +fruit. The confession began, as will be remembered, with recognition of +certain general and easily demonstrated facts, of [p.249] which there +were five, as follows: (1) We are all universal doubters. (2) Doubt is +essential to all consciousness. (3) Even habit, though confidence be the +horse, has doubt sitting up behind. (4) Like pain or ignorance, doubt is +a condition of real life. (5) And the sense of dependence, so general to +human nature, gives rise to doubt, although also, like misery, it always +seeks company--the company of nature, of man, of God. Then, after this +beginning, which left us by no means so hopeless as might have been +expected, we proceeded to try the doubter, nay, to try ourselves, first +before the court of ordinary life with its ordinary views of things, and +secondly, before the court of science, and, in both trials, we found the +doubting justified. Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in +science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found +what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and +almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of +contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and +the very heart of our human experience. This spirit of violence, too, as +the evidence of its presence accumulated, bade fair to dispel whatever +hope our confession had left us. Yet out of the evidence there gradually +did appear a reason for deepest assurance, and in the end our fear, not +our hope, was dispelled. Contradiction was seen in its very nature to +possess positive value. It was seen to protect experience, even while +experience was specific and concrete, definite and individual, against +any fatal digression or partiality of view. It was deeply conservative, +corrective, and [p.250] compensative in its effect, but it was all this +without ever being merely negative or destructive towards anything, +since its own efficiency required persistent individual differences. To +experience it gave movement, constant unity or wholeness, realistic +value and poise, practicality, and, lastly, social expression. And we +were able, accordingly, to conclude, in so many words, that both +ordinary life and science, so given to duplicity in their standpoint and +in their ideas, were really building well, far better, indeed, than they +seemed or than they clearly knew. Contradiction, in short, as we came to +see it, meant unity, but not an empty, abstract unity; it meant unity +rich and real with an infinity of differences; and so what had at first +appeared an uncompromising reason for doubt turned, right before our +doubter's eyes, into an unassailable ground of belief, making the very +world which we had been so uncertain about a world for an inviolable +faith. But truth, we saw at once, could no longer be identified with a +formal idea, known or unknown or unknowable; reality could no longer +have the character of a fixedly constituted thing, whether such a thing +were present in experience or not; and perfection, even the perfection +of God, could no longer be a mere status, a passive possession of +certain characters, attributes, or prerogatives. Truth became, as was +said, in want of a better word, a spirit; reality was a life; perfection +was a power. And thereupon, with the new view thus afforded us, coupled +as it was especially with the sense in which personally a man could +claim reality for himself and yet be party to the factional life of +society, we were able to turn to [p.251] Descartes, an early modern +doubter, a father confessor of many doubters, and, overlooking some of +his shortcomings in thought and character, to appreciate both the use +that he made of doubt, the intimacy that he, too, found between doubt +and faith, and the world of reality, of most vital sympathy between the +material and the spiritual, of genuine, personal individuality, and of +immortality, through which he led us, doubter, universal doubter though +he was. That great Frenchman, as we were enabled to understand him, got +back the world, the self and the God which he seemed to have lost, but +he got them all back transfigured. He got them back, not by denying and +excluding what appeared negative and treacherous in their nature, but by +facing this and using it, by accepting it and turning it even against +itself. The very Paris to which he returned as believer was the same +Paris, the Paris of doubt and of evil in all its forms, that earlier, +hopeless and despairing, he had put behind him. And, once more, his +experience was ours, and so helped us to interpret and deepen ours, +quickening the value of our own previous discovery that within the very +sources of doubt lay the real bases of belief. Our own doubted world of +what was relative and artificial, and above all contradictory, had +already turned, without loss of anything that was in it, into a world of +reality and belief. + +And so, for this concluding chapter, as but a sort of focussing of what +almost from the beginning has been borne in upon us, but especially at +the close has been rich in reality and meaning, we have a sixth general +fact, which may now be added to the original five. [p.252] _We believe +through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very +things we doubt_. To this fact really inclusive of all the others, or if +not to this fact at least to this conviction which we have achieved +here, we shall now turn, and in our concluding chapter we may even +forget, or retain only as the appropriate background, many of those more +special or more technical details that from time to time have occupied +us. After so much, that to some, if not to all, who have followed me to +this place, may have appeared open to the charge of being mere theory, +certain simple, very practical considerations, appealing quite as much +to the emotions as to the reason, can hardly be out of place. Those who +are already satisfied, who foresee only repetition, who are themselves +without emotion, or who consider anything like the drawing of a moral to +be as useless as it is inartistic, need read no further. + + +I. + +We believe in the very things we doubt. Doubt, this is to say, can +destroy nothing. It only calls for closer scrutiny, for wider and deeper +view, for greater achievement. Its effect is only to make over, renew, +or fulfil what has already been and must ever remain an object of faith, +and so doing it keeps the old faith alive. It questions all things, but +properly, consistently it raises, not questions of mere existence or +reality, but questions of meaning and worth, and whatever it truly +questions it always quickens. Have [p.253] we not found that with its +inborn and insatiable passion for truth doubt must believe in +everything, and that to satisfy this passion, since all things must work +together for what is real and true, it must reject nothing but seek even +the universe in everything? All things, from the momentary sensation in +your little finger, or the tree yonder on the lawn, to the personality +of God or the divinity of Christ as an idea in the consciousness of +millions of people, all things are; they are in experience; they are +unassailable realities of experience; but--and just this is as far as +the truth-loving doubter, the doubter who is honest with his own +self-consciousness, can go--what really are they? _What are they?_ is +such an honest question. In this question, too, there is more reality +for the things inquired about even than in any man's assertion that they +are this or that they are that. But the question _Are they?_ would be +downright treachery. We doubters, then, believe, but would ever know +what we believe; we have, yet would realize every possibility that what +we have affords. + +Doubt, I repeat, destroys nothing. From time to time certain doubting +people have called their prophets impostors, and have imagined +themselves able to put the impostors out of the way, but, as history has +always shown, only with the result of reviving among themselves and +often of awakening in the minds and hearts of others the sense and +conviction of just that for which the offensive impostors may have +suffered violent death. Even history's petty impostors, too, as well as +those who have proved heroes and great leaders, have always had their +justification. An [p.254] absolute impostor has never been. Again, +certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or +moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to +make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual +dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is +valid and real. Nothing can be, or ever has been, unreal. And, in +general, doubt of a thing or a person or a God only needs its own +conscious assertion to turn actually into an appeal from its particular +object to the ideal or spirit or principle for which the object had +stood, and upon this appeal even the object that has been for a moment +condemned is justified and glorified. Thus, doubt may deny or depose or +put to death, but as it is honest it also realizes or restores or +revives. Through doubt the sensuous, which is the particular and +visible, is ever becoming spiritualized; even this corruptible puts on +incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. Or, in these words, if +we doubt we may reject the object, the letter, but we cannot reject the +letter without accepting and asserting the spirit, and we cannot assert +the spirit without recalling and exalting and even worshipping the +letter. The rejection makes for universality by casting down the +barriers of the particular experience of time or place, of person or +nation, of the Greek perhaps, if again I may look to history, or of the +Jew or of the Christian, while the recall and the worship make for +definiteness. Without the previous rejection the worship could be only +idolatry. So, as Descartes will be remembered virtually to have said, +doubt is innately loyal to reality in [p.255] everything, and just +through this loyalty the world it spurns, the world of God and man and +nature, is for ever called back, a real world once more, because a +realized, a spiritually realized world. Why forget, as so many seem to, +that reality is an achievement; achieved it may be, as with the brook, +even by a great fall? + +But have you ever climbed a mountain up and up and up, through thick +woods, over rough, almost impassable trails, into clouds dense and +chilling, stormy and angry, over treacherous snows and frightful cliffs, +and come out at last on the very top to see both earth and heaven, +yourself between, the clouds dispersed, the hardships and dangers all +forgotten, the whole world real and yours? Well, that is doubt become +achievement. Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a +problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all +the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to +you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when +failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and +the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? +That, too, is doubt rewarded. Have you ever visited, perhaps more +curiously than reverently, some great Catholic cathedral, or, better +still, some temple of the far Orient, and watching the worshippers +there, suddenly had a vision of religion as greater and deeper than any +Protestantism or even than Christianity? That, again, is doubt's +achievement. Have you ever suffered a great heartrending disappointment, +let me say a great personal loss, and [p.256] found it seemingly +impossible to return to the routine of your former life, but +nevertheless, almost imperceptibly, come into a sense of presence and +gain from the very thing that seemed taken from you? That, once more, is +doubt without its sting, robbed of its victory. Doubt means sacrifice, +often enormous sacrifice, but always a more than equal gain. The light +that casts the shadows of doubt, when one can face it, and really does +face it, as, for another example, in this book we have been trying to +face it, is so splendid and so uplifting. + +So, a third time, doubt destroys nothing; it only makes reality forever +an achievement and belief a constantly active life. The fact, now no +stranger to us, that doubt is social, also shows this. Doubt is social, +as has been said, since by its isolation it makes the longing for +company, and by its greater freedom the larger opportunity for company; +and since also the very contradictions or controversies which arouse it +are never merely individual, being always social also, and social +relationship means effort and sacrifice, and is accordingly a peculiarly +interesting witness to the losses that doubt must suffer for its greater +gains. Doubt, in short, shows belief, working not merely for the reality +of all things, but also for the love of all men. As social, then, as +working for the love of all men, doubt involves sympathy. Yet not an +easy, passive sympathy. A restless, labouring, always growing sympathy +is the sympathy of the doubter; a sympathy that makes all it covers +labour and grow also. Does it hurt your business to doubt it +sufficiently to make you able to sympathize with the interests of +[p.257] another? To this question Adam Smith gave a timely answer when +at a critical moment in industrial history he found in sympathy a +condition of successful competition. Does it hurt your politics, if you +can lose enough of the partisan's conceit or the jingo's bombast to +sympathize with the other parties or the other nations? The value of +real independence in politics is one answer, and the idea of federation +among competing states, or of international polity as a basis of +successful national life, is another. Does it hurt your understanding to +outgrow your own profoundest ideas and see some validity in the +doctrines and formulæ of others? Does it hurt your Christianity to make +concessions to another's Christianity or to the worship of any land or +any time? The reading of the last great book, or the visit to the pagan +temple, is an answer. Simply the doubter the world over, social being +that he is by nature, imbued as he is with a living sympathy, must +recognize, and must labour to maintain or achieve, the unity of +humanity. For him just this is God, or truth, and it is worth far more +than anybody's religion or than anybody's rational formulæ. It must +stand, too, both as the universal authority which both religion and +reason have over the lives of men and as the motive or living principle, +or spirit, by which particular religions and particular formulæ, however +serviceable, are forever unstable. + +But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and +which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes +belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still +another way. It shows mankind using or spending [p.258] instead of +either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and +faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life +accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest +what they have; some speculate. Some are conservative, even timorous; +some are very rash. Yet doubt as expenditure is necessary to all who +would enjoy the proper, natural increase of their possessions, and while +the rash, be they transgressors or reformers, sensualists or +materialists, or equally impractical idealists, at a throw may win or +lose great riches of mind or spirit, the timorous and +ultra-conservative, the "practical" and conventional, are not less +dependent on chance. There are the new rich, too, and the aristocratic +poor, and both remind us strongly that the real use of what we have is +not only a duty, but also a very sober duty. To hoard blindly or spend +rashly is to risk unwisely, perhaps to lose all, or, if to win, to win +idly; while to use well, to doubt clearly and honestly, to doubt even in +one's belief, to doubt only for fuller meaning, for broader and deeper +life, for richer companionship, is personally to earn lasting spiritual +treasure. + +Modern science, whose knowledge comprises merely working hypotheses, the +means to truth, not truth itself, or if truth, then only a living, +growing truth, affords one of the best examples of this. Modern science +is a great faith, a great belief, but only because it is a life, not a +status or possession, only because it is a constant spending, a constant +using of knowledge, that earns interest, even compound interest, as +regularly as the years go by. And experience in [p.259] general, as well +as science, is also a great belief, and also only because always +doubting and so always using and always earning. + +Doubt, in a word, is more than a necessity of experience; it is +distinctly a duty. Experience itself is but another name for that hard +master who says to every unprofitable servant: "Thou wicked and slothful +servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I +did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the +bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with +interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him and give it unto +him that hath the ten talents." + + +II. + +That doubt is only the expenditure of the treasures of life for future +gain human history bears witness in a striking way. Times of a general +scepticism among any people have always been also times of +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards all things great and small. +To employ again a word used before, this means that life has come to +regard its establishments of all sorts as only "instrumental," not +final. Of course, conventionalism and utilitarianism are commonly +decried, just as the accompanying attitude of doubt is commonly decried; +but the fears, though not altogether idle, are usually short-sighted, +for there is gain ahead. In a certain community, for example, +patriotism, morality, and piety, long identified with specific forms and +customs and doctrines, have come at last to seem quite unsubstantial. A +rising cosmopolitanism perhaps has undone the first, sensationalism +[p.260] or naturalism the second, and mingled ritualism and secularism +the third. But however unsubstantial all three may appear in +consequence, they are nevertheless retained as still useful, as means to +some end, being at least good things to wear or to assume in any way, +and from the change, though it appear so like decline, the community in +the end is most decidedly enriched. + +How can this be? In answer, let us beard the very king of the race of +the conventionalists and utilitarians in his forbidding den. +Machiavelli, with his teaching that the end always justifies the means, +and his open advice to the leader who would be successful, to make a +point of at least seeming loyal and good and pious, shows a typical +mingling of the sceptic and the utilitarian in sacred things. Moreover, +what Machiavelli taught was also common practice in his time, and soon +became a principle of brilliant statesmanship all over Europe. And to +add meaning to his case by associating it with others, conspicuously in +Descartes' time, as we have observed, and also in Athens at the time of +the Sophists, and in Jerusalem when the Pharisees flourished, the same +standpoint was much in vogue; while in our own times we do not need to +look far to find it. Education, social life, politics, religion abound +in it, for the tribe of the Machiavellists is no more a lost tribe than +it is one that began with him whose name it bears. If the name is too +offensive to some by reason of its connection with a particular +character and a particular period in Italian history, for Machiavellism +they may substitute institutionalism, certainly a more innocent term at +first sight; but the offensiveness, though hidden, [p.261] or +half-hidden, still remains a part of the fact with which we have to +deal. The meaning of institutionalism is just that of some asserted end +justifying any available means, and so under cover of its peculiar +conceits sanctioning violence. Watch any institution and see how one or +another of life's objects of devotion is become, or fast becoming, a +mere utility. The institution makes life mechanical, and doing this it +is as treacherous as it seems loyal to the treasured things of life, the +developed ideas and established customs; it is even as sceptical towards +them as it seems faithful; and in the spirit, if not in the letter, of +Machiavellism it shows them no longer implicitly worshipped, but in use, +which is to say, "put to the bankers," and so robbed of their character +of sacred treasures. And as for Machiavelli himself, it may be worth +while to remember that with all his offensiveness he has undoubtedly +been very much maligned, and that to any student of history he seems +only a very apt though an unpleasantly outspoken pupil of the most +powerful institution of his time--the Roman Church--for which things +moral and religious had certainly become effective instruments of very +worldly ambitions. So in Machiavellism or in institutionalism, the name +now being indifferent to us, we see worship passing into use; we see +sacred things become secular, or things supposed final becoming only +instrumental; and we see, therefore, what appears like loss or +decline.[1] + +[p.262] But can there be anything besides loss or decline? This again is +our question, and the answer now comes quick and decisive, whether we +are thinking of Machiavelli or the Sophists, of the old-time Pharisees, +or of those in our own life. Decline and even fall never tell the whole +story of anything, and just because they mean use, even secular use. +That men must worship is surely true, but also men must and do use, and +the use, in spite of the strain of the offence and resistance which it +is sure to arouse, brings profit always. Use, secular use, may imply +sacrifice of the letter or the established form, but it always leads to +liberation of the spirit. In scepticism, therefore, and the coincident +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards sacred things, in the +institutionalism which harbours all these, though often darkly and +secretly, we may always read, what in truth history has again and again +exemplified, the throes of birth, the birth of the spirit. Must it not +be that any visible institution, be it ecclesiastical or industrial or +political or educational or ceremonial, just because an institution +designed in some way to serve an active, growing life, is always an +outgrown, falling institution? As in the case of the Roman Church in the +days of Machiavelli, an institution upon its establishment actually +justifies its enemies by its own practices, while the enemies, so +justified, do but lay it bare, exposing its hidden thoughts and ways, +forcing reform upon it, and perhaps in the end themselves "remaining to +pray." + +So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of +society what a wonderful triumvirate, working [p.263] for the real +growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by +the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and +utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. Even +Machiavelli in his most offensive pronouncements must have felt +something between his lines which expressed would have transfigured +their meaning, not to say also his reputation, greatly, and, consciously +or unconsciously, he was certainly a party to the development of what is +best in modern life. As for the Sophists, whether we see them as +sceptics or conventionalists, did they not have Socrates among them? +Between them and him, when all is said, the difference was only that +between talent and genius, between great formal ingenuity, which always +means opportunism, and really vital insight, which, shattering +opportunism with its own weapons, means loyalty, not to existing forms, +but to the spirit dwelling in the forms. Much in the same way, too, the +Jewish Pharisees had Jesus, a contemporary, who did but recognize and +earnestly teach what they were really practising, namely, the utility of +the law, or the law for man, not man for the law. Only what for them was +merely a selfish opportunity, absorbed as they were in the vested +interests of their time and generation, was manifest to him--who was a +genius and who used for real gain the talent which they hoarded--as a +great spiritual fact, as a universal truth, bringing opportunity and +freedom to all men under all law, not to some men under one law. Thus +they were institutionalists; he, by merely turning their narrowness into +a principle of all life, became a reformer, and, indebted to them as he +was, he could [p.264] forgive them even when they opposed him. Genius +always forgives; the spirit always recalls and cherishes the letter that +has given it birth. + +So the institution as an historical fact, whether we see it with the +eyes of Machiavelli or with those of a pope, with the eyes of Protagoras +or with those of Socrates, with the eyes of the Pharisees or with those +of Christ, may show worship turning into use, the sacred becoming +secular, but it shows also the life of society becoming enriched; it +shows investment for future gain; it shows doubt, not destroying +anything, but achieving only what is real; it shows the life of the +spirit. + + +III. + +No period of man's earlier doubting can be more interesting than that of +the centuries just prior to the Christian era, when the peoples of the +Mediterranean contributed so much, directly and indirectly, to the +preparation for Christianity and to the discovery, or revelation, which +finally came and in due time changed the ancient to our modern world. +What the preparation was has already been indicated, at least partially, +in the references that have been made to the Sophists and to the +Pharisees. Christianity has been only the interest, the earned +increment, or rather should I not say the compounded principal, of the +scepticism, of the formalism and the utilitarianism which beset the +Greeks and the Hebrews, to mention no others, as their peculiar +civilizations were merging into the larger and deeper life of a great +empire. In their several lives the demand came, and came, too, from +within, not merely from without, as in all life [p.265] it must come, +for use of their gathered treasures, whether spiritual or material, and +the rise of Rome was but the result of that demand satisfied, of the use +realized. As for the scepticism, this with all its incidents made the +use possible, made it possible for the peoples to give or relinquish +what they had to the larger life to which they all belonged, while the +religion of Christianity spiritualized for them all the resulting +empire. + +Those wonderful races of the Mediterranean, who achieved--at least some +of them--such great things in all that counts for civilization, became +at the last most extravagant sceptics, not only formulating, but also +very generally living up to, the conviction of ignorance and +forgetfulness of reality. Everything which their long past had gathered +for them they resigned--or let me say crucified--and themselves they +threw, as if with an investor's recklessness, upon a world of chance or +fate, upon a world seemingly of empty forms in all human relations, a +world of disguises for license and of mere conceits of moral power and +religious piety. Sensuous mysticism and pantheism, formalism of all +kinds, Stoicism, Epicureanism, legalism, and cosmopolitanism were +crosses upon which one people and another, one class and another, nailed +their long-cherished devotions, their love of God and man and nature, of +temple and family and country. A great doubting, then, was truly theirs. +A great sacrificial offering was their preparation for Christianity. In +a way, with a completeness that seems to have no parallel in history, +they put their talents to the bankers--despairing, of course, but hoping +also, [p.266] if only their doubting, when it came, may be supposed as +genuine as their earlier believing. From the North and from the East and +from the South their good men came, and their rich and their wise, and +laid what they had at the feet of the life that was new born. + +People read their histories so differently. The pagan doubt, the +Christian revelation and belief, the conversion of the pagan world to +Christianity, the Renaissance, in which the conversion was in a sense +reversed, and the Reformation mean such different things to different +people. Some must still have it that paganism, or pre-Christianism, +ended in absolutely blind despair, in the avowal of complete failure--as +if such despair or failure could ever find words for its own utterance; +that Christianity came into a hopelessly pagan world wholly from +without, came into a world of nothing but unmixed doubt, and brought +with it nothing but unmixed belief; that the conversion was a sort of +conquest, by a power all its own capturing the pagans, so wholly +unnerved as to be quite incapable even of a futile resistance; that the +Renaissance, restoration as it was of the pagan life and thought, was at +best a great condescension on the part of Christendom and at worst an +unfortunate return to the pagan idols; and that in the Reformation the +Christian Religion Militant did but retreat upon the Bible as its +impregnable fortress. But such history can hardly be our history here. +For us the rise and the progress of Christianity have had quite a +different character. To strike at the foundation of that whole structure +the pagan doubting was too articulate. It was, also, too earnest. It was +too genuine. The races did indeed resign, as with [p.267] an investor's +recklessness, all that they had, but their recklessness was not unmixed. +Their doubting had hope in it as well as despair. It still loved the +spirit of what had been even when it betrayed the letter. It had its +martyrs, too, as well as its suicides; its sense of life as well as its +enervating fear of death. Say what you will, then, a great, warm, +yearning belief dwelt within it. And so, just because the pagan doubting +was too earnest and too genuine and too articulate, because it was, in +truth, a great sacrificial offering, the crucifixion on Calvary was also +too true to life at Athens and Alexandria, as well as to life at +Jerusalem, and the resurrection of the spirit was too true to life at +Rome; they were too true to mean anything but fulfilment and +achievement. Everywhere, in every place and in every department of life, +the letter had been rejected; but everywhere also--and this, nothing +else, was the true conversion to Christianity--the spirit was accepted. +Acceptance of the spirit, too, meant that in good time the letter would +be restored, as indeed at the Renaissance it surely was. + +Christianity, therefore, came when the times were ripe for it. It came +not from without, but deeply from within the pagan life of the +Mediterranean. Moreover, if in this way, not in that other way, we must +read the rise of Christianity, then we must read both the Renaissance +and the Reformation under the same light. The Renaissance, as was just +said, brought a restoration of the letter; but, necessarily, of the +letter under the light of the spirit, of the letter transfigured. The +Renaissance, so dramatically manifested in the Crusades, was only +Christendom returning to its [p.268] birthplace. With its crusades to +Jerusalem, to all the old capitals, to the pagan ideas and institutions, +to the ancient languages and literatures, Christianity rediscovered +itself in the past, winning back in this way some of its childhood, +curing a homesickness that a worldly church had made it feel, securing +for itself such a deep experience as comes to a man who, after years of +wandering and forgetting, has returned to the home of his infancy. And +as for the Reformation--if indeed this was a retreat, shall we say, of a +defeated religion upon the Bible, its supposed impregnable fortress--we +need only to remember the pagan origin, the Hebrew and the Greek +inspiration, and the Roman atmosphere of that sacred book. + +And of the relation of Christianity to paganism, just one thing more. +The Christian revelation, so wonderfully portrayed and enacted in the +life and character of Jesus, was only an idealization, a spiritual +interpretation, of the very present, the thoroughly actual life of the +time, of the life that the pagans, doubting but believing, despairing +but also trusting, resigning all but hoping for more, had already +brought upon themselves; a life of self-denial, of common, universal +humanity, all men being "members one of another," and of perfect faith. +Perhaps the self-denial was bravely concealed in an accepted subjection, +but it was not less real. Perhaps the common humanity was military and +imperial, yet it also was real. Perhaps, too, the faith was blind and +fatalistic, but it was nevertheless faith. Can faith go farther or do +more than fatalism? The pagans, then, had become Christians in fact or +status, and Christianity came, breathing [p.269] life into the bare +fact, into the self-denial, and the broad humanity and the faith, and +made these not the mere phases of bare fact or condition, but motives +and ideals, manifesting them heroically in a single human life, and so +in the form and with the power of a personal discovery of self. + +Where genuine doubt is the God is always born. + + +IV. + +To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, +for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising +questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality +and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous +as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often +become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage +casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the +English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics +have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, +given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for +example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in +the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and +intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an +unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail +to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the +formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English +history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. +Frenchmen, though [p.270] so neighbourly to England, have been +conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and +problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more +vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, +throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and +consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear +or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. +Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more +effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not +revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. +Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this--witness +their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises--or only +other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this--witness the +testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic +example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English +people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in +religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their +past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the +forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in +Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it +now to give it point. + +Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may +be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude +doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is +peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own +dangers. To be candid, in the [p.271] sense of the word here intended, +is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, +and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and +fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or +reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the +possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, +and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the +reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full +due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the +same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his +philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was +taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid +English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to +anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or +subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable--in a word, to +nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, +again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a +positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been +a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great +enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal--if not unideal--substitute for the +present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and +government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present +responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or +almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost +never, something that lives in and [p.272] through God and government +and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and +Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare +and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or +Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature +has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest +English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand +English deism; the _laissez faire_ economics; the peculiar nature and +growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; +the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and +bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English +people's progressive conservatism? + +The most radical doubt must eventually appeal to nature and, what is +more, must sooner or later bring man to live with nature practically and +responsibly, intimately and sympathetically; but candour, like the +candour of the English, that never doubts without at the same time +believing, lives ever with her. Perhaps the English people need to have +what they seem never to have had--though the Armada threatened something +of the kind, and the loss of the thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war +was, not without its value--a great, overpowering disaster, a deep +all-searching despair; yet, be this as it may, their part in the +struggle of a life that must always doubt in order to grow is always +instructive and is often inspiring. + + +[p.273] + +V. + +The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful +triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we +must return to that characterization. The other members of the +triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great +spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of +the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the +others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there +are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and +the believer face each other squarely and honestly. _Both_ are parties +to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the +contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional +conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always +belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can +there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental +sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the +differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized +society, without betraying them? + +At once opponents and companions--this is the truth about the doubter +and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite +justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for +that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to +you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him +who hides his doubts in an outward show that [p.274] almost deceives him +as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of +intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or +individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a +camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or +has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life +everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, +law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or +treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to +stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, +have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, +and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The +doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; +the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which +each has and must feel his social rôle, but, at most and worst, they are +only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to +quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part +of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just +one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"--instead of off +at some tangent. + +Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have +him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold +to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he +turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he +could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place, +that his decision [p.275] not only must be made, and made strongly, one +way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third +place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement. +Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing +finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the +contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know +they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent +harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them +really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home, +making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to +my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with +yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with +his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So +fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions. + + +VI. + +Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those +well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring +injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to +be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and +seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all +the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of +these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat +old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,[2] [p.276] +once published a book entitled, _Poetry, Comedy and Duty_. Exactly what +his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of +life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly +and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in +substance if not in form, can not be very far from his. + +Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where +extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of +such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also +in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics +cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for +comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no +residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may +utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily +confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is +bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no +understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest +sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are +companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment--at +least among the gods. + +But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly +comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but +also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is +the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its +conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct +[p.277] way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem, +can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they +insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be +dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the +metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never +can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant +always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never +prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience, +it is always a _tertium quid_, can such a reality ever be present to any +other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face; +it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and +informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge; +for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation +and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man +thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity +of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the +analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily +partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its +parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy--that is, by +projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its +natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both +insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the +grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the +crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life, +is poetry. For [p.278] him who is lacking in both insight and humour, +who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality +accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose +is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly +bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it +presents--that is, in its subject-matter--it is always, not adequate and +inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in +short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, +to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is +above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license +poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever +prefers reality to prosaic peace. + +So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and +inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular +in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all +well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and +complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is +quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too +precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when +not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any +way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's +notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even +profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a +word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such +questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, +[p.279] though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that +the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, +only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry +always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry +of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring +relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme +or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he +continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a +responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal +precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not +if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? +Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real +duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as +they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly +feel their living obligation. + +For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is +both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than +just the principle, deeply true: _Whatever is, is right_. Men have +laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect +mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic +fact? But truth it is; _the_ truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal +comedy--the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem. + + +[1] As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth and +sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great change +of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or economics, +of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual life, were +becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting monarchy, +Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc. + +[2] The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University. + + + + +INDEX + + A + + Abstraction, of science, 58, 107; and duplicity, 61 + Agnosticism, 75, 106; special dangers of, 111, 117; dogmatic and + instrumental, 120; as call for action, 125; as passion for real + life, 128 + Analogy, among the sciences, 97; of individual self to environment, 155; + of universal to particular, 33, 220 + Anaxagoras, 94 + Anaximander, 34, 94, 147 + Anti-vitalism, 147 + Aristotle, 155, 156 + Atomism, 97, 102 + + B + + Babylonians, 106 + Bacon, 176 + Baldwin, 15 + Belief, as unquestioning, 8, 194; and doubt, 53, 105, 107, 130, 133, + 192, 248 + Biology, 88, 90, 104, 110 + Boehme, 177 + Body, and soul, 227, 237; immortality of, 141, 234 + Bradley, 153 n. + Burns, 94 + + C + + Candour, of the English, 270 + Carlyle, 126 + Catholicism, 175 + Causation, 39, 82, 83, 109, 205 + Change, and habit, 15; as motive, 17; of purpose, 11 + Charron, 177, 180 + Chemistry, 34, 36, 88, 90, 91, 110 + Christ, 51, 246, 263 + Christianity, and immortality, 240; preparation for, 266; different + views of history of, 266 + Christian Science, 2, 32 n. + Class, the social, 62, 126, 162; relation of, to doubt and belief, 171 + Comedy, 275 + Companionship, with nature, 21, 71; with man, 24; with God, 26 + Contradiction, in ordinary views, 30; in idea of reality, 30; + of unity, 33; of space and time, 38; of causation, 39; of + knowledge, 41; of morality, 44; of law, 49; as of value in + experience, 4, 37, 131; and dualism, 101; as corrective of + narrowness, 100, 116, 143; as meaning action, 136; as realizing + unity, 137; as securing reality and practicality, 145; as + requiring society, 147; as not to be cultivated for its own + sake, 151; as related to person and class, 170 + Conventionalism, 66, 260 + Creationalism, 82, 202 + Crusades, 267 + + D + + Death, 141, 151, 239 + Deduction, 97 + Democritus, 65 + Development, special, transferable, 165 + Descartes, 6, 172, 196, 251, 254 + Dichotomy, 101 + Dogmatism, and fear, 9; and belief, 194 + Doubt, as widespread, 1, 7; actual, if possible, 6; as essential to + consciousness, 9; and habit, 14; as making life real, 18; and + feeling of dependence, 21; as Basking company, 21, 255; as mediator + between old and now, 25; and atheism, 27; and belief, 55, 105, 130, + 133, 192, 248, 273; as investment for gain, 259; and candour, 270 + Dualism, 64, 101, 147, 209 + Duplicity, of science, 61; of life, 118 + Duty, 47, 278 + + E + + Education, and interest, 18 n. + Emerson, 144 + Energism, 147 + England, peculiar scepticism in, 269 + Environment, as source of conduct, 46; social environment and personal + individual, 169, 231 + Epicureanism, 116, 265 + Epistemology, 92 + Evil, and good, 45, 133, 150, 276 + Evolution, 78, 202, 246 + Experience, unity of, 160 + Experimentalism, 68 + + F + + Fatalism, 49 + Fear, and dogmatism, 9 + France, peculiar scepticism in, 271 + Freedom, of will, 47; of thought, 211, 227 + + G + + Galilei, 177 + Genius, 168, 196, 263 + God, Descartes' proof of, 181; fallacy in D.'s proof of, 189; + D.'s idea of, 186, 190; sceptic's idea of, 26, 187, 190, 203; + death of, 237; birth of, 269 + + H + + Habit, and doubt, 14 + Hebrews, 25, 264 + Hedonism, 64, 147, 265 + Hegel, 20, 147 + Heraclitus, 147, 152 + Hering, 147 + Hero-worship, 243 + History, standpoint of, 79; of Christianity, different views of, 266 + Hope, even in doubt, 13, 19, 37, 48, 53, 105 + Horace, 21 + Hypotheses, working, 89, 93, 258 + + I + + Idealism, 65, 147 + Illusions, 2, 23 n., 254 + Immortality, 141, 234 + Impostor, the, 253 + Individualism, 72, 116 + Individuality, 155, 165, 224 + Induction, 72, 97 + Industrialism, 222 + Infinity, 52, 102, 142 + Institutions and institutionalism, 16, 59, 260 + Interest theory, in education, 18 n. + + J + + Jesuits, 172 + Jesus, 51, 246, 263 + Jews, 25, 264 + Jurisprudence, standpoint of, 13, 47 + + K + + Kant, 110, 147 + Knowledge, contradictory views of, 41; of law, and freedom, 51, 212; + and the unknowable, 106 + + L + + Labour, division of, in special relation of person and class, 163; + division of, in experience, 232 + Law, standpoint of, 13; courts of, 47; contradiction in idea of, 49; + and nature, 51, 218 + Lawlessness, 51, 141, 261 + Leadership, 168, 196, 263 + Leibnitz, 133, 154, 210 + Lessing, 19 + Louis XIV, 172 + Luther, 174 + + M + + Macaulay, 270 + Machiavelli, 66, 261, 263 + Malebranche, 198 + Materialism, 65, 147, 175 + Mathematics, 88, 91, 96, 133, 177, 215 + Mechanic, the, as social type, 228; peculiar death of, 238 + Mechanicalism, 82, 218 + Method, Socratic, 71; historical, 95; experimental, 84, 95; + mathematical, 96 + Miracles, 53, 246 + Monism, 147 + Montaigne, 172, 176, 184 + Münsterberg, 109 n., 112, 119 + Mysticism, 176 + + N + + Nast, 97 + Nativism, 196 + Nature, return to, 22; relation of science to, 23, 56, 74; and + God, 26, 203, 271; sympathy of, 23, 203; and law, 51, 220; + as mechanical, 217; English and French views of, 271; + knowledge of law of, and freedom, 49, 212 + Necessity, in conduct, 47; superstition of, 49, 212 + Negativity, 3, 20, 37, 83, 85, 94, 101, 125, 133, 147 + Newton, 97 + + O + + Oratory of Jesus, 176 + + P + + Paradoxes, in ordinary consciousness, 30; in science, 75, 98; in + religion, 103 + Parallelism, 204 + Paris, 172, 192, 251 + Parmenides, 94 + Pascal, 180 + Person, nature of, 155, 165; relation to reality, 170, 184; + relation to doubt and belief, 171; part in society, 169, 231 + Pharisees, 262 + Physics, 87, 90; epistemological, 94 + Pillsbury, 212 n. + Plato, 65, 155, 156 + Poetry, 276 + Positivism, 73, 106, 122 + Practice, and theory, 113 + Principle, and programme, 183, 191, 194 + Programme, and principle, 183, 191, 194 + Protagoras, 264 + Protestants and Protestantism, 174, 268 + Psychology, 10, 87, 91, 210, 212 n.; physical, 92 + Purpose, 11, 83, 84 + + Q + + Question of fact, in science, 83 + + R + + Radicalism, 66 + Realism, of doubter, 193; of believer, 193; in contradiction, 143 + Reality, double views of, 30 + Reformation, 173, 266, 267 + Relative, the, 10, 136, 199, 200 + Relativity, law of, 10, 136 + Religion, and scepticism, 27, 184, 189, 268; as paradoxical, 103 + Renaissance, 173, 268, 267 + Rome, 267 + Rousseau, 23, 271 + + S + + Scepticism, 176, 265, 269 + Science, as a return to nature, 23; like ordinary consciousness, 57; + as confessing to limitations, 56; defined, 58; as abstract, 58; + as a "looking before leaping," 58; and duplicity, 61, 129; method + of, and environment, 71; specialism of, 71, 84; as inductive, 72; + objectivism of, 75; technique of, 76; and real life, 80, 125, 128; + as conservative, 81; and question of fact, 83; as negative and + destructive, 83; specialism of, 71, 86; "mergers" in, 91; + physical, as self-consciousness, 94; as paradoxical, 75, 98; + agnosticism of, 106; aloofness of, in ideas of space and time and + causation, 108, 109; application of, 114; scepticism of, 23, 258 + Sin, original, 131 + Skill, special, as transferable, 165 + Smith, Adam, 257 + Socialism, 116 + Society, as sought by sceptic, 21; as related to individual, 42, 165, + 171, 231; and science, 23, 60; division of experience in, 60; + as real to lower organisms, 84; as medium of conflict, 147 + Society of Jesus, 174 + Sociology, 88 + Socrates, 20, 70, 147, 263 + Soldier, the, 228, 238 + Sophists, 66, 262 + Soul, contradiction in idea of, 35; and body, 227, 237; immortality + of, 141, 234 + Space, 37, 38, 108 + Specialism, blindness of, 87; in social organization, 71; of science, + 71, 86; dreams of, 87; artificiality of, 87, 97; contradictions + due to, 63, 98; passing of, 128 + Spinoza, 24, 147, 179, 198 + Spirit, reality, or truth, as a, 152; of veracity, 105, 133, 170, 214 + Stoicism, 116, 265 + Supernaturalism, 32, 52, 147 + Superstition, 49, 218 + + T + + Technique, 76, 119; special, as transferable, 165 + Tennyson, 89 + Thales, 34 + Theology, 26, 131 + Time, 37, 38, 108 + Training, special, as transferable, 165 + Truth, spirit of, 105, 133, 170, 214 + + U + + Unity, contradiction in idea of, 31; as expressed through + contradiction, 137; of experience, 160 + Universality, of doubt, 1, 7; of human characters in general, 161 + Utilitarianism, 66, 261, 263 + + V + + Validity, spirit of, 105, 133, 153, 214 + Vanini, 176, 180 + Vitalism, 147 + + W + + Will, nature of, 11; freedom of, 47; to believe, 193; in relation + to agnosticism, 121, 125 + + Z + + Zeno, 109, 147 + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 34198 *** diff --git a/34198-h/34198-h.htm b/34198-h/34198-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9122926 --- /dev/null +++ b/34198-h/34198-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7773 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Will To Doubt, by Alfred H. Lloyd. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: 0.8em; + text-align: right; + color: #C0C0C0; +} /* page numbers */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 34198 ***</div> + +<h1>THE WILL TO DOUBT</h1> + +<h3>AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE</h3> + +<h3>GENERAL THINKER</h3> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>ALFRED H. LLOYD</h2> + +<h4>Truth hath neither visible form nor body; it is without habitation or name;</h4> +<h4>like the Son of Man it hath not where to lay its head.</h4> + + +<h4>LONDON</h4> + +<h4>SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim.</h4> + +<h5>25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C.</h5> + + +<h4>1907</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + + +<p>The chapters that follow comprise what might be called an introduction +to philosophy, but such a description of them would probably be +misleading, for they are addressed quite as much to the general reader, +or rather to the general thinker, as to the prospective student of +technical philosophy. They are the attempt of a University teacher of +philosophy to meet what is a real emergency of the day, namely, the +doubt that is appearing in so many departments of life, that is +affecting so many people, and that is fraught with so many dangers, and +in attempting this they would also at least help to bridge the chasm +between academic sophistication and practical life, self-consciousness +and positive activity. With peculiar truth at the present time the +University can justify itself only by serving real life, and it can +serve real life, not merely by bringing its pure science down to, or up +to, the health and the industrial pursuits of the people, but also by +explaining, which is even to say by applying, as science is "applied," +or by animating the general scepticism of the time.</p> + +<p>That this scepticism is often charged to the peculiar training of the +University hardly needs to be said, but except for its making such an +undertaking as the present essay only the more appropriate the charge +itself is strangely humorous. One might also accuse the University of +making atoms and germs, or, by its magic theories, of generating +electricity or disease. Scepticism is a world-wide, life-wide fact; even +like heat or electricity, it is a natural force or agent—unless +forsooth one must exclude all the attitudes of mind from what in the +fullest and deepest sense is natural; scepticism, in short, is a real +phase of whatever is real, and its explanation is an academic +responsibility. Its explanation, however, like the explanation of +everything real or natural, can be complete only when, as already +suggested here, its application and animation have been achieved, or +when it has been shown to be properly and effectively an object of will. +So, just as we have the various applied sciences, in this essay there is +offered an applied philosophy of doubt, a philosophy that would show +doubt to have a real part in effective action, and that with the showing +would make both the doubting and the acting so much the more effective.</p> + +<p>But it may be said that effective acting depends, not on doubt, but +rather on belief, on confidence or "credit." This will prove to be true, +excepting in what it denies. To be commonplace, to write down here and +now what is at once the truism and the paradox of this book, a vital, +practical belief must always live by doubting. Was it Schopenhauer who +declared that man walks only by saving himself at every step from a +fall? The meaning of this book is much the same, although no pessimism +is either intended or necessarily implied in such a declaration. Doubt +is no mere negative of belief; rather it is a very vital part of belief, +it has a place in the believer's experience and volition; the doubters +in society, be they trained at the University or not, and those +practical creatures in society who have kept the faith, who believe and +who do, are naturally and deeply in sympathy. And this essay seeks to +deepen their natural sympathy.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is my simple thesis. Doubt is essential to real belief. +Perhaps this means that all vital problems are bound in a real life to +be perennial, and certainly it cannot mean that in its support I may be +expected by my readers to give a solution of every special problem that +might be raised, an answer to every question about knowledge or +morality, about religion or politics or industry, that might be asked. +Problems and questions, of course the natural children, not of doubt, +but of doubt and belief, may be as worthy and as practical as solutions. +Some of them may be even better put than answered. But be this as it +may, the present essay must be taken for what it is, not for something +else. It is, then, for reasons not less practical than theoretical, an +attempt to face and, so far as may be, to solve the very general problem +of doubt itself, or say simply—if this be simple—the problem of +whatever in general is problematic; and, this done, to suggest what may +be the right attitude for doubters and believers towards each other and +towards life and the world which is life's natural sphere; emphatically +it is not the announcement of a programme for life in any of its +departments.</p> + +<p>The substance of chapters I., II., III., IV., and V. in small parts, and +VI. and VIII. was given during the summer of 1903 in lectures before the +Glenmore School of the Culture Sciences at Hurricane in the Adirondacks, +and except for some revision chapters V. and VII. have already been +published—<i>Science</i>, July 5, 1902, and the <i>Journal of Philosophy, +Psychology and Scientific Methods</i>, June, 1905.</p> + +<p>To Professor Muirhead, the Editor of the Ethical Library, I wish here to +express my hearty appreciation of his interest and assistance in the +final preparation of this volume for publication.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 23em;">A. H. L.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em"> +CONTENTS.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#I">I.</a> Introduction<br /> +<a href="#II">II.</a> The Confession of Doubt<br /> +<a href="#III">III.</a> Difficulties in the Ordinary View of Things<br /> +<a href="#IV">IV.</a> The View of Science: its Rise and Consequent Character<br /> +<a href="#V">V.</a> The View of Science: its Peculiar Limitations<br /> +<a href="#I_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_OBJECTIVE">i.</a> Science would be Objective<br /> +<a href="#II_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_SPECIALISTIC">ii.</a> Science would be Specialistic<br /> +<a href="#III_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_AGNOSTIC">iii.</a> Science would be Agnostic<br /> +<a href="#VI">VI.</a> Possible Value in these Essential Defects of Experience<br /> +<a href="#VII">VII.</a> The Personal and the Social, the Vital and the Formal in Experience<br /> +<a href="#VIII">VIII.</a> An Early Modern Doubter<br /> +<a href="#IX">IX.</a> The Doubter's World<br /> +<a href="#I_REALITY_WITHOUT_FINALITY_IN_ALL_THINGS">i.</a> Reality, without Finality, in all Things<br /> +<a href="#II_THE_PERFECT_SYMPATHY_BETWEEN_THE_SPIRITUAL_AND_THE_MATERIAL">ii</a>. Perfect Sympathy between the Spiritual and the Material<br /> +<a href="#III_A_GENUINE_INDIVIDUALITY">iii.</a> A Genuine Individuality<br /> +<a href="#IV_IMMORTALITY">iv.</a> Immortality<br /> +<a href="#X">X.</a> Doubt and Belief<br /> +<a href="#INDEX">Index</a><br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>THE WILL TO DOUBT.</h2> + + + +<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h3> + +<h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p001" id="p001"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.001]</span> +Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of +doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different +departments of life one sees doubt. And one sees, too, some of the +blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that +one sees. There is heat everywhere in the physical world, but not +necessarily only arson or even destructive fire. Morals, however, social +life, industry, politics, religion, have suffered somewhat—and many +would insist very seriously—from the prevailing doubt. Moreover, if the +outward view shows doubt everywhere, the inward view is at least not +more reassuring. Who can examine his own consciousness without finding +doubt at work there? We would often hide it from others, not to say from +ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. Other times +may also have been times of doubt, but our day, as the time to which we +certainly owe our first and chief <a name="p002" id="p002"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.002]</span> duty, is very conspicuously +and very seriously a time of doubt.</p> + +<p>Now there are some, and they are many, who would decry the discussion of +such a thing as doubt, for they see only danger ahead. Doubt they +compare with death or disease, and to dwell upon any of these is idle, +unnatural, morbid. Why not let such things alone, and look only to what +is pleasant, to what is good and true and beautiful? Then, too, doubt, +the confession of doubt, is the royal entrance to philosophy and the +risk of an entanglement with philosophy, which seems to them the source +of much that is harmful, the essence of all that is impractical, is +altogether too great. Doubt for them is even less to be played with than +fire, with which already it has been compared here. Again, as others in +matters political and industrial, so they in matters intellectual and +spiritual resent anything that appears likely in any way to disturb the +standing credit of the country. To doubt is just to join the opposition, +and the opposition is made up of heretics and agents generally of mere +destruction. To treat doubt as real and positively significant, as +having any true worth in human experience, as being even a proper object +of will, is to stop permanently, not the wheels of commerce and +industry, but the wheels of the present life in all its phases. In a +word, perhaps one of the words of the hour, Christian Science has not +wished to be more inhospitable to the reality of disease than have these +believers to the reality and usefulness of doubt.</p> + +<p>Yet all who feel in this way are short-sighted. Their contentions, like +those of their cousins, perhaps <a name="p003" id="p003"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.003]</span> their country cousins, the +Christian Scientists, may have worth for being corrective, but at very +best they are only one-sided. In a fable, never in real life, a man +might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize +the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the +alarm of fire would involve; but doubt is not less real nor less +dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful +applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, +then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook +or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a +part in real life? The negative things of life can be so only +relatively. Death itself cannot possibly be absolute, and doubt, not +unlike death, indeed perhaps only one of death's messengers, must be +even a gift, or an agent, of the gods. Some things, dangerous when +hidden, are wonderfully serviceable, when recognized and controlled. +Sometimes men really have entertained angels unawares.</p> + +<p>And so throughout these chapters, although some may think me and those +who follow me morbid, and although we may have to enter the dangerous +parlour of philosophy, the doubt of our time is to be squarely and +fairly faced. In all candour, we are from the start to be confessed +parties to it, hiding nothing intentionally, and at the same time trying +always to give nothing undue emphasis. The doubt that all seem to know, +that many really feel without perhaps clearly confessing, and that some +confess or even actually boast, we shall face and examine closely, +<a name="p004" id="p004"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.004]</span> trying as we can to find its true meaning and real worth. In +short, the confession of doubt, of our doubt, and the fruits of +confession are the burden of these chapters.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2> + +<h3>THE CONFESSION OF DOUBT.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p005" id="p005"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.005]</span> +Our confession must, of course, be thorough-going, and can be made so +only through a complete statement of every possible reason that +experience affords for the attitude of doubt. To the end, therefore, of +such a statement we shall consider in this chapter certain general and +easily recognized facts about doubt itself, while in chapters that +follow we shall continue the confession by examining, first, our +customary or "common-sense" view of things, and then the view of +science, and having brought together in each case numerous +incongruities, or contradictions, which ordinarily are at best only +casually noticed or timorously overlooked, we shall find ourselves +facing in a peculiarly telling way, not only certain strong reasons for +doubt, but also some of the real issues that doubt raises. As no issue, +moreover, can be more central or crucial than the meaning of the +contradictions found to pervade our views of things, before completing +our confession we shall allow ourselves some reflections, that should +prove useful to us in the end, upon the possible worth of contradiction +in human experience; for even to casual thinking contradiction, although +good ground for scepticism, suggests some positive advantage and +opportunity; the advantage of breadth, <a name="p006" id="p006"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.006]</span> for example, of freedom +from special form, or the opportunity of personal spontaneity and +initiative as against the restraints of formal consistency, of class, +and of institution; and if these things, among others, can be associated +with our case for doubt, our reflections will certainly not have been in +vain. Then we shall close our confession by seeking the companionhip of +a great doubter of modern times, and by learning what we can from him of +doubt itself and of the doubter's natural world. And finally, as a +result of all our own efforts, supplemented by his help, we shall be +able to reap some of the fruits for life and thought that a confession +so fully made may fairly claim.</p> + +<p>From start to finish, moreover, of this study of doubt we have to +remember that there can be no important difference between what is +possible and what is real. Thus anything whatsoever that can possibly be +doubted is really doubtful. Also, if anybody is amazed to hear mention +of facts about doubt, as if doubt should not somehow submit to its own +nostrum, let him merely reflect that, strangely enough, nothing is quite +so indubitable as doubt, nothing so convincing as the reasons for doubt. +Let me not be too subtle, but to doubt doubt is only to affirm it, and +somehow—whether for good or ill need not now be said—all the negative +things of life possess a peculiar certainty, and are all most easily +proved. A great Frenchman once put the case quite plainly when he said, +after canvassing very carefully the whole field of his consciousness, +that his doubts were the only things there, the only things he could be +quite certain about, and these were so very real that they left him +absolutely <a name="p007" id="p007"></a><span class="linenum">[p.007]</span> nothing but belief in himself, in his all-doubting +and ever-doubting self, to rest upon. His was surely a sweeping +confession, and his residuum of belief may not at first sight seem very +promising or very substantial, but quickly, I think, we shall find +ourselves in agreement with him, at least as to the reality and the wide +scope of our doubting, and it is also a possibility well worth +foreseeing that we may even find his belief in the reality of an +ever-doubting and all-doubting self a rock for our own saving.</p> + +<p>So, to turn now to those general and easily recognized facts, which were +to be the special interest of the present chapter, in the first place: +<i>We are all universal doubters</i>. We are all universal doubters in the +sense that every one of us doubts something, and there is nothing which +some of us have not doubted. Who would be so rash as to say that what a +fellow-being had questioned might not be questionable to himself also, +or that, if anything in his own experience had ever been subject to +question, all the other things might not also be subject to question? +But the merely dubitable is the already doubtful. In this sense, +therefore, not so abstruse and formally logical as it may appear, we are +all universal doubters.</p> + +<p>Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, +some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and +science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive +things these verities are! How shallow, or how hollow all of them are, +or at one time or another may become. To take a rather minute case, such +as it is <a name="p008" id="p008"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.008]</span> always the philosopher's license to make use of, a case +that is, however, quite typical in experience; here is a word—any word +you like—that has been spoken and written by you for years. Always +before it has been spelt correctly and clearly understood, but to-day +how unreal it seems. Are those the right letters, and are they correctly +placed? Is that the true meaning? What has happened, too, to give rise +to these unusual questions? Well, who can say? And who has not +substantially asked every one of them, not merely with reference to some +long-familiar word, but also with reference to much larger things in +life? Self and society, love and friendship, mind and matter, nature and +God have again and again been subjected to essentially the same +questioning. The verities of life, all the way from simple words used +every day to the great things of our moral and spiritual being, have +lost, sometimes slowly, sometimes very suddenly, the reality with which +we have supposed them endowed, and although we may still bravely believe +we find ourselves crying out passionately for help in our unbelief. +There certainly are the verities; not one of them can possibly fall to +the ground; yet these very verities are never quite in our experience.</p> + +<p>Still the world has its thoroughly confident people. Every one of us has +met some of those estimable beings to whom doubt seems wholly foreign, +people who assert with trembling voice and sacred vow that their +convictions, political perhaps or religious, are unassailable, and that +they must hold them to the grave. But, whatever may be said of political +convictions, religious convictions have often been <a name="p009" id="p009"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.009]</span> regarded as a +contradiction of terms. How can one be sure and religious at the same +time? Moreover, positive people under any standard are notoriously as +fearful as they are dogmatic. Fear is often, if not always, the chief +motive of dogmatism, and fear is hardly the most natural companion of +genuine confidence. The part which the emotion of fear has had, both in +the personal life and in the doctrine of the dogmatic among men, would +make a most instructive study.</p> + +<p>If, then, dogmatic people are slaves to their fears, while more +thoughtful people, as has not needed to be said, seem to get no reward +from their self-consciousness but the uncertain reward of their doubts, +then only such as live quietly, asserting nothing, depending on nothing, +and even assuming nothing, but simply taking what comes, are left to +represent genuine belief. Yet how many such are there? A few may seem to +approach the ideal, if ideal it be, but the class itself in realization +must be said to be a hypothetical one, and few, if any, of us could ever +really envy or strive to imitate its supposed manner of living; for, in +spite of all the dangers and all the doubts and fears, only the +constantly examined life can ever really lure us. Doubt, besides being a +general condition of life, seems to be also incident to what gives life +worth.</p> + +<p>But, furthermore, not only are we all universal doubters; the case for +doubt in the world is, if possible, even stronger; for also—and this is +the second general fact: <i>Doubt is a phase, nay, a vital condition of +all consciousness</i>. To be a conscious creature is to be a doubting +creature.</p> + +<p><a name="p010" id="p010"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.010]</span> In so many ways psychology is teaching us to-day with renewed +emphasis that we are conscious of nothing as it is, and that more or +less clearly we all know our shortcoming in this regard; or again, with +still more directness and emphasis, that for us there is no such thing +as a state of consciousness which does not indicate tension, or unstable +equilibrium, that is to say uncertainty, in our activity. Nor have we +need of the testimony of science to these facts, since common personal +experience is well aware of them. In small things and in great +consciousness transforms or refracts. In small things and in great +consciousness marks a moment of poise between an impulse to do +something, and more or less distinctly recognized conditions or +relations that would put restraint upon the doing of it. Even the law of +relativity, a psychological law only in its definite formulation, in its +idea a simple fact of everyday experience, true for all conscious states +from the crudest perceptions of the organs of sense to the most highly +developed ideas of critical reflection, by binding as it does all the +details of actual or possible experience into a whole, every part of +which acts upon the other parts, points very directly to this fact of +poise and instability, besides indicating also that knowledge never can +be literally or objectively exact, and that at least with some clearness +every knower must know it cannot. How can there ever be even a single +stable or a single finally accurate element in the consciousness of a +creature whose experience, in the first place, can comprise only +related, interdependent parts, and whose nature, in the second place, is +an essentially mobile and active <a name="p011" id="p011"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.011]</span> one? Moreover, as just one +other way of suggesting the inexactness and uncertainty of consciousness +and the balancing, tentative nature of all conscious life, we always +think, and think properly, of conscious creatures as having will, as +doing what they do purposely or from design. The new psychology, +however, to which we naturally turn, and which again has only formulated +what we can recognize from everyday experience, declares that the +purpose in conscious activity is not a developed, but an always +developing one. Purposive action is action that never finally knows, but +is ever finding out its real intent, purpose being identical with the +progressively discovered meaning of action. A volitionally, purposively +active being is always a seeker as well as a doer. Indeed, any doing +would itself be empty, or idle, if it were not a seeking, and so if it +were not subject to conditions of some uncertainty. In so many ways, +then, through the necessary inexactness of consciousness, through the +unstable equilibrium of all conscious activity, through the law and fact +of relativity, and through the tentative and provisional nature which +must always belong to purpose, we see how doubt must be a phase or +condition of all consciousness.</p> + +<p>Illustrations are abundant. Thus, once more to take a somewhat minute +case, which is really more significant for being minute, with regard to +conscious activity being in a state of tension, visual sensations always +involve muscular sensations, and these are incident not only to +expressed, but also to possible, yet restrained, movements. The eyes may +have been <a name="p012" id="p012"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.012]</span> moved and the head turned, but in spite of the +impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the +observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been +raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines, +although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always +present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. Or, +again, to adopt an illustration used for a different purpose by +Professor William James, so simple a process as the spelling of a word +is complicated with all sorts of diverting and unsettling impulses as +each letter is expressed. Let the word be <i>onomatopoetic</i>. Can I really +spell it correctly? And what a gauntlet of dangers I have to run. The +initial letter <i>o</i> tempts, perhaps with childhood memories of the +alphabet, to <i>p-q-r-s-t</i>, etc., or to indefinite words or syllables, +actual from my past or possible to my future experience, such as <i>of, +off, opine, October, -ology, -ovy</i>, and so on, or, to suggest mere +possibilities, such as <i>ontic, oreate, ot</i>, or <i>ow</i>; and every +succeeding letter is equally a scene of combat, a place of dangers +met—safely met, let us hope, and triumphantly passed. Worthy the boy, +or the man, who reaches the end unhurt. And what a voyage of +uncertainties, what a course between hope and fear, confidence and +doubt, the spelling of words or the spelling of life as a whole always +is. One's whole vocabulary, real or possible, or one's whole repertory +of acts is more or less directly involved, whatever one does. As to the +tentative nature of purpose, which seems the only other point here that +can possibly require illustration, the right we all <a name="p013" id="p013"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.013]</span> reserve to +change our minds in the different affairs of life tells its own story. +We never do do, or can do, exactly what we consciously would do; and +recognizing this, men, as well as women, insist on the right of a change +of mind, and sometimes even of conscious misrepresentation or of +disparity between their seeming and their being in thought or in deed. +That such a claim has its dangers does not now concern us; it has also +its opportunities; but the fact of it and the ground for it are quite +evident. Even jurisprudence, for which loyalty to established and +visible forms is peculiarly sacred, has its ways, direct and indirect, +of recognizing that purposes develop, that the returns are never all in, +that any purpose or meaning must sooner or later assume a new form, and +so may even now be other than it seems. Bequests for institutions, for +example, are allowed to continue in force, although, with the demands of +a more enlightened day, the formal conditions under which they were made +have been openly violated. In short—for it all comes to this—"Not the +letter, but the spirit," is an inevitable comment, or at least an +inevitable feeling about everything that is done. A man vaults a fence, +and then, even if he get over fairly well, vaulting is not what it was +for him. He may continue to use the old word, or the same arms and legs, +but with a changed meaning and a changed feeling of limb and muscle, and +so with a new purpose and a new body to control and modify his next +performance. And what is true for vaulting is true also for making boxes +or tables, for writing essays, for talking, for thinking, for founding +colleges or theological seminaries, or finally, for <a name="p014" id="p014"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.014]</span> what we so +indefinitely call living. An activity such as throughout its length and +breadth ours is, conscious activity that must for ever heed the call: +"Not the letter, but the spirit," an activity that never is, therefore, +and never can be without the elements of the game, since it must ever +wait on its own revealed consequences in order to grow into an +understanding of its real meaning; such an activity, among other things, +cannot but fasten doubt upon us as a most natural heritage. As man is +conscious, to doubt is human. Other things may be human, too, but doubt +is so certainly and conspicuously.</p> + +<p>Thirdly, in this presentation of general facts: <i>Doubt is inseparable +from habit</i>. Habit is usually associated with what is permanent and +established, but just here lies its undoing. As we usually understand +it, habit really deadens what it touches by leading to abstraction or +separation from actual conditions. Conservative as it surely is in +things important and in things unimportant, in things personal and in +things social, it sets him who is party to it behind the times, for no +act in its second expression, no simply repeated act, no mere habit +could ever be up to date in the sense of really meeting all the +emergencies of its own time. Personal habits make fixed characters; +social habits make customs and laws; religious habits make churches and +creeds; intellectual habits make schools; and of all these products, +which for the sake of the single term we will call institutions, it must +be said, however paradoxically, that in being made they are also +outgrown, for the habitual turns formal and unreal and so unsatisfying. +A growing nature has <a name="p015" id="p015"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.015]</span> her ways of making even conservatives keep +pace with her. An institution in the sense of an acquired manner of +action, personal or social, can never really be an end in itself, +although to a narrow view it may often seem to be; it is at best only +the manifested means to a newly developed or developing end which must +eventually transform it. In so large a thing, for example, as political +life, the institutes of monarchy have become the instruments of +democracy, and this conspicuously ever since the French Revolution; in +the history of thought, of man's intellectual life, the objective dogmas +of one time have been only the subjective standpoints of the next, the +metaphysics of one time has made the scientific method, the working +hypothesis, of the succeeding time; and in so small a thing as a child's +vocabulary, the oft-repeated and finally mastered syllable <i>ba</i>, or some +other equally intellectual, has become in time only one of the means to +a whole word, say <i>baby</i> or <i>bath</i>, or even <i>basilica</i> or +<i>barometrograph</i>. In all life the thing we get the habit of is only a +tool with which we strive towards something else. Some one thinking no +doubt of Hercules has called the institutions of life a great club which +the irresistible arm of society, always a hero when looked back upon, +swings fatally against the present.</p> + +<p>So intimately is change seen nowadays to be related to habit, or +indirectly involved in it, that in technical science a new account of +habit has been formulated. To cite but one case, Professor Baldwin, +says:<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +"Habit expresses the tendency of the organism <a name="p016" id="p016"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.016]</span> to secure +and retain its vital stimulations," and such an account, placing the +interest of habit in so general and so changeable a thing as "vital +stimulations," is designed to make habit fundamentally, not merely a +tendency to repetition or imitation, but instead a demand for constant +adaptation or differentiation. In the doctrines of inheritance, also, +always moving necessarily in close sympathy with those of habit, a +similar departure has been made. Both habit and inheritance are in fact +seen to belong to life in a world of change, or variation, and they have +assumed what I will style a protective colouring accordingly. The habit +of always being adapted is at least as radical as it is conservative.</p> + +<p>With this reform in the account of habit we have not only analogous +reforms, as was said, in the account of inheritance, but also in the +scientific view of character, custom, law, creed, and the institution +generally. Moreover, if in scientific theory we find these new views, in +practical life there are at least signs of the same standpoint. What may +be called a new conservatism—the most truly conservative thing being +taken to be the most thoroughly pertinent or adaptive thing—has for +many years been getting possession of us, and is now quite manifest. Our +political constitutions are amendable constitutions; our religious rites +and doctrines are recognized as only symbols; our theories are only +standpoints.</p> + +<p>So, once more, because change is at least an ever-present companion, if +not actually an integral part of habit, doubt must be as real and +general as habit. <a name="p017" id="p017"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.017]</span> Change must make doubt. Sociologically, +institutionalism must always imply a contemporary scepticism; the +conservative must have an unbeliever for his neighbour. Indeed, to add +an important point, some go so far as to say in general that change, +that is, something new and different, is not only a necessary incident +but also an actual motive in all activity, and when all is said they +seem quite right. Perhaps habit, as always an interest in adaptation, +would imply as much. Certainly novelty is a universal motive, and as for +society there can be no question that it has a very strong predilection +for lawlessness in all its forms. True, it may be objected that at times +men, individually or collectively, seek not something else, but simply +<i>more</i> of something already secured; more money, it may be, or more +learning, or more territory, or more pleasure. There is, however, in +spite of man's many conceits to the contrary, no change that is purely +quantitative. <i>More</i> is also <i>different</i> or <i>other</i>. Accordingly, we +both always find, and, what is even more to the point, always seek a +real change whenever we do anything. To speak again in most general +terms, the motion in the outer world, which is the fundamental stimulus +of all 'consciousness, both physically, that is, literally, and +figuratively, is more than merely an outer stimulus; something there is +within the nature of the subject which answers to it with perfect +sympathy and makes it equally an inner motive. Forsooth, could any +stimulus ever produce a response without its being in accord with an +existing motive? Life, then, is a game, and the game of life, doubts and +all, is a real interest as well as a necessity. We are <a name="p018" id="p018"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.018]</span> creatures +of habit, but we have, and we cherish, no habit stronger or more +essential than the habit at once of adaptation and variation.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>A fourth general fact, very closely related to the foregoing, is this: +<i>Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience</i>. Doubt is +but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real +life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the +challenge finds expression. The doubter is a questioner, a seeker; he +has, then, something to overcome; he fears, too, as well as hopes.</p> + +<p>Were all things settled once for all, were all things clearly known and +freely executed, or were the consequences of the things to be done +always capable of being accurately foretold, there would be no real +<a name="p019" id="p019"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.019]</span> living, there would be nothing really to do. In such case life +in general, or in any of its different expressions, religion, or +politics, or art, or science, or industry, or morals, if one may suppose +for a moment that any of these differences could ever develop, would +consist in a purely passive condition, a mere fixed status; it would be +a wholly static thing falsely called life; its movement, if movement +there were, could be only the rest or routine of strictly mechanical +motion.</p> + +<p>To a real life, then, doubt, as an evidence of challenge and resistance, +is absolutely necessary, and appreciation of just this necessity is +certainly an important part of our present confession, and the +confession is important, because it is sure somewhat to brighten what +heretofore may have seemed a dark horizon. Confession often changes +night to dawn, and here the association of doubt with real living, with +a world in which there is always something to do, awakens emotions that +such words as relativity, and instability, and change, and even game, +have discouraged, or even wholly suppressed. Leasing, perhaps better +than any one else, has given expression to these emotions, and has at +the same time reflected what in his day had certainly begun to be, and +what in our own time very widely and very deeply is, the ideal spirit. +Thus, as he wrote:—</p> + +<p>"Not the truth that any one may have or may think he has, but the honest +effort which has been exerted to compass it, makes what is really worthy +in human life. For not in having, but in seeking truth, are those powers +developed, in which alone man's ever-increasing <a name="p020" id="p020"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.020]</span> perfection +consists. Possession makes us inert, lazy, proud. If God held in his +right hand the perfect truth, and in his left the ever-restless struggle +after truth, and bade me choose, although I were bound to be ever and +always in the wrong, I should humbly select the left, saying: 'Father, +give; surely the pure truth is for Thee alone.'"</p> + +<p>This is a splendid utterance, and it has touched a responsive chord in +human nature the civilized world over, not so much, however, for the +humility of the choice as for the zeal in a life of seeking and +striving, or for the idea that knowledge is itself a dynamic thing, a +living, moving function, not a passive possession. The knower is made +also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, +forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within +him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the +condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary +to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, +proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even +putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever +living.</p> + +<p>Still others may be quoted in the same vein. Socrates made life, +particularly mental life, if this may be supposed distinct, essentially +active or dynamic when he identified true wisdom with self-conscious +ignorance, with a power in one of always finding oneself in error, and +in modern times Hegel has done the same thing as effectually, though +perhaps not in general so intelligibly, by finding a principle of +negativity or contradiction the very mainspring of all <a name="p021" id="p021"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.021]</span> +consciousness, of all thinking. Known truth is at once imperfect or even +false, being necessarily partial, relative, and at best only tentative, +very much, let us say, recalling something already remarked, as an +established form of life is no longer the real life, but merely the +developed means to a revolution, a life that is passing even as soon as +it has come.</p> + +<p>For the rest, the positive value of doubt to real life can hardly need +further emphasis. In one form or another the idea, as important as many +may find it commonplace, must constantly recur in these pages. We turn, +therefore, to our fifth, and for the present, last general fact, with +which we shall find ourselves still in sight, perhaps even in clearer +sight of the brighter horizon. We are all universal doubters; doubt +underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace +would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or +contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper +and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: <i>As man is +dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or +rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt</i>. Witness the +fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, +the company of his fellows, the company of God.</p> + +<p>Of course the social impulse, thus to be associated with doubt, is only +one of the phases of its dynamic and life-giving character, for a social +life, a life of dependence on what is without, of real relations beyond +self, must be a life of real and constant movement. Nothing so much as +such relations gives <a name="p022" id="p022"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.022]</span> vitality. This special phase, however, of +the place of doubt in real life is a very interesting one, and it +suggests, besides, so much that is of positive value as almost to +transform what so far has been in large part a sceptic's confession into +a sceptic's boast.</p> + +<p>Thus, in the first place, doubt seeks the company of nature. "Return to +nature!" has time and again in human history been the cry of the human +heart. Has civilization lost its hold, seeming unreal, artificial, +formal? Has morality become hollow? Has a lover suffered the shattering +of his dearest hopes? Has a creed lost its credibility? Have you and I +wearied of our study or our labour, whatever it be, and come to wonder +if it, or anything, is worth while after all? Have friends, ideals, and +God Himself deserted us? We turn, and all people turn to nature. Exactly +so the homesick traveller takes himself homeward, or the prodigal arises +and goes to his father. And your experience and mine, and the poetry of +all literatures, which tells so deeply the experiences of all men of all +times, are a constant witness to the comfort, and forgiveness, and +renewed confidence in self that nature imparts. Nature is our infancy, +in which all things are possible; she is our untrammelled will; she is +infinitely hopeful for us and infinitely kind; her necessity is so wide +and so open that its very law, so different from any human law, is our +greatest opportunity. True, our resort to nature is sometimes, perhaps +in greater or less degree always, by the way of moral dissipation, or +political anarchy, or intellectual suicide, or religious profanity; but +even these dark ways to the home and the great mother-heart of <a name="p023" id="p023"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.023]</span> +us all have never been hopelessly misleading. If history and literature +and personal experience can be trusted, even they have led to a kind +nature. Have you never failed in anything and become reckless, and then +profited from the very knowledge of yourself which the recklessness +uncovered? Personally and socially recklessness, return to nature that +it is, is always a helpful assistant to nature's great teacher, +experience. Great is the pathos, but also, as it is understood, great is +the inspiration of Rousseau's passionate outcry that his will was +perfectly good. He was incapable of a single wholesome relation in life, +yet, so he said, no man was better than he! Rousseau, philosopher of +revolution, spoke for nature. Out of her great love, nature always takes +the will for the deed—and perhaps she alone should have the privilege +of doing that; for she knows that the deed, however violent, however +bad, is sure to leave at least the will good.</p> + +<p>But intellectually, as well as morally or politically, or as well as in +any of the departments of the practical, emotional life, when trouble +comes we turn to nature. Nature has a mind as well as a heart, and when +state, and church, and social tradition have lost their validity and +infallibility, their various formulæ being no longer reasonable to us, +when we have to depose them from their position as our accepted +teachers, then we become scientists, which is to say, intellectual +prodigals. Science, the open-minded study of nature, is only a +homesickness for truth seeking relief. Does the scientist doubt? He is +one of the princes of doubters. He doubts, as in due time we <a name="p024" id="p024"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.024]</span> +shall more fully appreciate, even to the extreme position of +agnosticism. He doubts all things human that always he may be learning +of nature.</p> + +<p>So the companionship of nature for the comfort and pardon which she is +sure to give, and for the deeper knowledge which she is certain to +impart, is a passion of the doubter. True, no passion is free from +dangers; yet this passion, at least this passion, has somewhat of hope +in it.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, the companionship of one's fellows is not less strongly +desired. Huddling together in time of distress is by no means peculiar +to the animal world; in human life it has more than once made distress +seem richly worth while. "We have each other" in word or thought has +been the comforting reflection of many a family, or many a community, +when the money has gone, or when in other ways, possibly through a great +fire, or a great earthquake, or the ravages of a disease, afflictions +have come, and "Now we know how others have suffered" has been not less +common. Indeed, it is my own conviction that these two reflections +always rise together. The distress or affliction of doubt, however, is +certainly no exception to the rule. Doubt often separates an individual +from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified +himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, +or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his +loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social +relations. Benedict Spinoza may have been better than most of us, but he +was not in any other way different, and though maligned and insulted, as +earlier in history <a name="p025" id="p025"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.025]</span> another of his race had been, for his doubts +and heresies, and though exposed to the dangers of the assassin's knife, +and finally, when other measures failed, with special cruelties +excommunicated by his synagogue, he loved his people, and all men +besides, as few have loved them. Doubt makes one dependent; isolation +gives a sense of loss; and, if ever a solution of the doubt comes, in +the life and consciousness which it enjoins the lost companions, whether +they will or not, are included with oneself. In many ways this is an +important fact; yet it must suffice that we see the affinity of the +doubter for society. Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. +Dependent man and doubting man must have society.</p> + +<p>That doubt, furthermore, not only creates a motive to social life, even +to the restoration of lost companions, but also by weakening the +barriers which have divided some class, a sect perhaps, or a party, or a +nation, or a race, from some other class, puts social life on a broader +and deeper basis, is also an important fact, and full of significance +beyond our immediate interest. Thus, to suggest indeed how those two +reflections mentioned in the preceding paragraph are inseparable, +besides his wish to retain or recover his wonted companions, the doubter +would also associate them and himself with new companions, I venture to +say, as if in a figure, with Gentiles as well as with Jews, and this +gives to doubt, or to those who experience it and adequately use it, a +most significant rôle in the evolution of society, the rôle of mediation +between old friends and new, between the past and the future, the narrow +life and the broader <a name="p026" id="p026"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.026]</span> and deeper life, what is conservative and +what is progressive; but at least for the present it is again enough if +we see that doubt, not only by its personal losses gives the motive, but +also by its removal of barriers gives the larger possibility of society.</p> + +<p>And, in addition to the company of nature and the company of man, doubt, +springing as it does from man's sense of insufficiency, seeks also the +company of God; yet not of the God of any theology. As here conceived, +God is that which lies at the back of nature, and at the back of man in +the sense of being in character broader and deeper than either of these, +and quite superior to any difference between them; he is the single, +all-inclusive, wholly indeterminate reality upon which the doubter +depends, and must depend; he is as nameless and unspeakable as he is +indeterminate and all-inclusive, and he is real and perfect only as so +nameless. To theology, God is determinate; to doubt, imperfect if +determinate. At times, perhaps only half in earnest, or at least not +clearly knowing if he is in earnest or if he wishes others to think him +so, the doubter speaks of nature as his God, of the hills, or the +fields, or the sea, or the sky, or the busy street as his church, or the +great book of the universe as his Bible. At times, with the deepest +emotion and with open avowal, nature and God are fully one to him, and +the poetry, or the science, or the philosophy, to which his doubting +leads him, is veritably a religious revelation. But always his doubting, +as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to +nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to +others like himself who, by sharing, <a name="p027" id="p027"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.027]</span> may lighten his distress +and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; +to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he +has known; to a mind and a heart, such as he knows must be present in +that which surrounds him and moves within him, in knowledge more +enlightened and in emotion more inspired, than his doubting mind and +faltering heart have ever been; and such a life or such a mind or heart, +whatever name it be called by, is God. Can mind appeal to anything but +mind, or heart to anything but heart? And doubt—can it be doubt without +the appeal?</p> + +<p>The doubter who refuses or hesitates to speak the name of God may thus +be a protestant, but plainly he is no atheist. A mere name, in any case, +is quite as likely to obscure as to illumine the reality; the +chiaroscuro effect must ever belong to it. Doubt is no road to atheism. +As a way to theism it may be beset with hardship, and its goal may be +quite beyond the horizon; but the doubter is not by nature an atheist; +quite the contrary. As no other, feeling dependent, he is a seeker, and +even a confident seeker after what is perfect. He truly and confidently +seeketh, for he seeketh after what hath neither visible form nor body, +what is without habitation or name, what, like the Son of Man, hath not +where to lay its head. He seeketh, what his very seeking itself is, not +a God, but the life of the God.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The general facts about doubt are now before us, and although much needs +yet to be said in explanation, and a further fact is reserved for a +<a name="p028" id="p028"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.028]</span> concluding chapter, still not so darkly as it began this first +chapter in our confession of doubt has come, perhaps somewhat abruptly, +to an end. We have next, entering more fully and critically into the +conditions of our human experience, to scrutinize closely our ordinary +habits of mind, those common-sense views of things that on the whole +prevail among men. In these ideas, impulsive, unreasoning, above all +often flatly contradictory, we shall find some of the strongest reasons +for our doubting nature.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Mental Development of the Child and the Race. Methods and +Processes</i>. By James M. Baldwin. Macmillan, 1895.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Let me add, that if certain people, struggling in the +present maze of educational theory, and objecting, with a zest and a +combativeness that fairly belie their contentions, to the use of +interest as the primal educational motive, if these people would only +recognize change as always a part of interest, their greatest trouble +would be removed. They refuse to have education easy or pleasant; +interest, they insist, must make it so; and doubtless the advocates of +interest are in part to blame for this view; but change, which to my +mind is involved in all interest, includes resistance and struggle; +change is ever a challenge to effort; and, such being the case, an +education led by interest is not necessarily easy or idly pleasant. The +real meaning of the interest theory, at least as I have to understand +it, is simply (1) that the natural child or the natural man always has +something to do, and (2) that education should promote that something. +It is far from meaning that there should be no compulsion or discipline, +no pain or self-denial. Whoever honestly over expected to do, or ever +did any thing without these? The interest theory, then, would not +eliminate hardship or discipline, but, to my understanding, by making +education serve actual life, would substitute a natural for an +artificial and externally imposed hardship. Not hardship, but real +achievement makes the educated man.</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2> + +<h3>DIFFICULTIES IN OUR ORDINARY VIEWS OF THINGS.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p029" id="p029"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.029]</span> +If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences +against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the +jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it +would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the +different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be +offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the +consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. True, for some +reason lying deep in human nature, a defence that ends by convicting the +jury of error, is hardly likely to lead to the immediate discharge of +the prisoner; judges or jurymen are not in the habit of taking a rebuff +in that way; but in course of time the prisoner will be justified, and +his justification, however tardy, is all that now concerns us. To his +defence, therefore, and the discomfiture of his judges, but to the +latter without any malice, we turn at once.</p> + +<p>And where shall we begin? Our predicament in this defence is something +like that of the small boy, bewildered over the task of "picking up" his +nursery. <a name="p030" id="p030"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.030]</span> "I can't do it," he says. "There are so many things; I +can't tell which to take first." Poor little fellow! If he halts now, +what will he do when the littered room—I had almost said the littered +playroom—of his later life confronts him? Contradictions under foot +everywhere are certainly not less confusing than blocks, horses, papers, +trains, marbles, picture-books, and the like—or unlike—scattered over +a nursery floor.</p> + +<p>Here, for example, in practical life is the natural, physical world. How +real, brutally real, it is; its very law is fate; its forces are no +respecters of persons, inexorably ruling and compelling all alike, +giving life and taking it, full of the grimmest humour, raising hopes +only to cast them down. Is some one rash enough to suggest that things +physical are only so many ideas, real only as states of mind, of God's +mind possibly, in some way coming to consciousness in the senses of men? +The practical man knows a thing or two about that. He kicks a stone, or +strikes his fist loudly upon a table, and so ends the matter, laughing +the mad idealist away. And yet, prestissimo change! What do we hear him +saying now? This brutally real world of physical things and powers is +but a fleeting show; a thing only of space and time. What is really real +and abiding is the spiritual that is everywhere and always. Another +world there is, not to be spoken of in the same breath with this present +world, a world compared with which this is but a mist before the eyes.</p> + +<p>In so many familiar ways this duplicity towards what is real is +manifest. People go to church to do such a wonderfully strange thing; +nothing more <a name="p031" id="p031"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.031]</span> nor less than to save their real souls from an +unreal world, or sometimes to hide a real worldliness under unreal rites +or symbols. "You may think me worldly, selfish, sensuous," says some +one, "and I can not deny that often I do seem so, but this life of mine +is ever only a yearning after the things that are spiritual, for which, +as you see, I pray so earnestly, and which have nothing at all to do +with one's worldly life." Yes, we do see, and particularly we see that +things spiritual are often an impertinence in worldly affairs. The "real +self" never does the things that are really done. Only this, just this +is where the duplicity lies. Again, from some one else, a practical man +presumably and an accuser of the doubter, we hear the following: "Only +the spiritual life is real; look to it that you fear, as I fear, deeply +and constantly the material world hanging like a sword over us all." Can +it be, as would certainly appear, that superstition is still among us, +that so readily we can give reality to unreality, that belief in ghosts +still holds our human minds? Once upon a time—at least once—the +Christian Church rose in bitter resentment because a certain man, by +merely questioning the separate reality of the physical world, +threatened to deprive the holy priesthood, with all its time-honoured +prerogatives, of its heaven-appointed labour. Yet what is to be said of +a church that prefers to think of an independent physical world, by +which man is bound and damned, in order to save for itself the task, +either hopeless or useless, of rescuing him? Labelling a man "rescued" +or "Christian" does not make another-world creature of him. In political +history, too, what <a name="p032" id="p032"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.032]</span> a paradox it is that kingship by divine right +has always been also kingship by physical might. The practices of an +avowed supernaturalism have always been strangely materialistic.</p> + +<p>So, in high places and in low, in the affairs of men now and in the +past, the physical and the spiritual have ever been in a most remarkable +relation; each real in and by itself, but with a most unusual courtesy +also unreal at the slightest motion from the other; each now supreme, +and now wholly subject; each now the whole life of man, and now the very +opposite, the antipodes of all that is human; and each self-existent and +independent, yet never without its real need of the other. Here surely +is contradiction, or vacillation, in experience that is, to say the +least, very confusing to him who reflects.<a name="FNanchor_1_3" id="FNanchor_1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>But, to take up something else certainly not less confusing to the +ordinary mind, "practical," and unaccustomed to reflection, this is a +world of separate, individual things, of chairs, hands, atoms, eyes, +stars, men, stones, books, leaves, rivers, lives, mountains, relations, +notions, distances, days or years, and so on, <a name="p033" id="p033"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.033]</span> indefinitely and +above all indiscriminately; a world, moreover, into which in part God, +in part man, defying an equally powerful agent of chaos or dissipation, +has put at least for a time a certain kind of order, an order that might +be said to be good enough for all practical purposes. Yet with all its +indiscriminate manifoldness, and with the irregular, uncertain conflict +between chaos and order, it is nevertheless a single world, in short, +just one more individual thing, one more example, perhaps outdoing all +others, of the marvellous license with which human beings are wont to +speak and think of a "thing." Chairs, hands, mountains, men, stars, and +the whole universe, are all "things," and in this world of things, that +is itself another thing, or, should I rather say, <i>apart from</i> this +world of things, that is another thing, there are two, at least two, +discordant powers taking turns at making order and disorder.</p> + +<p>Confusion indeed! Nor have I exaggerated it. The loose association of +chairs, distances, and days; the easy assumption of two supreme agents +working against each other; the certain uncertainty about these agents +being in the world or out of it, of it or not of it; and the readiness +with which the whole universe, the all-inclusive thing, is treated as +only one more thing to be included: these habits of the ordinary mind +show a confusion that seems like insanity. Can we even face them safely +and soberly?</p> + +<p>For special regard I select just one, perhaps the central one; the habit +of treating the universe, the unity of all things, as but one additional +thing, the whole, as if it were only another part, the complete <a name="p034" id="p034"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.034]</span> +and infinite as if distinct from or outside of what is finite or +incomplete; or again, in good old philosophical terms, the One as if it +were another and so in effect, but one of the Many. Now some there are, +and their number may be large, who never have thought of the +contradiction and consequent confusion in the notion of a single world +made up of many single things, yet itself another thing, or of the +Infinite as external to the Finite, or of the One as not in and of the +Many, but the contradiction is there, and can scarcely need more than +mention to be seen.</p> + +<p>Even in theory, scientific or philosophical, the wholeness or unity of +the many things of the world has sometimes been taken for just one more +thing, as when Anaximander taught that it was "that thing which is no +one of the world's things," or for one of the many things supposed by it +to be unified, as when Thales so naïvely declared all things to be +water. Anaximander and Thales were only ancient Greeks, albeit very wise +and enlightened Greeks, living as early as 600 B.C., but in very recent +times they have had followers. Electricity has been taken as the one +force of all other forces. Our chemists, some of them, have been hunting +down the one element among the rest. Statesmen and churchmen have often +dreamt of one man as somehow in his single person expressing the unity +of all human life, and more than once they have even imagined him +present in the flesh. God, although the Being in whom we, as ourselves +persons, live and move and have our being, has Himself been another +person. Society and its supposed component individuals have made two +orders <a name="p035" id="p035"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.035]</span> of existence. Life and living creatures; history and its +many events; the solar system and its planets: nature and all her +various kingdoms: these have also been held apart, making amazing +dualisms. But, simply to repeat from above, taking the whole or the +unity of all things as itself an independent thing, as itself one more +thing, is a contradiction that needs only to be stated clearly to be +appreciated. Let me hope that I have stated it clearly.</p> + +<p>Nor is this particular conflict in our ordinary ideas yet before us in +all its fatefulness, for—as if to defy the principle of consistency to +the very last degree of its forbearance—we are often, if not usually, +given not only to unifying our world of things in terms of just one more +thing, or of persons in terms of just one more person, but also to +thinking of this one more thing, or person as <i>sui generis</i>, as +altogether different in nature and substance. So do we mingle our +duplicity about reality with that about the unity of things. The many, +for example, are physical or of the substance of matter; the one is +ideal or of the substance of mind or spirit. The many persons are merely +human, the One is divine. Strange, indeed, that men should ever take one +more as the unity of all the rest, but if possible it is at least, at +first sight, stranger that this one more should be relegated to a sphere +wholly apart and peculiar. In the madness of such compounded +contradiction there may lurk real method, but of the contradiction and +of the compounding there can be no question.</p> + +<p>Even the soul, a something, an entity, that each one of us has been in +the habit of claiming for himself <a name="p036" id="p036"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.036]</span> and of holding very sacred and +inviolate too, has been subjected to the same way of thinking. +Doubtless, since God has not been spared, we should hardly expect the +soul to escape. We view the soul so materialistically, even while we +insist that it is not material. We say, we think, that it is something +in the body; yet, of course, we are at our wit's end to tell just what +particular place it occupies there. Similarly, God is supposed to be +somewhere in the Universe, yet in no assignable place, and the chemist's +universal atom is somewhere also, though surely not in the same place, +and, wherever it be, waiting with its own, yet certainly a divine +patience that ought to be inspiring, for experimental discovery. But +with regard to the soul, although the life and unity of the body, +although one of the things in the body, the soul itself is not bodily at +all; it can enter the body and is important—who dares say how +important?—to the body, and it can, as at death, leave the body, but +though for a time in, it never is of the body. A strange standpoint +certainly, but men insist that it is quite as true as it is strange. It +seems very much like saying that when you build a house, in order to +ensure it real solidarity, to give it real permanence and integrity, you +should make a special point of putting your bricks or your lumber +together, not with clinging, well-set mortar, or strong pins and +straight-driven nails, but so much more sensibly, because so much +further from what would be like the material bricks or lumber, or like +the equally material mortar or nails, with those real and really compact +things, absolutely continuous or indivisible, or at least indestructible +<a name="p037" id="p037"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.037]</span> even when disintegrated, empty space and pure uneventful time. +With such space and time there would be union indeed I But, again, +strange as such a procedure in building a house would be, men insist or +at least I can readily imagine their insistence, that houses are built +in that way, and built successfully. The method may seem absurd, but +they insist that it is not madness. Are not abstract plans and such +seemingly unsubstantial things as mathematical formulæ, which are very +near to being made of empty space and time, the real strength and +integrity of all our great modern structures? And the soul, whatever be +said of its being an immaterial thing, is nevertheless, even for being +both immaterial and thing, the very sinew of the body.</p> + +<p>Here may be method, then, and sanity, but there is always contradiction, +obstinate contradiction, compounded contradiction! The soul, unity of +the body, is only another thing or part in the body, and at the same +time, though in the body, it is after all not really of the body. +Possibly, perhaps necessarily, such patent contradiction, and, more than +all, such compounding of contradiction, like doubling a negative, make +for what is without contradiction, but this wholesome result is not +consciously intended, and in the face of all, whatever our hopes or our +beliefs, we must feel grave doubts and confess our doubting. Those who +do build better than they know, if enlightened, would not again build in +the same way. Two contradictions may be better than one, but even two +make us wonder.</p> + +<p>Closely connected with the contradictions in our <a name="p038" id="p038"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.038]</span> customary ideas +of reality, and ideas of wholeness or unity, there is the way in which +we calmly take opposite sides in our notions about space and time, and +about that very fundamental factor of our experience—causation. These +are, all of them, so general and fundamental as possibly to seem too +abstruse even for mention in this place, since throughout these chapters +we are courting simplicity, but of space, and time, and causation, only +what is very simple needs to be said. Thus to the ordinary consciousness +how fatally things are separated from each other by conditions of space +and time. Then is not now. Here is not there. Space and time are only +physical and as brutal as all things physical, separating this from that +with a finality that knows no degree. Lovers, continents apart, despair +over the cruel distance. Time tears us ruthlessly from those dear to us. +What is to be, as well as what was, though in the next moment, is +absolutely beyond our grasp. Could anything be freer from dispute than +the reality and the separating brutally of space and time? Yet, almost +at a whisper, all distance and all duration become as nothing. Do not +the lovers write to each other, flatly and passionately denying that +they are far apart? Do we not constantly forestall the future and retain +the past? Indeed, when all is said, a thousand years are as one day, and +all the places of the earth are one. So real, and so vast, and so +physical to us but a moment ago, space and time have now passed into +mere phantoms of the imagination. We live, then, not only in a world +that is brutally spatial and temporal, but also, and at the same time, +<a name="p039" id="p039"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.039]</span> in a world that is not spatial and not temporal at all; and +living here—or there?—we have again to wonder and to doubt even in our +belief. To our own constant amazement we find that we make our life a +bridge over what would seem to be an absolutely impassable chasm.</p> + +<p>As for causation our temerity is not less surprising. Wet and dry moons, +unlucky Fridays, holy and unholy numbers, haunted houses, so-called +providences, free in the sense of indifferently, irresponsibly free +wills and fiat deities with their suddenly made worlds may not be +generally in vogue at the present time, at least among the better +educated, the enlightened and not infrequently conceited classes, but +even among the wise and the consciously informed they have their natural +offspring, and I am not so sure that many of them might not be found +almost intact, at least in the more retired parts of the consciousness +of my readers. To illustrate, for some if not for all of us, this is a +world of many free and independent causes, yet also it is the single +effect of one cause; it is again, our mood having changed, the single +effect of two absolutely unlike beings or natures, each of them an +all-powerful cause; it is a sphere here and now of causal, creative, +productive activity, but it was itself created once for all long ago, at +a date which the exegete hopes—in the equally distant future!—to +determine for us; it contains some things that are only causes and some +that are only effects, or some, or all, that are both causes and +effects; it has parts that are the accepted causes of other parts; it +has causes, those acting now and the one original cause, that are +temporally <a name="p040" id="p040"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.040]</span> antecedent to their effects; and, not to make the +list longer, it is variously a world of one last effect, of one first +and only cause, of an infinite series of causes and effects, and in +whole, or in part, it constantly shows something made out of nothing or +nothing resulting from something. A wondrous world most assuredly; and +yet at first statement this record of our various notions of causation +may not appear as a very serious arraignment of the consciousness which +it exposes. Moreover some people actually glory in such a wonder as it +presents. But, to be plain, though also monotonous, the uncaused cause +or the effect that is only a part of the whole, or the cause or the +effect that refuses to share in the other's nature, or finally the +causation that is now so individual and so manifold and so effective, +and that was once so single and so complete, is something that must give +any thinker pause. Can a moving body move an immobile body? Can some +things in the universe be mobile; others not? Can the moving body and +the moved body belong to different moments of time? Can motion lead to +rest or rest to motion? But our ordinary ideas of causation would allow, +or even require, an affirmative answer to every one of these questions.</p> + +<p>Alas! Shall this labour proceed? Can we afford to continue it? The +defence of the doubter is getting almost too successful; it is becoming +too personal to be pleasant. The task of picking up the room of our +ordinary life grows harder, not easier, as it moves forward. Every thing +that we touch tells of a spirit of violence in our nature. Even the +small boy can not have been more lawless, for his toys were all <a name="p041" id="p041"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.041]</span> +battered perhaps, but not, like ours, all broken. Can we afford to go +on? Afford it or not, we simply can not help ourselves, for our +self-confidence is already shattered; our attention to the disorder is +already beyond our control; each one of us is the doubter we would +defend.</p> + +<p>Here close at hand, where we have to see it, is another contradiction +common in all human experience. It inheres in our conceits about +knowledge. For us, on the one hand, the world we know not only really +is, the tree out yonder or the planet miles and miles away being really +and actually there, but also is just the world which our knowledge +reports to us. What we have knowledge of is in our belief a real thing +in and by itself, and we know it literally and directly, not +figuratively, not afar off through symbols; we know it as it is; we know +a real world, and we know it face to face. Yet, on the other hand, with +all this simple confidence in our knowledge, what are we also given to +saying, or assuming when we do not say it? Even in the moment of our +confidence we humble ourselves with the cry of our utter foolishness, +making our recognized foolishness only a counter-conceit. What but +perfect folly is our knowledge before God's knowledge! "Illusion! The +dream of a few hours or a few years!" is so often the best we can say of +the whole fabric, past and present, of human consciousness. Not now, but +only in the hereafter are we to see reality face to face; now we see +only very darkly, if at all.</p> + +<p>Some one here protests strenuously, raising an objection that might very +properly have been raised <a name="p042" id="p042"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.042]</span> before. Thus, I am told that only +different people, or only the same people at different times, ever hold +two opposite views, whether about knowledge or any thing else; never one +and the same person at the same time holds them both; and so the present +arraignment can not be as serious as it is made to appear. Well, with +this objection I can agree in part, for there is at least a half-truth +in it, but by no means does it tell, either in general or in particular, +that is, with regard to the special case of the conceits about +knowledge, the whole story of double living or double thinking among +men. Indeed the easy way, in which men make the distinctions of society +or the distinctions of time bear the responsibility for what must always +in the end be the conflicts of their personal lives, is but another +illustration of the difficulties besetting their ordinary views of +things. Duplicity of view, like anything else in experience, must always +be more than a matter of different people or different times, for the +simple reason that, whether directly personal or not, it is present in +the environment of the individual person. So, even if those two +positions, confidence in worldly knowledge and religious trust and +humility, for the sake of argument be momentarily associated only with +different persons or social classes or times, our present point will +really be just exactly as pointed, for there is always a third person or +class or time into whose direct single experience the duplicity or +contradiction is bound to enter. Consider, for example, the case of a +child. For a part of the week he is perhaps at school; on Sunday at +church; and the life in which he thus takes part must <a name="p043" id="p043"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.043]</span> appear to +him, there being in all probability little or no reservation on either +side, to be hopelessly divided against itself. Now is knowledge power; +now hindrance and greatest danger. Now he is to learn all he can; now, +on the other hand, to forget what he may have learned. So is the +conflict about him made his personal conflict, and exactly as in his +case, so in all human experience the individual must share personally +whatever the environment affords.</p> + +<p>The individual and the environing society are the closest of blood +relations, though we often allow ourselves, all too easily as has been +said, to lose sight of the fact; they live under the same roof, and rely +for sustenance on the same fare; and while to some the contradictions of +life may be overlooked as personally impertinent and unimportant, being +referred wholly to the environment, they are plainly the unavoidable +heritage and the personal responsibility of every individual that counts +himself a member of the human race. The objection, then, that was raised +does not remove contradiction as a cause of doubt, but merely emphasizes +what in a subsequent chapter must occupy us, the social aspect of +experience.<a name="FNanchor_2_4" id="FNanchor_2_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_4" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our +view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, +but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a +matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of +the single person's inner responsibility. Society in its manifold +classes, in its conflicts and in its history, may help us to see the +whole of experience, the unity <a name="p044" id="p044"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.044]</span> of experience on all sides and in +all parts, but it never does, and it never can, relieve the individual, +or deprive the individual, of any side or part of what makes up an +experience-whole. Grown men and women may be more definitely set in +their lives and their ideas to certain specific things than children, +but in no one, young or old, can such specialism ever be wholly +exclusive of any of the other things.</p> + +<p>To return to our immediate interest, if men are given to being doubters +in their views about reality, spiritual and material; about unity or +wholeness; about space and time, on the one hand fatally vast and +independently real, and on the other formal and illusory; about +causality, so actual and positive now, and yet so complete yesterday, or +ever and ever so long ago; and about knowledge, so perfectly wise and so +thoroughly vain and foolish; if, I say, men are double in all these +different ways, in their moral judgments they seem, if possible, even +more confused, and the confusion, the division against themselves, is +the more serious for being with regard to what so directly concerns +personal life and human fellowship.</p> + +<p>To begin with, as will indeed readily appear, the offences of our moral +judgments, which often, if not always, are largely influenced by +religious or rather theological conceptions, are only a peculiar +expression of the two-faced attitude towards causation, human persons or +wills being the causes specially involved. In general the causes of the +universe are of three sorts, those of natural force, those of +supernatural agency, and those of human agency, and although toward them +all essentially the same attitude is <a name="p045" id="p045"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.045]</span> assumed, it is worth our +while to consider particularly the causation that is commonly adjudged +to belong to the human will and the moral ideas that spring from it.</p> + +<p>For the purposes of the moral consciousness we translate the two +conflicting powers of our world, or the spiritual reality and the +material, into two agents of good and evil respectively, each having a +power of doing whatever, true to its peculiar character, it may will to +do, and then, as if in accord with this way of thinking, we find two +distinct selves, a good self and an evil self, within each one of us, +and we also divide the body social into two exclusive classes, the class +of those who are identified with the righteous life and the class of +those given to the unrighteous life, the sheep and the goats, the elect +and the damned. But, to say nothing of the fact that these three ideas +of the two powers, the two selves and the two classes, cannot be made +really to accord with each other, although they possess an outward +agreement, is it not clear that any attempt to take the good and the +evil as two mutually exclusive things, be they spirits or selves or +classes, is to destroy at once the real substance of virtue and the real +value of the consciousness of evil? In practical life this means, what +everybody knows so well, that an isolated, unduly holy righteousness, a +sort of touch-me-not goodness, is bound to be empty, to be only +ritualistic and aristocratic or pharisaical, and in any one of these +respects it appears decidedly unrighteous; while an isolated +unrighteousness, besides having at least the moral worth of a protest +against its counterpart, is in itself exactly like the original <a name="p046" id="p046"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.046]</span> +sinfulness of the theologian; being unavoidable, it is wholly without +any warranted opprobrium. Indeed, it all but comes to this, that +righteousness as a fixed thing, fixed to a part of the universe or to a +part of the individual self or to a part of society, is really in just +so far evil, and the direct opposite of such righteousness is +proportionately good. Good and evil, then, may not mix well, but certain +it is that contradiction results from the common attempt of men to +regard either as untainted or untempered by the other.</p> + +<p>Still, not upon this real difficulty in our moral judgments would I now +lay greatest stress, although it is real enough and important. In yet +another way our moral consciousness is at war with itself. In estimating +the worth of human conduct, so far as this is determined by its +initiation, we are in an almost hopeless tangle. We are more than likely +to think of other people as influenced by their environment in what they +do, of ourselves as quite original and responsible, as independent of +any such influences; or, more fully and more exactly, we are given to +referring our own bad deeds to environment, our good deeds to ourselves, +while for others we are prompted to do just the reverse, referring their +good deeds to environment, their bad deeds to themselves. Such is human +nature—not, to be sure, at its best, but common human nature; and even +when we escape the foregoing personally invidious distinctions, we +still—and this is the main point—treat self and environment as two +naturally conflicting, altogether independent sources of conduct. Two +different and independent sources of anything, <a name="p047" id="p047"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.047]</span> however, can only +make for conflict and contradiction. If only our courts of law could +judge responsibility either wholly from the determinations of +environment or wholly from those of personal will, or again, if only the +will and the environment could be seen as not so radically opposed, what +a simplification would ensue, and how much freer and more certain +justice would be. To venture on a variation of an aphorism, where +there's another way there is always a loophole; where there's +environment there is always a shifted responsibility; where there's a +"free will" there is always a will taken for some unperformed or +imperfectly performed deed.</p> + +<p>So the double origin of conduct offers a very serious difficulty, which, +when it is understood, is not unlike that of the two powers or selves or +classes, but even more is to be said in exposure of our moral judgments. +Thus we have the confident conceit of freedom, of our own freedom in +good or our neighbour's freedom in evil, or in general of man's freedom +to act without regard to the determinations from environment, but we +have also a strange though possibly a fortunate way of qualifying the +very freedom that we claim. We claim freedom only to avow, almost in the +same breath, duties and responsibilities. We have the freedom, but only +the duties make it worth anything. A startling paradox this, so familiar +to us all: "I am free to do all that I ought to do," or, "I am free to +carry out certain necessities of my true life." A startling paradox; +and, above all, a strange way of escaping the necessities of +environment, unless, forsooth, it really opens the door, or supplies a +secret door, by which the <a name="p048" id="p048"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.048]</span> necessities of environment and the +necessities of one's true life can come together? If freedom demands +law, why should it hold aloof from the natural law, the law of +environment so definitely present? Possibly, then, as once before +suggested, one contradiction in experience may be the corrective of +another, the paradox of freedom and duty only correcting the +contradiction of two sources of conduct, personal will and environment. +In the case, for example, of the disposition to distinguish between +one's own acts and another's, with respect to their initiation by will +or by environment, to mingle duty and necessity with one's own supposed +freedom is equivalent in effect to denying one's neighbour's freedom +because of the restraints of his environment. But such considerations, +however promising for future reflection upon the conflicts in our moral +consciousness, are not of immediate interest. Our doubts may once more +find hope in the reflection that the faults of experience may balance +themselves, but we have no occasion to abandon our doubting as idle or +meaningless. Contradictions that balance each other, errors that are +mutually corrective, are still contradictions, are still errors.</p> + +<p>So, to reduce our moral judgments, confusion and all, to small compass, +we are free, others are not; they are free, we are not; and our freedom +is bound by duty, by duty to the moral law, while their freedom, unless +a hopeless lawlessness, is bound by the environment and its law. Again, +good and evil are each unmixed, and moral acts serve two masters—that +is to say, spring from two sources. We may, therefore, <a name="p049" id="p049"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.049]</span> still +believe in morality—yet how can this be? And freedom—yet how is +freedom possible?</p> + +<p>But finally, as last to be examined, there is the idea of law, just now +brought to attention. This idea is a focus for a good many conflicting +views. Witness the familiar argument from the knowledge of law in nature +to fatalism, an argument as absurd as it is widespread, for the bare +fact that we know the laws of nature really emancipates us from the +blind fate to which the argument points. Can knowledge ever mean +anything but freedom? Certainly no law can ever be known unless the +sphere of its operation accords with the nature of those who have the +knowledge. Simply to know is to share in and be at one with whatsoever +is known, and the clearer and more cogent or rational the knowledge, the +truer and realer is this participation or union. The law we know, then, +must have all the meaning and the natural authority of a law of our own +enactment, and so must actually have the sanction of our will. Will, I +say, cannot help sanctioning knowledge, for knowledge is always true to, +because conditioned by, the natural action of the knower. But no such +message of freedom, or say of human opportunity in natural necessity, is +commonly received by men at large from the evidences of law in nature. +Superstitiously they see only fate. Clear knowledge and blind fate!</p> + +<p>Nor are we commonly satisfied with only so much superstition. We go +still further and make the case as bad as possible by treating the law +we know as if in its spirit, if not in its letter, it were final. In +other words, we view nature, with some of whose ways we <a name="p050" id="p050"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.050]</span> have +become conversant, not merely as a source of blind fate, or external +necessity, for our lives, but also as essentially and ultimately a +sphere of strictly mechanical routine. Yet here again we are surely +reasoning beyond our premises—the very essence of superstition—for the +routine we know can never answer substantially, or even formally, to +nature as she really is. Our positive knowledge, our knowledge that +arrives at specific formulæ, even though these formulæ reach the noble +dignity of mathematics, is bound to be in terms of some particular +experience, personal or national or racial; it is relative and special; +it is partial knowledge; and he is superstitious, and does, indeed, +argue beyond his premises, who takes the whole, whose law he does not +know, to be literally analogous to the part, whose law he thinks he +knows, but can in fact know only partially. No whole ever is one of its +parts, or merely analogous to one of its parts; <i>a</i> law never is <i>the</i> +law, or even in its lawfulness literally analogous thereto; and +mechanicalism, whether as a popular or a philosophical "ism," has no +justification save just this false analogy.</p> + +<p>And the prevalent confusion in the notions of law or lawfulness is of +course reflected in the corresponding notions of lawlessness. Here, as +with other negative terms, men forget that negatives necessarily are +quite relative to their positives. All specific, definitely manifest, +known and positive lawlessness simply must have some place in <i>the</i> law +of things; it can no more be an absolute lawlessness than any human +routine can be supposed final; and, on the other hand, there can be no +positive law whose breaking has not some <a name="p051" id="p051"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.051]</span> sanction; there can be +no lawfulness which does not warrant some lawlessness. This truth, +perhaps as nothing else could, must show the error in the notion of +mechanical routine as affording an adequate description of the ultimate +nature of things. Where the whole always gives point to the negation of +any of its parts, where <i>the</i> law always sanctions some breaking of any +law, to think of the whole in terms of its parts may be human, but it is +of the human which is prone to err. Those who would still insist upon +seeing only routine in law, and upon judging lawlessness as only +relative to such seeing, might do well, rising above their ordinary +views, to remember with some real appreciation that once upon a time the +law-breakers and the reformer were very closely associated; they were +associated in life, and at the end they were crucified together. +Whatever may be one's theology, there is a deal of food for thought in +those deaths on Calvary and in the several lives which they closed.</p> + +<p>Lawlessness suggests the supernatural. So many have promptly concluded +that just as with the knowledge of law in nature human freedom must be +resigned, blind fate taking its place, so anything or anybody at all +supernatural, Satan—for example—as well as God, must once for all +withdraw. If law reigns, God can will whatever he wills only because the +law is so; the law is not so because he wills it; and this in common +opinion only makes him decrepit, without real initiative, dead. Yet, +once more, what superstition! The knowledge of law has never robbed man +of his freedom, nor even slain his God; or this at least: the loss of +freedom or the death of God, for <a name="p052" id="p052"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.052]</span> which any law that man has had +knowledge of has been responsible, has always been only the forerunner +of a larger and fuller freedom and of his God's resurrection and +glorification. This or that law may rob and may kill, but this or that +law, let me reiterate, never is <i>the</i> law, and why common opinion has to +judge all things in heaven and earth, as if it were, is hard to +comprehend. Neither nature nor God, if these two need to be thought of +as two, is law-bound; each rather, with a meaning which I must hope now +to have made clear, is law-free. The law in which nature is free is as +infinite, as transcendent of any particular human experience as the +ever-developing freedom of man or as the will of God. And God, or the +Supernatural, is not confined to the narrow sphere of what man knows, as +man knows it; this stands only for what man calls nature. God is the +all-inclusive sphere or source of the absolute law, for which knowledge +can be only a constant striving, or which is itself even a party to the +constant striving. Somehow <i>the</i> law must be a living thing, not a +routine: the supernatural must be not nature as she is known, but +nature's fullest and deepest life.</p> + +<p>Very emphatically what has just been said about nature or God being +law-free, or about <i>the</i> law being infinite, or not analogous in form or +substance, in spirit or letter, to any thing in positive knowledge, is +no argument for the Jonah story or even for the miracle of the wine at +Cana's wedding feast; and yet time and again people who apparently +should have done enough thinking to know better, to the great +satisfaction of thousands have used the infinity of <a name="p053" id="p053"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.053]</span> nature's or +God's lawfulness, which is to say the only partial and tentative +character of all human knowledge of law, as a clinching proof of all the +miracles in the Bible. Can they not see that like what is lawless in +general, the miraculous must be in the premises only relative to the +experience of the time? Even chance is not less so. The spiritual +meaning of those miracles may persist, for the miraculous we must always +have with us; but if even our relative, imperfect knowledge stands for +anything, if it be even a tentative knowledge, a working standpoint, the +literal truth of most, or even all of them, disappeared long ago. +Miracles, like laws, come and go; only the miraculous, like <i>the</i> law, +goes on forever.</p> + +<p>And this leads to something else, to something also very common, perhaps +the reverse of the foregoing. With what an unaccountable delight many of +us have accepted naturalistic explanations, for example, of the sun +standing still, or of the retreat of the waters of the Red Sea, or of +the Immaculate Conception, or of any of the many other marvels in either +the Old or the New Testament, and have thought that so our old beliefs +are to be preserved. I have myself heard honest and earnest men, even +members of an academic community, appeal to parthenogenesis as a fact in +nature which would at least make the miracle of Christ's birth +scientifically plausible as well as spiritually significant; but such an +appeal, besides being, in my opinion, positively irreverent, is as blind +religiously as it is ignorant scientifically. Cannot such men +appreciate, and cannot all others who do as they do also appreciate the +fact that naturalistic explanation of <a name="p054" id="p054"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.054]</span> any miracle, if really a +genuine explanation, may prove the fact, but must in just so far +destroy, I do not say the miraculous, which is indestructible, but the +particular miracle?</p> + +<p>The lawful miracle, then—lawful, of course, so soon as explained—is +one more contradiction in our prevalent notions about law. That it +exemplifies, too, a habit of mind which is exercised by us in many +directions besides that of interpretation of the arbitrary things of the +Bible can hardly need be said. In life generally the arbitrary is +peculiarly fond of going to law, sometimes to what is called nature's +law, as when revolutionists of all sorts—strikers and radical +reformers—raise the cry of "natural rights," laying down the law as to +what men are by nature, and sometimes to "human" law, as when the +conservatives in government or business with their vested rights, be +these coal mines, oil fields, or political privileges, appeal for +"justice" to the courts or to the military.</p> + +<p>But, to say no more, with the lawful miracle, with law the strange +support of what is arbitrary, with this as a very good example of the +duplicity which in general we are all of us wont to allow in our +practical life, the present exposure of our ordinary consciousness must +come to an end. With regard to the real substance of things, or to their +unity, or to the nature of space and time and causation, with regard to +the worth of knowledge, with regard to our human conduct, to its freedom +and responsibility, or finally with regard to the place of law in nature +and in the life of man, our ordinary consciousness is manifestly +inconsistent and vacillating—nay, is grossly contradictory; and we are +<a name="p055" id="p055"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.055]</span> led at least to suspect that the disorder which we have found is +inherent and essential, having the nature of an original human defect. +Such a defect, however, is cause for doubt; so that man, above all +"practical" man, having inconsistency or duplicity as almost, if not +quite, an uncontrollable habit with him, should be himself a prince of +sceptics.</p> + +<p>And yet, although we have indeed found man spending at least his waking +hours in a room that seems disorder incarnate, and although before the +court of practical life the doubter seems thus to have been thoroughly +justified, while his too hasty judges are in turn condemned, +nevertheless the case for doubt is not of such a character as to leave +absolutely no hope for belief. Now and again in the evidence, as it has +been disclosed, have we not felt the presence of something, not yet +given its due weight, that would make man more than a mere doubter and +unbeliever? Have we not been led to suspect that somehow, without loss +of their reality and validity, the most cogent reasons for doubt, even +the contradictions in our views of things, might turn into bases of +belief, that an experience essentially paradoxical may not be as +hopeless as at first sight it may appear, that in all the madness there +is at least a chance of some method? The view of science, however, must +be examined before our attention can be turned definitely upon such a +possibility. Enough if in our present doubting we are still left with a +little hope.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_3" id="Footnote_1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_3"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In the rise of Christian Science, against which I have no +special grudge, although I have already taken exceptions to its claims, +there is a special case, special because affecting a single, relatively +small class, of the popular hospitality to contradiction. Thus, the +Christian Scientists would reduce all reality to mind, but at the same +time they busily deny reality to a large group of mind facts, namely and +notably, the ideas of disease. Recently, it is true, according to the +newspapers, their healers have been told to "decline to doctor +infectious or contagious diseases," yet not because such diseases have +any reality, but because the illusion of them is so real as to make the +"Christian" treatment of them both imprudent and impractical. +Philosophies and religions of illusion are certainly weird, uncanny +things!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_4" id="Footnote_2_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_4"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Chapter VII.</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2> + +<h3>THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS RISE AND CHARACTER.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p056" id="p056"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.056]</span> +With science we usually associate accuracy and consistency, and at first +thought we are not likely to expect that the work and standpoint of +science can contain anything substantial enough for the doubter to base +his claim upon; but second thought is our first duty at this time, and +second thought always changes the view, and in this particular instance +it will show science in important respects to be quite as vulnerable as +the unreflective consciousness of practical life, for science also is +honeycombed with contradiction and paradox.</p> + +<p>More than once scientists themselves have turned sceptical about their +work and its results. The cry of bankruptcy in science, not merely as a +charge, but also as a confession, has been heard in the land not +infrequently; now perhaps low and uncertain, but again clear and strong. +And why not? Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other +men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? +Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally +different from the ordinary consciousness. The same eye is looking at +<a name="p057" id="p057"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.057]</span> the same world, only through microscopes and telescopes. The +same mind is measuring the same environment, only with carefully devised +instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and +rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness +highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps +without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say +that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the +inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple +sensations of a bird. The mechanics of flying, so elaborately present to +the former, are nevertheless also present in the latter, while with both +we have the same eye or the same mind looking and the same world seen. +The boasted methods and ideals of the one are but the only half-waking +instincts of the other, and whatsoever is essential to either belongs +also to the other. But, to mark the great difference between them, the +inventor has the disposition to treat flying abstractly—that is, as if +a thing by itself, as if for its own sake; and he goes even farther, +making abstraction of the mere explanation and mechanical expression of +flying; while the bird simply flies, and, if I may hope to be +understood, all things else, the sun and the wind, the trees, and all +living things, and you and I who follow his course are flying with him.</p> + +<p>But no poetic soaring such as this can satisfy our present needs. To +understand and appraise the view of science we must trace its rise as +clearly as we can, <a name="p058" id="p058"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.058]</span> and then critically examine its peculiar +conceits, its own ideal methods and attitudes.</p> + +<p>As for the rise of the scientific view, we may well return to the +definition of science given above: the ordinary consciousness highly +developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Perhaps development +of anything is always at the cost of abstraction; but be this as it may, +science certainly arises through an abstraction, namely, through the +abstraction of consciousness of one's world, through the treatment of +this mere consciousness as something to be cultivated quite for its own +sake; and the motive and the meaning of such a treatment are not far to +seek. Consciousness, to the exclusion or inhibition of direct, overt +action, becomes a matter for abstract, which is to say, exclusive +cultivation, with any serious change, with any upheaval in the familiar +conditions of life. A man—or boy, if you prefer—is taking a +cross-country run, and for a time all goes well; the manner of his going +suffers no interruption, or no serious interruption; but gradually the +undergrowth thickens from low bushes to higher brushwood, and at last, +perhaps quite suddenly, breaking through some wild hedge, the runner +finds himself at the very edge of a stream too wide and too deep for any +ordinary crossing. Thereupon his running, or at least his forward +running, say the running of his "real life," ceases, and looking takes +its place. He is now, in a familiar phrase, "looking before leaping"; +yet with his looking there is a good deal of running too, more or less +overt, but also more or less <a name="p059" id="p059"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.059]</span> instrumental or merely mechanical, +as, going from one point to another, he measures the relations of bank +to bank, or of possible stepping-stones to each other, or hunts for +fallen logs or for shallow places. But, finally, the measurements all +made, the peculiar conditions as fully as possible appreciated, in the +way found to be most feasible he crosses the stream and runs again. And +just in that "looking before leaping," with the accompanying check put +upon the forward running and with the change of the "real life" of +running into merely instrumental action, we get at least a glimpse of +what science is, of the sort of abstraction that its rise implies.</p> + +<p>Only science, specifically so called, is more than such a casual, merely +personal study of a new situation. Science is the distinct work of a +distinct class abstractly studying a new situation that has confronted +the progress not of an individual, but of a whole people, and in this +character it gets at once all the advantages and all the conceits that +belong in general to the life of a class. It gets, too, all the +limitations. Science, once more, is not strictly a personal experience, +although in personal experience, like that of the cross-country runner, +we can get a glimpse of just that which may develop into science. +Science is characteristically a profession. The runner withholds his +running for a time and merely looks and studies, yet his looking is only +for a time; sooner or later he will run again; and even while he studies +there is his continued moving about, his instrumental action, as we +called it; but the professional scientist waives all thought of possible +future activity. Although in reality <a name="p060" id="p060"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.060]</span> his looking is before +leaping, it is not consciously so for him; he is one who under the +constraints of his class merely looks and studies, making of these +processes things quite worthy in themselves.</p> + +<p>In other words, to enlarge somewhat on what has just been said, the rise +of the profession of science does indeed involve both the same check +upon the "real life" and the same reduction of activity to a purely +mechanical or instrumental character that we have pointed out in the +case of the runner at the bank of the stream, but a number of different +social classes divides the labour. In general, society as a means to the +expression and development of human activity, be the activity running or +living in a broader and fuller sense, always shows the different phases +or factors of the experience identified more or less exclusively with as +many different classes or groups, and, in respect to the particular case +here under consideration, upon the rise of science society appears to +delegate the work of careful observation and critical thinking to a +separate class, which, as already suggested, gives up any direct +responsibility to the real life. Another distinct class, arising +contemporaneously, is composed of those who do feel directly +responsible, or "practical," continuing the life of positive, overt +action. This second class maintains the vital processes, although in a +more or less consciously instrumental way, since its members have the +lives of others as well as their own lives to support. So society gets +its workers or labourers as well as its observers and thinkers.</p> + +<p>The rise of science, then, involves a disrupted society. Moreover, the +division is by no means so <a name="p061" id="p061"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.061]</span> simple as the foregoing analysis may +seem to have implied. Observing and thinking, for example, have often +made, too, separate sub-classes, and also there have been many distinct +groups among the workers, such as clerks, soldiers, artisans, +road-menders, and tillers of the soil. The simple analysis, however, has +been quite enough to show, what has seemed to need emphasis, that all +the passions of social life, or rather of social caste, are brought to +bear upon the profession of science, giving it the peculiar conceits and +advantages of class or caste, and also imposing upon it the peculiar +limitations. The advantages, among others, are the strength that lies in +union, and the long continuity and the imitation that always ensure an +accumulation of experience and a refinement of method and an attainment +to impersonal, impartial standards; the conceits are exclusiveness, +sense of sanctity or intrinsic worth, and consequent claims to +aristocracy; and the limitations, although possibly already quite +obvious, are hereafter to be pointed out. But whatever the limitations +or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social +conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of +science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but +the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of +action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake.</p> + +<p>Nor is this fact that science is an abstraction, intensified by the +conditions of class life, the only fact to which the rise of science +bears witness. There is something else equally significant—something, +indeed, so intimately involved in this as perhaps not <a name="p062" id="p062"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.062]</span> properly +to be referred to as another fact at all, being only a further +manifestation of what is already before us. <i>There never arises +abstraction without duplicity.</i></p> + +<p>Plainly a disrupted society, such as has been seen to be incident to the +rise of science, means also a disrupted life. In general the corporate +life of any single class resulting from the division can be only +partial, I do not say in respect to "real life," since this phrase has +itself been associated with too narrow a meaning, but to human nature, +to human life in its entirety, in its real fulness, in its true breadth +and its true depth. All class life, I repeat, involving as it does +disruption and selection of some particular interest or relation, is +inadequate to any human being, and the life of science is no exception +to this rule. Membership in any class and conformity to its peculiar +life, which is partial and abstract as partial, have never satisfied +anybody, and the life of the professional scientist, again, is no +exception to this rule. Accordingly any abstraction in life, the +isolation of any specific interest, when seen in just the light of its +necessary inadequacy, of its definite, more or less exclusive +partiality, must imply in life a demand for reality and completeness, +and this the more as the abstraction is assertive, as the isolation is +insistent. Simply, the whole life will never brook an untempered neglect +from any of its always self-assertive parts. Plainly, however, as +plainly as a disrupted society must mean a disrupted life for each +resulting group, such a demand can be met only in one way, if the cause +for it continues; it can be met only by some form of duplicity, by some +way in which, however indirectly, the life of those <a name="p063" id="p063"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.063]</span> concerned +will always really be more than it seems or will always actually imply +what explicitly or formally it appears to exclude. No such narrow life, +in short, as must always characterize any social group, can ever be +without its compensating innuendoes or indirections for the life from +which it is outwardly aloof, and while the peculiar manner in which the +true reality and the wholeness of life are thus conserved will very +naturally always be determined by the particular class or the particular +class-character involved, being of one sort for road-menders and of +quite a different sort for scientific observers, the organization of +society seems bound at every turn to show that duplicity, compensation +as it always is for partiality, is an indispensable condition. +Duplicity, whatever may be its own special dangers, is always better, +being nearer to reality, than narrowness.</p> + +<p>Is not the road-mender also a good Catholic, or in some other way, +conventional or unconventional, religiously devout, piously doing, not +his own, but another's work? Does not the scientist give point to the +idea of another and different life, that is to say, of his life of +knowledge not being the whole of life, by the agnosticism which he not +only carefully asserts but also actually embodies as a factor in his +method? The road-mender slaves at his humble task, ignorant and yet +trustful, believing in an infallible wisdom and an absolute power, and +the scientist lives with great enthusiasm to know the world as it is, +but tells us at the same time with no less enthusiasm and with a meaning +that certainly ought to temper his exclusiveness that the object which +he studies and describes <a name="p064" id="p064"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.064]</span> is nevertheless really unknowable. To +quote Mr. Spencer: "The man of science ... more than any other, truly +<i>knows</i> that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known." Surely there +is meaning for Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in other +fields besides that of morality. Class life must always involve its +members in a protective or compensating duplicity.</p> + +<p>But now, whatever in the life of other classes this duplicity, which +conserves the wholeness of life even when formally life is narrow and +partial, ought to be called, in the profession of science it often goes +under the name of dualism. Seen at different angles, it is now dualism, +now objectivism, now agnosticism. In each of these different ways the +scientist, quite outdoing or transcending his profession, recognizes a +sphere of reality or a sphere of activity, that is beyond that of the +knowledge which he makes his special business, and, as is very important +to observe, the peculiar manner of his recognition of this sphere, or +the peculiar character of his duplicity, is relative to just the +abstraction which makes his science what it is. Thus his peculiar +duplicity is one of conscious subject and unconscious, external object, +of observing man and objective nature, of real knowledge and unknowable +reality.</p> + +<p>Yet here, before discussing further the relation of dualism to science, +it is well to observe that the positive history of science justifies the +account of its rise which has now been given. The age of science among +the Greeks was coincident with the closing conflict between Greek +civilization and the general life <a name="p065" id="p065"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.065]</span> of the Mediterranean, and the +age of modern science began, not to attempt a long story, with the +discovery of America. All "looking before leaping" is transitional or +revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and +degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs +to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern +science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from +Christendom to—who can say to what? But not only does history show +science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life +of the time, in the first place, to be sharply disintegrated, its +different factors being separately and abstractly expressed through as +many different social groups, and, in the second place, in each of the +groups to be given to double living, to the storm and stress of being +one thing and seeming another. Always an age, conspicuously and +characteristically scientific, has been an age of clearly developed +classes and of a general duplicity in living.</p> + +<p>Thus, to give a striking, although possibly too philosophical an +illustration of the duplicity, Democritus, the great materialist and +atomist, and Plato, the great idealist, were contemporaries and equally +were creatures of their day and generation, and their century was the +century of great achievements in Greek science. Moreover, as regards the +coincident organization of society, we know at least of Plato that he +was keenly conscious of the divisions of society into distinct classes. +And in very much the same way materialism and idealism, not to mention +hedonism and rigorism, or naturalism and supernaturalism, <a name="p066" id="p066"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.066]</span> have +been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern +science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than +so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special +conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes +or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they +are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, +that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or +profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of +Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in +all the different and separately organized phases of life—moral, +industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the +conservatives and the radicals? And were there not also, as typical +individual characters, each of them revealing to everybody something +present within his own life, the only conventional loyalist and the more +truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and +the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously +impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity.</p> + +<p>Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of +science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor +yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a +thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or +idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as +means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all +activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental. +As we know, the disruption means <a name="p067" id="p067"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.067]</span> actual, when not also +intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been +division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of +the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than +things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes +and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and +independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to +give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the +conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people +instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as +some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, +and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the +instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to +be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power +to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, +the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of +society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way +is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites +conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost +notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the +Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for +pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be +questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or +purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the +Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks, +being too conservative, though <a name="p068" id="p068"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.068]</span> utilitarian, failed to make full +use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally +appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as +unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the +Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism, +which has characterized them throughout.</p> + +<p>One thing more, too, from the facts of history may have our attention, +although possibly this addition is quite unnecessary—the fact, namely, +of scepticism coupled always with a hopeful curiosity. A disrupted +society, dividing the labour of human life, is as sceptical as it is +conventional, and as given to experiment and exploration, which are +never without their sense of mystery, and even to conquest, never +without its risks, as it is utilitarian. Was it curiosity or mere +Hellenic conceit, the sense of adventure or the mere dogmatism of a +Greek, that took Alexander abroad with his armies, or that earlier +turned the attention of Athens to the possibilities of the West? And +which, curiosity or religious and political propagandism, a pagan greed +or a Christian piety, inspired the Western and Southern voyages of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Which gave rise even to the Crusades? +It would be interesting, if our present purposes only warranted the +undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of +scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity +has developed as but one expression of a general interest in +experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and +especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and <a name="p069" id="p069"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.069]</span> +confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as +it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some +given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a +mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet +willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those +activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of +course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it +never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of +art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective, left far behind. +But to follow out the line of thought here suggested would take us too +far afield. Let it suffice, then, that we see these two things: how +historically and socially the investigations of science, whatever their +relations to an antecedent art, such as that of the Greeks or of +Christendom in the Renaissance, are but an incident within a general +life of appeal to nature—that is, of exploration and conquest—and then +how the scepticism, involved in the inquiries of science, is intrinsic +to a life that, for reasons now clear to us, has become both +conventional and utilitarian, both formal—or unreal in itself—and +consciously only instrumental. The first of these brings to mind what +was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt +seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly +in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having +the evidence of history, we have next to turn.</p> + +<p>We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the +various factors in human <a name="p070" id="p070"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.070]</span> life, and to be itself, in particular, +the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the +totality of the manifest conditions of life. This abstraction has been +developed and intensified by the formation of distinct social classes; +and, in the special case of the consciousness of nature, by the +formation of a class of scientists, so called, who cultivate their +science for its own sake. We have found the rise of science to imply +also a general duplicity, evident within the field of science in what is +known as dualism. Duplicity is a natural accompaniment of all +abstraction, and it has, as we saw at least in part, a certain +protective and corrective function, which both the logic of experience +and the social and historical conditions of its expression and +development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found +that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional +and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or—let me now +say—experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general +abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for +utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, +formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set +of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions +themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so +fatal to all ideas that should give knowledge any visible form or +resting-place, was but the spirit of his time, the spirit of radical +inquiry become incarnate and assertive in public places. He was but a +visible, public exponent of the critical examination of life which the +self-consciousness of his time made necessary. <a name="p071" id="p071"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.071]</span> Indeed, no +organic form, no living creature, ever reflected the character of its +environment more fully, or more successfully effected an adaptive life +than the method, with its searching questions, and its subtle, logical +gymnastic, of that honestly and radically inquisitive Sophist. And the +standpoint and the procedure of science, in respect to the relation to +their environment, are closely comparable with the method of Socrates.</p> + +<p>Thus science seeks a complete abstraction of the looking consciousness, +and then with a timely duplicity it looks to a wholly external, natural +world. So in the field of its peculiar abstraction does science take the +character and colour of its surroundings. But, further, it presumes upon +the peculiar forms and conditions of its subjective, looking +consciousness, the activities of the mind, being mediative or +instrumental to the presentation of the external objective world, and it +uses also the activities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter +activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the +industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for +just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is +presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take +the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own +purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly +when we remember that, besides being experimental, treating the mind as +an instrument and life's activities at large as only aids more or less +directly pertinent to the mind's work, it is agnostic. Its peculiar +agnosticism not only reflects <a name="p072" id="p072"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.072]</span> its duplicity, as was before +suggested, but in addition shows how very abstract its knowledge is, +and—I know no better phrase—how timelily adventurous. A time of +science is a time when all things final are beyond; yet also, when all +things present, however mysteriously, are really leading yonder.</p> + +<p>Further, science always divides the field of its operations, and so, +besides greatly compounding its abstractness, reflects in its own way, +or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the +specialism of the contemporary social organization. There is division of +labour in this, but there is also a difficulty, which, among other +difficulties, is hereafter to be considered.</p> + +<p>And there is, finally, one more characterization of science which is +suggested by the conditions of its rise, but by something in those +conditions not yet brought into clear view. An age of science is an age +of a rising, although perhaps formally suppressed and disguised +individualism, and quite in sympathy, the method of science is +"inductive," science, though interested in classification, always having +regard for the natural rights of particular things, of single +individuals, reasoning from the particular to the general, as the phrase +runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much +misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of +inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has +been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any +discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that +the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I +would only assert, but I venture to assert <a name="p073" id="p073"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.073]</span> strongly, first, that +behind the conventionalism and utilitarianism of the life of a society +divided into distinct classes, behind the abstraction and the inevitable +duplicity, behind the sense of experiment and adventure, the individual +person is the real power, and secondly, that in induction science has +only translated this real individualism of its time into an attitude or +method for the conduct of its looking consciousness. In this way, as in +those other ways, has science been educated to its peculiar manner.</p> + +<p>We have thus seen how science arises, and how its rise gives it a +certain character. But already suspicion of limitations in the view of +science, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. +Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not +be unmixed. What the specific difficulties are, however, and how far +they really justify our doubting, must be reserved for the ensuing +chapter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2> + +<h3>THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS PECULIAR LIMITATIONS.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p074" id="p074"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.074]</span> +Limitations or opportunities? Error or truth? In the familiar +illustration the tracks which limit the locomotive to a certain course +are essential to its successful movement, and something of the same kind +may be true of science. A man's vices and virtues are never really far +apart, and, again, the same may be true of science. But for the moment +we are to approach science from the standpoint of its limitations; we +are to see how its own natural ideals, as suggested by our +characterization of the scientific view, are evidence of its inadequacy. +So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going +confession of doubt.</p> + +<p>Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and +genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science +must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether +personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or +religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, +the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but <i>persona grata</i> +among scientific men; and (3) agnostic or "positivistic," all conceits +<a name="p075" id="p075"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.075]</span> about what is beyond positive experience, and even all dogma +about what seems really present to experience, being most arrant heresy; +and every one of these ideals, besides being derived from the habits or +instincts, commonly unrecognized and unappreciated, of the ordinary +consciousness, is wholly in accord with the conclusions of the preceding +chapter. The attitude of science, as there disclosed, involved a looking +to an external world—the objectivism; a division of the field—the +specialism; and an experimental, adventurous mind—the agnosticism or +positivism. It involved other things, too, but these three are now +selected, so to speak, as three determining points of science's +circumference. Consideration of them, to whatever results it may lead, +should meet all the demands of the present task. As for the results, +these will show fundamental difficulties, very like to those of ordinary +experience, to lurk in each one of the three ideals. The scientific +consciousness is abstract and just for being in consequence +objectivistic, specialistic, and agnostic it is artificial and unreal, +though perhaps only relatively or not unmixedly unreal, and especially +it is honeycombed with paradoxes and contradictions, with the translated +but not transcended contradictions of ordinary life.</p> + +<p>To the examination, therefore, of these difficulties, or limitations, we +must now turn, taking the three ideals in order.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="I_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_OBJECTIVE" id="I_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_OBJECTIVE"></a>I. SCIENCE WOULD BE OBJECTIVE.</p> + +<p>The ideal of a purely objective science is in many ways a great +delusion, for it may effectually blind <a name="p076" id="p076"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.076]</span> science to its necessary +subjectivism, so far as it gets any substance or content, and to its +necessary formalism, so far as it acts upon a merely external world. +With regard, for example, to the last point, just so far as the ideal of +objectivism is realized, science becomes merely so much technique. By +technique here is meant everything that makes scientific work purely +mechanical. A purely mechanical procedure is the inevitable, the natural +and necessary method of a pure objectivism. Scientists have their formal +etiquette about pre-empted problems or fields of research, their notions +about originality as dependent merely on working a new field—hence the +pre-emption to prevent transgression or theft of originality, their +conceits about bibliographical information, linguistic proficiency and +technical phraseology, their satisfaction over "publication," +"contribution," "production," and "research," and an almost +Gaston-Alphonse deference of each to each among the different branches +of scientific inquiry; and under technique all these things, as well as +the more familiar matters of method and apparatus and material, are here +included. Physicians, we are told, and not infrequently also their +patients, suffer from a professional ritual and etiquette, but they are +far from being alone in their misery. Scientists, would-be objective +scientists, and all who appeal to them, are a close second. Technique +must have its real uses, but plainly it has its limitations. It is one +of the enabling conditions, a <i>sine qua non</i> of science, if science is +to be objective, but it takes the life out of science. A science that +gets no further, that is only "objective," that is, "pure" and +"inductive" <a name="p077" id="p077"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.077]</span> is wholly vain, being like a domestic animal which +is only a pet, or rather like a vigorous plant that runs luxuriously to +leaves, never bearing either flowers or fruit. Its much vaunted +observation and experiment may fill a good many pages and a good many +volumes, but material, even material in books, and experiments, even +carefully, minutely reported experiments, are neither roses nor apples.</p> + +<p>A fruitful science relates itself to something more than a mere +independent object. A fruitful science involves synthesis, not formal, +but real synthesis, as well as analysis, its decomposed object being +also only the separated details of some organizing activity. Indeed, +however unconsciously, or even however against its own avowed interest +and desire, science has that organizing activity in the real life. The +"real life" has seemed aloof, but science is truly an integral part of +this life. Science's very genesis in social evolution, in spite of, nay, +even because of its abstraction by a distinct class and the assumption +of a professional garb, is witness to this relationship. Again, fruitful +science is practical invention, not abstract discovery, and the real +life of a person or a society or a race is as important to it, as much a +warrant of its conclusions, as any object, however mathematically +described or describable, with which science was ever concerned. As for +the thing invented, the tool or the machine, in general the instrument +of adaptation to environment, this sometimes takes visible, wholly +material form; sometimes it appears as a method in the practical arts or +in the fine arts or in education or government; sometimes it is only an +<a name="p078" id="p078"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.078]</span> atmosphere or point of view, a habit of mind; but whatever it +is, it is useful, incalculably useful, and its invention as something +that is widely distinguished from mere receptive observation, if this be +even possible, or from mere accurate description, is science's primary +justification.</p> + +<p>But this, objects somebody, is sentiment, and sentiment of the sort that +quite destroys science, making real science, serious and accurate +science, quite impossible. Well, it does of course dispense with a +purely objective science. It suggests the idea, perhaps the +uncomfortable idea, that, as in some other departments in life, so in +science, death is a condition of success. Science must die to its +objective self before it is saved; it must lose its whole world to gain +its own soul. Or, to put the same idea differently, if the assertion be +not too much like verbal play, a subjective science is not hopelessly +unscientific. Is a man less interested in having a proper edge on his +razor because eventually he must use it on himself? Nothing but a keen +edge can ever ensure a "velvet shave," and nothing but the truth, the +more accurate it be the better, can ever set anybody free.</p> + +<p>Still, all questions of sentiment or of sharp razors or of the accuracy +that liberates aside, we can get support for our scepticism about a +science that, if purely objective, must be also empty and mechanical +from science itself. The consistent evolutionist is obliged to deny pure +objectivity to any scientific knowledge, just as in general he is +obliged to think of all consciousness as never something by itself, but +one of the positive conditions of organic development. To <a name="p079" id="p079"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.079]</span> be an +evolutionist, and at the same time to think of consciousness as only an +external ornament of life, or in its higher development as the exclusive +privilege of a distinct class, to think of it as an aside in life, +perhaps a sudden result without in any way being also a condition of +development, to suppose science to be solely objective and for its own +sake, is nothing more or less than simply to stultify oneself +completely. Even for the historian, whether avowed evolutionist or not, +whose great business is to remind us that what is here or what is now is +not all, the devotion to science for its own sake, which also in other +times has possessed the minds and hearts of certain men, can be at best +only a local and a passing phenomenon. Finally, apart from the +standpoint of evolution or history, it is to be said that human society +at large is sure to resent what may be styled the aristocratic temper +which pure, objective science is all too likely to acquire from the +exclusiveness of its ritual or technique, or say from its abstract and +academic dress, and the resentment of society is important evidence +always. Aristocratic temper, whatever its direction, is certainly as +desirable in social life as it is necessary; it is incident to the +development of all institutions—political, ecclesiastical, industrial, +ceremonial, educational, and, to add to the familiar list, +epistemological; but the resentment which it is sure to awaken is not +one whit less serviceable to society, ensuring as it does, among other +things, the extension of science, the translation of science into life.</p> + +<p>So, to gather the threads together, two difficulties <a name="p080" id="p080"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.080]</span> have now +appeared as affecting the objectivism of science. The first, that of +burial in technique, gave us our starting-point, and the second has come +to light with discussion of the first. Thus, not merely is a would-be +objective science, through its bondage to technique, made formal and +empty, but also, as perhaps only the other side of the same truth, a +would-be objective science materially—that is, for its scientific +doctrines—and formally—that is, for its motives and methods—is always +in practice dependent upon the demands and sanctions of real life, and +so not purely, or not dualistically, objective after all. There is, in +brief, no other conclusion. Either science must be empty, a matter +merely of dead rites and dry symbols and irrelevant ideas, or it must be +pertinent and practical; and, if the latter, its boasted independence is +gone. A purely objective science seems to get only subjectivity for its +pains.</p> + +<p>Yet this conclusion is easily misunderstood. It is far from denying any +meaning to such words as object or objectivity. The object is denied +only as an external independent existence. The object still remains to +experience as possibly of mediative value to its beholders, mediating +between the actual in their life and the possible, between the partial +life and the whole life, the old and the new, the social, which is +always narrow, and the personal. The whole must be always "objective" to +the part, the possible to the actual, the personal to the social; or, +conversely, the "objective," natural world can be only the convincing +witness to the part or to the actual or to the social, not that there is +an independent, wholly external world, but <a name="p081" id="p081"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.081]</span> that there is a whole +or a possible or a personal. "Truly, we are all one," writes Fiona +Macleod. "It is a common tongue we speak, though the wave has its own +whisper, the wind its own sigh, and the lip of man its word, and the +heart of woman its silence." We are all one. Man and nature, which man +beholds, or the subject and the object, of which the subject is +conscious, are one; but an objective science would hide this from us, +not tell it to us.</p> + +<p>But besides burying science in technique, and besides involving it in an +only disguised, albeit a socially significant subjectivity, the ideal of +wholly objective knowledge has also made science conservative in a way +that must have peculiar interest here. Reference is not now made to the +double truth or the double life which an objective science sanctions so +cordially that men can hold so-called advanced scientific ideas without +feeling them in any serious conflict with the traditional teachings of +religion and morality, but to something else perhaps not wholly +unrelated to this, and certainly not less suggestive of contradiction. +While science is commonly supposed to be advanced and radical and up to +date, if anything is, it is so only in a way which calls for a very +important qualification, for it manages to perpetuate, not indeed the +letter, but the spirit of old views. At its best a purely objective +science can give only a new material content, or a new arrangement +perhaps of an old content, to existing and time-worn forms of thought; +it cannot possibly do that in which real progress must always consist, +namely, develop, recognize, and adopt new forms of thought, new +categories; <a name="p082" id="p082"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.082]</span> it cannot do that without betraying its own ideal of +mere objectivism. Objective science—to give a commonplace example—has +said relatively to a certain doctrine of creation that spirit did not +precede matter, but instead matter preceded spirit, and—except for the +excitement of the drawn battle which such a startling declaration has +precipitated—this can hardly be said to have involved any great +advance. Cause and effect have indeed been made to change places by the +new deal, and perhaps in common fairness it was high time that a change +be made, but no new conception of causation itself has been recognized. +The new creationalism, the materialistic, has no essential advantage +over the old. Again, while deposing the First Cause, an objective +science has made all things causes after the same plan—individual, +arbitrary, antecedent causes; and this is only to multiply indefinitely, +perhaps infinitely, the offensive creationalism. "Not so," says some +one; "there is a splendid democracy in it, and it implies a great deal +more than mere multiplication. Indefiniteness, or at least infinity, +transforms anything or everything to which it is applied. By making all +things causes one forces into science the important principle of the +equation of action and reaction, everything being seen as acted upon as +well as acting, and this principle, as if by turning creationalism +fatally against itself, yields a new standpoint, that of mechanicalism." +Granted, and granted cordially, but has a purely objective science any +right to change its standpoint?</p> + +<p>Possibly this does not mean very much. Then approach the matter from +another side, risking a <a name="p083" id="p083"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.083]</span> reference to one of science's pet +conceits, the "question of fact." It has been for science a question of +fact, of mere objective fact, whether matter made mind or mind made +matter; whether this or that thing is or is not a cause of some other +thing; whether certain very low, perhaps unicellular organisms show +purpose in their activities or do not, are gifted with a natural +tendency to social life, a real interest in their kind, or are not so +gifted; or—to take just one more case—whether the changes in the brain +that precede bodily movement are or are not directed by consciousness, +consciousness being in one case in causal relation with the brain, and +in the other only an idle, external accompaniment, an "epi-phenomenon"; +but in each of these questions of objective fact we see the scientist +only standing in his own light, obscuring the view of what above all +else it is important to see. Are mind and matter, cause and effect, +purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such +well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the +scientist's formulæ, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all +that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, +to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to +assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as +blinding and ill-advised as could well be. It has the pleasing form of +open-mindedness, but only the form. It is very much as if some earnest, +yearning truth-seeker should exclaim: "I would see clearly; therefore I +will not open my eyes." No doubt it keeps the scientist busy, eternally +busy, dealing and redealing his facts or data, as busy indeed as the +playful <a name="p084" id="p084"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.084]</span> cat that so hotly pursues her own tail, but it does not +contribute much that is positive and progressive. The very best that one +can say for it is that it turns the kaleidoscope of human experience, +leading as it usually does to a new arrangement of hard, unchanging +things. To the question, for example, about lower organisms showing +purpose or social feeling in their activity, the scientist, after most +careful experiments, may answer in the negative, and be quite emphatic +in his answer too; but almost at once he—or some one for him—will +appreciate that mankind, when scrutinized and experimented upon in the +same way, under the same instruments and through the same laboratory +methods, is similarly deficient; and then, somehow, the wind is taken +out of his sails, since social feeling and purpose refuse to be so +easily disposed of. In this case, as in all cases, the question of mere +objective fact simply returns, as importunate as ever, for another +reckoning, with Shelley's cloud silently laughing at its own cenotaph.</p> + +<p>And what is the difficulty? Once more the difficulty is in the +assumption, so natural to an objective science, of fixed conceptions. +Are purpose and social feeling so fixed in their nature, and above all +so well understood, that their presence or absence can be established by +an experiment or two or ten thousand conducted on strictly objective +principles? No conceptions are fixed, and instead of questions of fact +we should have, what a strictly objective science cannot have, questions +of meaning. Thus, not: Are low organisms, or any organisms, social or +purposive? but: What, if anything, do the processes of their <a name="p085" id="p085"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.085]</span> +lives testify as to the real nature of society or purpose?</p> + +<p>The conservative character of objective science, or the view-point in +its question of fact which the conservatism determines, is the chief +source of the negative attitude of science so familiar to all and so +often an object of complaint. To take, perhaps, the most widely +interesting case, for science to suppose that God either is or is +not—because he must either be or not be the particular thing men have +thought him—is to beg the theological question altogether. Indeed, for +this question of God's existence and for any other question of objective +fact a negative answer is almost, if not quite, a foregone conclusion, +since the very putting of the question is, <i>ipso facto</i>, evidence that a +new idea of the thing inquired about—of God, perhaps, or purpose or +society—is at least just below the horizon of man's consciousness, and +so that the old idea has already lost its validity. Nothing ever is +where you seek it, or what you seek in it, for the simple reason that +your conscious seeking has changed it. Why, then, look—perhaps with a +telescope after a God in the skies—for what you should know you cannot +find? Why despair when a question meets a "no" of its own dictation? The +real questioner lives in a living world, in which all things change and +die, yet only for rebirth, while the "objective" questioner simply +cannot see that the negative of his answer can be only relative to what +is already passing.</p> + +<p>In so many ways, then, a would-be objective science is open to +criticism, and affords in consequence a cause for doubt. Only +subjectivity can make it fruitfully <a name="p086" id="p086"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.086]</span> and worthily scientific. +Only a change in the form of its question can make it substantially as +well as formally progressive. Only a tempering of its negative answers +to a merely relative meaning can make it honest. It is looking at what +is not, and in a way which is artificial, and it sees everything only in +the clear light of its own shadow. Surely to be scientific is human; to +be objective is to rival the lover's unselfishness.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="II_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_SPECIALISTIC" id="II_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_SPECIALISTIC"></a>II. SCIENCE WOULD BE SPECIALISTIC.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, there is the scientist's ideal of specialism, which is at +once not less earnestly cherished and not less strikingly at constant +war with itself. What specialism for science means is known at least in +a general way to everybody, and that an objective science must be made +up of numberless independent inquiries needs only mention, since the +objective world, if really innocent of all personal or subjective +relations, is necessarily manifold and discrete, being made up of a +number of wholly separate details, and being approachable in every one +of its parts from a number of wholly separate standpoints. The objective +world apart from a subject is like a workshop without a workman—a +collection of unused and so unconnected tools and materials each one of +which may have an infinite number of uses; and the objective scientist +views it very much as a stranger, perhaps a savage—may I be forgiven +that mark—might view the lifeless shop, seeing now this thing, now +that, but never the living unity of all the things. So, to repeat, as +soon as the self or subject is removed and the world is turned +objective, all things and all views of things must fall <a name="p087" id="p087"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.087]</span> apart, +and science as the observation of such a world can be only "special." +Not so clear, however, or at least not so commonly appreciated, is the +peculiar fallacy and contradiction of specialism to which attention is +asked here. Once more is science to be seen as in a sense standing in +its own light, since it cannot be at once special and directly and +literally true and adequate.</p> + +<p>To begin with, specialism makes vision, the mind's vision as well as the +sensuous vision, dim or distorted. It may even be said to induce a +species of blindness or, as virtually the same thing, to create in +consciousness curious fancies, strange perversions of reality, seen not +with the natural eye at all, but with the imagination, always so +ingenious and so original, and one might almost add so hypnotic, in its +power of suggestion over the senses. In ways and for reasons neither +unknown nor unappreciated by most men, specialism even closes one's eyes +and makes one dream. It makes the specialist among physicians see his +special ailment in every disorder, and every disorder in his special +ailment, and this so truly that merely to consult him may be to fall his +victim. True, he may never be, perhaps can never be, wholly wrong, and +his transgressions, conscious or unconscious, have often helped +discovery, but nevertheless his situation, not to say that of his +patient, is full of humour, and always among other troubles he is under +the error of partiality or one-sidedness. And in science generally the +specialist always does and always must dream. His dreams may be waking +dreams, but he is always transgressing his own proper bounds without +ever <a name="p088" id="p088"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.088]</span> clearly comprehending that he has transgressed. Nor, be it +admitted, can this necessity of dreaming be a wholly unmixed evil to +science. However unfavourably it may reflect on the final, literal +validity of any special science, it only shows nature, or reality, +preserving her unity against the attempted violence of specialism. It +shows that in spite of the specialist being all eyes for his own +peculiar object, the mind that is within him and that is above all +else—such, apparently, is the nature of mind—responsible not +exclusively to the special and sensuous, but to the all-inclusive and +essential, and is therefore bound to conserve for experience the +interests of an indivisible universe in every particular thing, leads +him, devotee that he is, patiently repeating his sacred syllable, into +most wonderful visions. For the sake of inclusiveness and reality his +mind projects his would-be special consciousness into regions of strange +subtlety and marvellous logical construction; as Oriental priest or +Occidental scientist he is a specialist, yet not without a mind, or a +real, ever-present world, which refuses to be special, and as he dreams +he comes to see, yet knows not that he sees, the whole universe. A +seeing blindness, then, is this specialism; a monomania too, but, of +course, conventional and respectable.</p> + +<p>Mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology and psychology, not to +say also the social sciences, all depend upon the far-seeing mystical +visions of the mind, if not of the eye, upon the subtle, logical +constructions which their would-be scientific specialism, their desire +to know all things narrowly, forces upon them. Each one may be special, +but each as it <a name="p089" id="p089"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.089]</span> gains precision and as it becomes truly an +account of the facts, under the guidance of an exacting mind that at any +cost must present the whole to consciousness, conserves within itself +the common universe of them all by developing under what is called the +"scientific imagination" all sorts of indirections, disguises, +abstractions, logical constructions for the things and view-points of +the others. Each to be veracious has no choice but to be also voracious, +and when, for example, a physical scientist insists on seeing his world +only physically, while in reality it is of course, to say no more, a +world of chemical process also, and even of vital and mental character, +he is sooner or later constrained to admit to his thinking what above +were called abstractions or logical constructions, but what also pass +under the name of "working hypotheses." These are formally true to his +physical standpoint, but any outsider in order to explain why they are +hypotheses that <i>work</i> must call them compensating or conserving +conceptions—in short, logical constructions that are, or that in part +involve, substitutes for the neglected points of view, being, as it +were, the secret agents of a universe refusing to be divided. To +characterize them in just one more way, a science's working hypotheses, +results as they are of science's blind but brilliant dreaming, many or +all of them, are doors in the panelling by which the other sciences are +quietly admitted to a room seemingly tightly closed to all comers. Every +science, and this the more as it becomes scientific, must entertain all +the others, however unwittingly. Tennyson's "flower in the crannied +wall," so often plucked, is nothing in <a name="p090" id="p090"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.090]</span> all-inclusiveness when +compared with a well-developed special science. No science, physical or +psychical, biological or social, ever does or ever can live to itself +alone. It may will to, but it does not and it cannot. All the others +live with it and for it—nay, they all live in it.</p> + +<p>Yet in actual practice, what are these working hypotheses that work +because they are compensating conceptions or doors in the panelling? No +veracity without unrestrained voracity is interesting as a formula, but +how verify it? Verification, or illustration, is now imperative. +Illustration, however, is very difficult for a reason which the +scientists now on trial must allow me to mention. The scientists know +too much about the sciences, or at least of them, while I know too +little. Still, as too much knowledge is often the source of obscurity, +and so only a form of ignorance, my situation is not altogether +hopeless. Thus, while it is true that the scientists are likely to +insist, even in the face of a mind bound to preserve the unity of an +indivisible universe in all the varied studies and conclusions of +science, that physics is only physics and chemistry only chemistry and +biology only biology and psychology only psychology, and while also all +illustrations must come from the field of their special studies, and may +therefore only set them more firmly in the wilful blindness of their +specialism, still the principle of a conserving mind, or an eternally +conserved truth or an indivisible reality, is a disturbing influence +which they cannot evade. Then, too, I am forgetting and allowing them to +forget a very important fact in scientific work to-day. In these <a name="p091" id="p091"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.091]</span> +times the running together or merging of different sciences, as if +through something of the nature of a chemical reaction, is a very +familiar phenomenon. It is as familiar, although not so loudly heralded, +as that of the railroads and industrial companies; and it has been +taking place with such persistence and confidence as actually to suggest +a natural affinity, each of the sciences involved having the rich +experience of discovering itself already in the others. This fact, then, +must make illustration less difficult, since, in a way that must appeal +to the scientist as no merely theoretical considerations can, it proves +or goes very far toward proving what is to be illustrated. Moreover, +specific illustration is hardly necessary in the sphere of the different +physical sciences, or again, in that of the social or the psychological +sciences, for within each one of these groups the affinity but just now +referred to has been very clearly exemplified, as in the interesting +case of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which nowadays are one +science, not three, and which can be held apart only on methodological +grounds, not metaphysically. Illustration, accordingly, appears, after +all, to be needed only for the specialism that separates the physical +and the psychical sciences.</p> + +<p>Physiological psychology and physically experimental psychology, both of +them suggestive of nothing less incongruous than seething ice, are sure +to come to mind at once; but also there is a mathematical psychology, +comparable with a developmental mechanics and biometrics in biology, and +hardly a single field of science, however apparently distant and alien +in nature and interest, has not contributed something <a name="p092" id="p092"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.092]</span> to +psychology or to epistemology, the general science of knowledge. But now +it is likely to be objected by some one that just because sciences, +whether in clearly related or in widely separated fields, are useful to +each other, just because they can serve, as they do, in the rôle of +methods of each other, they are not necessarily in any real and natural +affinity. May not their association be purely one of utility, involving +no surrender of special individuality and requiring in any case only +temporary relationship? The question is absurd. Any means that really +serves an end must have something in common with the end it serves; and, +again, an end that really sanctions a means, whatever the means be, must +itself be, at least potentially, which is after all to say essentially, +in and of the means employed. Different sciences, then, even physics and +psychology, or natural science and theology, cannot be even temporarily +methods of each other without partaking in some way, under some disguise +or other, through some peculiarity in their conceptions or in the +relations of their conceptions, of each other's subject-matter.</p> + +<p>In view of this fact of mutual participation of nature and idea among +the sciences that use each other, I have myself conceived, and in +another place have given expression to, what appropriately may be called +a physical psychology or epistemology.'<a name="FNanchor_1_5" id="FNanchor_1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_5" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This new hybrid science is +especially concerned with nothing more nor less than those substitutes, +disguises, or <a name="p093" id="p093"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.093]</span> indirections, really present in all the physical +sciences, for the peculiar nature, for the peculiar sort of unity, +intensive instead of extensive or qualitative instead of quantitative, +or say also even vital and spiritual instead of physical, which is +always associated with mind. In conservation of matter, energy, what you +will, in plenitude, in motion as only relative and so as always under a +principle of uniformity and constancy or even immobility, in motion too +as inclining to vibration, which suggests poise or tension, or to +rotation, in which we see rest as well as motion, and finally, not to +extend what might be a long list, in the infinity of space and time or +of quantity, the physical sciences have hidden entrances for the silent, +usually unnoticed admission of what is psychical. But I may seem to be +jumping too far, to be presuming too much. Then put the case in this +way—not quite so direct, but to the same goal. All of these +conceptions, so necessary to a "working" physical science, need very +little examination to be seen to be treacherous to the physical +standpoint and its peculiar categories. One might as well try to make +water unsupported assume definiteness of form as to conceive the +conservation of energy or plenitude or the relativity of motion in the +character of what is physical, or at least of what is properly and +conventionally physical. Being treacherous, then, to the physical +science that has conceived them, they are, as was said, doors for what +is not physical; hidden doors, perhaps, but certainly doors to be opened +at will; and by them mind is bound to enter the physical world and its +sciences. To those familiar with the history of philosophy, the +speculation <a name="p094" id="p094"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.094]</span> of the early Greek thinkers, notably Anaximander, +Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, will afford illustration of the physical +view running, in spite of itself, into treacherous conceptions, and +eventually reaching the discovery of their treachery and with it the +idea of mind or <i>Nous</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_6" id="FNanchor_2_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_6" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>So for science is the material world, what properly it is often said to +be, a sort of dark mirror of man's inner life, of his psychical nature. +Physical science as consciousness of the outer material world is not, +and has itself shown that it cannot be, merely and exclusively physical. +By virtue of its working hypotheses, which are as secret doorways, it is +psychical also. Though darkly and indirectly it is our human +self-consciousness. Perhaps it is our self-consciousness rendered +impersonal or the self seen through the mirror of not-self or through +the disguise of what a photographer would call a "negative"; and, if it +may be so described, we are reminded of Burns:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O wad some power the giftie gie us,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To see oursels as others see us!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">It wad frae monie a blunder free us,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">And foolish notion.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Only the bonnie Robert himself was too much of a specialist in poetry to +see that natural science was the very thing he prayed for.</p> + +<p>And just as there is thus a physical psychology, so <a name="p095" id="p095"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.095]</span> in like +manner there is a psychological or epistemological physics, which in its +turn is concerned with the indirections, or doors in the panelling, +present in all the psychical sciences, for those very physical things +quantity and matter. The devil will have his due; even an optimistic +theology has to recognize him. And psychology has a sensuous self, the +self of the purely sensuous consciousness, which has always involved it +in a curious psychical atomism, a projection, in a word, of the physical +on the plane of the psychical. Sensationalism, too, as a psychological +theory in the history of thought has always been associated with +materialism.</p> + +<p>With regard, then, to the separation even of the psychical and the +physical sciences, which obviously has at its base the distinction +between mind and matter, we observe that our principle of affinity and +mutual participation still holds. By a sort of projection or +reproduction mind and matter both appear, the one openly, the other in +disguise, in each kind of science. However unawares, the physical +entertains mind; the psychical matter; and specialism, so far as +standing for anything more than scientific method, has to withdraw from +its last stronghold. The very dreaming of the scientific imagination is +its undoing.</p> + +<p>For other evidence against the integrity and adequacy of specialism, +showing how mind defies specialism and conserves its indivisible +universe, there are the following simple but certainly interesting +facts. All the different sciences, however special and however +apparently alien in subject matter, are wont to use the same general +methods—as, for example, the laboratory or experimental method or the +historical <a name="p096" id="p096"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.096]</span> method, the fatal consequences of which to the cause +of pure specialism may easily be inferred. History is famous for +overcoming differences. The common interest in mathematics must also be +mentioned, for mathematics, through its latest developments in danger of +turning into a pure logic, is quite independent of all those material +differences that separate the different sciences. It is formal and +universal, not special; so that the special science that would also be +mathematical appears somehow to be at least in aim as universal as it is +special. Perhaps mathematics more than anything else has fed the +voracity which we have seen veracity to exact. Has it not been the chief +agent in the virtual annihilation of the barriers between physics and +chemistry? This particular mingling of the special sciences has been +mentioned here already, but mathematics is threatening the party-walls +of all the other sciences also. Further, what are we to infer from the +idea that all sciences seek law? Certainly law is not special as science +has seemed to be. Somehow law is not many, but one. Many laws can only +be different phases or cases of one law. The very essence of law is to +be one and single and all-embracing. To put the case theologically, +could any one suppose that God made the laws of chemistry and sociology +and psychology as so many separate and independent enactments? On such a +supposition he had been a strange God indeed, lacking the very thing, +unity of being and character, which men have come to associate with +divinity, and what theology demands of God, science, even against its +own specialism, must demand of its object. Again, <a name="p097" id="p097"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.097]</span> the way in +which by implication, when not openly, one science is given to handing +over its hardest problems to another is very instructive as well as +amusing. Not many years ago I was present at a joint meeting, a +good-natured and doubtless honestly ambitious conference of biologists, +physiologists, and psychologists, and the addresses then made have often +reminded me of one of Thomas Nast's famous cartoons: A closed ring of +political grafters, none other than the notorious Tweed and his +followers, each pointing to his neighbour and putting on him the +responsibility of a very embarrassing situation. "Find the rogue" was +the artist's inscription; but with apologies for the association, we can +easily change it to "Find the special science." And, lastly, in this +list of the simple evidences against an adequate specialism there are +the conspicuous analogies other than those of common method or common +interest in law, which are always easily traced among the sciences, even +the sciences in the opposite camps of matter and mind, of any particular +time. Atomism in physics is contemporary with atomism in psychology and +with individualism in political philosophy; a monarchical politics with +an anthropomorphic, creationalistic theology and an also monarchical +physically centred astronomy, whether heliocentric or geocentric; and a +Newtonian astronomy, which really makes a law or force instead of an +individual body the centre and control of the solar system, with +democracy or constitutionalism, and with inductive instead of deductive +logic and naturalistic instead of dogmatic theology; so that at no time, +whatever the scientist's special interest, whatever his <a name="p098" id="p098"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.098]</span> special +syllable, can he fail to have at least a formal sympathy with others. +Such analogies among the sciences, so often recognized and so +absorbingly interesting to the students of the history of thought, if +not exactly doors in the panelling, may be said to make the panelled +partitions at least translucent if not unsubstantial and transparent.</p> + +<p>But the most important fact in illustration of our case against +specialism is yet to be considered, and unfortunately it takes us where +to some the waters may seem dangerously deep. Not only for reasons +already given and emphasized is the special science a misnomer, a +contradiction in terms, except in so far as specialism be taken merely +as an incident, not without its humour, of scientific method, but also +for the same reasons (and chiefly because the truth and reality of the +universe are bound to be conserved) every special science must sooner or +later develop its doctrines either into direct paradoxes or into tenets +that oppose and contradict each other. Thus, as has been shown, +specialism in science is itself a paradox, and, as now asserted, every +special science assuming precise form and real validity becomes a home +of paradoxical or contradictory doctrines. Indeed, these doctrines just +through their opposition appear be the most effective agents of that +compensation for neglected points of view, or conservation of all points +of view, which we are insisting is for ever forced upon the scientific +specialist. In the cases of physical epistemology and epistemological +physics we have already seen doctrines working to this end. In those +cases the real treachery to the avowed <a name="p099" id="p099"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.099]</span> standpoints lay in +virtual when not open contradiction. And, for the general principles, is +it not quite clear that nothing so surely as contradiction in any given +point of view, or in the specific doctrines developed under it, can +serve the interests of any other points of view? I have heard it said, +but by whom originally I do not know, that a paradox or contradiction +was only the mind on tiptoe struggling to look over a very high wall.</p> + +<p>The point is just this. The special science, because special or partial +and because at the same time courting scientific character or validity, +that is, conformity with reality, must be relative, formal, abstract, +artificial, unreal, but also for exactly the same reason it must +contrive to admit to its conceptions other view-points than its own. Its +own peculiar view-point is relative, but that it may attain actual +validity it is bound to overcome its relativity by admitting, secretly +perhaps yet not less truly, other points of view; and paradox or +contradiction is the natural door for such admissions, the original +view-point being tenacious to the last. Physics says: "I will be physics +through thick and thin; I will be physics though the heavens fall and +though dreadful paradoxes arise"; and in like manner psychology cries +aloud: "I will be psychology though I suffer from a splitting dualism +for my pains." Have you, gentle reader, never held and held and held to +some particular notion about things, modifying the details perhaps +little by little, but always imagining yourself strictly loyal to the +old, old view, and then suddenly discovered your consciousness alive +with contradictions? If you have, you know, possibly <a name="p100" id="p100"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.100]</span> too well, +the natural history of every special science, and also you can +sympathize deeply with the hen and her cherished chicks that proved ugly +ducklings. The special science, I repeat, must be hospitable, however +grudgingly, to strangers, though at the expense of becoming thoroughly +divided against itself. Such hospitality is an obligation—call it +logical if you will, or moral or metaphysical, for the name matters not +if it only suggests coercion—which is not less binding upon the +scientific spirit than upon the spirit of racial unity, always urgently +present in you and me. You and I may be so special or exclusive as to +drive strangers from our doors, but an impulse to call them back and +give them entertainment always follows—an impulse that is only the +necessary reaction of the expulsion. Humanity is indivisible in spite of +our asserted exclusiveness, and nature is indivisible, too, in spite of +specialism. Partiality of any sort, along any line, in any field, can +never long persist without, though often darkly and indirectly, though +by the way of bold, unrecognized, or unconfessed paradox, receiving from +outside all that it would exclude. I am not merely repeating. At first, +we saw only that the scientific imagination brought to the special +science as its working hypotheses certain conserving or compensating +conceptions; then, that these conceptions involved treachery to the +science that harboured them; but now we are face to face with the fact +that their complete, their most effective form is the paradox.</p> + +<p>Would that I had the ability to write with the penetration and the +clearness of statement that the <a name="p101" id="p101"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.101]</span> subject should certainly elicit, +upon the strange equanimity with which mankind, in science or in +practical life, receives and faces a direct negative or an open +contradiction. Perhaps the habit of easy division into positive and +negative, the ready resort to dichotomy, explains the mystery; perhaps +the fact that negation or opposition is and can only be in kind, that +there never is or can be any real change or need of change in a mere +negation, is at least an important factor in the case; perhaps, again, +the very hopelessness of the dualism, which a flat, unequivocal negation +plainly involves, is also to the point; but, beyond all peradventure, we +do accept the direct negative with a patience, even an indifference, +that may greatly assist our natural conservatism, whether of thought or +life, but that on being recognized certainly does arouse our wonder. +Good and its opposite evil, true and false, real and unreal, unity and +plurality, life and death, the indivisible and the divisible, rest and +motion, plenum and vacuum, immaterial and material, actuality and +illusion, lawfulness and lawlessness: these and so many other opposites +are the common stock-in-trade of our living and thinking, and we accept +and use them with a complacency that cannot easily be exaggerated. Yet +the negative in each and every one of them holds the future of the +universe in the palm of its hand. And the special scientist before his +inevitable paradoxes is as conservative and as complacent as the rest of +us.</p> + +<p>But it is one thing to say, or even to reason out cogently and +satisfactorily in every way, that the <a name="p102" id="p102"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.102]</span> special science, if both +persistently special and honestly scientific, must be sooner or later +inwardly contradictory and treacherous to itself, and it is quite +another thing to show the contradiction in actual cases. The actual +cases, however, are more easily found than many are likely to suppose, +and at mention they may even seem like forgotten memories, like things +which at some time we have noticed but become callous towards. Thus the +atom is through and through a self-contradiction, being itself only a +part of a divided reality, yet at the same time itself real only because +indivisible; and a science harbouring such an atom can hardly be said to +be unmixedly physical. The vibration, too, already referred to here as +motion in poise or at rest; infinity as one more quantity that is +significant because not quantitative; the sensation, a component element +of consciousness that cannot possibly be composite; the plenal physical +medium, which can be physical only if displaceable by other material +things, and so plenal only if not physical, and which has served besides +as an immobile yet infinitely elastic basis of motion or its +transmission; and, to give just one more instance, in moral and +political science the person, a self-existent, actively free being or +entity whose every deed as well as whose every thought is responsible to +something, being adaptive and therefore social, social with other +persons and with nature, and whose every virtue implies dependence and +an existence shared with something else: these are all also +self-contradictions. And in view of them who must not see how the +special sciences are always more than special, ever correcting <a name="p103" id="p103"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.103]</span> +in ways that may be unappreciated by themselves their partiality of +view, ever responsible to the totality of things even while they would +observe things only under selected view-points. Such contradictions, +once more, show mind loyal to what students of logic are familiar with +as the "universe of discourse." Even in science you cannot discourse +about anything without at least implicitly discoursing about everything, +although in order to do so you must speak in such paradoxes as the atom, +the person, the biologist's "vital unit," the vibration, the plenum, and +the like indefinitely.</p> + +<p>Nor is the scientist the only dreamer of paradoxes among men. Ordinary +practical life, as we have seen, teems with paradoxes. But, for purposes +of illustration, not to say also of giving greater breadth and depth to +the view, a reference to the situation in the religious consciousness +will have peculiar value here. A religion that supplements reverence for +a personal God, working miracles and caring for the elect, who even +nowadays are more or less elect, with belief in a devil, even nowadays +more or less personal, is clearly a blood relation to science, and it is +besides by no means so unnatural or irrational as is often declared, +particularly by the scientists. Its two errors, just because opposed, +conserve what is real, and no science can claim more than that. Indeed, +a science, notably a special science, like a theology, might well be +described as a system of mutually corrective errors, of abstractions +that, because abstract, distort the reality of things, but that also +because being at difference with each other and eventually <a name="p104" id="p104"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.104]</span> +falling into contradictory and so counteracting pairs are at least +parties to what is real and true. By hook or crook, by the hook of +abstraction or the crook of contradiction, every science gets in touch +with the universe as a whole, and so even with its errors is a "working" +science. The errors of many a religion, by their working together, have +not failed to save men.</p> + +<p>So we may return to the assertion that in its specialism, as well as in +its demand for objective knowledge, science is self-contradictory, and +with this conclusion established the exposure of science already offers +a very strong case for the doubter. Yet it does this only to the extent +and in the sense that contradiction warrants doubt. After all is said, +have we been only exposing science? Has attack been our only procedure? +Do we not find, as we reflect, that in our exposure there has also been +something very near to defence? Or, once more, through the science to +which we have taken exception have we not seen a science in which we +could believe? In the examination of science's objectivism we saw that +technique buried science, but—though we did not say this in so many +words—that there might be a resurrection. If fruitful in inventions +serviceable to life, science was justified in spite of its cultivated +objectivism, and the objectivity itself, besides an aid to accuracy, has +further significance as possibly an earnest of wider social +relationship, of broader and deeper life. The question of fact, too, if +appreciated and so made subordinate to the question of meaning, was even +allowed, and science, although at once formally conservative <a name="p105" id="p105"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.105]</span> and +materially negative and destructive, seemed after all to be the promise, +so to speak, of a new dawn for the very things denied. And now in what +has been said of the specialism of science, the same turning of the edge +of attack is all but manifest. Every special science is narrow and +relative—it is in the form of an unreal dream; but reality somehow +gives form to the dream, for there are always the compensating +conceptions. The contradictions by which the compensation has been +effected are, then, interpretable not more as causes of doubting science +than as reasons for confidence in it. Thus, to be tedious again, the +special science is relative and formal; it is a peculiar system of +ingenious abstractions that in so far are also errors; but its formal +character includes also contradiction; its errors are so related as to +correct and balance each other; so that, even in the face of our +necessary scepticism about it, science has been evident to us, as also +was the consciousness of ordinary life, as somehow always building +better than it knows or than its methods or ideals and doctrines viewed +only from without would lead one to expect. Moving in it we have +certainly felt the presence of, something, not yet called by name, which +is very like a principle or power of validity, preserving the reality of +things even in and through the relativity and contradiction under which +the things are seen. While the letter of our knowledge, even of our +scientific knowledge, must ever have an indeterminate future; while rest +or stability, ultimate reality or consistency is quite impossible to it, +still its inner, active spirit seems a source of faith that is +inviolable, that cannot be shaken. Different <a name="p106" id="p106"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.106]</span> quantities, such as +four and two, and sixteen and eight, do not make the same sum, much less +are they the same digits; but they are in the same ratio, and similarly +the truth of science would seem to lie in the ratio, the working +together, of the errors of science. Outwardly and materially changing +with time and with people, assuming ever new forms and comprising always +new doctrines, science nevertheless, as an active force, as a positive +resultant, is at least now conceivably always the same and applicable to +the same life. Even the Babylonians of an ancient day successfully +predicted eclipses, the very errors of their astronomy working together +for truth, exactly as the heresies of pagan religion seem to have +balanced each other to the preservation and the development of the life +which we of the present day and the Christian civilization are pleased +to call our own.</p> + +<p>Accordingly the science we have to doubt is also manifest to us as at +least a possible object of faith. The very causes of our doubt before +our very eyes have turned, or are in process of turning, into possible +bases of belief, and our confession of doubt as it proceeds is proving +ever more worth making. We are trying to be such honest doubters. We are +indeed such penitent believers.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="III_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_AGNOSTIC" id="III_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_AGNOSTIC"></a>III. SCIENCE WOULD BE AGNOSTIC.</p> + +<p>Still we have, thirdly, the agnosticism of science to consider and +appraise. Agnosticism confines knowledge to actual positive experience, +and in its form of "positivism" to an only tentative acceptance of +actual experience, and it is thus in effect an admission of <a name="p107" id="p107"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.107]</span> just +those limitations which have been found to belong to science as +objective and special. Objectivism and specialism have both shown +science to be standing in its own light, or at least to be standing in +the way of any direct and positive knowledge of reality. Whatever they +make possible to our virtual as distinct from our positive +consciousness, whatever indirectly or implicitly may through them belong +to our conscious life, formally and visibly, positively and directly, we +cannot know reality. In a word, science must and does recognize an +unknowable, or at least an unknowability in things, and agnosticism is +accordingly important among the three determining points of science's +circumference. But here is now our problem: Does science put the right +value upon, does it ascribe the right meaning to, its agnosticism? Is +the implied scepticism of the sort that we can cordially accept? +Especially, does science have any due appreciation of the negative, not +to say of the suggested dualism, in the opposition between the knowable +and the unknowable?</p> + +<p>Now both objectivism and specialism plainly involve aloofness, which is +perhaps only another word for what in the preceding chapter was called +abstraction. By the first of these two "isms" science is held aloof from +life; by the second, through the many divisions, from itself, that is to +say, part from part. Men who would be scientists withdraw, as we hear +them boast, from affairs, and as they withdraw it is also as if they put +on distorting and even discolouring glasses, through which in one and +another "special" way they would behold the "objective" world. Their +withdrawal <a name="p108" id="p108"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.108]</span> is thus not merely physical; it is also mental. To +look out of the window one must turn one's head and lift one's eyes and +adjust both head and eyes in other ways; but looking in general, whether +from the needs of an objective or a special view, also demands certain +pertinent adjustments, and the demanded adjustments make the resulting +experience just so far aloof, just so far discoloured and distorted. +Granted that these terms can be only relative in significance. To be +aloof from something is to have it equally aloof from you, and you +should be no more discredited by the separation than it. To be distorted +and discoloured is to be so only with regard to something that in its +own peculiar way may be equally transformed. Such relativity, however, +cannot deprive the differences involved of real significance; it can +only emphasize the general instead of the narrow, local application of +the terms found to be relative. What is relative is not unreal; it is +simply shared, like cousinship. So science, the looking of science, +means real aloofness and real disfiguration.</p> + +<p>The truth of this has already been apparent to us in a general way, but +it will be worth while here to be more specific. The space and time, for +example, in which scientists observe things are widely different from +the space and time of will and action. In ordinary life a difference is +felt between the world we know and the world we live, but the extreme +professional attitude of science greatly widens the differences. For +science space and time are quantitative, divisible, formal, +mathematically correct, and independent of what is in them, their +reality or qualitative <a name="p109" id="p109"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.109]</span> value to active life being hidden or at +least only very indirectly presented—I suggest, in the constant +opposition of their finiteness and infinity—while for will and action +they are qualitative, indivisible, inseparable from what is in them. Who +ever did anything in a composite, divisible space and time? Action in +such a sphere would be hopelessly jerky; with Zeno's flying arrow it +would just always rest <i>in statu quo</i>, though its <i>status in quo</i> might +have an indefinite series of positions. Again, the scientists reduce +causation to mere uniformity of co-existences or sequences, which is no +real causation at all, being only so much passive existence or +mechanical process, while will or action is causation, the positive +interaction of things, the active relation, the vital unity, of what was +and is and is to be. It is true that here, too, the causation of real +life is darkly presented by science in a constant opposition between a +single first cause and an eternal series of causes, for such an +opposition makes real causation in an important way quite transcendent +of the mere differences of time; but, setting this concession aside, who +ever did anything in a world either of one cause active long ago or of +an infinite series of causes? And, once more, science needs elements, +while will or life is the eternal denial of elements or anything like +them. Says a well-known writer:<a name="FNanchor_3_7" id="FNanchor_3_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_7" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> "It is one of the greatest dangers of +our time that the naturalistic (or scientific) point of view, which +decomposes the world into elements for the purpose of causal connection, +interferes with the volitional point of view of real life, <a name="p110" id="p110"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.110]</span> which +can deal only with values, and not with elements." The danger involved +will occupy us in a moment, but the bondage of science to elements, to a +composite world, to a thoroughly "decomposed" reality, will hardly be +questioned. Through contradiction, again, as in the chemist's component +atom, itself not composite; or the biologist's "vital unit," which bids +fair to be the master paradox of the day, science may darkly and +indirectly preserve the world of real life, the world that is neither +one element nor many, but in this case as in the others the indirection, +after all is said, only emphasizes the aloofness.</p> + +<p>So science is aloof, and in being aloof it disfigures and defaces +reality, and the argument for agnosticism is consequently unassailable. +No one more effectively has shown this than Immanuel Kant, although one +may question Kant's final appraisal of the fact. Here certainly is no +place for an exposition of the Kantian philosophy, but, briefly and +simply put, that philosophy has characterized space and time and the +relation of cause and effect, not to mention certain other very general +data of experience, as the <i>a priori</i> forms of all valid, objective +knowledge, and being translated this is to say that these so-called +forms are the enabling attitudes of the merely looking consciousness or +the peculiar glasses which, as it were, the mind puts on whenever it +turns just to look. The typical Boston girl, according to the +cartoonists, is never without her glasses. In like manner the typically, +professionally correct looking consciousness, the observing, scientific +mind, is never without those enabling attitudes. Do you ask if they are +then only subjective attitudes? <a name="p111" id="p111"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.111]</span> They are subjective only as they +are relative. They are subjective only as they express the aloofness of +the scientific observer. And they are subjective, lastly, only in so far +as can be consistent with Kant's further characterization of them as in +every instance imbued with essential opposition or "antinomy." Remember +that an attitude that harbours opposition is always tip-toeing to +overcome the bounds of its own natural vision. Such an attitude cannot +be unmixedly subjective.</p> + +<p>But what now is the danger of science's agnosticism, of science's own +admission that being "objective" and "special," or being under the +constraint of certain enabling attitudes, or being at best only +tentative in all its doctrines, it is not and cannot possibly be +formally realistic? One might imagine, or expect, that confession of its +limitations would be good for the soul of science, and in truth we shall +certainly find some advantage resulting from the confession, but even +science's agnosticism is faulty in a serious way. The writer quoted +above has told us that the great danger always threatening science is +that the scientific will interfere with the volitional point of view, +and this is equivalent to fearing, in the interests of science, that the +scientist will forget his agnosticism and try to render what he cannot +know in terms of what he does know, or that the man of affairs will look +to science for his programmes of action. Such a fear, however, may play +to the professional conceits and the professional isolation and +abstraction of the scientific point of view, but it is very far from +grasping the true import of the conflict between knowledge and +unknowable <a name="p112" id="p112"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.112]</span> reality. I should myself assert, in partial if not in +complete opposition to Professor Münsterberg, that science's very +natural danger is that the scientific and the volitional point of view +will be kept apart, that the professionalism and the formalism and what +Kant called the phenomenalism of science will prevent their +interference. At least, this danger is just as great, and just as +seriously a danger, as the other. Most people know well enough that +keeping science and life or theory and practice apart has the effect of +making the former lose itself in a highly morbid intellectualism, and +the latter in the dead monotony, of a mere existence, sometimes +presumptuously styled "practical life," but such a result seems not to +trouble either Professor Münsterberg or the conventional scientist whose +cause the vigorous professor has espoused. In other regions, +fortunately, a formal disparity is not accepted as arguing to a natural +divorce, but is even considered, let it be said, a reason for +association; and as for the disparity between science and will, it is +quite true that life without science is lifeless and that science +without life is meaningless.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the crowning fault of the agnostic scientist is his lack of +humour. He takes himself too seriously. The lover, when his fair one has +formally disagreed with him, rejecting his suit with her outspoken "No" +and promising lasting friendship and good-will even to assurances of +assistance in his next venture, takes hope, smiles grimly within +himself, and feels sure still that she and he, however disparite, are +meant to live together for better or worse. But the rejected scientist +takes the unknowable's "No" as if it <a name="p113" id="p113"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.113]</span> were final, and then, +retiring to his study or laboratory, proceeds, though in a morbid, +abnormal way, to mingle the scientific and volitional standpoints every +time he writes a line or makes an experiment. We watch him as he goes, +and find his case not without its humour. If the true lover upon being +rejected were satisfied thereafter with caressing the lady's photograph, +then he and the agnostic scientist would be in the same class.</p> + +<p>But, as is needless to say, I am not writing a novel. So, romance aside, +unquestionably the forms and doctrines of the scientific consciousness +are peculiar, being, as has been shown, logically subtle, imaginary and +innocent of direct practical realism, being, in short, the inhabitants +of a world quite their own, and to impose them intact upon active life +cannot fail to bring disaster, the usual disaster of a misfit. Yet, let +us bring to mind, in the first place, that the scientific consciousness +is not essentially different from consciousness in general, and that +consciousness in general deals, and always must deal with artificial +forms, with symbols, constructions, and transformations; and in the +second place, that it always knows with some measure of sophistication +that what it deals with is symbolic or constructed. Conscious creatures, +from the moment they begin to draw breath, are trained to see one thing +objectively and to understand or construe quite another thing for active +expression. There is no visual sensation without muscular sensation, and +most men, if not all men, have really learned in the long years of their +own and their race's experience to get along without <i>seeing</i> <a name="p114" id="p114"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.114]</span> +and yet also without foregoing the sensations in their muscles! Man's +long training, in a word, has taught him to use what he sees as not +direct reality, but only a symbol of reality, and so in volition always +to allow for the "practical" unreality of the objects before his +consciousness. The mere words bread and butter, for example, or even the +visible things in a restaurant window, have never brought satiety to a +hungry child, nor do I myself fear that they ever will. Moreover, the +long training that is the surety against danger, and that at the same +time has made man keenly awake to the value as well as the humour of +symbolism, is just what has rendered the high development of +professional science possible, and is also what makes possible and +properly controls the application of science to practical life.</p> + +<p>It may now be asserted that the facts are not in accord with the view to +which I have just given expression, that sometimes, and very of ten too, +the forms and doctrines of science are imposed without modification or +translation upon practical life. Thus, though the names for edibles +themselves as present to the eye—or to any other sense—are not normal +substitutes for food, nevertheless some people, whether from poverty or +from indigestion, have fed on them, just as they have taken long +journeys with maps, time-tables, and guide books. In education, too, the +formal conditions of science have suggested object-lessons and pure +induction; in political organization we have had programmes of extreme +elemental individualism, of lawless democracy, and of abstract communism +and Christian Socialism; in religion God <a name="p115" id="p115"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.115]</span> has been like a thing +seen, perhaps a tree walking or a man working, whether with hoe or rake +or with other implement, perhaps a trident, and belief has been +identified with an articulate dogma or formula; and many a realistic +novel, treating the details of life as a scientist might treat them, or +many a psychological novel, more problematic than artistic, has been put +upon the market. But what can all this mean, undoubtedly true as it is, +save that science belongs to life, yet is applied to it with difficulty +and only under conditions of conflict? In the case of the edibles, +poverty or illness, both of them incidents of conflict, is responsible +for the unnatural substitution, and in cases of education, politics, +religion, and literature, the substitution is equally a makeshift which +the conditions of conflict impose upon life. An individualistic +programme will not work, nor will a purely socialistic programme work. +Mere induction will not educate. No visible God ever was divine, and no +articulate creed ever was true. Life is a game throughout; its vital +character, its very integrity is its experimental character; it is not a +settled, abstractly perfect thing. Life is dynamic, not static. +Accordingly it must move forward by its mistakes, or by storm and stress +of the incongruous and misapplied, being inspired, not by somebody's +complacent optimism, but by a sacrificial, always heroic idealism; and +its scientific practices, however truly a mixing of things formally +incongruous or disparite, are just aids to its reality. Moreover, those +science-formed practices are always in some measure sophisticated. Human +nature is rather a fine thing in its way, as <a name="p116" id="p116"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.116]</span> many a man has +flattered himself and his kind by saying. Witness the homeless, +ill-clad, starving child feeding over the odorous grating and before the +well-stocked window of the restaurant, and feeling, if not actually +saying: "As long as I cannot have and eat, it is good to smell and see." +Witness, also, the educator or the statesman or the priest or the +novelist. Each knows his makeshift and feels some of the humour of it, +and in his closet, when not before his public, acknowledges the violence +to which he is lending himself.</p> + +<p>And another fact, besides that of the actual applications of science, +which, however violent, prove the need as well as the dangers, and +besides the sophistication, perhaps also the sense of humour, which +always accompanies the applications and at least tempers their violence, +must also be mentioned. Those science-formed programmes always go in +pairs. Individualism and socialism, realism and mysticism, Epicureanism +and Stoicism, orthodoxy and heresy are inseparable, socially and +historically; and the effect of such pairing is plainly to correct +whatever of violence the sense of symbolism and the sophistication and +the humour of the time may be unequal to. Thus in the movements and +programmes of society for any given misfit there is always a +counter-misfit. Possibly human life, at least as socially organized, is +only a competition of misfits, its programmes coming, not through the +acquired supremacy of one side or the other, but through the constant +mediation, the balancing and interacting of the two, and the misfits are +perhaps exclusively the gifts of science or at least <a name="p117" id="p117"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.117]</span> of the +observer's consciousness generally, and man is at once serious and +humorous enough to impose what science gives on the real life of his +fellows, as a ready-made clothier might on a stray countryman; but is a +city, then, to have no Hyam, and is the life of society also to dispense +with the gifts of science because they are imperfect? There are worse +things than clothes not made to measure or than the men who sell or buy +them. There is the life that never changes its old clothes for new. +There are the clothes that never get on the market at all.</p> + +<p>Accordingly the interference of the scientific with the volitional point +of view is, to say the least, not the only danger which the scientist or +the practical man needs to recognize. There is also the danger that the +disparity between science and life, or between knowledge and the +unknowable, will be construed to mean that the two are never to live +together. Science may be innocent of any direct accord with reality, +being in form quite innocent of a real realism, but after all, whether +by itself or in its various applications or renderings in human life, it +is so innocent only in a qualified sense, only with reference to the +form of its specific doctrine and attitudes taken individually. As +itself a living whole, part acting upon part, each abstraction corrected +by some counter-abstraction or perhaps by some inner self-opposition, as +conscious too of its own conditions and limitations, as sophisticated +and even humorous, both for all logical purposes and for all purposes of +applicability in the life of society it is realism itself. As harbouring +what above was called, in so many words, an <a name="p118" id="p118"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.118]</span> inner active spirit +of veracity or power for reality, a constant agent of validity and +applicability, it is itself a party to the real life.</p> + +<p>But return to the idea of the divorce of science and life, which is such +an easy conclusion of agnosticism. If divorced, it was said, they are +lost, the one in a morbid intellectualism, the other in the dead +monotony of mere existence. Now, in view of the fact that many have +found such a divorce to possess the highest ideal value, it seems worth +while to remark that after all is said the separation can be only +apparent, not real. Even if we neglect wholly the writing and the +experimentation of the scientist, as volitional as they are scientific, +and the practical consciousness, moral or prudential, of the disciple of +the "real life," as scientific as it is volitional, we shall find such +to be the case. We know men who have what may be styled, and what +sometimes is abusively styled, a double life. They have their science, +perhaps their laboratories and their books and their own pet doctrines, +and they have also their social affiliations in business and in politics +and in religion; and, whether it be ideal or unideal, admirable or +reprehensible, their life certainly does seem double, because their +sociology and their business, or their political theory and their party +ties, or their biology and their religion simply will not mix; but their +apparent duplicity has apparently little or nothing to rest upon. It may +count as two, numerically, but such counting never makes being. Men +should count less and think more. On the terms of such a numerical +separation, as was said, the science can be only formal, the life only +dead; but such a <a name="p119" id="p119"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.119]</span> science and such a life make one existence, not +two; and, however amusing the conclusion may be, it is nevertheless true +that the science, for just what it is, has been applied, making the life +just what it is. Are scientific technique with its aloofness and logical +abstractions and a life that in its own special, affairs can be only +conventional and ritualistic, or say routine in the study or the +laboratory and routine in the church or market-place, are these so +different as really to be, whatever the appearances, independent and +distinct? They may count as two for being in just so many different +places, but the man, scientist or practitioner, is always necessarily +with himself, and in this sense never in more than one place, so that in +character and value the two routines are one and the same. Moreover, the +ennui which together they are sure to induce must end sooner or later in +a common cry for help, in a passion for reality that will turn each +toward the other with an irresistible appeal.</p> + +<p>Once more, then, there is danger for science not merely in the +interference, but in the obstinate independence of the scientific and +the volitional point of view. A protected science may have no less, but +also it has no more justification than a protected industry. Competition +with life and will may often bring science low, degrading its methods +and impairing its professional success, but protection involves at least +equal risks. Professor Münsterberg—but may he forgive me my Homeric +epithets—is a too zealous epistemologic protectionist.</p> + +<p>The difficulty as to the agnosticism of science may be presented in +another way. Dismissing all thought <a name="p120" id="p120"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.120]</span> of either interference or +divorce and all thought of the scientist forgetting his agnosticism or +taking it too soberly, we may say that the scientific agnostic, being +under the spell of the scientific way of dealing with things, is +disposed to treat the unknowable as if it were but one more thing or +fact among all the other things or facts with which he is wont to deal. +The world for him is then composed of two departments or groups, which +like a good scientist he classifies and labels, the knowable and the +unknowable; and nothing could be simpler or more natural. Though the +point of what follows may be lost in its appearance of mere wordiness, +so to speak, the world of his interest, of his formal knowledge, +includes, among the other things, that which he knows to be unknowable, +and with the inclusion and the knowledge of unknowability he imagines +his responsibility to the unknowable both to begin and end. Or, again, +the agnostic scientist regards the unknowable as something apart from +the knowable, as something not for him to know and also not having any +vital, intrinsic relations to what he does know, but something +nevertheless objectively presentable to a creature with knowing +faculties altogether different from his. The unknowable is thus for him +still the object of a looking and thinking consciousness, yet never of +his looking and thinking consciousness; it is knowable, and formally +knowable, yet not to him, not through any of the forms of knowledge, the +enabling attitudes, at his command. And nothing, I say once more, could +be simpler or more natural. But, properly and professionally scientific +as it may be to give to agnosticism this turn, it is very <a name="p121" id="p121"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.121]</span> +decidedly an excellent example of professional blindness, being a sort +of <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>, of the scientific point of view, for plainly +it treats the unknowable as a matter, first, of knowledge—the scientist's +knowledge of its unknowability, and as a matter, second, for +knowledge—the knowledge of the creature with the different faculties. +Surely such treatment is not honestly agnostic. Science, therefore, if +it would be honest as well as scientific, must forget its +professionalism and take the negative of the unknowable in another way.</p> + +<p>In what way? In making reply to this question I must resort to a +distinction, which I have frequently found useful, between the dogmatic +and the merely instrumental. Thus agnosticism may be dogmatic, as the +conventional scientist would hold it, flatly declaring for an +unknowable, or it may be instrumental, esteeming the unknowability in +things, not merely as relative to the existing conditions of knowledge, +but also as a constant demand upon science that it never rest in itself, +that it for ever treat its results as only a means to some end. So +viewed an instrumental agnosticism is also teleological, but not in any +sense of a fixed and static telos. Telic character or purposiveness and +fixity are like oil and water. Whatever the traditional theologian may +think or say, they simply will not mix.</p> + +<p>Of the two kinds of agnosticism, the first hardly calls for further +treatment, for it is plainly that which has been recently examined and +found to be more scientific, or at least more professionally scientific, +than fully and personally honest, and the second is <a name="p122" id="p122"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.122]</span> very nearly +akin to positivism, but must be scrutinized closely, for it certainly +leads beyond the usual bounds of positivism. The positivist in science, +as has been indicated above, accepts only actual positive experience and +accepts that only tentatively. The working hypothesis is thus the master +of his mind. What he knows, however well established in his actual, +positive consciousness, is at best only relative and mediative. But—and +just here appears the defect of his position, or just here we see him +still only the professional scientist—the mediation which absorbs his +interest is merely one of formal knowledge; what he knows always leads +him just to more knowledge; his formulated hypotheses as they are tested +are but aids to new formulations: whereas, besides this mediation, there +always is another at least equally significant, for knowledge under the +very conditions of its rise and formulation must for ever be a means to +something besides mere knowledge. Recognition of this other mediation, +accordingly, is all-important to any final appraisal of the meaning of +agnosticism, to an appraisal that is justified just through being +superior to the special interests of formal and professional science. Is +it not one of the functions of the various negatives in our human life +really to save life from the narrowness of its various professional +abstractions, and is not the attitude of agnosticism but one of these +negations?</p> + +<p>And now, if for a paragraph or two I may be even offensively abstruse, +the conditions of our positive experience, of our actual knowledge, are +such, and are commonly recognized to be such, that there must always be +an unknown. Every working hypothesis <a name="p123" id="p123"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.123]</span> by implication points to an +unknown. It is equally true, however, that the conditions of positive +experience are such that there is no fixity to this unknown; and the +unknown changes in consequence, both in possible content and in possible +quality or value, with every change in knowledge. But <i>always</i> an +unknown which is <i>never</i> the same unknown must mean something more than +merely a yet-to-be-known; yes, it must mean even more than an +infinitely, eternally remote yet-to-be-known, for its being always, or +its being infinitely distant, simply makes it something besides positive +knowledge actual or possible. It must mean something which, though not +knowledge, is nevertheless in knowledge, now and always; something +served by all knowledge but itself other than any knowledge; something, +then, which exceeds or transcends whatever the formal enabling +conditions of knowledge are capable of presenting, but is itself +intimately and vitally involved in the presentation; or, once more, +something which is not at all in the character of a separate unknowable +thing or sphere of things, nor even of a separate part in the things +known or knowable, but is in the character rather of an unknowability, +perhaps in a sense a relative unknowability, belonging to the very +things and to every part of the very things that are known or, let me +say, inhering in the bare possibility of all knowledge. Must there not +be a sense in which just that which makes knowledge possible is itself +quite impossible to knowledge? Who makes a law must be superior to the +law, or "legally supreme," and what makes knowledge possible can hardly +be fully and directly an object <a name="p124" id="p124"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.124]</span> of knowledge. Given actual, +positive knowledge, then, and there must always be not merely an +unknown, but also an unknowable; an unknowable, however, that is in and +of the knowledge, not in place or in character a thing by itself.</p> + +<p>I said I should be abstruse, and I have not yet finished. In fully +appraising agnosticism we need to consider at close range another idea +of the positivist. Thus for the positivist knowledge is not a having, +but a getting—on the principle that unto him that hath shall be given; +not a knowing, but a questioning and seeking; not a being, but a +becoming—that has its ground in a being so real as to be without fixity +of form. And this is plainly equivalent to making movement and action +essential to the very nature of the knowing mind or to making knowledge +dynamic instead of static, and infinitely plastic—even like life +itself, that is always greater than its cross-sections or specific +forms. But in general to an active nature nothing can ever be quite +external; to a truly active nature there can be no essential +impossibility. For reflect. The mere existence of anything external or +of anything impossible would in just so far remove and deny the +intrinsic character of the activity; in just so far it would set the +supposedly active being in fixity of life and definiteness of form. For +an essentially active nature, therefore, all things—all things in +heaven and earth—are both present and possible, and so, specifically, +if that active nature be the knowing mind there can be no unknowable +that is at the same time alien and altogether impossible to the knower. +Even the very forms of the knower's knowledge must for ever compass +<a name="p125" id="p125"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.125]</span> pass more than they may visibly present. The knowing itself in +its own right and nature must be more than formal knowing, or than the +"objective," "special" science, in which the formal knowing has its +professional realization. And the knower, as he knows, in and through +his knowledge must always be compassing just that which is not +impossible to him, but only unknowable—that is, impossible merely to +his direct, formal knowledge. Is the inedible or the invisible or the +impenetrable or the unbearable or the illegible or even the +unintelligible ever wholly impossible? Such negatives, and in fact all +negatives, besides saving life from the narrowness of its various forms, +do this positive thing: they open the door of life's wider, nay, of +life's infinite opportunity or possibility, and at the same time they +render those various definite forms really mediative or instrumental, +making them parts in an essentially purposive existence. With just this +meaning, then, a meaning larger and deeper than that usual to +positivism, the attitude of the agnostic is instrumental and +teleological. Agnosticism simply endows the knower—must we not even put +our conclusion so?—with a wider freedom than that of knowledge, and yet +also makes his knowledge both share and serve the wider freedom that is +given.</p> + +<p>Instead, then, of pointing to a known "unknowable," before which either +some non-human creature or some human vice-regent of such a creature is +not obliged to be so knowingly humble, instead of establishing the +conceit that knowledge or science is wholly for its own sake and so of +divorcing knowledge and real life, instead of making castes out of the +social <a name="p126" id="p126"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.126]</span> classes of those who look and those who do, the +unknowable must be taken to point to the necessary unity of knowledge +and life, of theory and practice, to the fact that all looking is +incident to a running and before a leaping, that all knowledge is +responsible to life, and that only life, however directly unknowable, +can ever inform knowledge. It even suggests I think with Carlyle that +"the end of man is action, not thought, though it were the noblest." +Yet, in truth, though its own emphasis may thus exalt action, it cannot +mean any depreciation of thought or knowledge, only their enlistment in +the service of life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>At this point it would be interesting to show in detail how action—that +is, volition or application to life as central to the meaning of +agnosticism—is not only the logically appropriate nor yet only the +sentimentally ideal, but also the inevitable, the inner and actually +real motive, the natural outcome of the scientific standpoint in each +one of its three attitudes. Such a showing might follow historical and +sociological lines, or it might appeal to psychology or it might be +abstrusely logical, but I can ask attention only to a few suggestions of +so general a character as not to be easily classified.</p> + +<p>The natural consequence of objectivism is something like that attributed +by many to modern militarism, since it ends by inducing the very thing +it claims to prevent. An objective science discloses the mechanical +nature of man's environment, besides making man himself also a good deal +of a machine. But a machine, whether environment or personal being, is +always a <a name="p127" id="p127"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.127]</span> tool whose fine, accurate adjustments are just so much +presented opportunity that by a sort of hypnotism turns the scientist's +consciousness into that of an effective agent in the world. Somehow a +real machine must move, and in the case before us with the movement the +asserted distinction between looking subject and seen object collapses +hopelessly. Witness such a collapse, as the runner, who has been +studying the stream before him, takes his leap, or in history as an age +of self-consciousness, conventionalism, and utilitarianism, is followed +by the rise of Napoleon. So does objectivism pass over into action. As +for the special Science, it may be impractical, because partial, but we +have seen how at least formally it loses its partiality, becoming even +all-inclusive, indirectly compensating for its narrowness of view and so +becoming virtually co-extensive with all its associates in science. The +dividing partitions may still stand, but only as unsubstantial forms +wholly transparent and ineffective, so that the undivided universe is +really present to consciousness. The undivided universe, however, as +present to consciousness, is a call for will, since it cannot be fully +realized in any formal consciousness. The natural decline of an asserted +specialism, then, or the development of specialism into a mere form +without substance, into a virtual universalism, makes science +applicable. It makes science applicable, for in the first place it gives +freedom from the bondage of mere special technique, just as, for +example, the decline of religious—or irreligious?—sectarianism, a form +of specialism certainly, is sure to free religion from the bondage of +ritual, and in the second place, as was the <a name="p128" id="p128"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.128]</span> fate of objectivism, +it makes the distinction between self and not-self, subject and object, +man and nature, only a formal one, since the real unity of the objective +world is exactly that in which the self has its true realization. In +like manner a religion turned non-sectarian shows man truly living and +moving and having his being, not aloof from God, but in God. Thirdly, +whether because of the freedom from technique or ritual or because, as +the waters of science become quiet with the union of its many streams, +the objective world does clearly mirror the image of the self, the +decline of specialism, like the decline of sectarianism, brings what +some are pleased to call the liberation of the human spirit. The +psychologist would call it the development of knowledge into will—in a +word, the application of science, and the historian would record it as +the dawn of a new era. Psychologically and historically the human spirit +is liberated and nature is let loose at the same time. Details can +always be observed objectively and specially or separately; the whole, +on the other hand, is bound to draw the observer into itself and so to +change the observation into motive and will. And, lastly, as for +agnosticism, suffice it to say, in addition to what has been said, that +the suppressed passion for reality to which agnosticism must always +testify ensures in good time the assertion of the volitional as distinct +from the merely scientific point of view. Whatever this may mean +psychologically, historically and sociologically it means that a time of +agnosticism leads to all sorts of applications of science, such as +those, for example, in legislation and in industry. In morals <a name="p129" id="p129"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.129]</span> +and religion, too, the same wish and will to use the results of science +shows itself, as in the social settlements, in scientific charity, in +the "institutional" church, and in the university extension movement. +Agnosticism, marking, as it always does, dissatisfaction both with the +uninformed and with the conventionally informed life, and also rendering +mere formal knowledge, however logically correct and thinkable, unreal +or artificial, calls for a larger freedom of life through the mediation +of knowledge.</p> + +<p>But interesting as such reflections as the foregoing are, and +interesting also as it would be to undertake an account of will in +general in its relation to a consciousness which in so far as scientific +is always artificial and symbolic, and is in particular, as we have +found, always a poise between opposing points of view,<a name="FNanchor_4_8" id="FNanchor_4_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_8" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> I must bring +to an end this rather lengthy examination of the standpoint of science. +If I have not already tarried too long, the special task of this volume +certainly does not warrant further attention even to so important a +department of human experience.</p> + +<p>In conclusion, then, it is now quite apparent that science is a fruitful +field for the doubter. Science lacks self-sufficiency. Socially it means +the rise of a caste, and logically it involves abstraction and +consequent division against itself. Its most cherished ideals, as shown +in its attitudes and methods, are chimerical, or impossible. In general +and in particular it has a <a name="p130" id="p130"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.130]</span> paradoxical standpoint, being not +less given to contradictions than ordinary consciousness.</p> + +<p>But, as must be added, the case for the doubter of science has led also +toward a belief in science. Not infrequently in the course of the +foregoing discussion it must have seemed even as if belief rather than +doubt were the controlling motive. A little child has said that faith +consists in "believing what you know to be untrue," and our present +state of mind cannot be far from such a faith. Actually the science +which we may believe in is the science of which we are also confirmed +doubters. We doubt the formal attitude and the formal doctrines just +because they are abstract, phenomenal, paradoxical, but at the same time +we have to believe in the spirit—there seems to be no other word +available—as an ever-present agent of validity, because, in spite of +all, the very incongruities save these formal doctrines from their +apparent artificiality and abstraction, and put them in touch with what +is whole and real. And if, as was suggested, the scientific +consciousness is only the specially developed consciousness of ordinary +life, then we have gained also a new confidence even in the unreflective +paradoxical consciousness of everyday life. Yet, that we may more fully +comprehend what this means, we shall next consider at some length the +possible value of the defects in experience which have now been +observed. Ideas, which have appeared heretofore as little better than +hints or suggestions, can then be presented in clearer form.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_5" id="Footnote_1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_5"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See an article: "Epistemology and Physical Science—A Fatal +Parallelism," in the <i>Philosophical Review</i>, Vol. VII, No. 4, July, +1896.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_6" id="Footnote_2_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_6"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See articles: "Pluralism: Empedocles and Democritus," in +the <i>Philosophical Review</i>, Vol. X, No. 3, May, 1901; "A Study in the +Logic of the Early Greek Philosophy—Being, not-Being, and Becoming," in +the <i>Monist</i>, Vol. XII, No. 3, April, 1902; and "The Poetry of +Anaxagoras's Metaphysics," in <i>The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, +and Scientific Method</i>, Vol. IV, No 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_7" id="Footnote_3_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_7"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Münsterberg's <i>Psychology and Life</i>, p. 267. Houghton +Mifflin and Co., 1899.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_8" id="Footnote_4_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_8"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> For an interesting account, mainly psychological in +standpoint, of will as involving such a poise, see Münsterberg's +<i>Grundzüge der Psychologie</i>, Vol. I, chap. xv., Leipzig, 1900.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2> + +<h3>POSSIBLE VALUE IN THESE ESSENTIAL DEFECTS OF EXPERIENCE.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p131" id="p131"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.131]</span> +An original sin, or an essential defect, must somehow be for some good +purpose. At least, if a general faith in the ultimate propriety of all +things has any ground to stand on, such must be the case. The sin or the +defect cannot be unmixed; its very originality, its essentiality, must +line it, though it be the blackest of clouds, with some silver. Theology +has sometimes forgotten this, but an honest doubter cannot afford such a +lapse.</p> + +<p>Yet before examining the possible worth of the original defects of +experience, or, as some might regard the present enterprise, before +attempting to give the devil himself a "character," we must recall the +various steps of our general undertaking as it has progressed so far. We +have been, in the first place, occupied with a thorough-going confession +of doubt, with the greatest possible candour hunting down all the +reasons for the attitude of doubt which experience affords, and so far, +in the second place, we have found doubt justified, whether for good or +for ill, because of its potential when not actual universality among +men, of its character as a condition of all conscious life, of <a name="p132" id="p132"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.132]</span> +its importance to real active life and deep experience, of its intimacy +even with habit, and of its natural sense of dependence and consequent +impulse to companionship with nature, man and God, but more than +all—and this was the special interest of the last two chapters—because +of the paradoxical and self-contradictory nature of all human +experience. As regards the last point, our ordinary consciousness, the +often-boasted consciousness of common sense, was found to harbour a +widespread, very persistent duplicity towards such vital things as +reality, wholeness or unity, space and time, the causal relation, +knowledge, moral freedom and natural law; and science, to which many +when dislodged from their ordinary standpoint have been accustomed to +retreat with greatest confidence and hope, was examined with similar +results. Science was found in its rise to involve abstraction of +interest and disruption of life, and in its avowed point of view to +be—suppose I say at this point—impossible but contradictory. So, in a +word, as a clinching argument for doubt, as an argument that at least on +the surface has less of hope in it than any of the others, we are face +to face with the bare, hard fact that in the very nature of human +experience, besides the relativity and instability and subjectivity, +there dwells a spirit of positive violence. Contradiction is just one +phase of the error to which all men are said to be addicted. As a +background for the inconsistent theologian, the fickle woman, the +shifting politician and other equally double-faced monsters, we see +both-sidedness, individually and to a certain extent socially, to be a +basal habit of human nature, <a name="p133" id="p133"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.133]</span> and if the doctrine of original sin +is tenable at all, in just this fact it would appear to have its +strongest support. <i>Humanum est errare</i> may be translated: Man is most +human when hopelessly divided against himself.</p> + +<p>But just here our confession of doubt has reached a critical stage; +since in experience apparently at its very worst, as if in a medley of +discords we have caught a promise of real harmony, and so something from +which to get genuine hope. In the very habit of duplicity or +contradiction we have again and again had suggestion of an agent of +validity, a power for adequacy in experience, which would hold even a +phenomenal, relative, partial experience to a real world. In short, +really the strongest reason for doubt is possibly a ground of belief; +or, as was said in substance at the close of the foregoing chapter, the +very experience of which we are already confirmed doubters is, after +all, just the experience which we seem to see our way to believing in.</p> + +<p>Since the time of the great Leibnitz, and probably since the time +self-conscious man drew his first breath, all genuine optimism has +caught its most assuring vision of what was good, not in something quite +apart from what was evil, but in and through evil itself, as if what is +evil must be ever building better than it seems or than it knows. Very +much as mathematics has viewed the negative quantity as an integral part +of the whole system of quantities, so in the person of +Leibnitz—statesman, historian, scientist, mathematician, and +philosopher—and I imagine in the person also of you or me, though we +may not claim the same <a name="p134" id="p134"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.134]</span> authority, the human mind has been wise +and deep enough to see evil, representing all the negative things of +life as an organic part of the best possible world, even of the world +created by an infinite God. At least since Leibnitz's time, I say, +optimism has generally justified itself, not by denial of evil in the +world, but in and through evil. Not long ago a young man who was perhaps +more profound and reflective in his habits of mind than wise in his +manner of statement, said to me that the most spiritual truth as yet +disclosed to him was the identity of God with the devil. A shocking +declaration, of course; yet, to say the least, not very far from the +very spiritual idea, welcome to most, if not to all, that the conviction +of sin is the beginning of salvation, or that the consciousness of +ignorance is the very ground of wisdom. And here, similarly, belief +within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only +in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory +experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has +certainly been leading towards.</p> + +<p>Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his +ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, +exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and +with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest +kind of sympathy. In fact, upon just this sympathy I have been depending +in the development of the argument of this book. But human nature, +however sympathetic, is really superior to any momentary discomfiture, +and most if not all men sooner or later come to value highly <a name="p135" id="p135"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.135]</span> +even their once discomfiting inconsistencies. "I am glad," we seem to +hear a fellow-being say, "that after all, in spite of myself, I did +recognize the other side. You abused me and called me double; yet so +doing you were double too. I see now that my duplicity saved me, not, +however, for your view or for another's, but for the both-sided and +true, which we both shared and served"; and exactly such a reflection on +the inconsistencies of experiences, in their less or in their more +fundamental manifestations, is the burden of the present chapter. Again, +to one who complained that with every breath he took he had to +contradict himself, respiration being as necessary to his breathing as +inspiration, just as in walking falling is as necessary as rising, we +might properly and satisfactorily reply: "You are really alive, sir," +and just this answer is also quite pertinent to any who might be +disposed in their doubting to despair over the essential duplicity of +human experience. Is not experience more than any one idea or any one +ideal? Being really alive, is it not infinitely more than this or that +thing, than this or that place or time, than this or that power or will, +than this or that point of view? And, if more, what so surely as +universal duplicity and self-opposition can ensure at once its vitality +and its integrity?</p> + +<p>I am not forgetting or wishing my readers to forget that there are other +defects in experience besides this of self-opposition, besides +experience's habit of never failing to induce its own conflicts; but no +defect seems to me so central or so conclusive as this, and none is at +the same time so clear in its testimony to the intimacy of doubt and +belief. <a name="p136" id="p136"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.136]</span> Subjectivity, relativity, phenomenality, artificiality, +partiality, and instability—certainly an imposing and appalling list, +though logically I must suspect it of being at least a +cross-division—are all noteworthy defects; but supposing the list exact +and complete, we must recognize that all these either beget +contradiction or are begotten by it. Contradiction is just the life or +the heart of the interesting family to which they belong, and so in +applying our thinker's stethoscope to that heart we shall have +determined the hold upon life of the whole race.</p> + +<p>Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem +worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they +seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they +warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we +may rest a genuine case for belief.</p> + +<p>Thus, for the first of the five, contradiction incites and even in +itself implies movement; it requires, or positively it is, action. As a +mode of thinking, as a logical form, it is the way, perhaps the only +possible way, in which the mind can, so to speak, make a cross-section +or take a picture of activity or give the semblance of fixity, the +formal appearance of static nature, to what is dynamic. The photographer +trying for a portrait of reality might ask it only to look pleasant, but +the logician, for whom reality was essentially dynamic, would demand +manifest opposition, for in no other way could his art, limited to +conditions of rest,<a name="FNanchor_1_9" id="FNanchor_1_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_9" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +<a name="p137" id="p137"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.137]</span> be equal to its subject. Where experience +is contradictory, then, there is movement, whether for that which is +known or for him that has the knowledge. In your character or mine, so +like a lover's unselfish selfishness in its apparent inconsistencies, in +our double views about reality or unity or law, in a +subjective-objective science, in an agnostic philosophy, in all these +the contradictions are only the marks of essential unrest, of necessary +movement, that make the picture possible. For a world of opposites there +can be no peace. The very things opposed are themselves fluent and +unstable, and that third something, the <i>tertium quid</i>, a picture of +which the opposition tries to be or to which the things opposed +necessarily point, belongs, as Alice in Wonderland seems to have +discovered, to yesterday or to-morrow, never to to-day.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, contradiction, at least as here understood, is an +expression, or in experience a means to the expression, as well as to +the maintenance, of real unity. In general this is because real unity +cannot take sides, and so can never reside in anything that is, but must +rather be served by the co-operation of all things and in particular by +their mutually corrective or balancing differences. This no doubt will +appear to some readers as just one more example of a philosopher's +impossible subtleties, as a mountain with its top in so rare an +atmosphere that the common man would not dare to climb it if he could. +Yet, suppose together we rise to the heights of this seeming +impossibility by a little unprejudiced study of the conditions, +remembering that the summits of very wonderful mountains, plainly +impossible of ascent, have often been reached <a name="p138" id="p138"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.138]</span> from the other +side, and that difficulties of breathing are often due to a needless +exhaustion. To take a first step, then, contradiction is only +difference, or contrast, at its limit. Naturally there is some +opposition, some mutual resistance, in all difference, in that, for +example, between one man and another, or one thing and another, between +religion and art, red and green, or warm and hot, and often the +difference or the opposition seems very slight; but contradiction, so +called, is only this difference abstracted and unrestrained—it is +difference at its worst or best, difference as only opposition, or, once +more, difference where any possible unity of the things opposed has lost +all material ground or all chance of actual, visible form, and has +become, accordingly, at most merely an empty, abstract principle. +Contradiction, then, is difference so wide that unity seems wholly +betrayed rather than served or maintained. A real unity, however, +requires for its realization just the freedom from material form or +ground which such extreme difference would force upon it. It therefore +gains instead of losing reality by passing into the world of the +materially and visibly empty and abstract, or, say, by leaving behind +any hope of a finite residence and entering the sphere of the infinite, +to which difference, or at least contradiction, so cordially invites—or +expels—it. And, this being true, we can see how unity is served or +maintained, as was said, by the contradictions of experience.</p> + +<p>Commonly men have an idea that differences mean, or point to, unity, but +they are more likely to suppose that the unity is by mere contrast or +antithesis than <a name="p139" id="p139"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.139]</span> clearly to recognize that it is a most intimate +fact of the differences themselves. They will even see in a number of +things only so many varying aspects of some one thing, and will go so +far as to look upon the aspects as actually enriching and deepening the +unity, but they still fail fully to appreciate how the real unity is +immanent and immediate in the differences. Again, in all their thinking +they contrast, and may consciously observe that they contrast, only +objects or people that really have something in common, comparing, on +the other hand, only such as in some way are manifestly different, and +in their practical affairs they compete only with those who with them +are parties to one and the same life, a fundamental sympathy, indeed, +being a necessary condition of their rivalry, and actually and actively +hate only the beings whom because of a common humanity they might love; +but here, too, their appreciation lags behind the fact.</p> + +<p>In life generally, moreover, in small things and in large, extremes do +have the habit of meeting. A man's virtues are so near to his vices. The +widest variations in things are only relatively at variance. Even what +is cold is somewhat warm. Nothing is absolutely anything. In history a +single ideal, rising to influence, has always divided men into two +opposing camps. Witness the fact of bipartisanship, not in politics +alone, but in all of life's interests. Democrats and Republicans, +Radicals and Conservatives alike have loved their country and honoured +their country's flag and, regardless of party, their country's heroes or +patriots. Epicureans and Stoics—in recent times or long ago—have found +the same life worth living. The <a name="p140" id="p140"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.140]</span> Roman Law and the Roman Holiday, +working together, like the right and the left hand, different yet in +sympathy, made the great empire. Two men, furthermore, in active, open +conflict are in truth at serious difference with each other; but, as +they might even say, if their conflict were in the form of a debate, +where words instead of fists or pistols were the weapons, in the bare, +unapplied principle involved, or say in the abstract, in the final +success of whichever is the "best man," they do and they must agree. +Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no +idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the +manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common +relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is +it but a demand for real unity? And the common weapons, or for quite +general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition +is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, +only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, +even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, +truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at +most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is +intrinsic to a real unity.</p> + +<p>Where unity is real, then, there must be infinite difference, and +infinite difference is just what the contradictions of experience impose +upon experience and make it responsible to. Infinite difference gives to +everything an opposite and to all things unity; to every man a rival and +to human society, as a whole, solidarity. Against the material it sets +the spiritual; against <a name="p141" id="p141"></a>[p.141] the particular, the general; against the +subjective, the objective; against the living, the dead; against the +lawful, the lawless; against the caused, the uncaused; and to all these, +the spiritual and the material, the subjective and the objective, the +living and the dead, the lawful and the lawless, the caused and the +uncaused, it gives place in a perfect unity; not, of course, in any +material unity, since such unity could not be perfect, but nevertheless +in a real unity.</p> + +<p>For our first step, therefore, in the ascent of that "impossible +subtlety," contradiction is only difference at its greatest limit; for +the second, difference in general, whether partial or extreme, marks an +underlying, or more precisely an indwelling unity; and for the last +step, real unity is served, not betrayed by difference. Moreover, the +wider the difference, the nearer it be to positive contradiction or +opposition, the more conclusive and effective is the service. Remember, +real unity can never take sides; in the world of things it must be +always both-sided. It cannot be here or there, now and then—be the then +in the past or in the future, this or that. In the words, used of truth, +perhaps an appropriate refrain for this book, it can have neither +visible form nor body, neither habitation nor name; like the Son of Man, +it cannot have where to lay its head. The particular opposition of life +and death affords a peculiarly serviceable illustration, for it is, of +course, at the bottom of many of the most searching paradoxes of our +human experience. Real life cannot be confined to any single organic +form or to any single group of organic forms. In fact, it cannot be +bound even to the organic as commonly distinguished from the <a name="p142" id="p142"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.142]</span> +inorganic world. So for the biologist, very much as for the theologian, +whenever life takes a residence, death must ensue sooner or later. Life +and death, then, as opposites, become the medium of real life. But not +only have we here a helpful illustration, also we have a suggestion that +should prevent an easy misunderstanding. In general, as so plainly in +this special case, the opposition, so necessary to reality in +experience, to a real life or to any real unity, can itself be complete +and effective, not through any single instance of extreme difference, +not through the opposition of just two distinct things, but only through +an accumulation or summation of all possible instances, so to speak, +from difference at zero to difference at infinity. In fact, a real +opposition or rather a truly infinite difference, could be only in such +a sum. Not the single climax of death, but the constant dying, to which +it is only a climax, is what makes real the opposition of life and death +and makes this the medium, as was said, of the real life. Death must +constantly condition all the movements and processes of life: it must +have all possible degrees. And, in like manner, extreme difference at +large, just to be real itself and to make for real unity, must be in and +through all possible degrees of difference. In other words, the perfect +opposition, or contradiction, upon which reality depends, like the +perfect death, is rather a continuum than the wide gap, or chasm, which +so many have thought it; it is a graduate difference, not a single +cataclysmic difference. Difference in gradation or degree, I have +sometimes heard it said, is not real difference; but this statement, +though by no means without warrant or meaning, is <a name="p143" id="p143"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.143]</span> misleading. +Surely a cataclysmic difference, a "difference in kind," can be only one +finite case of difference; the negative, or opposition, in it can be +only relative; whereas, when in degree, difference becomes necessarily +infinite. Accordingly, as we must not forget, from this point on through +the remainder of this book, the contradiction of which we have been +thinking and which we have found infecting experience at every turn, is +not, what at first and even second thought it may have seemed, just an +opposition of two things; between its lines, as it were, it is inclusive +of, or maintained by, all the manifold and various things in life and +consciousness; it is the completed, short-circuited sum of an infinite +series. An infinitely many-sided world is the only world that can claim +real unity, and a world of such real unity is the world to which the +habit of contradiction, which we have observed, relates our human +experience.</p> + +<p>So far, then, in estimating the possible value of this central and +essential defect of experience, we have found that it implies action and +that it makes for, or testifies to, real unity. Now, thirdly, perhaps +only to enlarge upon what has just been said, contradiction is an +absolutely effective correction of narrowness or partiality or +relativity or one-sidedness in life or consciousness, and so it makes +experience not abstract, but realistic. This is in truth only another +view of the worth of contradiction to integrity and vitality, to unity +and reality, but it would emphasize, what is very interesting at least +to the metaphysician, and cannot fail to be of some interest to the +moralist and the theologian, that where there is real unity there +<a name="p144" id="p144"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.144]</span> is also true reality. Only the One is. The One and Being are the +same. There can be but one substance, as also but one God. So men have +said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality +or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply +concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the +intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, +then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and +intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. Now +individual things or ideas always show life suffering in some measure +under tangential digressions from the circle of its real wholeness, and +only opposition can save them or can preserve the reality to which they +both belong and contribute. Has not Emerson, among many others, declared +with a cogency and a depth of meaning which quite defy the +superficiality and levity attractive to a few, that mere consistency is +narrow and confining? Any particular view-point or idea or ideal, any +particular thing or activity, simply needs an opposite to balance the +abstraction or digression which being particular must always involve. +Particularity, specific individuality, is certainly a necessary +condition of real worth in life, but with an equal necessity there could +be no life, no conservation and wholeness of life if the particular, +individual things stood unchallenged in the world, and no realistic +experience, if experience were not thus paradoxical and divided against +itself. Life, therefore, gets not only movement and unity from the +contradictions that lie at the very heart of experience, but in getting +unity it gets also contact <a name="p145" id="p145"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.145]</span> with reality, and the three together +may be summed up in the one word poise. Montaigne marvelled at the +hopeless folly of mankind as compared with the wisdom of God, but man's +folly is divided against itself and so imbued with God's wisdom; and +with countless others he saw the ideas of man to be only subjective and +unsubstantial and irresponsible, but man's ideas, though fanciful and +illusory, though subjective and imaginative, work against each other for +what is real and substantial. Man's ideas co-operate for their own +correction and so for communion or intimacy with a character that is not +less substantial or responsible than that of God himself.</p> + +<p>And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience +supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make +realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be +abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the +hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express +satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the +both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive +experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite +to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there +always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In +practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there +always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to +leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is +all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social +classes or parties, can never be confined to a <a name="p146" id="p146"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.146]</span> single individual +representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly +practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but +instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely +many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed +individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and +competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly +practical, whether of things or realities—for the metaphysician—or of +ideas or categories—for the logician—or of persons or classes—for the +statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the +truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which +is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life +must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding +over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real +leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a +labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences +and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or +"entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for +morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and +platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a +labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites, +that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which +is real and practical.</p> + +<p>It would be peculiarly interesting to examine further this principle of +a practical, truly realistic experience ensured to human life through +the inner <a name="p147" id="p147"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.147]</span> conflicts of experience. The history of morals and +ethics, for example, notably of the perennial conflict between hedonism +and idealism, could not but cast a good deal of light upon it; and the +history of political struggles, or the history of the great +controversies in science—such as that between vitalism and +anti-vitalism or that between atomism and energism; or in philosophy, +between dualism and monism; or in theology, between naturalism and +supernaturalism, would also be most illuminating; while, also perhaps +appealing only to the few, in the logic of the negative, as it has +developed from the earliest times, or in psychological theory—for +example, in the dispute of the advocates of the innervation theory and +the afferent theory, or in Hering's theory of vision, or, again, in the +life and movement of any one of the time-worn paradoxes of popular or +scientific or philosophical ideas, one might expect to find suggestive +illustration. In philosophy, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Zeno, Socrates, +Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel have all found negation, or contradiction, +necessary to any adequate account of reality. Explorations, however, in +their teachings or along any of the paths that were suggested, would +lead us too far astray.</p> + +<p>Fifthly, then, not only do the contradictions make experience realistic +and so practical, but also they make it essentially social. A life or an +experience that is contradictory has (1) movement, (2) unity or +integrity, (3) reality and poise, and (4) practicality; and then it has +besides, as if the medium through which these four things are sustained, +(5) social character, society being only the visible expression, the +<a name="p148" id="p148"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.148]</span> outer realization, of the both-sidedness, of the infinitely +differential unity or the divided labour, which an active, yet +thoroughly self-controlled, truly realistic, practical experience +requires. In a former chapter, it will be readily recalled, an impulse +to social life was found to be intimately connected with the attitude of +doubt, and here clearly we are confronted with only another view of the +same fact, since contradiction has become our most cogent reason for +doubt and is now seen to require the social relations. An individual +whose experience is ever divided against itself is, <i>ipso facto</i>, a +social character, his social environment, whether in its narrowest or +broadest manifestation, adding nothing to his nature or to the struggles +of that nature, but only making the division against himself constantly +and manifestly real. The social environment, as it were, just proves the +man, his struggle and all, to himself. Some have agreed that the +individual consciousness contained nothing on which to ground a positive +case for society, for direct positive social interest; but so long as +man's experience is necessarily paradoxical or contradictory, so long as +man is divided against himself, or as the labour of life and reality is +a divided labour, the case for society and for personal interest in +society is clear and conclusive. A basis for society lies in the very +nature of experience. Society is not something added to individuality +from without.</p> + +<p>Let us here beware of easy sentiment. Let not our thinking conjure false +sweetness and light. Experience is truly and essentially social; the +individual was not meant to dwell alone; but herein is no immediate +<a name="p149" id="p149"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.149]</span> cure-all, no promise of an unperturbed brotherly love, of a life +for one and all of simple peace and blissful quietude. On such a plan +society would hardly suit the individual with whom, and with whose +natural experience, we have become acquainted. To speak with the +extravagance of a counter-sentimentalism, the individual of our present +acquaintance is forever spoiling for a fight. In the life of the society +to which he belongs; in the life where he watches for his incoming ship, +there must always be hate and evil in all their forms, lawlessness and +destruction, illusion and error; but—and just here sentiment, the +sentiment of a really searching optimism, called once before a +sacrificial and heroic optimism, may find some assurance—never an +unmixed hate, never a wholly idle destruction, never an unmeaning error. +Can anything, indeed, that has another thing against it—that has, in +short, an opposite—ever be itself unmixed? The good or the evil in +society, being always opposed, is always also shared. So few people +recognize, or appreciate, what a great mixer opposition is. Death is the +passing only of inadequate or unworthy life. Hate witnesses only a false +love; sin, a pharisaical righteousness. Destruction marks an imperfect +construction. And in all its forms, evil is not so much something in and +by itself as an exposure and reproach of what is supposed to be +unmixedly good. Public crime, for example, is not so local as it +appears; it is only a generally, widely private vice made locally +manifest, and the respectable and law-abiding, who adjudge it evil, are +bound to feel as if adjudging and condemning themselves. In a word, the +individual's natural society <a name="p150" id="p150"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.150]</span> is never without evil, but in all +its forms the evil has somewhat of good in it; and although social life, +not less than individual life, must be one of conflict and discord, +nevertheless, because the various factors or factions, however opposed, +can never be unmixed, because the members of society must all be good +and bad, right and wrong—I almost said living and dead +together—instead of being hopeless for having evil in it, the life of +society is so much the more worth living. Shallow sentimentalism may not +so esteem it, but we need give little thought to shallow sentimentalism.</p> + +<p>So our use of the word "society" is not sentimental. Society means +conflict. It is just the natural sphere of life and reality as for ever +a divided labour, as for ever divided and laborious—divided even +between the powers for supposed good and for adjudged evil, and through +the conflicts, in which the division is expressed, what is true and good +and vital is being forever kept real. Or, to repeat, society is the +natural medium through which movement, unity or integrity, poise and +reality, and practicality are secured and realized in human experience; +it is that which makes the individual's division against himself +manifestly real and positively and progressively effective for a life, +yes, for his life, at once of vitality and perfect wholeness.</p> + +<p>But now that the five things are said, now that the contradictions of +experience have been seen to serve experience by giving it movement, +unity, poise, practical reality and social character, somebody is sure +to remark facetiously that on the evidence contradiction is something we +should all cultivate assiduously, and <a name="p151" id="p151"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.151]</span> that henceforth to face +both ways, the butt of so much opprobrium, should be one of man's +greatest ideals; in brief, that the inconsistent creatures in politics, +morals, and theology are the coming examples for mankind. Verily the +devil has been given his promised "character." But, alas! in the spirit +of such startling humour one would have to conclude also that because +crime has beyond all question been a means of social development, being +all-important to the awakening of the social consciousness and +conscience, all men should at once take thought and find it their duty +to turn criminals; or, again, that because death has a fundamental part +in the order of nature and is, moreover, of greatest spiritual worth and +significance, we should all morbidly seek it, being successfully +righteous only by being suicides. True, we do need to recognize the +positive function of crime in the progress of civilization, or in the +history of law, and also to be aware of crime as a possibility in our +own lives, and we need to be ready to die and to feel besides that dying +we are far from losing all that is worth having, but to court crime or +to seek death would certainly be to deprive either of the very worth +which has made it significant. And in much the same way we may very +profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or +social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on +that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always +blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly +courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The +both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and +conserves human life, is only <a name="p152" id="p152"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.152]</span> that which is maintained with a +tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every +side.</p> + +<p>So, although grossly misused if directly courted, this defect of +experience has its place, even its ideal value, in experience, and what +on the surface seemed an almost if not quite hopeless reason for doubt, +has truly become all but transfigured, seeming now a source of real +assurance. With Heraclitus of old, only perhaps seeing even more than he +saw, we can glory in a world of strife. Doubting all things, we can yet +believe that all things work together for what is real, for what is +good.</p> + +<p>But let me now put the result, so far secured, of our confession of +doubt in a new way. For a life in which every thing has an opposite, +every idea a counter-idea, truth very plainly, as has indeed been +frequently said, cannot be a specific consciousness nor reality a fixed +thing. Truth is not a creed, but a spirit. Reality is not a thing, but a +life. And for being a spirit truth is only the more realistic? For being +a life, reality is only the more substantial. Perfection, too, even the +Perfect One, with whom we associate the true and the real, is no +particular separate being in a certain established exclusive status, at +once infinitely and passively excellent, but a power ever dwelling in +the strife that makes for movement and poise. For being such a power, +too, he is only more surely perfect, only more certainly infinite and +excellent.</p> + +<p>Such terms as spirit, life, and power are confessedly somewhat dangerous +terms to use. Especially the first is liable to misunderstanding. Yet, +whatever <a name="p153" id="p153"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.153]</span> common usage may be, when I say that truth is not a +creed but a spirit, that reality is not a thing but a power, the +reference is directly to that agent or principle of validity which has +been found to hold our experience, naturally so faulty, to contact and +intimacy with the real world. A spirit of truth, a principle of validity +there is, to which the very faults of experience give witness, and in +view of this we who doubt, who doubt the particular things, the creeds +and the objects generally, the definite forms and ideas, the habits and +standpoints of our everyday life or our scientific theory, may yet +believe; we may believe in the real spirit, or power, which makes all +things parties to the divided labour of a real life.<a name="FNanchor_2_10" id="FNanchor_2_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_10" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_9" id="Footnote_1_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_9"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This limitation is shown, for example, in the logical +principle of identity.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_10" id="Footnote_2_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_10"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The worth assigned in this chapter to the contradictions of +experience involves a standpoint which apparently is at variance with +that of Mr. F.H. Bradley, whose book, <i>Appearance and Reality</i>, has +occupied such an important place in the philosophical study and +controversy of the last ten years. Of course, here is not the place for +final criticism of Mr. Bradley, since the present examination of doubt +is no such scrutiny of experience as his; it is far short of what would +make a complete philosophical argument. Nevertheless, a word or two +expressing the nature of the difference between his view and the view +advocated here can hardly be impertinent. Thus, if I read him rightly, +Mr. Bradley has argued from the paradoxes of experience to the complete, +hopeless phenomenality of experience, while in this study of doubt the +argument has been from the paradoxes of experience to a thoroughly +realistic experience. Again, Mr. Bradley's Absolute is able to include +the phenomenal, the relative and contradictory, only because this is so +unsubstantial as to offer no resistance, while here there has not even +been any question of inclusion. <i>All experience</i>, our position has been, +<i>is informed with reality; its very contradictions hold an otherwise +phenomenal, relative, changing experience close down to a real world</i>; +and this position, I repeat, is at variance with what Mr. Bradley has +<i>seemed</i> to say. See, however, a short article, "Relativity and +Reality," in the <i>Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods</i>, Vol. I, No. 24, November, 1904.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2> + +<h3>THE PERSONAL AND THE SOCIAL, THE VITAL AND THE FORMAL IN EXPERIENCE.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p154" id="p154"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.154]</span> +Contrasts such as those in the title of the present chapter, the +personal and the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are +always dangerous to clear thinking, and yet in spite of the danger no +thinking can avoid them. They can be only relatively true; the terms in +which they are couched cannot fail, sooner or later, from one standpoint +or another, to make an exchange of the very things to which they apply, +since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective +mixer, and therefore they can only punctuate the naturally chiaroscuro +character that belongs to all articulate thinking. Nevertheless, used +with self-control, they are distinctly serviceable.</p> + +<p>In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of +experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character +with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the +social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this +contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was +said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general +purpose. It was <a name="p155" id="p155"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.155]</span> said that society was nothing alien, or +additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society +lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided +against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a +divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in +society was clear and conclusive; but this was not fully to define the +parts that are played by the individual person and the social group in +the development and maintenance of human life. Some, for example, would +fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that +of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, +who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our +defences.</p> + +<p>Long ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, of the human +individual, to society, and so, too, Aristotle, though not to society, +but much more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the other +has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, +for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of +the implications of the idea has never been fully stated or appraised, +and this is much to be wondered at, since there is involved a strong +case for both the personal and the social in the maintenance of +experience.<a name="FNanchor_1_11" id="FNanchor_1_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_11" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Plato found reason, will, and sensuous nature in the individual and +analogously a thinking or law-making class, an official or military +class, and an industrial or <a name="p156" id="p156"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.156]</span> appetitive class in society; and +Aristotle, in very much the same way, found the parts of the individual +soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of +nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable +enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated, +with its mere statement. Still, in order to be sure of appreciation, in +order especially to get the reflected light on the relation between +individual and society, we must look to the facts and conditions which +are presented very closely.</p> + +<p>To begin with, such an analogy, dealing as it does with the relation of +a part to the whole, has and should have, for a reason not hard to find, +the freedom of the city of logic. Other than logical approval of it +might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychology might be called in +to give testimony. And out of the past, the more recent past at least as +known to the historian of philosophy, Leibnitz with his <i>lex analogiæ</i>, +or for that matter with the general import of his monadology, might be +appealed to. But without tarrying for assistance from these quarters, +highly respectable though they are, I make a simple, yet perhaps timely +and—with apologies for so much emotion—soul-satisfying reference to +the logic in the case, for after all biology and sociology and +psychology are always under the restraints of logic, as well as +alliterated with it; nor does the evidence of logic depend on mere +technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these +enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can +the true part of anything ever dare <a name="p157" id="p157"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.157]</span> not to have an analogy, even +a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which +it is comprised? And—this being, as in due time will appear, quite as +important—how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, +ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts +within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, +however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three +typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though +at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same +differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the +group-part or class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may +be known also as the faction, and which was so important to Plato in his +analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3) the +all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible ways—that +is, even between individual and individual, or individual and group or +group and group, as well as between either individual or group and +whole—an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original +differential operation will persist. Such, almost truistically, though +also perhaps somewhat subtly for ordinary purposes, is the logical +condition of division or differentiation. Difference, like its limit +opposition, is thus a great mixer, and division can be no mere +separation or isolation of parts. The saying comes to my mind from +somewhere, that though division may reveal distinct vertebræ, the +vertebra always conceal a spinal cord.</p> + +<p>Analogy, however, although thus universal, although <a name="p158" id="p158"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.158]</span> applicable, +as said, in all of the possible ways, must itself share in, must be +quite under the spell of, the differentiation; it must have as many +various forms as it has expressions. In every expression the relation +must indeed be one of analogy, but it can never be of the same order or +degree. That of the individual to the group or faction must be +qualitatively distinct from all others, say from that of the individual +either to another individual or to the all-inclusive whole. Nor can the +much used and frequently abused distinction between small and large +writings, as when history is taken as a large writing of personal +biography or a social institution of some special phase of personal +character, adequately represent the differentiation here in mind. +Consider how various, internally and externally, are all the terms among +which the analogies obtain. Thus, as of direct interest here, factional +differences are bound to be sharper or wider, they are inevitably more +deeply set and more openly exclusive of each other than individual +differences, and in consequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, +but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of +its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole +implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, +which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to +speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the +case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates +a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other +characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes +these on the whole only in a negative way, in <a name="p159" id="p159"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.159]</span> the way in which +opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always +implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which +it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in +one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only +potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the +primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively +active with all the different factors of the operation, and this in +spite of the restraints of any particular class-affiliation, and the +whole, though macro-cosmic with respect to the microcosmic individual, +is at the same time qualitatively distinct, as distinct at least as the +explicit from the implicit, the actual from the potential. Whatever a +merely formal logic might say, a real logic requires that at most +microcosm and macrocosm are only metaphors of each other. Even their +difference of size would be quite enough to differentiate them at least +as sharply as the difference of size differentiated imperial Rome from +her prototype the Greek City-State. Can the whole and the part be one or +many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be +material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in +qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but +without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the +whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the +operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on +analogy, must be various accordingly.</p> + +<p>But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the +case for both personality and <a name="p160" id="p160"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.160]</span> society, no idea can be more +immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of +experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those +tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but +within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither +more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the +experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other +words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general, +or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however +different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, +as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a +thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an +indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and +spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, +intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has +developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It +is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, +sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division +or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, +aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the +language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is +only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction +between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, +out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human +society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest <a name="p161" id="p161"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.161]</span> +social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual +person.</p> + +<p>And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still +undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential +operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of +experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In +him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with +some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual, +intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical, +all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without +the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may +become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the +universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of +any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the +religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any +particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any +particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the +physiological is universal—as universal, to repeat, as it is +indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the +lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has +been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it +is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism, +whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of +the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the +discussion of the rise of science.<a name="FNanchor_2_12" id="FNanchor_2_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_12" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p><a name="p162" id="p162"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.162]</span> But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever +the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before +any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can +be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our +present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If +the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with +reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, +particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. +Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has +been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal +differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal +in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society +is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become +castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An +illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession +of science.</p> + +<p>Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the typical +relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or implied, +that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of the general +to the particular, of the whole to the part, and significantly that of +the vital to the instrumental. Yet, to say no more than this would be a +serious mistake, for at least in two ways this statement must be +modified. Doubtless the required modifications are directly consequent +upon the nature and origin of the relation, but nevertheless they need +to be carefully observed. Thus, logically and sociologically <a name="p163" id="p163"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.163]</span> +factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more +definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may +be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and +efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high +degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of +corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and +in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental +character. Between individual and class there is a difference very like +that between impulse and habit, or organic life and mere physical +process, or function and structure, or say human nature in terms of its +life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and in terms of its +establishments or institutions. Accordingly the relation of the person +to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part, but of the whole +in a state that is formally undeveloped to the part more or less highly +developed, and of the whole as a living, functional activity, the +differential operation of the unity of experience, to the part as an +institution or instrument.</p> + +<p>From all this it appears that the labour involved in the maintenance and +development of human life is divided between the person and the social +classes in some such way as follows. The class life stands for analysis +and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis +and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps +for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal +life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption +and the stagnation to <a name="p164" id="p164"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.164]</span> which specialism and its formal +establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and +instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. And while +so to define the distinction between person and class, or in general to +regard their relation as one of whole to part, even with the +qualifications that were promptly added, may involve some unavoidable +abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view +is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it +rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an +indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the +same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the +relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of +development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly +the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only +a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and +possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger +than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is +the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, +but also there is clearly a real place in social life at once for the +person and for the class. Factional life lacks completeness and +vitality, and personality, the living, integral expression of the unity +of experience, supplies these defects. True, a conflict of classes or +factions may always be counted on, since the unity of the total life, +which of course includes the classes, will prevent their ever being +indifferent to each other, and this conflict will make for both +completeness and vitality, but <a name="p165" id="p165"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.165]</span> negatively, indirectly, always as +if from outside. Only through the person can vitality and completeness +be secured positively and directly and immediately. Personality, on the +other hand, lacks definiteness and practical efficiency, and only the +special mechanical life of the class can supply these needs. So in the +two together we see a most indispensable co-operation.</p> + +<p>The person, furthermore, because of his particular class affiliation, +with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this imparts, +is always naturally under constraint not merely to overcome the +specialism, but also to apply the special training beyond the immediate +sphere of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. +Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by +the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and +the factional ritual, and taking this ritual—or special professional +technique—to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit +rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional +experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. Only +so can he be true both to his special classification and to his personal +wholeness.</p> + +<p>But an insistent question: Is such translation possible? On the +possibility the case for either personality or a class-divided society +must finally depend. On the possibility hangs also the worth of this +case to the general argument of this book. Logically, there certainly +can be but one answer, and that an affirmative one, since analogy, the +primal condition of translation, must be universal <a name="p166" id="p166"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.166]</span> among the +parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole. No two +parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, +but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and +the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any +acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, +however special and however technical, may and must have meaning +throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, +with the acquired freedom of any part, the metaphors, relating part to +part, may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person's +experience-world. The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, +of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very +crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative +illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches +height after height of the beholder's outstretched world.</p> + +<p>The conclusions of logic in this matter have sometimes been questioned, +if not defied. Quite properly, it may be, many people, and particularly +many among scientists, have been in the habit of distrusting the leading +of mere logic in the solution of their problems. But in this particular +matter I think that no scientist has ever succeeded in making out a +negative case. A few have tried to do so, have thought themselves for a +time successful, and then in the end, though not without some +reservation, have gone over to the other side. Probably their +undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes +entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate <a name="p167" id="p167"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.167]</span> people +to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of +things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class +of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or +physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral +truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special +training could ever be literally applicable beyond the particular sphere +of its attainment, the relation of part and part of human nature being +only analogous and metaphorical, and that in any scientifically observed +case special training, when artificially acquired, or when a result only +of a suggested and merely imitated routine, can hardly count as +conclusive evidence, the problem would lose much of its interest, and +science would be ready even to accept the logical solution. Logically, +then, the translation is possible, and scientifically there is no real +evidence against its possibility.</p> + +<p>As to the translation being positively natural or necessary, as well as +possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that whatever is truly +possible must be also real; that is to say, certain of realization or +rather somehow and somewhere, in some manner and in some degree already +in expression. Even the possible can never have been made out of, or +sprung up out of, nothing. Moreover, the translation here spoken of, +wherein one developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual +than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can +require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different +elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as +factionally manifested, shall be <a name="p168" id="p168"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.168]</span> forever true to their origin. +The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on +the ground of the analogies of the various parts being only metaphorical +instead of literal, for already in the original differentiation that has +made person and faction, that has separated the parts, these have been +overcome. The very nature of the person is their overcoming. The unity +of experience must persist assertive and inviolable, whatever the +divisions of experience. The distinct vertebræ must always contain a +spinal cord that has a common origin with them.</p> + +<p>And it remains to be said that since the person is thus at once the +living integral exponent of the unity of experience and the member of +some class or faction, translation is his most characteristic activity. +In this translation, too, we see him a leader, or a party to real +leadership, by nature. In it lies his true genius. Indeed, this +translation is just that which makes the great leader or the great +genius, for through it the person is ever showing himself superior to +his class and training, and to the formal institutions that have brought +him up. Factional life, as we know, develops through imitation and +repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the +flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special +development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological +term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the +practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other +special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to +be distinguished in this way—the one imitative, the other inventive. +Witness <a name="p169" id="p169"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.169]</span> the familiar antitheses between the typical and the +vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the really pleasant in +morality, the legal and the sovereign in politics, the orthodox and the +spiritually alive in religion, technical skill and originality in +science, and so on. These antitheses are all very important to the +understanding of human experience, particularly of its history, but they +are frequently seriously misapplied. More than anything else they show +the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the +living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order +that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate +and appropriate its acquirements.</p> + +<p>There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy +of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or +nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as +something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. +The rôles, too, that belong to personality and society are as distinct +and as real, besides being as organic to each other, as in general are +whole and part. But the person, at once a corrector of partiality and a +leader, a distributor of special development, holds a conspicuous place +and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority +to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions +as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal +experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or +contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to +this defect. Personality must bridge all <a name="p170" id="p170"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.170]</span> the divisions of +experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must +be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation +of that spirit of truth, that principle of validity and power for +adequacy, which has already come to our notice more than once. +Factionally experience is relative, phenomenal, divided against itself; +factionally, too, it is at once formal and contradictory; but personally +it reaches beyond the forms and contradictions, and is directly in touch +with what is true and real. So the contrast between the personal and the +social, the vital and the formal, shows itself quite parallel to that +between the real and the phenomenal, the true and the paradoxical.</p> + +<p>A business man says to a friend: "Personally, as you know perfectly +well, I should prefer to do what you ask, but professionally I simply +cannot, for you know also that business is business." A preacher +declares: "Personally I should just like to speak out clearly and +without restraint, but my church will not let me." Personally the +soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, +professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The +father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than +you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life—all are +all things together, and restraints that separate man and man are +lacking; but factionally there is always restraint, and open conflict +and inner inconsistency are unavoidable. The person is thus the medium, +not of an abstract universality, but concretely, through his factional +training and his leadership, of the universal life.</p> + +<p><a name="p171" id="p171"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.171]</span> And, finally, the life of the person is gifted with a great +faith, for it is in touch with an untethered reality; but, factionally, +life is a constant doubting, for it is constantly narrow and it is a +constant contending. So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as +inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this +conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say +confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells +the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very +defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the +spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as +social, is also real and true."</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_11" id="Footnote_1_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_11"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This paragraph, and many of the paragraphs that follow it, +except for considerable revision and adaptation, were published some +time ago. See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in Society," +in the <i>Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods</i>, Vol. +II, No. 13, 1906.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_12" id="Footnote_2_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_12"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Chap. Iv., p. 72.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + +<h3>AN EARLY MODERN DOUBTER.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p172" id="p172"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.172]</span> +I referred in an earlier chapter to the great Frenchman who boldly +declared that his doubting was all that he could be certain about, but +that this, being so very real, being indeed universal, left him a belief +in himself, although only in his always doubting self. Descartes' belief +in himself has interest for us, for while his thinking followed lines +somewhat different from our own, he seems to have reached nearly, if not +quite, the same very personal conclusion, namely, the right of the +doubter to say: "I am."</p> + +<p>Descartes was born in Touraine in 1596, and for the larger part of his +life he was at least nominally a resident in the Paris of Louis XIV, +Montaigne, and the earlier Jesuits. He was educated at a school of the +Jesuits in La Flêche, and in the course of his mature life he published +works of importance not merely in philosophy, but also in science and +mathematics. His <i>Meditations</i> and <i>Search after Truth</i> are easily first +among his contributions to philosophy. He died in 1650.</p> + +<p>Yet not exactly with the Descartes of positive history, but with +Descartes as a doubter, as perhaps the most notable progenitor of the +modern confession <a name="p173" id="p173"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.173]</span> and the modern use of doubt, are we now +directly concerned; for without the license of this broader view we +might lose a large part of the advantage of the centuries that lie +between Descartes' time and our own. He had many disciples, and these +disciples uncovered much in the Cartesian philosophy that Descartes +himself failed to see, or saw only imperfectly. He was not without +faults, too, some moral and some intellectual, if the two are separate, +and these faults we shall not consider, though the conscientious +historian should never play to the sentimentalist by disregarding them. +But with our present task we can afford to forget the faults; just as we +cannot afford to lose the interpretations and corrections of the +disciples. With interests as vital and personal as ours, we seek +something more than matter of fact. Our interest is very near to that of +the historical novel, but needless to say, this book is an essay in +philosophy, not a novel. Past men and past times can be really useful to +us, only if, belonging as we do not to the seventeenth but to the +twentieth century, we really use them. What we ourselves are able to +find in any period or in any human career is always truer or realer, +possibly in a sense it is also better history, than what lay on the +surface at the time or than what was seen, however profoundly, even by +contemporaries. So much better did Descartes and all really great men +build than they knew or even willed.</p> + +<p>Descartes came into European life at a crucial moment. The period of the +Renaissance, with its rediscovery of the old world and its stirring +vision of the new, had culminated in the Reformation, not <a name="p174" id="p174"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.174]</span> merely +in the religious reformation that set Protestant against Catholic, but +in the reformation that appeared in every department of man's life—in +art, literature, and science, in morals and in politics, as well as in +religion. Man asserted his independence of established authority in any +form. Man, not king, not pope, not even God, became the real centre of +the universe. Justification by his own faith was simply overflowing with +a meaning that knew no bounds in his experience.</p> + +<p>But the birth of Descartes was fifty years after the death of Luther, +and by the time he had reached his intellectual majority, as might well +be expected, the Reformation had changed from a spiritual +enthusiasm—whether among those who were its great leaders or among +those who, not less devoutly, were bent on summarily checking its +progress—into a practical, thoroughly worldly situation. The two +opposing parties, without exaggeration, seem to have settled down to +real business, and not less in the thought of one than in that of the +other the end justified any means.</p> + +<p>The society of Jesus was definitely organized and began its notable +career in 1640, and although its members, the Jesuits, have given to +history many wonderful examples of devotion and heroism, Jesuitry itself +is synonymous with the extreme materialism to which the Roman Church +resorted in its desperate defence against the Protestants. And on the +other side, men became not less sensuous and worldly, giving as good as +they got. They simply met, or opposed, like with like. Reading the +history of the time with <a name="p175" id="p175"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.175]</span> its controversies and jealousies and +intrigues and persecutions, one can only conclude that the honours were +about even. If Catholicism felt justified in her acts of sensuous +brutality, of almost hellish violence, which culminated in the massacre +of St. Bartholomew, Protestantism was made the specious, yet not less +welcome, excuse for worldliness, general materialism, and sensualism out +of the Church and in it. Any religious reform, or reform of any sort, +must always bring an unscrupulous lawlessness with it, and the great +Reformation was by no means an exception to this rule. Extreme +humanists, naturalists, atheists, sensationalists, social and physical +atomists, Machiavellists, sceptics and opportunists of all sorts, +swarmed in every capital of Europe, and especially in Paris.<a name="FNanchor_1_13" id="FNanchor_1_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_13" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>But the extravagant, more or less unconventional things of any time are +often the best signs of its inner life, since in them we see a few men +boldly, if not prudently, stepping over the bounds of custom, and +sometimes even of decency, and giving expression to what is actively +present, though often suppressed or concealed, in the lives of all. Thus +contemporary with Descartes, and from one side or another expressing the +materialism of his day, there were at least three very significant +movements, all of them endorsed by parties, of course under different +names, from both of the contending churches, or from their outside +echoes or reflections, and all of them at least in some degree when not +in great degree beyond the bounds of common conventional respectability. +These <a name="p176" id="p176"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.176]</span> movements in one church or in the other, or in neither, as +the case might be, were, first, a scoffing scepticism; second, a +dogmatic mysticism; and third, a most visionary gnosticism.</p> + +<p>1. Vanini (1585-1619) in Italy, Montaigne (1533-1592) in France, and +Bacon (1560-1620) in England, among many others that might be named, +were more or less extravagantly, not mere doubters, but satirical, often +derisive, scoffing doubters of everything in human life. Conceit of +knowledge, whenever asserted, in church or state, in everyday +consciousness or in science, was declared idolatry and held up to +constant ridicule. Could man's wisdom at its best be anything more than +a blinding folly?</p> + +<p>2. And religion, the religion of a few, as if in acknowledged sympathy +with these sceptics, surrendered everything but God—God being more a +longing than an actual fact; a spirit than a positive thing or person. +Even within the Catholic Church the Oratory of Jesus, a society +energetically opposed for good and sufficient reasons by the Jesuits, +was organized in the interests of a purified, truly spiritual +Christianity; and among those who had broken with the Catholics appeared +new sects of many names, such as the "Friends of God," "Collegiants," +and the "Brotherhood of the Christian Life," but with one ideal, the +direct untrammelled worship of God. "God is," they proclaimed in so many +words; "and God, just God, is all. Church and creeds and rites and +priests are hindrances, not helps, to true religion." This attitude, +commentary as of course it was on the conditions of the day, had almost +more satire in it and more doubt than any of the words <a name="p177" id="p177"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.177]</span> of the +most active scoffers; it was so unconscious; so quietly and so piously +it picked up the crumbs that the scoffers left. Indeed, the sceptics and +their devout, pure-minded contemporaries, Pierre Charron (1541-1603) and +Jakob Boehme (1595-1624), both advocates of religious purity against +theology and sensuous ritual, must be said not to have engaged in +separate activities, but to have shared the labour of a single activity. +Scepticism and such mysticism are but two sides of the same shield.</p> + +<p>3. But with the scoffing scepticism and its complementary counterpart, +the dogmatic mysticism of religion, there was associated also a most +visionary gnosticism. Thus the science of mathematics was heralded as a +key to all the secrets of the universe. A few simple applications of +mathematics to physical phenomena had been successfully made by the +scientists—for example, by Galilei—and ere long certain men in the +world of the intellectual life went wild over the possibilities of +mathematics. Obliged, as soon they were, to abandon every other field of +knowledge—theology, politics, material science, tradition, and +convention—they needed but little encouragement to give themselves +heart and soul to this last resort. Their enthusiasm for mathematics +doubtless had a deeper source than this simple account of its rise would +suggest, for an intellectual atmosphere in which just such a purely +logical, abstract science would develop was the natural product of +medievalism; but Galilei's successes may be said to have precipitated +the movement, and in any case for many mathematics became, both in its +principles and in its method, an intellectual <a name="p178" id="p178"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.178]</span> cure-all, and in +consequence not only were remarkable advances made in the science +itself, but men went to the extreme of applying the methods and the +formulæ of mathematics in every conceivable direction. Religion, +morality, and politics, as well as natural science, were all subjected +to mathematical treatment. Among the surviving monuments to this +activity the <i>Ethics</i>, so called, of Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) is +certainly the most noteworthy; a work of five books on God, mind, +emotions, bondage, and freedom—each with its special quota of axioms, +propositions, corollaries, scholia, and the like, and the procedure of +the whole amazingly consistent with that of Euclid. Excuse, also, a +personal reminiscence. I can myself recall how in the enthusiasm of a +first course in geometry I formulated a Euclidean proof of the +proposition: Knowledge is power. I, too, had my axioms, my special +demonstrations, my corollaries, and my final Q.E.D.'s. But any +present-day resort to mathematics or its methods is only a shadow, or an +echo, of the movement of the seventeenth century. At that time it was a +movement of last resort and all the passion of a deceived intellect, of +a mind given over to the most far-reaching doubts, and a disappointed +faith, once more acquiring hope, was present in it. The truths and +methods of mathematics—what but veracity incarnate, the very mind of +God made manifest to mankind!</p> + +<p>Nor, furthermore, does it take much reflection to appreciate that +mathematics was after all a very appropriate form for credible knowledge +to take in a time of scepticism and of religion turning to purism. +<a name="p179" id="p179"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.179]</span> Trustworthy knowledge of actual things—that is to say, real +concrete knowledge—being held impossible, there was nothing left but +knowledge of the strictly formal relations of things. Formal principles, +just like those of mathematics, are altogether innocent of the confusion +in actual things and persons, in particular events and current issues; +and accordingly in the seventeenth century, just by reason of this +innocence, they were peculiarly timely. Doubt seemed quite unable to +touch them; controversy was turned to agreement before them; and even a +truth-loving God, so to speak, could appeal to them in support of his +right to rule the minds and the lives of men. You and I might question +the reality of the things we count or the justice of the ratio between +our wealth and the wealth of certain others in the world, but we could +not easily question that two and two are four, or in matters of wealth +that one thousand and two thousand dollars are in the same ratio as two +million and four million. Such knowledge as this may not settle any +actual quarrels that we have, for example, over the number of acres we +own or the taxes we pay or the prices charged by our butchers or +grocers; but what of that? The quarrels are idle any way, and our +mathematical wisdom, being exact from the start and self-evident, is a +basis of perfect agreement between man and man and men and God.</p> + +<p>In short, mathematics is exact and universally credible just because it +is so empty and so logically formal, being always "in the abstract," in +that ideal, wholly blessed region, where there is no disputing, where +all men readily admit anything that can be <a name="p180" id="p180"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.180]</span> suggested; and its +being exact for this cause made it the only credible knowledge for +Descartes' time, a time at once of scepticism and mysticism. With +Vanini, then, and Charron, who were separately engaged, as was remarked, +in a single activity, we may associate the mathematicians of the day, +among whom none were more distinguished than Descartes himself and the +members of the Cartesian school. To Descartes we are largely indebted +for the Analytic Geometry, and Pascal did important work in the Theory +of Equations.</p> + +<p>In rough outline we now have the times of Descartes before us, and with +deepened meaning I may say again that Descartes came into European life +at a crucial moment. Materialism was rife, not merely theoretically +among a few scientists and philosophers, nor practically in some +isolated class of dissipated human beings, but really and more or less +openly everywhere in the whole life and feeling of society. Even the +devout played into the hands of the worldly by their very purism. And an +accompanying doubt, cropping out significantly, now in positive +irreverence, now in mysticism, now in intellectual formalism, appears to +have thoroughly possessed the minds of men.</p> + +<p>There was, too, in Descartes' day a growing sensitiveness to the +paradoxes of man's experience which have occupied so much of our +attention. Nothing was what it seemed. One writer boldly declared—not +much later—that France, nay, the whole world, could not be happy until +all should turn atheists. The boast of Louis XIV, "I am the State," +whether literally made or not, was hardly less startling. The sensualism +of <a name="p181" id="p181"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.181]</span> the Catholic Church or the Pharisaism of the Protestant was +flagrantly paradoxical, and was keenly felt to be so on all sides. Men +turned doubters perforce, and in the fact that with their scepticism +rose also a movement at once of individualism and cosmopolitanism, we +cannot fail to see how the course of history illustrates the conclusions +of a previous chapter. The time was one in which through its humanism, +or its cosmopolitan individualism, civilization was to reap the harvest +from the medieval organization of society.</p> + +<p>Descartes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his training at a school +of the Jesuits, seems to have caught the spirit, the real meaning of his +time, getting behind the mere letter of their instruction and of their +point of view. Only mathematics gave him any satisfaction, and he left +the La Flêche school in the first place conscious that he had learned +little or nothing, in the second place curious about the possibility of +men ever knowing anything, and in the third place evidently through the +influence of mathematics strongly prejudiced in favour of introspection, +or of thought conducted independently of things, as the only possible +way to certainty. This education, then, and its outcome, true as it was +to the life of the day, fitted Descartes for his life work, which was +nothing more or less than the erection of a system of philosophy on the +basis of a thorough-going confession of doubt.</p> + +<p>Descartes entered upon his great task by taking his day at its word. St. +Paul, addressing the Athenians, reminding them of one of their own +temples, and quoting their own poet Aratus, was not more tactful. +<a name="p182" id="p182"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.182]</span> Thus, as if speaking directly to the sceptics about him, +Descartes doubted everything, because he found, not only in his own +consciousness, become too reflective for implicit belief, but also in +the wide experience of his race, that everything was dubitable. He +doubted church and state, science and society; and he went even farther +than this. Also he boldly doubted mathematics, so long his own support +and the reliance of many others in his time. He did not know surely that +there might not be an evil spirit in the universe, a spirit of +deception, which even in mathematics was obscuring the mind's vision, +making it see things not as they are, but as they are not. Deception was +real enough and obvious enough in life at large to make such a suspicion +as this at least plausible. Moreover, the notion of an agent of evil in +the world had been a commonplace for centuries. It was just a part of +that medieval training. So although nothing could be said with certainty +either way, the plausible mischance had to be faced; mathematics went +the way of all doubtful knowledge, and man was left with literally +nothing but his doubt, his universal doubt. "<i>Dubito</i>," said Descartes; +"to doubt is my inmost nature"; and speaking so he at once marked the +first step in his reasoning, so important then and now, and in the +simplicity and directness of real genius reported a great, deep fact of +his own experience and of that of his time.</p> + +<p>But universal doubt is a <i>real</i> experience, being real just because +universal. Nothing ever is real that is not universal. What is always +and everywhere is just the mark of something that really is substantial. +A real <a name="p183" id="p183"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.183]</span> experience, however, real because universal, be it of +doubt or of anything else, means a real self, so that in the always +doubting self Descartes found reality, or a real self; and this always +doubting self he further characterized as a thinking self. In other +words, the real thinker was for him the universal doubter, and, +contrariwise, the universal doubter was real, a real thinker, a real +self. Before Descartes' time, to speak generally, men had identified +reality with fixed condition or possession, with specific knowledge or +established power or definite prerogative, divine or human, and truth +was an object of faith rather than thought, say an unchanging programme +for life rather than a pure principle—there is such a wide difference +between a principle and a programme! But Descartes, as we have seen, +identified reality with loss or privation, with such an empty-handed +thing as doubt; he recognized no self but the thinker, and no thinker +but the doubter. We always feel the pathos of those who, suffering +constant privation, find and often declare that life is very real, and +yet the sense of reality that comes in this way—namely, in the way of a +privation that denies reality all residence in positive experience—is +especially strong, and the pathos we feel is certainly not all. +Something else hard to name appeals to us, too, and changes the pathos +into a nobler because a more positive feeling—good will, perhaps, or +honour—since the persistent holding to reality commands a deep respect. +Yet, putting this more positive feeling apart, only the pathos of +Descartes' real self, real because a thinker and thinker because a +universal doubter, can occupy us now. Enough if we see that <a name="p184" id="p184"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.184]</span> the +reality was as indubitable as the universal doubt, the self always being +real up to the reality of its experience, and that the pathos is not +more for him than for the sceptics and mystics and mathematicians of his +time. But, again, in the Latin words, burdened, as so often the Latin +has been, with the experience of all Christendom: <i>Dubito, cogito; ergo +sum</i>. I doubt, I think; I as doubter and thinker am.</p> + +<p>That "I am" seems a sort of epitome of the humanism, not to say of the +pathos of the humanism of the time. Man had lost everything but his own +self, his lacking, longing, always seeking self. Montaigne put the +situation plainly when he said in so many words, that portrayal of self +was the beginning and the end alike of physics, the science of outer +reality, and metaphysics the science of all reality. Man had been left +with his mere self, robbed of beliefs and traditions, and abandoned by +everything but his doubts and the empty companionship which these +afforded, but to that, an unshaped thing with an undefined activity, +real only for what it did not have, he clung tenaciously and often +enthusiastically. And Descartes spoke for him: <i>Knowing that I have +nothing, I am</i>.</p> + +<p>But in this self that was real only because always lacking, always +doubting, Descartes found a priceless treasure. Every one is familiar +with the principle of Christian theology, that the conviction of sin is +a real promise because the actual beginning of salvation, and every one +has some appreciation of this principle. It is a principle, too, that no +priest ever made or could ever unmake, belonging as it does to the very +nature of conscious creatures. In like manner, <a name="p185" id="p185"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.185]</span> then, Descartes +recognized in the consciousness of doubt, or say of intellectual error, +the real promise, because the actual beginning or even the very presence +of veracity in knowledge. The doubter, conscious of error as he must be, +was never without and never by any possibility could be without a sense +for truth, an idea of veracity. Doubting all things he must yet believe +in truth. Plato said centuries before that mere opinion, however false, +was nevertheless always in love with true knowledge, and this Platonic +love Descartes found in the doubter's conviction of error. In Plato's +spirit Descartes insisted that doubt was a constant yearning for truth, +a persistent faith in it. Doubt was informed with truth, with the idea +of truth, very much as one has the "idea" of a thing that one cannot +master. Man might be a doubter of all things, then, but in spite of his +doubt he must believe in the reality of things, not exactly in the +individual reality of each and every thing, but in reality in and among +all things. For him, doubting and self-conscious, there must dwell in +the world a realizing nature or power, an agent of perfect veracity, +checking any experience from being altogether deceptive. And, for the +present, to narrow our attention to a single phase of the doubter's +natural idea of veracity, as Descartes reasoned about it, truth and +everything that goes with truth, perfection and absoluteness in all its +phases, could not be solely human if to doubt was human. They must, in +consequence, be divine. So God, a spirit of truth and righteousness, was +real, as real as the real self of always doubting but ever truth-loving +man. <i>Dubito, cogito; ergo sum: etiam</i> <a name="p186" id="p186"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.186]</span> <i>Deus est. I doubt, I +think; as thinker and doubter I am: and what is more, God, veracity +incarnate, is also</i>.</p> + +<p>And here begins or began a great controversy, nor can the issues of it +be said to have been wholly settled even to-day. What did Descartes +understand when in this way he proved to himself the existence of God? +Was only the God he seemed to have lost once more restored to him, and +restored intact? Did he merely justify, and so return to its old place +of authority, the traditional theology of his day? Was his doubt, as +some would view it, not his own genuine experience, but simply the +conceit and pretence of method? These questions need an answer, for +their answer affects not only Descartes' regained religion, but also his +regained real world in general. So many have been disposed almost to +laugh outright at the simple-minded Descartes for his doubting +everything from matter and mind to God, only in the end to get +everything back. They have seen him as one chasing the verities out by +one door only to welcome them with outstretched arms as they run in at +another that had been left open for their return; and this view of him +has been strengthened by the fact that conservatives in religion the +world over have made Descartes their victim by appealing to his proof, +borrowing for themselves his philosopher's robes, as if these could be +easily assumed and as easily put off. But as to the justice of such a +view there is little if any good evidence. Matter-of-fact history is not +our first concern here, as was said; yet, whatever may or may not have +been uppermost in Descartes' mind, the doubt of his day was both general +and very <a name="p187" id="p187"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.187]</span> genuine, and the final worth and validity of his +thinking lies wholly in that, not in his or any one's mere logical +gymnastic or verbal strategy. Moreover, for reasons which hardly need to +be given, the strong probability is that, notwithstanding his well-known +lack of courage in openly living up to or even thinking up to all the +consequences of his reasoning, he did feel in his philosophy not a mere +recovery of what had seemed lost, nor a cunning apology for the old, but +the birth of a new point of view; and, if this possibility should be +verified, among other things the conservatives, who have been borrowing +so much support, have been little if any better than parasites. Still, +even the probabilities in the case are relatively insignificant to us, +since the people of the time and of later times, and we ourselves from +the scepticism and mysticism of the seventeenth century, have learned to +think of God with a fulness of meaning never attained before, as—what +shall I say?—not a definite truth, but the living spirit of truth; not +a passive perfection, but a perfect activity; and not even a divine +person, in the sense of one more separate being of consciousness and +will to inhabit the universe, but the moving and conserving power of all +personality—the very active principle of reality present in the +vicissitudes and conflicts of our existence. And, such being the outcome +of history, we have to take it as really the meaning of the great +Frenchman's formulæ. We put aside the controversy, then, with the simple +reflection that results in history or anywhere else are at least very +hard indeed to conceive if they are anything more or less than realized +motives <a name="p188" id="p188"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.188]</span> perhaps the realized motives of a man or men building +somewhat beyond their clearest knowledge. Whatever has come about must +always be what more or less clearly men have been feeling after.</p> + +<p>The God whom Descartes really proves to his time, and still more +positively to us, must surely be the God not of a satisfied +unquestioning believer, but of the universal doubter who loves truth and +whose doubting and loving make him the always curious thinker; a God +without visibly or even quasi-visibly fixed or specific character of any +sort, since with his nature set to such a character, tethered like a +beast to a stake or like the sun bound to an orbit, he would not be and +could not be divine enough—which is to say, veracious or perfect +enough—for a universal doubter's curiosity; a God, then, who has the +divine character of true infinity, who is, too, a spirit in fact as well +as in word. Infinity certainly cannot belong to a being that is apart; +such a being would at once belie his nature; and "spirits," divine or +human, must not be supposed to be, like Elijah, the merely translated +beings of this visible and tangible world, for they can belong only to +the invisible and the intangible, which is in this world and of it, in +its knowledge, in its love and strife, in its changes of all kinds, in +its work and in its suffering. Yes, a truly living God, living here and +now, is the God of Descartes' proof; the God of just that world of +movement and conflict, of poise and reality, to which the differences +and above all the contradictions of experience, as examined by us in +preceding chapters, have already borne witness. Let us recall how we +were able to say that the very conflicts of human <a name="p189" id="p189"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.189]</span> experience +were the wisdom of God. And if this all amounts to saying, as apparently +it does, that only Descartes' universal doubter, who loves truth too +much ever to claim its final possession, can believe in a real God, then +we have reached something that will surely repay the most careful +reflection.</p> + +<p>Some have criticized Descartes for what they regard as a fallacy in his +reasoning. He jumped, they claim, without any real warrant, from the +idea of a thing as his premise to the actual existence of the thing as +his conclusion, from the idea of veracity, so necessary in the +consciousness of the doubter, to the substantial existence of a +perfectly veracious being, as if, to use their time-worn analogy, the +idea even of the very smallest sum of money would make the money itself +materialize in somebody's pocket. But, whether or not Descartes fully +understood his own thought, this criticism is very superficial, and it +gets only a specious cogency from the same matter-of-fact history that +we have already pushed aside. No idea, however clear, however necessary +even to the consciousness of a doubter, of perfect truth could ever +conjure into existence the unworldly, independently existing, +spiritually and intellectually isolated God of the Middle Ages; and for +that matter one might say, I think quite pertinently, that money not in +the pocket is something less than real money, or—which comes to the +same end—that the idea of money, if the pocket be indeed empty, must +imply some sense of the emptiness as well as of the money; and with such +an implication the idea taken for its full meaning is no such conjurer +as Descartes' critics have chosen to imagine it. After <a name="p190" id="p190"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.190]</span> all the +"mere" ideas, or the "mere" things in general, that appear in +controversies, are only ingenious ways of packing the jury. An adequate +idea—that is to say, an idea taken just for its full meaning, for what +it denies as well as for what it affirms, for the complete universe of +its discourse—does and must answer to existence; yes, and to +substantial existence too. So, again, the God that Descartes by the +doubter's idea of veracity proved to his time and to us, if not also as +clearly to himself, can have been no mere substantial existence wholly +outside the doubter's life and consciousness. In such case the universal +doubting would indeed have been only the insincere verbal strategy of a +conservative, the conceit of purely artful method, and the jump objected +to would have been quite necessary. But Descartes' God answered to just +the idea of truth which a universal doubter could honestly entertain; to +truth realized only in and through doubt; a God, living in and with the +seeking, struggling consciousness of the doubter.</p> + +<p>Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, +whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is +in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always +something else, something fuller and realer, something including and +using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"—for +such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and +hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him; +there can be no outer nature, but an including and developing nature, +and no transcendent God, but an indwelling, ever uplifting, <a name="p191" id="p191"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.191]</span> +forward-bearing God. Exactly such a being was Descartes' real self, the +self of his I <i>am</i>—"I as thinker and doubter am"—and this self had +need neither of struggling with nature nor of wrestling with God in +order to get one or the other on its side, for in its doubt, in its +constant confession of incompleteness, even—though this is a flagrant +paradox—of its own reality as in a sense always outside or beyond +itself, it had won the supreme victory at the start. Negatives are +always such very sweeping, comprehensive things; and to be, so to speak, +one's own negative, to be real and lacking, is somehow to include all +things within one's own life and interest. If I may apply an ordinary +phrase in an extraordinary way, to be always "beside oneself," always +doubting, always wanting, always striving, or to be, in the words of +earlier pages, ever and always divided against oneself, is to have +enlisted man and nature and God for ever in one's service.</p> + +<p>There is truly such a difference between programme and principle 1 It is +the difference between medievalism and modernism, between supposed +finality and recognized and asserted movement, between supernatural +authority and the authority of natural growth. Enthrone a programme, and +it is arbitrary and exclusive; it claims, as it must, the sanction of +another world; it hopelessly divides human nature as personally embodied +or as socially organized; it makes life and its sphere irrational and so +dependent on a blind faith: but a principle, enthroned, draws all things +into itself, using to its own constant realization even the changes and +differences of life, making faith <a name="p192" id="p192"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.192]</span> and reason lie down together, +and transfiguring both a brutal nature and an inhuman God by revealing +them as not indeed formally but vitally rational, and not indeed +mortally yet humanly alive. In Descartes' proof of God we see the birth +of modernism; the programme deposed; the principle set in the place of +authority.</p> + +<p>Finally, then, Descartes did not simply restore what had been lost. +Though we have been regarding only the religious aspect of his +philosophy, we can see in general that, just as not the old God, but +nevertheless God, remained to the doubter's life, so also not the old +verities at large, yet nevertheless the verities, or not the old +reality, yet nevertheless reality, remained also. Man, after all his +doubting, even because of it all, was enabled to return to the world of +all those "isms," the all-pervading materialism, the scoffing +scepticism, the dogmatic mysticism, and the intellectual formalism, with +a new spirit, a spirit of real confidence, a spirit of hope, a spirit of +life, that just by reason of its wants and conflicts believes itself not +only very real but also fully worth while.</p> + +<p>And travellers to-day visiting the streets of Paris or going anywhere +the doubting and despairing world over, would do well to imagine +Descartes, as the modern doubter, travelling and thinking with them.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_13" id="Footnote_1_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_13"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See an article by H.C. Lea in the <i>American Historical +Review</i>, January, 1904, "Ethical Values in History," especially p. 238 +seq.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2> + +<h3>THE DOUBTER'S WORLD.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p193" id="p193"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.193]</span> +The doubter's world is a world in which, as we journey, we shall +discover four features that are especially noteworthy and that accord +fully with the principles of Descartes as well as with the findings of +our own confession of doubt. Thus, in the order, or suppose I say in the +itinerary, here to be followed: (1) Reality, without finality, in all +things; (2) perfect sympathy between the spiritual and the material; (3) +genuine individuality; and (4) for whatever is indeed real, immortality.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="I_REALITY_WITHOUT_FINALITY_IN_ALL_THINGS" id="I_REALITY_WITHOUT_FINALITY_IN_ALL_THINGS"></a>I. REALITY, WITHOUT FINALITY, IN ALL THINGS.</p> + +<p>Doubt is only a particular state, or phase, of consciousness, and it is +worth while to observe that any state of consciousness whatsoever, any +attitude of mind, must assume or postulate something real. Indeed, this +assumption of reality is so positive that no consciousness is ever +without some will to believe, while no will to believe is ever without +some real object believed in. Can there be smoke without some fire, or a +seeming without some being? Were either of these things possible, then +by the same token there could also be a willing without some doing or a +wanting without some having. To be conscious of something, <a name="p194" id="p194"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.194]</span> then, +means not only that something is assumed and, if assumed, willed to be, +but also that something really and truly is. Of course, the +consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have +more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or +willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. +In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and +possesses, a real world; possibly not just the world formally presented +to it, but nevertheless reality, and reality, too, in which somehow the +presented world has a place and part.</p> + +<p>This may or may not be axiomatic, but at the very least it is very near +to being axiomatic, and, near or far, it quite agrees with the +conclusions to which, although along somewhat more specific lines, our +own thinking and Descartes' thinking have been constantly pointing. As +Descartes might have said, there is no consciousness without a +thoroughly warranted "I am," and no "I am" without an also thoroughly +warranted "The world of my consciousness is and is objectively real." +But in implications about reality the doubter's consciousness differs +from the believer's consciousness; not by any mere denial, for +unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the +doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar assumption as to what +the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken +as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. Thus, for +the distinct believer—that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic +believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, +<a name="p195" id="p195"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.195]</span> tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of +doctrine and to some specific manner of life—reality is always tethered +to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to +suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. For our +doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience +can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any +possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, +I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. Indeed, it could not be +either of these without being the other. For him nothing is <i>the</i> +reality, just because all things must belong to reality. For him, again, +the world's reality is nowhere, just because everywhere; in no defined +thing fixedly and completely, just because in all things—in them not +merely distributively, it is true, but as they work together; and +invisible and intangible, indeed generally unknowable, just because any +consciousness is necessarily limited to the definite and inadequate +mediums, or forms, of positive knowledge.</p> + +<p>So the doubter has a real world, but his own real world. Moreover, in +the great freedom of its reality we see how all things taken +individually or distributively, must be, as the word is used, only +"relative"; and in the perfect inclusiveness, how nothing, however +"relative," can ever be unreal. Relativism and scepticism have been +perenially associated, but relativism is not a nihilistic, but a deeply +realistic philosophy; it is just the sceptic's natural realism. All +things are "relative," but only because reality is at once free from +anything, and yet inclusive of all things. What is relative is <a name="p196" id="p196"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.196]</span> +thus not flatly unreal, as is often supposed, but significantly both +real and unreal or neither real—not real to itself alone—nor +unreal—not without its part and place in whatever is real. The sceptic, +though always a relativist, is thus also a most profound realist, and +the nature of his realism must help us greatly to our view of the +doubter's world.</p> + +<p>Moreover, Descartes and his followers were also nativists or +intuitionists, and, at least for the freer interpretation here +permitted, their nativism was of a peculiar order, and it involved, +accordingly, a world which was real in a peculiar way. Usually nativism +has stood for the assertion of certain inborn and so necessarily valid +and unchangeable ideas or characters or powers; as when men contend that +particular ideas of God are unassailable because immediately intuited as +a part of man's very being, or again when men declare a particular +genius to be born, not made, or insist that a voice of conscience born, +not bred, in them, tells them explicitly to do and even to make others +do this or that specific thing, to live and make others live in this or +that specific way, to accept and make others accept this or that +specific programme of politics, morals, or religion. Furthermore, +nativism of this prevalent type not only has claimed final validity for +what is thus inborn—or given independently of the changing conditions +of experience—but also has commonly punctuated this claim by viewing +the inborn, or the intuited—for example, the dictates of conscience—as +direct, immediate, unequivocal signs and mandates of God himself. Genius +has been not human, but divine. The intuition at large has <a name="p197" id="p197"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.197]</span> +passed for nothing more or less than a supernatural revelation. But such +an understanding of the innate, though serviceable beyond measure to the +"specifically dogmatic believer," and though implying too, as of course +it should, the natural, appropriate world of such a believer, does not +agree with the principles of Descartes.</p> + +<p>Such an understanding of the innate can imply only a world not merely of +definite, substantial reality, but also of definite, substantial +unreality. How real to some people, how definite and substantial the +"unreal" is; how brutally fixed and yet how alien to what they are given +to finding real. They are nativists of the conventional type, and for +them the negatives of all things are as fixed and as really or as +substantially not this or that as the positives to which what is innate +for them bears its special witness. Their world, in short, is a world of +tethered error as well as tethered truth, of hopeless, unmixed evil as +well as a wholly untainted, unassailable—and why not say also +hopeless?—virtue, of absolute and effective lawlessness as well as an +unswerving law, of a free and omnipotent devil as well as a free and +omnipotent God; for, in simplest language, the rule is a very poor one +that does not work both ways. A world, however, which is so constituted, +calls emphatically for revision of the view that imparts its character +to it. Where the unreal is as real as the real, the evil as effective as +the good, the false as conclusive as the true, there is certainly need +of some second thinking. As some good Irish philosopher might put the +case, if just this is wholly good or true or real, and just that is +wholly <a name="p198" id="p198"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.198]</span> evil or false or unreal, then <i>the</i> good or <i>the</i> true or +<i>the</i> real cannot be exclusively just this, <i>the</i> evil or <i>the</i> false or +<i>the</i> unreal cannot be exclusively just that, and <i>the</i> innate, +responsible for a world so made, cannot be just in terms of certain +fixed ideas or characters or powers. When, forsooth, has the manifest +existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of +political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not +shaken man's conceits about what is and what is right? The very +conceits—and this the more as they are definite and assertive—help to +make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in +making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly +manifested, cannot fail to assail and unsettle the conceits.</p> + +<p>According to the Cartesian nativism, on the other hand, particularly as +it was developed by such men as Malebranche and Spinoza, the innate, +which is always at once the final appeal of man's conceits and the +conclusive witness to what is absolutely real, was indeed one with the +divine or supernatural, but it was perhaps just by reason of its truly +divine or supernatural character and origin untethered. How could the +universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific +programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any +quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the +purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the +sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its +importance. The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, +and what is more he cannot be born without, a real <a name="p199" id="p199"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.199]</span> interest and +constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no +special experience can ever compass the length and the breadth, the +depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native +love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as +inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt; but the very +doubting in him forever saves both the truth and the righteousness from +being destroyed by satisfaction or crucified by any final embodiment. He +loves and he trusts with all his heart, and he lives in a world that +forever serves the truth and the righteousness of his love and faith.</p> + +<p>So, taken at least for what he promised, or for what he said between the +lines, Descartes was a nativist without the nativist's disastrous +bondage to form and creed, to fixed character and specific programme. He +was a nativist, but for him the innate lacked its self-destructive +definiteness; it was just a spirit or principle, or what I have also +called a life or power, ever present not in some, but in all experience, +and so at once sanctioning all things, and, because able to find +perfection in none alone, each single thing being relative, sanctioning +also a constant conflict between things as good or true or real, and +things as bad or false or unreal. Whatever is relative is necessarily, +so to speak, both-sided or divided against itself. The relativity is +such conflict. Before the judgment-seat of the innate, in short, all +things, being relative, must be parties to conflict both individually +and collectively, nor is their conflict anything but an old story to us. +All the paradoxes of experience have been evidences of it. The conflict +apart for the present, however, the meaning <a name="p200" id="p200"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.200]</span> of Descartes' +nativism is just this: truth in all experience, reality in all things, +and reality, or truth, a principle, not a programme. Just this, too, +discloses to us the nature of the doubter's real world.</p> + +<p>In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of God which the +universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and +cherish. We saw how in the proof of God Descartes, deposing the +programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in +consequence God became identified with all that was human, with all the +seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the +suffering, of man's life. God's nature just drew all things into itself; +the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of +experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, +or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world +as well as a God; and the doubter's metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds +from this simple creed: <i>Reality in all things</i>. So runs the creed's +supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally +familiar to us: <i>Reality without form or residence</i>—real as a spirit, +not a programme, and: <i>Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet +all things working together for what is real</i>. With this creed clearly +in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that +possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before.</p> + +<p>We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so +inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all +things must be "relative"—this we saw before, but have we ever quite +understood <a name="p201" id="p201"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.201]</span> stood the meaning of relativity?—and must be +relatively <i>at once real and unreal</i>. Perhaps I am still adding little, +if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and +emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually +are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus +relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being +also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the +relative <i>ipso facto</i> puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And +so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent +conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a +genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but +instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, +that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true +and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only +employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly +interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">All service ranks the same with God—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Whose puppets, best and worst,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Are we; there is no last or first.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could +not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things. +All men serving God are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, +could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and +unceasing.</p> + +<p>So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter—and +what a world it is! No <a name="p202" id="p202"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.202]</span> finality, because so much reality. +Conflict, forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity, +that is to say finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for +the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual +infinity.</p> + +<p>And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets +new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much +fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and +competition. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own +peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other. We cannot, +however, enlarge now upon this point. Another consequence of the +peculiar realism of the sceptic has a more pressing interest.</p> + +<p>Is our universal doubter naturally and honestly an evolutionist or a +creationalist? Of course, he may be neither, or he may be one or the +other with a meaning different from that usually recognized. Terms like +these are so very hard to control. Conceivably the doubter, a very +versatile character always, might even be both evolutionist and +creationalist. But, as the terms are commonly used, he must be said at +least to have his face towards an evolutional and away from a creational +view. The difference, again, is seen in that between principle and +programme. An evolutional world is the working out of a principle; a +created world, of a programme—the fixed design of some specified being. +True, one may speak with much significance of persistent, continuous +creation, of a creation active at all times and in all things, and it is +to the point that the Cartesians made much of a doctrine that was very +near to such a notion; but a truly continuous creation <a name="p203" id="p203"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.203]</span> could be +only an orthodox substitute, or disguise, for evolution. A truly +continuous creation could be bound by no programme; by definition it +could have neither date in time nor location in space. And, what is of +even greater moment, a continuous creator, ever present and ever active, +could never be more or less than the persistent reality of the world +itself. How could he be aloof or different? So have we come, once more, +to the immanence of God as a necessary idea of the sceptic.</p> + +<p>The doubter's world, then, is the scene, as realistic as you will and +perhaps we may say, too, without unwarranted enthusiasm, as bright +beneath the morning sun, of the ever present, ever active life of God +or—with the same meaning—of an evolution which we may call God or +nature as we please. From this thought, too, if only we remember that +nothing is unreal and no experience is without some contact with +reality, there is but a step to the idea that God and man are actively +parties to one and the same life. To repeat from above, the conflicts of +human life are the perfection, the perfect living of God. God is, nay, +God's life is, not what some, but what all men do, and the doubter's +world is just the world, the world of things always relative, the world +of constant conflict, in which alone this can be true.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="II_THE_PERFECT_SYMPATHY_BETWEEN_THE_SPIRITUAL_AND_THE_MATERIAL" id="II_THE_PERFECT_SYMPATHY_BETWEEN_THE_SPIRITUAL_AND_THE_MATERIAL"></a>II. THE PERFECT SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL.</p> + +<p>But we pass to the second feature of this world in which we are +journeying, namely, to the sympathy of the spiritual and the physical.</p> + +<p><a name="p204" id="p204"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.204]</span> As a matter of course the sceptic, by his peculiar attitude of +mind, must imply something with reference to the relation of the two +worlds, or the worlds commonly supposed to be two, the spiritual and the +material, and because for him the reality cannot be exclusively one +definite thing or any number, small or large, of definite things, all of +them independent and exclusive, he must imply in the world of things, be +these two or as many as you please, that they always work together for +whatever is real. Such an implication at first hearing may or may not +appear to be a pregnant one, but at least it suggests that in some +genuine way there must be sympathy between the two things, the two +worlds—spirit and matter, mind and body. These two must work together +for whatever is real.</p> + +<p>But by this necessary sympathy between the spiritual and the material is +not meant a mere parallelism so called. Thinkers, present and past, have +tried to be satisfied with such a meaning. To be quite real, however, +sympathy must be substantial even to the point of unity, not formal. +Some friends, and even some married people, are parallel, life matching +life at each and every point, but not positively and vitally +sympathetic. Still, in parallelism, the very name for which is fairly +indicative of its import, there is a convenient approach to the meaning +here intended. Moreover, our Cartesian philosophers were much given to a +theory of parallelism in their views of the relation of the two spheres +of mind and matter; their specific doctrine of continuous creation, +already referred to, was parallelistic; and they found the human mind +and <a name="p205" id="p205"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.205]</span> the human body, though distinctly two, still "parallel." +Then, too, in more recent times, parallelism has been in evidence, +figuring conspicuously at least as a working standpoint in the +psychological laboratory, and figuring also, I venture to add, as an +important assumption in philanthropic work. Accordingly, although the +term itself does convey a good deal of its meaning, I shall try, in +words as simple as possible, to show exactly what the theory of +parallelism is. This done, we shall be able to see, or think through +parallelism to sympathy of a more genuine and a more vital sort.</p> + +<p>As was said, the doctrine of continuous creation, holding as it does +that the mental and spiritual life of God and the constant changes in +the natural world, the world said to be of his creation, are always in +accord, God in his relation to the world being, so to speak, always up +to date and having his attention on every place and part, is distinctly +a parallelistic doctrine; but, quite apart from any theological +reference, parallelism asserts that all states, or events, in the two +spheres of body and mind, of spirit and matter, are (1) equally real and +substantial, and (2) perfectly harmonious and consistent, in just the +sense that always in connection with any condition or change in one +realm there is an accompanying condition or change in the other, +although (3) between the two there exists and can exist no causal +connection whatever. Obviously to make either, whether by what is known +as causation or in any other way, the producing and wholly determining +condition of the other, or of anything in the other, would be at once to +unsettle the equivalence or balance of their reality, and <i>equally real</i> +<a name="p206" id="p206"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.206]</span> <i>they must be</i>. Thus, in more detail, mind is denied any +independent part in the production or determination of anything in the +material realm, and matter is in no way the source of what transpires in +mind. Each is, so far as the other is concerned, quite its own master. +Each is absolutely without any arbitrary influence, any influence not +natural or sympathetic or co-operative, upon the other. So to speak, +neither imposes on the other a "must" that is not at the same time +already the other's "would." In other words, any state in one is always +the occasion, but, so far as an independent causation goes, the wholly +passive occasion of something quite pertinent occurring in the other. Is +there an idea, a state of consciousness; then, corresponding, there is +some real thing, some physical object adequate to the idea. Is there an +act of will; then, corresponding to it, some movement in the material +world. Were the relation different from this, were mind and matter ever +independent causes, not merely coincidents or perhaps co-operative +causes, of each other, then, as is worth adding, besides the disturbance +of the equivalence of reality, already referred to, there would be +implied a fixity of plan, or manner of action, and a definiteness of +possessed power in the nature of the supposed causes, and these +implications would also give offence.</p> + +<p>Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation—on some +plan—of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more +sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, +independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever +localized or with an exclusive residence. <a name="p207" id="p207"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.207]</span> In very much the same +way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression +contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an +exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute +monarchy or of an absolute institution, whether church or state. +Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain +conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily +involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and +value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable +conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of +the world must always be only one among other active things, each also +with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, +if not actually through their differences working together and +harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, +lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far +from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner +meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting.</p> + +<p>To give a single illustration, though this may be quite superfluous, +parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his +shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, +comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of +the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed +task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the +other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any +independent <i>ab extra</i> causation, but <a name="p208" id="p208"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.208]</span> nevertheless at every +thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the +environment's mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within +itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in +perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so +practical? The credit here has usually been given to a <i>tertium quid</i>, +to God, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. God is the Great +Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met—how about that? +Are the workman's mind and his environment each at once acting and acted +upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the +mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some +being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as +was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot +be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a +long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its +assertion of the parallelism and in its view of God as mediator rather +than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have +seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the +fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not +openly assert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for +example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of +what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides +making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door +to recognition of such a view.</p> + +<p>In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as <a name="p209" id="p209"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.209]</span> I find myself +able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal +reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly +correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, +rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism +still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also +a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism—at +least the dualism of the medieval type—already in a shroud. Even +dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a +decent burial. With the passing of dualism, however, the sympathy +becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot +be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain +cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with +unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation. +Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism +metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical.</p> + +<p>Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it +is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in +human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a +somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of +question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant +and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the +beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on +historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, +too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily <a name="p210" id="p210"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.210]</span> +detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material +conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its +service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies +in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the +expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its +relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or +trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself +should be indeterminate—<i>always a tertium quid</i>—and, in the second +place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, +should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, +atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of assumed +unity or co-operation among all the elements—as, for example, by +Leibnitz's doctrine of pre-established harmony.</p> + +<p>But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of +parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the +doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new +things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and +matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no +longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical +world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete +correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be +changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is +not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more +vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is +difficult. Still, I submit that the <a name="p211" id="p211"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.211]</span> effect of correspondence, +whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in +the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and +teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with +the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to +something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each +other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, +self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, +to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, +and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if +this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world +mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, +not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or +mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, +being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world +man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, +that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose.</p> + +<p>As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved +from all danger of any <i>arbitrary</i> interference from the physical world, +has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the +positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being +quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, +the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of +reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be +exemplified in the <a name="p212" id="p212"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.212]</span> natural world, or—as Hegel said, giving more +direct expression to the same idea—the real is rational and the +rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the +real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even +of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our +present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls +for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; +and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between +him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half +done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well +thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and +the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already +ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, +already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental +and the physical world.<a name="FNanchor_1_14" id="FNanchor_1_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_14" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker +in the doubter's world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to +develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions +which he reaches will be exemplified in his <a name="p213" id="p213"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.213]</span> world and so to be +able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious +misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is +no single individual developing some particular point of view, although +even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought. +Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader +than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the +life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious +life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, +articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own +peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and +mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and +broader than just what he sees, or—amounting really to the same +thing—only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual +accommodation with that of others. In the doubter's world the thought +that is at once free and fully applicable is social—just as we know +doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly +free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, +distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, +<i>though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring</i>, +but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, +is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,<a name="FNanchor_2_15" id="FNanchor_2_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_15" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and +in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, +when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, +makes up for its consequent <a name="p214" id="p214"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.214]</span> relativity and subjectivity by inner +paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by +open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and assumes +accordingly only the value of a means to an end.</p> + +<p>Much has been said in earlier chapters<a name="FNanchor_3_16" id="FNanchor_3_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_16" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> of the paradoxical nature of +human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a +contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were +recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first +sight seeming to blast man's ordinary experience, and his science also, +these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience +movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the +individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon +they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were +witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity +moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free +thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is +such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of +veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the +single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but +the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing +beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only +more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all +individuals, these views always working together for what is true and +real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior +to <a name="p215" id="p215"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.215]</span> anything that is either merely individual or merely social. +The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows +or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, +consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the +practical experience of what is real.</p> + +<p>With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely +applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say +that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all +knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the +final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its +character as a general attitude or method. It is not strictly a science, +but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any +specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure +mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully +applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no +promise of future changes? But whatever has a history—can this be quite +"pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned +to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and +revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular +formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but +altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is +said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the +fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but +in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum +never is a point. The perfectly homogeneous lever, so <a name="p216" id="p216"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.216]</span> necessary +to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can +never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of +the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric +disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of +absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, +which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest +accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most +constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics +be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the +very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as +forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism. +Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, +Descartes, was almost the inventor of the Analytic Geometry, and that +this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly +to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a +doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the +application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to +say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So +Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying +doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his God or his +material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and +theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to +return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free +thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least +sometimes so called, as <a name="p217" id="p217"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.217]</span> a method or attitude exacting clearest +possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very +principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must +always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics—so much more truly +than any other discipline—is superior to anything that is either merely +individual or abstractly social.</p> + +<p>So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how +thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some +practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, +said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is +liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. +Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of +arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative +acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, +represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a +personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, +often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer +interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be +just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed +by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary +interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the +contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, +the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's +sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we +now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it.</p> + +<p><a name="p218" id="p218"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.218]</span> And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature—of this +ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we +certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to +the different phases of the thinker's life, but discussion of them all +would take too much of our space and might seriously tax an already +tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The +truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or +thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his +could ever compass the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of +nature?</p> + +<p>Corresponding to the thinker's positive knowledge, to the specific law +or order, which at one time or another he finds manifest in his world, +there is the well-known, but often misunderstood, character of nature as +a great mechanism, moving of course under the law. But corresponding to +his only tentative acceptance, though always trustful use of what he +knows, there is the much neglected character of nature as not an idle, +unproductive mechanism, always doing exactly the same thing, but, if I +may so speak, a moving, developing, ever-productive one, serving some +end larger and deeper than the known law. Nature must indeed be a +machine if the thinker's knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an +instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a +merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the +knowledge itself is never final.</p> + +<p>The material, mechanical character of nature, as I have said, is often +misunderstood. The real meaning of it is lost, and with serious results. +In the first <a name="p219" id="p219"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.219]</span> place, it is taken as if it involved a wholly +external, physical nature, and in the second place it is taken as if it +represented this nature only as moving through its changes <i>according to +a certain law</i> and as having in consequence nothing to do but keep up +the dead, strictly "mechanical" existence of its law-fixed character and +incidentally involve man in the tireless turning of its fatal wheels. +But nothing could be more superficial, or even more needlessly +superstitious, than this. Obvious facts are overlooked or, if seen, +forgotten. The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted +so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an +actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known +—of a nature not alien—ever have any but a relative value, a +provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of +her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though +what is known is always informed with the law of her moving; and this is +to make her more than a mere machine. Again, no known law is ever <i>the</i> +law, and under <i>the</i> law nature must be qualitatively different from +what under the known law she appears to be. To neglect this difference, +then, is seriously to misunderstand the mechanical character of nature.</p> + +<p>Yet some one promptly objects that I am not at all fair to the common +understanding of mechanicalism. I am told that no one ever thinks of +nature as revolving strictly in accord with any known law. All men who +give any thought to the matter concede that the really ultimate law must +be not anything that is known, but only what is yet to be known, and is +<a name="p220" id="p220"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.220]</span> merely like in kind to such laws as men have cognizance of. This +interesting concession, however, quite fails of its purpose, since it +does not meet the real difficulty here in question. It shows +mechanicalism, not indeed bound to any particular knowledge, but +nevertheless still conceiving the final lawfulness of nature <i>after the +analogy</i> of a particular law, the merely known or unknown or unknowable +character of which matters not at all. The analogy is what misleads. The +analogy only serves to deaden what really lives.</p> + +<p>When will men cease to think of the whole after the analogy of the part? +Of <i>the</i>, as if it were <i>a</i>? When will God cease to be only another +person? And the universe only another thing? And the lawfulness or unity +of all nature only another formula? This or that formula may show nature +a mechanism as smooth running and as blindly given to dead routine as +could be imagined, but nature is ever more and other than known formulæ +of men, and as more and other, or say as answering to the free spirit of +truth that moves in the thought of men, she is as free in her real +lawfulness as she is infinite. By reason of her infinity there is no law +that she may not break. <i>A</i> law may make her a mechanism, dead and idle; +<i>the</i> law makes her an organism living and productive. How a +positivistic science, making all knowledge wait on actual experience, +and accepting all knowledge only tentatively, can ever be +mechanicalistic or appeal to the ordinary understanding as an argument +for the mechanicalistic view of things is hard to conceive. If one +reasons from known forms to uniform activities, must one not also reason +from the always provisional <a name="p221" id="p221"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.221]</span> and developing knowledge to +productive activities? Must not the mechanism evolve into something +more, adding something to man's life, realizing something for all life, +enlarging even the nature of God himself?</p> + +<p>Once more, therefore, corresponding to the law that men may know and +that they can know only as their working hypothesis, there is nature, a +mechanism moving and herself at work, while corresponding to the great +living fact of nature's final lawfulness, or to the thinker's sense of +truth as a spirit or principle, not a form or creed or programme, there +is the constantly, genuinely productive life of nature, the mechanism, +as has now been said several times, ever evolving beyond its form and +law. Her law is not a law, any more than the thinker's passion for truth +can be finally satisfied by a formula or than God's continuously +creative life can ever culminate in a single finishing act. The +doubter's world, in short, or so much of it as is said to be material, +is not law-bound, but law-free:<a name="FNanchor_4_17" id="FNanchor_4_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_17" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> an organism, not a mechanism; and +upon the value of this vision of nature, upon the theoretical or the +practical value, whether to science or to philosophy, to morals or to +religion, to politics or to industry, it seems hardly necessary to +dwell. But, to add a word or two in very general appraisal of it, such a +nature, served as it is by every law, by every mechanical action, yet +bound to move, is active always from design; its life is essentially +purposive. Not that it serves the purpose of anything, or any being, +beyond itself, but in every part and movement it is itself always +maintaining an end, the end of its <a name="p222" id="p222"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.222]</span> its own untethered reality. +In words used before, and applied alike to the spiritual and the +material, it is at once dynamic and teleologic.</p> + +<p>Such a nature, be it especially observed, is the basic condition, if not +also the very inspiration of our modern industrialism. This industrial +age, struggling against the old-time militarism, in its religion, in its +art and in its literature, in its leisure and in its labour, in city and +in country, is an age of machinery; of machinery in all the manifold +forms demanded by all the various departments of human life, not of +wheels and belts alone; an age of the conscious employment, for human +purposes, of the resources of all sorts, the materials and the forces +which the natural environment affords. Freedom, not slavery, is +recognized as man's ideal portion, and in order to ensure the freedom, +not human nature, but physical nature is mechanicalized; or, with the +same intent, all the formal means, or instruments, of life are taken as +incidents of environment, not as essential to man. So is industrialism +supplanting the old-time militarism that sought, in all the relations of +life, to identify the human with the instrumental. Witness the values +now put upon theories and creeds, upon rites and institutions, upon +personal habits and social laws. All of these, to begin with, are means, +not ends; and, further, they are means whose devising—so man is +insisting, as never before—must be, as near as possible, true to +nature. The sovereign conviction of this age of industrialism appears to +be that the only sure way to human freedom is the way of nature; +employment of such instruments as she can supply; obedience to such law +as she may disclose.</p> + +<p><a name="p223" id="p223"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.223]</span> But many have found this age of industrialism insufficient. It +seems to them so materialistic. It would view things so much from the +standpoint of cold naturalism. The attitude of <i>laissez faire</i> as +meaning "Let nature do the work," has so widely possessed the minds of +men. If only we could get back some of our former idealism and regard +nature as once more subject to some supernatural will! Despair like +this, however, is blind and as needless as blind. Dependence on a +lawful, mechanical nature can bring to human life no loss of what is +truly ideal and personally worthy. Instead, it brings constant gain, for +the knowledge of law and the making of machinery do not rob men of +personal opportunity, but rather make the opportunity for personal +achievement only the more manifest. A mechanical nature is always for +man, not man for a mechanical nature; and its movement is always +productive for man. If, then, industrial life has tended, as it has been +supposed to tend, towards materialism and fatalism, the reason can lie +only in the blindness of such as refuse to see clearly this visible +fact. Not merely something always doing, but something always that man +is doing is the definite message of a nature that ever manifests herself +under the form of law. To the thinker, in no uncertain syllables, she +says: Go forth and do. And our age of industrialism, if hearing this +bidding, will lose its unnatural materialism, and find itself quick with +a moral and religious instead of a narrowly practical and commercial +motive.</p> + +<p>So in the doubter's world are the spiritual and the material genuinely +sympathetic.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="p224" id="p224"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.224]</span> +<a name="III_A_GENUINE_INDIVIDUALITY" id="III_A_GENUINE_INDIVIDUALITY"></a>III. A GENUINE INDIVIDUALITY.</p> + +<p>Besides the reality, without finality, of all things in experience, to +which we gave our first attention in this chapter, and the perfect +sympathy of the spiritual and the material, which we have just seen to +give new dignity to the intellectual life, making thought free, and new +worth to the life and movement of nature, making nature not lifelessly +mechanical, but mechanically productive; besides these two features of +the doubter's world, there still remain two others to be observed by us. +For the first of these there is the fact of a genuine individuality. +Different persons, as well as different things, possess a substantial +worth to the real and the true. No one may be either real or worthy by +himself, but no one is unreal for being dependent on others. The +persons, like the things, that work together for what is real, find the +service its own reward. Reality, having no exclusive resting-place must +itself be dependent. It is dependent on an infinite multiplicity of +differences. Therein lies the person's chance for individuality; nay, it +is his right to it and assurance of it.</p> + +<p>Before the days of Descartes, to speak generally, the typical individual +in human society—and let me say also, though at the expense of running +into a rather violent metaphor, the typical individual in any class or +group whatsoever—was the soldier, a creature of another's will, doing +only another's work, and having reality only by virtue of characters so +apart from individual peculiarities as actually to imply existence in +another world. The individual, in other words—if <a name="p225" id="p225"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.225]</span> at once real +and worthy—was then an unearthly being. For a being so constituted, or +living as if he were so constituted, the creationalistic theology and +the analogous monarchical politics were of course largely responsible, +since in their different ways they took individual independence of +action from the general run of mankind. They imposed on men at large a +certain uniform of life and belief, and then, as it were, appeased them +for this suppression with a doctrine of another life in a world yet to +come. Plainly, then, the time was not one when personal individuality, +except as it was referred to the other world yonder and apart, was +recognized as of much positive worth. Under the regime of prescribed +routine, of life with regard to the hereafter, and of mysterious powers +of all sorts, more or less in good standing in the realm of the +unworldly, personal individuality, though in itself not without some +honour, was valued chiefly and primarily for the different conditions, +the different relations to the things of this world, and the different +views of these things, which men succeeded in overcoming, or rather in +completely denying and eschewing. A worthy individuality was thus +secured rather through self-denial than self-expression; through the +vassal's devotion to his lord, the gallant's submission to his lady, the +courtier's humility before his king, or the saint's self-abasement +before church and heaven. Just think a moment of resting your claim to +distinct personal worth on the mere fact of what you have eschewed or +escaped being in some way different, perhaps more worldly, more +dangerous, and more powerful, from what some others have eschewed or +<a name="p226" id="p226"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.226]</span> escaped, and you will be able to appreciate the main ground of +the ideally significant distinction between man and man in the days +before Descartes.</p> + +<p>But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its +appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, +and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and +the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. Authority came to +be placed not in a visible form, but in an abstract principle. Law +became superior to laws; monarchy to monarchs; divinity to Gods; truth +to truths, and righteousness to rites and habits. The abstract +principle, too, instead of being, as many might imagine, a wholly +shadowy thing, real only to the logician, stood for something vital and +substantial, for something wholly real, for an inner spirit or life or +power in the very things of experience. Authority, henceforth refused to +any specific thing, whether person or manner of life, institution or +formal belief, became a prerogative of all things together, of all +persons or all manners of life or all creeds; and, residing in the +working together of them all, it made personal worth consist no longer +in the denial of individual characters and relations, but in honest +assertion and open use of them. As some have liked to describe the +change, the "universal individual," the individual as an authoritative +and heaven-made type, that dictated a life and a belief to others +generally, passed away, and in its stead, instead of unity as itself an +individual, instead of an incarnate type, came unity as in the relation, +or the activity maintaining the relation, of all individuals. Instead of +a single planet, for <a name="p227" id="p227"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.227]</span> example, as the controlling centre of the +heavenly bodies, came the unity of the solar system through the force or +the law of gravity. Instead of a monarch or a book or a city the +self-sufficient ruler of human life and human thought, came unity +through the ballot; through freedom of thought—always loyal only to a +real unity and in being thus loyal also always tolerant; and through all +sorts of like means to individuality. The "universal individual" died, +and there arose, as it were, out of his grave the living unity of +manifold individuals, each one different, yet each quite essential.</p> + +<p>And the change brought a transfiguration. It was as if the human soul +had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. +Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise +of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical +interest in men and things the wide world over. With its valuable +accounts of the manifold experiences of different peoples and different +times, at last seen to be real parts even of the life present and at +hand, the study of history became wonderfully absorbing and inspiring; +and not less valuable than this travel in time was the travel in space, +the real travel or the imaginary, which accompanied it. Furthermore, +such ideas as balance of power and preservation of the worth and +integrity of the individual nation, and division of labour and right of +free speech and of political and religious liberty, developed into most +powerful influences in the life and consciousness of society. And, to +return definitely to the single person, he found himself, not in spite +of, but because of his <a name="p228" id="p228"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.228]</span> special place and special standpoint, an +active participant in the effective life of his time. Instead of being a +mere soldier as before, he found himself a mechanic; certainly the +proper inhabitant of a mechanically productive nature.</p> + +<p>Doubtless the term soldier lends itself more readily to philosophical +generalization than the term mechanic. Perhaps, too, distance in time +lends enchantment to the view, for the day of the soldier was, while the +day of the mechanic is. The day of the soldier has reached the stage of +romance and reflection, while the day of the mechanic suffers from what +is commonplace and prosaic, from the associations of a particular life, +from dust and smoke and factories, from tools and utilities. Yet the +mechanic must be the romantic figure of the future. He is the typical +individual of these modern times, of these times of the free because +practical thinker, and of a nature not lifelessly mechanical but +mechanically productive. Forget the grimy hands and the noisy machinery, +the overshadowing smoke and the apparent absorption in mere utility, and +think only of the man, who in his best moments feels himself +individually responsible and capable, who believes in himself as having +at once a peculiar and a necessary part in the real life of his time, +and who expresses himself through some skilful mastery over the +resources of nature, applying to them the principles his own thinking +has uncovered, and using her machinery to the ends of his own nature, +which, as we have seen, is bounded only by the "unity of experience."</p> + +<p>Remember, too, the mechanic of our modern world is <a name="p229" id="p229"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.229]</span> not the +factory labourer alone. Wherever in social life, whether in political +activity or in industrial management, in educational methods or in +religious effort, there appears a man who appreciates the need first of +observing natural conditions and finding natural laws, and then of +acting only in accord with the suggestions of the laws discovered, just +there is the mechanic, the responsible agent of a law-free but always +lawful nature. The soldier as creature of this world was only a passive, +wholly material part of a mechanism which depended for its movement upon +some outside power or will; but the mechanic, be he humble labourer +skilful in the use of tools, or political leader supporting no law that +is not, so far as can be known, in accord with natural life, or +religious reformer loyal to life as it is, shares positively in the +activity that makes the machinery go and in whatever this activity +produces.</p> + +<p>And yet one thing more must be said. Just as before we had to view free +thought in the light of a divided labour, the individual sharing in it +only as he treated his own peculiar experience as hypothetical, as a +means to an end, not merely an end in itself, or as he was subject to +the restraint and correction of the different experiences of others, so +now we must recognize that effective activity, not less than true +thinking or than realistic experience, is also necessarily the labour, +never of one alone, but of many. The successful mechanic—in other +words, the fully responsible agent of a law-free nature—is never an +isolated creature with merely such a sentimental concern for his +neighbours as might spring from the recognized chance <a name="p230" id="p230"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.230]</span> of meeting +them in that world of the hereafter, where all are to be equal and where +love and peace are to supplant the present hate and rivalry; he is, on +the contrary, one among others, different from him, it is true, and +often very positively at variance with him, but engaged with him in a +single activity and achievement. His difference works not against, but +with their differences for thoroughly controlled, truly effective +activity. As things are real, though never final, so men, at work in the +world, are individual and individually important, but never alone.</p> + +<p>The facts in the case, logically and practically, appear to be somewhat +as follows: The individual's view-point, and the special machinery by +which he undertakes to realize it, can be only tentative or provisional; +they have the character, and usually he knows that they have the +character, if I may use a somewhat extravagant term, of makeshifts; and, +such being the fact, he is bound always to be in a state of constraint +or tension, in a relation of suspense towards them and towards the +environment to which they refer or belong. He feels a positive +resistance, a something disposed to counteract what he would do, and of +course the feeling means that he is really party to a growing life, not +established in a completed life. Suppose a view-point, or a machinery +that was perfectly applicable, that worked perfectly, that never did and +never could give out, that might not even very suddenly go all to +pieces, and that therefore put no strain nor uncertainty upon him who +held or employed it; could such a view-point or such machinery be of any +service to a growing life, to productive <a name="p231" id="p231"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.231]</span> activity? Most +certainly not. Tension, or a strained relationship, is necessary to +every individual's conduct and to every individual's ideas. But this +strain, to be real, just to accomplish its own purposes must be not +merely of a person with his own ideas or with the outer world to which +the ideas refer, but of a person with other persons; not merely of +conscious man with a mechanical nature, but of conscious and +mechanically active man with other conscious and mechanically active +men.</p> + +<p>It is now an old story for us, but an important one, that there must be +society. A genuine individuality requires society. Society is a medium +not by which something is added to individual life, but by which +something in individual life is kept real and manifest. By maintaining, +as it were always from without, the natural tension of individual life, +it ensures to the individual the constant growth that is his legitimate +inheritance. The doubter is a social creature. The free thinker +accepting his ideas only tentatively, though at the same time using them +hopefully, sure that they will lead somewhere, is a social creature; and +the mechanic is a social creature, being one with others for whom life +is not routine but growth, and among whom the growth in which each has +his part induces constant tension, the tension of difference, the +tension of opposition and competition, the tension of mutual correction +and compensation, the tension, finally, of reality refusing to be bound. +Not the individual's provisional standpoint, nor yet the machinery that +he employs and that sooner or later must go to pieces, not these alone, +I must therefore reiterate, make the individual effectively <a name="p232" id="p232"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.232]</span> +active in a growing world, make him a worthy creature doing the work of +nature or of God; these have their place and part; but constant relation +to other individuals, the objects not less of hate than of love, not +less of rivalry than of friendship, is also essential.</p> + +<p>In the so-called material world all things, in and by themselves unreal, +get reality, yes, get individual reality, only as through their very +differences they work together for what is real. In the world of mind, +or thought, if this can be imagined apart from the world of things, all +thoughts or ideas, in and by themselves untrue for being subjective, +relative, and partial, get truth only as also through their differences, +so tense and interactive, they work together for what is true. And, +likewise, in the world of persons, if indeed this can be imagined apart +from the world of thought, all individuals, call them now mechanics or +what you will, though in and by themselves without personal worth or +real individuality, without freedom or immortality, get genuine worth +and are assured even immortality only as shoulder against shoulder they +work together for a life that is true and real, worthy and genuine.</p> + +<p>But in an earlier chapter, dealing with "The Personal and the Social, +the Vital and the Formal in Experience," a different argument for +individuality was insisted upon. Then the person was individual because +of his independence of particular form; now he is so because a real life +demands the particular and different, with which he is assumed to be +necessarily identified. Then he was the "living, integral exponent of +the unity of experience," free with the <a name="p233" id="p233"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.233]</span> genius of universality, +now he is one among all the particular conflicting elements of that +unity—or at least of the reality to which that unity refers. So there +appears to be even an inconsistency in my thinking. Yet, I venture still +to think, the inconsistency is only apparent. Certainly it should be +remembered that the person's asserted genius for universality was not +for the universal in an abstract sense, in the sense of the universal as +something by itself and apart from particulars; rather it was for a +constant enriching of the universal through particulars, for the +translation of any one particular relation and experience, which had +reached a higher state of development, to all the other actual or +possible relations of life; and this can mean only that the universal, +in which the personal individual has a place, is not denying or +betraying, but always holding and lifting up to itself all particular +factors or elements in the unity of experience or of reality. Simply, +though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the +particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, +therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either +side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a +tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound +to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a +genius for universality. Not in the sense of that conventional theology, +crudely dualistic and unthinkable, but in a sense that is not to be +gainsaid and that may give some meaning even to the conventional +theology, every individual is real only in having a body and a <a name="p234" id="p234"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.234]</span> +soul. The soul of a man is only his genius for universality, but for a +universality that works through, not that is independent of, the +particular.</p> + +<p>So the difference between this chapter and the former chapter is merely +one of emphasis. The double character of the individual, however, as it +is now before us, starts an inevitable question. Is the individual as +immortal as real? If he is immortal, does the immortality belong to both +sides of his character, to his body and to his soul, or only to one? +And, admittedly, this question offers more serious difficulties than the +suspicion of inconsistency. How can it be met?</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="IV_IMMORTALITY" id="IV_IMMORTALITY"></a>IV. IMMORTALITY.</p> + +<p>To write a useful essay on immortality has long been one of my +ambitions, and, as regards the views in that essay, my faith and my +reason alike have so far brought me to this thesis: <i>Whatever is real is +immortal</i>.<a name="FNanchor_5_18" id="FNanchor_5_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_18" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> "A most meagre contribution to the subject," I hear some +one exclaim. But is it so very meagre after all? "A most gloomy +contribution," says another, "for evil, and above all death, are real." +But is it so gloomy? Remember, not even death can be real alone. +Possibly, too, the meagreness will seem less and the gloom will be +illuminated if the need of the real being also the ideal, is brought to +mind. That the real must be ideal, that the world must be so <a name="p235" id="p235"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.235]</span> +constituted that the law of whatever is good will prevail in it, has +been a faith manifested among all men and expressed through history in +countless ways. True, no particular experience ever satisfies it. Not +even the particular things we adjudge to be best are adequate to it, and +the things we think evil, the suffering and the hardships of all kinds, +the always tragic death and the too often offensive life, seem its +eternal rebuke. Yet the faith remains, and you and I and all others are +forever calling out to it. Our very doubts are its altars; our honest, +rational thoughts, as they are uttered, are prayers; perhaps the only +prayers to which we have any right.</p> + +<p>So the real, which must be also the ideal, is immortal; and this, quite +apart from any particular questions about the body or the soul, makes a +world to live in and to hope in, whatever happens. Of body and soul, +too, it says something. These, in just so far as they are real, are +immortal, and any real relation between them is immortal also, for the +conclusive test of immortality is just reality, reality here and now. +Whatever is real in your life or in mine, whatever reality our present +personality may possess, be it physical or spiritual, be it both or +neither of these, that and only that is immortal. That and only that, +however, let it be said again, is now or never. The most serious error, +so it seems to me, in all the controversy about immortality, is the +notion, or the superstition, that something that is real now can pass +away, or that something real in the future is not real, not freely real +now. With this error corrected, of course at the expense of certain +attempts to bind reality to <a name="p236" id="p236"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.236]</span> something that is visible, if not to +the natural eye, at least to the eye of the mind, man has nothing to +fear. Reality will hold him to itself, will support whatever truly +inheres in his friendships or his family ties, in his best hopes or in +his personal conceits, for ever and ever. Reality can never betray what +it has ever harboured.</p> + +<p>And the whole trend of thinking in this book has been to make the +reality here spoken of a most hospitable harbour. So innate to all +experience is the spirit of truth, the principle of veracity, that life +can have no absolute illusions. True, life also can have no positive +knowledge final and exact, so that all things definitely manifest are +only relatively true or real. All things definitely manifest, whether to +the consciousness that looks without or that looks within, are mixedly +true or false, real or unreal. But just this impossibility, now so +familiar to us, at once of absolute illusion and of absolute knowledge, +is, as said so often, a condition of <i>the</i> true and <i>the</i> real, and it means +in this place that nothing which is ever defined, which is ever +hypostasized or apotheosized, which in any way is erected into a thing +or nature quite by itself, possessing determined or determinable +qualities, can ever be said to be either mortal or immortal, since it +must be as truly one as the other. It must be significantly, but never +purely and exclusively either. Not this hand of mine nor that picture on +the wall, not this body which, so to speak, I seem to wear, nor that +soul, which you or I imagine to be in the body and more or less loosely +connected with the body, is unqualifiedly immortal. Nor yet <a name="p237" id="p237"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.237]</span> is +any of these unqualifiedly mortal. Still, again, there is immortality, +and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole +body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a +part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just +named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just +one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any +thing, may say, "I am immortal." No one, however—to speak now only in +words directly applicable to man—may say, "My body is immortal," nor +even, "My soul is immortal," if, so speaking, he means only what he +seems to say. Body and soul alike, if two separate things, are <i>both</i> of +them at once living and dying. They are equally mortal or immortal, for +only so, as two things, can they belong to the real self. Can parts, be +they two or many more, ever be unmixedly what the whole is? There is +immortality, then, yet nothing, not the body nor the soul, is wholly or +selfishly immortal. Reflect, to take an illustration from the practice, +if not from the conscious thinking of men, how through the centuries of +the dualistic view of human nature, the saving, or the losing, of the +separate soul has been a keen human interest, and how the separate body, +living, has been neglected and despised, and, dead, has been cherished +and honoured. Yes, man's immortality is deeper, and it is more +hospitable, than any distinction, be this invidious on one side or on +the other or be it not, between the physical and the spiritual. Even in +the case of the spiritual, <i>the</i> cannot be <i>a</i>.</p> + +<p>The soldier and the mechanic have been mentioned <a name="p238" id="p238"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.238]</span> as types of +personal individuality appropriate respectively to the medieval and the +modern period, to the period of the "universal individual," on the one +hand, and of unity realized, not through a type, but through the working +together of different individuals, on the other. The type was of another +world; the living unity is here and now in this. For the mechanic, then, +death is not what the soldier has found it, and immortality is different +too. But how fully to describe the difference, and how above all really +to appraise it, I do not clearly know. Perhaps there is not enough of +the poetic in my nature. The soldier, as the political historian or as +the philosopher sees him, has had his appreciative poets, but the +mechanic has been little sung. The mechanic's death, however, and the +life following it, afford a theme that some poet of the future, let me +hope, will be able to do justice to. The soldier leaves this for another +world, by his violent death only fulfilling his extreme subjection here. +The mechanic, somewhat like the tools which he employs, actually +continues with the always productive life of this world, by his death, +natural rather than violent, even contributing to, as well as sharing +in, what is produced. Not less than the soldier's is his after-life an +appropriate fulfilment of his earthly career; each gains through death +the natural reward of his life's service. But though I find myself so +unable to say what I would, to express either in prose or in poetry all +that I seem to feel, there is just one thought that I must try to +articulate, and that will certainly assist the understanding of the +difference between the two deaths or the two after-lives.</p> + +<p><a name="p239" id="p239"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.239]</span> Soldiers are companionable, of course, but they live less in and +with each other than in and with the will which they serve or than in +and with the separate world which at any moment may suddenly take them +to itself. Their lives, accordingly, or their deaths, are aloof from +each other, and are brought together only through their common +subjection or their common destiny, through something which is without. +But the mechanic is social in his own nature, in his own right. The very +reality, too, of the world in which he works is, as in so many ways we +have seen, maintained only by a divided labour. It is, then, a reality, +or a labour, that bridges the chasm between one man's life and +another's, as well as between all separate lives and the unity of all +life. It makes the many lives "parallel" and harmonious—nay, it makes +them actively and vitally sympathetic. Not, as is certainly true, at the +expense of any one's real individuality, for each man has his place and +his part, real and immortal, and not one falls unnoticed or unguarded to +the ground; but, nevertheless, whatever all have and do, they have and +do together. They live-and-die together. There is, in a word, but one +death, as well as but one life, the life or the death, which all share, +and which accordingly is definitely and specifically nowhere and +nobody's. And in the light of this supreme unity, while any live, none +can be merely dead, or while any die, none can be merely alive or living +to themselves or their time alone. And, living and dying together, in +and with each other, all are parties to the immortality of what is real.</p> + +<p>So, again, there is immortality for mankind—the <a name="p240" id="p240"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.240]</span> immortality of +him whom I have called the mechanic. There is immortality, mine and +yours and ours. We die, but not as dies the soldier, who leaves this +life for another quite apart, securing there a companionship denied him +here; we die a death that is never death alone, and we die as we live, +in a companionship that is real now and throughout all time. +Furthermore, our death is always, or always may be, self-denial, and +self-denial, too, in its supreme moment, the moment of its greatest +achievement, but our self-denial is also very different from that of the +soldier.</p> + +<p>There is immortality, then, but what results has all that has now been +said for the interpretation of history, for our feelings about the life +and death of our fellows, and for the relevant doctrines of +Christianity?<a name="FNanchor_6_19" id="FNanchor_6_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_19" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>We commonly think of history as the passing of persons, nations, and +civilizations. Men come and go, but history goes on for ever. To be +sure, history accumulates, as if its gifts from humanity, innumerable +treasures, books, relics, institutions, buildings, machinery and the +like, but the donors, as we are wont to think, are lost to it, remaining +as ideal influences perhaps, but not as vitally active in the life they +once assisted. This common view, however, must now seem wrong. The past +must ever persist in the present, and not as an aside in some other +world, nor yet as merely so much ideal influence, but vitally as a party +to the present. Those that were must also live now. Have we their +literature? Yes, and their consciousness <a name="p241" id="p241"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.241]</span> too. Their +institutions? And also their life. Their achievements? And their power +and will. Altogether too fanciful, some one thinks; but give it meaning +from what has been said here especially about individuality. In the real +world there can be but one life and one death, and we individuals, +whatever our century, divide the labour of them both. Even our present +life and consciousness and our will must be said to belong, in return, +to those who have gone before; for it is wrong, it must be wrong, to +think of the life of the past and the life of the present as two lives, +as independent and perhaps even different in kind. Not those that are +now gone once lived and we live, but they and we are living, they in us, +and we with them; they in the world of our life, not in a world yonder +and apart. They live in us, to suggest a simple analogy, that is perhaps +more than a mere analogy, very much as our own past selves, our infancy +and our youth, are alive with us and in us to-day. If a physical +scientist can see the same force in the military weapons and engines of +ancient times that he sees in those of our own time, if a sociologist +can find the same social phenomena then and now, may not the historian +regard the older life in general and the newer life as not less +intimate? Did different winds blow in 1492 from those that blow to-day? +Was it a different sun that shone in 500 B.C.: from that which shone in +A.D. 500, or which shines, or tries to shine, to-day? We do not deny +that the animal nature is still alive in us as well as around us, +although at the same time we suppose it to belong to a very early period +in our development. Why, then, should we exclude what is <a name="p242" id="p242"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.242]</span> so much +more recent? Because it is too distinctly human to be so robbed of its +temporal independence, of its own date and place? That is certainly a +strange reason in view of the fact that men have insisted on erecting, +in their minds, for the human nature that has passed away, a place which +is altogether timeless and eternal. Why not dignify human nature, then, +by making it, and all that it bears, eternal in its own natural life, +not in a sphere that is unnatural? It is sheer materialism, in letter or +in spirit, either to entomb the historic past, as some would, in books +and monuments of all sorts, or, as others would, to lay it aside in a +so-called immaterial world. Who does either of these things forgets how +the books are written and how the monuments are erected, and how in +general the things of the past come to be. The future is always a party +to whatever is done. The men who have ever achieved anything have always +been, in their character and in their work, as if made by the future, +"ahead of their times." An uncanny phrase, unless one can think of the +deeds and men of any time as in a vital unity with the deeds and men of +all times. A man is great only as he identifies himself with some social +force, with some actual movement of his day, fulfilling it out of a long +past, bringing it to focus and so making it definite and manifest, and +as the life around him which gave him birth, adopts his will and repeats +his achievement. History has many cases of human societies repeating in +their lives as a whole the careers of great men. Only it is not +repetition exactly; it is resurrection and continuation. Great men make +history, but they make it only because they <a name="p243" id="p243"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.243]</span> are alive in it +before their birth and survive in it, in its doing and in its thinking, +after they die.<a name="FNanchor_7_20" id="FNanchor_7_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_20" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Would history be even thinkable without such +continuity? Could we honestly call it history? What good American to-day +is not, convinced that he has a share in what Washington and Lincoln +accomplished years ago, and also—and this one may, or may not, +regret—in the doings of Benedict Arnold and Booth? And, to put a very +practical question, would it not be well if in the popular consciousness +great men, good and bad, were really identified with history instead of +being treated as fixtures outside of it? Make them separate fixtures and +you make them oracles, the spirits of quite another world, with which +the demagogue, as if a medium, can excite the people; but identify them +in a vital way with history and they must grow with it, speaking quite +as much out of the present conditions as out of the past. Hero-worship +is too often idolatry, and for my part the literalism of it is only +"spiritualism" trying to be respectable. Every extravagance, of course, +has to have its lawful or conventionally respectable expression.</p> + +<p>But what, now, of friendship and family ties? Can we view these in the +same light? I think we would; I think we can; I think we must. True, it +is easier to speak in this large, "philosophical" way of history and of +the men who have had part in it, inventing and effectively using the +machinery that has enabled its progress, than of such matters as +friendship and <a name="p244" id="p244"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.244]</span> family. In these latter matters the heart more +than the mind is addressed. Still, the relations of friendship and +kinship are not themselves born, nor do they die and all friends abroad +and kin at home live and move and have their being only in these. Does +it destroy or even weaken the meaning or the reality of friendship to +have it said that the relation is as universal as particular or local, +and as eternal as temporal? Is a relationship worth less than any one of +its manifestations? Why, the universality of the relationship gives +meaning or reality to any manifestation. Friendship, then, or kinship, +for this person or that, cannot be separated from the experience in +general. Separate it, and one's friends or kin surely do die, remaining +after death, like the characters of the older history, as only ideal +"influences," or as unearthly spirits that sometimes idly chatter. But +in reality, friendship, or kinship, is one, not merely many, all of its +members labouring together for, and forever surviving in, what it truly +is. The friends, then, or the kin that lived, live still. In others +about us? Yes; and in ourselves too; or rather in the relation of man to +man or in the unity of all that lives. Not literally in others, then, +although the meaning intended was a genuine one, nor yet literally in +ourselves, for nothing crudely like transmigration of souls is in my +mind, but—to repeat—in the living relationship of friends or kin. +There is indeed a truth in transmigration, as also in other related +notions; witness all the facts of inheritance, of historical succession +or continuity, of social growth and personal character, of evolution; +but it is the truth, or is near to <a name="p245" id="p245"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.245]</span> the truth, of a reality that +is conserved even in its changing. The soldier of the past, let me say, +at his death was "translated," but the mechanic of to-day is transmuted. +The latter word may be stranger and harsher in sound than the former, +but there is truly less violence and more honour in its meaning. So, +again, friends and kin that ever lived, live still. Friendship and +fatherhood and motherhood and all the relations of kin, nay, all the +relations of life, that make our individuality real, that make it +personal, that make it social, that make, it natural, have been from the +beginning, live now, and must survive forever, and by their survival +hold for the present and the future life all who have ever been. Where +would faith go, and where worth and responsibility, if birth really +created and death destroyed, or if birth were a coming from no one knows +where, from a realm unlike and apart, and death the return? Birth cannot +create or introduce; it can only express, revealing and realizing. Death +cannot destroy or "translate"; it can be only fulfilment at a crisis.</p> + +<p>The mere wordiness of a philosopher! Possibly. And yet Christianity has +very nearly implied, if indeed it has not actually said, and said or +implied again and again, exactly the same thing. To science, I know, we +are peculiarly indebted for the conception of the organism, or the +organic, which enables us to bring together the universal and the +individual, the eternal and the temporal, the omnipresent and the local, +without losing the worth or the reality of either, and of course—for so +they would not be together—without erecting separate quarters, or +worlds, for their <a name="p246" id="p246"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.246]</span> occupation; but, when all is said, science has +only applied at large the very special and personal doctrines of +Christianity, and has therein helped Christianity to a better +consciousness of itself. The Resurrection, the Immaculate Conception, +the Divinity, the Immediacy of the Kingdom, the Sacrifice, and the +Brotherhood of Man are doctrines which one and all testify quite +directly that our real individuality, our real being, lies not in a +separate existence of any sort, here or hereafter, but in the abiding +relations of the actual life now. In these the Christ resides, the +always living Christ. What else can the following mean? "In as much as +ye have done it unto one of these, my brethren, even these least ye have +done it unto me." And again: "For whosoever shall do the will of my +father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and +mother." The living Christ, one of the dogmas of our day, is more than a +fancy and more than a dogma, and for no one so truly as the scientist, +the evolutionist. Christ was too great, too deep-lying, too far-reaching +in human history not to be more. The letter of Christianity, we are +often told, has got to go, but it is quite as true that the real letter +of Christianity has got to stay, has yet to come: the real letter, I +say, not the parody of a mere physical appearance and reappearance +nearly two thousand years ago. If Christ was really not born as men are +born, if he did not really die, if truly he still lives in and with our +lives to-day, if Christianity honestly means the brotherhood of humanity +and the divinity of man, then simply the Christ was more than a pagan's +messenger from another world, and <a name="p247" id="p247"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.247]</span> more than the creature of a +single moment in history or a single place; also he reveals to us more +in ourselves than any of these things, and instead of resorting to such +notions as parthenogenesis and trance to explain the birth and the +resurrection, we must rather recognize in him, and in ourselves, an +individuality that has, not in spite of, but because of, birth and +death, a share in, a place and a part in the immortality of what is +real. Now I am not a good preacher, plainly, nor am I exactly a +sympathetic theologian, and also I know too well the defects of argument +through scriptural quotation; but I have to hope, as personally I +believe, that in the foregoing paragraph, given in conclusion to the +discussion of immortality in the doubter's world, I have suggested what +at least is not an unchristian appreciation of Christianity.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Our journey in the doubter's world here comes to an end. All things are +real, yet none final. The spiritual and the material in life are +sympathetic even to the point of being vitally at one with each other, +thought being free and practical, and material nature being lawful but +law-free, and mechanical but productively so, and being in her +productiveness definite opportunity, not blind necessity, to human life. +And, the "universal individual" being dead, having returned to the other +world from which he came, all particular individuals have real and +personal shares in the life that is, in the work that is ever to be +done. Living or dying, the individual, as we have found him, is the +mechanic of to-day, not the soldier of yesterday.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_14" id="Footnote_1_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_14"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The last few sentences seem like a paragraph from some +psychologist of the day. My colleague, Professor W.B. Pillsbury, for +example, has just published a book on the attention, in which appears +the following statement: "It seems that the problem of voluntary +activity is largely, if not entirely, a problem of the attention ... . +The processes which are effective in the control of a man's ideas are +<i>ipso facto</i> in the control of his movements," and this, besides being +the current psychology, is quite in accord with our doubter's vision: +"Well thought is well done." (See <i>Attention</i>, chapter ix. London, +1907.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_15" id="Footnote_2_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_15"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Chap. VIII., pp. 177 seq.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_16" id="Footnote_3_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_16"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Chaps. III., IV., V., and VI.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_17" id="Footnote_4_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_17"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See also an earlier discussion in this book, chap. III., +pp. 49 seq.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_18" id="Footnote_5_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_18"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Two preliminary efforts have already been put in print. See +the Appendix, "A Study of Immortality in Outline," to a book: <i>Dynamic +Idealism: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Psychology</i> (McClurg, +1898). See, secondly, an article: "<i>Evolution and Immortality</i>," in the +<i>Monist</i>, April, 1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_19" id="Footnote_6_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_19"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Except for a few changes, the next few paragraphs are taken +from my article, "Evolution and Immortality," in the <i>Monist</i>, April, +1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_20" id="Footnote_7_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_20"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> In a small book, <i>Citizenship and Salvation, or Greek and +Jew</i>, published some years ago, I have tried to show this of Socrates +and Christ.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2> + +<h3>DOUBT AND BELIEF.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p248" id="p248"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.248]</span></p> + +<blockquote><p>There was once a brook that ran, at times slowly, at times more +rapidly, through fields and woods, under trees and over rocks. At +every chance, whatever the obstacles in its course, it fell, much +or little, as it could; but impatience and uncertainty filled its +life as the minutes and the hours passed. Had life nothing more in +store for its troubled waters? Was this groping downward all? Were +the memory and the accompanying hope, which haunted every thwarted +move, of no avail? Would true fulness of life never be attained?</p> + +<p>But a great moment for the brook came, rewarding it at last, +bringing assurance in place of threatened despair. A precipice +intervened, and the waters fell hundreds of feet; a glorious fall +—spray, sunlight, colour, eloquence.</p> + +<p>"Now," spoke the brook from the deep, smooth pool below, "now I +have lived; now I know that my life was real and that my life was +good, for I have found myself, I have found my world; and I have +found them where I thought them not. And, speaking so, the brook +flowed on contented. </p></blockquote> + +<p>The confession of doubt, which we set out to make with all possible +candour, is now nearly concluded even to the harvesting of the promised +fruit. The confession began, as will be remembered, with recognition of +certain general and easily demonstrated facts, of <a name="p249" id="p249"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.249]</span> which there +were five, as follows: (1) We are all universal doubters. (2) Doubt is +essential to all consciousness. (3) Even habit, though confidence be the +horse, has doubt sitting up behind. (4) Like pain or ignorance, doubt is +a condition of real life. (5) And the sense of dependence, so general to +human nature, gives rise to doubt, although also, like misery, it always +seeks company—the company of nature, of man, of God. Then, after this +beginning, which left us by no means so hopeless as might have been +expected, we proceeded to try the doubter, nay, to try ourselves, first +before the court of ordinary life with its ordinary views of things, and +secondly, before the court of science, and, in both trials, we found the +doubting justified. Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in +science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found +what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and +almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of +contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and +the very heart of our human experience. This spirit of violence, too, as +the evidence of its presence accumulated, bade fair to dispel whatever +hope our confession had left us. Yet out of the evidence there gradually +did appear a reason for deepest assurance, and in the end our fear, not +our hope, was dispelled. Contradiction was seen in its very nature to +possess positive value. It was seen to protect experience, even while +experience was specific and concrete, definite and individual, against +any fatal digression or partiality of view. It was deeply conservative, +corrective, and <a name="p250" id="p250"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.250]</span> compensative in its effect, but it was all this +without ever being merely negative or destructive towards anything, +since its own efficiency required persistent individual differences. To +experience it gave movement, constant unity or wholeness, realistic +value and poise, practicality, and, lastly, social expression. And we +were able, accordingly, to conclude, in so many words, that both +ordinary life and science, so given to duplicity in their standpoint and +in their ideas, were really building well, far better, indeed, than they +seemed or than they clearly knew. Contradiction, in short, as we came to +see it, meant unity, but not an empty, abstract unity; it meant unity +rich and real with an infinity of differences; and so what had at first +appeared an uncompromising reason for doubt turned, right before our +doubter's eyes, into an unassailable ground of belief, making the very +world which we had been so uncertain about a world for an inviolable +faith. But truth, we saw at once, could no longer be identified with a +formal idea, known or unknown or unknowable; reality could no longer +have the character of a fixedly constituted thing, whether such a thing +were present in experience or not; and perfection, even the perfection +of God, could no longer be a mere status, a passive possession of +certain characters, attributes, or prerogatives. Truth became, as was +said, in want of a better word, a spirit; reality was a life; perfection +was a power. And thereupon, with the new view thus afforded us, coupled +as it was especially with the sense in which personally a man could +claim reality for himself and yet be party to the factional life of +society, we were able to turn to <a name="p251" id="p251"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.251]</span> Descartes, an early modern +doubter, a father confessor of many doubters, and, overlooking some of +his shortcomings in thought and character, to appreciate both the use +that he made of doubt, the intimacy that he, too, found between doubt +and faith, and the world of reality, of most vital sympathy between the +material and the spiritual, of genuine, personal individuality, and of +immortality, through which he led us, doubter, universal doubter though +he was. That great Frenchman, as we were enabled to understand him, got +back the world, the self and the God which he seemed to have lost, but +he got them all back transfigured. He got them back, not by denying and +excluding what appeared negative and treacherous in their nature, but by +facing this and using it, by accepting it and turning it even against +itself. The very Paris to which he returned as believer was the same +Paris, the Paris of doubt and of evil in all its forms, that earlier, +hopeless and despairing, he had put behind him. And, once more, his +experience was ours, and so helped us to interpret and deepen ours, +quickening the value of our own previous discovery that within the very +sources of doubt lay the real bases of belief. Our own doubted world of +what was relative and artificial, and above all contradictory, had +already turned, without loss of anything that was in it, into a world of +reality and belief.</p> + +<p>And so, for this concluding chapter, as but a sort of focussing of what +almost from the beginning has been borne in upon us, but especially at +the close has been rich in reality and meaning, we have a sixth general +fact, which may now be added to the original five. <a name="p252" id="p252"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.252]</span> <i>We believe +through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very +things we doubt</i>. To this fact really inclusive of all the others, or if +not to this fact at least to this conviction which we have achieved +here, we shall now turn, and in our concluding chapter we may even +forget, or retain only as the appropriate background, many of those more +special or more technical details that from time to time have occupied +us. After so much, that to some, if not to all, who have followed me to +this place, may have appeared open to the charge of being mere theory, +certain simple, very practical considerations, appealing quite as much +to the emotions as to the reason, can hardly be out of place. Those who +are already satisfied, who foresee only repetition, who are themselves +without emotion, or who consider anything like the drawing of a moral to +be as useless as it is inartistic, need read no further.</p> + + +<p class="caption">I.</p> + +<p>We believe in the very things we doubt. Doubt, this is to say, can +destroy nothing. It only calls for closer scrutiny, for wider and deeper +view, for greater achievement. Its effect is only to make over, renew, +or fulfil what has already been and must ever remain an object of faith, +and so doing it keeps the old faith alive. It questions all things, but +properly, consistently it raises, not questions of mere existence or +reality, but questions of meaning and worth, and whatever it truly +questions it always quickens. Have <a name="p253" id="p253"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.253]</span> we not found that with its +inborn and insatiable passion for truth doubt must believe in +everything, and that to satisfy this passion, since all things must work +together for what is real and true, it must reject nothing but seek even +the universe in everything? All things, from the momentary sensation in +your little finger, or the tree yonder on the lawn, to the personality +of God or the divinity of Christ as an idea in the consciousness of +millions of people, all things are; they are in experience; they are +unassailable realities of experience; but—and just this is as far as +the truth-loving doubter, the doubter who is honest with his own +self-consciousness, can go—what really are they? <i>What are they?</i> is +such an honest question. In this question, too, there is more reality +for the things inquired about even than in any man's assertion that they +are this or that they are that. But the question <i>Are they?</i> would be +downright treachery. We doubters, then, believe, but would ever know +what we believe; we have, yet would realize every possibility that what +we have affords.</p> + +<p>Doubt, I repeat, destroys nothing. From time to time certain doubting +people have called their prophets impostors, and have imagined +themselves able to put the impostors out of the way, but, as history has +always shown, only with the result of reviving among themselves and +often of awakening in the minds and hearts of others the sense and +conviction of just that for which the offensive impostors may have +suffered violent death. Even history's petty impostors, too, as well as +those who have proved heroes and great leaders, have always had their +justification. An <a name="p254" id="p254"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.254]</span> absolute impostor has never been. Again, +certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or +moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to +make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual +dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is +valid and real. Nothing can be, or ever has been, unreal. And, in +general, doubt of a thing or a person or a God only needs its own +conscious assertion to turn actually into an appeal from its particular +object to the ideal or spirit or principle for which the object had +stood, and upon this appeal even the object that has been for a moment +condemned is justified and glorified. Thus, doubt may deny or depose or +put to death, but as it is honest it also realizes or restores or +revives. Through doubt the sensuous, which is the particular and +visible, is ever becoming spiritualized; even this corruptible puts on +incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. Or, in these words, if +we doubt we may reject the object, the letter, but we cannot reject the +letter without accepting and asserting the spirit, and we cannot assert +the spirit without recalling and exalting and even worshipping the +letter. The rejection makes for universality by casting down the +barriers of the particular experience of time or place, of person or +nation, of the Greek perhaps, if again I may look to history, or of the +Jew or of the Christian, while the recall and the worship make for +definiteness. Without the previous rejection the worship could be only +idolatry. So, as Descartes will be remembered virtually to have said, +doubt is innately loyal to reality in <a name="p255" id="p255"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.255]</span> everything, and just +through this loyalty the world it spurns, the world of God and man and +nature, is for ever called back, a real world once more, because a +realized, a spiritually realized world. Why forget, as so many seem to, +that reality is an achievement; achieved it may be, as with the brook, +even by a great fall?</p> + +<p>But have you ever climbed a mountain up and up and up, through thick +woods, over rough, almost impassable trails, into clouds dense and +chilling, stormy and angry, over treacherous snows and frightful cliffs, +and come out at last on the very top to see both earth and heaven, +yourself between, the clouds dispersed, the hardships and dangers all +forgotten, the whole world real and yours? Well, that is doubt become +achievement. Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a +problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all +the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to +you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when +failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and +the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? +That, too, is doubt rewarded. Have you ever visited, perhaps more +curiously than reverently, some great Catholic cathedral, or, better +still, some temple of the far Orient, and watching the worshippers +there, suddenly had a vision of religion as greater and deeper than any +Protestantism or even than Christianity? That, again, is doubt's +achievement. Have you ever suffered a great heartrending disappointment, +let me say a great personal loss, and <a name="p256" id="p256"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.256]</span> found it seemingly +impossible to return to the routine of your former life, but +nevertheless, almost imperceptibly, come into a sense of presence and +gain from the very thing that seemed taken from you? That, once more, is +doubt without its sting, robbed of its victory. Doubt means sacrifice, +often enormous sacrifice, but always a more than equal gain. The light +that casts the shadows of doubt, when one can face it, and really does +face it, as, for another example, in this book we have been trying to +face it, is so splendid and so uplifting.</p> + +<p>So, a third time, doubt destroys nothing; it only makes reality forever +an achievement and belief a constantly active life. The fact, now no +stranger to us, that doubt is social, also shows this. Doubt is social, +as has been said, since by its isolation it makes the longing for +company, and by its greater freedom the larger opportunity for company; +and since also the very contradictions or controversies which arouse it +are never merely individual, being always social also, and social +relationship means effort and sacrifice, and is accordingly a peculiarly +interesting witness to the losses that doubt must suffer for its greater +gains. Doubt, in short, shows belief, working not merely for the reality +of all things, but also for the love of all men. As social, then, as +working for the love of all men, doubt involves sympathy. Yet not an +easy, passive sympathy. A restless, labouring, always growing sympathy +is the sympathy of the doubter; a sympathy that makes all it covers +labour and grow also. Does it hurt your business to doubt it +sufficiently to make you able to sympathize with the interests of +<a name="p257" id="p257"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.257]</span> another? To this question Adam Smith gave a timely answer when +at a critical moment in industrial history he found in sympathy a +condition of successful competition. Does it hurt your politics, if you +can lose enough of the partisan's conceit or the jingo's bombast to +sympathize with the other parties or the other nations? The value of +real independence in politics is one answer, and the idea of federation +among competing states, or of international polity as a basis of +successful national life, is another. Does it hurt your understanding to +outgrow your own profoundest ideas and see some validity in the +doctrines and formulæ of others? Does it hurt your Christianity to make +concessions to another's Christianity or to the worship of any land or +any time? The reading of the last great book, or the visit to the pagan +temple, is an answer. Simply the doubter the world over, social being +that he is by nature, imbued as he is with a living sympathy, must +recognize, and must labour to maintain or achieve, the unity of +humanity. For him just this is God, or truth, and it is worth far more +than anybody's religion or than anybody's rational formulæ. It must +stand, too, both as the universal authority which both religion and +reason have over the lives of men and as the motive or living principle, +or spirit, by which particular religions and particular formulæ, however +serviceable, are forever unstable.</p> + +<p>But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and +which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes +belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still +another way. It shows mankind using or spending <a name="p258" id="p258"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.258]</span> instead of +either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and +faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life +accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest +what they have; some speculate. Some are conservative, even timorous; +some are very rash. Yet doubt as expenditure is necessary to all who +would enjoy the proper, natural increase of their possessions, and while +the rash, be they transgressors or reformers, sensualists or +materialists, or equally impractical idealists, at a throw may win or +lose great riches of mind or spirit, the timorous and +ultra-conservative, the "practical" and conventional, are not less +dependent on chance. There are the new rich, too, and the aristocratic +poor, and both remind us strongly that the real use of what we have is +not only a duty, but also a very sober duty. To hoard blindly or spend +rashly is to risk unwisely, perhaps to lose all, or, if to win, to win +idly; while to use well, to doubt clearly and honestly, to doubt even in +one's belief, to doubt only for fuller meaning, for broader and deeper +life, for richer companionship, is personally to earn lasting spiritual +treasure.</p> + +<p>Modern science, whose knowledge comprises merely working hypotheses, the +means to truth, not truth itself, or if truth, then only a living, +growing truth, affords one of the best examples of this. Modern science +is a great faith, a great belief, but only because it is a life, not a +status or possession, only because it is a constant spending, a constant +using of knowledge, that earns interest, even compound interest, as +regularly as the years go by. And experience in <a name="p259" id="p259"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.259]</span> general, as well +as science, is also a great belief, and also only because always +doubting and so always using and always earning.</p> + +<p>Doubt, in a word, is more than a necessity of experience; it is +distinctly a duty. Experience itself is but another name for that hard +master who says to every unprofitable servant: "Thou wicked and slothful +servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I +did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the +bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with +interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him and give it unto +him that hath the ten talents."</p> + + +<p class="caption">II.</p> + +<p>That doubt is only the expenditure of the treasures of life for future +gain human history bears witness in a striking way. Times of a general +scepticism among any people have always been also times of +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards all things great and small. +To employ again a word used before, this means that life has come to +regard its establishments of all sorts as only "instrumental," not +final. Of course, conventionalism and utilitarianism are commonly +decried, just as the accompanying attitude of doubt is commonly decried; +but the fears, though not altogether idle, are usually short-sighted, +for there is gain ahead. In a certain community, for example, +patriotism, morality, and piety, long identified with specific forms and +customs and doctrines, have come at last to seem quite unsubstantial. A +rising cosmopolitanism perhaps has undone the first, sensationalism +<a name="p260" id="p260"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.260]</span> or naturalism the second, and mingled ritualism and secularism +the third. But however unsubstantial all three may appear in +consequence, they are nevertheless retained as still useful, as means to +some end, being at least good things to wear or to assume in any way, +and from the change, though it appear so like decline, the community in +the end is most decidedly enriched.</p> + +<p>How can this be? In answer, let us beard the very king of the race of +the conventionalists and utilitarians in his forbidding den. +Machiavelli, with his teaching that the end always justifies the means, +and his open advice to the leader who would be successful, to make a +point of at least seeming loyal and good and pious, shows a typical +mingling of the sceptic and the utilitarian in sacred things. Moreover, +what Machiavelli taught was also common practice in his time, and soon +became a principle of brilliant statesmanship all over Europe. And to +add meaning to his case by associating it with others, conspicuously in +Descartes' time, as we have observed, and also in Athens at the time of +the Sophists, and in Jerusalem when the Pharisees flourished, the same +standpoint was much in vogue; while in our own times we do not need to +look far to find it. Education, social life, politics, religion abound +in it, for the tribe of the Machiavellists is no more a lost tribe than +it is one that began with him whose name it bears. If the name is too +offensive to some by reason of its connection with a particular +character and a particular period in Italian history, for Machiavellism +they may substitute institutionalism, certainly a more innocent term at +first sight; but the offensiveness, though hidden, <a name="p261" id="p261"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.261]</span> or +half-hidden, still remains a part of the fact with which we have to +deal. The meaning of institutionalism is just that of some asserted end +justifying any available means, and so under cover of its peculiar +conceits sanctioning violence. Watch any institution and see how one or +another of life's objects of devotion is become, or fast becoming, a +mere utility. The institution makes life mechanical, and doing this it +is as treacherous as it seems loyal to the treasured things of life, the +developed ideas and established customs; it is even as sceptical towards +them as it seems faithful; and in the spirit, if not in the letter, of +Machiavellism it shows them no longer implicitly worshipped, but in use, +which is to say, "put to the bankers," and so robbed of their character +of sacred treasures. And as for Machiavelli himself, it may be worth +while to remember that with all his offensiveness he has undoubtedly +been very much maligned, and that to any student of history he seems +only a very apt though an unpleasantly outspoken pupil of the most +powerful institution of his time—the Roman Church—for which things +moral and religious had certainly become effective instruments of very +worldly ambitions. So in Machiavellism or in institutionalism, the name +now being indifferent to us, we see worship passing into use; we see +sacred things become secular, or things supposed final becoming only +instrumental; and we see, therefore, what appears like loss or +decline.<a name="FNanchor_1_21" id="FNanchor_1_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_21" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p><a name="p262" id="p262"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.262]</span> But can there be anything besides loss or decline? This again is +our question, and the answer now comes quick and decisive, whether we +are thinking of Machiavelli or the Sophists, of the old-time Pharisees, +or of those in our own life. Decline and even fall never tell the whole +story of anything, and just because they mean use, even secular use. +That men must worship is surely true, but also men must and do use, and +the use, in spite of the strain of the offence and resistance which it +is sure to arouse, brings profit always. Use, secular use, may imply +sacrifice of the letter or the established form, but it always leads to +liberation of the spirit. In scepticism, therefore, and the coincident +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards sacred things, in the +institutionalism which harbours all these, though often darkly and +secretly, we may always read, what in truth history has again and again +exemplified, the throes of birth, the birth of the spirit. Must it not +be that any visible institution, be it ecclesiastical or industrial or +political or educational or ceremonial, just because an institution +designed in some way to serve an active, growing life, is always an +outgrown, falling institution? As in the case of the Roman Church in the +days of Machiavelli, an institution upon its establishment actually +justifies its enemies by its own practices, while the enemies, so +justified, do but lay it bare, exposing its hidden thoughts and ways, +forcing reform upon it, and perhaps in the end themselves "remaining to +pray."</p> + +<p>So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of +society what a wonderful triumvirate, working <a name="p263" id="p263"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.263]</span> for the real +growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by +the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and +utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. Even +Machiavelli in his most offensive pronouncements must have felt +something between his lines which expressed would have transfigured +their meaning, not to say also his reputation, greatly, and, consciously +or unconsciously, he was certainly a party to the development of what is +best in modern life. As for the Sophists, whether we see them as +sceptics or conventionalists, did they not have Socrates among them? +Between them and him, when all is said, the difference was only that +between talent and genius, between great formal ingenuity, which always +means opportunism, and really vital insight, which, shattering +opportunism with its own weapons, means loyalty, not to existing forms, +but to the spirit dwelling in the forms. Much in the same way, too, the +Jewish Pharisees had Jesus, a contemporary, who did but recognize and +earnestly teach what they were really practising, namely, the utility of +the law, or the law for man, not man for the law. Only what for them was +merely a selfish opportunity, absorbed as they were in the vested +interests of their time and generation, was manifest to him—who was a +genius and who used for real gain the talent which they hoarded—as a +great spiritual fact, as a universal truth, bringing opportunity and +freedom to all men under all law, not to some men under one law. Thus +they were institutionalists; he, by merely turning their narrowness into +a principle of all life, became a reformer, and, indebted to them as he +was, he could <a name="p264" id="p264"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.264]</span> forgive them even when they opposed him. Genius +always forgives; the spirit always recalls and cherishes the letter that +has given it birth.</p> + +<p>So the institution as an historical fact, whether we see it with the +eyes of Machiavelli or with those of a pope, with the eyes of Protagoras +or with those of Socrates, with the eyes of the Pharisees or with those +of Christ, may show worship turning into use, the sacred becoming +secular, but it shows also the life of society becoming enriched; it +shows investment for future gain; it shows doubt, not destroying +anything, but achieving only what is real; it shows the life of the +spirit.</p> + + +<p class="caption">III.</p> + +<p>No period of man's earlier doubting can be more interesting than that of +the centuries just prior to the Christian era, when the peoples of the +Mediterranean contributed so much, directly and indirectly, to the +preparation for Christianity and to the discovery, or revelation, which +finally came and in due time changed the ancient to our modern world. +What the preparation was has already been indicated, at least partially, +in the references that have been made to the Sophists and to the +Pharisees. Christianity has been only the interest, the earned +increment, or rather should I not say the compounded principal, of the +scepticism, of the formalism and the utilitarianism which beset the +Greeks and the Hebrews, to mention no others, as their peculiar +civilizations were merging into the larger and deeper life of a great +empire. In their several lives the demand came, and came, too, from +within, not merely from without, as in all life <a name="p265" id="p265"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.265]</span> it must come, +for use of their gathered treasures, whether spiritual or material, and +the rise of Rome was but the result of that demand satisfied, of the use +realized. As for the scepticism, this with all its incidents made the +use possible, made it possible for the peoples to give or relinquish +what they had to the larger life to which they all belonged, while the +religion of Christianity spiritualized for them all the resulting +empire.</p> + +<p>Those wonderful races of the Mediterranean, who achieved—at least some +of them—such great things in all that counts for civilization, became +at the last most extravagant sceptics, not only formulating, but also +very generally living up to, the conviction of ignorance and +forgetfulness of reality. Everything which their long past had gathered +for them they resigned—or let me say crucified—and themselves they +threw, as if with an investor's recklessness, upon a world of chance or +fate, upon a world seemingly of empty forms in all human relations, a +world of disguises for license and of mere conceits of moral power and +religious piety. Sensuous mysticism and pantheism, formalism of all +kinds, Stoicism, Epicureanism, legalism, and cosmopolitanism were +crosses upon which one people and another, one class and another, nailed +their long-cherished devotions, their love of God and man and nature, of +temple and family and country. A great doubting, then, was truly theirs. +A great sacrificial offering was their preparation for Christianity. In +a way, with a completeness that seems to have no parallel in history, +they put their talents to the bankers—despairing, of course, but hoping +also, <a name="p266" id="p266"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.266]</span> if only their doubting, when it came, may be supposed as +genuine as their earlier believing. From the North and from the East and +from the South their good men came, and their rich and their wise, and +laid what they had at the feet of the life that was new born.</p> + +<p>People read their histories so differently. The pagan doubt, the +Christian revelation and belief, the conversion of the pagan world to +Christianity, the Renaissance, in which the conversion was in a sense +reversed, and the Reformation mean such different things to different +people. Some must still have it that paganism, or pre-Christianism, +ended in absolutely blind despair, in the avowal of complete failure—as +if such despair or failure could ever find words for its own utterance; +that Christianity came into a hopelessly pagan world wholly from +without, came into a world of nothing but unmixed doubt, and brought +with it nothing but unmixed belief; that the conversion was a sort of +conquest, by a power all its own capturing the pagans, so wholly +unnerved as to be quite incapable even of a futile resistance; that the +Renaissance, restoration as it was of the pagan life and thought, was at +best a great condescension on the part of Christendom and at worst an +unfortunate return to the pagan idols; and that in the Reformation the +Christian Religion Militant did but retreat upon the Bible as its +impregnable fortress. But such history can hardly be our history here. +For us the rise and the progress of Christianity have had quite a +different character. To strike at the foundation of that whole structure +the pagan doubting was too articulate. It was, also, too earnest. It was +too genuine. The races did indeed resign, as with <a name="p267" id="p267"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.267]</span> an investor's +recklessness, all that they had, but their recklessness was not unmixed. +Their doubting had hope in it as well as despair. It still loved the +spirit of what had been even when it betrayed the letter. It had its +martyrs, too, as well as its suicides; its sense of life as well as its +enervating fear of death. Say what you will, then, a great, warm, +yearning belief dwelt within it. And so, just because the pagan doubting +was too earnest and too genuine and too articulate, because it was, in +truth, a great sacrificial offering, the crucifixion on Calvary was also +too true to life at Athens and Alexandria, as well as to life at +Jerusalem, and the resurrection of the spirit was too true to life at +Rome; they were too true to mean anything but fulfilment and +achievement. Everywhere, in every place and in every department of life, +the letter had been rejected; but everywhere also—and this, nothing +else, was the true conversion to Christianity—the spirit was accepted. +Acceptance of the spirit, too, meant that in good time the letter would +be restored, as indeed at the Renaissance it surely was.</p> + +<p>Christianity, therefore, came when the times were ripe for it. It came +not from without, but deeply from within the pagan life of the +Mediterranean. Moreover, if in this way, not in that other way, we must +read the rise of Christianity, then we must read both the Renaissance +and the Reformation under the same light. The Renaissance, as was just +said, brought a restoration of the letter; but, necessarily, of the +letter under the light of the spirit, of the letter transfigured. The +Renaissance, so dramatically manifested in the Crusades, was only +Christendom returning to its <a name="p268" id="p268"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.268]</span> birthplace. With its crusades to +Jerusalem, to all the old capitals, to the pagan ideas and institutions, +to the ancient languages and literatures, Christianity rediscovered +itself in the past, winning back in this way some of its childhood, +curing a homesickness that a worldly church had made it feel, securing +for itself such a deep experience as comes to a man who, after years of +wandering and forgetting, has returned to the home of his infancy. And +as for the Reformation—if indeed this was a retreat, shall we say, of a +defeated religion upon the Bible, its supposed impregnable fortress—we +need only to remember the pagan origin, the Hebrew and the Greek +inspiration, and the Roman atmosphere of that sacred book.</p> + +<p>And of the relation of Christianity to paganism, just one thing more. +The Christian revelation, so wonderfully portrayed and enacted in the +life and character of Jesus, was only an idealization, a spiritual +interpretation, of the very present, the thoroughly actual life of the +time, of the life that the pagans, doubting but believing, despairing +but also trusting, resigning all but hoping for more, had already +brought upon themselves; a life of self-denial, of common, universal +humanity, all men being "members one of another," and of perfect faith. +Perhaps the self-denial was bravely concealed in an accepted subjection, +but it was not less real. Perhaps the common humanity was military and +imperial, yet it also was real. Perhaps, too, the faith was blind and +fatalistic, but it was nevertheless faith. Can faith go farther or do +more than fatalism? The pagans, then, had become Christians in fact or +status, and Christianity came, breathing <a name="p269" id="p269"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.269]</span> life into the bare +fact, into the self-denial, and the broad humanity and the faith, and +made these not the mere phases of bare fact or condition, but motives +and ideals, manifesting them heroically in a single human life, and so +in the form and with the power of a personal discovery of self.</p> + +<p>Where genuine doubt is the God is always born.</p> + + +<p class="caption">IV.</p> + +<p>To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, +for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising +questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality +and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous +as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often +become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage +casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the +English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics +have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, +given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for +example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in +the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and +intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an +unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail +to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the +formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English +history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. +Frenchmen, though <a name="p270" id="p270"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.270]</span> so neighbourly to England, have been +conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and +problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more +vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, +throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and +consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear +or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. +Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more +effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not +revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. +Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this—witness +their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises—or only +other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this—witness the +testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic +example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English +people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in +religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their +past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the +forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in +Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it +now to give it point.</p> + +<p>Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may +be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude +doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is +peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own +dangers. To be candid, in the <a name="p271" id="p271"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.271]</span> sense of the word here intended, +is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, +and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and +fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or +reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the +possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, +and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the +reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full +due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the +same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his +philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was +taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid +English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to +anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or +subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable—in a word, to +nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, +again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a +positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been +a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great +enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal—if not unideal—substitute for the +present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and +government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present +responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or +almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost +never, something that lives in and <a name="p272" id="p272"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.272]</span> through God and government +and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and +Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare +and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or +Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature +has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest +English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand +English deism; the <i>laissez faire</i> economics; the peculiar nature and +growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; +the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and +bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English +people's progressive conservatism?</p> + +<p>The most radical doubt must +eventually appeal to nature and, what is more, must sooner or later +bring man to live with nature practically and responsibly, intimately +and sympathetically; but candour, like the candour of the English, that +never doubts without at the same time believing, lives ever with her. +Perhaps the English people need to have what they seem never to have +had—though the Armada threatened something of the kind, and the loss of the +thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war was, not without its value—a +great, overpowering disaster, a deep all-searching despair; yet, be this +as it may, their part in the struggle of a life that must always doubt +in order to grow is always instructive and is often inspiring.</p> + + +<p class="caption">V.</p> + +<p><a name="p273" id="p273"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.273]</span> The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful +triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we +must return to that characterization. The other members of the +triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great +spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of +the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the +others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there +are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and +the believer face each other squarely and honestly. <i>Both</i> are parties +to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the +contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional +conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always +belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can +there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental +sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the +differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized +society, without betraying them?</p> + +<p>At once opponents and companions—this is the truth about the doubter +and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite +justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for +that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to +you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him +who hides his doubts in an outward show that <a name="p274" id="p274"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.274]</span> almost deceives him +as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of +intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or +individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a +camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or +has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life +everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, +law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or +treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to +stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, +have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, +and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The +doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; +the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which +each has and must feel his social rôle, but, at most and worst, they are +only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to +quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part +of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just +one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"—instead of off +at some tangent.</p> + +<p>Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have +him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold +to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he +turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he +could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place, +that his decision <a name="p275" id="p275"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.275]</span> not only must be made, and made strongly, one +way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third +place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement. +Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing +finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the +contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know +they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent +harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them +really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home, +making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to +my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with +yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with +his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So +fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions.</p> + + +<p>VI.</p> + +<p>Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those +well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring +injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to +be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and +seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all +the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of +these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat +old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,<a name="FNanchor_2_22" id="FNanchor_2_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_22" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> <a name="p276" id="p276"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.276]</span> +once published a book entitled, <i>Poetry, Comedy and Duty</i>. Exactly what +his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of +life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly +and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in +substance if not in form, can not be very far from his.</p> + +<p>Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where +extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of +such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also +in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics +cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for +comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no +residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may +utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily +confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is +bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no +understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest +sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are +companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment—at +least among the gods.</p> + +<p>But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly +comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but +also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is +the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its +conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct +<a name="p277" id="p277"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.277]</span> way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem, +can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they +insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be +dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the +metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never +can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant +always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never +prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience, +it is always a <i>tertium quid</i>, can such a reality ever be present to any +other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face; +it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and +informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge; +for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation +and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man +thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity +of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the +analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily +partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its +parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy—that is, by +projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its +natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both +insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the +grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the +crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life, +is poetry. For <a name="p278" id="p278"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.278]</span> him who is lacking in both insight and humour, +who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality +accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose +is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly +bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it +presents—that is, in its subject-matter—it is always, not adequate and +inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in +short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, +to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is +above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license +poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever +prefers reality to prosaic peace.</p> + +<p>So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and +inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular +in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all +well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and +complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is +quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too +precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when +not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any +way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's +notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even +profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a +word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such +questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, +<a name="p279" id="p279"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.279]</span> though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that +the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, +only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry +always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry +of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring +relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme +or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he +continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a +responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal +precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not +if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? +Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real +duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as +they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly +feel their living obligation.</p> + +<p>For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is +both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than +just the principle, deeply true: <i>Whatever is, is right</i>. Men have +laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect +mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic +fact? But truth it is; <i>the</i> truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal +comedy—the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_21" id="Footnote_1_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_21"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth +and sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great +change of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or +economics, of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual +life, were becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting +monarchy, Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_22" id="Footnote_2_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_22"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> + +<p> +A<br /> +<br /> +Abstraction, of science, <a href="#p058">58</a>, <a href="#p107">107</a>; and duplicity, + <a href="#p061">61</a><br /> +Agnosticism, <a href="#p075">75</a>, <a href="#p106">106</a>; special dangers of, +<a href="#p111">111</a>, <a href="#p117">117</a>; dogmatic and<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">instrumental, <a href="#p120">120</a>; as call for action, +<a href="#p125">125</a>; as passion for real</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">life, <a href="#p128">128</a></span><br /> +Analogy, among the sciences, <a href="#p097">97</a>; of individual self to environment, +<a href="#p155">155</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of universal to particular, <a href="#p033">33</a>, +<a href="#p220">220</a></span><br /> +Anaxagoras, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +Anaximander, <a href="#p034">34</a>, <a href="#p094">94</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Anti-vitalism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Aristotle, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p156">156</a><br /> +Atomism, <a href="#p097">97</a>, <a href="#p102">102</a><br /> +<br /> +B<br /> +<br /> +Babylonians, <a href="#p106">106</a><br /> +Bacon, <a href="#p176">176</a><br /> +Baldwin, <a href="#p015">15</a><br /> +Belief, as unquestioning, <a href="#p008">8</a>, 194; and doubt, <a href="#p053">53</a>, +<a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p107">107</a>, <a href="#p130">130</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p192">192</a>, <a href="#p248">248</a></span><br /> +Biology, <a href="#p088">88</a>, <a href="#p090">90</a>, <a href="#p104">104</a>, <a href="#p110">110</a><br /> +Boehme, <a href="#p177">177</a><br /> +Body, and soul, <a href="#p227">227</a>, <a href="#p237">237</a>; immortality of, <a href="#p141">141</a>, +<a href="#p234">234</a><br /> +Bradley, <a href="#p153">153</a> n.<br /> +Burns, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +<br /> +C<br /> +<br /> +Candour, of the English, <a href="#p270">270</a><br /> +Carlyle, <a href="#p126">126</a><br /> +Catholicism, <a href="#p175">175</a><br /> +Causation, <a href="#p039">39</a>, <a href="#p082">82</a>, <a href="#p083">83</a>, <a href="#p109">109</a>, +<a href="#p205">205</a><br /> +Change, and habit, <a href="#p015">15</a>; as motive, <a href="#p017">17</a>; of purpose, <a href="#p011">11</a><br /> +Charron, <a href="#p177">177</a>, <a href="#p180">180</a><br /> +Chemistry, <a href="#p034">34</a>, <a href="#p036">36</a>, <a href="#p088">88</a>, <a href="#p090">90</a>, +<a href="#p091">91</a>, <a href="#p110">110</a><br /> +Christ, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Christianity, and immortality, <a href="#p240">240</a>; preparation for, <a href="#p266">266</a>; +different<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">views of history of, <a href="#p266">266</a></span><br /> +Christian Science, <a href="#p002">2</a>, <a href="#p032">32</a> n.<br /> +Class, the social, <a href="#p062">62</a>, <a href="#p126">126</a>, <a href="#p162">162</a>; relation of, +to doubt and belief, <a href="#p171">171</a><br /> +Comedy, <a href="#p275">275</a><br /> +Companionship, with nature, <a href="#p021">21</a>, <a href="#p071">71</a>; with man, +<a href="#p024">24</a>; with God, <a href="#p026">26</a><br /> +Contradiction, in ordinary views, <a href="#p030">30</a>; in idea of reality, +<a href="#p030">30</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of unity, <a href="#p033">33</a>; of space and time, +<a href="#p038">38</a>; of causation, <a href="#p039">39</a>; of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">knowledge, <a href="#p041">41</a>; of morality, <a href="#p044">44</a>; +of law, <a href="#p049">49</a>; as of value in</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">experience, <a href="#p004">4</a>, <a href="#p037">37</a>, +<a href="#p131">131</a>; and dualism, <a href="#p101">101</a>; as corrective of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">narrowness, <a href="#p100">100</a>, <a href="#p116">116</a>, +<a href="#p143">143</a>; as meaning action, <a href="#p136">136</a>; as realizing</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">unity, <a href="#p137">137</a>; as securing reality and practicality, +<a href="#p145">145</a>; as</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">requiring society, <a href="#p147">147</a>; as not to be cultivated for its own</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">sake, <a href="#p151">151</a>; as related to person and class, <a href="#p170">170</a></span><br /> +Conventionalism, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p260">260</a><br /> +Creationalism, <a href="#p082">82</a>, <a href="#p202">202</a><br /> +Crusades, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +<br /> +D<br /> +<br /> +Death, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p151">151</a>, <a href="#p239">239</a><br /> +Deduction, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +Democritus, <a href="#p065">65</a><br /> +Development, special, transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Descartes, <a href="#p006">6</a>, <a href="#p172">172</a>, <a href="#p196">196</a>, <a href="#p251">251</a>, +<a href="#p254">254</a><br /> +Dichotomy, <a href="#p101">101</a><br /> +Dogmatism, and fear, <a href="#p009">9</a>; and belief, <a href="#p194">194</a><br /> +Doubt, as widespread, <a href="#p001">1</a>, <a href="#p007">7</a>; actual, if possible, +<a href="#p006">6</a>; as essential to<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">consciousness, <a href="#p009">9</a>; and habit, <a href="#p014">14</a>; +as making life real, <a href="#p018">18</a>; and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">feeling of dependence, <a href="#p021">21</a>; as Basking company, +<a href="#p021">21</a>, <a href="#p255">255</a>; as mediator</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">between old and now, <a href="#p025">25</a>; and atheism, +<a href="#p027">27</a>; and belief, <a href="#p055">55</a>, <a href="#p105">105</a>, +<a href="#p130">130</a>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p192">192</a>, <a href="#p248">248</a>, +<a href="#p273">273</a>; as investment for gain, <a href="#p259">259</a>; and candour, <a href="#p270">270</a></span><br /> +Dualism, <a href="#p064">64</a>, <a href="#p101">101</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p209">209</a><br /> +Duplicity, of science, <a href="#p061">61</a>; of life, <a href="#p118">118</a><br /> +Duty, <a href="#p047">47</a>, <a href="#p278">278</a><br /> +<br /> +E<br /> +<br /> +Education, and interest, <a href="#p018">18</a> n.<br /> +Emerson, <a href="#p144">144</a><br /> +Energism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +England, peculiar scepticism in, <a href="#p269">269</a><br /> +Environment, as source of conduct, <a href="#p046">46</a>; social environment and personal<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">individual, <a href="#p169">169</a>, <a href="#p231">231</a></span><br /> +Epicureanism, <a href="#p116">116</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a><br /> +Epistemology, <a href="#p092">92</a><br /> +Evil, and good, <a href="#p045">45</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p150">150</a>, <a href="#p276">276</a><br /> +Evolution, <a href="#p078">78</a>, <a href="#p202">202</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a><br /> +Experience, unity of, <a href="#p160">160</a><br /> +Experimentalism, <a href="#p068">68</a><br /> +<br /> +F<br /> +<br /> +Fatalism, <a href="#p049">49</a><br /> +Fear, and dogmatism, <a href="#p009">9</a><br /> +France, peculiar scepticism in, <a href="#p271">271</a><br /> +Freedom, of will, <a href="#p047">47</a>; of thought, <a href="#p211">211</a>, <a href="#p227">227</a><br /> +<br /> +G<br /> +<br /> +Galilei, <a href="#p177">177</a><br /> +Genius, <a href="#p168">168</a>, <a href="#p196">196</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +God, Descartes' proof of, <a href="#p181">181</a>; fallacy in D.'s proof of, <a href="#p189">189</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">D.'s idea of, <a href="#p186">186</a>, <a href="#p190">190</a>; +sceptic's idea of, <a href="#p026">26</a>, <a href="#p187">187</a>, <a href="#p190">190</a>, <a href="#p203">203</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">death of, <a href="#p237">237</a>; birth of, <a href="#p269">269</a></span><br /> +<br /> +H<br /> +<br /> +Habit, and doubt, <a href="#p014">14</a><br /> +Hebrews, <a href="#p025">25</a>, <a href="#p264">264</a><br /> +Hedonism, <a href="#p064">64</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a><br /> +Hegel, <a href="#p020">20</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Heraclitus, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p152">152</a><br /> +Hering, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Hero-worship, <a href="#p243">243</a><br /> +History, standpoint of, <a href="#p079">79</a>; of Christianity, different views of, <a href="#p266">266</a><br /> +Hope, even in doubt, <a href="#p013">13</a>, <a href="#p019">19</a>, <a href="#p037">37</a>, +<a href="#p048">48</a>, <a href="#p053">53</a>, <a href="#p105">105</a><br /> +Horace, <a href="#p021">21</a><br /> +Hypotheses, working, <a href="#p089">89</a>, <a href="#p093">93</a>, <a href="#p258">258</a><br /> +<br /> +I<br /> +<br /> +Idealism, <a href="#p065">65</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Illusions, <a href="#p002">2</a>, <a href="#p023">23</a> n., <a href="#p254">254</a><br /> +Immortality, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p234">234</a><br /> +Impostor, the, <a href="#p253">253</a><br /> +Individualism, <a href="#p072">72</a>, <a href="#p116">116</a><br /> +Individuality, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>, <a href="#p224">224</a><br /> +Induction, <a href="#p072">72</a>, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +Industrialism, <a href="#p222">222</a><br /> +Infinity, <a href="#p052">52</a>, <a href="#p102">102</a>, <a href="#p142">142</a><br /> +Institutions and institutionalism, <a href="#p016">16</a>, <a href="#p059">59</a>, <a href="#p260">260</a><br /> +Interest theory, in education, <a href="#p018">18</a> n.<br /> +<br /> +J<br /> +<br /> +Jesuits, <a href="#p172">172</a><br /> +Jesus, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Jews, <a href="#p025">25</a>, <a href="#p264">264</a><br /> +Jurisprudence, standpoint of, <a href="#p013">13</a>, <a href="#p047">47</a><br /> +<br /> +K<br /> +<br /> +Kant, <a href="#p110">110</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Knowledge, contradictory views of, <a href="#p041">41</a>; of law, and freedom, <a href="#p051">51</a>, +<a href="#p212">212</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and the unknowable, <a href="#p106">106</a></span><br /> +<br /> +L<br /> +<br /> +Labour, division of, in special relation of person and class, <a href="#p163">163</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">division of, in experience, <a href="#p232">232</a></span><br /> +Law, standpoint of, <a href="#p013">13</a>; courts of, <a href="#p047">47</a>; contradiction in idea of, +<a href="#p049">49</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and nature, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p218">218</a></span><br /> +Lawlessness, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p261">261</a><br /> +Leadership, <a href="#p168">168</a>, <a href="#p196">196</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Leibnitz, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p154">154</a>, <a href="#p210">210</a><br /> +Lessing, <a href="#p019">19</a><br /> +Louis XIV, <a href="#p172">172</a><br /> +Luther, <a href="#p174">174</a><br /> +<br /> +M<br /> +<br /> +Macaulay, <a href="#p270">270</a><br /> +Machiavelli, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p261">261</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Malebranche, <a href="#p198">198</a><br /> +Materialism, <a href="#p065">65</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p175">175</a><br /> +Mathematics, <a href="#p088">88</a>, <a href="#p091">91</a>, <a href="#p096">96</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, +<a href="#p177">177</a>, <a href="#p215">215</a><br /> +Mechanic, the, as social type, <a href="#p228">228</a>; peculiar death of, <a href="#p238">238</a><br /> +Mechanicalism, <a href="#p082">82</a>, <a href="#p218">218</a><br /> +Method, Socratic, <a href="#p071">71</a>; historical, <a href="#p095">95</a>; experimental, <a href="#p084">84</a>, +<a href="#p095">95</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">mathematical, <a href="#p096">96</a></span><br /> +Miracles, <a href="#p053">53</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a><br /> +Monism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Montaigne, <a href="#p172">172</a>, <a href="#p176">176</a>, <a href="#p184">184</a><br /> +Münsterberg, <a href="#p109">109</a> n., <a href="#p112">112</a>, <a href="#p119">119</a><br /> +Mysticism, <a href="#p176">176</a><br /> +<br /> +N<br /> +<br /> +Nast, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +Nativism, <a href="#p196">196</a><br /> +Nature, return to, <a href="#p022">22</a>; relation of science to, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p056">56</a>, +<a href="#p074">74</a>; and<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">God, <a href="#p026">26</a>, <a href="#p203">203</a>, <a href="#p271">271</a>; +sympathy of, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p203">203</a>; and law, <a href="#p051">51</a>, +<a href="#p220">220</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as mechanical, <a href="#p217">217</a>; English and French views of, +<a href="#p271">271</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">knowledge of law of, and freedom, <a href="#p049">49</a>, <a href="#p212">212</a></span><br /> +Necessity, in conduct, <a href="#p047">47</a>; superstition of, <a href="#p049">49</a>, <a href="#p212">212</a><br /> +Negativity, <a href="#p003">3</a>, <a href="#p020">20</a>, <a href="#p037">37</a>, <a href="#p083">83</a>, +<a href="#p085">85</a>, <a href="#p094">94</a>, <a href="#p101">101</a>, <a href="#p125">125</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, +<a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Newton, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +<br /> +O<br /> +<br /> +Oratory of Jesus, <a href="#p176">176</a><br /> +<br /> +P<br /> +<br /> +Paradoxes, in ordinary consciousness, <a href="#p030">30</a>; in science, <a href="#p075">75</a>, <a href="#p098">98</a>; in<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">religion, <a href="#p103">103</a></span><br /> +Parallelism, <a href="#p204">204</a><br /> +Paris, <a href="#p172">172</a>, <a href="#p192">192</a>, <a href="#p251">251</a><br /> +Parmenides, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +Pascal, <a href="#p180">180</a><br /> +Person, nature of, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>; relation to reality, <a href="#p170">170</a>, <a href="#p184">184</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">relation to doubt and belief, <a href="#p171">171</a>; part in society, <a href="#p169">169</a>, <a href="#p231">231</a></span><br /> +Pharisees, <a href="#p262">262</a><br /> +Physics, <a href="#p087">87</a>, <a href="#p090">90</a>; epistemological, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +Pillsbury, <a href="#p212">212</a> n.<br /> +Plato, <a href="#p065">65</a>, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p156">156</a><br /> +Poetry, <a href="#p276">276</a><br /> +Positivism, <a href="#p073">73</a>, <a href="#p106">106</a>, <a href="#p122">122</a><br /> +Practice, and theory, <a href="#p113">113</a><br /> +Principle, and programme, <a href="#p183">183</a>, <a href="#p191">191</a>, <a href="#p194">194</a><br /> +Programme, and principle, <a href="#p183">183</a>, <a href="#p191">191</a>, <a href="#p194">194</a><br /> +Protagoras, <a href="#p264">264</a><br /> +Protestants and Protestantism, <a href="#p174">174</a>, <a href="#p268">268</a><br /> +Psychology, <a href="#p010">10</a>, <a href="#p087">87</a>, <a href="#p091">91</a>, <a href="#p210">210</a>, <a href="#p212">212</a> n.; +physical, <a href="#p092">92</a><br /> +Purpose, <a href="#p011">11</a>, <a href="#p083">83</a>, <a href="#p084">84</a><br /> +<br /> +Q<br /> +<br /> +Question of fact, in science, <a href="#p083">83</a><br /> +<br /> +R<br /> +<br /> +Radicalism, <a href="#p066">66</a><br /> +Realism, of doubter, <a href="#p193">193</a>; of believer, <a href="#p193">193</a>; +in contradiction, <a href="#p143">143</a><br /> +Reality, double views of, <a href="#p030">30</a><br /> +Reformation, <a href="#p173">173</a>, <a href="#p266">266</a>, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +Relative, the, <a href="#p010">10</a>, <a href="#p136">136</a>, <a href="#p199">199</a>, <a href="#p200">200</a><br /> +Relativity, law of, <a href="#p010">10</a>, <a href="#p136">136</a><br /> +Religion, and scepticism, <a href="#p027">27</a>, <a href="#p184">184</a>, <a href="#p189">189</a>, +<a href="#p268">268</a>; as paradoxical, <a href="#p103">103</a><br /> +Renaissance, <a href="#p173">173</a>, <a href="#p268">268</a>, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +Rome, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +Rousseau, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p271">271</a><br /> +<br /> +S<br /> +<br /> +Scepticism, <a href="#p176">176</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a>, <a href="#p269">269</a><br /> +Science, as a return to nature, <a href="#p023">23</a>; like ordinary consciousness, <a href="#p057">57</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as confessing to limitations, <a href="#p056">56</a>; defined, <a href="#p058">58</a>; +as abstract, <a href="#p058">58</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as a "looking before leaping," <a href="#p058">58</a>; and duplicity, +<a href="#p061">61</a>, <a href="#p129">129</a>; method</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of, and environment, <a href="#p071">71</a>; specialism of, <a href="#p071">71</a>, +<a href="#p084">84</a>; as inductive, <a href="#p072">72</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">objectivism of, <a href="#p075">75</a>; technique of, <a href="#p076">76</a>; +and real life, <a href="#p080">80</a>, <a href="#p125">125</a>, <a href="#p128">128</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as conservative, <a href="#p081">81</a>; and question of fact, +<a href="#p083">83</a>; as negative and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">destructive, <a href="#p083">83</a>; specialism of, <a href="#p071">71</a>, +<a href="#p086">86</a>; "mergers" in, <a href="#p091">91</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">physical, as self-consciousness, 94; as paradoxical, <a href="#p075">75</a>, +<a href="#p098">98</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">agnosticism of, <a href="#p106">106</a>; aloofness of, in ideas of space and time and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">causation, <a href="#p108">108</a>, <a href="#p109">109</a>; application of, +<a href="#p114">114</a>; scepticism of, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p258">258</a></span><br /> +Sin, original, <a href="#p131">131</a><br /> +Skill, special, as transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Smith, Adam, <a href="#p257">257</a><br /> +Socialism, <a href="#p116">116</a><br /> +Society, as sought by sceptic, <a href="#p021">21</a>; as related to individual, <a href="#p042">42</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p171">171</a>, <a href="#p231">231</a>; and science, <a href="#p023">23</a>, +<a href="#p060">60</a>; division of experience in, <a href="#p060">60</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as real to lower organisms, <a href="#p084">84</a>; as medium of conflict, +<a href="#p147">147</a></span><br /> +Society of Jesus, <a href="#p174">174</a><br /> +Sociology, <a href="#p088">88</a><br /> +Socrates, <a href="#p020">20</a>, <a href="#p070">70</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Soldier, the, <a href="#p228">228</a>, <a href="#p238">238</a><br /> +Sophists, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p262">262</a><br /> +Soul, contradiction in idea of, <a href="#p035">35</a>; and body, <a href="#p227">227</a>, <a href="#p237">237</a>; immortality<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p234">234</a></span><br /> +Space, <a href="#p037">37</a>, <a href="#p038">38</a>, <a href="#p108">108</a><br /> +Specialism, blindness of, <a href="#p087">87</a>; in social organization, <a href="#p071">71</a>; of science,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p071">71</a>, <a href="#p086">86</a>; dreams of, <a href="#p087">87</a>; +artificiality of, <a href="#p087">87</a>, <a href="#p097">97</a>; contradictions</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">due to, <a href="#p063">63</a>, <a href="#p098">98</a>; passing of, <a href="#p128">128</a></span><br /> +Spinoza, <a href="#p024">24</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p179">179</a>, <a href="#p198">198</a><br /> +Spirit, reality, or truth, as a, <a href="#p152">152</a>; of veracity, <a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, +<a href="#p170">170</a>, <a href="#p214">214</a><br /> +Stoicism, <a href="#p116">116</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a><br /> +Supernaturalism, <a href="#p032">32</a>, <a href="#p052">52</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Superstition, <a href="#p049">49</a>, <a href="#p218">218</a><br /> +<br /> +T<br /> +<br /> +Technique, <a href="#p076">76</a>, <a href="#p119">119</a>; special, as transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Tennyson, <a href="#p089">89</a><br /> +Thales, <a href="#p034">34</a><br /> +Theology, <a href="#p026">26</a>, <a href="#p131">131</a><br /> +Time, <a href="#p037">37</a>, <a href="#p038">38</a>, <a href="#p108">108</a><br /> +Training, special, as transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Truth, spirit of, <a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p170">170</a>, <a href="#p214">214</a><br /> +<br /> +U<br /> +<br /> +Unity, contradiction in idea of, <a href="#p031">31</a>; as expressed through<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">contradiction, <a href="#p137">137</a>; of experience, <a href="#p160">160</a></span><br /> +Universality, of doubt, <a href="#p001">1</a>, <a href="#p007">7</a>; of human characters in general, <a href="#p161">161</a><br /> +Utilitarianism, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p261">261</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +<br /> +V<br /> +<br /> +Validity, spirit of, <a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p153">153</a>, <a href="#p214">214</a><br /> +Vanini, <a href="#p176">176</a>, <a href="#p180">180</a><br /> +Vitalism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +<br /> +W<br /> +<br /> +Will, nature of, <a href="#p011">11</a>; freedom of, <a href="#p047">47</a>; to believe, <a href="#p193">193</a>; in relation<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">to agnosticism, <a href="#p121">121</a>, <a href="#p125">125</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Z<br /> +<br /> +Zeno, <a href="#p109">109</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 34198 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e26ee9d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #34198 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34198) diff --git a/old/34198-8.txt b/old/34198-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1abe67e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/34198-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8004 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Will to Doubt, by Alfred H. Lloyd + +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: The Will to Doubt + An essay in philosophy for the general thinker + +Author: Alfred H. Lloyd + +Release Date: November 3, 2010 [EBook #34198] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILL TO DOUBT *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + + + + +THE WILL TO DOUBT + +AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE + +GENERAL THINKER + +BY + +ALFRED H. LLOYD + +Truth hath neither visible form nor body; it is without habitation or name; +like the Son of Man it hath not where to lay its head. + + +LONDON + +SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim. + +25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C. + + +1907 + + + + +PREFACE. + + +The chapters that follow comprise what might be called an introduction +to philosophy, but such a description of them would probably be +misleading, for they are addressed quite as much to the general reader, +or rather to the general thinker, as to the prospective student of +technical philosophy. They are the attempt of a University teacher of +philosophy to meet what is a real emergency of the day, namely, the +doubt that is appearing in so many departments of life, that is +affecting so many people, and that is fraught with so many dangers, and +in attempting this they would also at least help to bridge the chasm +between academic sophistication and practical life, self-consciousness +and positive activity. With peculiar truth at the present time the +University can justify itself only by serving real life, and it can +serve real life, not merely by bringing its pure science down to, or up +to, the health and the industrial pursuits of the people, but also by +explaining, which is even to say by applying, as science is "applied," +or by animating the general scepticism of the time. + +That this scepticism is often charged to the peculiar training of the +University hardly needs to be said, but except for its making such an +undertaking as the present essay only the more appropriate the charge +itself is strangely humorous. One might also accuse the University of +making atoms and germs, or, by its magic theories, of generating +electricity or disease. Scepticism is a world-wide, life-wide fact; even +like heat or electricity, it is a natural force or agent--unless +forsooth one must exclude all the attitudes of mind from what in the +fullest and deepest sense is natural; scepticism, in short, is a real +phase of whatever is real, and its explanation is an academic +responsibility. Its explanation, however, like the explanation of +everything real or natural, can be complete only when, as already +suggested here, its application and animation have been achieved, or +when it has been shown to be properly and effectively an object of will. +So, just as we have the various applied sciences, in this essay there is +offered an applied philosophy of doubt, a philosophy that would show +doubt to have a real part in effective action, and that with the showing +would make both the doubting and the acting so much the more effective. + +But it may be said that effective acting depends, not on doubt, but +rather on belief, on confidence or "credit." This will prove to be true, +excepting in what it denies. To be commonplace, to write down here and +now what is at once the truism and the paradox of this book, a vital, +practical belief must always live by doubting. Was it Schopenhauer who +declared that man walks only by saving himself at every step from a +fall? The meaning of this book is much the same, although no pessimism +is either intended or necessarily implied in such a declaration. Doubt +is no mere negative of belief; rather it is a very vital part of belief, +it has a place in the believer's experience and volition; the doubters +in society, be they trained at the University or not, and those +practical creatures in society who have kept the faith, who believe and +who do, are naturally and deeply in sympathy. And this essay seeks to +deepen their natural sympathy. + +Here, then, is my simple thesis. Doubt is essential to real belief. +Perhaps this means that all vital problems are bound in a real life to +be perennial, and certainly it cannot mean that in its support I may be +expected by my readers to give a solution of every special problem that +might be raised, an answer to every question about knowledge or +morality, about religion or politics or industry, that might be asked. +Problems and questions, of course the natural children, not of doubt, +but of doubt and belief, may be as worthy and as practical as solutions. +Some of them may be even better put than answered. But be this as it +may, the present essay must be taken for what it is, not for something +else. It is, then, for reasons not less practical than theoretical, an +attempt to face and, so far as may be, to solve the very general problem +of doubt itself, or say simply--if this be simple--the problem of +whatever in general is problematic; and, this done, to suggest what may +be the right attitude for doubters and believers towards each other and +towards life and the world which is life's natural sphere; emphatically +it is not the announcement of a programme for life in any of its +departments. + +The substance of chapters I., II., III., IV., and V. in small parts, and +VI. and VIII. was given during the summer of 1903 in lectures before the +Glenmore School of the Culture Sciences at Hurricane in the Adirondacks, +and except for some revision chapters V. and VII. have already been +published--Science, July 5, 1902, and the journal of Philosophy, +Psychology and Scientific Methods, June, 1905. + +To Professor Muirhead, the Editor of the Ethical Library, I wish here to +express my hearty appreciation of his interest and assistance in the +final preparation of this volume for publication. + + A. H. L. + + THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, + ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + I. Introduction + II. The Confession of Doubt + III. Difficulties in the Ordinary View of Things + IV. The View of Science: its Rise and Consequent Character + V. The View of Science: its Peculiar Limitations + i. Science would be Objective + ii. Science would be Specialistic + iii. Science would be Agnostic + VI. Possible Value in these Essential Defects of Experience + VII. The Personal and the Social, the Vital and the Formal in Experience + VIII. An Early Modern Doubter + IX. The Doubter's World + i. Reality, without Finality, in all Things + ii. Perfect Sympathy between the Spiritual and the Material + iii. A Genuine Individuality + iv. Immortality + X. Doubt and Belief + Index + + + +THE WILL TO DOUBT. + + +[p.001] + +I. + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of +doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different +departments of life one sees doubt. And one sees, too, some of the +blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that +one sees. There is heat everywhere in the physical world, but not +necessarily only arson or even destructive fire. Morals, however, social +life, industry, politics, religion, have suffered somewhat--and many +would insist very seriously--from the prevailing doubt. Moreover, if the +outward view shows doubt everywhere, the inward view is at least not +more reassuring. Who can examine his own consciousness without finding +doubt at work there? We would often hide it from others, not to say from +ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. Other times +may also have been times of doubt, but our day, as the time to which we +certainly owe our first and chief [p.002] duty, is very conspicuously +and very seriously a time of doubt. + +Now there are some, and they are many, who would decry the discussion of +such a thing as doubt, for they see only danger ahead. Doubt they +compare with death or disease, and to dwell upon any of these is idle, +unnatural, morbid. Why not let such things alone, and look only to what +is pleasant, to what is good and true and beautiful? Then, too, doubt, +the confession of doubt, is the royal entrance to philosophy and the +risk of an entanglement with philosophy, which seems to them the source +of much that is harmful, the essence of all that is impractical, is +altogether too great. Doubt for them is even less to be played with than +fire, with which already it has been compared here. Again, as others in +matters political and industrial, so they in matters intellectual and +spiritual resent anything that appears likely in any way to disturb the +standing credit of the country. To doubt is just to join the opposition, +and the opposition is made up of heretics and agents generally of mere +destruction. To treat doubt as real and positively significant, as +having any true worth in human experience, as being even a proper object +of will, is to stop permanently, not the wheels of commerce and +industry, but the wheels of the present life in all its phases. In a +word, perhaps one of the words of the hour, Christian Science has not +wished to be more inhospitable to the reality of disease than have these +believers to the reality and usefulness of doubt. + +Yet all who feel in this way are short-sighted. Their contentions, like +those of their cousins, perhaps [p.003] their country cousins, the +Christian Scientists, may have worth for being corrective, but at very +best they are only one-sided. In a fable, never in real life, a man +might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize +the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the +alarm of fire would involve; but doubt is not less real nor less +dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful +applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, +then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook +or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a +part in real life? The negative things of life can be so only +relatively. Death itself cannot possibly be absolute, and doubt, not +unlike death, indeed perhaps only one of death's messengers, must be +even a gift, or an agent, of the gods. Some things, dangerous when +hidden, are wonderfully serviceable, when recognized and controlled. +Sometimes men really have entertained angels unawares. + +And so throughout these chapters, although some may think me and those +who follow me morbid, and although we may have to enter the dangerous +parlour of philosophy, the doubt of our time is to be squarely and +fairly faced. In all candour, we are from the start to be confessed +parties to it, hiding nothing intentionally, and at the same time trying +always to give nothing undue emphasis. The doubt that all seem to know, +that many really feel without perhaps clearly confessing, and that some +confess or even actually boast, we shall face and examine closely, +[p.004] trying as we can to find its true meaning and real worth. In +short, the confession of doubt, of our doubt, and the fruits of +confession are the burden of these chapters. + + + +[p.005] + +II. + +THE CONFESSION OF DOUBT. + + +Our confession must, of course, be thorough-going, and can be made so +only through a complete statement of every possible reason that +experience affords for the attitude of doubt. To the end, therefore, of +such a statement we shall consider in this chapter certain general and +easily recognized facts about doubt itself, while in chapters that +follow we shall continue the confession by examining, first, our +customary or "common-sense" view of things, and then the view of +science, and having brought together in each case numerous +incongruities, or contradictions, which ordinarily are at best only +casually noticed or timorously overlooked, we shall find ourselves +facing in a peculiarly telling way, not only certain strong reasons for +doubt, but also some of the real issues that doubt raises. As no issue, +moreover, can be more central or crucial than the meaning of the +contradictions found to pervade our views of things, before completing +our confession we shall allow ourselves some reflections, that should +prove useful to us in the end, upon the possible worth of contradiction +in human experience; for even to casual thinking contradiction, although +good ground for scepticism, suggests some positive advantage and +opportunity; the advantage of breadth, [p.006] for example, of freedom +from special form, or the opportunity of personal spontaneity and +initiative as against the restraints of formal consistency, of class, +and of institution; and if these things, among others, can be associated +with our case for doubt, our reflections will certainly not have been in +vain. Then we shall close our confession by seeking the companionhip of +a great doubter of modern times, and by learning what we can from him of +doubt itself and of the doubter's natural world. And finally, as a +result of all our own efforts, supplemented by his help, we shall be +able to reap some of the fruits for life and thought that a confession +so fully made may fairly claim. + +From start to finish, moreover, of this study of doubt we have to +remember that there can be no important difference between what is +possible and what is real. Thus anything whatsoever that can possibly be +doubted is really doubtful. Also, if anybody is amazed to hear mention +of facts about doubt, as if doubt should not somehow submit to its own +nostrum, let him merely reflect that, strangely enough, nothing is quite +so indubitable as doubt, nothing so convincing as the reasons for doubt. +Let me not be too subtle, but to doubt doubt is only to affirm it, and +somehow--whether for good or ill need not now be said--all the negative +things of life possess a peculiar certainty, and are all most easily +proved. A great Frenchman once put the case quite plainly when he said, +after canvassing very carefully the whole field of his consciousness, +that his doubts were the only things there, the only things he could be +quite certain about, and these were so very real that they left him +absolutely [p.007] nothing but belief in himself, in his all-doubting +and ever-doubting self, to rest upon. His was surely a sweeping +confession, and his residuum of belief may not at first sight seem very +promising or very substantial, but quickly, I think, we shall find +ourselves in agreement with him, at least as to the reality and the wide +scope of our doubting, and it is also a possibility well worth +foreseeing that we may even find his belief in the reality of an +ever-doubting and all-doubting self a rock for our own saving. + +So, to turn now to those general and easily recognized facts, which were +to be the special interest of the present chapter, in the first place: +_We are all universal doubters_. We are all universal doubters in the +sense that every one of us doubts something, and there is nothing which +some of us have not doubted. Who would be so rash as to say that what a +fellow-being had questioned might not be questionable to himself also, +or that, if anything in his own experience had ever been subject to +question, all the other things might not also be subject to question? +But the merely dubitable is the already doubtful. In this sense, +therefore, not so abstruse and formally logical as it may appear, we are +all universal doubters. + +Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, +some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and +science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive +things these verities are! How shallow, or how hollow all of them are, +or at one time or another may become. To take a rather minute case, such +as it is [p.008] always the philosopher's license to make use of, a case +that is, however, quite typical in experience; here is a word--any word +you like--that has been spoken and written by you for years. Always +before it has been spelt correctly and clearly understood, but to-day +how unreal it seems. Are those the right letters, and are they correctly +placed? Is that the true meaning? What has happened, too, to give rise +to these unusual questions? Well, who can say? And who has not +substantially asked every one of them, not merely with reference to some +long-familiar word, but also with reference to much larger things in +life? Self and society, love and friendship, mind and matter, nature and +God have again and again been subjected to essentially the same +questioning. The verities of life, all the way from simple words used +every day to the great things of our moral and spiritual being, have +lost, sometimes slowly, sometimes very suddenly, the reality with which +we have supposed them endowed, and although we may still bravely believe +we find ourselves crying out passionately for help in our unbelief. +There certainly are the verities; not one of them can possibly fall to +the ground; yet these very verities are never quite in our experience. + +Still the world has its thoroughly confident people. Every one of us has +met some of those estimable beings to whom doubt seems wholly foreign, +people who assert with trembling voice and sacred vow that their +convictions, political perhaps or religious, are unassailable, and that +they must hold them to the grave. But, whatever may be said of political +convictions, religious convictions have often been [p.009] regarded as a +contradiction of terms. How can one be sure and religious at the same +time? Moreover, positive people under any standard are notoriously as +fearful as they are dogmatic. Fear is often, if not always, the chief +motive of dogmatism, and fear is hardly the most natural companion of +genuine confidence. The part which the emotion of fear has had, both in +the personal life and in the doctrine of the dogmatic among men, would +make a most instructive study. + +If, then, dogmatic people are slaves to their fears, while more +thoughtful people, as has not needed to be said, seem to get no reward +from their self-consciousness but the uncertain reward of their doubts, +then only such as live quietly, asserting nothing, depending on nothing, +and even assuming nothing, but simply taking what comes, are left to +represent genuine belief. Yet how many such are there? A few may seem to +approach the ideal, if ideal it be, but the class itself in realization +must be said to be a hypothetical one, and few, if any, of us could ever +really envy or strive to imitate its supposed manner of living; for, in +spite of all the dangers and all the doubts and fears, only the +constantly examined life can ever really lure us. Doubt, besides being a +general condition of life, seems to be also incident to what gives life +worth. + +But, furthermore, not only are we all universal doubters; the case for +doubt in the world is, if possible, even stronger; for also--and this is +the second general fact: _Doubt is a phase, nay, a vital condition of +all consciousness_. To be a conscious creature is to be a doubting +creature. + +[p.010] In so many ways psychology is teaching us to-day with renewed +emphasis that we are conscious of nothing as it is, and that more or +less clearly we all know our shortcoming in this regard; or again, with +still more directness and emphasis, that for us there is no such thing +as a state of consciousness which does not indicate tension, or unstable +equilibrium, that is to say uncertainty, in our activity. Nor have we +need of the testimony of science to these facts, since common personal +experience is well aware of them. In small things and in great +consciousness transforms or refracts. In small things and in great +consciousness marks a moment of poise between an impulse to do +something, and more or less distinctly recognized conditions or +relations that would put restraint upon the doing of it. Even the law of +relativity, a psychological law only in its definite formulation, in its +idea a simple fact of everyday experience, true for all conscious states +from the crudest perceptions of the organs of sense to the most highly +developed ideas of critical reflection, by binding as it does all the +details of actual or possible experience into a whole, every part of +which acts upon the other parts, points very directly to this fact of +poise and instability, besides indicating also that knowledge never can +be literally or objectively exact, and that at least with some clearness +every knower must know it cannot. How can there ever be even a single +stable or a single finally accurate element in the consciousness of a +creature whose experience, in the first place, can comprise only +related, interdependent parts, and whose nature, in the second place, is +an essentially mobile and active [p.011] one? Moreover, as just one +other way of suggesting the inexactness and uncertainty of consciousness +and the balancing, tentative nature of all conscious life, we always +think, and think properly, of conscious creatures as having will, as +doing what they do purposely or from design. The new psychology, +however, to which we naturally turn, and which again has only formulated +what we can recognize from everyday experience, declares that the +purpose in conscious activity is not a developed, but an always +developing one. Purposive action is action that never finally knows, but +is ever finding out its real intent, purpose being identical with the +progressively discovered meaning of action. A volitionally, purposively +active being is always a seeker as well as a doer. Indeed, any doing +would itself be empty, or idle, if it were not a seeking, and so if it +were not subject to conditions of some uncertainty. In so many ways, +then, through the necessary inexactness of consciousness, through the +unstable equilibrium of all conscious activity, through the law and fact +of relativity, and through the tentative and provisional nature which +must always belong to purpose, we see how doubt must be a phase or +condition of all consciousness. + +Illustrations are abundant. Thus, once more to take a somewhat minute +case, which is really more significant for being minute, with regard to +conscious activity being in a state of tension, visual sensations always +involve muscular sensations, and these are incident not only to +expressed, but also to possible, yet restrained, movements. The eyes may +have been [p.012] moved and the head turned, but in spite of the +impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the +observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been +raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines, +although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always +present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. Or, +again, to adopt an illustration used for a different purpose by +Professor William James, so simple a process as the spelling of a word +is complicated with all sorts of diverting and unsettling impulses as +each letter is expressed. Let the word be _onomatopoetic_. Can I really +spell it correctly? And what a gauntlet of dangers I have to run. The +initial letter _o_ tempts, perhaps with childhood memories of the +alphabet, to _p-q-r-s-t_, etc., or to indefinite words or syllables, +actual from my past or possible to my future experience, such as _of, +off, opine, October, -ology, -ovy_, and so on, or, to suggest mere +possibilities, such as _ontic, oreate, ot_, or _ow_; and every +succeeding letter is equally a scene of combat, a place of dangers +met--safely met, let us hope, and triumphantly passed. Worthy the boy, +or the man, who reaches the end unhurt. And what a voyage of +uncertainties, what a course between hope and fear, confidence and +doubt, the spelling of words or the spelling of life as a whole always +is. One's whole vocabulary, real or possible, or one's whole repertory +of acts is more or less directly involved, whatever one does. As to the +tentative nature of purpose, which seems the only other point here that +can possibly require illustration, the right we all [p.013] reserve to +change our minds in the different affairs of life tells its own story. +We never do do, or can do, exactly what we consciously would do; and +recognizing this, men, as well as women, insist on the right of a change +of mind, and sometimes even of conscious misrepresentation or of +disparity between their seeming and their being in thought or in deed. +That such a claim has its dangers does not now concern us; it has also +its opportunities; but the fact of it and the ground for it are quite +evident. Even jurisprudence, for which loyalty to established and +visible forms is peculiarly sacred, has its ways, direct and indirect, +of recognizing that purposes develop, that the returns are never all in, +that any purpose or meaning must sooner or later assume a new form, and +so may even now be other than it seems. Bequests for institutions, for +example, are allowed to continue in force, although, with the demands of +a more enlightened day, the formal conditions under which they were made +have been openly violated. In short--for it all comes to this--"Not the +letter, but the spirit," is an inevitable comment, or at least an +inevitable feeling about everything that is done. A man vaults a fence, +and then, even if he get over fairly well, vaulting is not what it was +for him. He may continue to use the old word, or the same arms and legs, +but with a changed meaning and a changed feeling of limb and muscle, and +so with a new purpose and a new body to control and modify his next +performance. And what is true for vaulting is true also for making boxes +or tables, for writing essays, for talking, for thinking, for founding +colleges or theological seminaries, or finally, for [p.014] what we so +indefinitely call living. An activity such as throughout its length and +breadth ours is, conscious activity that must for ever heed the call: +"Not the letter, but the spirit," an activity that never is, therefore, +and never can be without the elements of the game, since it must ever +wait on its own revealed consequences in order to grow into an +understanding of its real meaning; such an activity, among other things, +cannot but fasten doubt upon us as a most natural heritage. As man is +conscious, to doubt is human. Other things may be human, too, but doubt +is so certainly and conspicuously. + +Thirdly, in this presentation of general facts: _Doubt is inseparable +from habit_. Habit is usually associated with what is permanent and +established, but just here lies its undoing. As we usually understand +it, habit really deadens what it touches by leading to abstraction or +separation from actual conditions. Conservative as it surely is in +things important and in things unimportant, in things personal and in +things social, it sets him who is party to it behind the times, for no +act in its second expression, no simply repeated act, no mere habit +could ever be up to date in the sense of really meeting all the +emergencies of its own time. Personal habits make fixed characters; +social habits make customs and laws; religious habits make churches and +creeds; intellectual habits make schools; and of all these products, +which for the sake of the single term we will call institutions, it must +be said, however paradoxically, that in being made they are also +outgrown, for the habitual turns formal and unreal and so unsatisfying. +A growing nature has [p.015] her ways of making even conservatives keep +pace with her. An institution in the sense of an acquired manner of +action, personal or social, can never really be an end in itself, +although to a narrow view it may often seem to be; it is at best only +the manifested means to a newly developed or developing end which must +eventually transform it. In so large a thing, for example, as political +life, the institutes of monarchy have become the instruments of +democracy, and this conspicuously ever since the French Revolution; in +the history of thought, of man's intellectual life, the objective dogmas +of one time have been only the subjective standpoints of the next, the +metaphysics of one time has made the scientific method, the working +hypothesis, of the succeeding time; and in so small a thing as a child's +vocabulary, the oft-repeated and finally mastered syllable _ba_, or some +other equally intellectual, has become in time only one of the means to +a whole word, say _baby_ or _bath_, or even _basilica_ or +_barometrograph_. In all life the thing we get the habit of is only a +tool with which we strive towards something else. Some one thinking no +doubt of Hercules has called the institutions of life a great club which +the irresistible arm of society, always a hero when looked back upon, +swings fatally against the present. + +So intimately is change seen nowadays to be related to habit, or +indirectly involved in it, that in technical science a new account of +habit has been formulated. To cite but one case, Professor Baldwin, +says:[1] "Habit expresses the tendency of the organism [p.016] to secure +and retain its vital stimulations," and such an account, placing the +interest of habit in so general and so changeable a thing as "vital +stimulations," is designed to make habit fundamentally, not merely a +tendency to repetition or imitation, but instead a demand for constant +adaptation or differentiation. In the doctrines of inheritance, also, +always moving necessarily in close sympathy with those of habit, a +similar departure has been made. Both habit and inheritance are in fact +seen to belong to life in a world of change, or variation, and they have +assumed what I will style a protective colouring accordingly. The habit +of always being adapted is at least as radical as it is conservative. + +With this reform in the account of habit we have not only analogous +reforms, as was said, in the account of inheritance, but also in the +scientific view of character, custom, law, creed, and the institution +generally. Moreover, if in scientific theory we find these new views, in +practical life there are at least signs of the same standpoint. What may +be called a new conservatism--the most truly conservative thing being +taken to be the most thoroughly pertinent or adaptive thing--has for +many years been getting possession of us, and is now quite manifest. Our +political constitutions are amendable constitutions; our religious rites +and doctrines are recognized as only symbols; our theories are only +standpoints. + +So, once more, because change is at least an ever-present companion, if +not actually an integral part of habit, doubt must be as real and +general as habit. [p.017] Change must make doubt. Sociologically, +institutionalism must always imply a contemporary scepticism; the +conservative must have an unbeliever for his neighbour. Indeed, to add +an important point, some go so far as to say in general that change, +that is, something new and different, is not only a necessary incident +but also an actual motive in all activity, and when all is said they +seem quite right. Perhaps habit, as always an interest in adaptation, +would imply as much. Certainly novelty is a universal motive, and as for +society there can be no question that it has a very strong predilection +for lawlessness in all its forms. True, it may be objected that at times +men, individually or collectively, seek not something else, but simply +_more_ of something already secured; more money, it may be, or more +learning, or more territory, or more pleasure. There is, however, in +spite of man's many conceits to the contrary, no change that is purely +quantitative. _More_ is also _different_ or _other_. Accordingly, we +both always find, and, what is even more to the point, always seek a +real change whenever we do anything. To speak again in most general +terms, the motion in the outer world, which is the fundamental stimulus +of all 'consciousness, both physically, that is, literally, and +figuratively, is more than merely an outer stimulus; something there is +within the nature of the subject which answers to it with perfect +sympathy and makes it equally an inner motive. Forsooth, could any +stimulus ever produce a response without its being in accord with an +existing motive? Life, then, is a game, and the game of life, doubts and +all, is a real interest as well as a necessity. We are [p.018] creatures +of habit, but we have, and we cherish, no habit stronger or more +essential than the habit at once of adaptation and variation.[2] + +A fourth general fact, very closely related to the foregoing, is this: +_Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience_. Doubt is +but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real +life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the +challenge finds expression. The doubter is a questioner, a seeker; he +has, then, something to overcome; he fears, too, as well as hopes. + +Were all things settled once for all, were all things clearly known and +freely executed, or were the consequences of the things to be done +always capable of being accurately foretold, there would be no real +[p.019] living, there would be nothing really to do. In such case life +in general, or in any of its different expressions, religion, or +politics, or art, or science, or industry, or morals, if one may suppose +for a moment that any of these differences could ever develop, would +consist in a purely passive condition, a mere fixed status; it would be +a wholly static thing falsely called life; its movement, if movement +there were, could be only the rest or routine of strictly mechanical +motion. + +To a real life, then, doubt, as an evidence of challenge and resistance, +is absolutely necessary, and appreciation of just this necessity is +certainly an important part of our present confession, and the +confession is important, because it is sure somewhat to brighten what +heretofore may have seemed a dark horizon. Confession often changes +night to dawn, and here the association of doubt with real living, with +a world in which there is always something to do, awakens emotions that +such words as relativity, and instability, and change, and even game, +have discouraged, or even wholly suppressed. Leasing, perhaps better +than any one else, has given expression to these emotions, and has at +the same time reflected what in his day had certainly begun to be, and +what in our own time very widely and very deeply is, the ideal spirit. +Thus, as he wrote:-- + +"Not the truth that any one may have or may think he has, but the honest +effort which has been exerted to compass it, makes what is really worthy +in human life. For not in having, but in seeking truth, are those powers +developed, in which alone man's ever-increasing [p.020] perfection +consists. Possession makes us inert, lazy, proud. If God held in his +right hand the perfect truth, and in his left the ever-restless struggle +after truth, and bade me choose, although I were bound to be ever and +always in the wrong, I should humbly select the left, saying: 'Father, +give; surely the pure truth is for Thee alone.'" + +This is a splendid utterance, and it has touched a responsive chord in +human nature the civilized world over, not so much, however, for the +humility of the choice as for the zeal in a life of seeking and +striving, or for the idea that knowledge is itself a dynamic thing, a +living, moving function, not a passive possession. The knower is made +also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, +forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within +him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the +condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary +to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, +proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even +putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever +living. + +Still others may be quoted in the same vein. Socrates made life, +particularly mental life, if this may be supposed distinct, essentially +active or dynamic when he identified true wisdom with self-conscious +ignorance, with a power in one of always finding oneself in error, and +in modern times Hegel has done the same thing as effectually, though +perhaps not in general so intelligibly, by finding a principle of +negativity or contradiction the very mainspring of all [p.021] +consciousness, of all thinking. Known truth is at once imperfect or even +false, being necessarily partial, relative, and at best only tentative, +very much, let us say, recalling something already remarked, as an +established form of life is no longer the real life, but merely the +developed means to a revolution, a life that is passing even as soon as +it has come. + +For the rest, the positive value of doubt to real life can hardly need +further emphasis. In one form or another the idea, as important as many +may find it commonplace, must constantly recur in these pages. We turn, +therefore, to our fifth, and for the present, last general fact, with +which we shall find ourselves still in sight, perhaps even in clearer +sight of the brighter horizon. We are all universal doubters; doubt +underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace +would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or +contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper +and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: _As man is +dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or +rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt_. Witness the +fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, +the company of his fellows, the company of God. + +Of course the social impulse, thus to be associated with doubt, is only +one of the phases of its dynamic and life-giving character, for a social +life, a life of dependence on what is without, of real relations beyond +self, must be a life of real and constant movement. Nothing so much as +such relations gives [p.022] vitality. This special phase, however, of +the place of doubt in real life is a very interesting one, and it +suggests, besides, so much that is of positive value as almost to +transform what so far has been in large part a sceptic's confession into +a sceptic's boast. + +Thus, in the first place, doubt seeks the company of nature. "Return to +nature!" has time and again in human history been the cry of the human +heart. Has civilization lost its hold, seeming unreal, artificial, +formal? Has morality become hollow? Has a lover suffered the shattering +of his dearest hopes? Has a creed lost its credibility? Have you and I +wearied of our study or our labour, whatever it be, and come to wonder +if it, or anything, is worth while after all? Have friends, ideals, and +God Himself deserted us? We turn, and all people turn to nature. Exactly +so the homesick traveller takes himself homeward, or the prodigal arises +and goes to his father. And your experience and mine, and the poetry of +all literatures, which tells so deeply the experiences of all men of all +times, are a constant witness to the comfort, and forgiveness, and +renewed confidence in self that nature imparts. Nature is our infancy, +in which all things are possible; she is our untrammelled will; she is +infinitely hopeful for us and infinitely kind; her necessity is so wide +and so open that its very law, so different from any human law, is our +greatest opportunity. True, our resort to nature is sometimes, perhaps +in greater or less degree always, by the way of moral dissipation, or +political anarchy, or intellectual suicide, or religious profanity; but +even these dark ways to the home and the great mother-heart of [p.023] +us all have never been hopelessly misleading. If history and literature +and personal experience can be trusted, even they have led to a kind +nature. Have you never failed in anything and become reckless, and then +profited from the very knowledge of yourself which the recklessness +uncovered? Personally and socially recklessness, return to nature that +it is, is always a helpful assistant to nature's great teacher, +experience. Great is the pathos, but also, as it is understood, great is +the inspiration of Rousseau's passionate outcry that his will was +perfectly good. He was incapable of a single wholesome relation in life, +yet, so he said, no man was better than he! Rousseau, philosopher of +revolution, spoke for nature. Out of her great love, nature always takes +the will for the deed--and perhaps she alone should have the privilege +of doing that; for she knows that the deed, however violent, however +bad, is sure to leave at least the will good. + +But intellectually, as well as morally or politically, or as well as in +any of the departments of the practical, emotional life, when trouble +comes we turn to nature. Nature has a mind as well as a heart, and when +state, and church, and social tradition have lost their validity and +infallibility, their various formulæ being no longer reasonable to us, +when we have to depose them from their position as our accepted +teachers, then we become scientists, which is to say, intellectual +prodigals. Science, the open-minded study of nature, is only a +homesickness for truth seeking relief. Does the scientist doubt? He is +one of the princes of doubters. He doubts, as in due time we [p.024] +shall more fully appreciate, even to the extreme position of +agnosticism. He doubts all things human that always he may be learning +of nature. + +So the companionship of nature for the comfort and pardon which she is +sure to give, and for the deeper knowledge which she is certain to +impart, is a passion of the doubter. True, no passion is free from +dangers; yet this passion, at least this passion, has somewhat of hope +in it. + +But, secondly, the companionship of one's fellows is not less strongly +desired. Huddling together in time of distress is by no means peculiar +to the animal world; in human life it has more than once made distress +seem richly worth while. "We have each other" in word or thought has +been the comforting reflection of many a family, or many a community, +when the money has gone, or when in other ways, possibly through a great +fire, or a great earthquake, or the ravages of a disease, afflictions +have come, and "Now we know how others have suffered" has been not less +common. Indeed, it is my own conviction that these two reflections +always rise together. The distress or affliction of doubt, however, is +certainly no exception to the rule. Doubt often separates an individual +from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified +himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, +or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his +loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social +relations. Benedict Spinoza may have been better than most of us, but he +was not in any other way different, and though maligned and insulted, as +earlier in history [p.025] another of his race had been, for his doubts +and heresies, and though exposed to the dangers of the assassin's knife, +and finally, when other measures failed, with special cruelties +excommunicated by his synagogue, he loved his people, and all men +besides, as few have loved them. Doubt makes one dependent; isolation +gives a sense of loss; and, if ever a solution of the doubt comes, in +the life and consciousness which it enjoins the lost companions, whether +they will or not, are included with oneself. In many ways this is an +important fact; yet it must suffice that we see the affinity of the +doubter for society. Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. +Dependent man and doubting man must have society. + +That doubt, furthermore, not only creates a motive to social life, even +to the restoration of lost companions, but also by weakening the +barriers which have divided some class, a sect perhaps, or a party, or a +nation, or a race, from some other class, puts social life on a broader +and deeper basis, is also an important fact, and full of significance +beyond our immediate interest. Thus, to suggest indeed how those two +reflections mentioned in the preceding paragraph are inseparable, +besides his wish to retain or recover his wonted companions, the doubter +would also associate them and himself with new companions, I venture to +say, as if in a figure, with Gentiles as well as with Jews, and this +gives to doubt, or to those who experience it and adequately use it, a +most significant rôle in the evolution of society, the rôle of mediation +between old friends and new, between the past and the future, the narrow +life and the broader [p.026] and deeper life, what is conservative and +what is progressive; but at least for the present it is again enough if +we see that doubt, not only by its personal losses gives the motive, but +also by its removal of barriers gives the larger possibility of society. + +And, in addition to the company of nature and the company of man, doubt, +springing as it does from man's sense of insufficiency, seeks also the +company of God; yet not of the God of any theology. As here conceived, +God is that which lies at the back of nature, and at the back of man in +the sense of being in character broader and deeper than either of these, +and quite superior to any difference between them; he is the single, +all-inclusive, wholly indeterminate reality upon which the doubter +depends, and must depend; he is as nameless and unspeakable as he is +indeterminate and all-inclusive, and he is real and perfect only as so +nameless. To theology, God is determinate; to doubt, imperfect if +determinate. At times, perhaps only half in earnest, or at least not +clearly knowing if he is in earnest or if he wishes others to think him +so, the doubter speaks of nature as his God, of the hills, or the +fields, or the sea, or the sky, or the busy street as his church, or the +great book of the universe as his Bible. At times, with the deepest +emotion and with open avowal, nature and God are fully one to him, and +the poetry, or the science, or the philosophy, to which his doubting +leads him, is veritably a religious revelation. But always his doubting, +as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to +nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to +others like himself who, by sharing, [p.027] may lighten his distress +and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; +to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he +has known; to a mind and a heart, such as he knows must be present in +that which surrounds him and moves within him, in knowledge more +enlightened and in emotion more inspired, than his doubting mind and +faltering heart have ever been; and such a life or such a mind or heart, +whatever name it be called by, is God. Can mind appeal to anything but +mind, or heart to anything but heart? And doubt--can it be doubt without +the appeal? + +The doubter who refuses or hesitates to speak the name of God may thus +be a protestant, but plainly he is no atheist. A mere name, in any case, +is quite as likely to obscure as to illumine the reality; the +chiaroscuro effect must ever belong to it. Doubt is no road to atheism. +As a way to theism it may be beset with hardship, and its goal may be +quite beyond the horizon; but the doubter is not by nature an atheist; +quite the contrary. As no other, feeling dependent, he is a seeker, and +even a confident seeker after what is perfect. He truly and confidently +seeketh, for he seeketh after what hath neither visible form nor body, +what is without habitation or name, what, like the Son of Man, hath not +where to lay its head. He seeketh, what his very seeking itself is, not +a God, but the life of the God. + + * * * * * + +The general facts about doubt are now before us, and although much needs +yet to be said in explanation, and a further fact is reserved for a +[p.028] concluding chapter, still not so darkly as it began this first +chapter in our confession of doubt has come, perhaps somewhat abruptly, +to an end. We have next, entering more fully and critically into the +conditions of our human experience, to scrutinize closely our ordinary +habits of mind, those common-sense views of things that on the whole +prevail among men. In these ideas, impulsive, unreasoning, above all +often flatly contradictory, we shall find some of the strongest reasons +for our doubting nature. + + +[1] _Mental Development of the Child and the Race. Methods and +Processes_. By James M. Baldwin. Macmillan, 1895. + +[2] Let me add, that if certain people, struggling in the present maze +of educational theory, and objecting, with a zest and a combativeness +that fairly belie their contentions, to the use of interest as the +primal educational motive, if these people would only recognize change +as always a part of interest, their greatest trouble would be removed. +They refuse to have education easy or pleasant; interest, they insist, +must make it so; and doubtless the advocates of interest are in part to +blame for this view; but change, which to my mind is involved in all +interest, includes resistance and struggle; change is ever a challenge +to effort; and, such being the case, an education led by interest is not +necessarily easy or idly pleasant. The real meaning of the interest +theory, at least as I have to understand it, is simply (1) that the +natural child or the natural man always has something to do, and (2) +that education should promote that something. It is far from meaning +that there should be no compulsion or discipline, no pain or +self-denial. Whoever honestly over expected to do, or ever did any thing +without these? The interest theory, then, would not eliminate hardship +or discipline, but, to my understanding, by making education serve +actual life, would substitute a natural for an artificial and externally +imposed hardship. Not hardship, but real achievement makes the educated +man. + + + +[p.029] + +III. + +DIFFICULTIES IN OUR ORDINARY VIEWS OF THINGS. + + +If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences +against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the +jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it +would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the +different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be +offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the +consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. True, for some +reason lying deep in human nature, a defence that ends by convicting the +jury of error, is hardly likely to lead to the immediate discharge of +the prisoner; judges or jurymen are not in the habit of taking a rebuff +in that way; but in course of time the prisoner will be justified, and +his justification, however tardy, is all that now concerns us. To his +defence, therefore, and the discomfiture of his judges, but to the +latter without any malice, we turn at once. + +And where shall we begin? Our predicament in this defence is something +like that of the small boy, bewildered over the task of "picking up" his +nursery. [p.030] "I can't do it," he says. "There are so many things; I +can't tell which to take first." Poor little fellow! If he halts now, +what will he do when the littered room--I had almost said the littered +playroom--of his later life confronts him? Contradictions under foot +everywhere are certainly not less confusing than blocks, horses, papers, +trains, marbles, picture-books, and the like--or unlike--scattered over +a nursery floor. + +Here, for example, in practical life is the natural, physical world. How +real, brutally real, it is; its very law is fate; its forces are no +respecters of persons, inexorably ruling and compelling all alike, +giving life and taking it, full of the grimmest humour, raising hopes +only to cast them down. Is some one rash enough to suggest that things +physical are only so many ideas, real only as states of mind, of God's +mind possibly, in some way coming to consciousness in the senses of men? +The practical man knows a thing or two about that. He kicks a stone, or +strikes his fist loudly upon a table, and so ends the matter, laughing +the mad idealist away. And yet, prestissimo change! What do we hear him +saying now? This brutally real world of physical things and powers is +but a fleeting show; a thing only of space and time. What is really real +and abiding is the spiritual that is everywhere and always. Another +world there is, not to be spoken of in the same breath with this present +world, a world compared with which this is but a mist before the eyes. + +In so many familiar ways this duplicity towards what is real is +manifest. People go to church to do such a wonderfully strange thing; +nothing more [p.031] nor less than to save their real souls from an +unreal world, or sometimes to hide a real worldliness under unreal rites +or symbols. "You may think me worldly, selfish, sensuous," says some +one, "and I can not deny that often I do seem so, but this life of mine +is ever only a yearning after the things that are spiritual, for which, +as you see, I pray so earnestly, and which have nothing at all to do +with one's worldly life." Yes, we do see, and particularly we see that +things spiritual are often an impertinence in worldly affairs. The "real +self" never does the things that are really done. Only this, just this +is where the duplicity lies. Again, from some one else, a practical man +presumably and an accuser of the doubter, we hear the following: "Only +the spiritual life is real; look to it that you fear, as I fear, deeply +and constantly the material world hanging like a sword over us all." Can +it be, as would certainly appear, that superstition is still among us, +that so readily we can give reality to unreality, that belief in ghosts +still holds our human minds? Once upon a time--at least once--the +Christian Church rose in bitter resentment because a certain man, by +merely questioning the separate reality of the physical world, +threatened to deprive the holy priesthood, with all its time-honoured +prerogatives, of its heaven-appointed labour. Yet what is to be said of +a church that prefers to think of an independent physical world, by +which man is bound and damned, in order to save for itself the task, +either hopeless or useless, of rescuing him? Labelling a man "rescued" +or "Christian" does not make another-world creature of him. In political +history, too, what [p.032] a paradox it is that kingship by divine right +has always been also kingship by physical might. The practices of an +avowed supernaturalism have always been strangely materialistic. + +So, in high places and in low, in the affairs of men now and in the +past, the physical and the spiritual have ever been in a most remarkable +relation; each real in and by itself, but with a most unusual courtesy +also unreal at the slightest motion from the other; each now supreme, +and now wholly subject; each now the whole life of man, and now the very +opposite, the antipodes of all that is human; and each self-existent and +independent, yet never without its real need of the other. Here surely +is contradiction, or vacillation, in experience that is, to say the +least, very confusing to him who reflects.[1] + +But, to take up something else certainly not less confusing to the +ordinary mind, "practical," and unaccustomed to reflection, this is a +world of separate, individual things, of chairs, hands, atoms, eyes, +stars, men, stones, books, leaves, rivers, lives, mountains, relations, +notions, distances, days or years, and so on, [p.033] indefinitely and +above all indiscriminately; a world, moreover, into which in part God, +in part man, defying an equally powerful agent of chaos or dissipation, +has put at least for a time a certain kind of order, an order that might +be said to be good enough for all practical purposes. Yet with all its +indiscriminate manifoldness, and with the irregular, uncertain conflict +between chaos and order, it is nevertheless a single world, in short, +just one more individual thing, one more example, perhaps outdoing all +others, of the marvellous license with which human beings are wont to +speak and think of a "thing." Chairs, hands, mountains, men, stars, and +the whole universe, are all "things," and in this world of things, that +is itself another thing, or, should I rather say, _apart from_ this +world of things, that is another thing, there are two, at least two, +discordant powers taking turns at making order and disorder. + +Confusion indeed! Nor have I exaggerated it. The loose association of +chairs, distances, and days; the easy assumption of two supreme agents +working against each other; the certain uncertainty about these agents +being in the world or out of it, of it or not of it; and the readiness +with which the whole universe, the all-inclusive thing, is treated as +only one more thing to be included: these habits of the ordinary mind +show a confusion that seems like insanity. Can we even face them safely +and soberly? + +For special regard I select just one, perhaps the central one; the habit +of treating the universe, the unity of all things, as but one additional +thing, the whole, as if it were only another part, the complete [p.034] +and infinite as if distinct from or outside of what is finite or +incomplete; or again, in good old philosophical terms, the One as if it +were another and so in effect, but one of the Many. Now some there are, +and their number may be large, who never have thought of the +contradiction and consequent confusion in the notion of a single world +made up of many single things, yet itself another thing, or of the +Infinite as external to the Finite, or of the One as not in and of the +Many, but the contradiction is there, and can scarcely need more than +mention to be seen. + +Even in theory, scientific or philosophical, the wholeness or unity of +the many things of the world has sometimes been taken for just one more +thing, as when Anaximander taught that it was "that thing which is no +one of the world's things," or for one of the many things supposed by it +to be unified, as when Thales so naïvely declared all things to be +water. Anaximander and Thales were only ancient Greeks, albeit very wise +and enlightened Greeks, living as early as 600 B.C., but in very recent +times they have had followers. Electricity has been taken as the one +force of all other forces. Our chemists, some of them, have been hunting +down the one element among the rest. Statesmen and churchmen have often +dreamt of one man as somehow in his single person expressing the unity +of all human life, and more than once they have even imagined him +present in the flesh. God, although the Being in whom we, as ourselves +persons, live and move and have our being, has Himself been another +person. Society and its supposed component individuals have made two +orders [p.035] of existence. Life and living creatures; history and its +many events; the solar system and its planets: nature and all her +various kingdoms: these have also been held apart, making amazing +dualisms. But, simply to repeat from above, taking the whole or the +unity of all things as itself an independent thing, as itself one more +thing, is a contradiction that needs only to be stated clearly to be +appreciated. Let me hope that I have stated it clearly. + +Nor is this particular conflict in our ordinary ideas yet before us in +all its fatefulness, for--as if to defy the principle of consistency to +the very last degree of its forbearance--we are often, if not usually, +given not only to unifying our world of things in terms of just one more +thing, or of persons in terms of just one more person, but also to +thinking of this one more thing, or person as _sui generis_, as +altogether different in nature and substance. So do we mingle our +duplicity about reality with that about the unity of things. The many, +for example, are physical or of the substance of matter; the one is +ideal or of the substance of mind or spirit. The many persons are merely +human, the One is divine. Strange, indeed, that men should ever take one +more as the unity of all the rest, but if possible it is at least, at +first sight, stranger that this one more should be relegated to a sphere +wholly apart and peculiar. In the madness of such compounded +contradiction there may lurk real method, but of the contradiction and +of the compounding there can be no question. + +Even the soul, a something, an entity, that each one of us has been in +the habit of claiming for himself [p.036] and of holding very sacred and +inviolate too, has been subjected to the same way of thinking. +Doubtless, since God has not been spared, we should hardly expect the +soul to escape. We view the soul so materialistically, even while we +insist that it is not material. We say, we think, that it is something +in the body; yet, of course, we are at our wit's end to tell just what +particular place it occupies there. Similarly, God is supposed to be +somewhere in the Universe, yet in no assignable place, and the chemist's +universal atom is somewhere also, though surely not in the same place, +and, wherever it be, waiting with its own, yet certainly a divine +patience that ought to be inspiring, for experimental discovery. But +with regard to the soul, although the life and unity of the body, +although one of the things in the body, the soul itself is not bodily at +all; it can enter the body and is important--who dares say how +important?--to the body, and it can, as at death, leave the body, but +though for a time in, it never is of the body. A strange standpoint +certainly, but men insist that it is quite as true as it is strange. It +seems very much like saying that when you build a house, in order to +ensure it real solidarity, to give it real permanence and integrity, you +should make a special point of putting your bricks or your lumber +together, not with clinging, well-set mortar, or strong pins and +straight-driven nails, but so much more sensibly, because so much +further from what would be like the material bricks or lumber, or like +the equally material mortar or nails, with those real and really compact +things, absolutely continuous or indivisible, or at least indestructible +[p.037] even when disintegrated, empty space and pure uneventful time. +With such space and time there would be union indeed I But, again, +strange as such a procedure in building a house would be, men insist or +at least I can readily imagine their insistence, that houses are built +in that way, and built successfully. The method may seem absurd, but +they insist that it is not madness. Are not abstract plans and such +seemingly unsubstantial things as mathematical formulæ, which are very +near to being made of empty space and time, the real strength and +integrity of all our great modern structures? And the soul, whatever be +said of its being an immaterial thing, is nevertheless, even for being +both immaterial and thing, the very sinew of the body. + +Here may be method, then, and sanity, but there is always contradiction, +obstinate contradiction, compounded contradiction! The soul, unity of +the body, is only another thing or part in the body, and at the same +time, though in the body, it is after all not really of the body. +Possibly, perhaps necessarily, such patent contradiction, and, more than +all, such compounding of contradiction, like doubling a negative, make +for what is without contradiction, but this wholesome result is not +consciously intended, and in the face of all, whatever our hopes or our +beliefs, we must feel grave doubts and confess our doubting. Those who +do build better than they know, if enlightened, would not again build in +the same way. Two contradictions may be better than one, but even two +make us wonder. + +Closely connected with the contradictions in our [p.038] customary ideas +of reality, and ideas of wholeness or unity, there is the way in which +we calmly take opposite sides in our notions about space and time, and +about that very fundamental factor of our experience--causation. These +are, all of them, so general and fundamental as possibly to seem too +abstruse even for mention in this place, since throughout these chapters +we are courting simplicity, but of space, and time, and causation, only +what is very simple needs to be said. Thus to the ordinary consciousness +how fatally things are separated from each other by conditions of space +and time. Then is not now. Here is not there. Space and time are only +physical and as brutal as all things physical, separating this from that +with a finality that knows no degree. Lovers, continents apart, despair +over the cruel distance. Time tears us ruthlessly from those dear to us. +What is to be, as well as what was, though in the next moment, is +absolutely beyond our grasp. Could anything be freer from dispute than +the reality and the separating brutally of space and time? Yet, almost +at a whisper, all distance and all duration become as nothing. Do not +the lovers write to each other, flatly and passionately denying that +they are far apart? Do we not constantly forestall the future and retain +the past? Indeed, when all is said, a thousand years are as one day, and +all the places of the earth are one. So real, and so vast, and so +physical to us but a moment ago, space and time have now passed into +mere phantoms of the imagination. We live, then, not only in a world +that is brutally spatial and temporal, but also, and at the same time, +[p.039] in a world that is not spatial and not temporal at all; and +living here--or there?--we have again to wonder and to doubt even in our +belief. To our own constant amazement we find that we make our life a +bridge over what would seem to be an absolutely impassable chasm. + +As for causation our temerity is not less surprising. Wet and dry moons, +unlucky Fridays, holy and unholy numbers, haunted houses, so-called +providences, free in the sense of indifferently, irresponsibly free +wills and fiat deities with their suddenly made worlds may not be +generally in vogue at the present time, at least among the better +educated, the enlightened and not infrequently conceited classes, but +even among the wise and the consciously informed they have their natural +offspring, and I am not so sure that many of them might not be found +almost intact, at least in the more retired parts of the consciousness +of my readers. To illustrate, for some if not for all of us, this is a +world of many free and independent causes, yet also it is the single +effect of one cause; it is again, our mood having changed, the single +effect of two absolutely unlike beings or natures, each of them an +all-powerful cause; it is a sphere here and now of causal, creative, +productive activity, but it was itself created once for all long ago, at +a date which the exegete hopes--in the equally distant future!--to +determine for us; it contains some things that are only causes and some +that are only effects, or some, or all, that are both causes and +effects; it has parts that are the accepted causes of other parts; it +has causes, those acting now and the one original cause, that are +temporally [p.040] antecedent to their effects; and, not to make the +list longer, it is variously a world of one last effect, of one first +and only cause, of an infinite series of causes and effects, and in +whole, or in part, it constantly shows something made out of nothing or +nothing resulting from something. A wondrous world most assuredly; and +yet at first statement this record of our various notions of causation +may not appear as a very serious arraignment of the consciousness which +it exposes. Moreover some people actually glory in such a wonder as it +presents. But, to be plain, though also monotonous, the uncaused cause +or the effect that is only a part of the whole, or the cause or the +effect that refuses to share in the other's nature, or finally the +causation that is now so individual and so manifold and so effective, +and that was once so single and so complete, is something that must give +any thinker pause. Can a moving body move an immobile body? Can some +things in the universe be mobile; others not? Can the moving body and +the moved body belong to different moments of time? Can motion lead to +rest or rest to motion? But our ordinary ideas of causation would allow, +or even require, an affirmative answer to every one of these questions. + +Alas! Shall this labour proceed? Can we afford to continue it? The +defence of the doubter is getting almost too successful; it is becoming +too personal to be pleasant. The task of picking up the room of our +ordinary life grows harder, not easier, as it moves forward. Every thing +that we touch tells of a spirit of violence in our nature. Even the +small boy can not have been more lawless, for his toys were all [p.041] +battered perhaps, but not, like ours, all broken. Can we afford to go +on? Afford it or not, we simply can not help ourselves, for our +self-confidence is already shattered; our attention to the disorder is +already beyond our control; each one of us is the doubter we would +defend. + +Here close at hand, where we have to see it, is another contradiction +common in all human experience. It inheres in our conceits about +knowledge. For us, on the one hand, the world we know not only really +is, the tree out yonder or the planet miles and miles away being really +and actually there, but also is just the world which our knowledge +reports to us. What we have knowledge of is in our belief a real thing +in and by itself, and we know it literally and directly, not +figuratively, not afar off through symbols; we know it as it is; we know +a real world, and we know it face to face. Yet, on the other hand, with +all this simple confidence in our knowledge, what are we also given to +saying, or assuming when we do not say it? Even in the moment of our +confidence we humble ourselves with the cry of our utter foolishness, +making our recognized foolishness only a counter-conceit. What but +perfect folly is our knowledge before God's knowledge! "Illusion! The +dream of a few hours or a few years!" is so often the best we can say of +the whole fabric, past and present, of human consciousness. Not now, but +only in the hereafter are we to see reality face to face; now we see +only very darkly, if at all. + +Some one here protests strenuously, raising an objection that might very +properly have been raised [p.042] before. Thus, I am told that only +different people, or only the same people at different times, ever hold +two opposite views, whether about knowledge or any thing else; never one +and the same person at the same time holds them both; and so the present +arraignment can not be as serious as it is made to appear. Well, with +this objection I can agree in part, for there is at least a half-truth +in it, but by no means does it tell, either in general or in particular, +that is, with regard to the special case of the conceits about +knowledge, the whole story of double living or double thinking among +men. Indeed the easy way, in which men make the distinctions of society +or the distinctions of time bear the responsibility for what must always +in the end be the conflicts of their personal lives, is but another +illustration of the difficulties besetting their ordinary views of +things. Duplicity of view, like anything else in experience, must always +be more than a matter of different people or different times, for the +simple reason that, whether directly personal or not, it is present in +the environment of the individual person. So, even if those two +positions, confidence in worldly knowledge and religious trust and +humility, for the sake of argument be momentarily associated only with +different persons or social classes or times, our present point will +really be just exactly as pointed, for there is always a third person or +class or time into whose direct single experience the duplicity or +contradiction is bound to enter. Consider, for example, the case of a +child. For a part of the week he is perhaps at school; on Sunday at +church; and the life in which he thus takes part must [p.043] appear to +him, there being in all probability little or no reservation on either +side, to be hopelessly divided against itself. Now is knowledge power; +now hindrance and greatest danger. Now he is to learn all he can; now, +on the other hand, to forget what he may have learned. So is the +conflict about him made his personal conflict, and exactly as in his +case, so in all human experience the individual must share personally +whatever the environment affords. + +The individual and the environing society are the closest of blood +relations, though we often allow ourselves, all too easily as has been +said, to lose sight of the fact; they live under the same roof, and rely +for sustenance on the same fare; and while to some the contradictions of +life may be overlooked as personally impertinent and unimportant, being +referred wholly to the environment, they are plainly the unavoidable +heritage and the personal responsibility of every individual that counts +himself a member of the human race. The objection, then, that was raised +does not remove contradiction as a cause of doubt, but merely emphasizes +what in a subsequent chapter must occupy us, the social aspect of +experience.[2] Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our +view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, +but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a +matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of +the single person's inner responsibility. Society in its manifold +classes, in its conflicts and in its history, may help us to see the +whole of experience, the unity [p.044] of experience on all sides and in +all parts, but it never does, and it never can, relieve the individual, +or deprive the individual, of any side or part of what makes up an +experience-whole. Grown men and women may be more definitely set in +their lives and their ideas to certain specific things than children, +but in no one, young or old, can such specialism ever be wholly +exclusive of any of the other things. + +To return to our immediate interest, if men are given to being doubters +in their views about reality, spiritual and material; about unity or +wholeness; about space and time, on the one hand fatally vast and +independently real, and on the other formal and illusory; about +causality, so actual and positive now, and yet so complete yesterday, or +ever and ever so long ago; and about knowledge, so perfectly wise and so +thoroughly vain and foolish; if, I say, men are double in all these +different ways, in their moral judgments they seem, if possible, even +more confused, and the confusion, the division against themselves, is +the more serious for being with regard to what so directly concerns +personal life and human fellowship. + +To begin with, as will indeed readily appear, the offences of our moral +judgments, which often, if not always, are largely influenced by +religious or rather theological conceptions, are only a peculiar +expression of the two-faced attitude towards causation, human persons or +wills being the causes specially involved. In general the causes of the +universe are of three sorts, those of natural force, those of +supernatural agency, and those of human agency, and although toward them +all essentially the same attitude is [p.045] assumed, it is worth our +while to consider particularly the causation that is commonly adjudged +to belong to the human will and the moral ideas that spring from it. + +For the purposes of the moral consciousness we translate the two +conflicting powers of our world, or the spiritual reality and the +material, into two agents of good and evil respectively, each having a +power of doing whatever, true to its peculiar character, it may will to +do, and then, as if in accord with this way of thinking, we find two +distinct selves, a good self and an evil self, within each one of us, +and we also divide the body social into two exclusive classes, the class +of those who are identified with the righteous life and the class of +those given to the unrighteous life, the sheep and the goats, the elect +and the damned. But, to say nothing of the fact that these three ideas +of the two powers, the two selves and the two classes, cannot be made +really to accord with each other, although they possess an outward +agreement, is it not clear that any attempt to take the good and the +evil as two mutually exclusive things, be they spirits or selves or +classes, is to destroy at once the real substance of virtue and the real +value of the consciousness of evil? In practical life this means, what +everybody knows so well, that an isolated, unduly holy righteousness, a +sort of touch-me-not goodness, is bound to be empty, to be only +ritualistic and aristocratic or pharisaical, and in any one of these +respects it appears decidedly unrighteous; while an isolated +unrighteousness, besides having at least the moral worth of a protest +against its counterpart, is in itself exactly like the original [p.046] +sinfulness of the theologian; being unavoidable, it is wholly without +any warranted opprobrium. Indeed, it all but comes to this, that +righteousness as a fixed thing, fixed to a part of the universe or to a +part of the individual self or to a part of society, is really in just +so far evil, and the direct opposite of such righteousness is +proportionately good. Good and evil, then, may not mix well, but certain +it is that contradiction results from the common attempt of men to +regard either as untainted or untempered by the other. + +Still, not upon this real difficulty in our moral judgments would I now +lay greatest stress, although it is real enough and important. In yet +another way our moral consciousness is at war with itself. In estimating +the worth of human conduct, so far as this is determined by its +initiation, we are in an almost hopeless tangle. We are more than likely +to think of other people as influenced by their environment in what they +do, of ourselves as quite original and responsible, as independent of +any such influences; or, more fully and more exactly, we are given to +referring our own bad deeds to environment, our good deeds to ourselves, +while for others we are prompted to do just the reverse, referring their +good deeds to environment, their bad deeds to themselves. Such is human +nature--not, to be sure, at its best, but common human nature; and even +when we escape the foregoing personally invidious distinctions, we +still--and this is the main point--treat self and environment as two +naturally conflicting, altogether independent sources of conduct. Two +different and independent sources of anything, [p.047] however, can only +make for conflict and contradiction. If only our courts of law could +judge responsibility either wholly from the determinations of +environment or wholly from those of personal will, or again, if only the +will and the environment could be seen as not so radically opposed, what +a simplification would ensue, and how much freer and more certain +justice would be. To venture on a variation of an aphorism, where +there's another way there is always a loophole; where there's +environment there is always a shifted responsibility; where there's a +"free will" there is always a will taken for some unperformed or +imperfectly performed deed. + +So the double origin of conduct offers a very serious difficulty, which, +when it is understood, is not unlike that of the two powers or selves or +classes, but even more is to be said in exposure of our moral judgments. +Thus we have the confident conceit of freedom, of our own freedom in +good or our neighbour's freedom in evil, or in general of man's freedom +to act without regard to the determinations from environment, but we +have also a strange though possibly a fortunate way of qualifying the +very freedom that we claim. We claim freedom only to avow, almost in the +same breath, duties and responsibilities. We have the freedom, but only +the duties make it worth anything. A startling paradox this, so familiar +to us all: "I am free to do all that I ought to do," or, "I am free to +carry out certain necessities of my true life." A startling paradox; +and, above all, a strange way of escaping the necessities of +environment, unless, forsooth, it really opens the door, or supplies a +secret door, by which the [p.048] necessities of environment and the +necessities of one's true life can come together? If freedom demands +law, why should it hold aloof from the natural law, the law of +environment so definitely present? Possibly, then, as once before +suggested, one contradiction in experience may be the corrective of +another, the paradox of freedom and duty only correcting the +contradiction of two sources of conduct, personal will and environment. +In the case, for example, of the disposition to distinguish between +one's own acts and another's, with respect to their initiation by will +or by environment, to mingle duty and necessity with one's own supposed +freedom is equivalent in effect to denying one's neighbour's freedom +because of the restraints of his environment. But such considerations, +however promising for future reflection upon the conflicts in our moral +consciousness, are not of immediate interest. Our doubts may once more +find hope in the reflection that the faults of experience may balance +themselves, but we have no occasion to abandon our doubting as idle or +meaningless. Contradictions that balance each other, errors that are +mutually corrective, are still contradictions, are still errors. + +So, to reduce our moral judgments, confusion and all, to small compass, +we are free, others are not; they are free, we are not; and our freedom +is bound by duty, by duty to the moral law, while their freedom, unless +a hopeless lawlessness, is bound by the environment and its law. Again, +good and evil are each unmixed, and moral acts serve two masters--that +is to say, spring from two sources. We may, therefore, [p.049] still +believe in morality--yet how can this be? And freedom--yet how is +freedom possible? + +But finally, as last to be examined, there is the idea of law, just now +brought to attention. This idea is a focus for a good many conflicting +views. Witness the familiar argument from the knowledge of law in nature +to fatalism, an argument as absurd as it is widespread, for the bare +fact that we know the laws of nature really emancipates us from the +blind fate to which the argument points. Can knowledge ever mean +anything but freedom? Certainly no law can ever be known unless the +sphere of its operation accords with the nature of those who have the +knowledge. Simply to know is to share in and be at one with whatsoever +is known, and the clearer and more cogent or rational the knowledge, the +truer and realer is this participation or union. The law we know, then, +must have all the meaning and the natural authority of a law of our own +enactment, and so must actually have the sanction of our will. Will, I +say, cannot help sanctioning knowledge, for knowledge is always true to, +because conditioned by, the natural action of the knower. But no such +message of freedom, or say of human opportunity in natural necessity, is +commonly received by men at large from the evidences of law in nature. +Superstitiously they see only fate. Clear knowledge and blind fate! + +Nor are we commonly satisfied with only so much superstition. We go +still further and make the case as bad as possible by treating the law +we know as if in its spirit, if not in its letter, it were final. In +other words, we view nature, with some of whose ways we [p.050] have +become conversant, not merely as a source of blind fate, or external +necessity, for our lives, but also as essentially and ultimately a +sphere of strictly mechanical routine. Yet here again we are surely +reasoning beyond our premises--the very essence of superstition--for the +routine we know can never answer substantially, or even formally, to +nature as she really is. Our positive knowledge, our knowledge that +arrives at specific formulæ, even though these formulæ reach the noble +dignity of mathematics, is bound to be in terms of some particular +experience, personal or national or racial; it is relative and special; +it is partial knowledge; and he is superstitious, and does, indeed, +argue beyond his premises, who takes the whole, whose law he does not +know, to be literally analogous to the part, whose law he thinks he +knows, but can in fact know only partially. No whole ever is one of its +parts, or merely analogous to one of its parts; _a_ law never is _the_ +law, or even in its lawfulness literally analogous thereto; and +mechanicalism, whether as a popular or a philosophical "ism," has no +justification save just this false analogy. + +And the prevalent confusion in the notions of law or lawfulness is of +course reflected in the corresponding notions of lawlessness. Here, as +with other negative terms, men forget that negatives necessarily are +quite relative to their positives. All specific, definitely manifest, +known and positive lawlessness simply must have some place in _the_ law +of things; it can no more be an absolute lawlessness than any human +routine can be supposed final; and, on the other hand, there can be no +positive law whose breaking has not some [p.051] sanction; there can be +no lawfulness which does not warrant some lawlessness. This truth, +perhaps as nothing else could, must show the error in the notion of +mechanical routine as affording an adequate description of the ultimate +nature of things. Where the whole always gives point to the negation of +any of its parts, where _the_ law always sanctions some breaking of any +law, to think of the whole in terms of its parts may be human, but it is +of the human which is prone to err. Those who would still insist upon +seeing only routine in law, and upon judging lawlessness as only +relative to such seeing, might do well, rising above their ordinary +views, to remember with some real appreciation that once upon a time the +law-breakers and the reformer were very closely associated; they were +associated in life, and at the end they were crucified together. +Whatever may be one's theology, there is a deal of food for thought in +those deaths on Calvary and in the several lives which they closed. + +Lawlessness suggests the supernatural. So many have promptly concluded +that just as with the knowledge of law in nature human freedom must be +resigned, blind fate taking its place, so anything or anybody at all +supernatural, Satan--for example--as well as God, must once for all +withdraw. If law reigns, God can will whatever he wills only because the +law is so; the law is not so because he wills it; and this in common +opinion only makes him decrepit, without real initiative, dead. Yet, +once more, what superstition! The knowledge of law has never robbed man +of his freedom, nor even slain his God; or this at least: the loss of +freedom or the death of God, for [p.052] which any law that man has had +knowledge of has been responsible, has always been only the forerunner +of a larger and fuller freedom and of his God's resurrection and +glorification. This or that law may rob and may kill, but this or that +law, let me reiterate, never is _the_ law, and why common opinion has to +judge all things in heaven and earth, as if it were, is hard to +comprehend. Neither nature nor God, if these two need to be thought of +as two, is law-bound; each rather, with a meaning which I must hope now +to have made clear, is law-free. The law in which nature is free is as +infinite, as transcendent of any particular human experience as the +ever-developing freedom of man or as the will of God. And God, or the +Supernatural, is not confined to the narrow sphere of what man knows, as +man knows it; this stands only for what man calls nature. God is the +all-inclusive sphere or source of the absolute law, for which knowledge +can be only a constant striving, or which is itself even a party to the +constant striving. Somehow _the_ law must be a living thing, not a +routine: the supernatural must be not nature as she is known, but +nature's fullest and deepest life. + +Very emphatically what has just been said about nature or God being +law-free, or about _the_ law being infinite, or not analogous in form or +substance, in spirit or letter, to any thing in positive knowledge, is +no argument for the Jonah story or even for the miracle of the wine at +Cana's wedding feast; and yet time and again people who apparently +should have done enough thinking to know better, to the great +satisfaction of thousands have used the infinity of [p.053] nature's or +God's lawfulness, which is to say the only partial and tentative +character of all human knowledge of law, as a clinching proof of all the +miracles in the Bible. Can they not see that like what is lawless in +general, the miraculous must be in the premises only relative to the +experience of the time? Even chance is not less so. The spiritual +meaning of those miracles may persist, for the miraculous we must always +have with us; but if even our relative, imperfect knowledge stands for +anything, if it be even a tentative knowledge, a working standpoint, the +literal truth of most, or even all of them, disappeared long ago. +Miracles, like laws, come and go; only the miraculous, like _the_ law, +goes on forever. + +And this leads to something else, to something also very common, perhaps +the reverse of the foregoing. With what an unaccountable delight many of +us have accepted naturalistic explanations, for example, of the sun +standing still, or of the retreat of the waters of the Red Sea, or of +the Immaculate Conception, or of any of the many other marvels in either +the Old or the New Testament, and have thought that so our old beliefs +are to be preserved. I have myself heard honest and earnest men, even +members of an academic community, appeal to parthenogenesis as a fact in +nature which would at least make the miracle of Christ's birth +scientifically plausible as well as spiritually significant; but such an +appeal, besides being, in my opinion, positively irreverent, is as blind +religiously as it is ignorant scientifically. Cannot such men +appreciate, and cannot all others who do as they do also appreciate the +fact that naturalistic explanation of [p.054] any miracle, if really a +genuine explanation, may prove the fact, but must in just so far +destroy, I do not say the miraculous, which is indestructible, but the +particular miracle? + +The lawful miracle, then--lawful, of course, so soon as explained--is +one more contradiction in our prevalent notions about law. That it +exemplifies, too, a habit of mind which is exercised by us in many +directions besides that of interpretation of the arbitrary things of the +Bible can hardly need be said. In life generally the arbitrary is +peculiarly fond of going to law, sometimes to what is called nature's +law, as when revolutionists of all sorts--strikers and radical +reformers--raise the cry of "natural rights," laying down the law as to +what men are by nature, and sometimes to "human" law, as when the +conservatives in government or business with their vested rights, be +these coal mines, oil fields, or political privileges, appeal for +"justice" to the courts or to the military. + +But, to say no more, with the lawful miracle, with law the strange +support of what is arbitrary, with this as a very good example of the +duplicity which in general we are all of us wont to allow in our +practical life, the present exposure of our ordinary consciousness must +come to an end. With regard to the real substance of things, or to their +unity, or to the nature of space and time and causation, with regard to +the worth of knowledge, with regard to our human conduct, to its freedom +and responsibility, or finally with regard to the place of law in nature +and in the life of man, our ordinary consciousness is manifestly +inconsistent and vacillating--nay, is grossly contradictory; and we are +[p.055] led at least to suspect that the disorder which we have found is +inherent and essential, having the nature of an original human defect. +Such a defect, however, is cause for doubt; so that man, above all +"practical" man, having inconsistency or duplicity as almost, if not +quite, an uncontrollable habit with him, should be himself a prince of +sceptics. + +And yet, although we have indeed found man spending at least his waking +hours in a room that seems disorder incarnate, and although before the +court of practical life the doubter seems thus to have been thoroughly +justified, while his too hasty judges are in turn condemned, +nevertheless the case for doubt is not of such a character as to leave +absolutely no hope for belief. Now and again in the evidence, as it has +been disclosed, have we not felt the presence of something, not yet +given its due weight, that would make man more than a mere doubter and +unbeliever? Have we not been led to suspect that somehow, without loss +of their reality and validity, the most cogent reasons for doubt, even +the contradictions in our views of things, might turn into bases of +belief, that an experience essentially paradoxical may not be as +hopeless as at first sight it may appear, that in all the madness there +is at least a chance of some method? The view of science, however, must +be examined before our attention can be turned definitely upon such a +possibility. Enough if in our present doubting we are still left with a +little hope. + + +[1] In the rise of Christian Science, against which I have no special +grudge, although I have already taken exceptions to its claims, there is +a special case, special because affecting a single, relatively small +class, of the popular hospitality to contradiction. Thus, the Christian +Scientists would reduce all reality to mind, but at the same time they +busily deny reality to a large group of mind facts, namely and notably, +the ideas of disease. Recently, it is true, according to the newspapers, +their healers have been told to "decline to doctor infectious or +contagious diseases," yet not because such diseases have any reality, +but because the illusion of them is so real as to make the "Christian" +treatment of them both imprudent and impractical. Philosophies and +religions of illusion are certainly weird, uncanny things! + +[2] Chapter VII. + + + +[p.056] + +IV. + +THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS RISE AND CHARACTER. + + +With science we usually associate accuracy and consistency, and at first +thought we are not likely to expect that the work and standpoint of +science can contain anything substantial enough for the doubter to base +his claim upon; but second thought is our first duty at this time, and +second thought always changes the view, and in this particular instance +it will show science in important respects to be quite as vulnerable as +the unreflective consciousness of practical life, for science also is +honeycombed with contradiction and paradox. + +More than once scientists themselves have turned sceptical about their +work and its results. The cry of bankruptcy in science, not merely as a +charge, but also as a confession, has been heard in the land not +infrequently; now perhaps low and uncertain, but again clear and strong. +And why not? Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other +men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? +Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally +different from the ordinary consciousness. The same eye is looking at +[p.057] the same world, only through microscopes and telescopes. The +same mind is measuring the same environment, only with carefully devised +instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and +rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness +highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps +without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say +that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the +inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple +sensations of a bird. The mechanics of flying, so elaborately present to +the former, are nevertheless also present in the latter, while with both +we have the same eye or the same mind looking and the same world seen. +The boasted methods and ideals of the one are but the only half-waking +instincts of the other, and whatsoever is essential to either belongs +also to the other. But, to mark the great difference between them, the +inventor has the disposition to treat flying abstractly--that is, as if +a thing by itself, as if for its own sake; and he goes even farther, +making abstraction of the mere explanation and mechanical expression of +flying; while the bird simply flies, and, if I may hope to be +understood, all things else, the sun and the wind, the trees, and all +living things, and you and I who follow his course are flying with him. + +But no poetic soaring such as this can satisfy our present needs. To +understand and appraise the view of science we must trace its rise as +clearly as we can, [p.058] and then critically examine its peculiar +conceits, its own ideal methods and attitudes. + +As for the rise of the scientific view, we may well return to the +definition of science given above: the ordinary consciousness highly +developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Perhaps development +of anything is always at the cost of abstraction; but be this as it may, +science certainly arises through an abstraction, namely, through the +abstraction of consciousness of one's world, through the treatment of +this mere consciousness as something to be cultivated quite for its own +sake; and the motive and the meaning of such a treatment are not far to +seek. Consciousness, to the exclusion or inhibition of direct, overt +action, becomes a matter for abstract, which is to say, exclusive +cultivation, with any serious change, with any upheaval in the familiar +conditions of life. A man--or boy, if you prefer--is taking a +cross-country run, and for a time all goes well; the manner of his going +suffers no interruption, or no serious interruption; but gradually the +undergrowth thickens from low bushes to higher brushwood, and at last, +perhaps quite suddenly, breaking through some wild hedge, the runner +finds himself at the very edge of a stream too wide and too deep for any +ordinary crossing. Thereupon his running, or at least his forward +running, say the running of his "real life," ceases, and looking takes +its place. He is now, in a familiar phrase, "looking before leaping"; +yet with his looking there is a good deal of running too, more or less +overt, but also more or less [p.059] instrumental or merely mechanical, +as, going from one point to another, he measures the relations of bank +to bank, or of possible stepping-stones to each other, or hunts for +fallen logs or for shallow places. But, finally, the measurements all +made, the peculiar conditions as fully as possible appreciated, in the +way found to be most feasible he crosses the stream and runs again. And +just in that "looking before leaping," with the accompanying check put +upon the forward running and with the change of the "real life" of +running into merely instrumental action, we get at least a glimpse of +what science is, of the sort of abstraction that its rise implies. + +Only science, specifically so called, is more than such a casual, merely +personal study of a new situation. Science is the distinct work of a +distinct class abstractly studying a new situation that has confronted +the progress not of an individual, but of a whole people, and in this +character it gets at once all the advantages and all the conceits that +belong in general to the life of a class. It gets, too, all the +limitations. Science, once more, is not strictly a personal experience, +although in personal experience, like that of the cross-country runner, +we can get a glimpse of just that which may develop into science. +Science is characteristically a profession. The runner withholds his +running for a time and merely looks and studies, yet his looking is only +for a time; sooner or later he will run again; and even while he studies +there is his continued moving about, his instrumental action, as we +called it; but the professional scientist waives all thought of possible +future activity. Although in reality [p.060] his looking is before +leaping, it is not consciously so for him; he is one who under the +constraints of his class merely looks and studies, making of these +processes things quite worthy in themselves. + +In other words, to enlarge somewhat on what has just been said, the rise +of the profession of science does indeed involve both the same check +upon the "real life" and the same reduction of activity to a purely +mechanical or instrumental character that we have pointed out in the +case of the runner at the bank of the stream, but a number of different +social classes divides the labour. In general, society as a means to the +expression and development of human activity, be the activity running or +living in a broader and fuller sense, always shows the different phases +or factors of the experience identified more or less exclusively with as +many different classes or groups, and, in respect to the particular case +here under consideration, upon the rise of science society appears to +delegate the work of careful observation and critical thinking to a +separate class, which, as already suggested, gives up any direct +responsibility to the real life. Another distinct class, arising +contemporaneously, is composed of those who do feel directly +responsible, or "practical," continuing the life of positive, overt +action. This second class maintains the vital processes, although in a +more or less consciously instrumental way, since its members have the +lives of others as well as their own lives to support. So society gets +its workers or labourers as well as its observers and thinkers. + +The rise of science, then, involves a disrupted society. Moreover, the +division is by no means so [p.061] simple as the foregoing analysis may +seem to have implied. Observing and thinking, for example, have often +made, too, separate sub-classes, and also there have been many distinct +groups among the workers, such as clerks, soldiers, artisans, +road-menders, and tillers of the soil. The simple analysis, however, has +been quite enough to show, what has seemed to need emphasis, that all +the passions of social life, or rather of social caste, are brought to +bear upon the profession of science, giving it the peculiar conceits and +advantages of class or caste, and also imposing upon it the peculiar +limitations. The advantages, among others, are the strength that lies in +union, and the long continuity and the imitation that always ensure an +accumulation of experience and a refinement of method and an attainment +to impersonal, impartial standards; the conceits are exclusiveness, +sense of sanctity or intrinsic worth, and consequent claims to +aristocracy; and the limitations, although possibly already quite +obvious, are hereafter to be pointed out. But whatever the limitations +or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social +conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of +science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but +the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of +action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake. + +Nor is this fact that science is an abstraction, intensified by the +conditions of class life, the only fact to which the rise of science +bears witness. There is something else equally significant--something, +indeed, so intimately involved in this as perhaps not [p.062] properly +to be referred to as another fact at all, being only a further +manifestation of what is already before us. _There never arises +abstraction without duplicity._ + +Plainly a disrupted society, such as has been seen to be incident to the +rise of science, means also a disrupted life. In general the corporate +life of any single class resulting from the division can be only +partial, I do not say in respect to "real life," since this phrase has +itself been associated with too narrow a meaning, but to human nature, +to human life in its entirety, in its real fulness, in its true breadth +and its true depth. All class life, I repeat, involving as it does +disruption and selection of some particular interest or relation, is +inadequate to any human being, and the life of science is no exception +to this rule. Membership in any class and conformity to its peculiar +life, which is partial and abstract as partial, have never satisfied +anybody, and the life of the professional scientist, again, is no +exception to this rule. Accordingly any abstraction in life, the +isolation of any specific interest, when seen in just the light of its +necessary inadequacy, of its definite, more or less exclusive +partiality, must imply in life a demand for reality and completeness, +and this the more as the abstraction is assertive, as the isolation is +insistent. Simply, the whole life will never brook an untempered neglect +from any of its always self-assertive parts. Plainly, however, as +plainly as a disrupted society must mean a disrupted life for each +resulting group, such a demand can be met only in one way, if the cause +for it continues; it can be met only by some form of duplicity, by some +way in which, however indirectly, the life of those [p.063] concerned +will always really be more than it seems or will always actually imply +what explicitly or formally it appears to exclude. No such narrow life, +in short, as must always characterize any social group, can ever be +without its compensating innuendoes or indirections for the life from +which it is outwardly aloof, and while the peculiar manner in which the +true reality and the wholeness of life are thus conserved will very +naturally always be determined by the particular class or the particular +class-character involved, being of one sort for road-menders and of +quite a different sort for scientific observers, the organization of +society seems bound at every turn to show that duplicity, compensation +as it always is for partiality, is an indispensable condition. +Duplicity, whatever may be its own special dangers, is always better, +being nearer to reality, than narrowness. + +Is not the road-mender also a good Catholic, or in some other way, +conventional or unconventional, religiously devout, piously doing, not +his own, but another's work? Does not the scientist give point to the +idea of another and different life, that is to say, of his life of +knowledge not being the whole of life, by the agnosticism which he not +only carefully asserts but also actually embodies as a factor in his +method? The road-mender slaves at his humble task, ignorant and yet +trustful, believing in an infallible wisdom and an absolute power, and +the scientist lives with great enthusiasm to know the world as it is, +but tells us at the same time with no less enthusiasm and with a meaning +that certainly ought to temper his exclusiveness that the object which +he studies and describes [p.064] is nevertheless really unknowable. To +quote Mr. Spencer: "The man of science ... more than any other, truly +_knows_ that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known." Surely there +is meaning for Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in other +fields besides that of morality. Class life must always involve its +members in a protective or compensating duplicity. + +But now, whatever in the life of other classes this duplicity, which +conserves the wholeness of life even when formally life is narrow and +partial, ought to be called, in the profession of science it often goes +under the name of dualism. Seen at different angles, it is now dualism, +now objectivism, now agnosticism. In each of these different ways the +scientist, quite outdoing or transcending his profession, recognizes a +sphere of reality or a sphere of activity, that is beyond that of the +knowledge which he makes his special business, and, as is very important +to observe, the peculiar manner of his recognition of this sphere, or +the peculiar character of his duplicity, is relative to just the +abstraction which makes his science what it is. Thus his peculiar +duplicity is one of conscious subject and unconscious, external object, +of observing man and objective nature, of real knowledge and unknowable +reality. + +Yet here, before discussing further the relation of dualism to science, +it is well to observe that the positive history of science justifies the +account of its rise which has now been given. The age of science among +the Greeks was coincident with the closing conflict between Greek +civilization and the general life [p.065] of the Mediterranean, and the +age of modern science began, not to attempt a long story, with the +discovery of America. All "looking before leaping" is transitional or +revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and +degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs +to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern +science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from +Christendom to--who can say to what? But not only does history show +science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life +of the time, in the first place, to be sharply disintegrated, its +different factors being separately and abstractly expressed through as +many different social groups, and, in the second place, in each of the +groups to be given to double living, to the storm and stress of being +one thing and seeming another. Always an age, conspicuously and +characteristically scientific, has been an age of clearly developed +classes and of a general duplicity in living. + +Thus, to give a striking, although possibly too philosophical an +illustration of the duplicity, Democritus, the great materialist and +atomist, and Plato, the great idealist, were contemporaries and equally +were creatures of their day and generation, and their century was the +century of great achievements in Greek science. Moreover, as regards the +coincident organization of society, we know at least of Plato that he +was keenly conscious of the divisions of society into distinct classes. +And in very much the same way materialism and idealism, not to mention +hedonism and rigorism, or naturalism and supernaturalism, [p.066] have +been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern +science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than +so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special +conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes +or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they +are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, +that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or +profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of +Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in +all the different and separately organized phases of life--moral, +industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the +conservatives and the radicals? And were there not also, as typical +individual characters, each of them revealing to everybody something +present within his own life, the only conventional loyalist and the more +truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and +the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously +impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity. + +Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of +science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor +yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a +thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or +idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as +means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all +activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental. +As we know, the disruption means [p.067] actual, when not also +intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been +division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of +the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than +things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes +and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and +independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to +give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the +conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people +instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as +some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, +and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the +instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to +be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power +to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, +the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of +society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way +is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites +conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost +notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the +Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for +pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be +questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or +purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the +Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks, +being too conservative, though [p.068] utilitarian, failed to make full +use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally +appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as +unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the +Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism, +which has characterized them throughout. + +One thing more, too, from the facts of history may have our attention, +although possibly this addition is quite unnecessary--the fact, namely, +of scepticism coupled always with a hopeful curiosity. A disrupted +society, dividing the labour of human life, is as sceptical as it is +conventional, and as given to experiment and exploration, which are +never without their sense of mystery, and even to conquest, never +without its risks, as it is utilitarian. Was it curiosity or mere +Hellenic conceit, the sense of adventure or the mere dogmatism of a +Greek, that took Alexander abroad with his armies, or that earlier +turned the attention of Athens to the possibilities of the West? And +which, curiosity or religious and political propagandism, a pagan greed +or a Christian piety, inspired the Western and Southern voyages of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Which gave rise even to the Crusades? +It would be interesting, if our present purposes only warranted the +undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of +scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity +has developed as but one expression of a general interest in +experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and +especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and [p.069] +confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as +it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some +given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a +mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet +willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those +activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of +course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it +never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of +art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective, left far behind. +But to follow out the line of thought here suggested would take us too +far afield. Let it suffice, then, that we see these two things: how +historically and socially the investigations of science, whatever their +relations to an antecedent art, such as that of the Greeks or of +Christendom in the Renaissance, are but an incident within a general +life of appeal to nature--that is, of exploration and conquest--and then +how the scepticism, involved in the inquiries of science, is intrinsic +to a life that, for reasons now clear to us, has become both +conventional and utilitarian, both formal--or unreal in itself--and +consciously only instrumental. The first of these brings to mind what +was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt +seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly +in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having +the evidence of history, we have next to turn. + +We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the +various factors in human [p.070] life, and to be itself, in particular, +the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the +totality of the manifest conditions of life. This abstraction has been +developed and intensified by the formation of distinct social classes; +and, in the special case of the consciousness of nature, by the +formation of a class of scientists, so called, who cultivate their +science for its own sake. We have found the rise of science to imply +also a general duplicity, evident within the field of science in what is +known as dualism. Duplicity is a natural accompaniment of all +abstraction, and it has, as we saw at least in part, a certain +protective and corrective function, which both the logic of experience +and the social and historical conditions of its expression and +development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found +that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional +and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or--let me now +say--experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general +abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for +utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, +formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set +of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions +themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so +fatal to all ideas that should give knowledge any visible form or +resting-place, was but the spirit of his time, the spirit of radical +inquiry become incarnate and assertive in public places. He was but a +visible, public exponent of the critical examination of life which the +self-consciousness of his time made necessary. [p.071] Indeed, no +organic form, no living creature, ever reflected the character of its +environment more fully, or more successfully effected an adaptive life +than the method, with its searching questions, and its subtle, logical +gymnastic, of that honestly and radically inquisitive Sophist. And the +standpoint and the procedure of science, in respect to the relation to +their environment, are closely comparable with the method of Socrates. + +Thus science seeks a complete abstraction of the looking consciousness, +and then with a timely duplicity it looks to a wholly external, natural +world. So in the field of its peculiar abstraction does science take the +character and colour of its surroundings. But, further, it presumes upon +the peculiar forms and conditions of its subjective, looking +consciousness, the activities of the mind, being mediative or +instrumental to the presentation of the external objective world, and it +uses also the activities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter +activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the +industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for +just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is +presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take +the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own +purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly +when we remember that, besides being experimental, treating the mind as +an instrument and life's activities at large as only aids more or less +directly pertinent to the mind's work, it is agnostic. Its peculiar +agnosticism not only reflects [p.072] its duplicity, as was before +suggested, but in addition shows how very abstract its knowledge is, +and--I know no better phrase--how timelily adventurous. A time of +science is a time when all things final are beyond; yet also, when all +things present, however mysteriously, are really leading yonder. + +Further, science always divides the field of its operations, and so, +besides greatly compounding its abstractness, reflects in its own way, +or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the +specialism of the contemporary social organization. There is division of +labour in this, but there is also a difficulty, which, among other +difficulties, is hereafter to be considered. + +And there is, finally, one more characterization of science which is +suggested by the conditions of its rise, but by something in those +conditions not yet brought into clear view. An age of science is an age +of a rising, although perhaps formally suppressed and disguised +individualism, and quite in sympathy, the method of science is +"inductive," science, though interested in classification, always having +regard for the natural rights of particular things, of single +individuals, reasoning from the particular to the general, as the phrase +runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much +misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of +inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has +been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any +discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that +the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I +would only assert, but I venture to assert [p.073] strongly, first, that +behind the conventionalism and utilitarianism of the life of a society +divided into distinct classes, behind the abstraction and the inevitable +duplicity, behind the sense of experiment and adventure, the individual +person is the real power, and secondly, that in induction science has +only translated this real individualism of its time into an attitude or +method for the conduct of its looking consciousness. In this way, as in +those other ways, has science been educated to its peculiar manner. + +We have thus seen how science arises, and how its rise gives it a +certain character. But already suspicion of limitations in the view of +science, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. +Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not +be unmixed. What the specific difficulties are, however, and how far +they really justify our doubting, must be reserved for the ensuing +chapter. + + +[p.074] + +V. + +THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS PECULIAR LIMITATIONS. + + +Limitations or opportunities? Error or truth? In the familiar +illustration the tracks which limit the locomotive to a certain course +are essential to its successful movement, and something of the same kind +may be true of science. A man's vices and virtues are never really far +apart, and, again, the same may be true of science. But for the moment +we are to approach science from the standpoint of its limitations; we +are to see how its own natural ideals, as suggested by our +characterization of the scientific view, are evidence of its inadequacy. +So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going +confession of doubt. + +Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and +genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science +must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether +personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or +religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, +the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but _persona grata_ +among scientific men; and (3) agnostic or "positivistic," all conceits +[p.075] about what is beyond positive experience, and even all dogma +about what seems really present to experience, being most arrant heresy; +and every one of these ideals, besides being derived from the habits or +instincts, commonly unrecognized and unappreciated, of the ordinary +consciousness, is wholly in accord with the conclusions of the preceding +chapter. The attitude of science, as there disclosed, involved a looking +to an external world--the objectivism; a division of the field--the +specialism; and an experimental, adventurous mind--the agnosticism or +positivism. It involved other things, too, but these three are now +selected, so to speak, as three determining points of science's +circumference. Consideration of them, to whatever results it may lead, +should meet all the demands of the present task. As for the results, +these will show fundamental difficulties, very like to those of ordinary +experience, to lurk in each one of the three ideals. The scientific +consciousness is abstract and just for being in consequence +objectivistic, specialistic, and agnostic it is artificial and unreal, +though perhaps only relatively or not unmixedly unreal, and especially +it is honeycombed with paradoxes and contradictions, with the translated +but not transcended contradictions of ordinary life. + +To the examination, therefore, of these difficulties, or limitations, we +must now turn, taking the three ideals in order. + + +I. SCIENCE WOULD BE OBJECTIVE. + +The ideal of a purely objective science is in many ways a great +delusion, for it may effectually blind [p.076] science to its necessary +subjectivism, so far as it gets any substance or content, and to its +necessary formalism, so far as it acts upon a merely external world. +With regard, for example, to the last point, just so far as the ideal of +objectivism is realized, science becomes merely so much technique. By +technique here is meant everything that makes scientific work purely +mechanical. A purely mechanical procedure is the inevitable, the natural +and necessary method of a pure objectivism. Scientists have their formal +etiquette about pre-empted problems or fields of research, their notions +about originality as dependent merely on working a new field--hence the +pre-emption to prevent transgression or theft of originality, their +conceits about bibliographical information, linguistic proficiency and +technical phraseology, their satisfaction over "publication," +"contribution," "production," and "research," and an almost +Gaston-Alphonse deference of each to each among the different branches +of scientific inquiry; and under technique all these things, as well as +the more familiar matters of method and apparatus and material, are here +included. Physicians, we are told, and not infrequently also their +patients, suffer from a professional ritual and etiquette, but they are +far from being alone in their misery. Scientists, would-be objective +scientists, and all who appeal to them, are a close second. Technique +must have its real uses, but plainly it has its limitations. It is one +of the enabling conditions, a _sine qua non_ of science, if science is +to be objective, but it takes the life out of science. A science that +gets no further, that is only "objective," that is, "pure" and +"inductive" [p.077] is wholly vain, being like a domestic animal which +is only a pet, or rather like a vigorous plant that runs luxuriously to +leaves, never bearing either flowers or fruit. Its much vaunted +observation and experiment may fill a good many pages and a good many +volumes, but material, even material in books, and experiments, even +carefully, minutely reported experiments, are neither roses nor apples. + +A fruitful science relates itself to something more than a mere +independent object. A fruitful science involves synthesis, not formal, +but real synthesis, as well as analysis, its decomposed object being +also only the separated details of some organizing activity. Indeed, +however unconsciously, or even however against its own avowed interest +and desire, science has that organizing activity in the real life. The +"real life" has seemed aloof, but science is truly an integral part of +this life. Science's very genesis in social evolution, in spite of, nay, +even because of its abstraction by a distinct class and the assumption +of a professional garb, is witness to this relationship. Again, fruitful +science is practical invention, not abstract discovery, and the real +life of a person or a society or a race is as important to it, as much a +warrant of its conclusions, as any object, however mathematically +described or describable, with which science was ever concerned. As for +the thing invented, the tool or the machine, in general the instrument +of adaptation to environment, this sometimes takes visible, wholly +material form; sometimes it appears as a method in the practical arts or +in the fine arts or in education or government; sometimes it is only an +[p.078] atmosphere or point of view, a habit of mind; but whatever it +is, it is useful, incalculably useful, and its invention as something +that is widely distinguished from mere receptive observation, if this be +even possible, or from mere accurate description, is science's primary +justification. + +But this, objects somebody, is sentiment, and sentiment of the sort that +quite destroys science, making real science, serious and accurate +science, quite impossible. Well, it does of course dispense with a +purely objective science. It suggests the idea, perhaps the +uncomfortable idea, that, as in some other departments in life, so in +science, death is a condition of success. Science must die to its +objective self before it is saved; it must lose its whole world to gain +its own soul. Or, to put the same idea differently, if the assertion be +not too much like verbal play, a subjective science is not hopelessly +unscientific. Is a man less interested in having a proper edge on his +razor because eventually he must use it on himself? Nothing but a keen +edge can ever ensure a "velvet shave," and nothing but the truth, the +more accurate it be the better, can ever set anybody free. + +Still, all questions of sentiment or of sharp razors or of the accuracy +that liberates aside, we can get support for our scepticism about a +science that, if purely objective, must be also empty and mechanical +from science itself. The consistent evolutionist is obliged to deny pure +objectivity to any scientific knowledge, just as in general he is +obliged to think of all consciousness as never something by itself, but +one of the positive conditions of organic development. To [p.079] be an +evolutionist, and at the same time to think of consciousness as only an +external ornament of life, or in its higher development as the exclusive +privilege of a distinct class, to think of it as an aside in life, +perhaps a sudden result without in any way being also a condition of +development, to suppose science to be solely objective and for its own +sake, is nothing more or less than simply to stultify oneself +completely. Even for the historian, whether avowed evolutionist or not, +whose great business is to remind us that what is here or what is now is +not all, the devotion to science for its own sake, which also in other +times has possessed the minds and hearts of certain men, can be at best +only a local and a passing phenomenon. Finally, apart from the +standpoint of evolution or history, it is to be said that human society +at large is sure to resent what may be styled the aristocratic temper +which pure, objective science is all too likely to acquire from the +exclusiveness of its ritual or technique, or say from its abstract and +academic dress, and the resentment of society is important evidence +always. Aristocratic temper, whatever its direction, is certainly as +desirable in social life as it is necessary; it is incident to the +development of all institutions--political, ecclesiastical, industrial, +ceremonial, educational, and, to add to the familiar list, +epistemological; but the resentment which it is sure to awaken is not +one whit less serviceable to society, ensuring as it does, among other +things, the extension of science, the translation of science into life. + +So, to gather the threads together, two difficulties [p.080] have now +appeared as affecting the objectivism of science. The first, that of +burial in technique, gave us our starting-point, and the second has come +to light with discussion of the first. Thus, not merely is a would-be +objective science, through its bondage to technique, made formal and +empty, but also, as perhaps only the other side of the same truth, a +would-be objective science materially--that is, for its scientific +doctrines--and formally--that is, for its motives and methods--is always +in practice dependent upon the demands and sanctions of real life, and +so not purely, or not dualistically, objective after all. There is, in +brief, no other conclusion. Either science must be empty, a matter +merely of dead rites and dry symbols and irrelevant ideas, or it must be +pertinent and practical; and, if the latter, its boasted independence is +gone. A purely objective science seems to get only subjectivity for its +pains. + +Yet this conclusion is easily misunderstood. It is far from denying any +meaning to such words as object or objectivity. The object is denied +only as an external independent existence. The object still remains to +experience as possibly of mediative value to its beholders, mediating +between the actual in their life and the possible, between the partial +life and the whole life, the old and the new, the social, which is +always narrow, and the personal. The whole must be always "objective" to +the part, the possible to the actual, the personal to the social; or, +conversely, the "objective," natural world can be only the convincing +witness to the part or to the actual or to the social, not that there is +an independent, wholly external world, but [p.081] that there is a whole +or a possible or a personal. "Truly, we are all one," writes Fiona +Macleod. "It is a common tongue we speak, though the wave has its own +whisper, the wind its own sigh, and the lip of man its word, and the +heart of woman its silence." We are all one. Man and nature, which man +beholds, or the subject and the object, of which the subject is +conscious, are one; but an objective science would hide this from us, +not tell it to us. + +But besides burying science in technique, and besides involving it in an +only disguised, albeit a socially significant subjectivity, the ideal of +wholly objective knowledge has also made science conservative in a way +that must have peculiar interest here. Reference is not now made to the +double truth or the double life which an objective science sanctions so +cordially that men can hold so-called advanced scientific ideas without +feeling them in any serious conflict with the traditional teachings of +religion and morality, but to something else perhaps not wholly +unrelated to this, and certainly not less suggestive of contradiction. +While science is commonly supposed to be advanced and radical and up to +date, if anything is, it is so only in a way which calls for a very +important qualification, for it manages to perpetuate, not indeed the +letter, but the spirit of old views. At its best a purely objective +science can give only a new material content, or a new arrangement +perhaps of an old content, to existing and time-worn forms of thought; +it cannot possibly do that in which real progress must always consist, +namely, develop, recognize, and adopt new forms of thought, new +categories; [p.082] it cannot do that without betraying its own ideal of +mere objectivism. Objective science--to give a commonplace example--has +said relatively to a certain doctrine of creation that spirit did not +precede matter, but instead matter preceded spirit, and--except for the +excitement of the drawn battle which such a startling declaration has +precipitated--this can hardly be said to have involved any great +advance. Cause and effect have indeed been made to change places by the +new deal, and perhaps in common fairness it was high time that a change +be made, but no new conception of causation itself has been recognized. +The new creationalism, the materialistic, has no essential advantage +over the old. Again, while deposing the First Cause, an objective +science has made all things causes after the same plan--individual, +arbitrary, antecedent causes; and this is only to multiply indefinitely, +perhaps infinitely, the offensive creationalism. "Not so," says some +one; "there is a splendid democracy in it, and it implies a great deal +more than mere multiplication. Indefiniteness, or at least infinity, +transforms anything or everything to which it is applied. By making all +things causes one forces into science the important principle of the +equation of action and reaction, everything being seen as acted upon as +well as acting, and this principle, as if by turning creationalism +fatally against itself, yields a new standpoint, that of mechanicalism." +Granted, and granted cordially, but has a purely objective science any +right to change its standpoint? + +Possibly this does not mean very much. Then approach the matter from +another side, risking a [p.083] reference to one of science's pet +conceits, the "question of fact." It has been for science a question of +fact, of mere objective fact, whether matter made mind or mind made +matter; whether this or that thing is or is not a cause of some other +thing; whether certain very low, perhaps unicellular organisms show +purpose in their activities or do not, are gifted with a natural +tendency to social life, a real interest in their kind, or are not so +gifted; or--to take just one more case--whether the changes in the brain +that precede bodily movement are or are not directed by consciousness, +consciousness being in one case in causal relation with the brain, and +in the other only an idle, external accompaniment, an "epi-phenomenon"; +but in each of these questions of objective fact we see the scientist +only standing in his own light, obscuring the view of what above all +else it is important to see. Are mind and matter, cause and effect, +purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such +well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the +scientist's formulæ, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all +that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, +to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to +assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as +blinding and ill-advised as could well be. It has the pleasing form of +open-mindedness, but only the form. It is very much as if some earnest, +yearning truth-seeker should exclaim: "I would see clearly; therefore I +will not open my eyes." No doubt it keeps the scientist busy, eternally +busy, dealing and redealing his facts or data, as busy indeed as the +playful [p.084] cat that so hotly pursues her own tail, but it does not +contribute much that is positive and progressive. The very best that one +can say for it is that it turns the kaleidoscope of human experience, +leading as it usually does to a new arrangement of hard, unchanging +things. To the question, for example, about lower organisms showing +purpose or social feeling in their activity, the scientist, after most +careful experiments, may answer in the negative, and be quite emphatic +in his answer too; but almost at once he--or some one for him--will +appreciate that mankind, when scrutinized and experimented upon in the +same way, under the same instruments and through the same laboratory +methods, is similarly deficient; and then, somehow, the wind is taken +out of his sails, since social feeling and purpose refuse to be so +easily disposed of. In this case, as in all cases, the question of mere +objective fact simply returns, as importunate as ever, for another +reckoning, with Shelley's cloud silently laughing at its own cenotaph. + +And what is the difficulty? Once more the difficulty is in the +assumption, so natural to an objective science, of fixed conceptions. +Are purpose and social feeling so fixed in their nature, and above all +so well understood, that their presence or absence can be established by +an experiment or two or ten thousand conducted on strictly objective +principles? No conceptions are fixed, and instead of questions of fact +we should have, what a strictly objective science cannot have, questions +of meaning. Thus, not: Are low organisms, or any organisms, social or +purposive? but: What, if anything, do the processes of their [p.085] +lives testify as to the real nature of society or purpose? + +The conservative character of objective science, or the view-point in +its question of fact which the conservatism determines, is the chief +source of the negative attitude of science so familiar to all and so +often an object of complaint. To take, perhaps, the most widely +interesting case, for science to suppose that God either is or is +not--because he must either be or not be the particular thing men have +thought him--is to beg the theological question altogether. Indeed, for +this question of God's existence and for any other question of objective +fact a negative answer is almost, if not quite, a foregone conclusion, +since the very putting of the question is, _ipso facto_, evidence that a +new idea of the thing inquired about--of God, perhaps, or purpose or +society--is at least just below the horizon of man's consciousness, and +so that the old idea has already lost its validity. Nothing ever is +where you seek it, or what you seek in it, for the simple reason that +your conscious seeking has changed it. Why, then, look--perhaps with a +telescope after a God in the skies--for what you should know you cannot +find? Why despair when a question meets a "no" of its own dictation? The +real questioner lives in a living world, in which all things change and +die, yet only for rebirth, while the "objective" questioner simply +cannot see that the negative of his answer can be only relative to what +is already passing. + +In so many ways, then, a would-be objective science is open to +criticism, and affords in consequence a cause for doubt. Only +subjectivity can make it fruitfully [p.086] and worthily scientific. +Only a change in the form of its question can make it substantially as +well as formally progressive. Only a tempering of its negative answers +to a merely relative meaning can make it honest. It is looking at what +is not, and in a way which is artificial, and it sees everything only in +the clear light of its own shadow. Surely to be scientific is human; to +be objective is to rival the lover's unselfishness. + + +II. SCIENCE WOULD BE SPECIALISTIC. + +But, secondly, there is the scientist's ideal of specialism, which is at +once not less earnestly cherished and not less strikingly at constant +war with itself. What specialism for science means is known at least in +a general way to everybody, and that an objective science must be made +up of numberless independent inquiries needs only mention, since the +objective world, if really innocent of all personal or subjective +relations, is necessarily manifold and discrete, being made up of a +number of wholly separate details, and being approachable in every one +of its parts from a number of wholly separate standpoints. The objective +world apart from a subject is like a workshop without a workman--a +collection of unused and so unconnected tools and materials each one of +which may have an infinite number of uses; and the objective scientist +views it very much as a stranger, perhaps a savage--may I be forgiven +that mark--might view the lifeless shop, seeing now this thing, now +that, but never the living unity of all the things. So, to repeat, as +soon as the self or subject is removed and the world is turned +objective, all things and all views of things must fall [p.087] apart, +and science as the observation of such a world can be only "special." +Not so clear, however, or at least not so commonly appreciated, is the +peculiar fallacy and contradiction of specialism to which attention is +asked here. Once more is science to be seen as in a sense standing in +its own light, since it cannot be at once special and directly and +literally true and adequate. + +To begin with, specialism makes vision, the mind's vision as well as the +sensuous vision, dim or distorted. It may even be said to induce a +species of blindness or, as virtually the same thing, to create in +consciousness curious fancies, strange perversions of reality, seen not +with the natural eye at all, but with the imagination, always so +ingenious and so original, and one might almost add so hypnotic, in its +power of suggestion over the senses. In ways and for reasons neither +unknown nor unappreciated by most men, specialism even closes one's eyes +and makes one dream. It makes the specialist among physicians see his +special ailment in every disorder, and every disorder in his special +ailment, and this so truly that merely to consult him may be to fall his +victim. True, he may never be, perhaps can never be, wholly wrong, and +his transgressions, conscious or unconscious, have often helped +discovery, but nevertheless his situation, not to say that of his +patient, is full of humour, and always among other troubles he is under +the error of partiality or one-sidedness. And in science generally the +specialist always does and always must dream. His dreams may be waking +dreams, but he is always transgressing his own proper bounds without +ever [p.088] clearly comprehending that he has transgressed. Nor, be it +admitted, can this necessity of dreaming be a wholly unmixed evil to +science. However unfavourably it may reflect on the final, literal +validity of any special science, it only shows nature, or reality, +preserving her unity against the attempted violence of specialism. It +shows that in spite of the specialist being all eyes for his own +peculiar object, the mind that is within him and that is above all +else--such, apparently, is the nature of mind--responsible not +exclusively to the special and sensuous, but to the all-inclusive and +essential, and is therefore bound to conserve for experience the +interests of an indivisible universe in every particular thing, leads +him, devotee that he is, patiently repeating his sacred syllable, into +most wonderful visions. For the sake of inclusiveness and reality his +mind projects his would-be special consciousness into regions of strange +subtlety and marvellous logical construction; as Oriental priest or +Occidental scientist he is a specialist, yet not without a mind, or a +real, ever-present world, which refuses to be special, and as he dreams +he comes to see, yet knows not that he sees, the whole universe. A +seeing blindness, then, is this specialism; a monomania too, but, of +course, conventional and respectable. + +Mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology and psychology, not to +say also the social sciences, all depend upon the far-seeing mystical +visions of the mind, if not of the eye, upon the subtle, logical +constructions which their would-be scientific specialism, their desire +to know all things narrowly, forces upon them. Each one may be special, +but each as it [p.089] gains precision and as it becomes truly an +account of the facts, under the guidance of an exacting mind that at any +cost must present the whole to consciousness, conserves within itself +the common universe of them all by developing under what is called the +"scientific imagination" all sorts of indirections, disguises, +abstractions, logical constructions for the things and view-points of +the others. Each to be veracious has no choice but to be also voracious, +and when, for example, a physical scientist insists on seeing his world +only physically, while in reality it is of course, to say no more, a +world of chemical process also, and even of vital and mental character, +he is sooner or later constrained to admit to his thinking what above +were called abstractions or logical constructions, but what also pass +under the name of "working hypotheses." These are formally true to his +physical standpoint, but any outsider in order to explain why they are +hypotheses that _work_ must call them compensating or conserving +conceptions--in short, logical constructions that are, or that in part +involve, substitutes for the neglected points of view, being, as it +were, the secret agents of a universe refusing to be divided. To +characterize them in just one more way, a science's working hypotheses, +results as they are of science's blind but brilliant dreaming, many or +all of them, are doors in the panelling by which the other sciences are +quietly admitted to a room seemingly tightly closed to all comers. Every +science, and this the more as it becomes scientific, must entertain all +the others, however unwittingly. Tennyson's "flower in the crannied +wall," so often plucked, is nothing in [p.090] all-inclusiveness when +compared with a well-developed special science. No science, physical or +psychical, biological or social, ever does or ever can live to itself +alone. It may will to, but it does not and it cannot. All the others +live with it and for it--nay, they all live in it. + +Yet in actual practice, what are these working hypotheses that work +because they are compensating conceptions or doors in the panelling? No +veracity without unrestrained voracity is interesting as a formula, but +how verify it? Verification, or illustration, is now imperative. +Illustration, however, is very difficult for a reason which the +scientists now on trial must allow me to mention. The scientists know +too much about the sciences, or at least of them, while I know too +little. Still, as too much knowledge is often the source of obscurity, +and so only a form of ignorance, my situation is not altogether +hopeless. Thus, while it is true that the scientists are likely to +insist, even in the face of a mind bound to preserve the unity of an +indivisible universe in all the varied studies and conclusions of +science, that physics is only physics and chemistry only chemistry and +biology only biology and psychology only psychology, and while also all +illustrations must come from the field of their special studies, and may +therefore only set them more firmly in the wilful blindness of their +specialism, still the principle of a conserving mind, or an eternally +conserved truth or an indivisible reality, is a disturbing influence +which they cannot evade. Then, too, I am forgetting and allowing them to +forget a very important fact in scientific work to-day. In these [p.091] +times the running together or merging of different sciences, as if +through something of the nature of a chemical reaction, is a very +familiar phenomenon. It is as familiar, although not so loudly heralded, +as that of the railroads and industrial companies; and it has been +taking place with such persistence and confidence as actually to suggest +a natural affinity, each of the sciences involved having the rich +experience of discovering itself already in the others. This fact, then, +must make illustration less difficult, since, in a way that must appeal +to the scientist as no merely theoretical considerations can, it proves +or goes very far toward proving what is to be illustrated. Moreover, +specific illustration is hardly necessary in the sphere of the different +physical sciences, or again, in that of the social or the psychological +sciences, for within each one of these groups the affinity but just now +referred to has been very clearly exemplified, as in the interesting +case of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which nowadays are one +science, not three, and which can be held apart only on methodological +grounds, not metaphysically. Illustration, accordingly, appears, after +all, to be needed only for the specialism that separates the physical +and the psychical sciences. + +Physiological psychology and physically experimental psychology, both of +them suggestive of nothing less incongruous than seething ice, are sure +to come to mind at once; but also there is a mathematical psychology, +comparable with a developmental mechanics and biometrics in biology, and +hardly a single field of science, however apparently distant and alien +in nature and interest, has not contributed something [p.092] to +psychology or to epistemology, the general science of knowledge. But now +it is likely to be objected by some one that just because sciences, +whether in clearly related or in widely separated fields, are useful to +each other, just because they can serve, as they do, in the rôle of +methods of each other, they are not necessarily in any real and natural +affinity. May not their association be purely one of utility, involving +no surrender of special individuality and requiring in any case only +temporary relationship? The question is absurd. Any means that really +serves an end must have something in common with the end it serves; and, +again, an end that really sanctions a means, whatever the means be, must +itself be, at least potentially, which is after all to say essentially, +in and of the means employed. Different sciences, then, even physics and +psychology, or natural science and theology, cannot be even temporarily +methods of each other without partaking in some way, under some disguise +or other, through some peculiarity in their conceptions or in the +relations of their conceptions, of each other's subject-matter. + +In view of this fact of mutual participation of nature and idea among +the sciences that use each other, I have myself conceived, and in +another place have given expression to, what appropriately may be called +a physical psychology or epistemology.'[1] This new hybrid science is +especially concerned with nothing more nor less than those substitutes, +disguises, or [p.093] indirections, really present in all the physical +sciences, for the peculiar nature, for the peculiar sort of unity, +intensive instead of extensive or qualitative instead of quantitative, +or say also even vital and spiritual instead of physical, which is +always associated with mind. In conservation of matter, energy, what you +will, in plenitude, in motion as only relative and so as always under a +principle of uniformity and constancy or even immobility, in motion too +as inclining to vibration, which suggests poise or tension, or to +rotation, in which we see rest as well as motion, and finally, not to +extend what might be a long list, in the infinity of space and time or +of quantity, the physical sciences have hidden entrances for the silent, +usually unnoticed admission of what is psychical. But I may seem to be +jumping too far, to be presuming too much. Then put the case in this +way--not quite so direct, but to the same goal. All of these +conceptions, so necessary to a "working" physical science, need very +little examination to be seen to be treacherous to the physical +standpoint and its peculiar categories. One might as well try to make +water unsupported assume definiteness of form as to conceive the +conservation of energy or plenitude or the relativity of motion in the +character of what is physical, or at least of what is properly and +conventionally physical. Being treacherous, then, to the physical +science that has conceived them, they are, as was said, doors for what +is not physical; hidden doors, perhaps, but certainly doors to be opened +at will; and by them mind is bound to enter the physical world and its +sciences. To those familiar with the history of philosophy, the +speculation [p.094] of the early Greek thinkers, notably Anaximander, +Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, will afford illustration of the physical +view running, in spite of itself, into treacherous conceptions, and +eventually reaching the discovery of their treachery and with it the +idea of mind or _Nous_.[2] + +So for science is the material world, what properly it is often said to +be, a sort of dark mirror of man's inner life, of his psychical nature. +Physical science as consciousness of the outer material world is not, +and has itself shown that it cannot be, merely and exclusively physical. +By virtue of its working hypotheses, which are as secret doorways, it is +psychical also. Though darkly and indirectly it is our human +self-consciousness. Perhaps it is our self-consciousness rendered +impersonal or the self seen through the mirror of not-self or through +the disguise of what a photographer would call a "negative"; and, if it +may be so described, we are reminded of Burns:-- + + O wad some power the giftie gie us, + To see oursels as others see us! + It wad frae monie a blunder free us, + And foolish notion. + +Only the bonnie Robert himself was too much of a specialist in poetry to +see that natural science was the very thing he prayed for. + +And just as there is thus a physical psychology, so [p.095] in like +manner there is a psychological or epistemological physics, which in its +turn is concerned with the indirections, or doors in the panelling, +present in all the psychical sciences, for those very physical things +quantity and matter. The devil will have his due; even an optimistic +theology has to recognize him. And psychology has a sensuous self, the +self of the purely sensuous consciousness, which has always involved it +in a curious psychical atomism, a projection, in a word, of the physical +on the plane of the psychical. Sensationalism, too, as a psychological +theory in the history of thought has always been associated with +materialism. + +With regard, then, to the separation even of the psychical and the +physical sciences, which obviously has at its base the distinction +between mind and matter, we observe that our principle of affinity and +mutual participation still holds. By a sort of projection or +reproduction mind and matter both appear, the one openly, the other in +disguise, in each kind of science. However unawares, the physical +entertains mind; the psychical matter; and specialism, so far as +standing for anything more than scientific method, has to withdraw from +its last stronghold. The very dreaming of the scientific imagination is +its undoing. + +For other evidence against the integrity and adequacy of specialism, +showing how mind defies specialism and conserves its indivisible +universe, there are the following simple but certainly interesting +facts. All the different sciences, however special and however +apparently alien in subject matter, are wont to use the same general +methods--as, for example, the laboratory or experimental method or the +historical [p.096] method, the fatal consequences of which to the cause +of pure specialism may easily be inferred. History is famous for +overcoming differences. The common interest in mathematics must also be +mentioned, for mathematics, through its latest developments in danger of +turning into a pure logic, is quite independent of all those material +differences that separate the different sciences. It is formal and +universal, not special; so that the special science that would also be +mathematical appears somehow to be at least in aim as universal as it is +special. Perhaps mathematics more than anything else has fed the +voracity which we have seen veracity to exact. Has it not been the chief +agent in the virtual annihilation of the barriers between physics and +chemistry? This particular mingling of the special sciences has been +mentioned here already, but mathematics is threatening the party-walls +of all the other sciences also. Further, what are we to infer from the +idea that all sciences seek law? Certainly law is not special as science +has seemed to be. Somehow law is not many, but one. Many laws can only +be different phases or cases of one law. The very essence of law is to +be one and single and all-embracing. To put the case theologically, +could any one suppose that God made the laws of chemistry and sociology +and psychology as so many separate and independent enactments? On such a +supposition he had been a strange God indeed, lacking the very thing, +unity of being and character, which men have come to associate with +divinity, and what theology demands of God, science, even against its +own specialism, must demand of its object. Again, [p.097] the way in +which by implication, when not openly, one science is given to handing +over its hardest problems to another is very instructive as well as +amusing. Not many years ago I was present at a joint meeting, a +good-natured and doubtless honestly ambitious conference of biologists, +physiologists, and psychologists, and the addresses then made have often +reminded me of one of Thomas Nast's famous cartoons: A closed ring of +political grafters, none other than the notorious Tweed and his +followers, each pointing to his neighbour and putting on him the +responsibility of a very embarrassing situation. "Find the rogue" was +the artist's inscription; but with apologies for the association, we can +easily change it to "Find the special science." And, lastly, in this +list of the simple evidences against an adequate specialism there are +the conspicuous analogies other than those of common method or common +interest in law, which are always easily traced among the sciences, even +the sciences in the opposite camps of matter and mind, of any particular +time. Atomism in physics is contemporary with atomism in psychology and +with individualism in political philosophy; a monarchical politics with +an anthropomorphic, creationalistic theology and an also monarchical +physically centred astronomy, whether heliocentric or geocentric; and a +Newtonian astronomy, which really makes a law or force instead of an +individual body the centre and control of the solar system, with +democracy or constitutionalism, and with inductive instead of deductive +logic and naturalistic instead of dogmatic theology; so that at no time, +whatever the scientist's special interest, whatever his [p.098] special +syllable, can he fail to have at least a formal sympathy with others. +Such analogies among the sciences, so often recognized and so +absorbingly interesting to the students of the history of thought, if +not exactly doors in the panelling, may be said to make the panelled +partitions at least translucent if not unsubstantial and transparent. + +But the most important fact in illustration of our case against +specialism is yet to be considered, and unfortunately it takes us where +to some the waters may seem dangerously deep. Not only for reasons +already given and emphasized is the special science a misnomer, a +contradiction in terms, except in so far as specialism be taken merely +as an incident, not without its humour, of scientific method, but also +for the same reasons (and chiefly because the truth and reality of the +universe are bound to be conserved) every special science must sooner or +later develop its doctrines either into direct paradoxes or into tenets +that oppose and contradict each other. Thus, as has been shown, +specialism in science is itself a paradox, and, as now asserted, every +special science assuming precise form and real validity becomes a home +of paradoxical or contradictory doctrines. Indeed, these doctrines just +through their opposition appear be the most effective agents of that +compensation for neglected points of view, or conservation of all points +of view, which we are insisting is for ever forced upon the scientific +specialist. In the cases of physical epistemology and epistemological +physics we have already seen doctrines working to this end. In those +cases the real treachery to the avowed [p.099] standpoints lay in +virtual when not open contradiction. And, for the general principles, is +it not quite clear that nothing so surely as contradiction in any given +point of view, or in the specific doctrines developed under it, can +serve the interests of any other points of view? I have heard it said, +but by whom originally I do not know, that a paradox or contradiction +was only the mind on tiptoe struggling to look over a very high wall. + +The point is just this. The special science, because special or partial +and because at the same time courting scientific character or validity, +that is, conformity with reality, must be relative, formal, abstract, +artificial, unreal, but also for exactly the same reason it must +contrive to admit to its conceptions other view-points than its own. Its +own peculiar view-point is relative, but that it may attain actual +validity it is bound to overcome its relativity by admitting, secretly +perhaps yet not less truly, other points of view; and paradox or +contradiction is the natural door for such admissions, the original +view-point being tenacious to the last. Physics says: "I will be physics +through thick and thin; I will be physics though the heavens fall and +though dreadful paradoxes arise"; and in like manner psychology cries +aloud: "I will be psychology though I suffer from a splitting dualism +for my pains." Have you, gentle reader, never held and held and held to +some particular notion about things, modifying the details perhaps +little by little, but always imagining yourself strictly loyal to the +old, old view, and then suddenly discovered your consciousness alive +with contradictions? If you have, you know, possibly [p.100] too well, +the natural history of every special science, and also you can +sympathize deeply with the hen and her cherished chicks that proved ugly +ducklings. The special science, I repeat, must be hospitable, however +grudgingly, to strangers, though at the expense of becoming thoroughly +divided against itself. Such hospitality is an obligation--call it +logical if you will, or moral or metaphysical, for the name matters not +if it only suggests coercion--which is not less binding upon the +scientific spirit than upon the spirit of racial unity, always urgently +present in you and me. You and I may be so special or exclusive as to +drive strangers from our doors, but an impulse to call them back and +give them entertainment always follows--an impulse that is only the +necessary reaction of the expulsion. Humanity is indivisible in spite of +our asserted exclusiveness, and nature is indivisible, too, in spite of +specialism. Partiality of any sort, along any line, in any field, can +never long persist without, though often darkly and indirectly, though +by the way of bold, unrecognized, or unconfessed paradox, receiving from +outside all that it would exclude. I am not merely repeating. At first, +we saw only that the scientific imagination brought to the special +science as its working hypotheses certain conserving or compensating +conceptions; then, that these conceptions involved treachery to the +science that harboured them; but now we are face to face with the fact +that their complete, their most effective form is the paradox. + +Would that I had the ability to write with the penetration and the +clearness of statement that the [p.101] subject should certainly elicit, +upon the strange equanimity with which mankind, in science or in +practical life, receives and faces a direct negative or an open +contradiction. Perhaps the habit of easy division into positive and +negative, the ready resort to dichotomy, explains the mystery; perhaps +the fact that negation or opposition is and can only be in kind, that +there never is or can be any real change or need of change in a mere +negation, is at least an important factor in the case; perhaps, again, +the very hopelessness of the dualism, which a flat, unequivocal negation +plainly involves, is also to the point; but, beyond all peradventure, we +do accept the direct negative with a patience, even an indifference, +that may greatly assist our natural conservatism, whether of thought or +life, but that on being recognized certainly does arouse our wonder. +Good and its opposite evil, true and false, real and unreal, unity and +plurality, life and death, the indivisible and the divisible, rest and +motion, plenum and vacuum, immaterial and material, actuality and +illusion, lawfulness and lawlessness: these and so many other opposites +are the common stock-in-trade of our living and thinking, and we accept +and use them with a complacency that cannot easily be exaggerated. Yet +the negative in each and every one of them holds the future of the +universe in the palm of its hand. And the special scientist before his +inevitable paradoxes is as conservative and as complacent as the rest of +us. + +But it is one thing to say, or even to reason out cogently and +satisfactorily in every way, that the [p.102] special science, if both +persistently special and honestly scientific, must be sooner or later +inwardly contradictory and treacherous to itself, and it is quite +another thing to show the contradiction in actual cases. The actual +cases, however, are more easily found than many are likely to suppose, +and at mention they may even seem like forgotten memories, like things +which at some time we have noticed but become callous towards. Thus the +atom is through and through a self-contradiction, being itself only a +part of a divided reality, yet at the same time itself real only because +indivisible; and a science harbouring such an atom can hardly be said to +be unmixedly physical. The vibration, too, already referred to here as +motion in poise or at rest; infinity as one more quantity that is +significant because not quantitative; the sensation, a component element +of consciousness that cannot possibly be composite; the plenal physical +medium, which can be physical only if displaceable by other material +things, and so plenal only if not physical, and which has served besides +as an immobile yet infinitely elastic basis of motion or its +transmission; and, to give just one more instance, in moral and +political science the person, a self-existent, actively free being or +entity whose every deed as well as whose every thought is responsible to +something, being adaptive and therefore social, social with other +persons and with nature, and whose every virtue implies dependence and +an existence shared with something else: these are all also +self-contradictions. And in view of them who must not see how the +special sciences are always more than special, ever correcting [p.103] +in ways that may be unappreciated by themselves their partiality of +view, ever responsible to the totality of things even while they would +observe things only under selected view-points. Such contradictions, +once more, show mind loyal to what students of logic are familiar with +as the "universe of discourse." Even in science you cannot discourse +about anything without at least implicitly discoursing about everything, +although in order to do so you must speak in such paradoxes as the atom, +the person, the biologist's "vital unit," the vibration, the plenum, and +the like indefinitely. + +Nor is the scientist the only dreamer of paradoxes among men. Ordinary +practical life, as we have seen, teems with paradoxes. But, for purposes +of illustration, not to say also of giving greater breadth and depth to +the view, a reference to the situation in the religious consciousness +will have peculiar value here. A religion that supplements reverence for +a personal God, working miracles and caring for the elect, who even +nowadays are more or less elect, with belief in a devil, even nowadays +more or less personal, is clearly a blood relation to science, and it is +besides by no means so unnatural or irrational as is often declared, +particularly by the scientists. Its two errors, just because opposed, +conserve what is real, and no science can claim more than that. Indeed, +a science, notably a special science, like a theology, might well be +described as a system of mutually corrective errors, of abstractions +that, because abstract, distort the reality of things, but that also +because being at difference with each other and eventually [p.104] +falling into contradictory and so counteracting pairs are at least +parties to what is real and true. By hook or crook, by the hook of +abstraction or the crook of contradiction, every science gets in touch +with the universe as a whole, and so even with its errors is a "working" +science. The errors of many a religion, by their working together, have +not failed to save men. + +So we may return to the assertion that in its specialism, as well as in +its demand for objective knowledge, science is self-contradictory, and +with this conclusion established the exposure of science already offers +a very strong case for the doubter. Yet it does this only to the extent +and in the sense that contradiction warrants doubt. After all is said, +have we been only exposing science? Has attack been our only procedure? +Do we not find, as we reflect, that in our exposure there has also been +something very near to defence? Or, once more, through the science to +which we have taken exception have we not seen a science in which we +could believe? In the examination of science's objectivism we saw that +technique buried science, but--though we did not say this in so many +words--that there might be a resurrection. If fruitful in inventions +serviceable to life, science was justified in spite of its cultivated +objectivism, and the objectivity itself, besides an aid to accuracy, has +further significance as possibly an earnest of wider social +relationship, of broader and deeper life. The question of fact, too, if +appreciated and so made subordinate to the question of meaning, was even +allowed, and science, although at once formally conservative [p.105] and +materially negative and destructive, seemed after all to be the promise, +so to speak, of a new dawn for the very things denied. And now in what +has been said of the specialism of science, the same turning of the edge +of attack is all but manifest. Every special science is narrow and +relative--it is in the form of an unreal dream; but reality somehow +gives form to the dream, for there are always the compensating +conceptions. The contradictions by which the compensation has been +effected are, then, interpretable not more as causes of doubting science +than as reasons for confidence in it. Thus, to be tedious again, the +special science is relative and formal; it is a peculiar system of +ingenious abstractions that in so far are also errors; but its formal +character includes also contradiction; its errors are so related as to +correct and balance each other; so that, even in the face of our +necessary scepticism about it, science has been evident to us, as also +was the consciousness of ordinary life, as somehow always building +better than it knows or than its methods or ideals and doctrines viewed +only from without would lead one to expect. Moving in it we have +certainly felt the presence of, something, not yet called by name, which +is very like a principle or power of validity, preserving the reality of +things even in and through the relativity and contradiction under which +the things are seen. While the letter of our knowledge, even of our +scientific knowledge, must ever have an indeterminate future; while rest +or stability, ultimate reality or consistency is quite impossible to it, +still its inner, active spirit seems a source of faith that is +inviolable, that cannot be shaken. Different [p.106] quantities, such as +four and two, and sixteen and eight, do not make the same sum, much less +are they the same digits; but they are in the same ratio, and similarly +the truth of science would seem to lie in the ratio, the working +together, of the errors of science. Outwardly and materially changing +with time and with people, assuming ever new forms and comprising always +new doctrines, science nevertheless, as an active force, as a positive +resultant, is at least now conceivably always the same and applicable to +the same life. Even the Babylonians of an ancient day successfully +predicted eclipses, the very errors of their astronomy working together +for truth, exactly as the heresies of pagan religion seem to have +balanced each other to the preservation and the development of the life +which we of the present day and the Christian civilization are pleased +to call our own. + +Accordingly the science we have to doubt is also manifest to us as at +least a possible object of faith. The very causes of our doubt before +our very eyes have turned, or are in process of turning, into possible +bases of belief, and our confession of doubt as it proceeds is proving +ever more worth making. We are trying to be such honest doubters. We are +indeed such penitent believers. + + +III. SCIENCE WOULD BE AGNOSTIC. + +Still we have, thirdly, the agnosticism of science to consider and +appraise. Agnosticism confines knowledge to actual positive experience, +and in its form of "positivism" to an only tentative acceptance of +actual experience, and it is thus in effect an admission of [p.107] just +those limitations which have been found to belong to science as +objective and special. Objectivism and specialism have both shown +science to be standing in its own light, or at least to be standing in +the way of any direct and positive knowledge of reality. Whatever they +make possible to our virtual as distinct from our positive +consciousness, whatever indirectly or implicitly may through them belong +to our conscious life, formally and visibly, positively and directly, we +cannot know reality. In a word, science must and does recognize an +unknowable, or at least an unknowability in things, and agnosticism is +accordingly important among the three determining points of science's +circumference. But here is now our problem: Does science put the right +value upon, does it ascribe the right meaning to, its agnosticism? Is +the implied scepticism of the sort that we can cordially accept? +Especially, does science have any due appreciation of the negative, not +to say of the suggested dualism, in the opposition between the knowable +and the unknowable? + +Now both objectivism and specialism plainly involve aloofness, which is +perhaps only another word for what in the preceding chapter was called +abstraction. By the first of these two "isms" science is held aloof from +life; by the second, through the many divisions, from itself, that is to +say, part from part. Men who would be scientists withdraw, as we hear +them boast, from affairs, and as they withdraw it is also as if they put +on distorting and even discolouring glasses, through which in one and +another "special" way they would behold the "objective" world. Their +withdrawal [p.108] is thus not merely physical; it is also mental. To +look out of the window one must turn one's head and lift one's eyes and +adjust both head and eyes in other ways; but looking in general, whether +from the needs of an objective or a special view, also demands certain +pertinent adjustments, and the demanded adjustments make the resulting +experience just so far aloof, just so far discoloured and distorted. +Granted that these terms can be only relative in significance. To be +aloof from something is to have it equally aloof from you, and you +should be no more discredited by the separation than it. To be distorted +and discoloured is to be so only with regard to something that in its +own peculiar way may be equally transformed. Such relativity, however, +cannot deprive the differences involved of real significance; it can +only emphasize the general instead of the narrow, local application of +the terms found to be relative. What is relative is not unreal; it is +simply shared, like cousinship. So science, the looking of science, +means real aloofness and real disfiguration. + +The truth of this has already been apparent to us in a general way, but +it will be worth while here to be more specific. The space and time, for +example, in which scientists observe things are widely different from +the space and time of will and action. In ordinary life a difference is +felt between the world we know and the world we live, but the extreme +professional attitude of science greatly widens the differences. For +science space and time are quantitative, divisible, formal, +mathematically correct, and independent of what is in them, their +reality or qualitative [p.109] value to active life being hidden or at +least only very indirectly presented--I suggest, in the constant +opposition of their finiteness and infinity--while for will and action +they are qualitative, indivisible, inseparable from what is in them. Who +ever did anything in a composite, divisible space and time? Action in +such a sphere would be hopelessly jerky; with Zeno's flying arrow it +would just always rest _in statu quo_, though its _status in quo_ might +have an indefinite series of positions. Again, the scientists reduce +causation to mere uniformity of co-existences or sequences, which is no +real causation at all, being only so much passive existence or +mechanical process, while will or action is causation, the positive +interaction of things, the active relation, the vital unity, of what was +and is and is to be. It is true that here, too, the causation of real +life is darkly presented by science in a constant opposition between a +single first cause and an eternal series of causes, for such an +opposition makes real causation in an important way quite transcendent +of the mere differences of time; but, setting this concession aside, who +ever did anything in a world either of one cause active long ago or of +an infinite series of causes? And, once more, science needs elements, +while will or life is the eternal denial of elements or anything like +them. Says a well-known writer:[3] "It is one of the greatest dangers of +our time that the naturalistic (or scientific) point of view, which +decomposes the world into elements for the purpose of causal connection, +interferes with the volitional point of view of real life, [p.110] which +can deal only with values, and not with elements." The danger involved +will occupy us in a moment, but the bondage of science to elements, to a +composite world, to a thoroughly "decomposed" reality, will hardly be +questioned. Through contradiction, again, as in the chemist's component +atom, itself not composite; or the biologist's "vital unit," which bids +fair to be the master paradox of the day, science may darkly and +indirectly preserve the world of real life, the world that is neither +one element nor many, but in this case as in the others the indirection, +after all is said, only emphasizes the aloofness. + +So science is aloof, and in being aloof it disfigures and defaces +reality, and the argument for agnosticism is consequently unassailable. +No one more effectively has shown this than Immanuel Kant, although one +may question Kant's final appraisal of the fact. Here certainly is no +place for an exposition of the Kantian philosophy, but, briefly and +simply put, that philosophy has characterized space and time and the +relation of cause and effect, not to mention certain other very general +data of experience, as the _a priori_ forms of all valid, objective +knowledge, and being translated this is to say that these so-called +forms are the enabling attitudes of the merely looking consciousness or +the peculiar glasses which, as it were, the mind puts on whenever it +turns just to look. The typical Boston girl, according to the +cartoonists, is never without her glasses. In like manner the typically, +professionally correct looking consciousness, the observing, scientific +mind, is never without those enabling attitudes. Do you ask if they are +then only subjective attitudes? [p.111] They are subjective only as they +are relative. They are subjective only as they express the aloofness of +the scientific observer. And they are subjective, lastly, only in so far +as can be consistent with Kant's further characterization of them as in +every instance imbued with essential opposition or "antinomy." Remember +that an attitude that harbours opposition is always tip-toeing to +overcome the bounds of its own natural vision. Such an attitude cannot +be unmixedly subjective. + +But what now is the danger of science's agnosticism, of science's own +admission that being "objective" and "special," or being under the +constraint of certain enabling attitudes, or being at best only +tentative in all its doctrines, it is not and cannot possibly be +formally realistic? One might imagine, or expect, that confession of its +limitations would be good for the soul of science, and in truth we shall +certainly find some advantage resulting from the confession, but even +science's agnosticism is faulty in a serious way. The writer quoted +above has told us that the great danger always threatening science is +that the scientific will interfere with the volitional point of view, +and this is equivalent to fearing, in the interests of science, that the +scientist will forget his agnosticism and try to render what he cannot +know in terms of what he does know, or that the man of affairs will look +to science for his programmes of action. Such a fear, however, may play +to the professional conceits and the professional isolation and +abstraction of the scientific point of view, but it is very far from +grasping the true import of the conflict between knowledge and +unknowable [p.112] reality. I should myself assert, in partial if not in +complete opposition to Professor Münsterberg, that science's very +natural danger is that the scientific and the volitional point of view +will be kept apart, that the professionalism and the formalism and what +Kant called the phenomenalism of science will prevent their +interference. At least, this danger is just as great, and just as +seriously a danger, as the other. Most people know well enough that +keeping science and life or theory and practice apart has the effect of +making the former lose itself in a highly morbid intellectualism, and +the latter in the dead monotony, of a mere existence, sometimes +presumptuously styled "practical life," but such a result seems not to +trouble either Professor Münsterberg or the conventional scientist whose +cause the vigorous professor has espoused. In other regions, +fortunately, a formal disparity is not accepted as arguing to a natural +divorce, but is even considered, let it be said, a reason for +association; and as for the disparity between science and will, it is +quite true that life without science is lifeless and that science +without life is meaningless. + +Perhaps the crowning fault of the agnostic scientist is his lack of +humour. He takes himself too seriously. The lover, when his fair one has +formally disagreed with him, rejecting his suit with her outspoken "No" +and promising lasting friendship and good-will even to assurances of +assistance in his next venture, takes hope, smiles grimly within +himself, and feels sure still that she and he, however disparite, are +meant to live together for better or worse. But the rejected scientist +takes the unknowable's "No" as if it [p.113] were final, and then, +retiring to his study or laboratory, proceeds, though in a morbid, +abnormal way, to mingle the scientific and volitional standpoints every +time he writes a line or makes an experiment. We watch him as he goes, +and find his case not without its humour. If the true lover upon being +rejected were satisfied thereafter with caressing the lady's photograph, +then he and the agnostic scientist would be in the same class. + +But, as is needless to say, I am not writing a novel. So, romance aside, +unquestionably the forms and doctrines of the scientific consciousness +are peculiar, being, as has been shown, logically subtle, imaginary and +innocent of direct practical realism, being, in short, the inhabitants +of a world quite their own, and to impose them intact upon active life +cannot fail to bring disaster, the usual disaster of a misfit. Yet, let +us bring to mind, in the first place, that the scientific consciousness +is not essentially different from consciousness in general, and that +consciousness in general deals, and always must deal with artificial +forms, with symbols, constructions, and transformations; and in the +second place, that it always knows with some measure of sophistication +that what it deals with is symbolic or constructed. Conscious creatures, +from the moment they begin to draw breath, are trained to see one thing +objectively and to understand or construe quite another thing for active +expression. There is no visual sensation without muscular sensation, and +most men, if not all men, have really learned in the long years of their +own and their race's experience to get along without _seeing_ [p.114] +and yet also without foregoing the sensations in their muscles! Man's +long training, in a word, has taught him to use what he sees as not +direct reality, but only a symbol of reality, and so in volition always +to allow for the "practical" unreality of the objects before his +consciousness. The mere words bread and butter, for example, or even the +visible things in a restaurant window, have never brought satiety to a +hungry child, nor do I myself fear that they ever will. Moreover, the +long training that is the surety against danger, and that at the same +time has made man keenly awake to the value as well as the humour of +symbolism, is just what has rendered the high development of +professional science possible, and is also what makes possible and +properly controls the application of science to practical life. + +It may now be asserted that the facts are not in accord with the view to +which I have just given expression, that sometimes, and very of ten too, +the forms and doctrines of science are imposed without modification or +translation upon practical life. Thus, though the names for edibles +themselves as present to the eye--or to any other sense--are not normal +substitutes for food, nevertheless some people, whether from poverty or +from indigestion, have fed on them, just as they have taken long +journeys with maps, time-tables, and guide books. In education, too, the +formal conditions of science have suggested object-lessons and pure +induction; in political organization we have had programmes of extreme +elemental individualism, of lawless democracy, and of abstract communism +and Christian Socialism; in religion God [p.115] has been like a thing +seen, perhaps a tree walking or a man working, whether with hoe or rake +or with other implement, perhaps a trident, and belief has been +identified with an articulate dogma or formula; and many a realistic +novel, treating the details of life as a scientist might treat them, or +many a psychological novel, more problematic than artistic, has been put +upon the market. But what can all this mean, undoubtedly true as it is, +save that science belongs to life, yet is applied to it with difficulty +and only under conditions of conflict? In the case of the edibles, +poverty or illness, both of them incidents of conflict, is responsible +for the unnatural substitution, and in cases of education, politics, +religion, and literature, the substitution is equally a makeshift which +the conditions of conflict impose upon life. An individualistic +programme will not work, nor will a purely socialistic programme work. +Mere induction will not educate. No visible God ever was divine, and no +articulate creed ever was true. Life is a game throughout; its vital +character, its very integrity is its experimental character; it is not a +settled, abstractly perfect thing. Life is dynamic, not static. +Accordingly it must move forward by its mistakes, or by storm and stress +of the incongruous and misapplied, being inspired, not by somebody's +complacent optimism, but by a sacrificial, always heroic idealism; and +its scientific practices, however truly a mixing of things formally +incongruous or disparite, are just aids to its reality. Moreover, those +science-formed practices are always in some measure sophisticated. Human +nature is rather a fine thing in its way, as [p.116] many a man has +flattered himself and his kind by saying. Witness the homeless, +ill-clad, starving child feeding over the odorous grating and before the +well-stocked window of the restaurant, and feeling, if not actually +saying: "As long as I cannot have and eat, it is good to smell and see." +Witness, also, the educator or the statesman or the priest or the +novelist. Each knows his makeshift and feels some of the humour of it, +and in his closet, when not before his public, acknowledges the violence +to which he is lending himself. + +And another fact, besides that of the actual applications of science, +which, however violent, prove the need as well as the dangers, and +besides the sophistication, perhaps also the sense of humour, which +always accompanies the applications and at least tempers their violence, +must also be mentioned. Those science-formed programmes always go in +pairs. Individualism and socialism, realism and mysticism, Epicureanism +and Stoicism, orthodoxy and heresy are inseparable, socially and +historically; and the effect of such pairing is plainly to correct +whatever of violence the sense of symbolism and the sophistication and +the humour of the time may be unequal to. Thus in the movements and +programmes of society for any given misfit there is always a +counter-misfit. Possibly human life, at least as socially organized, is +only a competition of misfits, its programmes coming, not through the +acquired supremacy of one side or the other, but through the constant +mediation, the balancing and interacting of the two, and the misfits are +perhaps exclusively the gifts of science or at least [p.117] of the +observer's consciousness generally, and man is at once serious and +humorous enough to impose what science gives on the real life of his +fellows, as a ready-made clothier might on a stray countryman; but is a +city, then, to have no Hyam, and is the life of society also to dispense +with the gifts of science because they are imperfect? There are worse +things than clothes not made to measure or than the men who sell or buy +them. There is the life that never changes its old clothes for new. +There are the clothes that never get on the market at all. + +Accordingly the interference of the scientific with the volitional point +of view is, to say the least, not the only danger which the scientist or +the practical man needs to recognize. There is also the danger that the +disparity between science and life, or between knowledge and the +unknowable, will be construed to mean that the two are never to live +together. Science may be innocent of any direct accord with reality, +being in form quite innocent of a real realism, but after all, whether +by itself or in its various applications or renderings in human life, it +is so innocent only in a qualified sense, only with reference to the +form of its specific doctrine and attitudes taken individually. As +itself a living whole, part acting upon part, each abstraction corrected +by some counter-abstraction or perhaps by some inner self-opposition, as +conscious too of its own conditions and limitations, as sophisticated +and even humorous, both for all logical purposes and for all purposes of +applicability in the life of society it is realism itself. As harbouring +what above was called, in so many words, an [p.118] inner active spirit +of veracity or power for reality, a constant agent of validity and +applicability, it is itself a party to the real life. + +But return to the idea of the divorce of science and life, which is such +an easy conclusion of agnosticism. If divorced, it was said, they are +lost, the one in a morbid intellectualism, the other in the dead +monotony of mere existence. Now, in view of the fact that many have +found such a divorce to possess the highest ideal value, it seems worth +while to remark that after all is said the separation can be only +apparent, not real. Even if we neglect wholly the writing and the +experimentation of the scientist, as volitional as they are scientific, +and the practical consciousness, moral or prudential, of the disciple of +the "real life," as scientific as it is volitional, we shall find such +to be the case. We know men who have what may be styled, and what +sometimes is abusively styled, a double life. They have their science, +perhaps their laboratories and their books and their own pet doctrines, +and they have also their social affiliations in business and in politics +and in religion; and, whether it be ideal or unideal, admirable or +reprehensible, their life certainly does seem double, because their +sociology and their business, or their political theory and their party +ties, or their biology and their religion simply will not mix; but their +apparent duplicity has apparently little or nothing to rest upon. It may +count as two, numerically, but such counting never makes being. Men +should count less and think more. On the terms of such a numerical +separation, as was said, the science can be only formal, the life only +dead; but such a [p.119] science and such a life make one existence, not +two; and, however amusing the conclusion may be, it is nevertheless true +that the science, for just what it is, has been applied, making the life +just what it is. Are scientific technique with its aloofness and logical +abstractions and a life that in its own special, affairs can be only +conventional and ritualistic, or say routine in the study or the +laboratory and routine in the church or market-place, are these so +different as really to be, whatever the appearances, independent and +distinct? They may count as two for being in just so many different +places, but the man, scientist or practitioner, is always necessarily +with himself, and in this sense never in more than one place, so that in +character and value the two routines are one and the same. Moreover, the +ennui which together they are sure to induce must end sooner or later in +a common cry for help, in a passion for reality that will turn each +toward the other with an irresistible appeal. + +Once more, then, there is danger for science not merely in the +interference, but in the obstinate independence of the scientific and +the volitional point of view. A protected science may have no less, but +also it has no more justification than a protected industry. Competition +with life and will may often bring science low, degrading its methods +and impairing its professional success, but protection involves at least +equal risks. Professor Münsterberg--but may he forgive me my Homeric +epithets--is a too zealous epistemologic protectionist. + +The difficulty as to the agnosticism of science may be presented in +another way. Dismissing all thought [p.120] of either interference or +divorce and all thought of the scientist forgetting his agnosticism or +taking it too soberly, we may say that the scientific agnostic, being +under the spell of the scientific way of dealing with things, is +disposed to treat the unknowable as if it were but one more thing or +fact among all the other things or facts with which he is wont to deal. +The world for him is then composed of two departments or groups, which +like a good scientist he classifies and labels, the knowable and the +unknowable; and nothing could be simpler or more natural. Though the +point of what follows may be lost in its appearance of mere wordiness, +so to speak, the world of his interest, of his formal knowledge, +includes, among the other things, that which he knows to be unknowable, +and with the inclusion and the knowledge of unknowability he imagines +his responsibility to the unknowable both to begin and end. Or, again, +the agnostic scientist regards the unknowable as something apart from +the knowable, as something not for him to know and also not having any +vital, intrinsic relations to what he does know, but something +nevertheless objectively presentable to a creature with knowing +faculties altogether different from his. The unknowable is thus for him +still the object of a looking and thinking consciousness, yet never of +his looking and thinking consciousness; it is knowable, and formally +knowable, yet not to him, not through any of the forms of knowledge, the +enabling attitudes, at his command. And nothing, I say once more, could +be simpler or more natural. But, properly and professionally scientific +as it may be to give to agnosticism this turn, it is very [p.121] +decidedly an excellent example of professional blindness, being a sort +of _reductio ad absurdum_, of the scientific point of view, for plainly +it treats the unknowable as a matter, first, of knowledge--the scientist's +knowledge of its unknowability, and as a matter, second, for +knowledge--the knowledge of the creature with the different faculties. +Surely such treatment is not honestly agnostic. Science, therefore, if +it would be honest as well as scientific, must forget its +professionalism and take the negative of the unknowable in another way. + +In what way? In making reply to this question I must resort to a +distinction, which I have frequently found useful, between the dogmatic +and the merely instrumental. Thus agnosticism may be dogmatic, as the +conventional scientist would hold it, flatly declaring for an +unknowable, or it may be instrumental, esteeming the unknowability in +things, not merely as relative to the existing conditions of knowledge, +but also as a constant demand upon science that it never rest in itself, +that it for ever treat its results as only a means to some end. So +viewed an instrumental agnosticism is also teleological, but not in any +sense of a fixed and static telos. Telic character or purposiveness and +fixity are like oil and water. Whatever the traditional theologian may +think or say, they simply will not mix. + +Of the two kinds of agnosticism, the first hardly calls for further +treatment, for it is plainly that which has been recently examined and +found to be more scientific, or at least more professionally scientific, +than fully and personally honest, and the second is [p.122] very nearly +akin to positivism, but must be scrutinized closely, for it certainly +leads beyond the usual bounds of positivism. The positivist in science, +as has been indicated above, accepts only actual positive experience and +accepts that only tentatively. The working hypothesis is thus the master +of his mind. What he knows, however well established in his actual, +positive consciousness, is at best only relative and mediative. But--and +just here appears the defect of his position, or just here we see him +still only the professional scientist--the mediation which absorbs his +interest is merely one of formal knowledge; what he knows always leads +him just to more knowledge; his formulated hypotheses as they are tested +are but aids to new formulations: whereas, besides this mediation, there +always is another at least equally significant, for knowledge under the +very conditions of its rise and formulation must for ever be a means to +something besides mere knowledge. Recognition of this other mediation, +accordingly, is all-important to any final appraisal of the meaning of +agnosticism, to an appraisal that is justified just through being +superior to the special interests of formal and professional science. Is +it not one of the functions of the various negatives in our human life +really to save life from the narrowness of its various professional +abstractions, and is not the attitude of agnosticism but one of these +negations? + +And now, if for a paragraph or two I may be even offensively abstruse, +the conditions of our positive experience, of our actual knowledge, are +such, and are commonly recognized to be such, that there must always be +an unknown. Every working hypothesis [p.123] by implication points to an +unknown. It is equally true, however, that the conditions of positive +experience are such that there is no fixity to this unknown; and the +unknown changes in consequence, both in possible content and in possible +quality or value, with every change in knowledge. But _always_ an +unknown which is _never_ the same unknown must mean something more than +merely a yet-to-be-known; yes, it must mean even more than an +infinitely, eternally remote yet-to-be-known, for its being always, or +its being infinitely distant, simply makes it something besides positive +knowledge actual or possible. It must mean something which, though not +knowledge, is nevertheless in knowledge, now and always; something +served by all knowledge but itself other than any knowledge; something, +then, which exceeds or transcends whatever the formal enabling +conditions of knowledge are capable of presenting, but is itself +intimately and vitally involved in the presentation; or, once more, +something which is not at all in the character of a separate unknowable +thing or sphere of things, nor even of a separate part in the things +known or knowable, but is in the character rather of an unknowability, +perhaps in a sense a relative unknowability, belonging to the very +things and to every part of the very things that are known or, let me +say, inhering in the bare possibility of all knowledge. Must there not +be a sense in which just that which makes knowledge possible is itself +quite impossible to knowledge? Who makes a law must be superior to the +law, or "legally supreme," and what makes knowledge possible can hardly +be fully and directly an object [p.124] of knowledge. Given actual, +positive knowledge, then, and there must always be not merely an +unknown, but also an unknowable; an unknowable, however, that is in and +of the knowledge, not in place or in character a thing by itself. + +I said I should be abstruse, and I have not yet finished. In fully +appraising agnosticism we need to consider at close range another idea +of the positivist. Thus for the positivist knowledge is not a having, +but a getting--on the principle that unto him that hath shall be given; +not a knowing, but a questioning and seeking; not a being, but a +becoming--that has its ground in a being so real as to be without fixity +of form. And this is plainly equivalent to making movement and action +essential to the very nature of the knowing mind or to making knowledge +dynamic instead of static, and infinitely plastic--even like life +itself, that is always greater than its cross-sections or specific +forms. But in general to an active nature nothing can ever be quite +external; to a truly active nature there can be no essential +impossibility. For reflect. The mere existence of anything external or +of anything impossible would in just so far remove and deny the +intrinsic character of the activity; in just so far it would set the +supposedly active being in fixity of life and definiteness of form. For +an essentially active nature, therefore, all things--all things in +heaven and earth--are both present and possible, and so, specifically, +if that active nature be the knowing mind there can be no unknowable +that is at the same time alien and altogether impossible to the knower. +Even the very forms of the knower's knowledge must for ever compass +[p.125] pass more than they may visibly present. The knowing itself in +its own right and nature must be more than formal knowing, or than the +"objective," "special" science, in which the formal knowing has its +professional realization. And the knower, as he knows, in and through +his knowledge must always be compassing just that which is not +impossible to him, but only unknowable--that is, impossible merely to +his direct, formal knowledge. Is the inedible or the invisible or the +impenetrable or the unbearable or the illegible or even the +unintelligible ever wholly impossible? Such negatives, and in fact all +negatives, besides saving life from the narrowness of its various forms, +do this positive thing: they open the door of life's wider, nay, of +life's infinite opportunity or possibility, and at the same time they +render those various definite forms really mediative or instrumental, +making them parts in an essentially purposive existence. With just this +meaning, then, a meaning larger and deeper than that usual to +positivism, the attitude of the agnostic is instrumental and +teleological. Agnosticism simply endows the knower--must we not even put +our conclusion so?--with a wider freedom than that of knowledge, and yet +also makes his knowledge both share and serve the wider freedom that is +given. + +Instead, then, of pointing to a known "unknowable," before which either +some non-human creature or some human vice-regent of such a creature is +not obliged to be so knowingly humble, instead of establishing the +conceit that knowledge or science is wholly for its own sake and so of +divorcing knowledge and real life, instead of making castes out of the +social [p.126] classes of those who look and those who do, the +unknowable must be taken to point to the necessary unity of knowledge +and life, of theory and practice, to the fact that all looking is +incident to a running and before a leaping, that all knowledge is +responsible to life, and that only life, however directly unknowable, +can ever inform knowledge. It even suggests I think with Carlyle that +"the end of man is action, not thought, though it were the noblest." +Yet, in truth, though its own emphasis may thus exalt action, it cannot +mean any depreciation of thought or knowledge, only their enlistment in +the service of life. + + * * * * * + +At this point it would be interesting to show in detail how action--that +is, volition or application to life as central to the meaning of +agnosticism--is not only the logically appropriate nor yet only the +sentimentally ideal, but also the inevitable, the inner and actually +real motive, the natural outcome of the scientific standpoint in each +one of its three attitudes. Such a showing might follow historical and +sociological lines, or it might appeal to psychology or it might be +abstrusely logical, but I can ask attention only to a few suggestions of +so general a character as not to be easily classified. + +The natural consequence of objectivism is something like that attributed +by many to modern militarism, since it ends by inducing the very thing +it claims to prevent. An objective science discloses the mechanical +nature of man's environment, besides making man himself also a good deal +of a machine. But a machine, whether environment or personal being, is +always a [p.127] tool whose fine, accurate adjustments are just so much +presented opportunity that by a sort of hypnotism turns the scientist's +consciousness into that of an effective agent in the world. Somehow a +real machine must move, and in the case before us with the movement the +asserted distinction between looking subject and seen object collapses +hopelessly. Witness such a collapse, as the runner, who has been +studying the stream before him, takes his leap, or in history as an age +of self-consciousness, conventionalism, and utilitarianism, is followed +by the rise of Napoleon. So does objectivism pass over into action. As +for the special Science, it may be impractical, because partial, but we +have seen how at least formally it loses its partiality, becoming even +all-inclusive, indirectly compensating for its narrowness of view and so +becoming virtually co-extensive with all its associates in science. The +dividing partitions may still stand, but only as unsubstantial forms +wholly transparent and ineffective, so that the undivided universe is +really present to consciousness. The undivided universe, however, as +present to consciousness, is a call for will, since it cannot be fully +realized in any formal consciousness. The natural decline of an asserted +specialism, then, or the development of specialism into a mere form +without substance, into a virtual universalism, makes science +applicable. It makes science applicable, for in the first place it gives +freedom from the bondage of mere special technique, just as, for +example, the decline of religious--or irreligious?--sectarianism, a form +of specialism certainly, is sure to free religion from the bondage of +ritual, and in the second place, as was the [p.128] fate of objectivism, +it makes the distinction between self and not-self, subject and object, +man and nature, only a formal one, since the real unity of the objective +world is exactly that in which the self has its true realization. In +like manner a religion turned non-sectarian shows man truly living and +moving and having his being, not aloof from God, but in God. Thirdly, +whether because of the freedom from technique or ritual or because, as +the waters of science become quiet with the union of its many streams, +the objective world does clearly mirror the image of the self, the +decline of specialism, like the decline of sectarianism, brings what +some are pleased to call the liberation of the human spirit. The +psychologist would call it the development of knowledge into will--in a +word, the application of science, and the historian would record it as +the dawn of a new era. Psychologically and historically the human spirit +is liberated and nature is let loose at the same time. Details can +always be observed objectively and specially or separately; the whole, +on the other hand, is bound to draw the observer into itself and so to +change the observation into motive and will. And, lastly, as for +agnosticism, suffice it to say, in addition to what has been said, that +the suppressed passion for reality to which agnosticism must always +testify ensures in good time the assertion of the volitional as distinct +from the merely scientific point of view. Whatever this may mean +psychologically, historically and sociologically it means that a time of +agnosticism leads to all sorts of applications of science, such as +those, for example, in legislation and in industry. In morals [p.129] +and religion, too, the same wish and will to use the results of science +shows itself, as in the social settlements, in scientific charity, in +the "institutional" church, and in the university extension movement. +Agnosticism, marking, as it always does, dissatisfaction both with the +uninformed and with the conventionally informed life, and also rendering +mere formal knowledge, however logically correct and thinkable, unreal +or artificial, calls for a larger freedom of life through the mediation +of knowledge. + +But interesting as such reflections as the foregoing are, and +interesting also as it would be to undertake an account of will in +general in its relation to a consciousness which in so far as scientific +is always artificial and symbolic, and is in particular, as we have +found, always a poise between opposing points of view,[4] I must bring +to an end this rather lengthy examination of the standpoint of science. +If I have not already tarried too long, the special task of this volume +certainly does not warrant further attention even to so important a +department of human experience. + +In conclusion, then, it is now quite apparent that science is a fruitful +field for the doubter. Science lacks self-sufficiency. Socially it means +the rise of a caste, and logically it involves abstraction and +consequent division against itself. Its most cherished ideals, as shown +in its attitudes and methods, are chimerical, or impossible. In general +and in particular it has a [p.130] paradoxical standpoint, being not +less given to contradictions than ordinary consciousness. + +But, as must be added, the case for the doubter of science has led also +toward a belief in science. Not infrequently in the course of the +foregoing discussion it must have seemed even as if belief rather than +doubt were the controlling motive. A little child has said that faith +consists in "believing what you know to be untrue," and our present +state of mind cannot be far from such a faith. Actually the science +which we may believe in is the science of which we are also confirmed +doubters. We doubt the formal attitude and the formal doctrines just +because they are abstract, phenomenal, paradoxical, but at the same time +we have to believe in the spirit--there seems to be no other word +available--as an ever-present agent of validity, because, in spite of +all, the very incongruities save these formal doctrines from their +apparent artificiality and abstraction, and put them in touch with what +is whole and real. And if, as was suggested, the scientific +consciousness is only the specially developed consciousness of ordinary +life, then we have gained also a new confidence even in the unreflective +paradoxical consciousness of everyday life. Yet, that we may more fully +comprehend what this means, we shall next consider at some length the +possible value of the defects in experience which have now been +observed. Ideas, which have appeared heretofore as little better than +hints or suggestions, can then be presented in clearer form. + + +[1] See an article: "Epistemology and Physical Science--A Fatal +Parallelism," in the _Philosophical Review_, Vol. VII, No. 4, July, +1896. + +[2] See articles: "Pluralism: Empedocles and Democritus," in the +_Philosophical Review_, Vol. X, No. 3, May, 1901; "A Study in the Logic +of the Early Greek Philosophy--Being, not-Being, and Becoming," in the +_Monist_, Vol. XII, No. 3, April, 1902; and "The Poetry of Anaxagoras's +Metaphysics," in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Method_, Vol. IV, No 4. + +[3] See Münsterberg's _Psychology and Life_, p. 267. Houghton Mifflin +and Co., 1899. + +[4] For an interesting account, mainly psychological in standpoint, of +will as involving such a poise, see Münsterberg's _Grundzüge der +Psychologie_, Vol. I, chap. xv., Leipzig, 1900. + + + +[p.131] + +VI. + +POSSIBLE VALUE IN THESE ESSENTIAL DEFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. + + +An original sin, or an essential defect, must somehow be for some good +purpose. At least, if a general faith in the ultimate propriety of all +things has any ground to stand on, such must be the case. The sin or the +defect cannot be unmixed; its very originality, its essentiality, must +line it, though it be the blackest of clouds, with some silver. Theology +has sometimes forgotten this, but an honest doubter cannot afford such a +lapse. + +Yet before examining the possible worth of the original defects of +experience, or, as some might regard the present enterprise, before +attempting to give the devil himself a "character," we must recall the +various steps of our general undertaking as it has progressed so far. We +have been, in the first place, occupied with a thorough-going confession +of doubt, with the greatest possible candour hunting down all the +reasons for the attitude of doubt which experience affords, and so far, +in the second place, we have found doubt justified, whether for good or +for ill, because of its potential when not actual universality among +men, of its character as a condition of all conscious life, of [p.132] +its importance to real active life and deep experience, of its intimacy +even with habit, and of its natural sense of dependence and consequent +impulse to companionship with nature, man and God, but more than +all--and this was the special interest of the last two chapters--because +of the paradoxical and self-contradictory nature of all human +experience. As regards the last point, our ordinary consciousness, the +often-boasted consciousness of common sense, was found to harbour a +widespread, very persistent duplicity towards such vital things as +reality, wholeness or unity, space and time, the causal relation, +knowledge, moral freedom and natural law; and science, to which many +when dislodged from their ordinary standpoint have been accustomed to +retreat with greatest confidence and hope, was examined with similar +results. Science was found in its rise to involve abstraction of +interest and disruption of life, and in its avowed point of view to +be--suppose I say at this point--impossible but contradictory. So, in a +word, as a clinching argument for doubt, as an argument that at least on +the surface has less of hope in it than any of the others, we are face +to face with the bare, hard fact that in the very nature of human +experience, besides the relativity and instability and subjectivity, +there dwells a spirit of positive violence. Contradiction is just one +phase of the error to which all men are said to be addicted. As a +background for the inconsistent theologian, the fickle woman, the +shifting politician and other equally double-faced monsters, we see +both-sidedness, individually and to a certain extent socially, to be a +basal habit of human nature, [p.133] and if the doctrine of original sin +is tenable at all, in just this fact it would appear to have its +strongest support. _Humanum est errare_ may be translated: Man is most +human when hopelessly divided against himself. + +But just here our confession of doubt has reached a critical stage; +since in experience apparently at its very worst, as if in a medley of +discords we have caught a promise of real harmony, and so something from +which to get genuine hope. In the very habit of duplicity or +contradiction we have again and again had suggestion of an agent of +validity, a power for adequacy in experience, which would hold even a +phenomenal, relative, partial experience to a real world. In short, +really the strongest reason for doubt is possibly a ground of belief; +or, as was said in substance at the close of the foregoing chapter, the +very experience of which we are already confirmed doubters is, after +all, just the experience which we seem to see our way to believing in. + +Since the time of the great Leibnitz, and probably since the time +self-conscious man drew his first breath, all genuine optimism has +caught its most assuring vision of what was good, not in something quite +apart from what was evil, but in and through evil itself, as if what is +evil must be ever building better than it seems or than it knows. Very +much as mathematics has viewed the negative quantity as an integral part +of the whole system of quantities, so in the person of +Leibnitz--statesman, historian, scientist, mathematician, and +philosopher--and I imagine in the person also of you or me, though we +may not claim the same [p.134] authority, the human mind has been wise +and deep enough to see evil, representing all the negative things of +life as an organic part of the best possible world, even of the world +created by an infinite God. At least since Leibnitz's time, I say, +optimism has generally justified itself, not by denial of evil in the +world, but in and through evil. Not long ago a young man who was perhaps +more profound and reflective in his habits of mind than wise in his +manner of statement, said to me that the most spiritual truth as yet +disclosed to him was the identity of God with the devil. A shocking +declaration, of course; yet, to say the least, not very far from the +very spiritual idea, welcome to most, if not to all, that the conviction +of sin is the beginning of salvation, or that the consciousness of +ignorance is the very ground of wisdom. And here, similarly, belief +within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only +in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory +experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has +certainly been leading towards. + +Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his +ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, +exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and +with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest +kind of sympathy. In fact, upon just this sympathy I have been depending +in the development of the argument of this book. But human nature, +however sympathetic, is really superior to any momentary discomfiture, +and most if not all men sooner or later come to value highly [p.135] +even their once discomfiting inconsistencies. "I am glad," we seem to +hear a fellow-being say, "that after all, in spite of myself, I did +recognize the other side. You abused me and called me double; yet so +doing you were double too. I see now that my duplicity saved me, not, +however, for your view or for another's, but for the both-sided and +true, which we both shared and served"; and exactly such a reflection on +the inconsistencies of experiences, in their less or in their more +fundamental manifestations, is the burden of the present chapter. Again, +to one who complained that with every breath he took he had to +contradict himself, respiration being as necessary to his breathing as +inspiration, just as in walking falling is as necessary as rising, we +might properly and satisfactorily reply: "You are really alive, sir," +and just this answer is also quite pertinent to any who might be +disposed in their doubting to despair over the essential duplicity of +human experience. Is not experience more than any one idea or any one +ideal? Being really alive, is it not infinitely more than this or that +thing, than this or that place or time, than this or that power or will, +than this or that point of view? And, if more, what so surely as +universal duplicity and self-opposition can ensure at once its vitality +and its integrity? + +I am not forgetting or wishing my readers to forget that there are other +defects in experience besides this of self-opposition, besides +experience's habit of never failing to induce its own conflicts; but no +defect seems to me so central or so conclusive as this, and none is at +the same time so clear in its testimony to the intimacy of doubt and +belief. [p.136] Subjectivity, relativity, phenomenality, artificiality, +partiality, and instability--certainly an imposing and appalling list, +though logically I must suspect it of being at least a +cross-division--are all noteworthy defects; but supposing the list exact +and complete, we must recognize that all these either beget +contradiction or are begotten by it. Contradiction is just the life or +the heart of the interesting family to which they belong, and so in +applying our thinker's stethoscope to that heart we shall have +determined the hold upon life of the whole race. + +Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem +worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they +seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they +warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we +may rest a genuine case for belief. + +Thus, for the first of the five, contradiction incites and even in +itself implies movement; it requires, or positively it is, action. As a +mode of thinking, as a logical form, it is the way, perhaps the only +possible way, in which the mind can, so to speak, make a cross-section +or take a picture of activity or give the semblance of fixity, the +formal appearance of static nature, to what is dynamic. The photographer +trying for a portrait of reality might ask it only to look pleasant, but +the logician, for whom reality was essentially dynamic, would demand +manifest opposition, for in no other way could his art, limited to +conditions of rest,[1] [p.137] be equal to its subject. Where experience +is contradictory, then, there is movement, whether for that which is +known or for him that has the knowledge. In your character or mine, so +like a lover's unselfish selfishness in its apparent inconsistencies, in +our double views about reality or unity or law, in a +subjective-objective science, in an agnostic philosophy, in all these +the contradictions are only the marks of essential unrest, of necessary +movement, that make the picture possible. For a world of opposites there +can be no peace. The very things opposed are themselves fluent and +unstable, and that third something, the _tertium quid_, a picture of +which the opposition tries to be or to which the things opposed +necessarily point, belongs, as Alice in Wonderland seems to have +discovered, to yesterday or to-morrow, never to to-day. + +But, secondly, contradiction, at least as here understood, is an +expression, or in experience a means to the expression, as well as to +the maintenance, of real unity. In general this is because real unity +cannot take sides, and so can never reside in anything that is, but must +rather be served by the co-operation of all things and in particular by +their mutually corrective or balancing differences. This no doubt will +appear to some readers as just one more example of a philosopher's +impossible subtleties, as a mountain with its top in so rare an +atmosphere that the common man would not dare to climb it if he could. +Yet, suppose together we rise to the heights of this seeming +impossibility by a little unprejudiced study of the conditions, +remembering that the summits of very wonderful mountains, plainly +impossible of ascent, have often been reached [p.138] from the other +side, and that difficulties of breathing are often due to a needless +exhaustion. To take a first step, then, contradiction is only +difference, or contrast, at its limit. Naturally there is some +opposition, some mutual resistance, in all difference, in that, for +example, between one man and another, or one thing and another, between +religion and art, red and green, or warm and hot, and often the +difference or the opposition seems very slight; but contradiction, so +called, is only this difference abstracted and unrestrained--it is +difference at its worst or best, difference as only opposition, or, once +more, difference where any possible unity of the things opposed has lost +all material ground or all chance of actual, visible form, and has +become, accordingly, at most merely an empty, abstract principle. +Contradiction, then, is difference so wide that unity seems wholly +betrayed rather than served or maintained. A real unity, however, +requires for its realization just the freedom from material form or +ground which such extreme difference would force upon it. It therefore +gains instead of losing reality by passing into the world of the +materially and visibly empty and abstract, or, say, by leaving behind +any hope of a finite residence and entering the sphere of the infinite, +to which difference, or at least contradiction, so cordially invites--or +expels--it. And, this being true, we can see how unity is served or +maintained, as was said, by the contradictions of experience. + +Commonly men have an idea that differences mean, or point to, unity, but +they are more likely to suppose that the unity is by mere contrast or +antithesis than [p.139] clearly to recognize that it is a most intimate +fact of the differences themselves. They will even see in a number of +things only so many varying aspects of some one thing, and will go so +far as to look upon the aspects as actually enriching and deepening the +unity, but they still fail fully to appreciate how the real unity is +immanent and immediate in the differences. Again, in all their thinking +they contrast, and may consciously observe that they contrast, only +objects or people that really have something in common, comparing, on +the other hand, only such as in some way are manifestly different, and +in their practical affairs they compete only with those who with them +are parties to one and the same life, a fundamental sympathy, indeed, +being a necessary condition of their rivalry, and actually and actively +hate only the beings whom because of a common humanity they might love; +but here, too, their appreciation lags behind the fact. + +In life generally, moreover, in small things and in large, extremes do +have the habit of meeting. A man's virtues are so near to his vices. The +widest variations in things are only relatively at variance. Even what +is cold is somewhat warm. Nothing is absolutely anything. In history a +single ideal, rising to influence, has always divided men into two +opposing camps. Witness the fact of bipartisanship, not in politics +alone, but in all of life's interests. Democrats and Republicans, +Radicals and Conservatives alike have loved their country and honoured +their country's flag and, regardless of party, their country's heroes or +patriots. Epicureans and Stoics--in recent times or long ago--have found +the same life worth living. The [p.140] Roman Law and the Roman Holiday, +working together, like the right and the left hand, different yet in +sympathy, made the great empire. Two men, furthermore, in active, open +conflict are in truth at serious difference with each other; but, as +they might even say, if their conflict were in the form of a debate, +where words instead of fists or pistols were the weapons, in the bare, +unapplied principle involved, or say in the abstract, in the final +success of whichever is the "best man," they do and they must agree. +Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no +idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the +manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common +relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is +it but a demand for real unity? And the common weapons, or for quite +general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition +is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, +only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, +even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, +truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at +most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is +intrinsic to a real unity. + +Where unity is real, then, there must be infinite difference, and +infinite difference is just what the contradictions of experience impose +upon experience and make it responsible to. Infinite difference gives to +everything an opposite and to all things unity; to every man a rival and +to human society, as a whole, solidarity. Against the material it sets +the spiritual; against [p.141] the particular, the general; against the +subjective, the objective; against the living, the dead; against the +lawful, the lawless; against the caused, the uncaused; and to all these, +the spiritual and the material, the subjective and the objective, the +living and the dead, the lawful and the lawless, the caused and the +uncaused, it gives place in a perfect unity; not, of course, in any +material unity, since such unity could not be perfect, but nevertheless +in a real unity. + +For our first step, therefore, in the ascent of that "impossible +subtlety," contradiction is only difference at its greatest limit; for +the second, difference in general, whether partial or extreme, marks an +underlying, or more precisely an indwelling unity; and for the last +step, real unity is served, not betrayed by difference. Moreover, the +wider the difference, the nearer it be to positive contradiction or +opposition, the more conclusive and effective is the service. Remember, +real unity can never take sides; in the world of things it must be +always both-sided. It cannot be here or there, now and then--be the then +in the past or in the future, this or that. In the words, used of truth, +perhaps an appropriate refrain for this book, it can have neither +visible form nor body, neither habitation nor name; like the Son of Man, +it cannot have where to lay its head. The particular opposition of life +and death affords a peculiarly serviceable illustration, for it is, of +course, at the bottom of many of the most searching paradoxes of our +human experience. Real life cannot be confined to any single organic +form or to any single group of organic forms. In fact, it cannot be +bound even to the organic as commonly distinguished from the [p.142] +inorganic world. So for the biologist, very much as for the theologian, +whenever life takes a residence, death must ensue sooner or later. Life +and death, then, as opposites, become the medium of real life. But not +only have we here a helpful illustration, also we have a suggestion that +should prevent an easy misunderstanding. In general, as so plainly in +this special case, the opposition, so necessary to reality in +experience, to a real life or to any real unity, can itself be complete +and effective, not through any single instance of extreme difference, +not through the opposition of just two distinct things, but only through +an accumulation or summation of all possible instances, so to speak, +from difference at zero to difference at infinity. In fact, a real +opposition or rather a truly infinite difference, could be only in such +a sum. Not the single climax of death, but the constant dying, to which +it is only a climax, is what makes real the opposition of life and death +and makes this the medium, as was said, of the real life. Death must +constantly condition all the movements and processes of life: it must +have all possible degrees. And, in like manner, extreme difference at +large, just to be real itself and to make for real unity, must be in and +through all possible degrees of difference. In other words, the perfect +opposition, or contradiction, upon which reality depends, like the +perfect death, is rather a continuum than the wide gap, or chasm, which +so many have thought it; it is a graduate difference, not a single +cataclysmic difference. Difference in gradation or degree, I have +sometimes heard it said, is not real difference; but this statement, +though by no means without warrant or meaning, is [p.143] misleading. +Surely a cataclysmic difference, a "difference in kind," can be only one +finite case of difference; the negative, or opposition, in it can be +only relative; whereas, when in degree, difference becomes necessarily +infinite. Accordingly, as we must not forget, from this point on through +the remainder of this book, the contradiction of which we have been +thinking and which we have found infecting experience at every turn, is +not, what at first and even second thought it may have seemed, just an +opposition of two things; between its lines, as it were, it is inclusive +of, or maintained by, all the manifold and various things in life and +consciousness; it is the completed, short-circuited sum of an infinite +series. An infinitely many-sided world is the only world that can claim +real unity, and a world of such real unity is the world to which the +habit of contradiction, which we have observed, relates our human +experience. + +So far, then, in estimating the possible value of this central and +essential defect of experience, we have found that it implies action and +that it makes for, or testifies to, real unity. Now, thirdly, perhaps +only to enlarge upon what has just been said, contradiction is an +absolutely effective correction of narrowness or partiality or +relativity or one-sidedness in life or consciousness, and so it makes +experience not abstract, but realistic. This is in truth only another +view of the worth of contradiction to integrity and vitality, to unity +and reality, but it would emphasize, what is very interesting at least +to the metaphysician, and cannot fail to be of some interest to the +moralist and the theologian, that where there is real unity there +[p.144] is also true reality. Only the One is. The One and Being are the +same. There can be but one substance, as also but one God. So men have +said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality +or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply +concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the +intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, +then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and +intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. Now +individual things or ideas always show life suffering in some measure +under tangential digressions from the circle of its real wholeness, and +only opposition can save them or can preserve the reality to which they +both belong and contribute. Has not Emerson, among many others, declared +with a cogency and a depth of meaning which quite defy the +superficiality and levity attractive to a few, that mere consistency is +narrow and confining? Any particular view-point or idea or ideal, any +particular thing or activity, simply needs an opposite to balance the +abstraction or digression which being particular must always involve. +Particularity, specific individuality, is certainly a necessary +condition of real worth in life, but with an equal necessity there could +be no life, no conservation and wholeness of life if the particular, +individual things stood unchallenged in the world, and no realistic +experience, if experience were not thus paradoxical and divided against +itself. Life, therefore, gets not only movement and unity from the +contradictions that lie at the very heart of experience, but in getting +unity it gets also contact [p.145] with reality, and the three together +may be summed up in the one word poise. Montaigne marvelled at the +hopeless folly of mankind as compared with the wisdom of God, but man's +folly is divided against itself and so imbued with God's wisdom; and +with countless others he saw the ideas of man to be only subjective and +unsubstantial and irresponsible, but man's ideas, though fanciful and +illusory, though subjective and imaginative, work against each other for +what is real and substantial. Man's ideas co-operate for their own +correction and so for communion or intimacy with a character that is not +less substantial or responsible than that of God himself. + +And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience +supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make +realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be +abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the +hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express +satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the +both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive +experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite +to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there +always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In +practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there +always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to +leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is +all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social +classes or parties, can never be confined to a [p.146] single individual +representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly +practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but +instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely +many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed +individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and +competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly +practical, whether of things or realities--for the metaphysician--or of +ideas or categories--for the logician--or of persons or classes--for the +statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the +truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which +is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life +must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding +over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real +leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a +labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences +and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or +"entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for +morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and +platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a +labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites, +that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which +is real and practical. + +It would be peculiarly interesting to examine further this principle of +a practical, truly realistic experience ensured to human life through +the inner [p.147] conflicts of experience. The history of morals and +ethics, for example, notably of the perennial conflict between hedonism +and idealism, could not but cast a good deal of light upon it; and the +history of political struggles, or the history of the great +controversies in science--such as that between vitalism and +anti-vitalism or that between atomism and energism; or in philosophy, +between dualism and monism; or in theology, between naturalism and +supernaturalism, would also be most illuminating; while, also perhaps +appealing only to the few, in the logic of the negative, as it has +developed from the earliest times, or in psychological theory--for +example, in the dispute of the advocates of the innervation theory and +the afferent theory, or in Hering's theory of vision, or, again, in the +life and movement of any one of the time-worn paradoxes of popular or +scientific or philosophical ideas, one might expect to find suggestive +illustration. In philosophy, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Zeno, Socrates, +Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel have all found negation, or contradiction, +necessary to any adequate account of reality. Explorations, however, in +their teachings or along any of the paths that were suggested, would +lead us too far astray. + +Fifthly, then, not only do the contradictions make experience realistic +and so practical, but also they make it essentially social. A life or an +experience that is contradictory has (1) movement, (2) unity or +integrity, (3) reality and poise, and (4) practicality; and then it has +besides, as if the medium through which these four things are sustained, +(5) social character, society being only the visible expression, the +[p.148] outer realization, of the both-sidedness, of the infinitely +differential unity or the divided labour, which an active, yet +thoroughly self-controlled, truly realistic, practical experience +requires. In a former chapter, it will be readily recalled, an impulse +to social life was found to be intimately connected with the attitude of +doubt, and here clearly we are confronted with only another view of the +same fact, since contradiction has become our most cogent reason for +doubt and is now seen to require the social relations. An individual +whose experience is ever divided against itself is, _ipso facto_, a +social character, his social environment, whether in its narrowest or +broadest manifestation, adding nothing to his nature or to the struggles +of that nature, but only making the division against himself constantly +and manifestly real. The social environment, as it were, just proves the +man, his struggle and all, to himself. Some have agreed that the +individual consciousness contained nothing on which to ground a positive +case for society, for direct positive social interest; but so long as +man's experience is necessarily paradoxical or contradictory, so long as +man is divided against himself, or as the labour of life and reality is +a divided labour, the case for society and for personal interest in +society is clear and conclusive. A basis for society lies in the very +nature of experience. Society is not something added to individuality +from without. + +Let us here beware of easy sentiment. Let not our thinking conjure false +sweetness and light. Experience is truly and essentially social; the +individual was not meant to dwell alone; but herein is no immediate +[p.149] cure-all, no promise of an unperturbed brotherly love, of a life +for one and all of simple peace and blissful quietude. On such a plan +society would hardly suit the individual with whom, and with whose +natural experience, we have become acquainted. To speak with the +extravagance of a counter-sentimentalism, the individual of our present +acquaintance is forever spoiling for a fight. In the life of the society +to which he belongs; in the life where he watches for his incoming ship, +there must always be hate and evil in all their forms, lawlessness and +destruction, illusion and error; but--and just here sentiment, the +sentiment of a really searching optimism, called once before a +sacrificial and heroic optimism, may find some assurance--never an +unmixed hate, never a wholly idle destruction, never an unmeaning error. +Can anything, indeed, that has another thing against it--that has, in +short, an opposite--ever be itself unmixed? The good or the evil in +society, being always opposed, is always also shared. So few people +recognize, or appreciate, what a great mixer opposition is. Death is the +passing only of inadequate or unworthy life. Hate witnesses only a false +love; sin, a pharisaical righteousness. Destruction marks an imperfect +construction. And in all its forms, evil is not so much something in and +by itself as an exposure and reproach of what is supposed to be +unmixedly good. Public crime, for example, is not so local as it +appears; it is only a generally, widely private vice made locally +manifest, and the respectable and law-abiding, who adjudge it evil, are +bound to feel as if adjudging and condemning themselves. In a word, the +individual's natural society [p.149] is never without evil, but in all +its forms the evil has somewhat of good in it; and although social life, +not less than individual life, must be one of conflict and discord, +nevertheless, because the various factors or factions, however opposed, +can never be unmixed, because the members of society must all be good +and bad, right and wrong--I almost said living and dead +together--instead of being hopeless for having evil in it, the life of +society is so much the more worth living. Shallow sentimentalism may not +so esteem it, but we need give little thought to shallow sentimentalism. + +So our use of the word "society" is not sentimental. Society means +conflict. It is just the natural sphere of life and reality as for ever +a divided labour, as for ever divided and laborious--divided even +between the powers for supposed good and for adjudged evil, and through +the conflicts, in which the division is expressed, what is true and good +and vital is being forever kept real. Or, to repeat, society is the +natural medium through which movement, unity or integrity, poise and +reality, and practicality are secured and realized in human experience; +it is that which makes the individual's division against himself +manifestly real and positively and progressively effective for a life, +yes, for his life, at once of vitality and perfect wholeness. + +But now that the five things are said, now that the contradictions of +experience have been seen to serve experience by giving it movement, +unity, poise, practical reality and social character, somebody is sure +to remark facetiously that on the evidence contradiction is something we +should all cultivate assiduously, and [p.151] that henceforth to face +both ways, the butt of so much opprobrium, should be one of man's +greatest ideals; in brief, that the inconsistent creatures in politics, +morals, and theology are the coming examples for mankind. Verily the +devil has been given his promised "character." But, alas! in the spirit +of such startling humour one would have to conclude also that because +crime has beyond all question been a means of social development, being +all-important to the awakening of the social consciousness and +conscience, all men should at once take thought and find it their duty +to turn criminals; or, again, that because death has a fundamental part +in the order of nature and is, moreover, of greatest spiritual worth and +significance, we should all morbidly seek it, being successfully +righteous only by being suicides. True, we do need to recognize the +positive function of crime in the progress of civilization, or in the +history of law, and also to be aware of crime as a possibility in our +own lives, and we need to be ready to die and to feel besides that dying +we are far from losing all that is worth having, but to court crime or +to seek death would certainly be to deprive either of the very worth +which has made it significant. And in much the same way we may very +profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or +social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on +that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always +blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly +courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The +both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and +conserves human life, is only [p.152] that which is maintained with a +tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every +side. + +So, although grossly misused if directly courted, this defect of +experience has its place, even its ideal value, in experience, and what +on the surface seemed an almost if not quite hopeless reason for doubt, +has truly become all but transfigured, seeming now a source of real +assurance. With Heraclitus of old, only perhaps seeing even more than he +saw, we can glory in a world of strife. Doubting all things, we can yet +believe that all things work together for what is real, for what is +good. + +But let me now put the result, so far secured, of our confession of +doubt in a new way. For a life in which every thing has an opposite, +every idea a counter-idea, truth very plainly, as has indeed been +frequently said, cannot be a specific consciousness nor reality a fixed +thing. Truth is not a creed, but a spirit. Reality is not a thing, but a +life. And for being a spirit truth is only the more realistic? For being +a life, reality is only the more substantial. Perfection, too, even the +Perfect One, with whom we associate the true and the real, is no +particular separate being in a certain established exclusive status, at +once infinitely and passively excellent, but a power ever dwelling in +the strife that makes for movement and poise. For being such a power, +too, he is only more surely perfect, only more certainly infinite and +excellent. + +Such terms as spirit, life, and power are confessedly somewhat dangerous +terms to use. Especially the first is liable to misunderstanding. Yet, +whatever [p.153] common usage may be, when I say that truth is not a +creed but a spirit, that reality is not a thing but a power, the +reference is directly to that agent or principle of validity which has +been found to hold our experience, naturally so faulty, to contact and +intimacy with the real world. A spirit of truth, a principle of validity +there is, to which the very faults of experience give witness, and in +view of this we who doubt, who doubt the particular things, the creeds +and the objects generally, the definite forms and ideas, the habits and +standpoints of our everyday life or our scientific theory, may yet +believe; we may believe in the real spirit, or power, which makes all +things parties to the divided labour of a real life.[2] + + +[1] This limitation is shown, for example, in the logical principle of +identity. + +[2] The worth assigned in this chapter to the contradictions of +experience involves a standpoint which apparently is at variance with +that of Mr. F.H. Bradley, whose book, _Appearance and Reality_, has +occupied such an important place in the philosophical study and +controversy of the last ten years. Of course, here is not the place for +final criticism of Mr. Bradley, since the present examination of doubt +is no such scrutiny of experience as his; it is far short of what would +make a complete philosophical argument. Nevertheless, a word or two +expressing the nature of the difference between his view and the view +advocated here can hardly be impertinent. Thus, if I read him rightly, +Mr. Bradley has argued from the paradoxes of experience to the complete, +hopeless phenomenality of experience, while in this study of doubt the +argument has been from the paradoxes of experience to a thoroughly +realistic experience. Again, Mr. Bradley's Absolute is able to include +the phenomenal, the relative and contradictory, only because this is so +unsubstantial as to offer no resistance, while here there has not even +been any question of inclusion. _All experience_, our position has been, +_is informed with reality; its very contradictions hold an otherwise +phenomenal, relative, changing experience close down to a real world_; +and this position, I repeat, is at variance with what Mr. Bradley has +_seemed_ to say. See, however, a short article, "Relativity and +Reality," in the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods_, Vol. I, No. 24, November, 1904. + + + +[p.154] + +VII. + +THE PERSONAL AND THE SOCIAL, THE VITAL AND THE FORMAL IN EXPERIENCE. + + +Contrasts such as those in the title of the present chapter, the +personal and the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are +always dangerous to clear thinking, and yet in spite of the danger no +thinking can avoid them. They can be only relatively true; the terms in +which they are couched cannot fail, sooner or later, from one standpoint +or another, to make an exchange of the very things to which they apply, +since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective +mixer, and therefore they can only punctuate the naturally chiaroscuro +character that belongs to all articulate thinking. Nevertheless, used +with self-control, they are distinctly serviceable. + +In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of +experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character +with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the +social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this +contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was +said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general +purpose. It was [p.155] said that society was nothing alien, or +additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society +lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided +against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a +divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in +society was clear and conclusive; but this was not fully to define the +parts that are played by the individual person and the social group in +the development and maintenance of human life. Some, for example, would +fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that +of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, +who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our +defences. + +Long ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, of the human +individual, to society, and so, too, Aristotle, though not to society, +but much more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the other +has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, +for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of +the implications of the idea has never been fully stated or appraised, +and this is much to be wondered at, since there is involved a strong +case for both the personal and the social in the maintenance of +experience.[1] + +Plato found reason, will, and sensuous nature in the individual and +analogously a thinking or law-making class, an official or military +class, and an industrial or [p.156] appetitive class in society; and +Aristotle, in very much the same way, found the parts of the individual +soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of +nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable +enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated, +with its mere statement. Still, in order to be sure of appreciation, in +order especially to get the reflected light on the relation between +individual and society, we must look to the facts and conditions which +are presented very closely. + +To begin with, such an analogy, dealing as it does with the relation of +a part to the whole, has and should have, for a reason not hard to find, +the freedom of the city of logic. Other than logical approval of it +might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychology might be called in +to give testimony. And out of the past, the more recent past at least as +known to the historian of philosophy, Leibnitz with his _lex analogiæ_, +or for that matter with the general import of his monadology, might be +appealed to. But without tarrying for assistance from these quarters, +highly respectable though they are, I make a simple, yet perhaps timely +and--with apologies for so much emotion--soul-satisfying reference to +the logic in the case, for after all biology and sociology and +psychology are always under the restraints of logic, as well as +alliterated with it; nor does the evidence of logic depend on mere +technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these +enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can +the true part of anything ever dare [p.157] not to have an analogy, even +a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which +it is comprised? And--this being, as in due time will appear, quite as +important--how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, +ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts +within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, +however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three +typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though +at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same +differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the +group-part or class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may +be known also as the faction, and which was so important to Plato in his +analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3) the +all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible ways--that +is, even between individual and individual, or individual and group or +group and group, as well as between either individual or group and +whole--an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original +differential operation will persist. Such, almost truistically, though +also perhaps somewhat subtly for ordinary purposes, is the logical +condition of division or differentiation. Difference, like its limit +opposition, is thus a great mixer, and division can be no mere +separation or isolation of parts. The saying comes to my mind from +somewhere, that though division may reveal distinct vertebræ, the +vertebra always conceal a spinal cord. + +Analogy, however, although thus universal, although [p.158] applicable, +as said, in all of the possible ways, must itself share in, must be +quite under the spell of, the differentiation; it must have as many +various forms as it has expressions. In every expression the relation +must indeed be one of analogy, but it can never be of the same order or +degree. That of the individual to the group or faction must be +qualitatively distinct from all others, say from that of the individual +either to another individual or to the all-inclusive whole. Nor can the +much used and frequently abused distinction between small and large +writings, as when history is taken as a large writing of personal +biography or a social institution of some special phase of personal +character, adequately represent the differentiation here in mind. +Consider how various, internally and externally, are all the terms among +which the analogies obtain. Thus, as of direct interest here, factional +differences are bound to be sharper or wider, they are inevitably more +deeply set and more openly exclusive of each other than individual +differences, and in consequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, +but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of +its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole +implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, +which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to +speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the +case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates +a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other +characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes +these on the whole only in a negative way, in [p.159] the way in which +opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always +implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which +it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in +one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only +potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the +primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively +active with all the different factors of the operation, and this in +spite of the restraints of any particular class-affiliation, and the +whole, though macro-cosmic with respect to the microcosmic individual, +is at the same time qualitatively distinct, as distinct at least as the +explicit from the implicit, the actual from the potential. Whatever a +merely formal logic might say, a real logic requires that at most +microcosm and macrocosm are only metaphors of each other. Even their +difference of size would be quite enough to differentiate them at least +as sharply as the difference of size differentiated imperial Rome from +her prototype the Greek City-State. Can the whole and the part be one or +many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be +material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in +qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but +without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the +whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the +operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on +analogy, must be various accordingly. + +But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the +case for both personality and [p.160] society, no idea can be more +immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of +experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those +tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but +within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither +more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the +experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other +words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general, +or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however +different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, +as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a +thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an +indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and +spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, +intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has +developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It +is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, +sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division +or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, +aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the +language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is +only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction +between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, +out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human +society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest [p.161] +social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual +person. + +And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still +undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential +operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of +experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In +him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with +some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual, +intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical, +all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without +the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may +become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the +universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of +any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the +religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any +particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any +particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the +physiological is universal--as universal, to repeat, as it is +indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the +lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has +been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it +is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism, +whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of +the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the +discussion of the rise of science.[2] + +[p.162] But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever +the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before +any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can +be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our +present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If +the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with +reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, +particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. +Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has +been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal +differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal +in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society +is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become +castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An +illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession +of science. + +Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the typical +relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or implied, +that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of the general +to the particular, of the whole to the part, and significantly that of +the vital to the instrumental. Yet, to say no more than this would be a +serious mistake, for at least in two ways this statement must be +modified. Doubtless the required modifications are directly consequent +upon the nature and origin of the relation, but nevertheless they need +to be carefully observed. Thus, logically and sociologically [p.163] +factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more +definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may +be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and +efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high +degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of +corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and +in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental +character. Between individual and class there is a difference very like +that between impulse and habit, or organic life and mere physical +process, or function and structure, or say human nature in terms of its +life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and in terms of its +establishments or institutions. Accordingly the relation of the person +to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part, but of the whole +in a state that is formally undeveloped to the part more or less highly +developed, and of the whole as a living, functional activity, the +differential operation of the unity of experience, to the part as an +institution or instrument. + +From all this it appears that the labour involved in the maintenance and +development of human life is divided between the person and the social +classes in some such way as follows. The class life stands for analysis +and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis +and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps +for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal +life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption +and the stagnation to [p.164] which specialism and its formal +establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and +instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. And while +so to define the distinction between person and class, or in general to +regard their relation as one of whole to part, even with the +qualifications that were promptly added, may involve some unavoidable +abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view +is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it +rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an +indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the +same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the +relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of +development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly +the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only +a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and +possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger +than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is +the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, +but also there is clearly a real place in social life at once for the +person and for the class. Factional life lacks completeness and +vitality, and personality, the living, integral expression of the unity +of experience, supplies these defects. True, a conflict of classes or +factions may always be counted on, since the unity of the total life, +which of course includes the classes, will prevent their ever being +indifferent to each other, and this conflict will make for both +completeness and vitality, but [p.165] negatively, indirectly, always as +if from outside. Only through the person can vitality and completeness +be secured positively and directly and immediately. Personality, on the +other hand, lacks definiteness and practical efficiency, and only the +special mechanical life of the class can supply these needs. So in the +two together we see a most indispensable co-operation. + +The person, furthermore, because of his particular class affiliation, +with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this imparts, +is always naturally under constraint not merely to overcome the +specialism, but also to apply the special training beyond the immediate +sphere of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. +Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by +the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and +the factional ritual, and taking this ritual--or special professional +technique--to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit +rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional +experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. Only +so can he be true both to his special classification and to his personal +wholeness. + +But an insistent question: Is such translation possible? On the +possibility the case for either personality or a class-divided society +must finally depend. On the possibility hangs also the worth of this +case to the general argument of this book. Logically, there certainly +can be but one answer, and that an affirmative one, since analogy, the +primal condition of translation, must be universal [p.166] among the +parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole. No two +parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, +but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and +the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any +acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, +however special and however technical, may and must have meaning +throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, +with the acquired freedom of any part, the metaphors, relating part to +part, may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person's +experience-world. The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, +of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very +crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative +illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches +height after height of the beholder's outstretched world. + +The conclusions of logic in this matter have sometimes been questioned, +if not defied. Quite properly, it may be, many people, and particularly +many among scientists, have been in the habit of distrusting the leading +of mere logic in the solution of their problems. But in this particular +matter I think that no scientist has ever succeeded in making out a +negative case. A few have tried to do so, have thought themselves for a +time successful, and then in the end, though not without some +reservation, have gone over to the other side. Probably their +undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes +entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate [p.167] people +to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of +things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class +of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or +physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral +truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special +training could ever be literally applicable beyond the particular sphere +of its attainment, the relation of part and part of human nature being +only analogous and metaphorical, and that in any scientifically observed +case special training, when artificially acquired, or when a result only +of a suggested and merely imitated routine, can hardly count as +conclusive evidence, the problem would lose much of its interest, and +science would be ready even to accept the logical solution. Logically, +then, the translation is possible, and scientifically there is no real +evidence against its possibility. + +As to the translation being positively natural or necessary, as well as +possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that whatever is truly +possible must be also real; that is to say, certain of realization or +rather somehow and somewhere, in some manner and in some degree already +in expression. Even the possible can never have been made out of, or +sprung up out of, nothing. Moreover, the translation here spoken of, +wherein one developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual +than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can +require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different +elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as +factionally manifested, shall be [p.168] forever true to their origin. +The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on +the ground of the analogies of the various parts being only metaphorical +instead of literal, for already in the original differentiation that has +made person and faction, that has separated the parts, these have been +overcome. The very nature of the person is their overcoming. The unity +of experience must persist assertive and inviolable, whatever the +divisions of experience. The distinct vertebræ must always contain a +spinal cord that has a common origin with them. + +And it remains to be said that since the person is thus at once the +living integral exponent of the unity of experience and the member of +some class or faction, translation is his most characteristic activity. +In this translation, too, we see him a leader, or a party to real +leadership, by nature. In it lies his true genius. Indeed, this +translation is just that which makes the great leader or the great +genius, for through it the person is ever showing himself superior to +his class and training, and to the formal institutions that have brought +him up. Factional life, as we know, develops through imitation and +repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the +flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special +development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological +term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the +practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other +special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to +be distinguished in this way--the one imitative, the other inventive. +Witness [p.169] the familiar antitheses between the typical and the +vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the really pleasant in +morality, the legal and the sovereign in politics, the orthodox and the +spiritually alive in religion, technical skill and originality in +science, and so on. These antitheses are all very important to the +understanding of human experience, particularly of its history, but they +are frequently seriously misapplied. More than anything else they show +the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the +living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order +that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate +and appropriate its acquirements. + +There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy +of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or +nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as +something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. +The rôles, too, that belong to personality and society are as distinct +and as real, besides being as organic to each other, as in general are +whole and part. But the person, at once a corrector of partiality and a +leader, a distributor of special development, holds a conspicuous place +and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority +to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions +as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal +experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or +contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to +this defect. Personality must bridge all [p.170] the divisions of +experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must +be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation +of that spirit of truth, that principle of validity and power for +adequacy, which has already come to our notice more than once. +Factionally experience is relative, phenomenal, divided against itself; +factionally, too, it is at once formal and contradictory; but personally +it reaches beyond the forms and contradictions, and is directly in touch +with what is true and real. So the contrast between the personal and the +social, the vital and the formal, shows itself quite parallel to that +between the real and the phenomenal, the true and the paradoxical. + +A business man says to a friend: "Personally, as you know perfectly +well, I should prefer to do what you ask, but professionally I simply +cannot, for you know also that business is business." A preacher +declares: "Personally I should just like to speak out clearly and +without restraint, but my church will not let me." Personally the +soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, +professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The +father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than +you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life--all are +all things together, and restraints that separate man and man are +lacking; but factionally there is always restraint, and open conflict +and inner inconsistency are unavoidable. The person is thus the medium, +not of an abstract universality, but concretely, through his factional +training and his leadership, of the universal life. + +[p.171] And, finally, the life of the person is gifted with a great +faith, for it is in touch with an untethered reality; but, factionally, +life is a constant doubting, for it is constantly narrow and it is a +constant contending. So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as +inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this +conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say +confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells +the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very +defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the +spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as +social, is also real and true." + + +[1] This paragraph, and many of the paragraphs that follow it, except +for considerable revision and adaptation, were published some time ago. +See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in Society," in the +_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. II, +No. 13, 1906. + +[2] Chap. Iv., p. 72. + + + +[p.172] + +VIII + +AN EARLY MODERN DOUBTER. + + +I referred in an earlier chapter to the great Frenchman who boldly +declared that his doubting was all that he could be certain about, but +that this, being so very real, being indeed universal, left him a belief +in himself, although only in his always doubting self. Descartes' belief +in himself has interest for us, for while his thinking followed lines +somewhat different from our own, he seems to have reached nearly, if not +quite, the same very personal conclusion, namely, the right of the +doubter to say: "I am." + +Descartes was born in Touraine in 1596, and for the larger part of his +life he was at least nominally a resident in the Paris of Louis XIV, +Montaigne, and the earlier Jesuits. He was educated at a school of the +Jesuits in La Flêche, and in the course of his mature life he published +works of importance not merely in philosophy, but also in science and +mathematics. His _Meditations_ and _Search after Truth_ are easily first +among his contributions to philosophy. He died in 1650. + +Yet not exactly with the Descartes of positive history, but with +Descartes as a doubter, as perhaps the most notable progenitor of the +modern confession [p.173] and the modern use of doubt, are we now +directly concerned; for without the license of this broader view we +might lose a large part of the advantage of the centuries that lie +between Descartes' time and our own. He had many disciples, and these +disciples uncovered much in the Cartesian philosophy that Descartes +himself failed to see, or saw only imperfectly. He was not without +faults, too, some moral and some intellectual, if the two are separate, +and these faults we shall not consider, though the conscientious +historian should never play to the sentimentalist by disregarding them. +But with our present task we can afford to forget the faults; just as we +cannot afford to lose the interpretations and corrections of the +disciples. With interests as vital and personal as ours, we seek +something more than matter of fact. Our interest is very near to that of +the historical novel, but needless to say, this book is an essay in +philosophy, not a novel. Past men and past times can be really useful to +us, only if, belonging as we do not to the seventeenth but to the +twentieth century, we really use them. What we ourselves are able to +find in any period or in any human career is always truer or realer, +possibly in a sense it is also better history, than what lay on the +surface at the time or than what was seen, however profoundly, even by +contemporaries. So much better did Descartes and all really great men +build than they knew or even willed. + +Descartes came into European life at a crucial moment. The period of the +Renaissance, with its rediscovery of the old world and its stirring +vision of the new, had culminated in the Reformation, not [p.174] merely +in the religious reformation that set Protestant against Catholic, but +in the reformation that appeared in every department of man's life--in +art, literature, and science, in morals and in politics, as well as in +religion. Man asserted his independence of established authority in any +form. Man, not king, not pope, not even God, became the real centre of +the universe. Justification by his own faith was simply overflowing with +a meaning that knew no bounds in his experience. + +But the birth of Descartes was fifty years after the death of Luther, +and by the time he had reached his intellectual majority, as might well +be expected, the Reformation had changed from a spiritual +enthusiasm--whether among those who were its great leaders or among +those who, not less devoutly, were bent on summarily checking its +progress--into a practical, thoroughly worldly situation. The two +opposing parties, without exaggeration, seem to have settled down to +real business, and not less in the thought of one than in that of the +other the end justified any means. + +The society of Jesus was definitely organized and began its notable +career in 1640, and although its members, the Jesuits, have given to +history many wonderful examples of devotion and heroism, Jesuitry itself +is synonymous with the extreme materialism to which the Roman Church +resorted in its desperate defence against the Protestants. And on the +other side, men became not less sensuous and worldly, giving as good as +they got. They simply met, or opposed, like with like. Reading the +history of the time with [p.175] its controversies and jealousies and +intrigues and persecutions, one can only conclude that the honours were +about even. If Catholicism felt justified in her acts of sensuous +brutality, of almost hellish violence, which culminated in the massacre +of St. Bartholomew, Protestantism was made the specious, yet not less +welcome, excuse for worldliness, general materialism, and sensualism out +of the Church and in it. Any religious reform, or reform of any sort, +must always bring an unscrupulous lawlessness with it, and the great +Reformation was by no means an exception to this rule. Extreme +humanists, naturalists, atheists, sensationalists, social and physical +atomists, Machiavellists, sceptics and opportunists of all sorts, +swarmed in every capital of Europe, and especially in Paris.[1] + +But the extravagant, more or less unconventional things of any time are +often the best signs of its inner life, since in them we see a few men +boldly, if not prudently, stepping over the bounds of custom, and +sometimes even of decency, and giving expression to what is actively +present, though often suppressed or concealed, in the lives of all. Thus +contemporary with Descartes, and from one side or another expressing the +materialism of his day, there were at least three very significant +movements, all of them endorsed by parties, of course under different +names, from both of the contending churches, or from their outside +echoes or reflections, and all of them at least in some degree when not +in great degree beyond the bounds of common conventional respectability. +These [p.176] movements in one church or in the other, or in neither, as +the case might be, were, first, a scoffing scepticism; second, a +dogmatic mysticism; and third, a most visionary gnosticism. + +1. Vanini (1585-1619) in Italy, Montaigne (1533-1592) in France, and +Bacon (1560-1620) in England, among many others that might be named, +were more or less extravagantly, not mere doubters, but satirical, often +derisive, scoffing doubters of everything in human life. Conceit of +knowledge, whenever asserted, in church or state, in everyday +consciousness or in science, was declared idolatry and held up to +constant ridicule. Could man's wisdom at its best be anything more than +a blinding folly? + +2. And religion, the religion of a few, as if in acknowledged sympathy +with these sceptics, surrendered everything but God--God being more a +longing than an actual fact; a spirit than a positive thing or person. +Even within the Catholic Church the Oratory of Jesus, a society +energetically opposed for good and sufficient reasons by the Jesuits, +was organized in the interests of a purified, truly spiritual +Christianity; and among those who had broken with the Catholics appeared +new sects of many names, such as the "Friends of God," "Collegiants," +and the "Brotherhood of the Christian Life," but with one ideal, the +direct untrammelled worship of God. "God is," they proclaimed in so many +words; "and God, just God, is all. Church and creeds and rites and +priests are hindrances, not helps, to true religion." This attitude, +commentary as of course it was on the conditions of the day, had almost +more satire in it and more doubt than any of the words [p.177] of the +most active scoffers; it was so unconscious; so quietly and so piously +it picked up the crumbs that the scoffers left. Indeed, the sceptics and +their devout, pure-minded contemporaries, Pierre Charron (1541-1603) and +Jakob Boehme (1595-1624), both advocates of religious purity against +theology and sensuous ritual, must be said not to have engaged in +separate activities, but to have shared the labour of a single activity. +Scepticism and such mysticism are but two sides of the same shield. + +3. But with the scoffing scepticism and its complementary counterpart, +the dogmatic mysticism of religion, there was associated also a most +visionary gnosticism. Thus the science of mathematics was heralded as a +key to all the secrets of the universe. A few simple applications of +mathematics to physical phenomena had been successfully made by the +scientists--for example, by Galilei--and ere long certain men in the +world of the intellectual life went wild over the possibilities of +mathematics. Obliged, as soon they were, to abandon every other field of +knowledge--theology, politics, material science, tradition, and +convention--they needed but little encouragement to give themselves +heart and soul to this last resort. Their enthusiasm for mathematics +doubtless had a deeper source than this simple account of its rise would +suggest, for an intellectual atmosphere in which just such a purely +logical, abstract science would develop was the natural product of +medievalism; but Galilei's successes may be said to have precipitated +the movement, and in any case for many mathematics became, both in its +principles and in its method, an intellectual [p.178] cure-all, and in +consequence not only were remarkable advances made in the science +itself, but men went to the extreme of applying the methods and the +formulæ of mathematics in every conceivable direction. Religion, +morality, and politics, as well as natural science, were all subjected +to mathematical treatment. Among the surviving monuments to this +activity the _Ethics_, so called, of Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) is +certainly the most noteworthy; a work of five books on God, mind, +emotions, bondage, and freedom--each with its special quota of axioms, +propositions, corollaries, scholia, and the like, and the procedure of +the whole amazingly consistent with that of Euclid. Excuse, also, a +personal reminiscence. I can myself recall how in the enthusiasm of a +first course in geometry I formulated a Euclidean proof of the +proposition: Knowledge is power. I, too, had my axioms, my special +demonstrations, my corollaries, and my final Q.E.D.'s. But any +present-day resort to mathematics or its methods is only a shadow, or an +echo, of the movement of the seventeenth century. At that time it was a +movement of last resort and all the passion of a deceived intellect, of +a mind given over to the most far-reaching doubts, and a disappointed +faith, once more acquiring hope, was present in it. The truths and +methods of mathematics--what but veracity incarnate, the very mind of +God made manifest to mankind! + +Nor, furthermore, does it take much reflection to appreciate that +mathematics was after all a very appropriate form for credible knowledge +to take in a time of scepticism and of religion turning to purism. +[p.179] Trustworthy knowledge of actual things--that is to say, real +concrete knowledge--being held impossible, there was nothing left but +knowledge of the strictly formal relations of things. Formal principles, +just like those of mathematics, are altogether innocent of the confusion +in actual things and persons, in particular events and current issues; +and accordingly in the seventeenth century, just by reason of this +innocence, they were peculiarly timely. Doubt seemed quite unable to +touch them; controversy was turned to agreement before them; and even a +truth-loving God, so to speak, could appeal to them in support of his +right to rule the minds and the lives of men. You and I might question +the reality of the things we count or the justice of the ratio between +our wealth and the wealth of certain others in the world, but we could +not easily question that two and two are four, or in matters of wealth +that one thousand and two thousand dollars are in the same ratio as two +million and four million. Such knowledge as this may not settle any +actual quarrels that we have, for example, over the number of acres we +own or the taxes we pay or the prices charged by our butchers or +grocers; but what of that? The quarrels are idle any way, and our +mathematical wisdom, being exact from the start and self-evident, is a +basis of perfect agreement between man and man and men and God. + +In short, mathematics is exact and universally credible just because it +is so empty and so logically formal, being always "in the abstract," in +that ideal, wholly blessed region, where there is no disputing, where +all men readily admit anything that can be [p.180] suggested; and its +being exact for this cause made it the only credible knowledge for +Descartes' time, a time at once of scepticism and mysticism. With +Vanini, then, and Charron, who were separately engaged, as was remarked, +in a single activity, we may associate the mathematicians of the day, +among whom none were more distinguished than Descartes himself and the +members of the Cartesian school. To Descartes we are largely indebted +for the Analytic Geometry, and Pascal did important work in the Theory +of Equations. + +In rough outline we now have the times of Descartes before us, and with +deepened meaning I may say again that Descartes came into European life +at a crucial moment. Materialism was rife, not merely theoretically +among a few scientists and philosophers, nor practically in some +isolated class of dissipated human beings, but really and more or less +openly everywhere in the whole life and feeling of society. Even the +devout played into the hands of the worldly by their very purism. And an +accompanying doubt, cropping out significantly, now in positive +irreverence, now in mysticism, now in intellectual formalism, appears to +have thoroughly possessed the minds of men. + +There was, too, in Descartes' day a growing sensitiveness to the +paradoxes of man's experience which have occupied so much of our +attention. Nothing was what it seemed. One writer boldly declared--not +much later--that France, nay, the whole world, could not be happy until +all should turn atheists. The boast of Louis XIV, "I am the State," +whether literally made or not, was hardly less startling. The sensualism +of [p.181] the Catholic Church or the Pharisaism of the Protestant was +flagrantly paradoxical, and was keenly felt to be so on all sides. Men +turned doubters perforce, and in the fact that with their scepticism +rose also a movement at once of individualism and cosmopolitanism, we +cannot fail to see how the course of history illustrates the conclusions +of a previous chapter. The time was one in which through its humanism, +or its cosmopolitan individualism, civilization was to reap the harvest +from the medieval organization of society. + +Descartes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his training at a school +of the Jesuits, seems to have caught the spirit, the real meaning of his +time, getting behind the mere letter of their instruction and of their +point of view. Only mathematics gave him any satisfaction, and he left +the La Flêche school in the first place conscious that he had learned +little or nothing, in the second place curious about the possibility of +men ever knowing anything, and in the third place evidently through the +influence of mathematics strongly prejudiced in favour of introspection, +or of thought conducted independently of things, as the only possible +way to certainty. This education, then, and its outcome, true as it was +to the life of the day, fitted Descartes for his life work, which was +nothing more or less than the erection of a system of philosophy on the +basis of a thorough-going confession of doubt. + +Descartes entered upon his great task by taking his day at its word. St. +Paul, addressing the Athenians, reminding them of one of their own +temples, and quoting their own poet Aratus, was not more tactful. +[p.182] Thus, as if speaking directly to the sceptics about him, +Descartes doubted everything, because he found, not only in his own +consciousness, become too reflective for implicit belief, but also in +the wide experience of his race, that everything was dubitable. He +doubted church and state, science and society; and he went even farther +than this. Also he boldly doubted mathematics, so long his own support +and the reliance of many others in his time. He did not know surely that +there might not be an evil spirit in the universe, a spirit of +deception, which even in mathematics was obscuring the mind's vision, +making it see things not as they are, but as they are not. Deception was +real enough and obvious enough in life at large to make such a suspicion +as this at least plausible. Moreover, the notion of an agent of evil in +the world had been a commonplace for centuries. It was just a part of +that medieval training. So although nothing could be said with certainty +either way, the plausible mischance had to be faced; mathematics went +the way of all doubtful knowledge, and man was left with literally +nothing but his doubt, his universal doubt. "_Dubito_," said Descartes; +"to doubt is my inmost nature"; and speaking so he at once marked the +first step in his reasoning, so important then and now, and in the +simplicity and directness of real genius reported a great, deep fact of +his own experience and of that of his time. + +But universal doubt is a _real_ experience, being real just because +universal. Nothing ever is real that is not universal. What is always +and everywhere is just the mark of something that really is substantial. +A real [p.183] experience, however, real because universal, be it of +doubt or of anything else, means a real self, so that in the always +doubting self Descartes found reality, or a real self; and this always +doubting self he further characterized as a thinking self. In other +words, the real thinker was for him the universal doubter, and, +contrariwise, the universal doubter was real, a real thinker, a real +self. Before Descartes' time, to speak generally, men had identified +reality with fixed condition or possession, with specific knowledge or +established power or definite prerogative, divine or human, and truth +was an object of faith rather than thought, say an unchanging programme +for life rather than a pure principle--there is such a wide difference +between a principle and a programme! But Descartes, as we have seen, +identified reality with loss or privation, with such an empty-handed +thing as doubt; he recognized no self but the thinker, and no thinker +but the doubter. We always feel the pathos of those who, suffering +constant privation, find and often declare that life is very real, and +yet the sense of reality that comes in this way--namely, in the way of a +privation that denies reality all residence in positive experience--is +especially strong, and the pathos we feel is certainly not all. +Something else hard to name appeals to us, too, and changes the pathos +into a nobler because a more positive feeling--good will, perhaps, or +honour--since the persistent holding to reality commands a deep respect. +Yet, putting this more positive feeling apart, only the pathos of +Descartes' real self, real because a thinker and thinker because a +universal doubter, can occupy us now. Enough if we see that [p.184] the +reality was as indubitable as the universal doubt, the self always being +real up to the reality of its experience, and that the pathos is not +more for him than for the sceptics and mystics and mathematicians of his +time. But, again, in the Latin words, burdened, as so often the Latin +has been, with the experience of all Christendom: _Dubito, cogito; ergo +sum_. I doubt, I think; I as doubter and thinker am. + +That "I am" seems a sort of epitome of the humanism, not to say of the +pathos of the humanism of the time. Man had lost everything but his own +self, his lacking, longing, always seeking self. Montaigne put the +situation plainly when he said in so many words, that portrayal of self +was the beginning and the end alike of physics, the science of outer +reality, and metaphysics the science of all reality. Man had been left +with his mere self, robbed of beliefs and traditions, and abandoned by +everything but his doubts and the empty companionship which these +afforded, but to that, an unshaped thing with an undefined activity, +real only for what it did not have, he clung tenaciously and often +enthusiastically. And Descartes spoke for him: _Knowing that I have +nothing, I am_. + +But in this self that was real only because always lacking, always +doubting, Descartes found a priceless treasure. Every one is familiar +with the principle of Christian theology, that the conviction of sin is +a real promise because the actual beginning of salvation, and every one +has some appreciation of this principle. It is a principle, too, that no +priest ever made or could ever unmake, belonging as it does to the very +nature of conscious creatures. In like manner, [p.185] then, Descartes +recognized in the consciousness of doubt, or say of intellectual error, +the real promise, because the actual beginning or even the very presence +of veracity in knowledge. The doubter, conscious of error as he must be, +was never without and never by any possibility could be without a sense +for truth, an idea of veracity. Doubting all things he must yet believe +in truth. Plato said centuries before that mere opinion, however false, +was nevertheless always in love with true knowledge, and this Platonic +love Descartes found in the doubter's conviction of error. In Plato's +spirit Descartes insisted that doubt was a constant yearning for truth, +a persistent faith in it. Doubt was informed with truth, with the idea +of truth, very much as one has the "idea" of a thing that one cannot +master. Man might be a doubter of all things, then, but in spite of his +doubt he must believe in the reality of things, not exactly in the +individual reality of each and every thing, but in reality in and among +all things. For him, doubting and self-conscious, there must dwell in +the world a realizing nature or power, an agent of perfect veracity, +checking any experience from being altogether deceptive. And, for the +present, to narrow our attention to a single phase of the doubter's +natural idea of veracity, as Descartes reasoned about it, truth and +everything that goes with truth, perfection and absoluteness in all its +phases, could not be solely human if to doubt was human. They must, in +consequence, be divine. So God, a spirit of truth and righteousness, was +real, as real as the real self of always doubting but ever truth-loving +man. _Dubito, cogito; ergo sum: etiam_ [p.186] _Deus est. I doubt, I +think; as thinker and doubter I am: and what is more, God, veracity +incarnate, is also_. + +And here begins or began a great controversy, nor can the issues of it +be said to have been wholly settled even to-day. What did Descartes +understand when in this way he proved to himself the existence of God? +Was only the God he seemed to have lost once more restored to him, and +restored intact? Did he merely justify, and so return to its old place +of authority, the traditional theology of his day? Was his doubt, as +some would view it, not his own genuine experience, but simply the +conceit and pretence of method? These questions need an answer, for +their answer affects not only Descartes' regained religion, but also his +regained real world in general. So many have been disposed almost to +laugh outright at the simple-minded Descartes for his doubting +everything from matter and mind to God, only in the end to get +everything back. They have seen him as one chasing the verities out by +one door only to welcome them with outstretched arms as they run in at +another that had been left open for their return; and this view of him +has been strengthened by the fact that conservatives in religion the +world over have made Descartes their victim by appealing to his proof, +borrowing for themselves his philosopher's robes, as if these could be +easily assumed and as easily put off. But as to the justice of such a +view there is little if any good evidence. Matter-of-fact history is not +our first concern here, as was said; yet, whatever may or may not have +been uppermost in Descartes' mind, the doubt of his day was both general +and very [p.187] genuine, and the final worth and validity of his +thinking lies wholly in that, not in his or any one's mere logical +gymnastic or verbal strategy. Moreover, for reasons which hardly need to +be given, the strong probability is that, notwithstanding his well-known +lack of courage in openly living up to or even thinking up to all the +consequences of his reasoning, he did feel in his philosophy not a mere +recovery of what had seemed lost, nor a cunning apology for the old, but +the birth of a new point of view; and, if this possibility should be +verified, among other things the conservatives, who have been borrowing +so much support, have been little if any better than parasites. Still, +even the probabilities in the case are relatively insignificant to us, +since the people of the time and of later times, and we ourselves from +the scepticism and mysticism of the seventeenth century, have learned to +think of God with a fulness of meaning never attained before, as--what +shall I say?--not a definite truth, but the living spirit of truth; not +a passive perfection, but a perfect activity; and not even a divine +person, in the sense of one more separate being of consciousness and +will to inhabit the universe, but the moving and conserving power of all +personality--the very active principle of reality present in the +vicissitudes and conflicts of our existence. And, such being the outcome +of history, we have to take it as really the meaning of the great +Frenchman's formulæ. We put aside the controversy, then, with the simple +reflection that results in history or anywhere else are at least very +hard indeed to conceive if they are anything more or less than realized +motives [p.188] perhaps the realized motives of a man or men building +somewhat beyond their clearest knowledge. Whatever has come about must +always be what more or less clearly men have been feeling after. + +The God whom Descartes really proves to his time, and still more +positively to us, must surely be the God not of a satisfied +unquestioning believer, but of the universal doubter who loves truth and +whose doubting and loving make him the always curious thinker; a God +without visibly or even quasi-visibly fixed or specific character of any +sort, since with his nature set to such a character, tethered like a +beast to a stake or like the sun bound to an orbit, he would not be and +could not be divine enough--which is to say, veracious or perfect +enough--for a universal doubter's curiosity; a God, then, who has the +divine character of true infinity, who is, too, a spirit in fact as well +as in word. Infinity certainly cannot belong to a being that is apart; +such a being would at once belie his nature; and "spirits," divine or +human, must not be supposed to be, like Elijah, the merely translated +beings of this visible and tangible world, for they can belong only to +the invisible and the intangible, which is in this world and of it, in +its knowledge, in its love and strife, in its changes of all kinds, in +its work and in its suffering. Yes, a truly living God, living here and +now, is the God of Descartes' proof; the God of just that world of +movement and conflict, of poise and reality, to which the differences +and above all the contradictions of experience, as examined by us in +preceding chapters, have already borne witness. Let us recall how we +were able to say that the very conflicts of human [p.189] experience +were the wisdom of God. And if this all amounts to saying, as apparently +it does, that only Descartes' universal doubter, who loves truth too +much ever to claim its final possession, can believe in a real God, then +we have reached something that will surely repay the most careful +reflection. + +Some have criticized Descartes for what they regard as a fallacy in his +reasoning. He jumped, they claim, without any real warrant, from the +idea of a thing as his premise to the actual existence of the thing as +his conclusion, from the idea of veracity, so necessary in the +consciousness of the doubter, to the substantial existence of a +perfectly veracious being, as if, to use their time-worn analogy, the +idea even of the very smallest sum of money would make the money itself +materialize in somebody's pocket. But, whether or not Descartes fully +understood his own thought, this criticism is very superficial, and it +gets only a specious cogency from the same matter-of-fact history that +we have already pushed aside. No idea, however clear, however necessary +even to the consciousness of a doubter, of perfect truth could ever +conjure into existence the unworldly, independently existing, +spiritually and intellectually isolated God of the Middle Ages; and for +that matter one might say, I think quite pertinently, that money not in +the pocket is something less than real money, or--which comes to the +same end--that the idea of money, if the pocket be indeed empty, must +imply some sense of the emptiness as well as of the money; and with such +an implication the idea taken for its full meaning is no such conjurer +as Descartes' critics have chosen to imagine it. After [p.190] all the +"mere" ideas, or the "mere" things in general, that appear in +controversies, are only ingenious ways of packing the jury. An adequate +idea--that is to say, an idea taken just for its full meaning, for what +it denies as well as for what it affirms, for the complete universe of +its discourse--does and must answer to existence; yes, and to +substantial existence too. So, again, the God that Descartes by the +doubter's idea of veracity proved to his time and to us, if not also as +clearly to himself, can have been no mere substantial existence wholly +outside the doubter's life and consciousness. In such case the universal +doubting would indeed have been only the insincere verbal strategy of a +conservative, the conceit of purely artful method, and the jump objected +to would have been quite necessary. But Descartes' God answered to just +the idea of truth which a universal doubter could honestly entertain; to +truth realized only in and through doubt; a God, living in and with the +seeking, struggling consciousness of the doubter. + +Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, +whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is +in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always +something else, something fuller and realer, something including and +using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"--for +such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and +hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him; +there can be no outer nature, but an including and developing nature, +and no transcendent God, but an indwelling, ever uplifting, [p.191] +forward-bearing God. Exactly such a being was Descartes' real self, the +self of his I _am_--"I as thinker and doubter am"--and this self had +need neither of struggling with nature nor of wrestling with God in +order to get one or the other on its side, for in its doubt, in its +constant confession of incompleteness, even--though this is a flagrant +paradox--of its own reality as in a sense always outside or beyond +itself, it had won the supreme victory at the start. Negatives are +always such very sweeping, comprehensive things; and to be, so to speak, +one's own negative, to be real and lacking, is somehow to include all +things within one's own life and interest. If I may apply an ordinary +phrase in an extraordinary way, to be always "beside oneself," always +doubting, always wanting, always striving, or to be, in the words of +earlier pages, ever and always divided against oneself, is to have +enlisted man and nature and God for ever in one's service. + +There is truly such a difference between programme and principle 1 It is +the difference between medievalism and modernism, between supposed +finality and recognized and asserted movement, between supernatural +authority and the authority of natural growth. Enthrone a programme, and +it is arbitrary and exclusive; it claims, as it must, the sanction of +another world; it hopelessly divides human nature as personally embodied +or as socially organized; it makes life and its sphere irrational and so +dependent on a blind faith: but a principle, enthroned, draws all things +into itself, using to its own constant realization even the changes and +differences of life, making faith [p.192] and reason lie down together, +and transfiguring both a brutal nature and an inhuman God by revealing +them as not indeed formally but vitally rational, and not indeed +mortally yet humanly alive. In Descartes' proof of God we see the birth +of modernism; the programme deposed; the principle set in the place of +authority. + +Finally, then, Descartes did not simply restore what had been lost. +Though we have been regarding only the religious aspect of his +philosophy, we can see in general that, just as not the old God, but +nevertheless God, remained to the doubter's life, so also not the old +verities at large, yet nevertheless the verities, or not the old +reality, yet nevertheless reality, remained also. Man, after all his +doubting, even because of it all, was enabled to return to the world of +all those "isms," the all-pervading materialism, the scoffing +scepticism, the dogmatic mysticism, and the intellectual formalism, with +a new spirit, a spirit of real confidence, a spirit of hope, a spirit of +life, that just by reason of its wants and conflicts believes itself not +only very real but also fully worth while. + +And travellers to-day visiting the streets of Paris or going anywhere +the doubting and despairing world over, would do well to imagine +Descartes, as the modern doubter, travelling and thinking with them. + + +[1] See an article by H.C. Lea in the _American Historical Review_, +January, 1904, "Ethical Values in History," especially p. 238 seq. + + + +[p.193] + +IX. + +THE DOUBTER'S WORLD. + + +The doubter's world is a world in which, as we journey, we shall +discover four features that are especially noteworthy and that accord +fully with the principles of Descartes as well as with the findings of +our own confession of doubt. Thus, in the order, or suppose I say in the +itinerary, here to be followed: (1) Reality, without finality, in all +things; (2) perfect sympathy between the spiritual and the material; (3) +genuine individuality; and (4) for whatever is indeed real, immortality. + + +I. REALITY, WITHOUT FINALITY, IN ALL THINGS. + +Doubt is only a particular state, or phase, of consciousness, and it is +worth while to observe that any state of consciousness whatsoever, any +attitude of mind, must assume or postulate something real. Indeed, this +assumption of reality is so positive that no consciousness is ever +without some will to believe, while no will to believe is ever without +some real object believed in. Can there be smoke without some fire, or a +seeming without some being? Were either of these things possible, then +by the same token there could also be a willing without some doing or a +wanting without some having. To be conscious of something, [p.194] then, +means not only that something is assumed and, if assumed, willed to be, +but also that something really and truly is. Of course, the +consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have +more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or +willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. +In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and +possesses, a real world; possibly not just the world formally presented +to it, but nevertheless reality, and reality, too, in which somehow the +presented world has a place and part. + +This may or may not be axiomatic, but at the very least it is very near +to being axiomatic, and, near or far, it quite agrees with the +conclusions to which, although along somewhat more specific lines, our +own thinking and Descartes' thinking have been constantly pointing. As +Descartes might have said, there is no consciousness without a +thoroughly warranted "I am," and no "I am" without an also thoroughly +warranted "The world of my consciousness is and is objectively real." +But in implications about reality the doubter's consciousness differs +from the believer's consciousness; not by any mere denial, for +unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the +doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar assumption as to what +the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken +as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. Thus, for +the distinct believer--that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic +believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, +[p.195] tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of +doctrine and to some specific manner of life--reality is always tethered +to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to +suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. For our +doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience +can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any +possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, +I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. Indeed, it could not be +either of these without being the other. For him nothing is _the_ +reality, just because all things must belong to reality. For him, again, +the world's reality is nowhere, just because everywhere; in no defined +thing fixedly and completely, just because in all things--in them not +merely distributively, it is true, but as they work together; and +invisible and intangible, indeed generally unknowable, just because any +consciousness is necessarily limited to the definite and inadequate +mediums, or forms, of positive knowledge. + +So the doubter has a real world, but his own real world. Moreover, in +the great freedom of its reality we see how all things taken +individually or distributively, must be, as the word is used, only +"relative"; and in the perfect inclusiveness, how nothing, however +"relative," can ever be unreal. Relativism and scepticism have been +perenially associated, but relativism is not a nihilistic, but a deeply +realistic philosophy; it is just the sceptic's natural realism. All +things are "relative," but only because reality is at once free from +anything, and yet inclusive of all things. What is relative is [p.196] +thus not flatly unreal, as is often supposed, but significantly both +real and unreal or neither real--not real to itself alone--nor +unreal--not without its part and place in whatever is real. The sceptic, +though always a relativist, is thus also a most profound realist, and +the nature of his realism must help us greatly to our view of the +doubter's world. + +Moreover, Descartes and his followers were also nativists or +intuitionists, and, at least for the freer interpretation here +permitted, their nativism was of a peculiar order, and it involved, +accordingly, a world which was real in a peculiar way. Usually nativism +has stood for the assertion of certain inborn and so necessarily valid +and unchangeable ideas or characters or powers; as when men contend that +particular ideas of God are unassailable because immediately intuited as +a part of man's very being, or again when men declare a particular +genius to be born, not made, or insist that a voice of conscience born, +not bred, in them, tells them explicitly to do and even to make others +do this or that specific thing, to live and make others live in this or +that specific way, to accept and make others accept this or that +specific programme of politics, morals, or religion. Furthermore, +nativism of this prevalent type not only has claimed final validity for +what is thus inborn--or given independently of the changing conditions +of experience--but also has commonly punctuated this claim by viewing +the inborn, or the intuited--for example, the dictates of conscience--as +direct, immediate, unequivocal signs and mandates of God himself. Genius +has been not human, but divine. The intuition at large has [p.197] +passed for nothing more or less than a supernatural revelation. But such +an understanding of the innate, though serviceable beyond measure to the +"specifically dogmatic believer," and though implying too, as of course +it should, the natural, appropriate world of such a believer, does not +agree with the principles of Descartes. + +Such an understanding of the innate can imply only a world not merely of +definite, substantial reality, but also of definite, substantial +unreality. How real to some people, how definite and substantial the +"unreal" is; how brutally fixed and yet how alien to what they are given +to finding real. They are nativists of the conventional type, and for +them the negatives of all things are as fixed and as really or as +substantially not this or that as the positives to which what is innate +for them bears its special witness. Their world, in short, is a world of +tethered error as well as tethered truth, of hopeless, unmixed evil as +well as a wholly untainted, unassailable--and why not say also +hopeless?--virtue, of absolute and effective lawlessness as well as an +unswerving law, of a free and omnipotent devil as well as a free and +omnipotent God; for, in simplest language, the rule is a very poor one +that does not work both ways. A world, however, which is so constituted, +calls emphatically for revision of the view that imparts its character +to it. Where the unreal is as real as the real, the evil as effective as +the good, the false as conclusive as the true, there is certainly need +of some second thinking. As some good Irish philosopher might put the +case, if just this is wholly good or true or real, and just that is +wholly [p.198] evil or false or unreal, then _the_ good or _the_ true or +_the_ real cannot be exclusively just this, _the_ evil or _the_ false or +_the_ unreal cannot be exclusively just that, and _the_ innate, +responsible for a world so made, cannot be just in terms of certain +fixed ideas or characters or powers. When, forsooth, has the manifest +existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of +political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not +shaken man's conceits about what is and what is right? The very +conceits--and this the more as they are definite and assertive--help to +make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in +making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly +manifested, cannot fail to assail and unsettle the conceits. + +According to the Cartesian nativism, on the other hand, particularly as +it was developed by such men as Malebranche and Spinoza, the innate, +which is always at once the final appeal of man's conceits and the +conclusive witness to what is absolutely real, was indeed one with the +divine or supernatural, but it was perhaps just by reason of its truly +divine or supernatural character and origin untethered. How could the +universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific +programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any +quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the +purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the +sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its +importance. The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, +and what is more he cannot be born without, a real [p.199] interest and +constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no +special experience can ever compass the length and the breadth, the +depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native +love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as +inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt; but the very +doubting in him forever saves both the truth and the righteousness from +being destroyed by satisfaction or crucified by any final embodiment. He +loves and he trusts with all his heart, and he lives in a world that +forever serves the truth and the righteousness of his love and faith. + +So, taken at least for what he promised, or for what he said between the +lines, Descartes was a nativist without the nativist's disastrous +bondage to form and creed, to fixed character and specific programme. He +was a nativist, but for him the innate lacked its self-destructive +definiteness; it was just a spirit or principle, or what I have also +called a life or power, ever present not in some, but in all experience, +and so at once sanctioning all things, and, because able to find +perfection in none alone, each single thing being relative, sanctioning +also a constant conflict between things as good or true or real, and +things as bad or false or unreal. Whatever is relative is necessarily, +so to speak, both-sided or divided against itself. The relativity is +such conflict. Before the judgment-seat of the innate, in short, all +things, being relative, must be parties to conflict both individually +and collectively, nor is their conflict anything but an old story to us. +All the paradoxes of experience have been evidences of it. The conflict +apart for the present, however, the meaning [p.200] of Descartes' +nativism is just this: truth in all experience, reality in all things, +and reality, or truth, a principle, not a programme. Just this, too, +discloses to us the nature of the doubter's real world. + +In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of God which the +universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and +cherish. We saw how in the proof of God Descartes, deposing the +programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in +consequence God became identified with all that was human, with all the +seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the +suffering, of man's life. God's nature just drew all things into itself; +the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of +experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, +or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world +as well as a God; and the doubter's metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds +from this simple creed: _Reality in all things_. So runs the creed's +supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally +familiar to us: _Reality without form or residence_--real as a spirit, +not a programme, and: _Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet +all things working together for what is real_. With this creed clearly +in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that +possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before. + +We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so +inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all +things must be "relative"--this we saw before, but have we ever quite +understood [p.201] stood the meaning of relativity?--and must be +relatively _at once real and unreal_. Perhaps I am still adding little, +if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and +emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually +are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus +relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being +also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the +relative _ipso facto_ puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And +so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent +conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a +genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but +instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, +that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true +and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only +employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly +interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines: + + All service ranks the same with God-- + Whose puppets, best and worst, + Are we; there is no last or first. + +All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could +not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things. +All men serving God are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, +could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and +unceasing. + +So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter--and +what a world it is! No [p.202] finality, because so much reality. +Conflict, forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity, +that is to say finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for +the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual +infinity. + +And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets +new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much +fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and +competition. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own +peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other. We cannot, +however, enlarge now upon this point. Another consequence of the +peculiar realism of the sceptic has a more pressing interest. + +Is our universal doubter naturally and honestly an evolutionist or a +creationalist? Of course, he may be neither, or he may be one or the +other with a meaning different from that usually recognized. Terms like +these are so very hard to control. Conceivably the doubter, a very +versatile character always, might even be both evolutionist and +creationalist. But, as the terms are commonly used, he must be said at +least to have his face towards an evolutional and away from a creational +view. The difference, again, is seen in that between principle and +programme. An evolutional world is the working out of a principle; a +created world, of a programme--the fixed design of some specified being. +True, one may speak with much significance of persistent, continuous +creation, of a creation active at all times and in all things, and it is +to the point that the Cartesians made much of a doctrine that was very +near to such a notion; but a truly continuous creation [p.203] could be +only an orthodox substitute, or disguise, for evolution. A truly +continuous creation could be bound by no programme; by definition it +could have neither date in time nor location in space. And, what is of +even greater moment, a continuous creator, ever present and ever active, +could never be more or less than the persistent reality of the world +itself. How could he be aloof or different? So have we come, once more, +to the immanence of God as a necessary idea of the sceptic. + +The doubter's world, then, is the scene, as realistic as you will and +perhaps we may say, too, without unwarranted enthusiasm, as bright +beneath the morning sun, of the ever present, ever active life of God +or--with the same meaning--of an evolution which we may call God or +nature as we please. From this thought, too, if only we remember that +nothing is unreal and no experience is without some contact with +reality, there is but a step to the idea that God and man are actively +parties to one and the same life. To repeat from above, the conflicts of +human life are the perfection, the perfect living of God. God is, nay, +God's life is, not what some, but what all men do, and the doubter's +world is just the world, the world of things always relative, the world +of constant conflict, in which alone this can be true. + + +II. THE PERFECT SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL. + +But we pass to the second feature of this world in which we are +journeying, namely, to the sympathy of the spiritual and the physical. + +[p.204] As a matter of course the sceptic, by his peculiar attitude of +mind, must imply something with reference to the relation of the two +worlds, or the worlds commonly supposed to be two, the spiritual and the +material, and because for him the reality cannot be exclusively one +definite thing or any number, small or large, of definite things, all of +them independent and exclusive, he must imply in the world of things, be +these two or as many as you please, that they always work together for +whatever is real. Such an implication at first hearing may or may not +appear to be a pregnant one, but at least it suggests that in some +genuine way there must be sympathy between the two things, the two +worlds--spirit and matter, mind and body. These two must work together +for whatever is real. + +But by this necessary sympathy between the spiritual and the material is +not meant a mere parallelism so called. Thinkers, present and past, have +tried to be satisfied with such a meaning. To be quite real, however, +sympathy must be substantial even to the point of unity, not formal. +Some friends, and even some married people, are parallel, life matching +life at each and every point, but not positively and vitally +sympathetic. Still, in parallelism, the very name for which is fairly +indicative of its import, there is a convenient approach to the meaning +here intended. Moreover, our Cartesian philosophers were much given to a +theory of parallelism in their views of the relation of the two spheres +of mind and matter; their specific doctrine of continuous creation, +already referred to, was parallelistic; and they found the human mind +and [p.205] the human body, though distinctly two, still "parallel." +Then, too, in more recent times, parallelism has been in evidence, +figuring conspicuously at least as a working standpoint in the +psychological laboratory, and figuring also, I venture to add, as an +important assumption in philanthropic work. Accordingly, although the +term itself does convey a good deal of its meaning, I shall try, in +words as simple as possible, to show exactly what the theory of +parallelism is. This done, we shall be able to see, or think through +parallelism to sympathy of a more genuine and a more vital sort. + +As was said, the doctrine of continuous creation, holding as it does +that the mental and spiritual life of God and the constant changes in +the natural world, the world said to be of his creation, are always in +accord, God in his relation to the world being, so to speak, always up +to date and having his attention on every place and part, is distinctly +a parallelistic doctrine; but, quite apart from any theological +reference, parallelism asserts that all states, or events, in the two +spheres of body and mind, of spirit and matter, are (1) equally real and +substantial, and (2) perfectly harmonious and consistent, in just the +sense that always in connection with any condition or change in one +realm there is an accompanying condition or change in the other, +although (3) between the two there exists and can exist no causal +connection whatever. Obviously to make either, whether by what is known +as causation or in any other way, the producing and wholly determining +condition of the other, or of anything in the other, would be at once to +unsettle the equivalence or balance of their reality, and _equally real_ +[p.206] _they must be_. Thus, in more detail, mind is denied any +independent part in the production or determination of anything in the +material realm, and matter is in no way the source of what transpires in +mind. Each is, so far as the other is concerned, quite its own master. +Each is absolutely without any arbitrary influence, any influence not +natural or sympathetic or co-operative, upon the other. So to speak, +neither imposes on the other a "must" that is not at the same time +already the other's "would." In other words, any state in one is always +the occasion, but, so far as an independent causation goes, the wholly +passive occasion of something quite pertinent occurring in the other. Is +there an idea, a state of consciousness; then, corresponding, there is +some real thing, some physical object adequate to the idea. Is there an +act of will; then, corresponding to it, some movement in the material +world. Were the relation different from this, were mind and matter ever +independent causes, not merely coincidents or perhaps co-operative +causes, of each other, then, as is worth adding, besides the disturbance +of the equivalence of reality, already referred to, there would be +implied a fixity of plan, or manner of action, and a definiteness of +possessed power in the nature of the supposed causes, and these +implications would also give offence. + +Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation--on some +plan--of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more +sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, +independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever +localized or with an exclusive residence. [p.207] In very much the same +way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression +contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an +exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute +monarchy or of an absolute institution, whether church or state. +Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain +conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily +involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and +value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable +conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of +the world must always be only one among other active things, each also +with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, +if not actually through their differences working together and +harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, +lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far +from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner +meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting. + +To give a single illustration, though this may be quite superfluous, +parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his +shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, +comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of +the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed +task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the +other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any +independent _ab extra_ causation, but [p.208] nevertheless at every +thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the +environment's mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within +itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in +perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so +practical? The credit here has usually been given to a _tertium quid_, +to God, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. God is the Great +Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met--how about that? +Are the workman's mind and his environment each at once acting and acted +upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the +mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some +being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as +was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot +be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a +long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its +assertion of the parallelism and in its view of God as mediator rather +than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have +seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the +fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not +openly assert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for +example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of +what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides +making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door +to recognition of such a view. + +In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as [p.209] I find myself +able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal +reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly +correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, +rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism +still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also +a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism--at +least the dualism of the medieval type--already in a shroud. Even +dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a +decent burial. With the passing of dualism, however, the sympathy +becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot +be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain +cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with +unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation. +Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism +metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical. + +Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it +is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in +human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a +somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of +question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant +and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the +beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on +historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, +too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily [p.210] +detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material +conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its +service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies +in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the +expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its +relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or +trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself +should be indeterminate--_always a tertium quid_--and, in the second +place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, +should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, +atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of assumed +unity or co-operation among all the elements--as, for example, by +Leibnitz's doctrine of pre-established harmony. + +But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of +parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the +doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new +things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and +matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no +longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical +world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete +correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be +changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is +not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more +vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is +difficult. Still, I submit that the [p.211] effect of correspondence, +whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in +the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and +teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with +the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to +something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each +other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, +self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, +to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, +and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if +this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world +mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, +not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or +mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, +being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world +man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, +that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose. + +As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved +from all danger of any _arbitrary_ interference from the physical world, +has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the +positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being +quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, +the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of +reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be +exemplified in the [p.212] natural world, or--as Hegel said, giving more +direct expression to the same idea--the real is rational and the +rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the +real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even +of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our +present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls +for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; +and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between +him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half +done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well +thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and +the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already +ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, +already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental +and the physical world.[1] + +Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker +in the doubter's world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to +develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions +which he reaches will be exemplified in his [p.213] world and so to be +able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious +misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is +no single individual developing some particular point of view, although +even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought. +Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader +than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the +life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious +life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, +articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own +peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and +mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and +broader than just what he sees, or--amounting really to the same +thing--only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual +accommodation with that of others. In the doubter's world the thought +that is at once free and fully applicable is social--just as we know +doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly +free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, +distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, +_though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring_, +but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, +is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,[2] and +in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, +when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, +makes up for its consequent [p.214] relativity and subjectivity by inner +paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by +open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and assumes +accordingly only the value of a means to an end. + +Much has been said in earlier chapters[3] of the paradoxical nature of +human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a +contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were +recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first +sight seeming to blast man's ordinary experience, and his science also, +these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience +movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the +individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon +they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were +witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity +moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free +thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is +such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of +veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the +single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but +the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing +beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only +more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all +individuals, these views always working together for what is true and +real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior +to [p.215] anything that is either merely individual or merely social. +The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows +or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, +consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the +practical experience of what is real. + +With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely +applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say +that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all +knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the +final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its +character as a general attitude or method. It is not strictly a science, +but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any +specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure +mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully +applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no +promise of future changes? But whatever has a history--can this be quite +"pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned +to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and +revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular +formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but +altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is +said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the +fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but +in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum +never is a point. The perfectly homogeneous lever, so [p.216] necessary +to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can +never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of +the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric +disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of +absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, +which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest +accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most +constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics +be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the +very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as +forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism. +Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, +Descartes, was almost the inventor of the Analytic Geometry, and that +this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly +to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a +doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the +application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to +say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So +Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying +doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his God or his +material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and +theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to +return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free +thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least +sometimes so called, as [p.217] a method or attitude exacting clearest +possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very +principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must +always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics--so much more truly +than any other discipline--is superior to anything that is either merely +individual or abstractly social. + +So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how +thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some +practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, +said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is +liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. +Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of +arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative +acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, +represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a +personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, +often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer +interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be +just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed +by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary +interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the +contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, +the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's +sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we +now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it. + +[p.218] And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature--of this +ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we +certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to +the different phases of the thinker's life, but discussion of them all +would take too much of our space and might seriously tax an already +tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The +truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or +thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his +could ever compass the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of +nature? + +Corresponding to the thinker's positive knowledge, to the specific law +or order, which at one time or another he finds manifest in his world, +there is the well-known, but often misunderstood, character of nature as +a great mechanism, moving of course under the law. But corresponding to +his only tentative acceptance, though always trustful use of what he +knows, there is the much neglected character of nature as not an idle, +unproductive mechanism, always doing exactly the same thing, but, if I +may so speak, a moving, developing, ever-productive one, serving some +end larger and deeper than the known law. Nature must indeed be a +machine if the thinker's knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an +instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a +merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the +knowledge itself is never final. + +The material, mechanical character of nature, as I have said, is often +misunderstood. The real meaning of it is lost, and with serious results. +In the first [p.219] place, it is taken as if it involved a wholly +external, physical nature, and in the second place it is taken as if it +represented this nature only as moving through its changes _according to +a certain law_ and as having in consequence nothing to do but keep up +the dead, strictly "mechanical" existence of its law-fixed character and +incidentally involve man in the tireless turning of its fatal wheels. +But nothing could be more superficial, or even more needlessly +superstitious, than this. Obvious facts are overlooked or, if seen, +forgotten. The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted +so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an +actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known +--of a nature not alien--ever have any but a relative value, a +provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of +her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though +what is known is always informed with the law of her moving; and this is +to make her more than a mere machine. Again, no known law is ever _the_ +law, and under _the_ law nature must be qualitatively different from +what under the known law she appears to be. To neglect this difference, +then, is seriously to misunderstand the mechanical character of nature. + +Yet some one promptly objects that I am not at all fair to the common +understanding of mechanicalism. I am told that no one ever thinks of +nature as revolving strictly in accord with any known law. All men who +give any thought to the matter concede that the really ultimate law must +be not anything that is known, but only what is yet to be known, and is +[p.220] merely like in kind to such laws as men have cognizance of. This +interesting concession, however, quite fails of its purpose, since it +does not meet the real difficulty here in question. It shows +mechanicalism, not indeed bound to any particular knowledge, but +nevertheless still conceiving the final lawfulness of nature _after the +analogy_ of a particular law, the merely known or unknown or unknowable +character of which matters not at all. The analogy is what misleads. The +analogy only serves to deaden what really lives. + +When will men cease to think of the whole after the analogy of the part? +Of _the_, as if it were _a_? When will God cease to be only another +person? And the universe only another thing? And the lawfulness or unity +of all nature only another formula? This or that formula may show nature +a mechanism as smooth running and as blindly given to dead routine as +could be imagined, but nature is ever more and other than known formulæ +of men, and as more and other, or say as answering to the free spirit of +truth that moves in the thought of men, she is as free in her real +lawfulness as she is infinite. By reason of her infinity there is no law +that she may not break. _A_ law may make her a mechanism, dead and idle; +_the_ law makes her an organism living and productive. How a +positivistic science, making all knowledge wait on actual experience, +and accepting all knowledge only tentatively, can ever be +mechanicalistic or appeal to the ordinary understanding as an argument +for the mechanicalistic view of things is hard to conceive. If one +reasons from known forms to uniform activities, must one not also reason +from the always provisional [p.221] and developing knowledge to +productive activities? Must not the mechanism evolve into something +more, adding something to man's life, realizing something for all life, +enlarging even the nature of God himself? + +Once more, therefore, corresponding to the law that men may know and +that they can know only as their working hypothesis, there is nature, a +mechanism moving and herself at work, while corresponding to the great +living fact of nature's final lawfulness, or to the thinker's sense of +truth as a spirit or principle, not a form or creed or programme, there +is the constantly, genuinely productive life of nature, the mechanism, +as has now been said several times, ever evolving beyond its form and +law. Her law is not a law, any more than the thinker's passion for truth +can be finally satisfied by a formula or than God's continuously +creative life can ever culminate in a single finishing act. The +doubter's world, in short, or so much of it as is said to be material, +is not law-bound, but law-free:[4] an organism, not a mechanism; and +upon the value of this vision of nature, upon the theoretical or the +practical value, whether to science or to philosophy, to morals or to +religion, to politics or to industry, it seems hardly necessary to +dwell. But, to add a word or two in very general appraisal of it, such a +nature, served as it is by every law, by every mechanical action, yet +bound to move, is active always from design; its life is essentially +purposive. Not that it serves the purpose of anything, or any being, +beyond itself, but in every part and movement it is itself always +maintaining an end, the end of its [p.222] its own untethered reality. +In words used before, and applied alike to the spiritual and the +material, it is at once dynamic and teleologic. + +Such a nature, be it especially observed, is the basic condition, if not +also the very inspiration of our modern industrialism. This industrial +age, struggling against the old-time militarism, in its religion, in its +art and in its literature, in its leisure and in its labour, in city and +in country, is an age of machinery; of machinery in all the manifold +forms demanded by all the various departments of human life, not of +wheels and belts alone; an age of the conscious employment, for human +purposes, of the resources of all sorts, the materials and the forces +which the natural environment affords. Freedom, not slavery, is +recognized as man's ideal portion, and in order to ensure the freedom, +not human nature, but physical nature is mechanicalized; or, with the +same intent, all the formal means, or instruments, of life are taken as +incidents of environment, not as essential to man. So is industrialism +supplanting the old-time militarism that sought, in all the relations of +life, to identify the human with the instrumental. Witness the values +now put upon theories and creeds, upon rites and institutions, upon +personal habits and social laws. All of these, to begin with, are means, +not ends; and, further, they are means whose devising--so man is +insisting, as never before--must be, as near as possible, true to +nature. The sovereign conviction of this age of industrialism appears to +be that the only sure way to human freedom is the way of nature; +employment of such instruments as she can supply; obedience to such law +as she may disclose. + +[p.223] But many have found this age of industrialism insufficient. It +seems to them so materialistic. It would view things so much from the +standpoint of cold naturalism. The attitude of _laissez faire_ as +meaning "Let nature do the work," has so widely possessed the minds of +men. If only we could get back some of our former idealism and regard +nature as once more subject to some supernatural will! Despair like +this, however, is blind and as needless as blind. Dependence on a +lawful, mechanical nature can bring to human life no loss of what is +truly ideal and personally worthy. Instead, it brings constant gain, for +the knowledge of law and the making of machinery do not rob men of +personal opportunity, but rather make the opportunity for personal +achievement only the more manifest. A mechanical nature is always for +man, not man for a mechanical nature; and its movement is always +productive for man. If, then, industrial life has tended, as it has been +supposed to tend, towards materialism and fatalism, the reason can lie +only in the blindness of such as refuse to see clearly this visible +fact. Not merely something always doing, but something always that man +is doing is the definite message of a nature that ever manifests herself +under the form of law. To the thinker, in no uncertain syllables, she +says: Go forth and do. And our age of industrialism, if hearing this +bidding, will lose its unnatural materialism, and find itself quick with +a moral and religious instead of a narrowly practical and commercial +motive. + +So in the doubter's world are the spiritual and the material genuinely +sympathetic. + + +[p.224] + +III. A GENUINE INDIVIDUALITY. + +Besides the reality, without finality, of all things in experience, to +which we gave our first attention in this chapter, and the perfect +sympathy of the spiritual and the material, which we have just seen to +give new dignity to the intellectual life, making thought free, and new +worth to the life and movement of nature, making nature not lifelessly +mechanical, but mechanically productive; besides these two features of +the doubter's world, there still remain two others to be observed by us. +For the first of these there is the fact of a genuine individuality. +Different persons, as well as different things, possess a substantial +worth to the real and the true. No one may be either real or worthy by +himself, but no one is unreal for being dependent on others. The +persons, like the things, that work together for what is real, find the +service its own reward. Reality, having no exclusive resting-place must +itself be dependent. It is dependent on an infinite multiplicity of +differences. Therein lies the person's chance for individuality; nay, it +is his right to it and assurance of it. + +Before the days of Descartes, to speak generally, the typical individual +in human society--and let me say also, though at the expense of running +into a rather violent metaphor, the typical individual in any class or +group whatsoever--was the soldier, a creature of another's will, doing +only another's work, and having reality only by virtue of characters so +apart from individual peculiarities as actually to imply existence in +another world. The individual, in other words--if [p.225] at once real +and worthy--was then an unearthly being. For a being so constituted, or +living as if he were so constituted, the creationalistic theology and +the analogous monarchical politics were of course largely responsible, +since in their different ways they took individual independence of +action from the general run of mankind. They imposed on men at large a +certain uniform of life and belief, and then, as it were, appeased them +for this suppression with a doctrine of another life in a world yet to +come. Plainly, then, the time was not one when personal individuality, +except as it was referred to the other world yonder and apart, was +recognized as of much positive worth. Under the regime of prescribed +routine, of life with regard to the hereafter, and of mysterious powers +of all sorts, more or less in good standing in the realm of the +unworldly, personal individuality, though in itself not without some +honour, was valued chiefly and primarily for the different conditions, +the different relations to the things of this world, and the different +views of these things, which men succeeded in overcoming, or rather in +completely denying and eschewing. A worthy individuality was thus +secured rather through self-denial than self-expression; through the +vassal's devotion to his lord, the gallant's submission to his lady, the +courtier's humility before his king, or the saint's self-abasement +before church and heaven. Just think a moment of resting your claim to +distinct personal worth on the mere fact of what you have eschewed or +escaped being in some way different, perhaps more worldly, more +dangerous, and more powerful, from what some others have eschewed or +[p.226] escaped, and you will be able to appreciate the main ground of +the ideally significant distinction between man and man in the days +before Descartes. + +But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its +appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, +and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and +the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. Authority came to +be placed not in a visible form, but in an abstract principle. Law +became superior to laws; monarchy to monarchs; divinity to Gods; truth +to truths, and righteousness to rites and habits. The abstract +principle, too, instead of being, as many might imagine, a wholly +shadowy thing, real only to the logician, stood for something vital and +substantial, for something wholly real, for an inner spirit or life or +power in the very things of experience. Authority, henceforth refused to +any specific thing, whether person or manner of life, institution or +formal belief, became a prerogative of all things together, of all +persons or all manners of life or all creeds; and, residing in the +working together of them all, it made personal worth consist no longer +in the denial of individual characters and relations, but in honest +assertion and open use of them. As some have liked to describe the +change, the "universal individual," the individual as an authoritative +and heaven-made type, that dictated a life and a belief to others +generally, passed away, and in its stead, instead of unity as itself an +individual, instead of an incarnate type, came unity as in the relation, +or the activity maintaining the relation, of all individuals. Instead of +a single planet, for [p.227] example, as the controlling centre of the +heavenly bodies, came the unity of the solar system through the force or +the law of gravity. Instead of a monarch or a book or a city the +self-sufficient ruler of human life and human thought, came unity +through the ballot; through freedom of thought--always loyal only to a +real unity and in being thus loyal also always tolerant; and through all +sorts of like means to individuality. The "universal individual" died, +and there arose, as it were, out of his grave the living unity of +manifold individuals, each one different, yet each quite essential. + +And the change brought a transfiguration. It was as if the human soul +had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. +Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise +of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical +interest in men and things the wide world over. With its valuable +accounts of the manifold experiences of different peoples and different +times, at last seen to be real parts even of the life present and at +hand, the study of history became wonderfully absorbing and inspiring; +and not less valuable than this travel in time was the travel in space, +the real travel or the imaginary, which accompanied it. Furthermore, +such ideas as balance of power and preservation of the worth and +integrity of the individual nation, and division of labour and right of +free speech and of political and religious liberty, developed into most +powerful influences in the life and consciousness of society. And, to +return definitely to the single person, he found himself, not in spite +of, but because of his [p.228] special place and special standpoint, an +active participant in the effective life of his time. Instead of being a +mere soldier as before, he found himself a mechanic; certainly the +proper inhabitant of a mechanically productive nature. + +Doubtless the term soldier lends itself more readily to philosophical +generalization than the term mechanic. Perhaps, too, distance in time +lends enchantment to the view, for the day of the soldier was, while the +day of the mechanic is. The day of the soldier has reached the stage of +romance and reflection, while the day of the mechanic suffers from what +is commonplace and prosaic, from the associations of a particular life, +from dust and smoke and factories, from tools and utilities. Yet the +mechanic must be the romantic figure of the future. He is the typical +individual of these modern times, of these times of the free because +practical thinker, and of a nature not lifelessly mechanical but +mechanically productive. Forget the grimy hands and the noisy machinery, +the overshadowing smoke and the apparent absorption in mere utility, and +think only of the man, who in his best moments feels himself +individually responsible and capable, who believes in himself as having +at once a peculiar and a necessary part in the real life of his time, +and who expresses himself through some skilful mastery over the +resources of nature, applying to them the principles his own thinking +has uncovered, and using her machinery to the ends of his own nature, +which, as we have seen, is bounded only by the "unity of experience." + +Remember, too, the mechanic of our modern world is [p.229] not the +factory labourer alone. Wherever in social life, whether in political +activity or in industrial management, in educational methods or in +religious effort, there appears a man who appreciates the need first of +observing natural conditions and finding natural laws, and then of +acting only in accord with the suggestions of the laws discovered, just +there is the mechanic, the responsible agent of a law-free but always +lawful nature. The soldier as creature of this world was only a passive, +wholly material part of a mechanism which depended for its movement upon +some outside power or will; but the mechanic, be he humble labourer +skilful in the use of tools, or political leader supporting no law that +is not, so far as can be known, in accord with natural life, or +religious reformer loyal to life as it is, shares positively in the +activity that makes the machinery go and in whatever this activity +produces. + +And yet one thing more must be said. Just as before we had to view free +thought in the light of a divided labour, the individual sharing in it +only as he treated his own peculiar experience as hypothetical, as a +means to an end, not merely an end in itself, or as he was subject to +the restraint and correction of the different experiences of others, so +now we must recognize that effective activity, not less than true +thinking or than realistic experience, is also necessarily the labour, +never of one alone, but of many. The successful mechanic--in other +words, the fully responsible agent of a law-free nature--is never an +isolated creature with merely such a sentimental concern for his +neighbours as might spring from the recognized chance [p.230] of meeting +them in that world of the hereafter, where all are to be equal and where +love and peace are to supplant the present hate and rivalry; he is, on +the contrary, one among others, different from him, it is true, and +often very positively at variance with him, but engaged with him in a +single activity and achievement. His difference works not against, but +with their differences for thoroughly controlled, truly effective +activity. As things are real, though never final, so men, at work in the +world, are individual and individually important, but never alone. + +The facts in the case, logically and practically, appear to be somewhat +as follows: The individual's view-point, and the special machinery by +which he undertakes to realize it, can be only tentative or provisional; +they have the character, and usually he knows that they have the +character, if I may use a somewhat extravagant term, of makeshifts; and, +such being the fact, he is bound always to be in a state of constraint +or tension, in a relation of suspense towards them and towards the +environment to which they refer or belong. He feels a positive +resistance, a something disposed to counteract what he would do, and of +course the feeling means that he is really party to a growing life, not +established in a completed life. Suppose a view-point, or a machinery +that was perfectly applicable, that worked perfectly, that never did and +never could give out, that might not even very suddenly go all to +pieces, and that therefore put no strain nor uncertainty upon him who +held or employed it; could such a view-point or such machinery be of any +service to a growing life, to productive [p.231] activity? Most +certainly not. Tension, or a strained relationship, is necessary to +every individual's conduct and to every individual's ideas. But this +strain, to be real, just to accomplish its own purposes must be not +merely of a person with his own ideas or with the outer world to which +the ideas refer, but of a person with other persons; not merely of +conscious man with a mechanical nature, but of conscious and +mechanically active man with other conscious and mechanically active +men. + +It is now an old story for us, but an important one, that there must be +society. A genuine individuality requires society. Society is a medium +not by which something is added to individual life, but by which +something in individual life is kept real and manifest. By maintaining, +as it were always from without, the natural tension of individual life, +it ensures to the individual the constant growth that is his legitimate +inheritance. The doubter is a social creature. The free thinker +accepting his ideas only tentatively, though at the same time using them +hopefully, sure that they will lead somewhere, is a social creature; and +the mechanic is a social creature, being one with others for whom life +is not routine but growth, and among whom the growth in which each has +his part induces constant tension, the tension of difference, the +tension of opposition and competition, the tension of mutual correction +and compensation, the tension, finally, of reality refusing to be bound. +Not the individual's provisional standpoint, nor yet the machinery that +he employs and that sooner or later must go to pieces, not these alone, +I must therefore reiterate, make the individual effectively [p.232] +active in a growing world, make him a worthy creature doing the work of +nature or of God; these have their place and part; but constant relation +to other individuals, the objects not less of hate than of love, not +less of rivalry than of friendship, is also essential. + +In the so-called material world all things, in and by themselves unreal, +get reality, yes, get individual reality, only as through their very +differences they work together for what is real. In the world of mind, +or thought, if this can be imagined apart from the world of things, all +thoughts or ideas, in and by themselves untrue for being subjective, +relative, and partial, get truth only as also through their differences, +so tense and interactive, they work together for what is true. And, +likewise, in the world of persons, if indeed this can be imagined apart +from the world of thought, all individuals, call them now mechanics or +what you will, though in and by themselves without personal worth or +real individuality, without freedom or immortality, get genuine worth +and are assured even immortality only as shoulder against shoulder they +work together for a life that is true and real, worthy and genuine. + +But in an earlier chapter, dealing with "The Personal and the Social, +the Vital and the Formal in Experience," a different argument for +individuality was insisted upon. Then the person was individual because +of his independence of particular form; now he is so because a real life +demands the particular and different, with which he is assumed to be +necessarily identified. Then he was the "living, integral exponent of +the unity of experience," free with the [p.233] genius of universality, +now he is one among all the particular conflicting elements of that +unity--or at least of the reality to which that unity refers. So there +appears to be even an inconsistency in my thinking. Yet, I venture still +to think, the inconsistency is only apparent. Certainly it should be +remembered that the person's asserted genius for universality was not +for the universal in an abstract sense, in the sense of the universal as +something by itself and apart from particulars; rather it was for a +constant enriching of the universal through particulars, for the +translation of any one particular relation and experience, which had +reached a higher state of development, to all the other actual or +possible relations of life; and this can mean only that the universal, +in which the personal individual has a place, is not denying or +betraying, but always holding and lifting up to itself all particular +factors or elements in the unity of experience or of reality. Simply, +though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the +particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, +therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either +side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a +tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound +to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a +genius for universality. Not in the sense of that conventional theology, +crudely dualistic and unthinkable, but in a sense that is not to be +gainsaid and that may give some meaning even to the conventional +theology, every individual is real only in having a body and a [p.234] +soul. The soul of a man is only his genius for universality, but for a +universality that works through, not that is independent of, the +particular. + +So the difference between this chapter and the former chapter is merely +one of emphasis. The double character of the individual, however, as it +is now before us, starts an inevitable question. Is the individual as +immortal as real? If he is immortal, does the immortality belong to both +sides of his character, to his body and to his soul, or only to one? +And, admittedly, this question offers more serious difficulties than the +suspicion of inconsistency. How can it be met? + + +IV. IMMORTALITY. + +To write a useful essay on immortality has long been one of my +ambitions, and, as regards the views in that essay, my faith and my +reason alike have so far brought me to this thesis: _Whatever is real is +immortal_.[5] "A most meagre contribution to the subject," I hear some +one exclaim. But is it so very meagre after all? "A most gloomy +contribution," says another, "for evil, and above all death, are real." +But is it so gloomy? Remember, not even death can be real alone. +Possibly, too, the meagreness will seem less and the gloom will be +illuminated if the need of the real being also the ideal, is brought to +mind. That the real must be ideal, that the world must be so [p.235] +constituted that the law of whatever is good will prevail in it, has +been a faith manifested among all men and expressed through history in +countless ways. True, no particular experience ever satisfies it. Not +even the particular things we adjudge to be best are adequate to it, and +the things we think evil, the suffering and the hardships of all kinds, +the always tragic death and the too often offensive life, seem its +eternal rebuke. Yet the faith remains, and you and I and all others are +forever calling out to it. Our very doubts are its altars; our honest, +rational thoughts, as they are uttered, are prayers; perhaps the only +prayers to which we have any right. + +So the real, which must be also the ideal, is immortal; and this, quite +apart from any particular questions about the body or the soul, makes a +world to live in and to hope in, whatever happens. Of body and soul, +too, it says something. These, in just so far as they are real, are +immortal, and any real relation between them is immortal also, for the +conclusive test of immortality is just reality, reality here and now. +Whatever is real in your life or in mine, whatever reality our present +personality may possess, be it physical or spiritual, be it both or +neither of these, that and only that is immortal. That and only that, +however, let it be said again, is now or never. The most serious error, +so it seems to me, in all the controversy about immortality, is the +notion, or the superstition, that something that is real now can pass +away, or that something real in the future is not real, not freely real +now. With this error corrected, of course at the expense of certain +attempts to bind reality to [p.236] something that is visible, if not to +the natural eye, at least to the eye of the mind, man has nothing to +fear. Reality will hold him to itself, will support whatever truly +inheres in his friendships or his family ties, in his best hopes or in +his personal conceits, for ever and ever. Reality can never betray what +it has ever harboured. + +And the whole trend of thinking in this book has been to make the +reality here spoken of a most hospitable harbour. So innate to all +experience is the spirit of truth, the principle of veracity, that life +can have no absolute illusions. True, life also can have no positive +knowledge final and exact, so that all things definitely manifest are +only relatively true or real. All things definitely manifest, whether to +the consciousness that looks without or that looks within, are mixedly +true or false, real or unreal. But just this impossibility, now so +familiar to us, at once of absolute illusion and of absolute knowledge, +is, as said so often, a condition of _the_ true and _the_ real, and it +means in this place that nothing which is ever defined, which is ever +hypostasized or apotheosized, which in any way is erected into a thing +or nature quite by itself, possessing determined or determinable +qualities, can ever be said to be either mortal or immortal, since it +must be as truly one as the other. It must be significantly, but never +purely and exclusively either. Not this hand of mine nor that picture on +the wall, not this body which, so to speak, I seem to wear, nor that +soul, which you or I imagine to be in the body and more or less loosely +connected with the body, is unqualifiedly immortal. Nor yet [p.237] is +any of these unqualifiedly mortal. Still, again, there is immortality, +and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole +body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a +part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just +named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just +one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any +thing, may say, "I am immortal." No one, however--to speak now only in +words directly applicable to man--may say, "My body is immortal," nor +even, "My soul is immortal," if, so speaking, he means only what he +seems to say. Body and soul alike, if two separate things, are _both_ of +them at once living and dying. They are equally mortal or immortal, for +only so, as two things, can they belong to the real self. Can parts, be +they two or many more, ever be unmixedly what the whole is? There is +immortality, then, yet nothing, not the body nor the soul, is wholly or +selfishly immortal. Reflect, to take an illustration from the practice, +if not from the conscious thinking of men, how through the centuries of +the dualistic view of human nature, the saving, or the losing, of the +separate soul has been a keen human interest, and how the separate body, +living, has been neglected and despised, and, dead, has been cherished +and honoured. Yes, man's immortality is deeper, and it is more +hospitable, than any distinction, be this invidious on one side or on +the other or be it not, between the physical and the spiritual. Even in +the case of the spiritual, _the_ cannot be _a_. + +The soldier and the mechanic have been mentioned [p.238] as types of +personal individuality appropriate respectively to the medieval and the +modern period, to the period of the "universal individual," on the one +hand, and of unity realized, not through a type, but through the working +together of different individuals, on the other. The type was of another +world; the living unity is here and now in this. For the mechanic, then, +death is not what the soldier has found it, and immortality is different +too. But how fully to describe the difference, and how above all really +to appraise it, I do not clearly know. Perhaps there is not enough of +the poetic in my nature. The soldier, as the political historian or as +the philosopher sees him, has had his appreciative poets, but the +mechanic has been little sung. The mechanic's death, however, and the +life following it, afford a theme that some poet of the future, let me +hope, will be able to do justice to. The soldier leaves this for another +world, by his violent death only fulfilling his extreme subjection here. +The mechanic, somewhat like the tools which he employs, actually +continues with the always productive life of this world, by his death, +natural rather than violent, even contributing to, as well as sharing +in, what is produced. Not less than the soldier's is his after-life an +appropriate fulfilment of his earthly career; each gains through death +the natural reward of his life's service. But though I find myself so +unable to say what I would, to express either in prose or in poetry all +that I seem to feel, there is just one thought that I must try to +articulate, and that will certainly assist the understanding of the +difference between the two deaths or the two after-lives. + +[p.239] Soldiers are companionable, of course, but they live less in and +with each other than in and with the will which they serve or than in +and with the separate world which at any moment may suddenly take them +to itself. Their lives, accordingly, or their deaths, are aloof from +each other, and are brought together only through their common +subjection or their common destiny, through something which is without. +But the mechanic is social in his own nature, in his own right. The very +reality, too, of the world in which he works is, as in so many ways we +have seen, maintained only by a divided labour. It is, then, a reality, +or a labour, that bridges the chasm between one man's life and +another's, as well as between all separate lives and the unity of all +life. It makes the many lives "parallel" and harmonious--nay, it makes +them actively and vitally sympathetic. Not, as is certainly true, at the +expense of any one's real individuality, for each man has his place and +his part, real and immortal, and not one falls unnoticed or unguarded to +the ground; but, nevertheless, whatever all have and do, they have and +do together. They live-and-die together. There is, in a word, but one +death, as well as but one life, the life or the death, which all share, +and which accordingly is definitely and specifically nowhere and +nobody's. And in the light of this supreme unity, while any live, none +can be merely dead, or while any die, none can be merely alive or living +to themselves or their time alone. And, living and dying together, in +and with each other, all are parties to the immortality of what is real. + +So, again, there is immortality for mankind--the [p.240] immortality of +him whom I have called the mechanic. There is immortality, mine and +yours and ours. We die, but not as dies the soldier, who leaves this +life for another quite apart, securing there a companionship denied him +here; we die a death that is never death alone, and we die as we live, +in a companionship that is real now and throughout all time. +Furthermore, our death is always, or always may be, self-denial, and +self-denial, too, in its supreme moment, the moment of its greatest +achievement, but our self-denial is also very different from that of the +soldier. + +There is immortality, then, but what results has all that has now been +said for the interpretation of history, for our feelings about the life +and death of our fellows, and for the relevant doctrines of +Christianity?[6] + +We commonly think of history as the passing of persons, nations, and +civilizations. Men come and go, but history goes on for ever. To be +sure, history accumulates, as if its gifts from humanity, innumerable +treasures, books, relics, institutions, buildings, machinery and the +like, but the donors, as we are wont to think, are lost to it, remaining +as ideal influences perhaps, but not as vitally active in the life they +once assisted. This common view, however, must now seem wrong. The past +must ever persist in the present, and not as an aside in some other +world, nor yet as merely so much ideal influence, but vitally as a party +to the present. Those that were must also live now. Have we their +literature? Yes, and their consciousness [p.241] too. Their +institutions? And also their life. Their achievements? And their power +and will. Altogether too fanciful, some one thinks; but give it meaning +from what has been said here especially about individuality. In the real +world there can be but one life and one death, and we individuals, +whatever our century, divide the labour of them both. Even our present +life and consciousness and our will must be said to belong, in return, +to those who have gone before; for it is wrong, it must be wrong, to +think of the life of the past and the life of the present as two lives, +as independent and perhaps even different in kind. Not those that are +now gone once lived and we live, but they and we are living, they in us, +and we with them; they in the world of our life, not in a world yonder +and apart. They live in us, to suggest a simple analogy, that is perhaps +more than a mere analogy, very much as our own past selves, our infancy +and our youth, are alive with us and in us to-day. If a physical +scientist can see the same force in the military weapons and engines of +ancient times that he sees in those of our own time, if a sociologist +can find the same social phenomena then and now, may not the historian +regard the older life in general and the newer life as not less +intimate? Did different winds blow in 1492 from those that blow to-day? +Was it a different sun that shone in 500 B.C.: from that which shone in +A.D. 500, or which shines, or tries to shine, to-day? We do not deny +that the animal nature is still alive in us as well as around us, +although at the same time we suppose it to belong to a very early period +in our development. Why, then, should we exclude what is [p.242] so much +more recent? Because it is too distinctly human to be so robbed of its +temporal independence, of its own date and place? That is certainly a +strange reason in view of the fact that men have insisted on erecting, +in their minds, for the human nature that has passed away, a place which +is altogether timeless and eternal. Why not dignify human nature, then, +by making it, and all that it bears, eternal in its own natural life, +not in a sphere that is unnatural? It is sheer materialism, in letter or +in spirit, either to entomb the historic past, as some would, in books +and monuments of all sorts, or, as others would, to lay it aside in a +so-called immaterial world. Who does either of these things forgets how +the books are written and how the monuments are erected, and how in +general the things of the past come to be. The future is always a party +to whatever is done. The men who have ever achieved anything have always +been, in their character and in their work, as if made by the future, +"ahead of their times." An uncanny phrase, unless one can think of the +deeds and men of any time as in a vital unity with the deeds and men of +all times. A man is great only as he identifies himself with some social +force, with some actual movement of his day, fulfilling it out of a long +past, bringing it to focus and so making it definite and manifest, and +as the life around him which gave him birth, adopts his will and repeats +his achievement. History has many cases of human societies repeating in +their lives as a whole the careers of great men. Only it is not +repetition exactly; it is resurrection and continuation. Great men make +history, but they make it only because they [p.243] are alive in it +before their birth and survive in it, in its doing and in its thinking, +after they die.[7] Would history be even thinkable without such +continuity? Could we honestly call it history? What good American to-day +is not, convinced that he has a share in what Washington and Lincoln +accomplished years ago, and also--and this one may, or may not, +regret--in the doings of Benedict Arnold and Booth? And, to put a very +practical question, would it not be well if in the popular consciousness +great men, good and bad, were really identified with history instead of +being treated as fixtures outside of it? Make them separate fixtures and +you make them oracles, the spirits of quite another world, with which +the demagogue, as if a medium, can excite the people; but identify them +in a vital way with history and they must grow with it, speaking quite +as much out of the present conditions as out of the past. Hero-worship +is too often idolatry, and for my part the literalism of it is only +"spiritualism" trying to be respectable. Every extravagance, of course, +has to have its lawful or conventionally respectable expression. + +But what, now, of friendship and family ties? Can we view these in the +same light? I think we would; I think we can; I think we must. True, it +is easier to speak in this large, "philosophical" way of history and of +the men who have had part in it, inventing and effectively using the +machinery that has enabled its progress, than of such matters as +friendship and [p.244] family. In these latter matters the heart more +than the mind is addressed. Still, the relations of friendship and +kinship are not themselves born, nor do they die and all friends abroad +and kin at home live and move and have their being only in these. Does +it destroy or even weaken the meaning or the reality of friendship to +have it said that the relation is as universal as particular or local, +and as eternal as temporal? Is a relationship worth less than any one of +its manifestations? Why, the universality of the relationship gives +meaning or reality to any manifestation. Friendship, then, or kinship, +for this person or that, cannot be separated from the experience in +general. Separate it, and one's friends or kin surely do die, remaining +after death, like the characters of the older history, as only ideal +"influences," or as unearthly spirits that sometimes idly chatter. But +in reality, friendship, or kinship, is one, not merely many, all of its +members labouring together for, and forever surviving in, what it truly +is. The friends, then, or the kin that lived, live still. In others +about us? Yes; and in ourselves too; or rather in the relation of man to +man or in the unity of all that lives. Not literally in others, then, +although the meaning intended was a genuine one, nor yet literally in +ourselves, for nothing crudely like transmigration of souls is in my +mind, but--to repeat--in the living relationship of friends or kin. +There is indeed a truth in transmigration, as also in other related +notions; witness all the facts of inheritance, of historical succession +or continuity, of social growth and personal character, of evolution; +but it is the truth, or is near to [p.245] the truth, of a reality that +is conserved even in its changing. The soldier of the past, let me say, +at his death was "translated," but the mechanic of to-day is transmuted. +The latter word may be stranger and harsher in sound than the former, +but there is truly less violence and more honour in its meaning. So, +again, friends and kin that ever lived, live still. Friendship and +fatherhood and motherhood and all the relations of kin, nay, all the +relations of life, that make our individuality real, that make it +personal, that make it social, that make, it natural, have been from the +beginning, live now, and must survive forever, and by their survival +hold for the present and the future life all who have ever been. Where +would faith go, and where worth and responsibility, if birth really +created and death destroyed, or if birth were a coming from no one knows +where, from a realm unlike and apart, and death the return? Birth cannot +create or introduce; it can only express, revealing and realizing. Death +cannot destroy or "translate"; it can be only fulfilment at a crisis. + +The mere wordiness of a philosopher! Possibly. And yet Christianity has +very nearly implied, if indeed it has not actually said, and said or +implied again and again, exactly the same thing. To science, I know, we +are peculiarly indebted for the conception of the organism, or the +organic, which enables us to bring together the universal and the +individual, the eternal and the temporal, the omnipresent and the local, +without losing the worth or the reality of either, and of course--for so +they would not be together--without erecting separate quarters, or +worlds, for their [p.246] occupation; but, when all is said, science has +only applied at large the very special and personal doctrines of +Christianity, and has therein helped Christianity to a better +consciousness of itself. The Resurrection, the Immaculate Conception, +the Divinity, the Immediacy of the Kingdom, the Sacrifice, and the +Brotherhood of Man are doctrines which one and all testify quite +directly that our real individuality, our real being, lies not in a +separate existence of any sort, here or hereafter, but in the abiding +relations of the actual life now. In these the Christ resides, the +always living Christ. What else can the following mean? "In as much as +ye have done it unto one of these, my brethren, even these least ye have +done it unto me." And again: "For whosoever shall do the will of my +father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and +mother." The living Christ, one of the dogmas of our day, is more than a +fancy and more than a dogma, and for no one so truly as the scientist, +the evolutionist. Christ was too great, too deep-lying, too far-reaching +in human history not to be more. The letter of Christianity, we are +often told, has got to go, but it is quite as true that the real letter +of Christianity has got to stay, has yet to come: the real letter, I +say, not the parody of a mere physical appearance and reappearance +nearly two thousand years ago. If Christ was really not born as men are +born, if he did not really die, if truly he still lives in and with our +lives to-day, if Christianity honestly means the brotherhood of humanity +and the divinity of man, then simply the Christ was more than a pagan's +messenger from another world, and [p.247] more than the creature of a +single moment in history or a single place; also he reveals to us more +in ourselves than any of these things, and instead of resorting to such +notions as parthenogenesis and trance to explain the birth and the +resurrection, we must rather recognize in him, and in ourselves, an +individuality that has, not in spite of, but because of, birth and +death, a share in, a place and a part in the immortality of what is +real. Now I am not a good preacher, plainly, nor am I exactly a +sympathetic theologian, and also I know too well the defects of argument +through scriptural quotation; but I have to hope, as personally I +believe, that in the foregoing paragraph, given in conclusion to the +discussion of immortality in the doubter's world, I have suggested what +at least is not an unchristian appreciation of Christianity. + + * * * * * + +Our journey in the doubter's world here comes to an end. All things are +real, yet none final. The spiritual and the material in life are +sympathetic even to the point of being vitally at one with each other, +thought being free and practical, and material nature being lawful but +law-free, and mechanical but productively so, and being in her +productiveness definite opportunity, not blind necessity, to human life. +And, the "universal individual" being dead, having returned to the other +world from which he came, all particular individuals have real and +personal shares in the life that is, in the work that is ever to be +done. Living or dying, the individual, as we have found him, is the +mechanic of to-day, not the soldier of yesterday. + + +[1] The last few sentences seem like a paragraph from some psychologist +of the day. My colleague, Professor W.B. Pillsbury, for example, has +just published a book on the attention, in which appears the following +statement: "It seems that the problem of voluntary activity is largely, +if not entirely, a problem of the attention ... . The processes which +are effective in the control of a man's ideas are _ipso facto_ in the +control of his movements," and this, besides being the current +psychology, is quite in accord with our doubter's vision: "Well thought +is well done." (See _Attention_, chapter ix. London, 1907.) + +[2] Chap. VIII., pp. 177 seq. + +[3] Chaps. III., IV., V., and VI. + +[4] See also an earlier discussion in this book, chap. III., pp. 49 seq. + +[5] Two preliminary efforts have already been put in print. See the +Appendix, "A Study of Immortality in Outline," to a book: _Dynamic +Idealism: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Psychology_ (McClurg, +1898). See, secondly, an article: "_Evolution and Immortality_," in the +_Monist_, April, 1900. + +[6] Except for a few changes, the next few paragraphs are taken from my +article, "Evolution and Immortality," in the _Monist_, April, 1900. + +[7] In a small book, _Citizenship and Salvation, or Greek and Jew_, +published some years ago, I have tried to show this of Socrates and +Christ. + + + +[p.248] + +X. + +DOUBT AND BELIEF. + + + There was once a brook that ran, at times slowly, at times more + rapidly, through fields and woods, under trees and over rocks. At + every chance, whatever the obstacles in its course, it fell, much + or little, as it could; but impatience and uncertainty filled its + life as the minutes and the hours passed. Had life nothing more in + store for its troubled waters? Was this groping downward all? Were + the memory and the accompanying hope, which haunted every thwarted + move, of no avail? Would true fulness of life never be attained? + + But a great moment for the brook came, rewarding it at last, + bringing assurance in place of threatened despair. A precipice + intervened, and the waters fell hundreds of feet; a glorious fall + --spray, sunlight, colour, eloquence. + + "Now," spoke the brook from the deep, smooth pool below, "now I + have lived; now I know that my life was real and that my life was + good, for I have found myself, I have found my world; and I have + found them where I thought them not. And, speaking so, the brook + flowed on contented. + +The confession of doubt, which we set out to make with all possible +candour, is now nearly concluded even to the harvesting of the promised +fruit. The confession began, as will be remembered, with recognition of +certain general and easily demonstrated facts, of [p.249] which there +were five, as follows: (1) We are all universal doubters. (2) Doubt is +essential to all consciousness. (3) Even habit, though confidence be the +horse, has doubt sitting up behind. (4) Like pain or ignorance, doubt is +a condition of real life. (5) And the sense of dependence, so general to +human nature, gives rise to doubt, although also, like misery, it always +seeks company--the company of nature, of man, of God. Then, after this +beginning, which left us by no means so hopeless as might have been +expected, we proceeded to try the doubter, nay, to try ourselves, first +before the court of ordinary life with its ordinary views of things, and +secondly, before the court of science, and, in both trials, we found the +doubting justified. Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in +science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found +what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and +almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of +contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and +the very heart of our human experience. This spirit of violence, too, as +the evidence of its presence accumulated, bade fair to dispel whatever +hope our confession had left us. Yet out of the evidence there gradually +did appear a reason for deepest assurance, and in the end our fear, not +our hope, was dispelled. Contradiction was seen in its very nature to +possess positive value. It was seen to protect experience, even while +experience was specific and concrete, definite and individual, against +any fatal digression or partiality of view. It was deeply conservative, +corrective, and [p.250] compensative in its effect, but it was all this +without ever being merely negative or destructive towards anything, +since its own efficiency required persistent individual differences. To +experience it gave movement, constant unity or wholeness, realistic +value and poise, practicality, and, lastly, social expression. And we +were able, accordingly, to conclude, in so many words, that both +ordinary life and science, so given to duplicity in their standpoint and +in their ideas, were really building well, far better, indeed, than they +seemed or than they clearly knew. Contradiction, in short, as we came to +see it, meant unity, but not an empty, abstract unity; it meant unity +rich and real with an infinity of differences; and so what had at first +appeared an uncompromising reason for doubt turned, right before our +doubter's eyes, into an unassailable ground of belief, making the very +world which we had been so uncertain about a world for an inviolable +faith. But truth, we saw at once, could no longer be identified with a +formal idea, known or unknown or unknowable; reality could no longer +have the character of a fixedly constituted thing, whether such a thing +were present in experience or not; and perfection, even the perfection +of God, could no longer be a mere status, a passive possession of +certain characters, attributes, or prerogatives. Truth became, as was +said, in want of a better word, a spirit; reality was a life; perfection +was a power. And thereupon, with the new view thus afforded us, coupled +as it was especially with the sense in which personally a man could +claim reality for himself and yet be party to the factional life of +society, we were able to turn to [p.251] Descartes, an early modern +doubter, a father confessor of many doubters, and, overlooking some of +his shortcomings in thought and character, to appreciate both the use +that he made of doubt, the intimacy that he, too, found between doubt +and faith, and the world of reality, of most vital sympathy between the +material and the spiritual, of genuine, personal individuality, and of +immortality, through which he led us, doubter, universal doubter though +he was. That great Frenchman, as we were enabled to understand him, got +back the world, the self and the God which he seemed to have lost, but +he got them all back transfigured. He got them back, not by denying and +excluding what appeared negative and treacherous in their nature, but by +facing this and using it, by accepting it and turning it even against +itself. The very Paris to which he returned as believer was the same +Paris, the Paris of doubt and of evil in all its forms, that earlier, +hopeless and despairing, he had put behind him. And, once more, his +experience was ours, and so helped us to interpret and deepen ours, +quickening the value of our own previous discovery that within the very +sources of doubt lay the real bases of belief. Our own doubted world of +what was relative and artificial, and above all contradictory, had +already turned, without loss of anything that was in it, into a world of +reality and belief. + +And so, for this concluding chapter, as but a sort of focussing of what +almost from the beginning has been borne in upon us, but especially at +the close has been rich in reality and meaning, we have a sixth general +fact, which may now be added to the original five. [p.252] _We believe +through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very +things we doubt_. To this fact really inclusive of all the others, or if +not to this fact at least to this conviction which we have achieved +here, we shall now turn, and in our concluding chapter we may even +forget, or retain only as the appropriate background, many of those more +special or more technical details that from time to time have occupied +us. After so much, that to some, if not to all, who have followed me to +this place, may have appeared open to the charge of being mere theory, +certain simple, very practical considerations, appealing quite as much +to the emotions as to the reason, can hardly be out of place. Those who +are already satisfied, who foresee only repetition, who are themselves +without emotion, or who consider anything like the drawing of a moral to +be as useless as it is inartistic, need read no further. + + +I. + +We believe in the very things we doubt. Doubt, this is to say, can +destroy nothing. It only calls for closer scrutiny, for wider and deeper +view, for greater achievement. Its effect is only to make over, renew, +or fulfil what has already been and must ever remain an object of faith, +and so doing it keeps the old faith alive. It questions all things, but +properly, consistently it raises, not questions of mere existence or +reality, but questions of meaning and worth, and whatever it truly +questions it always quickens. Have [p.253] we not found that with its +inborn and insatiable passion for truth doubt must believe in +everything, and that to satisfy this passion, since all things must work +together for what is real and true, it must reject nothing but seek even +the universe in everything? All things, from the momentary sensation in +your little finger, or the tree yonder on the lawn, to the personality +of God or the divinity of Christ as an idea in the consciousness of +millions of people, all things are; they are in experience; they are +unassailable realities of experience; but--and just this is as far as +the truth-loving doubter, the doubter who is honest with his own +self-consciousness, can go--what really are they? _What are they?_ is +such an honest question. In this question, too, there is more reality +for the things inquired about even than in any man's assertion that they +are this or that they are that. But the question _Are they?_ would be +downright treachery. We doubters, then, believe, but would ever know +what we believe; we have, yet would realize every possibility that what +we have affords. + +Doubt, I repeat, destroys nothing. From time to time certain doubting +people have called their prophets impostors, and have imagined +themselves able to put the impostors out of the way, but, as history has +always shown, only with the result of reviving among themselves and +often of awakening in the minds and hearts of others the sense and +conviction of just that for which the offensive impostors may have +suffered violent death. Even history's petty impostors, too, as well as +those who have proved heroes and great leaders, have always had their +justification. An [p.254] absolute impostor has never been. Again, +certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or +moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to +make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual +dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is +valid and real. Nothing can be, or ever has been, unreal. And, in +general, doubt of a thing or a person or a God only needs its own +conscious assertion to turn actually into an appeal from its particular +object to the ideal or spirit or principle for which the object had +stood, and upon this appeal even the object that has been for a moment +condemned is justified and glorified. Thus, doubt may deny or depose or +put to death, but as it is honest it also realizes or restores or +revives. Through doubt the sensuous, which is the particular and +visible, is ever becoming spiritualized; even this corruptible puts on +incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. Or, in these words, if +we doubt we may reject the object, the letter, but we cannot reject the +letter without accepting and asserting the spirit, and we cannot assert +the spirit without recalling and exalting and even worshipping the +letter. The rejection makes for universality by casting down the +barriers of the particular experience of time or place, of person or +nation, of the Greek perhaps, if again I may look to history, or of the +Jew or of the Christian, while the recall and the worship make for +definiteness. Without the previous rejection the worship could be only +idolatry. So, as Descartes will be remembered virtually to have said, +doubt is innately loyal to reality in [p.255] everything, and just +through this loyalty the world it spurns, the world of God and man and +nature, is for ever called back, a real world once more, because a +realized, a spiritually realized world. Why forget, as so many seem to, +that reality is an achievement; achieved it may be, as with the brook, +even by a great fall? + +But have you ever climbed a mountain up and up and up, through thick +woods, over rough, almost impassable trails, into clouds dense and +chilling, stormy and angry, over treacherous snows and frightful cliffs, +and come out at last on the very top to see both earth and heaven, +yourself between, the clouds dispersed, the hardships and dangers all +forgotten, the whole world real and yours? Well, that is doubt become +achievement. Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a +problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all +the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to +you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when +failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and +the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? +That, too, is doubt rewarded. Have you ever visited, perhaps more +curiously than reverently, some great Catholic cathedral, or, better +still, some temple of the far Orient, and watching the worshippers +there, suddenly had a vision of religion as greater and deeper than any +Protestantism or even than Christianity? That, again, is doubt's +achievement. Have you ever suffered a great heartrending disappointment, +let me say a great personal loss, and [p.256] found it seemingly +impossible to return to the routine of your former life, but +nevertheless, almost imperceptibly, come into a sense of presence and +gain from the very thing that seemed taken from you? That, once more, is +doubt without its sting, robbed of its victory. Doubt means sacrifice, +often enormous sacrifice, but always a more than equal gain. The light +that casts the shadows of doubt, when one can face it, and really does +face it, as, for another example, in this book we have been trying to +face it, is so splendid and so uplifting. + +So, a third time, doubt destroys nothing; it only makes reality forever +an achievement and belief a constantly active life. The fact, now no +stranger to us, that doubt is social, also shows this. Doubt is social, +as has been said, since by its isolation it makes the longing for +company, and by its greater freedom the larger opportunity for company; +and since also the very contradictions or controversies which arouse it +are never merely individual, being always social also, and social +relationship means effort and sacrifice, and is accordingly a peculiarly +interesting witness to the losses that doubt must suffer for its greater +gains. Doubt, in short, shows belief, working not merely for the reality +of all things, but also for the love of all men. As social, then, as +working for the love of all men, doubt involves sympathy. Yet not an +easy, passive sympathy. A restless, labouring, always growing sympathy +is the sympathy of the doubter; a sympathy that makes all it covers +labour and grow also. Does it hurt your business to doubt it +sufficiently to make you able to sympathize with the interests of +[p.257] another? To this question Adam Smith gave a timely answer when +at a critical moment in industrial history he found in sympathy a +condition of successful competition. Does it hurt your politics, if you +can lose enough of the partisan's conceit or the jingo's bombast to +sympathize with the other parties or the other nations? The value of +real independence in politics is one answer, and the idea of federation +among competing states, or of international polity as a basis of +successful national life, is another. Does it hurt your understanding to +outgrow your own profoundest ideas and see some validity in the +doctrines and formulæ of others? Does it hurt your Christianity to make +concessions to another's Christianity or to the worship of any land or +any time? The reading of the last great book, or the visit to the pagan +temple, is an answer. Simply the doubter the world over, social being +that he is by nature, imbued as he is with a living sympathy, must +recognize, and must labour to maintain or achieve, the unity of +humanity. For him just this is God, or truth, and it is worth far more +than anybody's religion or than anybody's rational formulæ. It must +stand, too, both as the universal authority which both religion and +reason have over the lives of men and as the motive or living principle, +or spirit, by which particular religions and particular formulæ, however +serviceable, are forever unstable. + +But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and +which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes +belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still +another way. It shows mankind using or spending [p.258] instead of +either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and +faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life +accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest +what they have; some speculate. Some are conservative, even timorous; +some are very rash. Yet doubt as expenditure is necessary to all who +would enjoy the proper, natural increase of their possessions, and while +the rash, be they transgressors or reformers, sensualists or +materialists, or equally impractical idealists, at a throw may win or +lose great riches of mind or spirit, the timorous and +ultra-conservative, the "practical" and conventional, are not less +dependent on chance. There are the new rich, too, and the aristocratic +poor, and both remind us strongly that the real use of what we have is +not only a duty, but also a very sober duty. To hoard blindly or spend +rashly is to risk unwisely, perhaps to lose all, or, if to win, to win +idly; while to use well, to doubt clearly and honestly, to doubt even in +one's belief, to doubt only for fuller meaning, for broader and deeper +life, for richer companionship, is personally to earn lasting spiritual +treasure. + +Modern science, whose knowledge comprises merely working hypotheses, the +means to truth, not truth itself, or if truth, then only a living, +growing truth, affords one of the best examples of this. Modern science +is a great faith, a great belief, but only because it is a life, not a +status or possession, only because it is a constant spending, a constant +using of knowledge, that earns interest, even compound interest, as +regularly as the years go by. And experience in [p.259] general, as well +as science, is also a great belief, and also only because always +doubting and so always using and always earning. + +Doubt, in a word, is more than a necessity of experience; it is +distinctly a duty. Experience itself is but another name for that hard +master who says to every unprofitable servant: "Thou wicked and slothful +servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I +did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the +bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with +interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him and give it unto +him that hath the ten talents." + + +II. + +That doubt is only the expenditure of the treasures of life for future +gain human history bears witness in a striking way. Times of a general +scepticism among any people have always been also times of +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards all things great and small. +To employ again a word used before, this means that life has come to +regard its establishments of all sorts as only "instrumental," not +final. Of course, conventionalism and utilitarianism are commonly +decried, just as the accompanying attitude of doubt is commonly decried; +but the fears, though not altogether idle, are usually short-sighted, +for there is gain ahead. In a certain community, for example, +patriotism, morality, and piety, long identified with specific forms and +customs and doctrines, have come at last to seem quite unsubstantial. A +rising cosmopolitanism perhaps has undone the first, sensationalism +[p.260] or naturalism the second, and mingled ritualism and secularism +the third. But however unsubstantial all three may appear in +consequence, they are nevertheless retained as still useful, as means to +some end, being at least good things to wear or to assume in any way, +and from the change, though it appear so like decline, the community in +the end is most decidedly enriched. + +How can this be? In answer, let us beard the very king of the race of +the conventionalists and utilitarians in his forbidding den. +Machiavelli, with his teaching that the end always justifies the means, +and his open advice to the leader who would be successful, to make a +point of at least seeming loyal and good and pious, shows a typical +mingling of the sceptic and the utilitarian in sacred things. Moreover, +what Machiavelli taught was also common practice in his time, and soon +became a principle of brilliant statesmanship all over Europe. And to +add meaning to his case by associating it with others, conspicuously in +Descartes' time, as we have observed, and also in Athens at the time of +the Sophists, and in Jerusalem when the Pharisees flourished, the same +standpoint was much in vogue; while in our own times we do not need to +look far to find it. Education, social life, politics, religion abound +in it, for the tribe of the Machiavellists is no more a lost tribe than +it is one that began with him whose name it bears. If the name is too +offensive to some by reason of its connection with a particular +character and a particular period in Italian history, for Machiavellism +they may substitute institutionalism, certainly a more innocent term at +first sight; but the offensiveness, though hidden, [p.261] or +half-hidden, still remains a part of the fact with which we have to +deal. The meaning of institutionalism is just that of some asserted end +justifying any available means, and so under cover of its peculiar +conceits sanctioning violence. Watch any institution and see how one or +another of life's objects of devotion is become, or fast becoming, a +mere utility. The institution makes life mechanical, and doing this it +is as treacherous as it seems loyal to the treasured things of life, the +developed ideas and established customs; it is even as sceptical towards +them as it seems faithful; and in the spirit, if not in the letter, of +Machiavellism it shows them no longer implicitly worshipped, but in use, +which is to say, "put to the bankers," and so robbed of their character +of sacred treasures. And as for Machiavelli himself, it may be worth +while to remember that with all his offensiveness he has undoubtedly +been very much maligned, and that to any student of history he seems +only a very apt though an unpleasantly outspoken pupil of the most +powerful institution of his time--the Roman Church--for which things +moral and religious had certainly become effective instruments of very +worldly ambitions. So in Machiavellism or in institutionalism, the name +now being indifferent to us, we see worship passing into use; we see +sacred things become secular, or things supposed final becoming only +instrumental; and we see, therefore, what appears like loss or +decline.[1] + +[p.262] But can there be anything besides loss or decline? This again is +our question, and the answer now comes quick and decisive, whether we +are thinking of Machiavelli or the Sophists, of the old-time Pharisees, +or of those in our own life. Decline and even fall never tell the whole +story of anything, and just because they mean use, even secular use. +That men must worship is surely true, but also men must and do use, and +the use, in spite of the strain of the offence and resistance which it +is sure to arouse, brings profit always. Use, secular use, may imply +sacrifice of the letter or the established form, but it always leads to +liberation of the spirit. In scepticism, therefore, and the coincident +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards sacred things, in the +institutionalism which harbours all these, though often darkly and +secretly, we may always read, what in truth history has again and again +exemplified, the throes of birth, the birth of the spirit. Must it not +be that any visible institution, be it ecclesiastical or industrial or +political or educational or ceremonial, just because an institution +designed in some way to serve an active, growing life, is always an +outgrown, falling institution? As in the case of the Roman Church in the +days of Machiavelli, an institution upon its establishment actually +justifies its enemies by its own practices, while the enemies, so +justified, do but lay it bare, exposing its hidden thoughts and ways, +forcing reform upon it, and perhaps in the end themselves "remaining to +pray." + +So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of +society what a wonderful triumvirate, working [p.263] for the real +growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by +the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and +utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. Even +Machiavelli in his most offensive pronouncements must have felt +something between his lines which expressed would have transfigured +their meaning, not to say also his reputation, greatly, and, consciously +or unconsciously, he was certainly a party to the development of what is +best in modern life. As for the Sophists, whether we see them as +sceptics or conventionalists, did they not have Socrates among them? +Between them and him, when all is said, the difference was only that +between talent and genius, between great formal ingenuity, which always +means opportunism, and really vital insight, which, shattering +opportunism with its own weapons, means loyalty, not to existing forms, +but to the spirit dwelling in the forms. Much in the same way, too, the +Jewish Pharisees had Jesus, a contemporary, who did but recognize and +earnestly teach what they were really practising, namely, the utility of +the law, or the law for man, not man for the law. Only what for them was +merely a selfish opportunity, absorbed as they were in the vested +interests of their time and generation, was manifest to him--who was a +genius and who used for real gain the talent which they hoarded--as a +great spiritual fact, as a universal truth, bringing opportunity and +freedom to all men under all law, not to some men under one law. Thus +they were institutionalists; he, by merely turning their narrowness into +a principle of all life, became a reformer, and, indebted to them as he +was, he could [p.264] forgive them even when they opposed him. Genius +always forgives; the spirit always recalls and cherishes the letter that +has given it birth. + +So the institution as an historical fact, whether we see it with the +eyes of Machiavelli or with those of a pope, with the eyes of Protagoras +or with those of Socrates, with the eyes of the Pharisees or with those +of Christ, may show worship turning into use, the sacred becoming +secular, but it shows also the life of society becoming enriched; it +shows investment for future gain; it shows doubt, not destroying +anything, but achieving only what is real; it shows the life of the +spirit. + + +III. + +No period of man's earlier doubting can be more interesting than that of +the centuries just prior to the Christian era, when the peoples of the +Mediterranean contributed so much, directly and indirectly, to the +preparation for Christianity and to the discovery, or revelation, which +finally came and in due time changed the ancient to our modern world. +What the preparation was has already been indicated, at least partially, +in the references that have been made to the Sophists and to the +Pharisees. Christianity has been only the interest, the earned +increment, or rather should I not say the compounded principal, of the +scepticism, of the formalism and the utilitarianism which beset the +Greeks and the Hebrews, to mention no others, as their peculiar +civilizations were merging into the larger and deeper life of a great +empire. In their several lives the demand came, and came, too, from +within, not merely from without, as in all life [p.265] it must come, +for use of their gathered treasures, whether spiritual or material, and +the rise of Rome was but the result of that demand satisfied, of the use +realized. As for the scepticism, this with all its incidents made the +use possible, made it possible for the peoples to give or relinquish +what they had to the larger life to which they all belonged, while the +religion of Christianity spiritualized for them all the resulting +empire. + +Those wonderful races of the Mediterranean, who achieved--at least some +of them--such great things in all that counts for civilization, became +at the last most extravagant sceptics, not only formulating, but also +very generally living up to, the conviction of ignorance and +forgetfulness of reality. Everything which their long past had gathered +for them they resigned--or let me say crucified--and themselves they +threw, as if with an investor's recklessness, upon a world of chance or +fate, upon a world seemingly of empty forms in all human relations, a +world of disguises for license and of mere conceits of moral power and +religious piety. Sensuous mysticism and pantheism, formalism of all +kinds, Stoicism, Epicureanism, legalism, and cosmopolitanism were +crosses upon which one people and another, one class and another, nailed +their long-cherished devotions, their love of God and man and nature, of +temple and family and country. A great doubting, then, was truly theirs. +A great sacrificial offering was their preparation for Christianity. In +a way, with a completeness that seems to have no parallel in history, +they put their talents to the bankers--despairing, of course, but hoping +also, [p.266] if only their doubting, when it came, may be supposed as +genuine as their earlier believing. From the North and from the East and +from the South their good men came, and their rich and their wise, and +laid what they had at the feet of the life that was new born. + +People read their histories so differently. The pagan doubt, the +Christian revelation and belief, the conversion of the pagan world to +Christianity, the Renaissance, in which the conversion was in a sense +reversed, and the Reformation mean such different things to different +people. Some must still have it that paganism, or pre-Christianism, +ended in absolutely blind despair, in the avowal of complete failure--as +if such despair or failure could ever find words for its own utterance; +that Christianity came into a hopelessly pagan world wholly from +without, came into a world of nothing but unmixed doubt, and brought +with it nothing but unmixed belief; that the conversion was a sort of +conquest, by a power all its own capturing the pagans, so wholly +unnerved as to be quite incapable even of a futile resistance; that the +Renaissance, restoration as it was of the pagan life and thought, was at +best a great condescension on the part of Christendom and at worst an +unfortunate return to the pagan idols; and that in the Reformation the +Christian Religion Militant did but retreat upon the Bible as its +impregnable fortress. But such history can hardly be our history here. +For us the rise and the progress of Christianity have had quite a +different character. To strike at the foundation of that whole structure +the pagan doubting was too articulate. It was, also, too earnest. It was +too genuine. The races did indeed resign, as with [p.267] an investor's +recklessness, all that they had, but their recklessness was not unmixed. +Their doubting had hope in it as well as despair. It still loved the +spirit of what had been even when it betrayed the letter. It had its +martyrs, too, as well as its suicides; its sense of life as well as its +enervating fear of death. Say what you will, then, a great, warm, +yearning belief dwelt within it. And so, just because the pagan doubting +was too earnest and too genuine and too articulate, because it was, in +truth, a great sacrificial offering, the crucifixion on Calvary was also +too true to life at Athens and Alexandria, as well as to life at +Jerusalem, and the resurrection of the spirit was too true to life at +Rome; they were too true to mean anything but fulfilment and +achievement. Everywhere, in every place and in every department of life, +the letter had been rejected; but everywhere also--and this, nothing +else, was the true conversion to Christianity--the spirit was accepted. +Acceptance of the spirit, too, meant that in good time the letter would +be restored, as indeed at the Renaissance it surely was. + +Christianity, therefore, came when the times were ripe for it. It came +not from without, but deeply from within the pagan life of the +Mediterranean. Moreover, if in this way, not in that other way, we must +read the rise of Christianity, then we must read both the Renaissance +and the Reformation under the same light. The Renaissance, as was just +said, brought a restoration of the letter; but, necessarily, of the +letter under the light of the spirit, of the letter transfigured. The +Renaissance, so dramatically manifested in the Crusades, was only +Christendom returning to its [p.268] birthplace. With its crusades to +Jerusalem, to all the old capitals, to the pagan ideas and institutions, +to the ancient languages and literatures, Christianity rediscovered +itself in the past, winning back in this way some of its childhood, +curing a homesickness that a worldly church had made it feel, securing +for itself such a deep experience as comes to a man who, after years of +wandering and forgetting, has returned to the home of his infancy. And +as for the Reformation--if indeed this was a retreat, shall we say, of a +defeated religion upon the Bible, its supposed impregnable fortress--we +need only to remember the pagan origin, the Hebrew and the Greek +inspiration, and the Roman atmosphere of that sacred book. + +And of the relation of Christianity to paganism, just one thing more. +The Christian revelation, so wonderfully portrayed and enacted in the +life and character of Jesus, was only an idealization, a spiritual +interpretation, of the very present, the thoroughly actual life of the +time, of the life that the pagans, doubting but believing, despairing +but also trusting, resigning all but hoping for more, had already +brought upon themselves; a life of self-denial, of common, universal +humanity, all men being "members one of another," and of perfect faith. +Perhaps the self-denial was bravely concealed in an accepted subjection, +but it was not less real. Perhaps the common humanity was military and +imperial, yet it also was real. Perhaps, too, the faith was blind and +fatalistic, but it was nevertheless faith. Can faith go farther or do +more than fatalism? The pagans, then, had become Christians in fact or +status, and Christianity came, breathing [p.269] life into the bare +fact, into the self-denial, and the broad humanity and the faith, and +made these not the mere phases of bare fact or condition, but motives +and ideals, manifesting them heroically in a single human life, and so +in the form and with the power of a personal discovery of self. + +Where genuine doubt is the God is always born. + + +IV. + +To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, +for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising +questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality +and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous +as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often +become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage +casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the +English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics +have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, +given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for +example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in +the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and +intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an +unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail +to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the +formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English +history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. +Frenchmen, though [p.270] so neighbourly to England, have been +conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and +problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more +vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, +throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and +consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear +or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. +Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more +effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not +revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. +Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this--witness +their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises--or only +other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this--witness the +testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic +example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English +people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in +religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their +past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the +forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in +Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it +now to give it point. + +Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may +be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude +doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is +peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own +dangers. To be candid, in the [p.271] sense of the word here intended, +is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, +and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and +fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or +reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the +possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, +and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the +reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full +due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the +same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his +philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was +taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid +English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to +anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or +subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable--in a word, to +nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, +again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a +positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been +a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great +enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal--if not unideal--substitute for the +present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and +government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present +responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or +almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost +never, something that lives in and [p.272] through God and government +and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and +Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare +and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or +Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature +has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest +English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand +English deism; the _laissez faire_ economics; the peculiar nature and +growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; +the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and +bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English +people's progressive conservatism? + +The most radical doubt must eventually appeal to nature and, what is +more, must sooner or later bring man to live with nature practically and +responsibly, intimately and sympathetically; but candour, like the +candour of the English, that never doubts without at the same time +believing, lives ever with her. Perhaps the English people need to have +what they seem never to have had--though the Armada threatened something +of the kind, and the loss of the thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war +was, not without its value--a great, overpowering disaster, a deep +all-searching despair; yet, be this as it may, their part in the +struggle of a life that must always doubt in order to grow is always +instructive and is often inspiring. + + +[p.273] + +V. + +The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful +triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we +must return to that characterization. The other members of the +triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great +spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of +the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the +others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there +are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and +the believer face each other squarely and honestly. _Both_ are parties +to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the +contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional +conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always +belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can +there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental +sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the +differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized +society, without betraying them? + +At once opponents and companions--this is the truth about the doubter +and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite +justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for +that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to +you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him +who hides his doubts in an outward show that [p.274] almost deceives him +as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of +intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or +individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a +camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or +has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life +everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, +law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or +treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to +stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, +have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, +and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The +doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; +the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which +each has and must feel his social rôle, but, at most and worst, they are +only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to +quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part +of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just +one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"--instead of off +at some tangent. + +Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have +him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold +to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he +turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he +could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place, +that his decision [p.275] not only must be made, and made strongly, one +way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third +place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement. +Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing +finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the +contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know +they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent +harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them +really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home, +making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to +my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with +yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with +his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So +fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions. + + +VI. + +Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those +well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring +injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to +be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and +seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all +the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of +these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat +old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,[2] [p.276] +once published a book entitled, _Poetry, Comedy and Duty_. Exactly what +his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of +life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly +and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in +substance if not in form, can not be very far from his. + +Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where +extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of +such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also +in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics +cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for +comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no +residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may +utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily +confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is +bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no +understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest +sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are +companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment--at +least among the gods. + +But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly +comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but +also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is +the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its +conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct +[p.277] way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem, +can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they +insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be +dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the +metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never +can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant +always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never +prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience, +it is always a _tertium quid_, can such a reality ever be present to any +other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face; +it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and +informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge; +for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation +and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man +thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity +of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the +analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily +partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its +parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy--that is, by +projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its +natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both +insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the +grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the +crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life, +is poetry. For [p.278] him who is lacking in both insight and humour, +who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality +accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose +is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly +bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it +presents--that is, in its subject-matter--it is always, not adequate and +inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in +short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, +to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is +above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license +poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever +prefers reality to prosaic peace. + +So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and +inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular +in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all +well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and +complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is +quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too +precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when +not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any +way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's +notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even +profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a +word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such +questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, +[p.279] though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that +the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, +only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry +always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry +of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring +relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme +or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he +continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a +responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal +precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not +if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? +Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real +duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as +they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly +feel their living obligation. + +For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is +both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than +just the principle, deeply true: _Whatever is, is right_. Men have +laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect +mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic +fact? But truth it is; _the_ truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal +comedy--the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem. + + +[1] As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth and +sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great change +of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or economics, +of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual life, were +becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting monarchy, +Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc. + +[2] The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University. + + + + +INDEX + + A + + Abstraction, of science, 58, 107; and duplicity, 61 + Agnosticism, 75, 106; special dangers of, 111, 117; dogmatic and + instrumental, 120; as call for action, 125; as passion for real + life, 128 + Analogy, among the sciences, 97; of individual self to environment, 155; + of universal to particular, 33, 220 + Anaxagoras, 94 + Anaximander, 34, 94, 147 + Anti-vitalism, 147 + Aristotle, 155, 156 + Atomism, 97, 102 + + B + + Babylonians, 106 + Bacon, 176 + Baldwin, 15 + Belief, as unquestioning, 8, 194; and doubt, 53, 105, 107, 130, 133, + 192, 248 + Biology, 88, 90, 104, 110 + Boehme, 177 + Body, and soul, 227, 237; immortality of, 141, 234 + Bradley, 153 n. + Burns, 94 + + C + + Candour, of the English, 270 + Carlyle, 126 + Catholicism, 175 + Causation, 39, 82, 83, 109, 205 + Change, and habit, 15; as motive, 17; of purpose, 11 + Charron, 177, 180 + Chemistry, 34, 36, 88, 90, 91, 110 + Christ, 51, 246, 263 + Christianity, and immortality, 240; preparation for, 266; different + views of history of, 266 + Christian Science, 2, 32 n. + Class, the social, 62, 126, 162; relation of, to doubt and belief, 171 + Comedy, 275 + Companionship, with nature, 21, 71; with man, 24; with God, 26 + Contradiction, in ordinary views, 30; in idea of reality, 30; + of unity, 33; of space and time, 38; of causation, 39; of + knowledge, 41; of morality, 44; of law, 49; as of value in + experience, 4, 37, 131; and dualism, 101; as corrective of + narrowness, 100, 116, 143; as meaning action, 136; as realizing + unity, 137; as securing reality and practicality, 145; as + requiring society, 147; as not to be cultivated for its own + sake, 151; as related to person and class, 170 + Conventionalism, 66, 260 + Creationalism, 82, 202 + Crusades, 267 + + D + + Death, 141, 151, 239 + Deduction, 97 + Democritus, 65 + Development, special, transferable, 165 + Descartes, 6, 172, 196, 251, 254 + Dichotomy, 101 + Dogmatism, and fear, 9; and belief, 194 + Doubt, as widespread, 1, 7; actual, if possible, 6; as essential to + consciousness, 9; and habit, 14; as making life real, 18; and + feeling of dependence, 21; as Basking company, 21, 255; as mediator + between old and now, 25; and atheism, 27; and belief, 55, 105, 130, + 133, 192, 248, 273; as investment for gain, 259; and candour, 270 + Dualism, 64, 101, 147, 209 + Duplicity, of science, 61; of life, 118 + Duty, 47, 278 + + E + + Education, and interest, 18 n. + Emerson, 144 + Energism, 147 + England, peculiar scepticism in, 269 + Environment, as source of conduct, 46; social environment and personal + individual, 169, 231 + Epicureanism, 116, 265 + Epistemology, 92 + Evil, and good, 45, 133, 150, 276 + Evolution, 78, 202, 246 + Experience, unity of, 160 + Experimentalism, 68 + + F + + Fatalism, 49 + Fear, and dogmatism, 9 + France, peculiar scepticism in, 271 + Freedom, of will, 47; of thought, 211, 227 + + G + + Galilei, 177 + Genius, 168, 196, 263 + God, Descartes' proof of, 181; fallacy in D.'s proof of, 189; + D.'s idea of, 186, 190; sceptic's idea of, 26, 187, 190, 203; + death of, 237; birth of, 269 + + H + + Habit, and doubt, 14 + Hebrews, 25, 264 + Hedonism, 64, 147, 265 + Hegel, 20, 147 + Heraclitus, 147, 152 + Hering, 147 + Hero-worship, 243 + History, standpoint of, 79; of Christianity, different views of, 266 + Hope, even in doubt, 13, 19, 37, 48, 53, 105 + Horace, 21 + Hypotheses, working, 89, 93, 258 + + I + + Idealism, 65, 147 + Illusions, 2, 23 n., 254 + Immortality, 141, 234 + Impostor, the, 253 + Individualism, 72, 116 + Individuality, 155, 165, 224 + Induction, 72, 97 + Industrialism, 222 + Infinity, 52, 102, 142 + Institutions and institutionalism, 16, 59, 260 + Interest theory, in education, 18 n. + + J + + Jesuits, 172 + Jesus, 51, 246, 263 + Jews, 25, 264 + Jurisprudence, standpoint of, 13, 47 + + K + + Kant, 110, 147 + Knowledge, contradictory views of, 41; of law, and freedom, 51, 212; + and the unknowable, 106 + + L + + Labour, division of, in special relation of person and class, 163; + division of, in experience, 232 + Law, standpoint of, 13; courts of, 47; contradiction in idea of, 49; + and nature, 51, 218 + Lawlessness, 51, 141, 261 + Leadership, 168, 196, 263 + Leibnitz, 133, 154, 210 + Lessing, 19 + Louis XIV, 172 + Luther, 174 + + M + + Macaulay, 270 + Machiavelli, 66, 261, 263 + Malebranche, 198 + Materialism, 65, 147, 175 + Mathematics, 88, 91, 96, 133, 177, 215 + Mechanic, the, as social type, 228; peculiar death of, 238 + Mechanicalism, 82, 218 + Method, Socratic, 71; historical, 95; experimental, 84, 95; + mathematical, 96 + Miracles, 53, 246 + Monism, 147 + Montaigne, 172, 176, 184 + Münsterberg, 109 n., 112, 119 + Mysticism, 176 + + N + + Nast, 97 + Nativism, 196 + Nature, return to, 22; relation of science to, 23, 56, 74; and + God, 26, 203, 271; sympathy of, 23, 203; and law, 51, 220; + as mechanical, 217; English and French views of, 271; + knowledge of law of, and freedom, 49, 212 + Necessity, in conduct, 47; superstition of, 49, 212 + Negativity, 3, 20, 37, 83, 85, 94, 101, 125, 133, 147 + Newton, 97 + + O + + Oratory of Jesus, 176 + + P + + Paradoxes, in ordinary consciousness, 30; in science, 75, 98; in + religion, 103 + Parallelism, 204 + Paris, 172, 192, 251 + Parmenides, 94 + Pascal, 180 + Person, nature of, 155, 165; relation to reality, 170, 184; + relation to doubt and belief, 171; part in society, 169, 231 + Pharisees, 262 + Physics, 87, 90; epistemological, 94 + Pillsbury, 212 n. + Plato, 65, 155, 156 + Poetry, 276 + Positivism, 73, 106, 122 + Practice, and theory, 113 + Principle, and programme, 183, 191, 194 + Programme, and principle, 183, 191, 194 + Protagoras, 264 + Protestants and Protestantism, 174, 268 + Psychology, 10, 87, 91, 210, 212 n.; physical, 92 + Purpose, 11, 83, 84 + + Q + + Question of fact, in science, 83 + + R + + Radicalism, 66 + Realism, of doubter, 193; of believer, 193; in contradiction, 143 + Reality, double views of, 30 + Reformation, 173, 266, 267 + Relative, the, 10, 136, 199, 200 + Relativity, law of, 10, 136 + Religion, and scepticism, 27, 184, 189, 268; as paradoxical, 103 + Renaissance, 173, 268, 267 + Rome, 267 + Rousseau, 23, 271 + + S + + Scepticism, 176, 265, 269 + Science, as a return to nature, 23; like ordinary consciousness, 57; + as confessing to limitations, 56; defined, 58; as abstract, 58; + as a "looking before leaping," 58; and duplicity, 61, 129; method + of, and environment, 71; specialism of, 71, 84; as inductive, 72; + objectivism of, 75; technique of, 76; and real life, 80, 125, 128; + as conservative, 81; and question of fact, 83; as negative and + destructive, 83; specialism of, 71, 86; "mergers" in, 91; + physical, as self-consciousness, 94; as paradoxical, 75, 98; + agnosticism of, 106; aloofness of, in ideas of space and time and + causation, 108, 109; application of, 114; scepticism of, 23, 258 + Sin, original, 131 + Skill, special, as transferable, 165 + Smith, Adam, 257 + Socialism, 116 + Society, as sought by sceptic, 21; as related to individual, 42, 165, + 171, 231; and science, 23, 60; division of experience in, 60; + as real to lower organisms, 84; as medium of conflict, 147 + Society of Jesus, 174 + Sociology, 88 + Socrates, 20, 70, 147, 263 + Soldier, the, 228, 238 + Sophists, 66, 262 + Soul, contradiction in idea of, 35; and body, 227, 237; immortality + of, 141, 234 + Space, 37, 38, 108 + Specialism, blindness of, 87; in social organization, 71; of science, + 71, 86; dreams of, 87; artificiality of, 87, 97; contradictions + due to, 63, 98; passing of, 128 + Spinoza, 24, 147, 179, 198 + Spirit, reality, or truth, as a, 152; of veracity, 105, 133, 170, 214 + Stoicism, 116, 265 + Supernaturalism, 32, 52, 147 + Superstition, 49, 218 + + T + + Technique, 76, 119; special, as transferable, 165 + Tennyson, 89 + Thales, 34 + Theology, 26, 131 + Time, 37, 38, 108 + Training, special, as transferable, 165 + Truth, spirit of, 105, 133, 170, 214 + + U + + Unity, contradiction in idea of, 31; as expressed through + contradiction, 137; of experience, 160 + Universality, of doubt, 1, 7; of human characters in general, 161 + Utilitarianism, 66, 261, 263 + + V + + Validity, spirit of, 105, 133, 153, 214 + Vanini, 176, 180 + Vitalism, 147 + + W + + Will, nature of, 11; freedom of, 47; to believe, 193; in relation + to agnosticism, 121, 125 + + Z + + Zeno, 109, 147 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Will to Doubt, by Alfred H. 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Lloyd + +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: The Will to Doubt + An essay in philosophy for the general thinker + +Author: Alfred H. Lloyd + +Release Date: November 3, 2010 [EBook #34198] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILL TO DOUBT *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>THE WILL TO DOUBT</h1> + +<h3>AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE</h3> + +<h3>GENERAL THINKER</h3> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>ALFRED H. LLOYD</h2> + +<h4>Truth hath neither visible form nor body; it is without habitation or name;</h4> +<h4>like the Son of Man it hath not where to lay its head.</h4> + + +<h4>LONDON</h4> + +<h4>SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim.</h4> + +<h5>25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C.</h5> + + +<h4>1907</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + + +<p>The chapters that follow comprise what might be called an introduction +to philosophy, but such a description of them would probably be +misleading, for they are addressed quite as much to the general reader, +or rather to the general thinker, as to the prospective student of +technical philosophy. They are the attempt of a University teacher of +philosophy to meet what is a real emergency of the day, namely, the +doubt that is appearing in so many departments of life, that is +affecting so many people, and that is fraught with so many dangers, and +in attempting this they would also at least help to bridge the chasm +between academic sophistication and practical life, self-consciousness +and positive activity. With peculiar truth at the present time the +University can justify itself only by serving real life, and it can +serve real life, not merely by bringing its pure science down to, or up +to, the health and the industrial pursuits of the people, but also by +explaining, which is even to say by applying, as science is "applied," +or by animating the general scepticism of the time.</p> + +<p>That this scepticism is often charged to the peculiar training of the +University hardly needs to be said, but except for its making such an +undertaking as the present essay only the more appropriate the charge +itself is strangely humorous. One might also accuse the University of +making atoms and germs, or, by its magic theories, of generating +electricity or disease. Scepticism is a world-wide, life-wide fact; even +like heat or electricity, it is a natural force or agent—unless +forsooth one must exclude all the attitudes of mind from what in the +fullest and deepest sense is natural; scepticism, in short, is a real +phase of whatever is real, and its explanation is an academic +responsibility. Its explanation, however, like the explanation of +everything real or natural, can be complete only when, as already +suggested here, its application and animation have been achieved, or +when it has been shown to be properly and effectively an object of will. +So, just as we have the various applied sciences, in this essay there is +offered an applied philosophy of doubt, a philosophy that would show +doubt to have a real part in effective action, and that with the showing +would make both the doubting and the acting so much the more effective.</p> + +<p>But it may be said that effective acting depends, not on doubt, but +rather on belief, on confidence or "credit." This will prove to be true, +excepting in what it denies. To be commonplace, to write down here and +now what is at once the truism and the paradox of this book, a vital, +practical belief must always live by doubting. Was it Schopenhauer who +declared that man walks only by saving himself at every step from a +fall? The meaning of this book is much the same, although no pessimism +is either intended or necessarily implied in such a declaration. Doubt +is no mere negative of belief; rather it is a very vital part of belief, +it has a place in the believer's experience and volition; the doubters +in society, be they trained at the University or not, and those +practical creatures in society who have kept the faith, who believe and +who do, are naturally and deeply in sympathy. And this essay seeks to +deepen their natural sympathy.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is my simple thesis. Doubt is essential to real belief. +Perhaps this means that all vital problems are bound in a real life to +be perennial, and certainly it cannot mean that in its support I may be +expected by my readers to give a solution of every special problem that +might be raised, an answer to every question about knowledge or +morality, about religion or politics or industry, that might be asked. +Problems and questions, of course the natural children, not of doubt, +but of doubt and belief, may be as worthy and as practical as solutions. +Some of them may be even better put than answered. But be this as it +may, the present essay must be taken for what it is, not for something +else. It is, then, for reasons not less practical than theoretical, an +attempt to face and, so far as may be, to solve the very general problem +of doubt itself, or say simply—if this be simple—the problem of +whatever in general is problematic; and, this done, to suggest what may +be the right attitude for doubters and believers towards each other and +towards life and the world which is life's natural sphere; emphatically +it is not the announcement of a programme for life in any of its +departments.</p> + +<p>The substance of chapters I., II., III., IV., and V. in small parts, and +VI. and VIII. was given during the summer of 1903 in lectures before the +Glenmore School of the Culture Sciences at Hurricane in the Adirondacks, +and except for some revision chapters V. and VII. have already been +published—<i>Science</i>, July 5, 1902, and the <i>Journal of Philosophy, +Psychology and Scientific Methods</i>, June, 1905.</p> + +<p>To Professor Muirhead, the Editor of the Ethical Library, I wish here to +express my hearty appreciation of his interest and assistance in the +final preparation of this volume for publication.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 23em;">A. H. L.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p style="margin-left: 15em"> +CONTENTS.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#I">I.</a> Introduction<br /> +<a href="#II">II.</a> The Confession of Doubt<br /> +<a href="#III">III.</a> Difficulties in the Ordinary View of Things<br /> +<a href="#IV">IV.</a> The View of Science: its Rise and Consequent Character<br /> +<a href="#V">V.</a> The View of Science: its Peculiar Limitations<br /> +<a href="#I_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_OBJECTIVE">i.</a> Science would be Objective<br /> +<a href="#II_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_SPECIALISTIC">ii.</a> Science would be Specialistic<br /> +<a href="#III_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_AGNOSTIC">iii.</a> Science would be Agnostic<br /> +<a href="#VI">VI.</a> Possible Value in these Essential Defects of Experience<br /> +<a href="#VII">VII.</a> The Personal and the Social, the Vital and the Formal in Experience<br /> +<a href="#VIII">VIII.</a> An Early Modern Doubter<br /> +<a href="#IX">IX.</a> The Doubter's World<br /> +<a href="#I_REALITY_WITHOUT_FINALITY_IN_ALL_THINGS">i.</a> Reality, without Finality, in all Things<br /> +<a href="#II_THE_PERFECT_SYMPATHY_BETWEEN_THE_SPIRITUAL_AND_THE_MATERIAL">ii</a>. Perfect Sympathy between the Spiritual and the Material<br /> +<a href="#III_A_GENUINE_INDIVIDUALITY">iii.</a> A Genuine Individuality<br /> +<a href="#IV_IMMORTALITY">iv.</a> Immortality<br /> +<a href="#X">X.</a> Doubt and Belief<br /> +<a href="#INDEX">Index</a><br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>THE WILL TO DOUBT.</h2> + + + +<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h3> + +<h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p001" id="p001"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.001]</span> +Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of +doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different +departments of life one sees doubt. And one sees, too, some of the +blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that +one sees. There is heat everywhere in the physical world, but not +necessarily only arson or even destructive fire. Morals, however, social +life, industry, politics, religion, have suffered somewhat—and many +would insist very seriously—from the prevailing doubt. Moreover, if the +outward view shows doubt everywhere, the inward view is at least not +more reassuring. Who can examine his own consciousness without finding +doubt at work there? We would often hide it from others, not to say from +ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. Other times +may also have been times of doubt, but our day, as the time to which we +certainly owe our first and chief <a name="p002" id="p002"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.002]</span> duty, is very conspicuously +and very seriously a time of doubt.</p> + +<p>Now there are some, and they are many, who would decry the discussion of +such a thing as doubt, for they see only danger ahead. Doubt they +compare with death or disease, and to dwell upon any of these is idle, +unnatural, morbid. Why not let such things alone, and look only to what +is pleasant, to what is good and true and beautiful? Then, too, doubt, +the confession of doubt, is the royal entrance to philosophy and the +risk of an entanglement with philosophy, which seems to them the source +of much that is harmful, the essence of all that is impractical, is +altogether too great. Doubt for them is even less to be played with than +fire, with which already it has been compared here. Again, as others in +matters political and industrial, so they in matters intellectual and +spiritual resent anything that appears likely in any way to disturb the +standing credit of the country. To doubt is just to join the opposition, +and the opposition is made up of heretics and agents generally of mere +destruction. To treat doubt as real and positively significant, as +having any true worth in human experience, as being even a proper object +of will, is to stop permanently, not the wheels of commerce and +industry, but the wheels of the present life in all its phases. In a +word, perhaps one of the words of the hour, Christian Science has not +wished to be more inhospitable to the reality of disease than have these +believers to the reality and usefulness of doubt.</p> + +<p>Yet all who feel in this way are short-sighted. Their contentions, like +those of their cousins, perhaps <a name="p003" id="p003"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.003]</span> their country cousins, the +Christian Scientists, may have worth for being corrective, but at very +best they are only one-sided. In a fable, never in real life, a man +might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize +the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the +alarm of fire would involve; but doubt is not less real nor less +dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful +applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, +then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook +or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a +part in real life? The negative things of life can be so only +relatively. Death itself cannot possibly be absolute, and doubt, not +unlike death, indeed perhaps only one of death's messengers, must be +even a gift, or an agent, of the gods. Some things, dangerous when +hidden, are wonderfully serviceable, when recognized and controlled. +Sometimes men really have entertained angels unawares.</p> + +<p>And so throughout these chapters, although some may think me and those +who follow me morbid, and although we may have to enter the dangerous +parlour of philosophy, the doubt of our time is to be squarely and +fairly faced. In all candour, we are from the start to be confessed +parties to it, hiding nothing intentionally, and at the same time trying +always to give nothing undue emphasis. The doubt that all seem to know, +that many really feel without perhaps clearly confessing, and that some +confess or even actually boast, we shall face and examine closely, +<a name="p004" id="p004"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.004]</span> trying as we can to find its true meaning and real worth. In +short, the confession of doubt, of our doubt, and the fruits of +confession are the burden of these chapters.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2> + +<h3>THE CONFESSION OF DOUBT.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p005" id="p005"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.005]</span> +Our confession must, of course, be thorough-going, and can be made so +only through a complete statement of every possible reason that +experience affords for the attitude of doubt. To the end, therefore, of +such a statement we shall consider in this chapter certain general and +easily recognized facts about doubt itself, while in chapters that +follow we shall continue the confession by examining, first, our +customary or "common-sense" view of things, and then the view of +science, and having brought together in each case numerous +incongruities, or contradictions, which ordinarily are at best only +casually noticed or timorously overlooked, we shall find ourselves +facing in a peculiarly telling way, not only certain strong reasons for +doubt, but also some of the real issues that doubt raises. As no issue, +moreover, can be more central or crucial than the meaning of the +contradictions found to pervade our views of things, before completing +our confession we shall allow ourselves some reflections, that should +prove useful to us in the end, upon the possible worth of contradiction +in human experience; for even to casual thinking contradiction, although +good ground for scepticism, suggests some positive advantage and +opportunity; the advantage of breadth, <a name="p006" id="p006"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.006]</span> for example, of freedom +from special form, or the opportunity of personal spontaneity and +initiative as against the restraints of formal consistency, of class, +and of institution; and if these things, among others, can be associated +with our case for doubt, our reflections will certainly not have been in +vain. Then we shall close our confession by seeking the companionhip of +a great doubter of modern times, and by learning what we can from him of +doubt itself and of the doubter's natural world. And finally, as a +result of all our own efforts, supplemented by his help, we shall be +able to reap some of the fruits for life and thought that a confession +so fully made may fairly claim.</p> + +<p>From start to finish, moreover, of this study of doubt we have to +remember that there can be no important difference between what is +possible and what is real. Thus anything whatsoever that can possibly be +doubted is really doubtful. Also, if anybody is amazed to hear mention +of facts about doubt, as if doubt should not somehow submit to its own +nostrum, let him merely reflect that, strangely enough, nothing is quite +so indubitable as doubt, nothing so convincing as the reasons for doubt. +Let me not be too subtle, but to doubt doubt is only to affirm it, and +somehow—whether for good or ill need not now be said—all the negative +things of life possess a peculiar certainty, and are all most easily +proved. A great Frenchman once put the case quite plainly when he said, +after canvassing very carefully the whole field of his consciousness, +that his doubts were the only things there, the only things he could be +quite certain about, and these were so very real that they left him +absolutely <a name="p007" id="p007"></a><span class="linenum">[p.007]</span> nothing but belief in himself, in his all-doubting +and ever-doubting self, to rest upon. His was surely a sweeping +confession, and his residuum of belief may not at first sight seem very +promising or very substantial, but quickly, I think, we shall find +ourselves in agreement with him, at least as to the reality and the wide +scope of our doubting, and it is also a possibility well worth +foreseeing that we may even find his belief in the reality of an +ever-doubting and all-doubting self a rock for our own saving.</p> + +<p>So, to turn now to those general and easily recognized facts, which were +to be the special interest of the present chapter, in the first place: +<i>We are all universal doubters</i>. We are all universal doubters in the +sense that every one of us doubts something, and there is nothing which +some of us have not doubted. Who would be so rash as to say that what a +fellow-being had questioned might not be questionable to himself also, +or that, if anything in his own experience had ever been subject to +question, all the other things might not also be subject to question? +But the merely dubitable is the already doubtful. In this sense, +therefore, not so abstruse and formally logical as it may appear, we are +all universal doubters.</p> + +<p>Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, +some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and +science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive +things these verities are! How shallow, or how hollow all of them are, +or at one time or another may become. To take a rather minute case, such +as it is <a name="p008" id="p008"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.008]</span> always the philosopher's license to make use of, a case +that is, however, quite typical in experience; here is a word—any word +you like—that has been spoken and written by you for years. Always +before it has been spelt correctly and clearly understood, but to-day +how unreal it seems. Are those the right letters, and are they correctly +placed? Is that the true meaning? What has happened, too, to give rise +to these unusual questions? Well, who can say? And who has not +substantially asked every one of them, not merely with reference to some +long-familiar word, but also with reference to much larger things in +life? Self and society, love and friendship, mind and matter, nature and +God have again and again been subjected to essentially the same +questioning. The verities of life, all the way from simple words used +every day to the great things of our moral and spiritual being, have +lost, sometimes slowly, sometimes very suddenly, the reality with which +we have supposed them endowed, and although we may still bravely believe +we find ourselves crying out passionately for help in our unbelief. +There certainly are the verities; not one of them can possibly fall to +the ground; yet these very verities are never quite in our experience.</p> + +<p>Still the world has its thoroughly confident people. Every one of us has +met some of those estimable beings to whom doubt seems wholly foreign, +people who assert with trembling voice and sacred vow that their +convictions, political perhaps or religious, are unassailable, and that +they must hold them to the grave. But, whatever may be said of political +convictions, religious convictions have often been <a name="p009" id="p009"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.009]</span> regarded as a +contradiction of terms. How can one be sure and religious at the same +time? Moreover, positive people under any standard are notoriously as +fearful as they are dogmatic. Fear is often, if not always, the chief +motive of dogmatism, and fear is hardly the most natural companion of +genuine confidence. The part which the emotion of fear has had, both in +the personal life and in the doctrine of the dogmatic among men, would +make a most instructive study.</p> + +<p>If, then, dogmatic people are slaves to their fears, while more +thoughtful people, as has not needed to be said, seem to get no reward +from their self-consciousness but the uncertain reward of their doubts, +then only such as live quietly, asserting nothing, depending on nothing, +and even assuming nothing, but simply taking what comes, are left to +represent genuine belief. Yet how many such are there? A few may seem to +approach the ideal, if ideal it be, but the class itself in realization +must be said to be a hypothetical one, and few, if any, of us could ever +really envy or strive to imitate its supposed manner of living; for, in +spite of all the dangers and all the doubts and fears, only the +constantly examined life can ever really lure us. Doubt, besides being a +general condition of life, seems to be also incident to what gives life +worth.</p> + +<p>But, furthermore, not only are we all universal doubters; the case for +doubt in the world is, if possible, even stronger; for also—and this is +the second general fact: <i>Doubt is a phase, nay, a vital condition of +all consciousness</i>. To be a conscious creature is to be a doubting +creature.</p> + +<p><a name="p010" id="p010"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.010]</span> In so many ways psychology is teaching us to-day with renewed +emphasis that we are conscious of nothing as it is, and that more or +less clearly we all know our shortcoming in this regard; or again, with +still more directness and emphasis, that for us there is no such thing +as a state of consciousness which does not indicate tension, or unstable +equilibrium, that is to say uncertainty, in our activity. Nor have we +need of the testimony of science to these facts, since common personal +experience is well aware of them. In small things and in great +consciousness transforms or refracts. In small things and in great +consciousness marks a moment of poise between an impulse to do +something, and more or less distinctly recognized conditions or +relations that would put restraint upon the doing of it. Even the law of +relativity, a psychological law only in its definite formulation, in its +idea a simple fact of everyday experience, true for all conscious states +from the crudest perceptions of the organs of sense to the most highly +developed ideas of critical reflection, by binding as it does all the +details of actual or possible experience into a whole, every part of +which acts upon the other parts, points very directly to this fact of +poise and instability, besides indicating also that knowledge never can +be literally or objectively exact, and that at least with some clearness +every knower must know it cannot. How can there ever be even a single +stable or a single finally accurate element in the consciousness of a +creature whose experience, in the first place, can comprise only +related, interdependent parts, and whose nature, in the second place, is +an essentially mobile and active <a name="p011" id="p011"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.011]</span> one? Moreover, as just one +other way of suggesting the inexactness and uncertainty of consciousness +and the balancing, tentative nature of all conscious life, we always +think, and think properly, of conscious creatures as having will, as +doing what they do purposely or from design. The new psychology, +however, to which we naturally turn, and which again has only formulated +what we can recognize from everyday experience, declares that the +purpose in conscious activity is not a developed, but an always +developing one. Purposive action is action that never finally knows, but +is ever finding out its real intent, purpose being identical with the +progressively discovered meaning of action. A volitionally, purposively +active being is always a seeker as well as a doer. Indeed, any doing +would itself be empty, or idle, if it were not a seeking, and so if it +were not subject to conditions of some uncertainty. In so many ways, +then, through the necessary inexactness of consciousness, through the +unstable equilibrium of all conscious activity, through the law and fact +of relativity, and through the tentative and provisional nature which +must always belong to purpose, we see how doubt must be a phase or +condition of all consciousness.</p> + +<p>Illustrations are abundant. Thus, once more to take a somewhat minute +case, which is really more significant for being minute, with regard to +conscious activity being in a state of tension, visual sensations always +involve muscular sensations, and these are incident not only to +expressed, but also to possible, yet restrained, movements. The eyes may +have been <a name="p012" id="p012"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.012]</span> moved and the head turned, but in spite of the +impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the +observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been +raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines, +although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always +present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. Or, +again, to adopt an illustration used for a different purpose by +Professor William James, so simple a process as the spelling of a word +is complicated with all sorts of diverting and unsettling impulses as +each letter is expressed. Let the word be <i>onomatopoetic</i>. Can I really +spell it correctly? And what a gauntlet of dangers I have to run. The +initial letter <i>o</i> tempts, perhaps with childhood memories of the +alphabet, to <i>p-q-r-s-t</i>, etc., or to indefinite words or syllables, +actual from my past or possible to my future experience, such as <i>of, +off, opine, October, -ology, -ovy</i>, and so on, or, to suggest mere +possibilities, such as <i>ontic, oreate, ot</i>, or <i>ow</i>; and every +succeeding letter is equally a scene of combat, a place of dangers +met—safely met, let us hope, and triumphantly passed. Worthy the boy, +or the man, who reaches the end unhurt. And what a voyage of +uncertainties, what a course between hope and fear, confidence and +doubt, the spelling of words or the spelling of life as a whole always +is. One's whole vocabulary, real or possible, or one's whole repertory +of acts is more or less directly involved, whatever one does. As to the +tentative nature of purpose, which seems the only other point here that +can possibly require illustration, the right we all <a name="p013" id="p013"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.013]</span> reserve to +change our minds in the different affairs of life tells its own story. +We never do do, or can do, exactly what we consciously would do; and +recognizing this, men, as well as women, insist on the right of a change +of mind, and sometimes even of conscious misrepresentation or of +disparity between their seeming and their being in thought or in deed. +That such a claim has its dangers does not now concern us; it has also +its opportunities; but the fact of it and the ground for it are quite +evident. Even jurisprudence, for which loyalty to established and +visible forms is peculiarly sacred, has its ways, direct and indirect, +of recognizing that purposes develop, that the returns are never all in, +that any purpose or meaning must sooner or later assume a new form, and +so may even now be other than it seems. Bequests for institutions, for +example, are allowed to continue in force, although, with the demands of +a more enlightened day, the formal conditions under which they were made +have been openly violated. In short—for it all comes to this—"Not the +letter, but the spirit," is an inevitable comment, or at least an +inevitable feeling about everything that is done. A man vaults a fence, +and then, even if he get over fairly well, vaulting is not what it was +for him. He may continue to use the old word, or the same arms and legs, +but with a changed meaning and a changed feeling of limb and muscle, and +so with a new purpose and a new body to control and modify his next +performance. And what is true for vaulting is true also for making boxes +or tables, for writing essays, for talking, for thinking, for founding +colleges or theological seminaries, or finally, for <a name="p014" id="p014"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.014]</span> what we so +indefinitely call living. An activity such as throughout its length and +breadth ours is, conscious activity that must for ever heed the call: +"Not the letter, but the spirit," an activity that never is, therefore, +and never can be without the elements of the game, since it must ever +wait on its own revealed consequences in order to grow into an +understanding of its real meaning; such an activity, among other things, +cannot but fasten doubt upon us as a most natural heritage. As man is +conscious, to doubt is human. Other things may be human, too, but doubt +is so certainly and conspicuously.</p> + +<p>Thirdly, in this presentation of general facts: <i>Doubt is inseparable +from habit</i>. Habit is usually associated with what is permanent and +established, but just here lies its undoing. As we usually understand +it, habit really deadens what it touches by leading to abstraction or +separation from actual conditions. Conservative as it surely is in +things important and in things unimportant, in things personal and in +things social, it sets him who is party to it behind the times, for no +act in its second expression, no simply repeated act, no mere habit +could ever be up to date in the sense of really meeting all the +emergencies of its own time. Personal habits make fixed characters; +social habits make customs and laws; religious habits make churches and +creeds; intellectual habits make schools; and of all these products, +which for the sake of the single term we will call institutions, it must +be said, however paradoxically, that in being made they are also +outgrown, for the habitual turns formal and unreal and so unsatisfying. +A growing nature has <a name="p015" id="p015"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.015]</span> her ways of making even conservatives keep +pace with her. An institution in the sense of an acquired manner of +action, personal or social, can never really be an end in itself, +although to a narrow view it may often seem to be; it is at best only +the manifested means to a newly developed or developing end which must +eventually transform it. In so large a thing, for example, as political +life, the institutes of monarchy have become the instruments of +democracy, and this conspicuously ever since the French Revolution; in +the history of thought, of man's intellectual life, the objective dogmas +of one time have been only the subjective standpoints of the next, the +metaphysics of one time has made the scientific method, the working +hypothesis, of the succeeding time; and in so small a thing as a child's +vocabulary, the oft-repeated and finally mastered syllable <i>ba</i>, or some +other equally intellectual, has become in time only one of the means to +a whole word, say <i>baby</i> or <i>bath</i>, or even <i>basilica</i> or +<i>barometrograph</i>. In all life the thing we get the habit of is only a +tool with which we strive towards something else. Some one thinking no +doubt of Hercules has called the institutions of life a great club which +the irresistible arm of society, always a hero when looked back upon, +swings fatally against the present.</p> + +<p>So intimately is change seen nowadays to be related to habit, or +indirectly involved in it, that in technical science a new account of +habit has been formulated. To cite but one case, Professor Baldwin, +says:<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +"Habit expresses the tendency of the organism <a name="p016" id="p016"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.016]</span> to secure +and retain its vital stimulations," and such an account, placing the +interest of habit in so general and so changeable a thing as "vital +stimulations," is designed to make habit fundamentally, not merely a +tendency to repetition or imitation, but instead a demand for constant +adaptation or differentiation. In the doctrines of inheritance, also, +always moving necessarily in close sympathy with those of habit, a +similar departure has been made. Both habit and inheritance are in fact +seen to belong to life in a world of change, or variation, and they have +assumed what I will style a protective colouring accordingly. The habit +of always being adapted is at least as radical as it is conservative.</p> + +<p>With this reform in the account of habit we have not only analogous +reforms, as was said, in the account of inheritance, but also in the +scientific view of character, custom, law, creed, and the institution +generally. Moreover, if in scientific theory we find these new views, in +practical life there are at least signs of the same standpoint. What may +be called a new conservatism—the most truly conservative thing being +taken to be the most thoroughly pertinent or adaptive thing—has for +many years been getting possession of us, and is now quite manifest. Our +political constitutions are amendable constitutions; our religious rites +and doctrines are recognized as only symbols; our theories are only +standpoints.</p> + +<p>So, once more, because change is at least an ever-present companion, if +not actually an integral part of habit, doubt must be as real and +general as habit. <a name="p017" id="p017"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.017]</span> Change must make doubt. Sociologically, +institutionalism must always imply a contemporary scepticism; the +conservative must have an unbeliever for his neighbour. Indeed, to add +an important point, some go so far as to say in general that change, +that is, something new and different, is not only a necessary incident +but also an actual motive in all activity, and when all is said they +seem quite right. Perhaps habit, as always an interest in adaptation, +would imply as much. Certainly novelty is a universal motive, and as for +society there can be no question that it has a very strong predilection +for lawlessness in all its forms. True, it may be objected that at times +men, individually or collectively, seek not something else, but simply +<i>more</i> of something already secured; more money, it may be, or more +learning, or more territory, or more pleasure. There is, however, in +spite of man's many conceits to the contrary, no change that is purely +quantitative. <i>More</i> is also <i>different</i> or <i>other</i>. Accordingly, we +both always find, and, what is even more to the point, always seek a +real change whenever we do anything. To speak again in most general +terms, the motion in the outer world, which is the fundamental stimulus +of all 'consciousness, both physically, that is, literally, and +figuratively, is more than merely an outer stimulus; something there is +within the nature of the subject which answers to it with perfect +sympathy and makes it equally an inner motive. Forsooth, could any +stimulus ever produce a response without its being in accord with an +existing motive? Life, then, is a game, and the game of life, doubts and +all, is a real interest as well as a necessity. We are <a name="p018" id="p018"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.018]</span> creatures +of habit, but we have, and we cherish, no habit stronger or more +essential than the habit at once of adaptation and variation.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>A fourth general fact, very closely related to the foregoing, is this: +<i>Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience</i>. Doubt is +but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real +life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the +challenge finds expression. The doubter is a questioner, a seeker; he +has, then, something to overcome; he fears, too, as well as hopes.</p> + +<p>Were all things settled once for all, were all things clearly known and +freely executed, or were the consequences of the things to be done +always capable of being accurately foretold, there would be no real +<a name="p019" id="p019"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.019]</span> living, there would be nothing really to do. In such case life +in general, or in any of its different expressions, religion, or +politics, or art, or science, or industry, or morals, if one may suppose +for a moment that any of these differences could ever develop, would +consist in a purely passive condition, a mere fixed status; it would be +a wholly static thing falsely called life; its movement, if movement +there were, could be only the rest or routine of strictly mechanical +motion.</p> + +<p>To a real life, then, doubt, as an evidence of challenge and resistance, +is absolutely necessary, and appreciation of just this necessity is +certainly an important part of our present confession, and the +confession is important, because it is sure somewhat to brighten what +heretofore may have seemed a dark horizon. Confession often changes +night to dawn, and here the association of doubt with real living, with +a world in which there is always something to do, awakens emotions that +such words as relativity, and instability, and change, and even game, +have discouraged, or even wholly suppressed. Leasing, perhaps better +than any one else, has given expression to these emotions, and has at +the same time reflected what in his day had certainly begun to be, and +what in our own time very widely and very deeply is, the ideal spirit. +Thus, as he wrote:—</p> + +<p>"Not the truth that any one may have or may think he has, but the honest +effort which has been exerted to compass it, makes what is really worthy +in human life. For not in having, but in seeking truth, are those powers +developed, in which alone man's ever-increasing <a name="p020" id="p020"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.020]</span> perfection +consists. Possession makes us inert, lazy, proud. If God held in his +right hand the perfect truth, and in his left the ever-restless struggle +after truth, and bade me choose, although I were bound to be ever and +always in the wrong, I should humbly select the left, saying: 'Father, +give; surely the pure truth is for Thee alone.'"</p> + +<p>This is a splendid utterance, and it has touched a responsive chord in +human nature the civilized world over, not so much, however, for the +humility of the choice as for the zeal in a life of seeking and +striving, or for the idea that knowledge is itself a dynamic thing, a +living, moving function, not a passive possession. The knower is made +also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, +forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within +him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the +condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary +to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, +proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even +putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever +living.</p> + +<p>Still others may be quoted in the same vein. Socrates made life, +particularly mental life, if this may be supposed distinct, essentially +active or dynamic when he identified true wisdom with self-conscious +ignorance, with a power in one of always finding oneself in error, and +in modern times Hegel has done the same thing as effectually, though +perhaps not in general so intelligibly, by finding a principle of +negativity or contradiction the very mainspring of all <a name="p021" id="p021"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.021]</span> +consciousness, of all thinking. Known truth is at once imperfect or even +false, being necessarily partial, relative, and at best only tentative, +very much, let us say, recalling something already remarked, as an +established form of life is no longer the real life, but merely the +developed means to a revolution, a life that is passing even as soon as +it has come.</p> + +<p>For the rest, the positive value of doubt to real life can hardly need +further emphasis. In one form or another the idea, as important as many +may find it commonplace, must constantly recur in these pages. We turn, +therefore, to our fifth, and for the present, last general fact, with +which we shall find ourselves still in sight, perhaps even in clearer +sight of the brighter horizon. We are all universal doubters; doubt +underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace +would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or +contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper +and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: <i>As man is +dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or +rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt</i>. Witness the +fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, +the company of his fellows, the company of God.</p> + +<p>Of course the social impulse, thus to be associated with doubt, is only +one of the phases of its dynamic and life-giving character, for a social +life, a life of dependence on what is without, of real relations beyond +self, must be a life of real and constant movement. Nothing so much as +such relations gives <a name="p022" id="p022"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.022]</span> vitality. This special phase, however, of +the place of doubt in real life is a very interesting one, and it +suggests, besides, so much that is of positive value as almost to +transform what so far has been in large part a sceptic's confession into +a sceptic's boast.</p> + +<p>Thus, in the first place, doubt seeks the company of nature. "Return to +nature!" has time and again in human history been the cry of the human +heart. Has civilization lost its hold, seeming unreal, artificial, +formal? Has morality become hollow? Has a lover suffered the shattering +of his dearest hopes? Has a creed lost its credibility? Have you and I +wearied of our study or our labour, whatever it be, and come to wonder +if it, or anything, is worth while after all? Have friends, ideals, and +God Himself deserted us? We turn, and all people turn to nature. Exactly +so the homesick traveller takes himself homeward, or the prodigal arises +and goes to his father. And your experience and mine, and the poetry of +all literatures, which tells so deeply the experiences of all men of all +times, are a constant witness to the comfort, and forgiveness, and +renewed confidence in self that nature imparts. Nature is our infancy, +in which all things are possible; she is our untrammelled will; she is +infinitely hopeful for us and infinitely kind; her necessity is so wide +and so open that its very law, so different from any human law, is our +greatest opportunity. True, our resort to nature is sometimes, perhaps +in greater or less degree always, by the way of moral dissipation, or +political anarchy, or intellectual suicide, or religious profanity; but +even these dark ways to the home and the great mother-heart of <a name="p023" id="p023"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.023]</span> +us all have never been hopelessly misleading. If history and literature +and personal experience can be trusted, even they have led to a kind +nature. Have you never failed in anything and become reckless, and then +profited from the very knowledge of yourself which the recklessness +uncovered? Personally and socially recklessness, return to nature that +it is, is always a helpful assistant to nature's great teacher, +experience. Great is the pathos, but also, as it is understood, great is +the inspiration of Rousseau's passionate outcry that his will was +perfectly good. He was incapable of a single wholesome relation in life, +yet, so he said, no man was better than he! Rousseau, philosopher of +revolution, spoke for nature. Out of her great love, nature always takes +the will for the deed—and perhaps she alone should have the privilege +of doing that; for she knows that the deed, however violent, however +bad, is sure to leave at least the will good.</p> + +<p>But intellectually, as well as morally or politically, or as well as in +any of the departments of the practical, emotional life, when trouble +comes we turn to nature. Nature has a mind as well as a heart, and when +state, and church, and social tradition have lost their validity and +infallibility, their various formulæ being no longer reasonable to us, +when we have to depose them from their position as our accepted +teachers, then we become scientists, which is to say, intellectual +prodigals. Science, the open-minded study of nature, is only a +homesickness for truth seeking relief. Does the scientist doubt? He is +one of the princes of doubters. He doubts, as in due time we <a name="p024" id="p024"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.024]</span> +shall more fully appreciate, even to the extreme position of +agnosticism. He doubts all things human that always he may be learning +of nature.</p> + +<p>So the companionship of nature for the comfort and pardon which she is +sure to give, and for the deeper knowledge which she is certain to +impart, is a passion of the doubter. True, no passion is free from +dangers; yet this passion, at least this passion, has somewhat of hope +in it.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, the companionship of one's fellows is not less strongly +desired. Huddling together in time of distress is by no means peculiar +to the animal world; in human life it has more than once made distress +seem richly worth while. "We have each other" in word or thought has +been the comforting reflection of many a family, or many a community, +when the money has gone, or when in other ways, possibly through a great +fire, or a great earthquake, or the ravages of a disease, afflictions +have come, and "Now we know how others have suffered" has been not less +common. Indeed, it is my own conviction that these two reflections +always rise together. The distress or affliction of doubt, however, is +certainly no exception to the rule. Doubt often separates an individual +from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified +himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, +or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his +loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social +relations. Benedict Spinoza may have been better than most of us, but he +was not in any other way different, and though maligned and insulted, as +earlier in history <a name="p025" id="p025"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.025]</span> another of his race had been, for his doubts +and heresies, and though exposed to the dangers of the assassin's knife, +and finally, when other measures failed, with special cruelties +excommunicated by his synagogue, he loved his people, and all men +besides, as few have loved them. Doubt makes one dependent; isolation +gives a sense of loss; and, if ever a solution of the doubt comes, in +the life and consciousness which it enjoins the lost companions, whether +they will or not, are included with oneself. In many ways this is an +important fact; yet it must suffice that we see the affinity of the +doubter for society. Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. +Dependent man and doubting man must have society.</p> + +<p>That doubt, furthermore, not only creates a motive to social life, even +to the restoration of lost companions, but also by weakening the +barriers which have divided some class, a sect perhaps, or a party, or a +nation, or a race, from some other class, puts social life on a broader +and deeper basis, is also an important fact, and full of significance +beyond our immediate interest. Thus, to suggest indeed how those two +reflections mentioned in the preceding paragraph are inseparable, +besides his wish to retain or recover his wonted companions, the doubter +would also associate them and himself with new companions, I venture to +say, as if in a figure, with Gentiles as well as with Jews, and this +gives to doubt, or to those who experience it and adequately use it, a +most significant rôle in the evolution of society, the rôle of mediation +between old friends and new, between the past and the future, the narrow +life and the broader <a name="p026" id="p026"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.026]</span> and deeper life, what is conservative and +what is progressive; but at least for the present it is again enough if +we see that doubt, not only by its personal losses gives the motive, but +also by its removal of barriers gives the larger possibility of society.</p> + +<p>And, in addition to the company of nature and the company of man, doubt, +springing as it does from man's sense of insufficiency, seeks also the +company of God; yet not of the God of any theology. As here conceived, +God is that which lies at the back of nature, and at the back of man in +the sense of being in character broader and deeper than either of these, +and quite superior to any difference between them; he is the single, +all-inclusive, wholly indeterminate reality upon which the doubter +depends, and must depend; he is as nameless and unspeakable as he is +indeterminate and all-inclusive, and he is real and perfect only as so +nameless. To theology, God is determinate; to doubt, imperfect if +determinate. At times, perhaps only half in earnest, or at least not +clearly knowing if he is in earnest or if he wishes others to think him +so, the doubter speaks of nature as his God, of the hills, or the +fields, or the sea, or the sky, or the busy street as his church, or the +great book of the universe as his Bible. At times, with the deepest +emotion and with open avowal, nature and God are fully one to him, and +the poetry, or the science, or the philosophy, to which his doubting +leads him, is veritably a religious revelation. But always his doubting, +as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to +nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to +others like himself who, by sharing, <a name="p027" id="p027"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.027]</span> may lighten his distress +and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; +to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he +has known; to a mind and a heart, such as he knows must be present in +that which surrounds him and moves within him, in knowledge more +enlightened and in emotion more inspired, than his doubting mind and +faltering heart have ever been; and such a life or such a mind or heart, +whatever name it be called by, is God. Can mind appeal to anything but +mind, or heart to anything but heart? And doubt—can it be doubt without +the appeal?</p> + +<p>The doubter who refuses or hesitates to speak the name of God may thus +be a protestant, but plainly he is no atheist. A mere name, in any case, +is quite as likely to obscure as to illumine the reality; the +chiaroscuro effect must ever belong to it. Doubt is no road to atheism. +As a way to theism it may be beset with hardship, and its goal may be +quite beyond the horizon; but the doubter is not by nature an atheist; +quite the contrary. As no other, feeling dependent, he is a seeker, and +even a confident seeker after what is perfect. He truly and confidently +seeketh, for he seeketh after what hath neither visible form nor body, +what is without habitation or name, what, like the Son of Man, hath not +where to lay its head. He seeketh, what his very seeking itself is, not +a God, but the life of the God.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The general facts about doubt are now before us, and although much needs +yet to be said in explanation, and a further fact is reserved for a +<a name="p028" id="p028"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.028]</span> concluding chapter, still not so darkly as it began this first +chapter in our confession of doubt has come, perhaps somewhat abruptly, +to an end. We have next, entering more fully and critically into the +conditions of our human experience, to scrutinize closely our ordinary +habits of mind, those common-sense views of things that on the whole +prevail among men. In these ideas, impulsive, unreasoning, above all +often flatly contradictory, we shall find some of the strongest reasons +for our doubting nature.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Mental Development of the Child and the Race. Methods and +Processes</i>. By James M. Baldwin. Macmillan, 1895.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Let me add, that if certain people, struggling in the +present maze of educational theory, and objecting, with a zest and a +combativeness that fairly belie their contentions, to the use of +interest as the primal educational motive, if these people would only +recognize change as always a part of interest, their greatest trouble +would be removed. They refuse to have education easy or pleasant; +interest, they insist, must make it so; and doubtless the advocates of +interest are in part to blame for this view; but change, which to my +mind is involved in all interest, includes resistance and struggle; +change is ever a challenge to effort; and, such being the case, an +education led by interest is not necessarily easy or idly pleasant. The +real meaning of the interest theory, at least as I have to understand +it, is simply (1) that the natural child or the natural man always has +something to do, and (2) that education should promote that something. +It is far from meaning that there should be no compulsion or discipline, +no pain or self-denial. Whoever honestly over expected to do, or ever +did any thing without these? The interest theory, then, would not +eliminate hardship or discipline, but, to my understanding, by making +education serve actual life, would substitute a natural for an +artificial and externally imposed hardship. Not hardship, but real +achievement makes the educated man.</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2> + +<h3>DIFFICULTIES IN OUR ORDINARY VIEWS OF THINGS.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p029" id="p029"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.029]</span> +If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences +against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the +jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it +would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the +different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be +offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the +consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. True, for some +reason lying deep in human nature, a defence that ends by convicting the +jury of error, is hardly likely to lead to the immediate discharge of +the prisoner; judges or jurymen are not in the habit of taking a rebuff +in that way; but in course of time the prisoner will be justified, and +his justification, however tardy, is all that now concerns us. To his +defence, therefore, and the discomfiture of his judges, but to the +latter without any malice, we turn at once.</p> + +<p>And where shall we begin? Our predicament in this defence is something +like that of the small boy, bewildered over the task of "picking up" his +nursery. <a name="p030" id="p030"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.030]</span> "I can't do it," he says. "There are so many things; I +can't tell which to take first." Poor little fellow! If he halts now, +what will he do when the littered room—I had almost said the littered +playroom—of his later life confronts him? Contradictions under foot +everywhere are certainly not less confusing than blocks, horses, papers, +trains, marbles, picture-books, and the like—or unlike—scattered over +a nursery floor.</p> + +<p>Here, for example, in practical life is the natural, physical world. How +real, brutally real, it is; its very law is fate; its forces are no +respecters of persons, inexorably ruling and compelling all alike, +giving life and taking it, full of the grimmest humour, raising hopes +only to cast them down. Is some one rash enough to suggest that things +physical are only so many ideas, real only as states of mind, of God's +mind possibly, in some way coming to consciousness in the senses of men? +The practical man knows a thing or two about that. He kicks a stone, or +strikes his fist loudly upon a table, and so ends the matter, laughing +the mad idealist away. And yet, prestissimo change! What do we hear him +saying now? This brutally real world of physical things and powers is +but a fleeting show; a thing only of space and time. What is really real +and abiding is the spiritual that is everywhere and always. Another +world there is, not to be spoken of in the same breath with this present +world, a world compared with which this is but a mist before the eyes.</p> + +<p>In so many familiar ways this duplicity towards what is real is +manifest. People go to church to do such a wonderfully strange thing; +nothing more <a name="p031" id="p031"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.031]</span> nor less than to save their real souls from an +unreal world, or sometimes to hide a real worldliness under unreal rites +or symbols. "You may think me worldly, selfish, sensuous," says some +one, "and I can not deny that often I do seem so, but this life of mine +is ever only a yearning after the things that are spiritual, for which, +as you see, I pray so earnestly, and which have nothing at all to do +with one's worldly life." Yes, we do see, and particularly we see that +things spiritual are often an impertinence in worldly affairs. The "real +self" never does the things that are really done. Only this, just this +is where the duplicity lies. Again, from some one else, a practical man +presumably and an accuser of the doubter, we hear the following: "Only +the spiritual life is real; look to it that you fear, as I fear, deeply +and constantly the material world hanging like a sword over us all." Can +it be, as would certainly appear, that superstition is still among us, +that so readily we can give reality to unreality, that belief in ghosts +still holds our human minds? Once upon a time—at least once—the +Christian Church rose in bitter resentment because a certain man, by +merely questioning the separate reality of the physical world, +threatened to deprive the holy priesthood, with all its time-honoured +prerogatives, of its heaven-appointed labour. Yet what is to be said of +a church that prefers to think of an independent physical world, by +which man is bound and damned, in order to save for itself the task, +either hopeless or useless, of rescuing him? Labelling a man "rescued" +or "Christian" does not make another-world creature of him. In political +history, too, what <a name="p032" id="p032"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.032]</span> a paradox it is that kingship by divine right +has always been also kingship by physical might. The practices of an +avowed supernaturalism have always been strangely materialistic.</p> + +<p>So, in high places and in low, in the affairs of men now and in the +past, the physical and the spiritual have ever been in a most remarkable +relation; each real in and by itself, but with a most unusual courtesy +also unreal at the slightest motion from the other; each now supreme, +and now wholly subject; each now the whole life of man, and now the very +opposite, the antipodes of all that is human; and each self-existent and +independent, yet never without its real need of the other. Here surely +is contradiction, or vacillation, in experience that is, to say the +least, very confusing to him who reflects.<a name="FNanchor_1_3" id="FNanchor_1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>But, to take up something else certainly not less confusing to the +ordinary mind, "practical," and unaccustomed to reflection, this is a +world of separate, individual things, of chairs, hands, atoms, eyes, +stars, men, stones, books, leaves, rivers, lives, mountains, relations, +notions, distances, days or years, and so on, <a name="p033" id="p033"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.033]</span> indefinitely and +above all indiscriminately; a world, moreover, into which in part God, +in part man, defying an equally powerful agent of chaos or dissipation, +has put at least for a time a certain kind of order, an order that might +be said to be good enough for all practical purposes. Yet with all its +indiscriminate manifoldness, and with the irregular, uncertain conflict +between chaos and order, it is nevertheless a single world, in short, +just one more individual thing, one more example, perhaps outdoing all +others, of the marvellous license with which human beings are wont to +speak and think of a "thing." Chairs, hands, mountains, men, stars, and +the whole universe, are all "things," and in this world of things, that +is itself another thing, or, should I rather say, <i>apart from</i> this +world of things, that is another thing, there are two, at least two, +discordant powers taking turns at making order and disorder.</p> + +<p>Confusion indeed! Nor have I exaggerated it. The loose association of +chairs, distances, and days; the easy assumption of two supreme agents +working against each other; the certain uncertainty about these agents +being in the world or out of it, of it or not of it; and the readiness +with which the whole universe, the all-inclusive thing, is treated as +only one more thing to be included: these habits of the ordinary mind +show a confusion that seems like insanity. Can we even face them safely +and soberly?</p> + +<p>For special regard I select just one, perhaps the central one; the habit +of treating the universe, the unity of all things, as but one additional +thing, the whole, as if it were only another part, the complete <a name="p034" id="p034"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.034]</span> +and infinite as if distinct from or outside of what is finite or +incomplete; or again, in good old philosophical terms, the One as if it +were another and so in effect, but one of the Many. Now some there are, +and their number may be large, who never have thought of the +contradiction and consequent confusion in the notion of a single world +made up of many single things, yet itself another thing, or of the +Infinite as external to the Finite, or of the One as not in and of the +Many, but the contradiction is there, and can scarcely need more than +mention to be seen.</p> + +<p>Even in theory, scientific or philosophical, the wholeness or unity of +the many things of the world has sometimes been taken for just one more +thing, as when Anaximander taught that it was "that thing which is no +one of the world's things," or for one of the many things supposed by it +to be unified, as when Thales so naïvely declared all things to be +water. Anaximander and Thales were only ancient Greeks, albeit very wise +and enlightened Greeks, living as early as 600 B.C., but in very recent +times they have had followers. Electricity has been taken as the one +force of all other forces. Our chemists, some of them, have been hunting +down the one element among the rest. Statesmen and churchmen have often +dreamt of one man as somehow in his single person expressing the unity +of all human life, and more than once they have even imagined him +present in the flesh. God, although the Being in whom we, as ourselves +persons, live and move and have our being, has Himself been another +person. Society and its supposed component individuals have made two +orders <a name="p035" id="p035"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.035]</span> of existence. Life and living creatures; history and its +many events; the solar system and its planets: nature and all her +various kingdoms: these have also been held apart, making amazing +dualisms. But, simply to repeat from above, taking the whole or the +unity of all things as itself an independent thing, as itself one more +thing, is a contradiction that needs only to be stated clearly to be +appreciated. Let me hope that I have stated it clearly.</p> + +<p>Nor is this particular conflict in our ordinary ideas yet before us in +all its fatefulness, for—as if to defy the principle of consistency to +the very last degree of its forbearance—we are often, if not usually, +given not only to unifying our world of things in terms of just one more +thing, or of persons in terms of just one more person, but also to +thinking of this one more thing, or person as <i>sui generis</i>, as +altogether different in nature and substance. So do we mingle our +duplicity about reality with that about the unity of things. The many, +for example, are physical or of the substance of matter; the one is +ideal or of the substance of mind or spirit. The many persons are merely +human, the One is divine. Strange, indeed, that men should ever take one +more as the unity of all the rest, but if possible it is at least, at +first sight, stranger that this one more should be relegated to a sphere +wholly apart and peculiar. In the madness of such compounded +contradiction there may lurk real method, but of the contradiction and +of the compounding there can be no question.</p> + +<p>Even the soul, a something, an entity, that each one of us has been in +the habit of claiming for himself <a name="p036" id="p036"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.036]</span> and of holding very sacred and +inviolate too, has been subjected to the same way of thinking. +Doubtless, since God has not been spared, we should hardly expect the +soul to escape. We view the soul so materialistically, even while we +insist that it is not material. We say, we think, that it is something +in the body; yet, of course, we are at our wit's end to tell just what +particular place it occupies there. Similarly, God is supposed to be +somewhere in the Universe, yet in no assignable place, and the chemist's +universal atom is somewhere also, though surely not in the same place, +and, wherever it be, waiting with its own, yet certainly a divine +patience that ought to be inspiring, for experimental discovery. But +with regard to the soul, although the life and unity of the body, +although one of the things in the body, the soul itself is not bodily at +all; it can enter the body and is important—who dares say how +important?—to the body, and it can, as at death, leave the body, but +though for a time in, it never is of the body. A strange standpoint +certainly, but men insist that it is quite as true as it is strange. It +seems very much like saying that when you build a house, in order to +ensure it real solidarity, to give it real permanence and integrity, you +should make a special point of putting your bricks or your lumber +together, not with clinging, well-set mortar, or strong pins and +straight-driven nails, but so much more sensibly, because so much +further from what would be like the material bricks or lumber, or like +the equally material mortar or nails, with those real and really compact +things, absolutely continuous or indivisible, or at least indestructible +<a name="p037" id="p037"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.037]</span> even when disintegrated, empty space and pure uneventful time. +With such space and time there would be union indeed I But, again, +strange as such a procedure in building a house would be, men insist or +at least I can readily imagine their insistence, that houses are built +in that way, and built successfully. The method may seem absurd, but +they insist that it is not madness. Are not abstract plans and such +seemingly unsubstantial things as mathematical formulæ, which are very +near to being made of empty space and time, the real strength and +integrity of all our great modern structures? And the soul, whatever be +said of its being an immaterial thing, is nevertheless, even for being +both immaterial and thing, the very sinew of the body.</p> + +<p>Here may be method, then, and sanity, but there is always contradiction, +obstinate contradiction, compounded contradiction! The soul, unity of +the body, is only another thing or part in the body, and at the same +time, though in the body, it is after all not really of the body. +Possibly, perhaps necessarily, such patent contradiction, and, more than +all, such compounding of contradiction, like doubling a negative, make +for what is without contradiction, but this wholesome result is not +consciously intended, and in the face of all, whatever our hopes or our +beliefs, we must feel grave doubts and confess our doubting. Those who +do build better than they know, if enlightened, would not again build in +the same way. Two contradictions may be better than one, but even two +make us wonder.</p> + +<p>Closely connected with the contradictions in our <a name="p038" id="p038"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.038]</span> customary ideas +of reality, and ideas of wholeness or unity, there is the way in which +we calmly take opposite sides in our notions about space and time, and +about that very fundamental factor of our experience—causation. These +are, all of them, so general and fundamental as possibly to seem too +abstruse even for mention in this place, since throughout these chapters +we are courting simplicity, but of space, and time, and causation, only +what is very simple needs to be said. Thus to the ordinary consciousness +how fatally things are separated from each other by conditions of space +and time. Then is not now. Here is not there. Space and time are only +physical and as brutal as all things physical, separating this from that +with a finality that knows no degree. Lovers, continents apart, despair +over the cruel distance. Time tears us ruthlessly from those dear to us. +What is to be, as well as what was, though in the next moment, is +absolutely beyond our grasp. Could anything be freer from dispute than +the reality and the separating brutally of space and time? Yet, almost +at a whisper, all distance and all duration become as nothing. Do not +the lovers write to each other, flatly and passionately denying that +they are far apart? Do we not constantly forestall the future and retain +the past? Indeed, when all is said, a thousand years are as one day, and +all the places of the earth are one. So real, and so vast, and so +physical to us but a moment ago, space and time have now passed into +mere phantoms of the imagination. We live, then, not only in a world +that is brutally spatial and temporal, but also, and at the same time, +<a name="p039" id="p039"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.039]</span> in a world that is not spatial and not temporal at all; and +living here—or there?—we have again to wonder and to doubt even in our +belief. To our own constant amazement we find that we make our life a +bridge over what would seem to be an absolutely impassable chasm.</p> + +<p>As for causation our temerity is not less surprising. Wet and dry moons, +unlucky Fridays, holy and unholy numbers, haunted houses, so-called +providences, free in the sense of indifferently, irresponsibly free +wills and fiat deities with their suddenly made worlds may not be +generally in vogue at the present time, at least among the better +educated, the enlightened and not infrequently conceited classes, but +even among the wise and the consciously informed they have their natural +offspring, and I am not so sure that many of them might not be found +almost intact, at least in the more retired parts of the consciousness +of my readers. To illustrate, for some if not for all of us, this is a +world of many free and independent causes, yet also it is the single +effect of one cause; it is again, our mood having changed, the single +effect of two absolutely unlike beings or natures, each of them an +all-powerful cause; it is a sphere here and now of causal, creative, +productive activity, but it was itself created once for all long ago, at +a date which the exegete hopes—in the equally distant future!—to +determine for us; it contains some things that are only causes and some +that are only effects, or some, or all, that are both causes and +effects; it has parts that are the accepted causes of other parts; it +has causes, those acting now and the one original cause, that are +temporally <a name="p040" id="p040"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.040]</span> antecedent to their effects; and, not to make the +list longer, it is variously a world of one last effect, of one first +and only cause, of an infinite series of causes and effects, and in +whole, or in part, it constantly shows something made out of nothing or +nothing resulting from something. A wondrous world most assuredly; and +yet at first statement this record of our various notions of causation +may not appear as a very serious arraignment of the consciousness which +it exposes. Moreover some people actually glory in such a wonder as it +presents. But, to be plain, though also monotonous, the uncaused cause +or the effect that is only a part of the whole, or the cause or the +effect that refuses to share in the other's nature, or finally the +causation that is now so individual and so manifold and so effective, +and that was once so single and so complete, is something that must give +any thinker pause. Can a moving body move an immobile body? Can some +things in the universe be mobile; others not? Can the moving body and +the moved body belong to different moments of time? Can motion lead to +rest or rest to motion? But our ordinary ideas of causation would allow, +or even require, an affirmative answer to every one of these questions.</p> + +<p>Alas! Shall this labour proceed? Can we afford to continue it? The +defence of the doubter is getting almost too successful; it is becoming +too personal to be pleasant. The task of picking up the room of our +ordinary life grows harder, not easier, as it moves forward. Every thing +that we touch tells of a spirit of violence in our nature. Even the +small boy can not have been more lawless, for his toys were all <a name="p041" id="p041"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.041]</span> +battered perhaps, but not, like ours, all broken. Can we afford to go +on? Afford it or not, we simply can not help ourselves, for our +self-confidence is already shattered; our attention to the disorder is +already beyond our control; each one of us is the doubter we would +defend.</p> + +<p>Here close at hand, where we have to see it, is another contradiction +common in all human experience. It inheres in our conceits about +knowledge. For us, on the one hand, the world we know not only really +is, the tree out yonder or the planet miles and miles away being really +and actually there, but also is just the world which our knowledge +reports to us. What we have knowledge of is in our belief a real thing +in and by itself, and we know it literally and directly, not +figuratively, not afar off through symbols; we know it as it is; we know +a real world, and we know it face to face. Yet, on the other hand, with +all this simple confidence in our knowledge, what are we also given to +saying, or assuming when we do not say it? Even in the moment of our +confidence we humble ourselves with the cry of our utter foolishness, +making our recognized foolishness only a counter-conceit. What but +perfect folly is our knowledge before God's knowledge! "Illusion! The +dream of a few hours or a few years!" is so often the best we can say of +the whole fabric, past and present, of human consciousness. Not now, but +only in the hereafter are we to see reality face to face; now we see +only very darkly, if at all.</p> + +<p>Some one here protests strenuously, raising an objection that might very +properly have been raised <a name="p042" id="p042"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.042]</span> before. Thus, I am told that only +different people, or only the same people at different times, ever hold +two opposite views, whether about knowledge or any thing else; never one +and the same person at the same time holds them both; and so the present +arraignment can not be as serious as it is made to appear. Well, with +this objection I can agree in part, for there is at least a half-truth +in it, but by no means does it tell, either in general or in particular, +that is, with regard to the special case of the conceits about +knowledge, the whole story of double living or double thinking among +men. Indeed the easy way, in which men make the distinctions of society +or the distinctions of time bear the responsibility for what must always +in the end be the conflicts of their personal lives, is but another +illustration of the difficulties besetting their ordinary views of +things. Duplicity of view, like anything else in experience, must always +be more than a matter of different people or different times, for the +simple reason that, whether directly personal or not, it is present in +the environment of the individual person. So, even if those two +positions, confidence in worldly knowledge and religious trust and +humility, for the sake of argument be momentarily associated only with +different persons or social classes or times, our present point will +really be just exactly as pointed, for there is always a third person or +class or time into whose direct single experience the duplicity or +contradiction is bound to enter. Consider, for example, the case of a +child. For a part of the week he is perhaps at school; on Sunday at +church; and the life in which he thus takes part must <a name="p043" id="p043"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.043]</span> appear to +him, there being in all probability little or no reservation on either +side, to be hopelessly divided against itself. Now is knowledge power; +now hindrance and greatest danger. Now he is to learn all he can; now, +on the other hand, to forget what he may have learned. So is the +conflict about him made his personal conflict, and exactly as in his +case, so in all human experience the individual must share personally +whatever the environment affords.</p> + +<p>The individual and the environing society are the closest of blood +relations, though we often allow ourselves, all too easily as has been +said, to lose sight of the fact; they live under the same roof, and rely +for sustenance on the same fare; and while to some the contradictions of +life may be overlooked as personally impertinent and unimportant, being +referred wholly to the environment, they are plainly the unavoidable +heritage and the personal responsibility of every individual that counts +himself a member of the human race. The objection, then, that was raised +does not remove contradiction as a cause of doubt, but merely emphasizes +what in a subsequent chapter must occupy us, the social aspect of +experience.<a name="FNanchor_2_4" id="FNanchor_2_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_4" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our +view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, +but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a +matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of +the single person's inner responsibility. Society in its manifold +classes, in its conflicts and in its history, may help us to see the +whole of experience, the unity <a name="p044" id="p044"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.044]</span> of experience on all sides and in +all parts, but it never does, and it never can, relieve the individual, +or deprive the individual, of any side or part of what makes up an +experience-whole. Grown men and women may be more definitely set in +their lives and their ideas to certain specific things than children, +but in no one, young or old, can such specialism ever be wholly +exclusive of any of the other things.</p> + +<p>To return to our immediate interest, if men are given to being doubters +in their views about reality, spiritual and material; about unity or +wholeness; about space and time, on the one hand fatally vast and +independently real, and on the other formal and illusory; about +causality, so actual and positive now, and yet so complete yesterday, or +ever and ever so long ago; and about knowledge, so perfectly wise and so +thoroughly vain and foolish; if, I say, men are double in all these +different ways, in their moral judgments they seem, if possible, even +more confused, and the confusion, the division against themselves, is +the more serious for being with regard to what so directly concerns +personal life and human fellowship.</p> + +<p>To begin with, as will indeed readily appear, the offences of our moral +judgments, which often, if not always, are largely influenced by +religious or rather theological conceptions, are only a peculiar +expression of the two-faced attitude towards causation, human persons or +wills being the causes specially involved. In general the causes of the +universe are of three sorts, those of natural force, those of +supernatural agency, and those of human agency, and although toward them +all essentially the same attitude is <a name="p045" id="p045"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.045]</span> assumed, it is worth our +while to consider particularly the causation that is commonly adjudged +to belong to the human will and the moral ideas that spring from it.</p> + +<p>For the purposes of the moral consciousness we translate the two +conflicting powers of our world, or the spiritual reality and the +material, into two agents of good and evil respectively, each having a +power of doing whatever, true to its peculiar character, it may will to +do, and then, as if in accord with this way of thinking, we find two +distinct selves, a good self and an evil self, within each one of us, +and we also divide the body social into two exclusive classes, the class +of those who are identified with the righteous life and the class of +those given to the unrighteous life, the sheep and the goats, the elect +and the damned. But, to say nothing of the fact that these three ideas +of the two powers, the two selves and the two classes, cannot be made +really to accord with each other, although they possess an outward +agreement, is it not clear that any attempt to take the good and the +evil as two mutually exclusive things, be they spirits or selves or +classes, is to destroy at once the real substance of virtue and the real +value of the consciousness of evil? In practical life this means, what +everybody knows so well, that an isolated, unduly holy righteousness, a +sort of touch-me-not goodness, is bound to be empty, to be only +ritualistic and aristocratic or pharisaical, and in any one of these +respects it appears decidedly unrighteous; while an isolated +unrighteousness, besides having at least the moral worth of a protest +against its counterpart, is in itself exactly like the original <a name="p046" id="p046"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.046]</span> +sinfulness of the theologian; being unavoidable, it is wholly without +any warranted opprobrium. Indeed, it all but comes to this, that +righteousness as a fixed thing, fixed to a part of the universe or to a +part of the individual self or to a part of society, is really in just +so far evil, and the direct opposite of such righteousness is +proportionately good. Good and evil, then, may not mix well, but certain +it is that contradiction results from the common attempt of men to +regard either as untainted or untempered by the other.</p> + +<p>Still, not upon this real difficulty in our moral judgments would I now +lay greatest stress, although it is real enough and important. In yet +another way our moral consciousness is at war with itself. In estimating +the worth of human conduct, so far as this is determined by its +initiation, we are in an almost hopeless tangle. We are more than likely +to think of other people as influenced by their environment in what they +do, of ourselves as quite original and responsible, as independent of +any such influences; or, more fully and more exactly, we are given to +referring our own bad deeds to environment, our good deeds to ourselves, +while for others we are prompted to do just the reverse, referring their +good deeds to environment, their bad deeds to themselves. Such is human +nature—not, to be sure, at its best, but common human nature; and even +when we escape the foregoing personally invidious distinctions, we +still—and this is the main point—treat self and environment as two +naturally conflicting, altogether independent sources of conduct. Two +different and independent sources of anything, <a name="p047" id="p047"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.047]</span> however, can only +make for conflict and contradiction. If only our courts of law could +judge responsibility either wholly from the determinations of +environment or wholly from those of personal will, or again, if only the +will and the environment could be seen as not so radically opposed, what +a simplification would ensue, and how much freer and more certain +justice would be. To venture on a variation of an aphorism, where +there's another way there is always a loophole; where there's +environment there is always a shifted responsibility; where there's a +"free will" there is always a will taken for some unperformed or +imperfectly performed deed.</p> + +<p>So the double origin of conduct offers a very serious difficulty, which, +when it is understood, is not unlike that of the two powers or selves or +classes, but even more is to be said in exposure of our moral judgments. +Thus we have the confident conceit of freedom, of our own freedom in +good or our neighbour's freedom in evil, or in general of man's freedom +to act without regard to the determinations from environment, but we +have also a strange though possibly a fortunate way of qualifying the +very freedom that we claim. We claim freedom only to avow, almost in the +same breath, duties and responsibilities. We have the freedom, but only +the duties make it worth anything. A startling paradox this, so familiar +to us all: "I am free to do all that I ought to do," or, "I am free to +carry out certain necessities of my true life." A startling paradox; +and, above all, a strange way of escaping the necessities of +environment, unless, forsooth, it really opens the door, or supplies a +secret door, by which the <a name="p048" id="p048"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.048]</span> necessities of environment and the +necessities of one's true life can come together? If freedom demands +law, why should it hold aloof from the natural law, the law of +environment so definitely present? Possibly, then, as once before +suggested, one contradiction in experience may be the corrective of +another, the paradox of freedom and duty only correcting the +contradiction of two sources of conduct, personal will and environment. +In the case, for example, of the disposition to distinguish between +one's own acts and another's, with respect to their initiation by will +or by environment, to mingle duty and necessity with one's own supposed +freedom is equivalent in effect to denying one's neighbour's freedom +because of the restraints of his environment. But such considerations, +however promising for future reflection upon the conflicts in our moral +consciousness, are not of immediate interest. Our doubts may once more +find hope in the reflection that the faults of experience may balance +themselves, but we have no occasion to abandon our doubting as idle or +meaningless. Contradictions that balance each other, errors that are +mutually corrective, are still contradictions, are still errors.</p> + +<p>So, to reduce our moral judgments, confusion and all, to small compass, +we are free, others are not; they are free, we are not; and our freedom +is bound by duty, by duty to the moral law, while their freedom, unless +a hopeless lawlessness, is bound by the environment and its law. Again, +good and evil are each unmixed, and moral acts serve two masters—that +is to say, spring from two sources. We may, therefore, <a name="p049" id="p049"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.049]</span> still +believe in morality—yet how can this be? And freedom—yet how is +freedom possible?</p> + +<p>But finally, as last to be examined, there is the idea of law, just now +brought to attention. This idea is a focus for a good many conflicting +views. Witness the familiar argument from the knowledge of law in nature +to fatalism, an argument as absurd as it is widespread, for the bare +fact that we know the laws of nature really emancipates us from the +blind fate to which the argument points. Can knowledge ever mean +anything but freedom? Certainly no law can ever be known unless the +sphere of its operation accords with the nature of those who have the +knowledge. Simply to know is to share in and be at one with whatsoever +is known, and the clearer and more cogent or rational the knowledge, the +truer and realer is this participation or union. The law we know, then, +must have all the meaning and the natural authority of a law of our own +enactment, and so must actually have the sanction of our will. Will, I +say, cannot help sanctioning knowledge, for knowledge is always true to, +because conditioned by, the natural action of the knower. But no such +message of freedom, or say of human opportunity in natural necessity, is +commonly received by men at large from the evidences of law in nature. +Superstitiously they see only fate. Clear knowledge and blind fate!</p> + +<p>Nor are we commonly satisfied with only so much superstition. We go +still further and make the case as bad as possible by treating the law +we know as if in its spirit, if not in its letter, it were final. In +other words, we view nature, with some of whose ways we <a name="p050" id="p050"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.050]</span> have +become conversant, not merely as a source of blind fate, or external +necessity, for our lives, but also as essentially and ultimately a +sphere of strictly mechanical routine. Yet here again we are surely +reasoning beyond our premises—the very essence of superstition—for the +routine we know can never answer substantially, or even formally, to +nature as she really is. Our positive knowledge, our knowledge that +arrives at specific formulæ, even though these formulæ reach the noble +dignity of mathematics, is bound to be in terms of some particular +experience, personal or national or racial; it is relative and special; +it is partial knowledge; and he is superstitious, and does, indeed, +argue beyond his premises, who takes the whole, whose law he does not +know, to be literally analogous to the part, whose law he thinks he +knows, but can in fact know only partially. No whole ever is one of its +parts, or merely analogous to one of its parts; <i>a</i> law never is <i>the</i> +law, or even in its lawfulness literally analogous thereto; and +mechanicalism, whether as a popular or a philosophical "ism," has no +justification save just this false analogy.</p> + +<p>And the prevalent confusion in the notions of law or lawfulness is of +course reflected in the corresponding notions of lawlessness. Here, as +with other negative terms, men forget that negatives necessarily are +quite relative to their positives. All specific, definitely manifest, +known and positive lawlessness simply must have some place in <i>the</i> law +of things; it can no more be an absolute lawlessness than any human +routine can be supposed final; and, on the other hand, there can be no +positive law whose breaking has not some <a name="p051" id="p051"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.051]</span> sanction; there can be +no lawfulness which does not warrant some lawlessness. This truth, +perhaps as nothing else could, must show the error in the notion of +mechanical routine as affording an adequate description of the ultimate +nature of things. Where the whole always gives point to the negation of +any of its parts, where <i>the</i> law always sanctions some breaking of any +law, to think of the whole in terms of its parts may be human, but it is +of the human which is prone to err. Those who would still insist upon +seeing only routine in law, and upon judging lawlessness as only +relative to such seeing, might do well, rising above their ordinary +views, to remember with some real appreciation that once upon a time the +law-breakers and the reformer were very closely associated; they were +associated in life, and at the end they were crucified together. +Whatever may be one's theology, there is a deal of food for thought in +those deaths on Calvary and in the several lives which they closed.</p> + +<p>Lawlessness suggests the supernatural. So many have promptly concluded +that just as with the knowledge of law in nature human freedom must be +resigned, blind fate taking its place, so anything or anybody at all +supernatural, Satan—for example—as well as God, must once for all +withdraw. If law reigns, God can will whatever he wills only because the +law is so; the law is not so because he wills it; and this in common +opinion only makes him decrepit, without real initiative, dead. Yet, +once more, what superstition! The knowledge of law has never robbed man +of his freedom, nor even slain his God; or this at least: the loss of +freedom or the death of God, for <a name="p052" id="p052"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.052]</span> which any law that man has had +knowledge of has been responsible, has always been only the forerunner +of a larger and fuller freedom and of his God's resurrection and +glorification. This or that law may rob and may kill, but this or that +law, let me reiterate, never is <i>the</i> law, and why common opinion has to +judge all things in heaven and earth, as if it were, is hard to +comprehend. Neither nature nor God, if these two need to be thought of +as two, is law-bound; each rather, with a meaning which I must hope now +to have made clear, is law-free. The law in which nature is free is as +infinite, as transcendent of any particular human experience as the +ever-developing freedom of man or as the will of God. And God, or the +Supernatural, is not confined to the narrow sphere of what man knows, as +man knows it; this stands only for what man calls nature. God is the +all-inclusive sphere or source of the absolute law, for which knowledge +can be only a constant striving, or which is itself even a party to the +constant striving. Somehow <i>the</i> law must be a living thing, not a +routine: the supernatural must be not nature as she is known, but +nature's fullest and deepest life.</p> + +<p>Very emphatically what has just been said about nature or God being +law-free, or about <i>the</i> law being infinite, or not analogous in form or +substance, in spirit or letter, to any thing in positive knowledge, is +no argument for the Jonah story or even for the miracle of the wine at +Cana's wedding feast; and yet time and again people who apparently +should have done enough thinking to know better, to the great +satisfaction of thousands have used the infinity of <a name="p053" id="p053"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.053]</span> nature's or +God's lawfulness, which is to say the only partial and tentative +character of all human knowledge of law, as a clinching proof of all the +miracles in the Bible. Can they not see that like what is lawless in +general, the miraculous must be in the premises only relative to the +experience of the time? Even chance is not less so. The spiritual +meaning of those miracles may persist, for the miraculous we must always +have with us; but if even our relative, imperfect knowledge stands for +anything, if it be even a tentative knowledge, a working standpoint, the +literal truth of most, or even all of them, disappeared long ago. +Miracles, like laws, come and go; only the miraculous, like <i>the</i> law, +goes on forever.</p> + +<p>And this leads to something else, to something also very common, perhaps +the reverse of the foregoing. With what an unaccountable delight many of +us have accepted naturalistic explanations, for example, of the sun +standing still, or of the retreat of the waters of the Red Sea, or of +the Immaculate Conception, or of any of the many other marvels in either +the Old or the New Testament, and have thought that so our old beliefs +are to be preserved. I have myself heard honest and earnest men, even +members of an academic community, appeal to parthenogenesis as a fact in +nature which would at least make the miracle of Christ's birth +scientifically plausible as well as spiritually significant; but such an +appeal, besides being, in my opinion, positively irreverent, is as blind +religiously as it is ignorant scientifically. Cannot such men +appreciate, and cannot all others who do as they do also appreciate the +fact that naturalistic explanation of <a name="p054" id="p054"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.054]</span> any miracle, if really a +genuine explanation, may prove the fact, but must in just so far +destroy, I do not say the miraculous, which is indestructible, but the +particular miracle?</p> + +<p>The lawful miracle, then—lawful, of course, so soon as explained—is +one more contradiction in our prevalent notions about law. That it +exemplifies, too, a habit of mind which is exercised by us in many +directions besides that of interpretation of the arbitrary things of the +Bible can hardly need be said. In life generally the arbitrary is +peculiarly fond of going to law, sometimes to what is called nature's +law, as when revolutionists of all sorts—strikers and radical +reformers—raise the cry of "natural rights," laying down the law as to +what men are by nature, and sometimes to "human" law, as when the +conservatives in government or business with their vested rights, be +these coal mines, oil fields, or political privileges, appeal for +"justice" to the courts or to the military.</p> + +<p>But, to say no more, with the lawful miracle, with law the strange +support of what is arbitrary, with this as a very good example of the +duplicity which in general we are all of us wont to allow in our +practical life, the present exposure of our ordinary consciousness must +come to an end. With regard to the real substance of things, or to their +unity, or to the nature of space and time and causation, with regard to +the worth of knowledge, with regard to our human conduct, to its freedom +and responsibility, or finally with regard to the place of law in nature +and in the life of man, our ordinary consciousness is manifestly +inconsistent and vacillating—nay, is grossly contradictory; and we are +<a name="p055" id="p055"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.055]</span> led at least to suspect that the disorder which we have found is +inherent and essential, having the nature of an original human defect. +Such a defect, however, is cause for doubt; so that man, above all +"practical" man, having inconsistency or duplicity as almost, if not +quite, an uncontrollable habit with him, should be himself a prince of +sceptics.</p> + +<p>And yet, although we have indeed found man spending at least his waking +hours in a room that seems disorder incarnate, and although before the +court of practical life the doubter seems thus to have been thoroughly +justified, while his too hasty judges are in turn condemned, +nevertheless the case for doubt is not of such a character as to leave +absolutely no hope for belief. Now and again in the evidence, as it has +been disclosed, have we not felt the presence of something, not yet +given its due weight, that would make man more than a mere doubter and +unbeliever? Have we not been led to suspect that somehow, without loss +of their reality and validity, the most cogent reasons for doubt, even +the contradictions in our views of things, might turn into bases of +belief, that an experience essentially paradoxical may not be as +hopeless as at first sight it may appear, that in all the madness there +is at least a chance of some method? The view of science, however, must +be examined before our attention can be turned definitely upon such a +possibility. Enough if in our present doubting we are still left with a +little hope.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_3" id="Footnote_1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_3"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In the rise of Christian Science, against which I have no +special grudge, although I have already taken exceptions to its claims, +there is a special case, special because affecting a single, relatively +small class, of the popular hospitality to contradiction. Thus, the +Christian Scientists would reduce all reality to mind, but at the same +time they busily deny reality to a large group of mind facts, namely and +notably, the ideas of disease. Recently, it is true, according to the +newspapers, their healers have been told to "decline to doctor +infectious or contagious diseases," yet not because such diseases have +any reality, but because the illusion of them is so real as to make the +"Christian" treatment of them both imprudent and impractical. +Philosophies and religions of illusion are certainly weird, uncanny +things!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_4" id="Footnote_2_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_4"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Chapter VII.</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2> + +<h3>THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS RISE AND CHARACTER.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p056" id="p056"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.056]</span> +With science we usually associate accuracy and consistency, and at first +thought we are not likely to expect that the work and standpoint of +science can contain anything substantial enough for the doubter to base +his claim upon; but second thought is our first duty at this time, and +second thought always changes the view, and in this particular instance +it will show science in important respects to be quite as vulnerable as +the unreflective consciousness of practical life, for science also is +honeycombed with contradiction and paradox.</p> + +<p>More than once scientists themselves have turned sceptical about their +work and its results. The cry of bankruptcy in science, not merely as a +charge, but also as a confession, has been heard in the land not +infrequently; now perhaps low and uncertain, but again clear and strong. +And why not? Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other +men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? +Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally +different from the ordinary consciousness. The same eye is looking at +<a name="p057" id="p057"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.057]</span> the same world, only through microscopes and telescopes. The +same mind is measuring the same environment, only with carefully devised +instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and +rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness +highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps +without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say +that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the +inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple +sensations of a bird. The mechanics of flying, so elaborately present to +the former, are nevertheless also present in the latter, while with both +we have the same eye or the same mind looking and the same world seen. +The boasted methods and ideals of the one are but the only half-waking +instincts of the other, and whatsoever is essential to either belongs +also to the other. But, to mark the great difference between them, the +inventor has the disposition to treat flying abstractly—that is, as if +a thing by itself, as if for its own sake; and he goes even farther, +making abstraction of the mere explanation and mechanical expression of +flying; while the bird simply flies, and, if I may hope to be +understood, all things else, the sun and the wind, the trees, and all +living things, and you and I who follow his course are flying with him.</p> + +<p>But no poetic soaring such as this can satisfy our present needs. To +understand and appraise the view of science we must trace its rise as +clearly as we can, <a name="p058" id="p058"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.058]</span> and then critically examine its peculiar +conceits, its own ideal methods and attitudes.</p> + +<p>As for the rise of the scientific view, we may well return to the +definition of science given above: the ordinary consciousness highly +developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Perhaps development +of anything is always at the cost of abstraction; but be this as it may, +science certainly arises through an abstraction, namely, through the +abstraction of consciousness of one's world, through the treatment of +this mere consciousness as something to be cultivated quite for its own +sake; and the motive and the meaning of such a treatment are not far to +seek. Consciousness, to the exclusion or inhibition of direct, overt +action, becomes a matter for abstract, which is to say, exclusive +cultivation, with any serious change, with any upheaval in the familiar +conditions of life. A man—or boy, if you prefer—is taking a +cross-country run, and for a time all goes well; the manner of his going +suffers no interruption, or no serious interruption; but gradually the +undergrowth thickens from low bushes to higher brushwood, and at last, +perhaps quite suddenly, breaking through some wild hedge, the runner +finds himself at the very edge of a stream too wide and too deep for any +ordinary crossing. Thereupon his running, or at least his forward +running, say the running of his "real life," ceases, and looking takes +its place. He is now, in a familiar phrase, "looking before leaping"; +yet with his looking there is a good deal of running too, more or less +overt, but also more or less <a name="p059" id="p059"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.059]</span> instrumental or merely mechanical, +as, going from one point to another, he measures the relations of bank +to bank, or of possible stepping-stones to each other, or hunts for +fallen logs or for shallow places. But, finally, the measurements all +made, the peculiar conditions as fully as possible appreciated, in the +way found to be most feasible he crosses the stream and runs again. And +just in that "looking before leaping," with the accompanying check put +upon the forward running and with the change of the "real life" of +running into merely instrumental action, we get at least a glimpse of +what science is, of the sort of abstraction that its rise implies.</p> + +<p>Only science, specifically so called, is more than such a casual, merely +personal study of a new situation. Science is the distinct work of a +distinct class abstractly studying a new situation that has confronted +the progress not of an individual, but of a whole people, and in this +character it gets at once all the advantages and all the conceits that +belong in general to the life of a class. It gets, too, all the +limitations. Science, once more, is not strictly a personal experience, +although in personal experience, like that of the cross-country runner, +we can get a glimpse of just that which may develop into science. +Science is characteristically a profession. The runner withholds his +running for a time and merely looks and studies, yet his looking is only +for a time; sooner or later he will run again; and even while he studies +there is his continued moving about, his instrumental action, as we +called it; but the professional scientist waives all thought of possible +future activity. Although in reality <a name="p060" id="p060"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.060]</span> his looking is before +leaping, it is not consciously so for him; he is one who under the +constraints of his class merely looks and studies, making of these +processes things quite worthy in themselves.</p> + +<p>In other words, to enlarge somewhat on what has just been said, the rise +of the profession of science does indeed involve both the same check +upon the "real life" and the same reduction of activity to a purely +mechanical or instrumental character that we have pointed out in the +case of the runner at the bank of the stream, but a number of different +social classes divides the labour. In general, society as a means to the +expression and development of human activity, be the activity running or +living in a broader and fuller sense, always shows the different phases +or factors of the experience identified more or less exclusively with as +many different classes or groups, and, in respect to the particular case +here under consideration, upon the rise of science society appears to +delegate the work of careful observation and critical thinking to a +separate class, which, as already suggested, gives up any direct +responsibility to the real life. Another distinct class, arising +contemporaneously, is composed of those who do feel directly +responsible, or "practical," continuing the life of positive, overt +action. This second class maintains the vital processes, although in a +more or less consciously instrumental way, since its members have the +lives of others as well as their own lives to support. So society gets +its workers or labourers as well as its observers and thinkers.</p> + +<p>The rise of science, then, involves a disrupted society. Moreover, the +division is by no means so <a name="p061" id="p061"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.061]</span> simple as the foregoing analysis may +seem to have implied. Observing and thinking, for example, have often +made, too, separate sub-classes, and also there have been many distinct +groups among the workers, such as clerks, soldiers, artisans, +road-menders, and tillers of the soil. The simple analysis, however, has +been quite enough to show, what has seemed to need emphasis, that all +the passions of social life, or rather of social caste, are brought to +bear upon the profession of science, giving it the peculiar conceits and +advantages of class or caste, and also imposing upon it the peculiar +limitations. The advantages, among others, are the strength that lies in +union, and the long continuity and the imitation that always ensure an +accumulation of experience and a refinement of method and an attainment +to impersonal, impartial standards; the conceits are exclusiveness, +sense of sanctity or intrinsic worth, and consequent claims to +aristocracy; and the limitations, although possibly already quite +obvious, are hereafter to be pointed out. But whatever the limitations +or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social +conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of +science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but +the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of +action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake.</p> + +<p>Nor is this fact that science is an abstraction, intensified by the +conditions of class life, the only fact to which the rise of science +bears witness. There is something else equally significant—something, +indeed, so intimately involved in this as perhaps not <a name="p062" id="p062"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.062]</span> properly +to be referred to as another fact at all, being only a further +manifestation of what is already before us. <i>There never arises +abstraction without duplicity.</i></p> + +<p>Plainly a disrupted society, such as has been seen to be incident to the +rise of science, means also a disrupted life. In general the corporate +life of any single class resulting from the division can be only +partial, I do not say in respect to "real life," since this phrase has +itself been associated with too narrow a meaning, but to human nature, +to human life in its entirety, in its real fulness, in its true breadth +and its true depth. All class life, I repeat, involving as it does +disruption and selection of some particular interest or relation, is +inadequate to any human being, and the life of science is no exception +to this rule. Membership in any class and conformity to its peculiar +life, which is partial and abstract as partial, have never satisfied +anybody, and the life of the professional scientist, again, is no +exception to this rule. Accordingly any abstraction in life, the +isolation of any specific interest, when seen in just the light of its +necessary inadequacy, of its definite, more or less exclusive +partiality, must imply in life a demand for reality and completeness, +and this the more as the abstraction is assertive, as the isolation is +insistent. Simply, the whole life will never brook an untempered neglect +from any of its always self-assertive parts. Plainly, however, as +plainly as a disrupted society must mean a disrupted life for each +resulting group, such a demand can be met only in one way, if the cause +for it continues; it can be met only by some form of duplicity, by some +way in which, however indirectly, the life of those <a name="p063" id="p063"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.063]</span> concerned +will always really be more than it seems or will always actually imply +what explicitly or formally it appears to exclude. No such narrow life, +in short, as must always characterize any social group, can ever be +without its compensating innuendoes or indirections for the life from +which it is outwardly aloof, and while the peculiar manner in which the +true reality and the wholeness of life are thus conserved will very +naturally always be determined by the particular class or the particular +class-character involved, being of one sort for road-menders and of +quite a different sort for scientific observers, the organization of +society seems bound at every turn to show that duplicity, compensation +as it always is for partiality, is an indispensable condition. +Duplicity, whatever may be its own special dangers, is always better, +being nearer to reality, than narrowness.</p> + +<p>Is not the road-mender also a good Catholic, or in some other way, +conventional or unconventional, religiously devout, piously doing, not +his own, but another's work? Does not the scientist give point to the +idea of another and different life, that is to say, of his life of +knowledge not being the whole of life, by the agnosticism which he not +only carefully asserts but also actually embodies as a factor in his +method? The road-mender slaves at his humble task, ignorant and yet +trustful, believing in an infallible wisdom and an absolute power, and +the scientist lives with great enthusiasm to know the world as it is, +but tells us at the same time with no less enthusiasm and with a meaning +that certainly ought to temper his exclusiveness that the object which +he studies and describes <a name="p064" id="p064"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.064]</span> is nevertheless really unknowable. To +quote Mr. Spencer: "The man of science ... more than any other, truly +<i>knows</i> that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known." Surely there +is meaning for Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in other +fields besides that of morality. Class life must always involve its +members in a protective or compensating duplicity.</p> + +<p>But now, whatever in the life of other classes this duplicity, which +conserves the wholeness of life even when formally life is narrow and +partial, ought to be called, in the profession of science it often goes +under the name of dualism. Seen at different angles, it is now dualism, +now objectivism, now agnosticism. In each of these different ways the +scientist, quite outdoing or transcending his profession, recognizes a +sphere of reality or a sphere of activity, that is beyond that of the +knowledge which he makes his special business, and, as is very important +to observe, the peculiar manner of his recognition of this sphere, or +the peculiar character of his duplicity, is relative to just the +abstraction which makes his science what it is. Thus his peculiar +duplicity is one of conscious subject and unconscious, external object, +of observing man and objective nature, of real knowledge and unknowable +reality.</p> + +<p>Yet here, before discussing further the relation of dualism to science, +it is well to observe that the positive history of science justifies the +account of its rise which has now been given. The age of science among +the Greeks was coincident with the closing conflict between Greek +civilization and the general life <a name="p065" id="p065"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.065]</span> of the Mediterranean, and the +age of modern science began, not to attempt a long story, with the +discovery of America. All "looking before leaping" is transitional or +revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and +degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs +to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern +science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from +Christendom to—who can say to what? But not only does history show +science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life +of the time, in the first place, to be sharply disintegrated, its +different factors being separately and abstractly expressed through as +many different social groups, and, in the second place, in each of the +groups to be given to double living, to the storm and stress of being +one thing and seeming another. Always an age, conspicuously and +characteristically scientific, has been an age of clearly developed +classes and of a general duplicity in living.</p> + +<p>Thus, to give a striking, although possibly too philosophical an +illustration of the duplicity, Democritus, the great materialist and +atomist, and Plato, the great idealist, were contemporaries and equally +were creatures of their day and generation, and their century was the +century of great achievements in Greek science. Moreover, as regards the +coincident organization of society, we know at least of Plato that he +was keenly conscious of the divisions of society into distinct classes. +And in very much the same way materialism and idealism, not to mention +hedonism and rigorism, or naturalism and supernaturalism, <a name="p066" id="p066"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.066]</span> have +been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern +science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than +so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special +conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes +or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they +are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, +that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or +profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of +Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in +all the different and separately organized phases of life—moral, +industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the +conservatives and the radicals? And were there not also, as typical +individual characters, each of them revealing to everybody something +present within his own life, the only conventional loyalist and the more +truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and +the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously +impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity.</p> + +<p>Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of +science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor +yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a +thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or +idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as +means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all +activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental. +As we know, the disruption means <a name="p067" id="p067"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.067]</span> actual, when not also +intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been +division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of +the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than +things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes +and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and +independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to +give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the +conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people +instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as +some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, +and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the +instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to +be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power +to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, +the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of +society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way +is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites +conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost +notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the +Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for +pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be +questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or +purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the +Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks, +being too conservative, though <a name="p068" id="p068"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.068]</span> utilitarian, failed to make full +use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally +appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as +unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the +Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism, +which has characterized them throughout.</p> + +<p>One thing more, too, from the facts of history may have our attention, +although possibly this addition is quite unnecessary—the fact, namely, +of scepticism coupled always with a hopeful curiosity. A disrupted +society, dividing the labour of human life, is as sceptical as it is +conventional, and as given to experiment and exploration, which are +never without their sense of mystery, and even to conquest, never +without its risks, as it is utilitarian. Was it curiosity or mere +Hellenic conceit, the sense of adventure or the mere dogmatism of a +Greek, that took Alexander abroad with his armies, or that earlier +turned the attention of Athens to the possibilities of the West? And +which, curiosity or religious and political propagandism, a pagan greed +or a Christian piety, inspired the Western and Southern voyages of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Which gave rise even to the Crusades? +It would be interesting, if our present purposes only warranted the +undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of +scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity +has developed as but one expression of a general interest in +experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and +especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and <a name="p069" id="p069"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.069]</span> +confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as +it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some +given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a +mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet +willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those +activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of +course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it +never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of +art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective, left far behind. +But to follow out the line of thought here suggested would take us too +far afield. Let it suffice, then, that we see these two things: how +historically and socially the investigations of science, whatever their +relations to an antecedent art, such as that of the Greeks or of +Christendom in the Renaissance, are but an incident within a general +life of appeal to nature—that is, of exploration and conquest—and then +how the scepticism, involved in the inquiries of science, is intrinsic +to a life that, for reasons now clear to us, has become both +conventional and utilitarian, both formal—or unreal in itself—and +consciously only instrumental. The first of these brings to mind what +was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt +seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly +in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having +the evidence of history, we have next to turn.</p> + +<p>We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the +various factors in human <a name="p070" id="p070"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.070]</span> life, and to be itself, in particular, +the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the +totality of the manifest conditions of life. This abstraction has been +developed and intensified by the formation of distinct social classes; +and, in the special case of the consciousness of nature, by the +formation of a class of scientists, so called, who cultivate their +science for its own sake. We have found the rise of science to imply +also a general duplicity, evident within the field of science in what is +known as dualism. Duplicity is a natural accompaniment of all +abstraction, and it has, as we saw at least in part, a certain +protective and corrective function, which both the logic of experience +and the social and historical conditions of its expression and +development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found +that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional +and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or—let me now +say—experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general +abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for +utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, +formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set +of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions +themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so +fatal to all ideas that should give knowledge any visible form or +resting-place, was but the spirit of his time, the spirit of radical +inquiry become incarnate and assertive in public places. He was but a +visible, public exponent of the critical examination of life which the +self-consciousness of his time made necessary. <a name="p071" id="p071"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.071]</span> Indeed, no +organic form, no living creature, ever reflected the character of its +environment more fully, or more successfully effected an adaptive life +than the method, with its searching questions, and its subtle, logical +gymnastic, of that honestly and radically inquisitive Sophist. And the +standpoint and the procedure of science, in respect to the relation to +their environment, are closely comparable with the method of Socrates.</p> + +<p>Thus science seeks a complete abstraction of the looking consciousness, +and then with a timely duplicity it looks to a wholly external, natural +world. So in the field of its peculiar abstraction does science take the +character and colour of its surroundings. But, further, it presumes upon +the peculiar forms and conditions of its subjective, looking +consciousness, the activities of the mind, being mediative or +instrumental to the presentation of the external objective world, and it +uses also the activities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter +activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the +industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for +just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is +presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take +the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own +purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly +when we remember that, besides being experimental, treating the mind as +an instrument and life's activities at large as only aids more or less +directly pertinent to the mind's work, it is agnostic. Its peculiar +agnosticism not only reflects <a name="p072" id="p072"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.072]</span> its duplicity, as was before +suggested, but in addition shows how very abstract its knowledge is, +and—I know no better phrase—how timelily adventurous. A time of +science is a time when all things final are beyond; yet also, when all +things present, however mysteriously, are really leading yonder.</p> + +<p>Further, science always divides the field of its operations, and so, +besides greatly compounding its abstractness, reflects in its own way, +or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the +specialism of the contemporary social organization. There is division of +labour in this, but there is also a difficulty, which, among other +difficulties, is hereafter to be considered.</p> + +<p>And there is, finally, one more characterization of science which is +suggested by the conditions of its rise, but by something in those +conditions not yet brought into clear view. An age of science is an age +of a rising, although perhaps formally suppressed and disguised +individualism, and quite in sympathy, the method of science is +"inductive," science, though interested in classification, always having +regard for the natural rights of particular things, of single +individuals, reasoning from the particular to the general, as the phrase +runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much +misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of +inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has +been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any +discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that +the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I +would only assert, but I venture to assert <a name="p073" id="p073"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.073]</span> strongly, first, that +behind the conventionalism and utilitarianism of the life of a society +divided into distinct classes, behind the abstraction and the inevitable +duplicity, behind the sense of experiment and adventure, the individual +person is the real power, and secondly, that in induction science has +only translated this real individualism of its time into an attitude or +method for the conduct of its looking consciousness. In this way, as in +those other ways, has science been educated to its peculiar manner.</p> + +<p>We have thus seen how science arises, and how its rise gives it a +certain character. But already suspicion of limitations in the view of +science, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. +Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not +be unmixed. What the specific difficulties are, however, and how far +they really justify our doubting, must be reserved for the ensuing +chapter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2> + +<h3>THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS PECULIAR LIMITATIONS.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p074" id="p074"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.074]</span> +Limitations or opportunities? Error or truth? In the familiar +illustration the tracks which limit the locomotive to a certain course +are essential to its successful movement, and something of the same kind +may be true of science. A man's vices and virtues are never really far +apart, and, again, the same may be true of science. But for the moment +we are to approach science from the standpoint of its limitations; we +are to see how its own natural ideals, as suggested by our +characterization of the scientific view, are evidence of its inadequacy. +So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going +confession of doubt.</p> + +<p>Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and +genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science +must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether +personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or +religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, +the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but <i>persona grata</i> +among scientific men; and (3) agnostic or "positivistic," all conceits +<a name="p075" id="p075"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.075]</span> about what is beyond positive experience, and even all dogma +about what seems really present to experience, being most arrant heresy; +and every one of these ideals, besides being derived from the habits or +instincts, commonly unrecognized and unappreciated, of the ordinary +consciousness, is wholly in accord with the conclusions of the preceding +chapter. The attitude of science, as there disclosed, involved a looking +to an external world—the objectivism; a division of the field—the +specialism; and an experimental, adventurous mind—the agnosticism or +positivism. It involved other things, too, but these three are now +selected, so to speak, as three determining points of science's +circumference. Consideration of them, to whatever results it may lead, +should meet all the demands of the present task. As for the results, +these will show fundamental difficulties, very like to those of ordinary +experience, to lurk in each one of the three ideals. The scientific +consciousness is abstract and just for being in consequence +objectivistic, specialistic, and agnostic it is artificial and unreal, +though perhaps only relatively or not unmixedly unreal, and especially +it is honeycombed with paradoxes and contradictions, with the translated +but not transcended contradictions of ordinary life.</p> + +<p>To the examination, therefore, of these difficulties, or limitations, we +must now turn, taking the three ideals in order.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="I_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_OBJECTIVE" id="I_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_OBJECTIVE"></a>I. SCIENCE WOULD BE OBJECTIVE.</p> + +<p>The ideal of a purely objective science is in many ways a great +delusion, for it may effectually blind <a name="p076" id="p076"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.076]</span> science to its necessary +subjectivism, so far as it gets any substance or content, and to its +necessary formalism, so far as it acts upon a merely external world. +With regard, for example, to the last point, just so far as the ideal of +objectivism is realized, science becomes merely so much technique. By +technique here is meant everything that makes scientific work purely +mechanical. A purely mechanical procedure is the inevitable, the natural +and necessary method of a pure objectivism. Scientists have their formal +etiquette about pre-empted problems or fields of research, their notions +about originality as dependent merely on working a new field—hence the +pre-emption to prevent transgression or theft of originality, their +conceits about bibliographical information, linguistic proficiency and +technical phraseology, their satisfaction over "publication," +"contribution," "production," and "research," and an almost +Gaston-Alphonse deference of each to each among the different branches +of scientific inquiry; and under technique all these things, as well as +the more familiar matters of method and apparatus and material, are here +included. Physicians, we are told, and not infrequently also their +patients, suffer from a professional ritual and etiquette, but they are +far from being alone in their misery. Scientists, would-be objective +scientists, and all who appeal to them, are a close second. Technique +must have its real uses, but plainly it has its limitations. It is one +of the enabling conditions, a <i>sine qua non</i> of science, if science is +to be objective, but it takes the life out of science. A science that +gets no further, that is only "objective," that is, "pure" and +"inductive" <a name="p077" id="p077"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.077]</span> is wholly vain, being like a domestic animal which +is only a pet, or rather like a vigorous plant that runs luxuriously to +leaves, never bearing either flowers or fruit. Its much vaunted +observation and experiment may fill a good many pages and a good many +volumes, but material, even material in books, and experiments, even +carefully, minutely reported experiments, are neither roses nor apples.</p> + +<p>A fruitful science relates itself to something more than a mere +independent object. A fruitful science involves synthesis, not formal, +but real synthesis, as well as analysis, its decomposed object being +also only the separated details of some organizing activity. Indeed, +however unconsciously, or even however against its own avowed interest +and desire, science has that organizing activity in the real life. The +"real life" has seemed aloof, but science is truly an integral part of +this life. Science's very genesis in social evolution, in spite of, nay, +even because of its abstraction by a distinct class and the assumption +of a professional garb, is witness to this relationship. Again, fruitful +science is practical invention, not abstract discovery, and the real +life of a person or a society or a race is as important to it, as much a +warrant of its conclusions, as any object, however mathematically +described or describable, with which science was ever concerned. As for +the thing invented, the tool or the machine, in general the instrument +of adaptation to environment, this sometimes takes visible, wholly +material form; sometimes it appears as a method in the practical arts or +in the fine arts or in education or government; sometimes it is only an +<a name="p078" id="p078"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.078]</span> atmosphere or point of view, a habit of mind; but whatever it +is, it is useful, incalculably useful, and its invention as something +that is widely distinguished from mere receptive observation, if this be +even possible, or from mere accurate description, is science's primary +justification.</p> + +<p>But this, objects somebody, is sentiment, and sentiment of the sort that +quite destroys science, making real science, serious and accurate +science, quite impossible. Well, it does of course dispense with a +purely objective science. It suggests the idea, perhaps the +uncomfortable idea, that, as in some other departments in life, so in +science, death is a condition of success. Science must die to its +objective self before it is saved; it must lose its whole world to gain +its own soul. Or, to put the same idea differently, if the assertion be +not too much like verbal play, a subjective science is not hopelessly +unscientific. Is a man less interested in having a proper edge on his +razor because eventually he must use it on himself? Nothing but a keen +edge can ever ensure a "velvet shave," and nothing but the truth, the +more accurate it be the better, can ever set anybody free.</p> + +<p>Still, all questions of sentiment or of sharp razors or of the accuracy +that liberates aside, we can get support for our scepticism about a +science that, if purely objective, must be also empty and mechanical +from science itself. The consistent evolutionist is obliged to deny pure +objectivity to any scientific knowledge, just as in general he is +obliged to think of all consciousness as never something by itself, but +one of the positive conditions of organic development. To <a name="p079" id="p079"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.079]</span> be an +evolutionist, and at the same time to think of consciousness as only an +external ornament of life, or in its higher development as the exclusive +privilege of a distinct class, to think of it as an aside in life, +perhaps a sudden result without in any way being also a condition of +development, to suppose science to be solely objective and for its own +sake, is nothing more or less than simply to stultify oneself +completely. Even for the historian, whether avowed evolutionist or not, +whose great business is to remind us that what is here or what is now is +not all, the devotion to science for its own sake, which also in other +times has possessed the minds and hearts of certain men, can be at best +only a local and a passing phenomenon. Finally, apart from the +standpoint of evolution or history, it is to be said that human society +at large is sure to resent what may be styled the aristocratic temper +which pure, objective science is all too likely to acquire from the +exclusiveness of its ritual or technique, or say from its abstract and +academic dress, and the resentment of society is important evidence +always. Aristocratic temper, whatever its direction, is certainly as +desirable in social life as it is necessary; it is incident to the +development of all institutions—political, ecclesiastical, industrial, +ceremonial, educational, and, to add to the familiar list, +epistemological; but the resentment which it is sure to awaken is not +one whit less serviceable to society, ensuring as it does, among other +things, the extension of science, the translation of science into life.</p> + +<p>So, to gather the threads together, two difficulties <a name="p080" id="p080"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.080]</span> have now +appeared as affecting the objectivism of science. The first, that of +burial in technique, gave us our starting-point, and the second has come +to light with discussion of the first. Thus, not merely is a would-be +objective science, through its bondage to technique, made formal and +empty, but also, as perhaps only the other side of the same truth, a +would-be objective science materially—that is, for its scientific +doctrines—and formally—that is, for its motives and methods—is always +in practice dependent upon the demands and sanctions of real life, and +so not purely, or not dualistically, objective after all. There is, in +brief, no other conclusion. Either science must be empty, a matter +merely of dead rites and dry symbols and irrelevant ideas, or it must be +pertinent and practical; and, if the latter, its boasted independence is +gone. A purely objective science seems to get only subjectivity for its +pains.</p> + +<p>Yet this conclusion is easily misunderstood. It is far from denying any +meaning to such words as object or objectivity. The object is denied +only as an external independent existence. The object still remains to +experience as possibly of mediative value to its beholders, mediating +between the actual in their life and the possible, between the partial +life and the whole life, the old and the new, the social, which is +always narrow, and the personal. The whole must be always "objective" to +the part, the possible to the actual, the personal to the social; or, +conversely, the "objective," natural world can be only the convincing +witness to the part or to the actual or to the social, not that there is +an independent, wholly external world, but <a name="p081" id="p081"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.081]</span> that there is a whole +or a possible or a personal. "Truly, we are all one," writes Fiona +Macleod. "It is a common tongue we speak, though the wave has its own +whisper, the wind its own sigh, and the lip of man its word, and the +heart of woman its silence." We are all one. Man and nature, which man +beholds, or the subject and the object, of which the subject is +conscious, are one; but an objective science would hide this from us, +not tell it to us.</p> + +<p>But besides burying science in technique, and besides involving it in an +only disguised, albeit a socially significant subjectivity, the ideal of +wholly objective knowledge has also made science conservative in a way +that must have peculiar interest here. Reference is not now made to the +double truth or the double life which an objective science sanctions so +cordially that men can hold so-called advanced scientific ideas without +feeling them in any serious conflict with the traditional teachings of +religion and morality, but to something else perhaps not wholly +unrelated to this, and certainly not less suggestive of contradiction. +While science is commonly supposed to be advanced and radical and up to +date, if anything is, it is so only in a way which calls for a very +important qualification, for it manages to perpetuate, not indeed the +letter, but the spirit of old views. At its best a purely objective +science can give only a new material content, or a new arrangement +perhaps of an old content, to existing and time-worn forms of thought; +it cannot possibly do that in which real progress must always consist, +namely, develop, recognize, and adopt new forms of thought, new +categories; <a name="p082" id="p082"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.082]</span> it cannot do that without betraying its own ideal of +mere objectivism. Objective science—to give a commonplace example—has +said relatively to a certain doctrine of creation that spirit did not +precede matter, but instead matter preceded spirit, and—except for the +excitement of the drawn battle which such a startling declaration has +precipitated—this can hardly be said to have involved any great +advance. Cause and effect have indeed been made to change places by the +new deal, and perhaps in common fairness it was high time that a change +be made, but no new conception of causation itself has been recognized. +The new creationalism, the materialistic, has no essential advantage +over the old. Again, while deposing the First Cause, an objective +science has made all things causes after the same plan—individual, +arbitrary, antecedent causes; and this is only to multiply indefinitely, +perhaps infinitely, the offensive creationalism. "Not so," says some +one; "there is a splendid democracy in it, and it implies a great deal +more than mere multiplication. Indefiniteness, or at least infinity, +transforms anything or everything to which it is applied. By making all +things causes one forces into science the important principle of the +equation of action and reaction, everything being seen as acted upon as +well as acting, and this principle, as if by turning creationalism +fatally against itself, yields a new standpoint, that of mechanicalism." +Granted, and granted cordially, but has a purely objective science any +right to change its standpoint?</p> + +<p>Possibly this does not mean very much. Then approach the matter from +another side, risking a <a name="p083" id="p083"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.083]</span> reference to one of science's pet +conceits, the "question of fact." It has been for science a question of +fact, of mere objective fact, whether matter made mind or mind made +matter; whether this or that thing is or is not a cause of some other +thing; whether certain very low, perhaps unicellular organisms show +purpose in their activities or do not, are gifted with a natural +tendency to social life, a real interest in their kind, or are not so +gifted; or—to take just one more case—whether the changes in the brain +that precede bodily movement are or are not directed by consciousness, +consciousness being in one case in causal relation with the brain, and +in the other only an idle, external accompaniment, an "epi-phenomenon"; +but in each of these questions of objective fact we see the scientist +only standing in his own light, obscuring the view of what above all +else it is important to see. Are mind and matter, cause and effect, +purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such +well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the +scientist's formulæ, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all +that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, +to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to +assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as +blinding and ill-advised as could well be. It has the pleasing form of +open-mindedness, but only the form. It is very much as if some earnest, +yearning truth-seeker should exclaim: "I would see clearly; therefore I +will not open my eyes." No doubt it keeps the scientist busy, eternally +busy, dealing and redealing his facts or data, as busy indeed as the +playful <a name="p084" id="p084"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.084]</span> cat that so hotly pursues her own tail, but it does not +contribute much that is positive and progressive. The very best that one +can say for it is that it turns the kaleidoscope of human experience, +leading as it usually does to a new arrangement of hard, unchanging +things. To the question, for example, about lower organisms showing +purpose or social feeling in their activity, the scientist, after most +careful experiments, may answer in the negative, and be quite emphatic +in his answer too; but almost at once he—or some one for him—will +appreciate that mankind, when scrutinized and experimented upon in the +same way, under the same instruments and through the same laboratory +methods, is similarly deficient; and then, somehow, the wind is taken +out of his sails, since social feeling and purpose refuse to be so +easily disposed of. In this case, as in all cases, the question of mere +objective fact simply returns, as importunate as ever, for another +reckoning, with Shelley's cloud silently laughing at its own cenotaph.</p> + +<p>And what is the difficulty? Once more the difficulty is in the +assumption, so natural to an objective science, of fixed conceptions. +Are purpose and social feeling so fixed in their nature, and above all +so well understood, that their presence or absence can be established by +an experiment or two or ten thousand conducted on strictly objective +principles? No conceptions are fixed, and instead of questions of fact +we should have, what a strictly objective science cannot have, questions +of meaning. Thus, not: Are low organisms, or any organisms, social or +purposive? but: What, if anything, do the processes of their <a name="p085" id="p085"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.085]</span> +lives testify as to the real nature of society or purpose?</p> + +<p>The conservative character of objective science, or the view-point in +its question of fact which the conservatism determines, is the chief +source of the negative attitude of science so familiar to all and so +often an object of complaint. To take, perhaps, the most widely +interesting case, for science to suppose that God either is or is +not—because he must either be or not be the particular thing men have +thought him—is to beg the theological question altogether. Indeed, for +this question of God's existence and for any other question of objective +fact a negative answer is almost, if not quite, a foregone conclusion, +since the very putting of the question is, <i>ipso facto</i>, evidence that a +new idea of the thing inquired about—of God, perhaps, or purpose or +society—is at least just below the horizon of man's consciousness, and +so that the old idea has already lost its validity. Nothing ever is +where you seek it, or what you seek in it, for the simple reason that +your conscious seeking has changed it. Why, then, look—perhaps with a +telescope after a God in the skies—for what you should know you cannot +find? Why despair when a question meets a "no" of its own dictation? The +real questioner lives in a living world, in which all things change and +die, yet only for rebirth, while the "objective" questioner simply +cannot see that the negative of his answer can be only relative to what +is already passing.</p> + +<p>In so many ways, then, a would-be objective science is open to +criticism, and affords in consequence a cause for doubt. Only +subjectivity can make it fruitfully <a name="p086" id="p086"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.086]</span> and worthily scientific. +Only a change in the form of its question can make it substantially as +well as formally progressive. Only a tempering of its negative answers +to a merely relative meaning can make it honest. It is looking at what +is not, and in a way which is artificial, and it sees everything only in +the clear light of its own shadow. Surely to be scientific is human; to +be objective is to rival the lover's unselfishness.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="II_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_SPECIALISTIC" id="II_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_SPECIALISTIC"></a>II. SCIENCE WOULD BE SPECIALISTIC.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, there is the scientist's ideal of specialism, which is at +once not less earnestly cherished and not less strikingly at constant +war with itself. What specialism for science means is known at least in +a general way to everybody, and that an objective science must be made +up of numberless independent inquiries needs only mention, since the +objective world, if really innocent of all personal or subjective +relations, is necessarily manifold and discrete, being made up of a +number of wholly separate details, and being approachable in every one +of its parts from a number of wholly separate standpoints. The objective +world apart from a subject is like a workshop without a workman—a +collection of unused and so unconnected tools and materials each one of +which may have an infinite number of uses; and the objective scientist +views it very much as a stranger, perhaps a savage—may I be forgiven +that mark—might view the lifeless shop, seeing now this thing, now +that, but never the living unity of all the things. So, to repeat, as +soon as the self or subject is removed and the world is turned +objective, all things and all views of things must fall <a name="p087" id="p087"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.087]</span> apart, +and science as the observation of such a world can be only "special." +Not so clear, however, or at least not so commonly appreciated, is the +peculiar fallacy and contradiction of specialism to which attention is +asked here. Once more is science to be seen as in a sense standing in +its own light, since it cannot be at once special and directly and +literally true and adequate.</p> + +<p>To begin with, specialism makes vision, the mind's vision as well as the +sensuous vision, dim or distorted. It may even be said to induce a +species of blindness or, as virtually the same thing, to create in +consciousness curious fancies, strange perversions of reality, seen not +with the natural eye at all, but with the imagination, always so +ingenious and so original, and one might almost add so hypnotic, in its +power of suggestion over the senses. In ways and for reasons neither +unknown nor unappreciated by most men, specialism even closes one's eyes +and makes one dream. It makes the specialist among physicians see his +special ailment in every disorder, and every disorder in his special +ailment, and this so truly that merely to consult him may be to fall his +victim. True, he may never be, perhaps can never be, wholly wrong, and +his transgressions, conscious or unconscious, have often helped +discovery, but nevertheless his situation, not to say that of his +patient, is full of humour, and always among other troubles he is under +the error of partiality or one-sidedness. And in science generally the +specialist always does and always must dream. His dreams may be waking +dreams, but he is always transgressing his own proper bounds without +ever <a name="p088" id="p088"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.088]</span> clearly comprehending that he has transgressed. Nor, be it +admitted, can this necessity of dreaming be a wholly unmixed evil to +science. However unfavourably it may reflect on the final, literal +validity of any special science, it only shows nature, or reality, +preserving her unity against the attempted violence of specialism. It +shows that in spite of the specialist being all eyes for his own +peculiar object, the mind that is within him and that is above all +else—such, apparently, is the nature of mind—responsible not +exclusively to the special and sensuous, but to the all-inclusive and +essential, and is therefore bound to conserve for experience the +interests of an indivisible universe in every particular thing, leads +him, devotee that he is, patiently repeating his sacred syllable, into +most wonderful visions. For the sake of inclusiveness and reality his +mind projects his would-be special consciousness into regions of strange +subtlety and marvellous logical construction; as Oriental priest or +Occidental scientist he is a specialist, yet not without a mind, or a +real, ever-present world, which refuses to be special, and as he dreams +he comes to see, yet knows not that he sees, the whole universe. A +seeing blindness, then, is this specialism; a monomania too, but, of +course, conventional and respectable.</p> + +<p>Mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology and psychology, not to +say also the social sciences, all depend upon the far-seeing mystical +visions of the mind, if not of the eye, upon the subtle, logical +constructions which their would-be scientific specialism, their desire +to know all things narrowly, forces upon them. Each one may be special, +but each as it <a name="p089" id="p089"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.089]</span> gains precision and as it becomes truly an +account of the facts, under the guidance of an exacting mind that at any +cost must present the whole to consciousness, conserves within itself +the common universe of them all by developing under what is called the +"scientific imagination" all sorts of indirections, disguises, +abstractions, logical constructions for the things and view-points of +the others. Each to be veracious has no choice but to be also voracious, +and when, for example, a physical scientist insists on seeing his world +only physically, while in reality it is of course, to say no more, a +world of chemical process also, and even of vital and mental character, +he is sooner or later constrained to admit to his thinking what above +were called abstractions or logical constructions, but what also pass +under the name of "working hypotheses." These are formally true to his +physical standpoint, but any outsider in order to explain why they are +hypotheses that <i>work</i> must call them compensating or conserving +conceptions—in short, logical constructions that are, or that in part +involve, substitutes for the neglected points of view, being, as it +were, the secret agents of a universe refusing to be divided. To +characterize them in just one more way, a science's working hypotheses, +results as they are of science's blind but brilliant dreaming, many or +all of them, are doors in the panelling by which the other sciences are +quietly admitted to a room seemingly tightly closed to all comers. Every +science, and this the more as it becomes scientific, must entertain all +the others, however unwittingly. Tennyson's "flower in the crannied +wall," so often plucked, is nothing in <a name="p090" id="p090"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.090]</span> all-inclusiveness when +compared with a well-developed special science. No science, physical or +psychical, biological or social, ever does or ever can live to itself +alone. It may will to, but it does not and it cannot. All the others +live with it and for it—nay, they all live in it.</p> + +<p>Yet in actual practice, what are these working hypotheses that work +because they are compensating conceptions or doors in the panelling? No +veracity without unrestrained voracity is interesting as a formula, but +how verify it? Verification, or illustration, is now imperative. +Illustration, however, is very difficult for a reason which the +scientists now on trial must allow me to mention. The scientists know +too much about the sciences, or at least of them, while I know too +little. Still, as too much knowledge is often the source of obscurity, +and so only a form of ignorance, my situation is not altogether +hopeless. Thus, while it is true that the scientists are likely to +insist, even in the face of a mind bound to preserve the unity of an +indivisible universe in all the varied studies and conclusions of +science, that physics is only physics and chemistry only chemistry and +biology only biology and psychology only psychology, and while also all +illustrations must come from the field of their special studies, and may +therefore only set them more firmly in the wilful blindness of their +specialism, still the principle of a conserving mind, or an eternally +conserved truth or an indivisible reality, is a disturbing influence +which they cannot evade. Then, too, I am forgetting and allowing them to +forget a very important fact in scientific work to-day. In these <a name="p091" id="p091"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.091]</span> +times the running together or merging of different sciences, as if +through something of the nature of a chemical reaction, is a very +familiar phenomenon. It is as familiar, although not so loudly heralded, +as that of the railroads and industrial companies; and it has been +taking place with such persistence and confidence as actually to suggest +a natural affinity, each of the sciences involved having the rich +experience of discovering itself already in the others. This fact, then, +must make illustration less difficult, since, in a way that must appeal +to the scientist as no merely theoretical considerations can, it proves +or goes very far toward proving what is to be illustrated. Moreover, +specific illustration is hardly necessary in the sphere of the different +physical sciences, or again, in that of the social or the psychological +sciences, for within each one of these groups the affinity but just now +referred to has been very clearly exemplified, as in the interesting +case of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which nowadays are one +science, not three, and which can be held apart only on methodological +grounds, not metaphysically. Illustration, accordingly, appears, after +all, to be needed only for the specialism that separates the physical +and the psychical sciences.</p> + +<p>Physiological psychology and physically experimental psychology, both of +them suggestive of nothing less incongruous than seething ice, are sure +to come to mind at once; but also there is a mathematical psychology, +comparable with a developmental mechanics and biometrics in biology, and +hardly a single field of science, however apparently distant and alien +in nature and interest, has not contributed something <a name="p092" id="p092"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.092]</span> to +psychology or to epistemology, the general science of knowledge. But now +it is likely to be objected by some one that just because sciences, +whether in clearly related or in widely separated fields, are useful to +each other, just because they can serve, as they do, in the rôle of +methods of each other, they are not necessarily in any real and natural +affinity. May not their association be purely one of utility, involving +no surrender of special individuality and requiring in any case only +temporary relationship? The question is absurd. Any means that really +serves an end must have something in common with the end it serves; and, +again, an end that really sanctions a means, whatever the means be, must +itself be, at least potentially, which is after all to say essentially, +in and of the means employed. Different sciences, then, even physics and +psychology, or natural science and theology, cannot be even temporarily +methods of each other without partaking in some way, under some disguise +or other, through some peculiarity in their conceptions or in the +relations of their conceptions, of each other's subject-matter.</p> + +<p>In view of this fact of mutual participation of nature and idea among +the sciences that use each other, I have myself conceived, and in +another place have given expression to, what appropriately may be called +a physical psychology or epistemology.'<a name="FNanchor_1_5" id="FNanchor_1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_5" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This new hybrid science is +especially concerned with nothing more nor less than those substitutes, +disguises, or <a name="p093" id="p093"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.093]</span> indirections, really present in all the physical +sciences, for the peculiar nature, for the peculiar sort of unity, +intensive instead of extensive or qualitative instead of quantitative, +or say also even vital and spiritual instead of physical, which is +always associated with mind. In conservation of matter, energy, what you +will, in plenitude, in motion as only relative and so as always under a +principle of uniformity and constancy or even immobility, in motion too +as inclining to vibration, which suggests poise or tension, or to +rotation, in which we see rest as well as motion, and finally, not to +extend what might be a long list, in the infinity of space and time or +of quantity, the physical sciences have hidden entrances for the silent, +usually unnoticed admission of what is psychical. But I may seem to be +jumping too far, to be presuming too much. Then put the case in this +way—not quite so direct, but to the same goal. All of these +conceptions, so necessary to a "working" physical science, need very +little examination to be seen to be treacherous to the physical +standpoint and its peculiar categories. One might as well try to make +water unsupported assume definiteness of form as to conceive the +conservation of energy or plenitude or the relativity of motion in the +character of what is physical, or at least of what is properly and +conventionally physical. Being treacherous, then, to the physical +science that has conceived them, they are, as was said, doors for what +is not physical; hidden doors, perhaps, but certainly doors to be opened +at will; and by them mind is bound to enter the physical world and its +sciences. To those familiar with the history of philosophy, the +speculation <a name="p094" id="p094"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.094]</span> of the early Greek thinkers, notably Anaximander, +Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, will afford illustration of the physical +view running, in spite of itself, into treacherous conceptions, and +eventually reaching the discovery of their treachery and with it the +idea of mind or <i>Nous</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_6" id="FNanchor_2_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_6" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>So for science is the material world, what properly it is often said to +be, a sort of dark mirror of man's inner life, of his psychical nature. +Physical science as consciousness of the outer material world is not, +and has itself shown that it cannot be, merely and exclusively physical. +By virtue of its working hypotheses, which are as secret doorways, it is +psychical also. Though darkly and indirectly it is our human +self-consciousness. Perhaps it is our self-consciousness rendered +impersonal or the self seen through the mirror of not-self or through +the disguise of what a photographer would call a "negative"; and, if it +may be so described, we are reminded of Burns:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O wad some power the giftie gie us,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To see oursels as others see us!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">It wad frae monie a blunder free us,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">And foolish notion.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Only the bonnie Robert himself was too much of a specialist in poetry to +see that natural science was the very thing he prayed for.</p> + +<p>And just as there is thus a physical psychology, so <a name="p095" id="p095"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.095]</span> in like +manner there is a psychological or epistemological physics, which in its +turn is concerned with the indirections, or doors in the panelling, +present in all the psychical sciences, for those very physical things +quantity and matter. The devil will have his due; even an optimistic +theology has to recognize him. And psychology has a sensuous self, the +self of the purely sensuous consciousness, which has always involved it +in a curious psychical atomism, a projection, in a word, of the physical +on the plane of the psychical. Sensationalism, too, as a psychological +theory in the history of thought has always been associated with +materialism.</p> + +<p>With regard, then, to the separation even of the psychical and the +physical sciences, which obviously has at its base the distinction +between mind and matter, we observe that our principle of affinity and +mutual participation still holds. By a sort of projection or +reproduction mind and matter both appear, the one openly, the other in +disguise, in each kind of science. However unawares, the physical +entertains mind; the psychical matter; and specialism, so far as +standing for anything more than scientific method, has to withdraw from +its last stronghold. The very dreaming of the scientific imagination is +its undoing.</p> + +<p>For other evidence against the integrity and adequacy of specialism, +showing how mind defies specialism and conserves its indivisible +universe, there are the following simple but certainly interesting +facts. All the different sciences, however special and however +apparently alien in subject matter, are wont to use the same general +methods—as, for example, the laboratory or experimental method or the +historical <a name="p096" id="p096"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.096]</span> method, the fatal consequences of which to the cause +of pure specialism may easily be inferred. History is famous for +overcoming differences. The common interest in mathematics must also be +mentioned, for mathematics, through its latest developments in danger of +turning into a pure logic, is quite independent of all those material +differences that separate the different sciences. It is formal and +universal, not special; so that the special science that would also be +mathematical appears somehow to be at least in aim as universal as it is +special. Perhaps mathematics more than anything else has fed the +voracity which we have seen veracity to exact. Has it not been the chief +agent in the virtual annihilation of the barriers between physics and +chemistry? This particular mingling of the special sciences has been +mentioned here already, but mathematics is threatening the party-walls +of all the other sciences also. Further, what are we to infer from the +idea that all sciences seek law? Certainly law is not special as science +has seemed to be. Somehow law is not many, but one. Many laws can only +be different phases or cases of one law. The very essence of law is to +be one and single and all-embracing. To put the case theologically, +could any one suppose that God made the laws of chemistry and sociology +and psychology as so many separate and independent enactments? On such a +supposition he had been a strange God indeed, lacking the very thing, +unity of being and character, which men have come to associate with +divinity, and what theology demands of God, science, even against its +own specialism, must demand of its object. Again, <a name="p097" id="p097"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.097]</span> the way in +which by implication, when not openly, one science is given to handing +over its hardest problems to another is very instructive as well as +amusing. Not many years ago I was present at a joint meeting, a +good-natured and doubtless honestly ambitious conference of biologists, +physiologists, and psychologists, and the addresses then made have often +reminded me of one of Thomas Nast's famous cartoons: A closed ring of +political grafters, none other than the notorious Tweed and his +followers, each pointing to his neighbour and putting on him the +responsibility of a very embarrassing situation. "Find the rogue" was +the artist's inscription; but with apologies for the association, we can +easily change it to "Find the special science." And, lastly, in this +list of the simple evidences against an adequate specialism there are +the conspicuous analogies other than those of common method or common +interest in law, which are always easily traced among the sciences, even +the sciences in the opposite camps of matter and mind, of any particular +time. Atomism in physics is contemporary with atomism in psychology and +with individualism in political philosophy; a monarchical politics with +an anthropomorphic, creationalistic theology and an also monarchical +physically centred astronomy, whether heliocentric or geocentric; and a +Newtonian astronomy, which really makes a law or force instead of an +individual body the centre and control of the solar system, with +democracy or constitutionalism, and with inductive instead of deductive +logic and naturalistic instead of dogmatic theology; so that at no time, +whatever the scientist's special interest, whatever his <a name="p098" id="p098"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.098]</span> special +syllable, can he fail to have at least a formal sympathy with others. +Such analogies among the sciences, so often recognized and so +absorbingly interesting to the students of the history of thought, if +not exactly doors in the panelling, may be said to make the panelled +partitions at least translucent if not unsubstantial and transparent.</p> + +<p>But the most important fact in illustration of our case against +specialism is yet to be considered, and unfortunately it takes us where +to some the waters may seem dangerously deep. Not only for reasons +already given and emphasized is the special science a misnomer, a +contradiction in terms, except in so far as specialism be taken merely +as an incident, not without its humour, of scientific method, but also +for the same reasons (and chiefly because the truth and reality of the +universe are bound to be conserved) every special science must sooner or +later develop its doctrines either into direct paradoxes or into tenets +that oppose and contradict each other. Thus, as has been shown, +specialism in science is itself a paradox, and, as now asserted, every +special science assuming precise form and real validity becomes a home +of paradoxical or contradictory doctrines. Indeed, these doctrines just +through their opposition appear be the most effective agents of that +compensation for neglected points of view, or conservation of all points +of view, which we are insisting is for ever forced upon the scientific +specialist. In the cases of physical epistemology and epistemological +physics we have already seen doctrines working to this end. In those +cases the real treachery to the avowed <a name="p099" id="p099"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.099]</span> standpoints lay in +virtual when not open contradiction. And, for the general principles, is +it not quite clear that nothing so surely as contradiction in any given +point of view, or in the specific doctrines developed under it, can +serve the interests of any other points of view? I have heard it said, +but by whom originally I do not know, that a paradox or contradiction +was only the mind on tiptoe struggling to look over a very high wall.</p> + +<p>The point is just this. The special science, because special or partial +and because at the same time courting scientific character or validity, +that is, conformity with reality, must be relative, formal, abstract, +artificial, unreal, but also for exactly the same reason it must +contrive to admit to its conceptions other view-points than its own. Its +own peculiar view-point is relative, but that it may attain actual +validity it is bound to overcome its relativity by admitting, secretly +perhaps yet not less truly, other points of view; and paradox or +contradiction is the natural door for such admissions, the original +view-point being tenacious to the last. Physics says: "I will be physics +through thick and thin; I will be physics though the heavens fall and +though dreadful paradoxes arise"; and in like manner psychology cries +aloud: "I will be psychology though I suffer from a splitting dualism +for my pains." Have you, gentle reader, never held and held and held to +some particular notion about things, modifying the details perhaps +little by little, but always imagining yourself strictly loyal to the +old, old view, and then suddenly discovered your consciousness alive +with contradictions? If you have, you know, possibly <a name="p100" id="p100"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.100]</span> too well, +the natural history of every special science, and also you can +sympathize deeply with the hen and her cherished chicks that proved ugly +ducklings. The special science, I repeat, must be hospitable, however +grudgingly, to strangers, though at the expense of becoming thoroughly +divided against itself. Such hospitality is an obligation—call it +logical if you will, or moral or metaphysical, for the name matters not +if it only suggests coercion—which is not less binding upon the +scientific spirit than upon the spirit of racial unity, always urgently +present in you and me. You and I may be so special or exclusive as to +drive strangers from our doors, but an impulse to call them back and +give them entertainment always follows—an impulse that is only the +necessary reaction of the expulsion. Humanity is indivisible in spite of +our asserted exclusiveness, and nature is indivisible, too, in spite of +specialism. Partiality of any sort, along any line, in any field, can +never long persist without, though often darkly and indirectly, though +by the way of bold, unrecognized, or unconfessed paradox, receiving from +outside all that it would exclude. I am not merely repeating. At first, +we saw only that the scientific imagination brought to the special +science as its working hypotheses certain conserving or compensating +conceptions; then, that these conceptions involved treachery to the +science that harboured them; but now we are face to face with the fact +that their complete, their most effective form is the paradox.</p> + +<p>Would that I had the ability to write with the penetration and the +clearness of statement that the <a name="p101" id="p101"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.101]</span> subject should certainly elicit, +upon the strange equanimity with which mankind, in science or in +practical life, receives and faces a direct negative or an open +contradiction. Perhaps the habit of easy division into positive and +negative, the ready resort to dichotomy, explains the mystery; perhaps +the fact that negation or opposition is and can only be in kind, that +there never is or can be any real change or need of change in a mere +negation, is at least an important factor in the case; perhaps, again, +the very hopelessness of the dualism, which a flat, unequivocal negation +plainly involves, is also to the point; but, beyond all peradventure, we +do accept the direct negative with a patience, even an indifference, +that may greatly assist our natural conservatism, whether of thought or +life, but that on being recognized certainly does arouse our wonder. +Good and its opposite evil, true and false, real and unreal, unity and +plurality, life and death, the indivisible and the divisible, rest and +motion, plenum and vacuum, immaterial and material, actuality and +illusion, lawfulness and lawlessness: these and so many other opposites +are the common stock-in-trade of our living and thinking, and we accept +and use them with a complacency that cannot easily be exaggerated. Yet +the negative in each and every one of them holds the future of the +universe in the palm of its hand. And the special scientist before his +inevitable paradoxes is as conservative and as complacent as the rest of +us.</p> + +<p>But it is one thing to say, or even to reason out cogently and +satisfactorily in every way, that the <a name="p102" id="p102"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.102]</span> special science, if both +persistently special and honestly scientific, must be sooner or later +inwardly contradictory and treacherous to itself, and it is quite +another thing to show the contradiction in actual cases. The actual +cases, however, are more easily found than many are likely to suppose, +and at mention they may even seem like forgotten memories, like things +which at some time we have noticed but become callous towards. Thus the +atom is through and through a self-contradiction, being itself only a +part of a divided reality, yet at the same time itself real only because +indivisible; and a science harbouring such an atom can hardly be said to +be unmixedly physical. The vibration, too, already referred to here as +motion in poise or at rest; infinity as one more quantity that is +significant because not quantitative; the sensation, a component element +of consciousness that cannot possibly be composite; the plenal physical +medium, which can be physical only if displaceable by other material +things, and so plenal only if not physical, and which has served besides +as an immobile yet infinitely elastic basis of motion or its +transmission; and, to give just one more instance, in moral and +political science the person, a self-existent, actively free being or +entity whose every deed as well as whose every thought is responsible to +something, being adaptive and therefore social, social with other +persons and with nature, and whose every virtue implies dependence and +an existence shared with something else: these are all also +self-contradictions. And in view of them who must not see how the +special sciences are always more than special, ever correcting <a name="p103" id="p103"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.103]</span> +in ways that may be unappreciated by themselves their partiality of +view, ever responsible to the totality of things even while they would +observe things only under selected view-points. Such contradictions, +once more, show mind loyal to what students of logic are familiar with +as the "universe of discourse." Even in science you cannot discourse +about anything without at least implicitly discoursing about everything, +although in order to do so you must speak in such paradoxes as the atom, +the person, the biologist's "vital unit," the vibration, the plenum, and +the like indefinitely.</p> + +<p>Nor is the scientist the only dreamer of paradoxes among men. Ordinary +practical life, as we have seen, teems with paradoxes. But, for purposes +of illustration, not to say also of giving greater breadth and depth to +the view, a reference to the situation in the religious consciousness +will have peculiar value here. A religion that supplements reverence for +a personal God, working miracles and caring for the elect, who even +nowadays are more or less elect, with belief in a devil, even nowadays +more or less personal, is clearly a blood relation to science, and it is +besides by no means so unnatural or irrational as is often declared, +particularly by the scientists. Its two errors, just because opposed, +conserve what is real, and no science can claim more than that. Indeed, +a science, notably a special science, like a theology, might well be +described as a system of mutually corrective errors, of abstractions +that, because abstract, distort the reality of things, but that also +because being at difference with each other and eventually <a name="p104" id="p104"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.104]</span> +falling into contradictory and so counteracting pairs are at least +parties to what is real and true. By hook or crook, by the hook of +abstraction or the crook of contradiction, every science gets in touch +with the universe as a whole, and so even with its errors is a "working" +science. The errors of many a religion, by their working together, have +not failed to save men.</p> + +<p>So we may return to the assertion that in its specialism, as well as in +its demand for objective knowledge, science is self-contradictory, and +with this conclusion established the exposure of science already offers +a very strong case for the doubter. Yet it does this only to the extent +and in the sense that contradiction warrants doubt. After all is said, +have we been only exposing science? Has attack been our only procedure? +Do we not find, as we reflect, that in our exposure there has also been +something very near to defence? Or, once more, through the science to +which we have taken exception have we not seen a science in which we +could believe? In the examination of science's objectivism we saw that +technique buried science, but—though we did not say this in so many +words—that there might be a resurrection. If fruitful in inventions +serviceable to life, science was justified in spite of its cultivated +objectivism, and the objectivity itself, besides an aid to accuracy, has +further significance as possibly an earnest of wider social +relationship, of broader and deeper life. The question of fact, too, if +appreciated and so made subordinate to the question of meaning, was even +allowed, and science, although at once formally conservative <a name="p105" id="p105"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.105]</span> and +materially negative and destructive, seemed after all to be the promise, +so to speak, of a new dawn for the very things denied. And now in what +has been said of the specialism of science, the same turning of the edge +of attack is all but manifest. Every special science is narrow and +relative—it is in the form of an unreal dream; but reality somehow +gives form to the dream, for there are always the compensating +conceptions. The contradictions by which the compensation has been +effected are, then, interpretable not more as causes of doubting science +than as reasons for confidence in it. Thus, to be tedious again, the +special science is relative and formal; it is a peculiar system of +ingenious abstractions that in so far are also errors; but its formal +character includes also contradiction; its errors are so related as to +correct and balance each other; so that, even in the face of our +necessary scepticism about it, science has been evident to us, as also +was the consciousness of ordinary life, as somehow always building +better than it knows or than its methods or ideals and doctrines viewed +only from without would lead one to expect. Moving in it we have +certainly felt the presence of, something, not yet called by name, which +is very like a principle or power of validity, preserving the reality of +things even in and through the relativity and contradiction under which +the things are seen. While the letter of our knowledge, even of our +scientific knowledge, must ever have an indeterminate future; while rest +or stability, ultimate reality or consistency is quite impossible to it, +still its inner, active spirit seems a source of faith that is +inviolable, that cannot be shaken. Different <a name="p106" id="p106"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.106]</span> quantities, such as +four and two, and sixteen and eight, do not make the same sum, much less +are they the same digits; but they are in the same ratio, and similarly +the truth of science would seem to lie in the ratio, the working +together, of the errors of science. Outwardly and materially changing +with time and with people, assuming ever new forms and comprising always +new doctrines, science nevertheless, as an active force, as a positive +resultant, is at least now conceivably always the same and applicable to +the same life. Even the Babylonians of an ancient day successfully +predicted eclipses, the very errors of their astronomy working together +for truth, exactly as the heresies of pagan religion seem to have +balanced each other to the preservation and the development of the life +which we of the present day and the Christian civilization are pleased +to call our own.</p> + +<p>Accordingly the science we have to doubt is also manifest to us as at +least a possible object of faith. The very causes of our doubt before +our very eyes have turned, or are in process of turning, into possible +bases of belief, and our confession of doubt as it proceeds is proving +ever more worth making. We are trying to be such honest doubters. We are +indeed such penitent believers.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="III_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_AGNOSTIC" id="III_SCIENCE_WOULD_BE_AGNOSTIC"></a>III. SCIENCE WOULD BE AGNOSTIC.</p> + +<p>Still we have, thirdly, the agnosticism of science to consider and +appraise. Agnosticism confines knowledge to actual positive experience, +and in its form of "positivism" to an only tentative acceptance of +actual experience, and it is thus in effect an admission of <a name="p107" id="p107"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.107]</span> just +those limitations which have been found to belong to science as +objective and special. Objectivism and specialism have both shown +science to be standing in its own light, or at least to be standing in +the way of any direct and positive knowledge of reality. Whatever they +make possible to our virtual as distinct from our positive +consciousness, whatever indirectly or implicitly may through them belong +to our conscious life, formally and visibly, positively and directly, we +cannot know reality. In a word, science must and does recognize an +unknowable, or at least an unknowability in things, and agnosticism is +accordingly important among the three determining points of science's +circumference. But here is now our problem: Does science put the right +value upon, does it ascribe the right meaning to, its agnosticism? Is +the implied scepticism of the sort that we can cordially accept? +Especially, does science have any due appreciation of the negative, not +to say of the suggested dualism, in the opposition between the knowable +and the unknowable?</p> + +<p>Now both objectivism and specialism plainly involve aloofness, which is +perhaps only another word for what in the preceding chapter was called +abstraction. By the first of these two "isms" science is held aloof from +life; by the second, through the many divisions, from itself, that is to +say, part from part. Men who would be scientists withdraw, as we hear +them boast, from affairs, and as they withdraw it is also as if they put +on distorting and even discolouring glasses, through which in one and +another "special" way they would behold the "objective" world. Their +withdrawal <a name="p108" id="p108"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.108]</span> is thus not merely physical; it is also mental. To +look out of the window one must turn one's head and lift one's eyes and +adjust both head and eyes in other ways; but looking in general, whether +from the needs of an objective or a special view, also demands certain +pertinent adjustments, and the demanded adjustments make the resulting +experience just so far aloof, just so far discoloured and distorted. +Granted that these terms can be only relative in significance. To be +aloof from something is to have it equally aloof from you, and you +should be no more discredited by the separation than it. To be distorted +and discoloured is to be so only with regard to something that in its +own peculiar way may be equally transformed. Such relativity, however, +cannot deprive the differences involved of real significance; it can +only emphasize the general instead of the narrow, local application of +the terms found to be relative. What is relative is not unreal; it is +simply shared, like cousinship. So science, the looking of science, +means real aloofness and real disfiguration.</p> + +<p>The truth of this has already been apparent to us in a general way, but +it will be worth while here to be more specific. The space and time, for +example, in which scientists observe things are widely different from +the space and time of will and action. In ordinary life a difference is +felt between the world we know and the world we live, but the extreme +professional attitude of science greatly widens the differences. For +science space and time are quantitative, divisible, formal, +mathematically correct, and independent of what is in them, their +reality or qualitative <a name="p109" id="p109"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.109]</span> value to active life being hidden or at +least only very indirectly presented—I suggest, in the constant +opposition of their finiteness and infinity—while for will and action +they are qualitative, indivisible, inseparable from what is in them. Who +ever did anything in a composite, divisible space and time? Action in +such a sphere would be hopelessly jerky; with Zeno's flying arrow it +would just always rest <i>in statu quo</i>, though its <i>status in quo</i> might +have an indefinite series of positions. Again, the scientists reduce +causation to mere uniformity of co-existences or sequences, which is no +real causation at all, being only so much passive existence or +mechanical process, while will or action is causation, the positive +interaction of things, the active relation, the vital unity, of what was +and is and is to be. It is true that here, too, the causation of real +life is darkly presented by science in a constant opposition between a +single first cause and an eternal series of causes, for such an +opposition makes real causation in an important way quite transcendent +of the mere differences of time; but, setting this concession aside, who +ever did anything in a world either of one cause active long ago or of +an infinite series of causes? And, once more, science needs elements, +while will or life is the eternal denial of elements or anything like +them. Says a well-known writer:<a name="FNanchor_3_7" id="FNanchor_3_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_7" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> "It is one of the greatest dangers of +our time that the naturalistic (or scientific) point of view, which +decomposes the world into elements for the purpose of causal connection, +interferes with the volitional point of view of real life, <a name="p110" id="p110"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.110]</span> which +can deal only with values, and not with elements." The danger involved +will occupy us in a moment, but the bondage of science to elements, to a +composite world, to a thoroughly "decomposed" reality, will hardly be +questioned. Through contradiction, again, as in the chemist's component +atom, itself not composite; or the biologist's "vital unit," which bids +fair to be the master paradox of the day, science may darkly and +indirectly preserve the world of real life, the world that is neither +one element nor many, but in this case as in the others the indirection, +after all is said, only emphasizes the aloofness.</p> + +<p>So science is aloof, and in being aloof it disfigures and defaces +reality, and the argument for agnosticism is consequently unassailable. +No one more effectively has shown this than Immanuel Kant, although one +may question Kant's final appraisal of the fact. Here certainly is no +place for an exposition of the Kantian philosophy, but, briefly and +simply put, that philosophy has characterized space and time and the +relation of cause and effect, not to mention certain other very general +data of experience, as the <i>a priori</i> forms of all valid, objective +knowledge, and being translated this is to say that these so-called +forms are the enabling attitudes of the merely looking consciousness or +the peculiar glasses which, as it were, the mind puts on whenever it +turns just to look. The typical Boston girl, according to the +cartoonists, is never without her glasses. In like manner the typically, +professionally correct looking consciousness, the observing, scientific +mind, is never without those enabling attitudes. Do you ask if they are +then only subjective attitudes? <a name="p111" id="p111"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.111]</span> They are subjective only as they +are relative. They are subjective only as they express the aloofness of +the scientific observer. And they are subjective, lastly, only in so far +as can be consistent with Kant's further characterization of them as in +every instance imbued with essential opposition or "antinomy." Remember +that an attitude that harbours opposition is always tip-toeing to +overcome the bounds of its own natural vision. Such an attitude cannot +be unmixedly subjective.</p> + +<p>But what now is the danger of science's agnosticism, of science's own +admission that being "objective" and "special," or being under the +constraint of certain enabling attitudes, or being at best only +tentative in all its doctrines, it is not and cannot possibly be +formally realistic? One might imagine, or expect, that confession of its +limitations would be good for the soul of science, and in truth we shall +certainly find some advantage resulting from the confession, but even +science's agnosticism is faulty in a serious way. The writer quoted +above has told us that the great danger always threatening science is +that the scientific will interfere with the volitional point of view, +and this is equivalent to fearing, in the interests of science, that the +scientist will forget his agnosticism and try to render what he cannot +know in terms of what he does know, or that the man of affairs will look +to science for his programmes of action. Such a fear, however, may play +to the professional conceits and the professional isolation and +abstraction of the scientific point of view, but it is very far from +grasping the true import of the conflict between knowledge and +unknowable <a name="p112" id="p112"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.112]</span> reality. I should myself assert, in partial if not in +complete opposition to Professor Münsterberg, that science's very +natural danger is that the scientific and the volitional point of view +will be kept apart, that the professionalism and the formalism and what +Kant called the phenomenalism of science will prevent their +interference. At least, this danger is just as great, and just as +seriously a danger, as the other. Most people know well enough that +keeping science and life or theory and practice apart has the effect of +making the former lose itself in a highly morbid intellectualism, and +the latter in the dead monotony, of a mere existence, sometimes +presumptuously styled "practical life," but such a result seems not to +trouble either Professor Münsterberg or the conventional scientist whose +cause the vigorous professor has espoused. In other regions, +fortunately, a formal disparity is not accepted as arguing to a natural +divorce, but is even considered, let it be said, a reason for +association; and as for the disparity between science and will, it is +quite true that life without science is lifeless and that science +without life is meaningless.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the crowning fault of the agnostic scientist is his lack of +humour. He takes himself too seriously. The lover, when his fair one has +formally disagreed with him, rejecting his suit with her outspoken "No" +and promising lasting friendship and good-will even to assurances of +assistance in his next venture, takes hope, smiles grimly within +himself, and feels sure still that she and he, however disparite, are +meant to live together for better or worse. But the rejected scientist +takes the unknowable's "No" as if it <a name="p113" id="p113"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.113]</span> were final, and then, +retiring to his study or laboratory, proceeds, though in a morbid, +abnormal way, to mingle the scientific and volitional standpoints every +time he writes a line or makes an experiment. We watch him as he goes, +and find his case not without its humour. If the true lover upon being +rejected were satisfied thereafter with caressing the lady's photograph, +then he and the agnostic scientist would be in the same class.</p> + +<p>But, as is needless to say, I am not writing a novel. So, romance aside, +unquestionably the forms and doctrines of the scientific consciousness +are peculiar, being, as has been shown, logically subtle, imaginary and +innocent of direct practical realism, being, in short, the inhabitants +of a world quite their own, and to impose them intact upon active life +cannot fail to bring disaster, the usual disaster of a misfit. Yet, let +us bring to mind, in the first place, that the scientific consciousness +is not essentially different from consciousness in general, and that +consciousness in general deals, and always must deal with artificial +forms, with symbols, constructions, and transformations; and in the +second place, that it always knows with some measure of sophistication +that what it deals with is symbolic or constructed. Conscious creatures, +from the moment they begin to draw breath, are trained to see one thing +objectively and to understand or construe quite another thing for active +expression. There is no visual sensation without muscular sensation, and +most men, if not all men, have really learned in the long years of their +own and their race's experience to get along without <i>seeing</i> <a name="p114" id="p114"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.114]</span> +and yet also without foregoing the sensations in their muscles! Man's +long training, in a word, has taught him to use what he sees as not +direct reality, but only a symbol of reality, and so in volition always +to allow for the "practical" unreality of the objects before his +consciousness. The mere words bread and butter, for example, or even the +visible things in a restaurant window, have never brought satiety to a +hungry child, nor do I myself fear that they ever will. Moreover, the +long training that is the surety against danger, and that at the same +time has made man keenly awake to the value as well as the humour of +symbolism, is just what has rendered the high development of +professional science possible, and is also what makes possible and +properly controls the application of science to practical life.</p> + +<p>It may now be asserted that the facts are not in accord with the view to +which I have just given expression, that sometimes, and very of ten too, +the forms and doctrines of science are imposed without modification or +translation upon practical life. Thus, though the names for edibles +themselves as present to the eye—or to any other sense—are not normal +substitutes for food, nevertheless some people, whether from poverty or +from indigestion, have fed on them, just as they have taken long +journeys with maps, time-tables, and guide books. In education, too, the +formal conditions of science have suggested object-lessons and pure +induction; in political organization we have had programmes of extreme +elemental individualism, of lawless democracy, and of abstract communism +and Christian Socialism; in religion God <a name="p115" id="p115"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.115]</span> has been like a thing +seen, perhaps a tree walking or a man working, whether with hoe or rake +or with other implement, perhaps a trident, and belief has been +identified with an articulate dogma or formula; and many a realistic +novel, treating the details of life as a scientist might treat them, or +many a psychological novel, more problematic than artistic, has been put +upon the market. But what can all this mean, undoubtedly true as it is, +save that science belongs to life, yet is applied to it with difficulty +and only under conditions of conflict? In the case of the edibles, +poverty or illness, both of them incidents of conflict, is responsible +for the unnatural substitution, and in cases of education, politics, +religion, and literature, the substitution is equally a makeshift which +the conditions of conflict impose upon life. An individualistic +programme will not work, nor will a purely socialistic programme work. +Mere induction will not educate. No visible God ever was divine, and no +articulate creed ever was true. Life is a game throughout; its vital +character, its very integrity is its experimental character; it is not a +settled, abstractly perfect thing. Life is dynamic, not static. +Accordingly it must move forward by its mistakes, or by storm and stress +of the incongruous and misapplied, being inspired, not by somebody's +complacent optimism, but by a sacrificial, always heroic idealism; and +its scientific practices, however truly a mixing of things formally +incongruous or disparite, are just aids to its reality. Moreover, those +science-formed practices are always in some measure sophisticated. Human +nature is rather a fine thing in its way, as <a name="p116" id="p116"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.116]</span> many a man has +flattered himself and his kind by saying. Witness the homeless, +ill-clad, starving child feeding over the odorous grating and before the +well-stocked window of the restaurant, and feeling, if not actually +saying: "As long as I cannot have and eat, it is good to smell and see." +Witness, also, the educator or the statesman or the priest or the +novelist. Each knows his makeshift and feels some of the humour of it, +and in his closet, when not before his public, acknowledges the violence +to which he is lending himself.</p> + +<p>And another fact, besides that of the actual applications of science, +which, however violent, prove the need as well as the dangers, and +besides the sophistication, perhaps also the sense of humour, which +always accompanies the applications and at least tempers their violence, +must also be mentioned. Those science-formed programmes always go in +pairs. Individualism and socialism, realism and mysticism, Epicureanism +and Stoicism, orthodoxy and heresy are inseparable, socially and +historically; and the effect of such pairing is plainly to correct +whatever of violence the sense of symbolism and the sophistication and +the humour of the time may be unequal to. Thus in the movements and +programmes of society for any given misfit there is always a +counter-misfit. Possibly human life, at least as socially organized, is +only a competition of misfits, its programmes coming, not through the +acquired supremacy of one side or the other, but through the constant +mediation, the balancing and interacting of the two, and the misfits are +perhaps exclusively the gifts of science or at least <a name="p117" id="p117"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.117]</span> of the +observer's consciousness generally, and man is at once serious and +humorous enough to impose what science gives on the real life of his +fellows, as a ready-made clothier might on a stray countryman; but is a +city, then, to have no Hyam, and is the life of society also to dispense +with the gifts of science because they are imperfect? There are worse +things than clothes not made to measure or than the men who sell or buy +them. There is the life that never changes its old clothes for new. +There are the clothes that never get on the market at all.</p> + +<p>Accordingly the interference of the scientific with the volitional point +of view is, to say the least, not the only danger which the scientist or +the practical man needs to recognize. There is also the danger that the +disparity between science and life, or between knowledge and the +unknowable, will be construed to mean that the two are never to live +together. Science may be innocent of any direct accord with reality, +being in form quite innocent of a real realism, but after all, whether +by itself or in its various applications or renderings in human life, it +is so innocent only in a qualified sense, only with reference to the +form of its specific doctrine and attitudes taken individually. As +itself a living whole, part acting upon part, each abstraction corrected +by some counter-abstraction or perhaps by some inner self-opposition, as +conscious too of its own conditions and limitations, as sophisticated +and even humorous, both for all logical purposes and for all purposes of +applicability in the life of society it is realism itself. As harbouring +what above was called, in so many words, an <a name="p118" id="p118"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.118]</span> inner active spirit +of veracity or power for reality, a constant agent of validity and +applicability, it is itself a party to the real life.</p> + +<p>But return to the idea of the divorce of science and life, which is such +an easy conclusion of agnosticism. If divorced, it was said, they are +lost, the one in a morbid intellectualism, the other in the dead +monotony of mere existence. Now, in view of the fact that many have +found such a divorce to possess the highest ideal value, it seems worth +while to remark that after all is said the separation can be only +apparent, not real. Even if we neglect wholly the writing and the +experimentation of the scientist, as volitional as they are scientific, +and the practical consciousness, moral or prudential, of the disciple of +the "real life," as scientific as it is volitional, we shall find such +to be the case. We know men who have what may be styled, and what +sometimes is abusively styled, a double life. They have their science, +perhaps their laboratories and their books and their own pet doctrines, +and they have also their social affiliations in business and in politics +and in religion; and, whether it be ideal or unideal, admirable or +reprehensible, their life certainly does seem double, because their +sociology and their business, or their political theory and their party +ties, or their biology and their religion simply will not mix; but their +apparent duplicity has apparently little or nothing to rest upon. It may +count as two, numerically, but such counting never makes being. Men +should count less and think more. On the terms of such a numerical +separation, as was said, the science can be only formal, the life only +dead; but such a <a name="p119" id="p119"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.119]</span> science and such a life make one existence, not +two; and, however amusing the conclusion may be, it is nevertheless true +that the science, for just what it is, has been applied, making the life +just what it is. Are scientific technique with its aloofness and logical +abstractions and a life that in its own special, affairs can be only +conventional and ritualistic, or say routine in the study or the +laboratory and routine in the church or market-place, are these so +different as really to be, whatever the appearances, independent and +distinct? They may count as two for being in just so many different +places, but the man, scientist or practitioner, is always necessarily +with himself, and in this sense never in more than one place, so that in +character and value the two routines are one and the same. Moreover, the +ennui which together they are sure to induce must end sooner or later in +a common cry for help, in a passion for reality that will turn each +toward the other with an irresistible appeal.</p> + +<p>Once more, then, there is danger for science not merely in the +interference, but in the obstinate independence of the scientific and +the volitional point of view. A protected science may have no less, but +also it has no more justification than a protected industry. Competition +with life and will may often bring science low, degrading its methods +and impairing its professional success, but protection involves at least +equal risks. Professor Münsterberg—but may he forgive me my Homeric +epithets—is a too zealous epistemologic protectionist.</p> + +<p>The difficulty as to the agnosticism of science may be presented in +another way. Dismissing all thought <a name="p120" id="p120"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.120]</span> of either interference or +divorce and all thought of the scientist forgetting his agnosticism or +taking it too soberly, we may say that the scientific agnostic, being +under the spell of the scientific way of dealing with things, is +disposed to treat the unknowable as if it were but one more thing or +fact among all the other things or facts with which he is wont to deal. +The world for him is then composed of two departments or groups, which +like a good scientist he classifies and labels, the knowable and the +unknowable; and nothing could be simpler or more natural. Though the +point of what follows may be lost in its appearance of mere wordiness, +so to speak, the world of his interest, of his formal knowledge, +includes, among the other things, that which he knows to be unknowable, +and with the inclusion and the knowledge of unknowability he imagines +his responsibility to the unknowable both to begin and end. Or, again, +the agnostic scientist regards the unknowable as something apart from +the knowable, as something not for him to know and also not having any +vital, intrinsic relations to what he does know, but something +nevertheless objectively presentable to a creature with knowing +faculties altogether different from his. The unknowable is thus for him +still the object of a looking and thinking consciousness, yet never of +his looking and thinking consciousness; it is knowable, and formally +knowable, yet not to him, not through any of the forms of knowledge, the +enabling attitudes, at his command. And nothing, I say once more, could +be simpler or more natural. But, properly and professionally scientific +as it may be to give to agnosticism this turn, it is very <a name="p121" id="p121"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.121]</span> +decidedly an excellent example of professional blindness, being a sort +of <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>, of the scientific point of view, for plainly +it treats the unknowable as a matter, first, of knowledge—the scientist's +knowledge of its unknowability, and as a matter, second, for +knowledge—the knowledge of the creature with the different faculties. +Surely such treatment is not honestly agnostic. Science, therefore, if +it would be honest as well as scientific, must forget its +professionalism and take the negative of the unknowable in another way.</p> + +<p>In what way? In making reply to this question I must resort to a +distinction, which I have frequently found useful, between the dogmatic +and the merely instrumental. Thus agnosticism may be dogmatic, as the +conventional scientist would hold it, flatly declaring for an +unknowable, or it may be instrumental, esteeming the unknowability in +things, not merely as relative to the existing conditions of knowledge, +but also as a constant demand upon science that it never rest in itself, +that it for ever treat its results as only a means to some end. So +viewed an instrumental agnosticism is also teleological, but not in any +sense of a fixed and static telos. Telic character or purposiveness and +fixity are like oil and water. Whatever the traditional theologian may +think or say, they simply will not mix.</p> + +<p>Of the two kinds of agnosticism, the first hardly calls for further +treatment, for it is plainly that which has been recently examined and +found to be more scientific, or at least more professionally scientific, +than fully and personally honest, and the second is <a name="p122" id="p122"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.122]</span> very nearly +akin to positivism, but must be scrutinized closely, for it certainly +leads beyond the usual bounds of positivism. The positivist in science, +as has been indicated above, accepts only actual positive experience and +accepts that only tentatively. The working hypothesis is thus the master +of his mind. What he knows, however well established in his actual, +positive consciousness, is at best only relative and mediative. But—and +just here appears the defect of his position, or just here we see him +still only the professional scientist—the mediation which absorbs his +interest is merely one of formal knowledge; what he knows always leads +him just to more knowledge; his formulated hypotheses as they are tested +are but aids to new formulations: whereas, besides this mediation, there +always is another at least equally significant, for knowledge under the +very conditions of its rise and formulation must for ever be a means to +something besides mere knowledge. Recognition of this other mediation, +accordingly, is all-important to any final appraisal of the meaning of +agnosticism, to an appraisal that is justified just through being +superior to the special interests of formal and professional science. Is +it not one of the functions of the various negatives in our human life +really to save life from the narrowness of its various professional +abstractions, and is not the attitude of agnosticism but one of these +negations?</p> + +<p>And now, if for a paragraph or two I may be even offensively abstruse, +the conditions of our positive experience, of our actual knowledge, are +such, and are commonly recognized to be such, that there must always be +an unknown. Every working hypothesis <a name="p123" id="p123"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.123]</span> by implication points to an +unknown. It is equally true, however, that the conditions of positive +experience are such that there is no fixity to this unknown; and the +unknown changes in consequence, both in possible content and in possible +quality or value, with every change in knowledge. But <i>always</i> an +unknown which is <i>never</i> the same unknown must mean something more than +merely a yet-to-be-known; yes, it must mean even more than an +infinitely, eternally remote yet-to-be-known, for its being always, or +its being infinitely distant, simply makes it something besides positive +knowledge actual or possible. It must mean something which, though not +knowledge, is nevertheless in knowledge, now and always; something +served by all knowledge but itself other than any knowledge; something, +then, which exceeds or transcends whatever the formal enabling +conditions of knowledge are capable of presenting, but is itself +intimately and vitally involved in the presentation; or, once more, +something which is not at all in the character of a separate unknowable +thing or sphere of things, nor even of a separate part in the things +known or knowable, but is in the character rather of an unknowability, +perhaps in a sense a relative unknowability, belonging to the very +things and to every part of the very things that are known or, let me +say, inhering in the bare possibility of all knowledge. Must there not +be a sense in which just that which makes knowledge possible is itself +quite impossible to knowledge? Who makes a law must be superior to the +law, or "legally supreme," and what makes knowledge possible can hardly +be fully and directly an object <a name="p124" id="p124"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.124]</span> of knowledge. Given actual, +positive knowledge, then, and there must always be not merely an +unknown, but also an unknowable; an unknowable, however, that is in and +of the knowledge, not in place or in character a thing by itself.</p> + +<p>I said I should be abstruse, and I have not yet finished. In fully +appraising agnosticism we need to consider at close range another idea +of the positivist. Thus for the positivist knowledge is not a having, +but a getting—on the principle that unto him that hath shall be given; +not a knowing, but a questioning and seeking; not a being, but a +becoming—that has its ground in a being so real as to be without fixity +of form. And this is plainly equivalent to making movement and action +essential to the very nature of the knowing mind or to making knowledge +dynamic instead of static, and infinitely plastic—even like life +itself, that is always greater than its cross-sections or specific +forms. But in general to an active nature nothing can ever be quite +external; to a truly active nature there can be no essential +impossibility. For reflect. The mere existence of anything external or +of anything impossible would in just so far remove and deny the +intrinsic character of the activity; in just so far it would set the +supposedly active being in fixity of life and definiteness of form. For +an essentially active nature, therefore, all things—all things in +heaven and earth—are both present and possible, and so, specifically, +if that active nature be the knowing mind there can be no unknowable +that is at the same time alien and altogether impossible to the knower. +Even the very forms of the knower's knowledge must for ever compass +<a name="p125" id="p125"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.125]</span> pass more than they may visibly present. The knowing itself in +its own right and nature must be more than formal knowing, or than the +"objective," "special" science, in which the formal knowing has its +professional realization. And the knower, as he knows, in and through +his knowledge must always be compassing just that which is not +impossible to him, but only unknowable—that is, impossible merely to +his direct, formal knowledge. Is the inedible or the invisible or the +impenetrable or the unbearable or the illegible or even the +unintelligible ever wholly impossible? Such negatives, and in fact all +negatives, besides saving life from the narrowness of its various forms, +do this positive thing: they open the door of life's wider, nay, of +life's infinite opportunity or possibility, and at the same time they +render those various definite forms really mediative or instrumental, +making them parts in an essentially purposive existence. With just this +meaning, then, a meaning larger and deeper than that usual to +positivism, the attitude of the agnostic is instrumental and +teleological. Agnosticism simply endows the knower—must we not even put +our conclusion so?—with a wider freedom than that of knowledge, and yet +also makes his knowledge both share and serve the wider freedom that is +given.</p> + +<p>Instead, then, of pointing to a known "unknowable," before which either +some non-human creature or some human vice-regent of such a creature is +not obliged to be so knowingly humble, instead of establishing the +conceit that knowledge or science is wholly for its own sake and so of +divorcing knowledge and real life, instead of making castes out of the +social <a name="p126" id="p126"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.126]</span> classes of those who look and those who do, the +unknowable must be taken to point to the necessary unity of knowledge +and life, of theory and practice, to the fact that all looking is +incident to a running and before a leaping, that all knowledge is +responsible to life, and that only life, however directly unknowable, +can ever inform knowledge. It even suggests I think with Carlyle that +"the end of man is action, not thought, though it were the noblest." +Yet, in truth, though its own emphasis may thus exalt action, it cannot +mean any depreciation of thought or knowledge, only their enlistment in +the service of life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>At this point it would be interesting to show in detail how action—that +is, volition or application to life as central to the meaning of +agnosticism—is not only the logically appropriate nor yet only the +sentimentally ideal, but also the inevitable, the inner and actually +real motive, the natural outcome of the scientific standpoint in each +one of its three attitudes. Such a showing might follow historical and +sociological lines, or it might appeal to psychology or it might be +abstrusely logical, but I can ask attention only to a few suggestions of +so general a character as not to be easily classified.</p> + +<p>The natural consequence of objectivism is something like that attributed +by many to modern militarism, since it ends by inducing the very thing +it claims to prevent. An objective science discloses the mechanical +nature of man's environment, besides making man himself also a good deal +of a machine. But a machine, whether environment or personal being, is +always a <a name="p127" id="p127"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.127]</span> tool whose fine, accurate adjustments are just so much +presented opportunity that by a sort of hypnotism turns the scientist's +consciousness into that of an effective agent in the world. Somehow a +real machine must move, and in the case before us with the movement the +asserted distinction between looking subject and seen object collapses +hopelessly. Witness such a collapse, as the runner, who has been +studying the stream before him, takes his leap, or in history as an age +of self-consciousness, conventionalism, and utilitarianism, is followed +by the rise of Napoleon. So does objectivism pass over into action. As +for the special Science, it may be impractical, because partial, but we +have seen how at least formally it loses its partiality, becoming even +all-inclusive, indirectly compensating for its narrowness of view and so +becoming virtually co-extensive with all its associates in science. The +dividing partitions may still stand, but only as unsubstantial forms +wholly transparent and ineffective, so that the undivided universe is +really present to consciousness. The undivided universe, however, as +present to consciousness, is a call for will, since it cannot be fully +realized in any formal consciousness. The natural decline of an asserted +specialism, then, or the development of specialism into a mere form +without substance, into a virtual universalism, makes science +applicable. It makes science applicable, for in the first place it gives +freedom from the bondage of mere special technique, just as, for +example, the decline of religious—or irreligious?—sectarianism, a form +of specialism certainly, is sure to free religion from the bondage of +ritual, and in the second place, as was the <a name="p128" id="p128"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.128]</span> fate of objectivism, +it makes the distinction between self and not-self, subject and object, +man and nature, only a formal one, since the real unity of the objective +world is exactly that in which the self has its true realization. In +like manner a religion turned non-sectarian shows man truly living and +moving and having his being, not aloof from God, but in God. Thirdly, +whether because of the freedom from technique or ritual or because, as +the waters of science become quiet with the union of its many streams, +the objective world does clearly mirror the image of the self, the +decline of specialism, like the decline of sectarianism, brings what +some are pleased to call the liberation of the human spirit. The +psychologist would call it the development of knowledge into will—in a +word, the application of science, and the historian would record it as +the dawn of a new era. Psychologically and historically the human spirit +is liberated and nature is let loose at the same time. Details can +always be observed objectively and specially or separately; the whole, +on the other hand, is bound to draw the observer into itself and so to +change the observation into motive and will. And, lastly, as for +agnosticism, suffice it to say, in addition to what has been said, that +the suppressed passion for reality to which agnosticism must always +testify ensures in good time the assertion of the volitional as distinct +from the merely scientific point of view. Whatever this may mean +psychologically, historically and sociologically it means that a time of +agnosticism leads to all sorts of applications of science, such as +those, for example, in legislation and in industry. In morals <a name="p129" id="p129"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.129]</span> +and religion, too, the same wish and will to use the results of science +shows itself, as in the social settlements, in scientific charity, in +the "institutional" church, and in the university extension movement. +Agnosticism, marking, as it always does, dissatisfaction both with the +uninformed and with the conventionally informed life, and also rendering +mere formal knowledge, however logically correct and thinkable, unreal +or artificial, calls for a larger freedom of life through the mediation +of knowledge.</p> + +<p>But interesting as such reflections as the foregoing are, and +interesting also as it would be to undertake an account of will in +general in its relation to a consciousness which in so far as scientific +is always artificial and symbolic, and is in particular, as we have +found, always a poise between opposing points of view,<a name="FNanchor_4_8" id="FNanchor_4_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_8" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> I must bring +to an end this rather lengthy examination of the standpoint of science. +If I have not already tarried too long, the special task of this volume +certainly does not warrant further attention even to so important a +department of human experience.</p> + +<p>In conclusion, then, it is now quite apparent that science is a fruitful +field for the doubter. Science lacks self-sufficiency. Socially it means +the rise of a caste, and logically it involves abstraction and +consequent division against itself. Its most cherished ideals, as shown +in its attitudes and methods, are chimerical, or impossible. In general +and in particular it has a <a name="p130" id="p130"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.130]</span> paradoxical standpoint, being not +less given to contradictions than ordinary consciousness.</p> + +<p>But, as must be added, the case for the doubter of science has led also +toward a belief in science. Not infrequently in the course of the +foregoing discussion it must have seemed even as if belief rather than +doubt were the controlling motive. A little child has said that faith +consists in "believing what you know to be untrue," and our present +state of mind cannot be far from such a faith. Actually the science +which we may believe in is the science of which we are also confirmed +doubters. We doubt the formal attitude and the formal doctrines just +because they are abstract, phenomenal, paradoxical, but at the same time +we have to believe in the spirit—there seems to be no other word +available—as an ever-present agent of validity, because, in spite of +all, the very incongruities save these formal doctrines from their +apparent artificiality and abstraction, and put them in touch with what +is whole and real. And if, as was suggested, the scientific +consciousness is only the specially developed consciousness of ordinary +life, then we have gained also a new confidence even in the unreflective +paradoxical consciousness of everyday life. Yet, that we may more fully +comprehend what this means, we shall next consider at some length the +possible value of the defects in experience which have now been +observed. Ideas, which have appeared heretofore as little better than +hints or suggestions, can then be presented in clearer form.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_5" id="Footnote_1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_5"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See an article: "Epistemology and Physical Science—A Fatal +Parallelism," in the <i>Philosophical Review</i>, Vol. VII, No. 4, July, +1896.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_6" id="Footnote_2_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_6"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See articles: "Pluralism: Empedocles and Democritus," in +the <i>Philosophical Review</i>, Vol. X, No. 3, May, 1901; "A Study in the +Logic of the Early Greek Philosophy—Being, not-Being, and Becoming," in +the <i>Monist</i>, Vol. XII, No. 3, April, 1902; and "The Poetry of +Anaxagoras's Metaphysics," in <i>The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, +and Scientific Method</i>, Vol. IV, No 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_7" id="Footnote_3_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_7"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Münsterberg's <i>Psychology and Life</i>, p. 267. Houghton +Mifflin and Co., 1899.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_8" id="Footnote_4_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_8"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> For an interesting account, mainly psychological in +standpoint, of will as involving such a poise, see Münsterberg's +<i>Grundzüge der Psychologie</i>, Vol. I, chap. xv., Leipzig, 1900.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2> + +<h3>POSSIBLE VALUE IN THESE ESSENTIAL DEFECTS OF EXPERIENCE.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p131" id="p131"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.131]</span> +An original sin, or an essential defect, must somehow be for some good +purpose. At least, if a general faith in the ultimate propriety of all +things has any ground to stand on, such must be the case. The sin or the +defect cannot be unmixed; its very originality, its essentiality, must +line it, though it be the blackest of clouds, with some silver. Theology +has sometimes forgotten this, but an honest doubter cannot afford such a +lapse.</p> + +<p>Yet before examining the possible worth of the original defects of +experience, or, as some might regard the present enterprise, before +attempting to give the devil himself a "character," we must recall the +various steps of our general undertaking as it has progressed so far. We +have been, in the first place, occupied with a thorough-going confession +of doubt, with the greatest possible candour hunting down all the +reasons for the attitude of doubt which experience affords, and so far, +in the second place, we have found doubt justified, whether for good or +for ill, because of its potential when not actual universality among +men, of its character as a condition of all conscious life, of <a name="p132" id="p132"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.132]</span> +its importance to real active life and deep experience, of its intimacy +even with habit, and of its natural sense of dependence and consequent +impulse to companionship with nature, man and God, but more than +all—and this was the special interest of the last two chapters—because +of the paradoxical and self-contradictory nature of all human +experience. As regards the last point, our ordinary consciousness, the +often-boasted consciousness of common sense, was found to harbour a +widespread, very persistent duplicity towards such vital things as +reality, wholeness or unity, space and time, the causal relation, +knowledge, moral freedom and natural law; and science, to which many +when dislodged from their ordinary standpoint have been accustomed to +retreat with greatest confidence and hope, was examined with similar +results. Science was found in its rise to involve abstraction of +interest and disruption of life, and in its avowed point of view to +be—suppose I say at this point—impossible but contradictory. So, in a +word, as a clinching argument for doubt, as an argument that at least on +the surface has less of hope in it than any of the others, we are face +to face with the bare, hard fact that in the very nature of human +experience, besides the relativity and instability and subjectivity, +there dwells a spirit of positive violence. Contradiction is just one +phase of the error to which all men are said to be addicted. As a +background for the inconsistent theologian, the fickle woman, the +shifting politician and other equally double-faced monsters, we see +both-sidedness, individually and to a certain extent socially, to be a +basal habit of human nature, <a name="p133" id="p133"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.133]</span> and if the doctrine of original sin +is tenable at all, in just this fact it would appear to have its +strongest support. <i>Humanum est errare</i> may be translated: Man is most +human when hopelessly divided against himself.</p> + +<p>But just here our confession of doubt has reached a critical stage; +since in experience apparently at its very worst, as if in a medley of +discords we have caught a promise of real harmony, and so something from +which to get genuine hope. In the very habit of duplicity or +contradiction we have again and again had suggestion of an agent of +validity, a power for adequacy in experience, which would hold even a +phenomenal, relative, partial experience to a real world. In short, +really the strongest reason for doubt is possibly a ground of belief; +or, as was said in substance at the close of the foregoing chapter, the +very experience of which we are already confirmed doubters is, after +all, just the experience which we seem to see our way to believing in.</p> + +<p>Since the time of the great Leibnitz, and probably since the time +self-conscious man drew his first breath, all genuine optimism has +caught its most assuring vision of what was good, not in something quite +apart from what was evil, but in and through evil itself, as if what is +evil must be ever building better than it seems or than it knows. Very +much as mathematics has viewed the negative quantity as an integral part +of the whole system of quantities, so in the person of +Leibnitz—statesman, historian, scientist, mathematician, and +philosopher—and I imagine in the person also of you or me, though we +may not claim the same <a name="p134" id="p134"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.134]</span> authority, the human mind has been wise +and deep enough to see evil, representing all the negative things of +life as an organic part of the best possible world, even of the world +created by an infinite God. At least since Leibnitz's time, I say, +optimism has generally justified itself, not by denial of evil in the +world, but in and through evil. Not long ago a young man who was perhaps +more profound and reflective in his habits of mind than wise in his +manner of statement, said to me that the most spiritual truth as yet +disclosed to him was the identity of God with the devil. A shocking +declaration, of course; yet, to say the least, not very far from the +very spiritual idea, welcome to most, if not to all, that the conviction +of sin is the beginning of salvation, or that the consciousness of +ignorance is the very ground of wisdom. And here, similarly, belief +within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only +in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory +experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has +certainly been leading towards.</p> + +<p>Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his +ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, +exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and +with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest +kind of sympathy. In fact, upon just this sympathy I have been depending +in the development of the argument of this book. But human nature, +however sympathetic, is really superior to any momentary discomfiture, +and most if not all men sooner or later come to value highly <a name="p135" id="p135"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.135]</span> +even their once discomfiting inconsistencies. "I am glad," we seem to +hear a fellow-being say, "that after all, in spite of myself, I did +recognize the other side. You abused me and called me double; yet so +doing you were double too. I see now that my duplicity saved me, not, +however, for your view or for another's, but for the both-sided and +true, which we both shared and served"; and exactly such a reflection on +the inconsistencies of experiences, in their less or in their more +fundamental manifestations, is the burden of the present chapter. Again, +to one who complained that with every breath he took he had to +contradict himself, respiration being as necessary to his breathing as +inspiration, just as in walking falling is as necessary as rising, we +might properly and satisfactorily reply: "You are really alive, sir," +and just this answer is also quite pertinent to any who might be +disposed in their doubting to despair over the essential duplicity of +human experience. Is not experience more than any one idea or any one +ideal? Being really alive, is it not infinitely more than this or that +thing, than this or that place or time, than this or that power or will, +than this or that point of view? And, if more, what so surely as +universal duplicity and self-opposition can ensure at once its vitality +and its integrity?</p> + +<p>I am not forgetting or wishing my readers to forget that there are other +defects in experience besides this of self-opposition, besides +experience's habit of never failing to induce its own conflicts; but no +defect seems to me so central or so conclusive as this, and none is at +the same time so clear in its testimony to the intimacy of doubt and +belief. <a name="p136" id="p136"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.136]</span> Subjectivity, relativity, phenomenality, artificiality, +partiality, and instability—certainly an imposing and appalling list, +though logically I must suspect it of being at least a +cross-division—are all noteworthy defects; but supposing the list exact +and complete, we must recognize that all these either beget +contradiction or are begotten by it. Contradiction is just the life or +the heart of the interesting family to which they belong, and so in +applying our thinker's stethoscope to that heart we shall have +determined the hold upon life of the whole race.</p> + +<p>Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem +worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they +seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they +warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we +may rest a genuine case for belief.</p> + +<p>Thus, for the first of the five, contradiction incites and even in +itself implies movement; it requires, or positively it is, action. As a +mode of thinking, as a logical form, it is the way, perhaps the only +possible way, in which the mind can, so to speak, make a cross-section +or take a picture of activity or give the semblance of fixity, the +formal appearance of static nature, to what is dynamic. The photographer +trying for a portrait of reality might ask it only to look pleasant, but +the logician, for whom reality was essentially dynamic, would demand +manifest opposition, for in no other way could his art, limited to +conditions of rest,<a name="FNanchor_1_9" id="FNanchor_1_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_9" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +<a name="p137" id="p137"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.137]</span> be equal to its subject. Where experience +is contradictory, then, there is movement, whether for that which is +known or for him that has the knowledge. In your character or mine, so +like a lover's unselfish selfishness in its apparent inconsistencies, in +our double views about reality or unity or law, in a +subjective-objective science, in an agnostic philosophy, in all these +the contradictions are only the marks of essential unrest, of necessary +movement, that make the picture possible. For a world of opposites there +can be no peace. The very things opposed are themselves fluent and +unstable, and that third something, the <i>tertium quid</i>, a picture of +which the opposition tries to be or to which the things opposed +necessarily point, belongs, as Alice in Wonderland seems to have +discovered, to yesterday or to-morrow, never to to-day.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, contradiction, at least as here understood, is an +expression, or in experience a means to the expression, as well as to +the maintenance, of real unity. In general this is because real unity +cannot take sides, and so can never reside in anything that is, but must +rather be served by the co-operation of all things and in particular by +their mutually corrective or balancing differences. This no doubt will +appear to some readers as just one more example of a philosopher's +impossible subtleties, as a mountain with its top in so rare an +atmosphere that the common man would not dare to climb it if he could. +Yet, suppose together we rise to the heights of this seeming +impossibility by a little unprejudiced study of the conditions, +remembering that the summits of very wonderful mountains, plainly +impossible of ascent, have often been reached <a name="p138" id="p138"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.138]</span> from the other +side, and that difficulties of breathing are often due to a needless +exhaustion. To take a first step, then, contradiction is only +difference, or contrast, at its limit. Naturally there is some +opposition, some mutual resistance, in all difference, in that, for +example, between one man and another, or one thing and another, between +religion and art, red and green, or warm and hot, and often the +difference or the opposition seems very slight; but contradiction, so +called, is only this difference abstracted and unrestrained—it is +difference at its worst or best, difference as only opposition, or, once +more, difference where any possible unity of the things opposed has lost +all material ground or all chance of actual, visible form, and has +become, accordingly, at most merely an empty, abstract principle. +Contradiction, then, is difference so wide that unity seems wholly +betrayed rather than served or maintained. A real unity, however, +requires for its realization just the freedom from material form or +ground which such extreme difference would force upon it. It therefore +gains instead of losing reality by passing into the world of the +materially and visibly empty and abstract, or, say, by leaving behind +any hope of a finite residence and entering the sphere of the infinite, +to which difference, or at least contradiction, so cordially invites—or +expels—it. And, this being true, we can see how unity is served or +maintained, as was said, by the contradictions of experience.</p> + +<p>Commonly men have an idea that differences mean, or point to, unity, but +they are more likely to suppose that the unity is by mere contrast or +antithesis than <a name="p139" id="p139"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.139]</span> clearly to recognize that it is a most intimate +fact of the differences themselves. They will even see in a number of +things only so many varying aspects of some one thing, and will go so +far as to look upon the aspects as actually enriching and deepening the +unity, but they still fail fully to appreciate how the real unity is +immanent and immediate in the differences. Again, in all their thinking +they contrast, and may consciously observe that they contrast, only +objects or people that really have something in common, comparing, on +the other hand, only such as in some way are manifestly different, and +in their practical affairs they compete only with those who with them +are parties to one and the same life, a fundamental sympathy, indeed, +being a necessary condition of their rivalry, and actually and actively +hate only the beings whom because of a common humanity they might love; +but here, too, their appreciation lags behind the fact.</p> + +<p>In life generally, moreover, in small things and in large, extremes do +have the habit of meeting. A man's virtues are so near to his vices. The +widest variations in things are only relatively at variance. Even what +is cold is somewhat warm. Nothing is absolutely anything. In history a +single ideal, rising to influence, has always divided men into two +opposing camps. Witness the fact of bipartisanship, not in politics +alone, but in all of life's interests. Democrats and Republicans, +Radicals and Conservatives alike have loved their country and honoured +their country's flag and, regardless of party, their country's heroes or +patriots. Epicureans and Stoics—in recent times or long ago—have found +the same life worth living. The <a name="p140" id="p140"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.140]</span> Roman Law and the Roman Holiday, +working together, like the right and the left hand, different yet in +sympathy, made the great empire. Two men, furthermore, in active, open +conflict are in truth at serious difference with each other; but, as +they might even say, if their conflict were in the form of a debate, +where words instead of fists or pistols were the weapons, in the bare, +unapplied principle involved, or say in the abstract, in the final +success of whichever is the "best man," they do and they must agree. +Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no +idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the +manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common +relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is +it but a demand for real unity? And the common weapons, or for quite +general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition +is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, +only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, +even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, +truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at +most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is +intrinsic to a real unity.</p> + +<p>Where unity is real, then, there must be infinite difference, and +infinite difference is just what the contradictions of experience impose +upon experience and make it responsible to. Infinite difference gives to +everything an opposite and to all things unity; to every man a rival and +to human society, as a whole, solidarity. Against the material it sets +the spiritual; against <a name="p141" id="p141"></a>[p.141] the particular, the general; against the +subjective, the objective; against the living, the dead; against the +lawful, the lawless; against the caused, the uncaused; and to all these, +the spiritual and the material, the subjective and the objective, the +living and the dead, the lawful and the lawless, the caused and the +uncaused, it gives place in a perfect unity; not, of course, in any +material unity, since such unity could not be perfect, but nevertheless +in a real unity.</p> + +<p>For our first step, therefore, in the ascent of that "impossible +subtlety," contradiction is only difference at its greatest limit; for +the second, difference in general, whether partial or extreme, marks an +underlying, or more precisely an indwelling unity; and for the last +step, real unity is served, not betrayed by difference. Moreover, the +wider the difference, the nearer it be to positive contradiction or +opposition, the more conclusive and effective is the service. Remember, +real unity can never take sides; in the world of things it must be +always both-sided. It cannot be here or there, now and then—be the then +in the past or in the future, this or that. In the words, used of truth, +perhaps an appropriate refrain for this book, it can have neither +visible form nor body, neither habitation nor name; like the Son of Man, +it cannot have where to lay its head. The particular opposition of life +and death affords a peculiarly serviceable illustration, for it is, of +course, at the bottom of many of the most searching paradoxes of our +human experience. Real life cannot be confined to any single organic +form or to any single group of organic forms. In fact, it cannot be +bound even to the organic as commonly distinguished from the <a name="p142" id="p142"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.142]</span> +inorganic world. So for the biologist, very much as for the theologian, +whenever life takes a residence, death must ensue sooner or later. Life +and death, then, as opposites, become the medium of real life. But not +only have we here a helpful illustration, also we have a suggestion that +should prevent an easy misunderstanding. In general, as so plainly in +this special case, the opposition, so necessary to reality in +experience, to a real life or to any real unity, can itself be complete +and effective, not through any single instance of extreme difference, +not through the opposition of just two distinct things, but only through +an accumulation or summation of all possible instances, so to speak, +from difference at zero to difference at infinity. In fact, a real +opposition or rather a truly infinite difference, could be only in such +a sum. Not the single climax of death, but the constant dying, to which +it is only a climax, is what makes real the opposition of life and death +and makes this the medium, as was said, of the real life. Death must +constantly condition all the movements and processes of life: it must +have all possible degrees. And, in like manner, extreme difference at +large, just to be real itself and to make for real unity, must be in and +through all possible degrees of difference. In other words, the perfect +opposition, or contradiction, upon which reality depends, like the +perfect death, is rather a continuum than the wide gap, or chasm, which +so many have thought it; it is a graduate difference, not a single +cataclysmic difference. Difference in gradation or degree, I have +sometimes heard it said, is not real difference; but this statement, +though by no means without warrant or meaning, is <a name="p143" id="p143"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.143]</span> misleading. +Surely a cataclysmic difference, a "difference in kind," can be only one +finite case of difference; the negative, or opposition, in it can be +only relative; whereas, when in degree, difference becomes necessarily +infinite. Accordingly, as we must not forget, from this point on through +the remainder of this book, the contradiction of which we have been +thinking and which we have found infecting experience at every turn, is +not, what at first and even second thought it may have seemed, just an +opposition of two things; between its lines, as it were, it is inclusive +of, or maintained by, all the manifold and various things in life and +consciousness; it is the completed, short-circuited sum of an infinite +series. An infinitely many-sided world is the only world that can claim +real unity, and a world of such real unity is the world to which the +habit of contradiction, which we have observed, relates our human +experience.</p> + +<p>So far, then, in estimating the possible value of this central and +essential defect of experience, we have found that it implies action and +that it makes for, or testifies to, real unity. Now, thirdly, perhaps +only to enlarge upon what has just been said, contradiction is an +absolutely effective correction of narrowness or partiality or +relativity or one-sidedness in life or consciousness, and so it makes +experience not abstract, but realistic. This is in truth only another +view of the worth of contradiction to integrity and vitality, to unity +and reality, but it would emphasize, what is very interesting at least +to the metaphysician, and cannot fail to be of some interest to the +moralist and the theologian, that where there is real unity there +<a name="p144" id="p144"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.144]</span> is also true reality. Only the One is. The One and Being are the +same. There can be but one substance, as also but one God. So men have +said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality +or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply +concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the +intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, +then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and +intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. Now +individual things or ideas always show life suffering in some measure +under tangential digressions from the circle of its real wholeness, and +only opposition can save them or can preserve the reality to which they +both belong and contribute. Has not Emerson, among many others, declared +with a cogency and a depth of meaning which quite defy the +superficiality and levity attractive to a few, that mere consistency is +narrow and confining? Any particular view-point or idea or ideal, any +particular thing or activity, simply needs an opposite to balance the +abstraction or digression which being particular must always involve. +Particularity, specific individuality, is certainly a necessary +condition of real worth in life, but with an equal necessity there could +be no life, no conservation and wholeness of life if the particular, +individual things stood unchallenged in the world, and no realistic +experience, if experience were not thus paradoxical and divided against +itself. Life, therefore, gets not only movement and unity from the +contradictions that lie at the very heart of experience, but in getting +unity it gets also contact <a name="p145" id="p145"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.145]</span> with reality, and the three together +may be summed up in the one word poise. Montaigne marvelled at the +hopeless folly of mankind as compared with the wisdom of God, but man's +folly is divided against itself and so imbued with God's wisdom; and +with countless others he saw the ideas of man to be only subjective and +unsubstantial and irresponsible, but man's ideas, though fanciful and +illusory, though subjective and imaginative, work against each other for +what is real and substantial. Man's ideas co-operate for their own +correction and so for communion or intimacy with a character that is not +less substantial or responsible than that of God himself.</p> + +<p>And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience +supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make +realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be +abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the +hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express +satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the +both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive +experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite +to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there +always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In +practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there +always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to +leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is +all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social +classes or parties, can never be confined to a <a name="p146" id="p146"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.146]</span> single individual +representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly +practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but +instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely +many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed +individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and +competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly +practical, whether of things or realities—for the metaphysician—or of +ideas or categories—for the logician—or of persons or classes—for the +statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the +truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which +is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life +must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding +over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real +leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a +labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences +and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or +"entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for +morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and +platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a +labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites, +that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which +is real and practical.</p> + +<p>It would be peculiarly interesting to examine further this principle of +a practical, truly realistic experience ensured to human life through +the inner <a name="p147" id="p147"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.147]</span> conflicts of experience. The history of morals and +ethics, for example, notably of the perennial conflict between hedonism +and idealism, could not but cast a good deal of light upon it; and the +history of political struggles, or the history of the great +controversies in science—such as that between vitalism and +anti-vitalism or that between atomism and energism; or in philosophy, +between dualism and monism; or in theology, between naturalism and +supernaturalism, would also be most illuminating; while, also perhaps +appealing only to the few, in the logic of the negative, as it has +developed from the earliest times, or in psychological theory—for +example, in the dispute of the advocates of the innervation theory and +the afferent theory, or in Hering's theory of vision, or, again, in the +life and movement of any one of the time-worn paradoxes of popular or +scientific or philosophical ideas, one might expect to find suggestive +illustration. In philosophy, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Zeno, Socrates, +Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel have all found negation, or contradiction, +necessary to any adequate account of reality. Explorations, however, in +their teachings or along any of the paths that were suggested, would +lead us too far astray.</p> + +<p>Fifthly, then, not only do the contradictions make experience realistic +and so practical, but also they make it essentially social. A life or an +experience that is contradictory has (1) movement, (2) unity or +integrity, (3) reality and poise, and (4) practicality; and then it has +besides, as if the medium through which these four things are sustained, +(5) social character, society being only the visible expression, the +<a name="p148" id="p148"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.148]</span> outer realization, of the both-sidedness, of the infinitely +differential unity or the divided labour, which an active, yet +thoroughly self-controlled, truly realistic, practical experience +requires. In a former chapter, it will be readily recalled, an impulse +to social life was found to be intimately connected with the attitude of +doubt, and here clearly we are confronted with only another view of the +same fact, since contradiction has become our most cogent reason for +doubt and is now seen to require the social relations. An individual +whose experience is ever divided against itself is, <i>ipso facto</i>, a +social character, his social environment, whether in its narrowest or +broadest manifestation, adding nothing to his nature or to the struggles +of that nature, but only making the division against himself constantly +and manifestly real. The social environment, as it were, just proves the +man, his struggle and all, to himself. Some have agreed that the +individual consciousness contained nothing on which to ground a positive +case for society, for direct positive social interest; but so long as +man's experience is necessarily paradoxical or contradictory, so long as +man is divided against himself, or as the labour of life and reality is +a divided labour, the case for society and for personal interest in +society is clear and conclusive. A basis for society lies in the very +nature of experience. Society is not something added to individuality +from without.</p> + +<p>Let us here beware of easy sentiment. Let not our thinking conjure false +sweetness and light. Experience is truly and essentially social; the +individual was not meant to dwell alone; but herein is no immediate +<a name="p149" id="p149"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.149]</span> cure-all, no promise of an unperturbed brotherly love, of a life +for one and all of simple peace and blissful quietude. On such a plan +society would hardly suit the individual with whom, and with whose +natural experience, we have become acquainted. To speak with the +extravagance of a counter-sentimentalism, the individual of our present +acquaintance is forever spoiling for a fight. In the life of the society +to which he belongs; in the life where he watches for his incoming ship, +there must always be hate and evil in all their forms, lawlessness and +destruction, illusion and error; but—and just here sentiment, the +sentiment of a really searching optimism, called once before a +sacrificial and heroic optimism, may find some assurance—never an +unmixed hate, never a wholly idle destruction, never an unmeaning error. +Can anything, indeed, that has another thing against it—that has, in +short, an opposite—ever be itself unmixed? The good or the evil in +society, being always opposed, is always also shared. So few people +recognize, or appreciate, what a great mixer opposition is. Death is the +passing only of inadequate or unworthy life. Hate witnesses only a false +love; sin, a pharisaical righteousness. Destruction marks an imperfect +construction. And in all its forms, evil is not so much something in and +by itself as an exposure and reproach of what is supposed to be +unmixedly good. Public crime, for example, is not so local as it +appears; it is only a generally, widely private vice made locally +manifest, and the respectable and law-abiding, who adjudge it evil, are +bound to feel as if adjudging and condemning themselves. In a word, the +individual's natural society <a name="p150" id="p150"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.150]</span> is never without evil, but in all +its forms the evil has somewhat of good in it; and although social life, +not less than individual life, must be one of conflict and discord, +nevertheless, because the various factors or factions, however opposed, +can never be unmixed, because the members of society must all be good +and bad, right and wrong—I almost said living and dead +together—instead of being hopeless for having evil in it, the life of +society is so much the more worth living. Shallow sentimentalism may not +so esteem it, but we need give little thought to shallow sentimentalism.</p> + +<p>So our use of the word "society" is not sentimental. Society means +conflict. It is just the natural sphere of life and reality as for ever +a divided labour, as for ever divided and laborious—divided even +between the powers for supposed good and for adjudged evil, and through +the conflicts, in which the division is expressed, what is true and good +and vital is being forever kept real. Or, to repeat, society is the +natural medium through which movement, unity or integrity, poise and +reality, and practicality are secured and realized in human experience; +it is that which makes the individual's division against himself +manifestly real and positively and progressively effective for a life, +yes, for his life, at once of vitality and perfect wholeness.</p> + +<p>But now that the five things are said, now that the contradictions of +experience have been seen to serve experience by giving it movement, +unity, poise, practical reality and social character, somebody is sure +to remark facetiously that on the evidence contradiction is something we +should all cultivate assiduously, and <a name="p151" id="p151"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.151]</span> that henceforth to face +both ways, the butt of so much opprobrium, should be one of man's +greatest ideals; in brief, that the inconsistent creatures in politics, +morals, and theology are the coming examples for mankind. Verily the +devil has been given his promised "character." But, alas! in the spirit +of such startling humour one would have to conclude also that because +crime has beyond all question been a means of social development, being +all-important to the awakening of the social consciousness and +conscience, all men should at once take thought and find it their duty +to turn criminals; or, again, that because death has a fundamental part +in the order of nature and is, moreover, of greatest spiritual worth and +significance, we should all morbidly seek it, being successfully +righteous only by being suicides. True, we do need to recognize the +positive function of crime in the progress of civilization, or in the +history of law, and also to be aware of crime as a possibility in our +own lives, and we need to be ready to die and to feel besides that dying +we are far from losing all that is worth having, but to court crime or +to seek death would certainly be to deprive either of the very worth +which has made it significant. And in much the same way we may very +profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or +social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on +that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always +blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly +courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The +both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and +conserves human life, is only <a name="p152" id="p152"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.152]</span> that which is maintained with a +tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every +side.</p> + +<p>So, although grossly misused if directly courted, this defect of +experience has its place, even its ideal value, in experience, and what +on the surface seemed an almost if not quite hopeless reason for doubt, +has truly become all but transfigured, seeming now a source of real +assurance. With Heraclitus of old, only perhaps seeing even more than he +saw, we can glory in a world of strife. Doubting all things, we can yet +believe that all things work together for what is real, for what is +good.</p> + +<p>But let me now put the result, so far secured, of our confession of +doubt in a new way. For a life in which every thing has an opposite, +every idea a counter-idea, truth very plainly, as has indeed been +frequently said, cannot be a specific consciousness nor reality a fixed +thing. Truth is not a creed, but a spirit. Reality is not a thing, but a +life. And for being a spirit truth is only the more realistic? For being +a life, reality is only the more substantial. Perfection, too, even the +Perfect One, with whom we associate the true and the real, is no +particular separate being in a certain established exclusive status, at +once infinitely and passively excellent, but a power ever dwelling in +the strife that makes for movement and poise. For being such a power, +too, he is only more surely perfect, only more certainly infinite and +excellent.</p> + +<p>Such terms as spirit, life, and power are confessedly somewhat dangerous +terms to use. Especially the first is liable to misunderstanding. Yet, +whatever <a name="p153" id="p153"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.153]</span> common usage may be, when I say that truth is not a +creed but a spirit, that reality is not a thing but a power, the +reference is directly to that agent or principle of validity which has +been found to hold our experience, naturally so faulty, to contact and +intimacy with the real world. A spirit of truth, a principle of validity +there is, to which the very faults of experience give witness, and in +view of this we who doubt, who doubt the particular things, the creeds +and the objects generally, the definite forms and ideas, the habits and +standpoints of our everyday life or our scientific theory, may yet +believe; we may believe in the real spirit, or power, which makes all +things parties to the divided labour of a real life.<a name="FNanchor_2_10" id="FNanchor_2_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_10" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_9" id="Footnote_1_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_9"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This limitation is shown, for example, in the logical +principle of identity.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_10" id="Footnote_2_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_10"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The worth assigned in this chapter to the contradictions of +experience involves a standpoint which apparently is at variance with +that of Mr. F.H. Bradley, whose book, <i>Appearance and Reality</i>, has +occupied such an important place in the philosophical study and +controversy of the last ten years. Of course, here is not the place for +final criticism of Mr. Bradley, since the present examination of doubt +is no such scrutiny of experience as his; it is far short of what would +make a complete philosophical argument. Nevertheless, a word or two +expressing the nature of the difference between his view and the view +advocated here can hardly be impertinent. Thus, if I read him rightly, +Mr. Bradley has argued from the paradoxes of experience to the complete, +hopeless phenomenality of experience, while in this study of doubt the +argument has been from the paradoxes of experience to a thoroughly +realistic experience. Again, Mr. Bradley's Absolute is able to include +the phenomenal, the relative and contradictory, only because this is so +unsubstantial as to offer no resistance, while here there has not even +been any question of inclusion. <i>All experience</i>, our position has been, +<i>is informed with reality; its very contradictions hold an otherwise +phenomenal, relative, changing experience close down to a real world</i>; +and this position, I repeat, is at variance with what Mr. Bradley has +<i>seemed</i> to say. See, however, a short article, "Relativity and +Reality," in the <i>Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods</i>, Vol. I, No. 24, November, 1904.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2> + +<h3>THE PERSONAL AND THE SOCIAL, THE VITAL AND THE FORMAL IN EXPERIENCE.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p154" id="p154"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.154]</span> +Contrasts such as those in the title of the present chapter, the +personal and the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are +always dangerous to clear thinking, and yet in spite of the danger no +thinking can avoid them. They can be only relatively true; the terms in +which they are couched cannot fail, sooner or later, from one standpoint +or another, to make an exchange of the very things to which they apply, +since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective +mixer, and therefore they can only punctuate the naturally chiaroscuro +character that belongs to all articulate thinking. Nevertheless, used +with self-control, they are distinctly serviceable.</p> + +<p>In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of +experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character +with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the +social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this +contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was +said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general +purpose. It was <a name="p155" id="p155"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.155]</span> said that society was nothing alien, or +additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society +lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided +against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a +divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in +society was clear and conclusive; but this was not fully to define the +parts that are played by the individual person and the social group in +the development and maintenance of human life. Some, for example, would +fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that +of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, +who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our +defences.</p> + +<p>Long ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, of the human +individual, to society, and so, too, Aristotle, though not to society, +but much more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the other +has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, +for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of +the implications of the idea has never been fully stated or appraised, +and this is much to be wondered at, since there is involved a strong +case for both the personal and the social in the maintenance of +experience.<a name="FNanchor_1_11" id="FNanchor_1_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_11" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Plato found reason, will, and sensuous nature in the individual and +analogously a thinking or law-making class, an official or military +class, and an industrial or <a name="p156" id="p156"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.156]</span> appetitive class in society; and +Aristotle, in very much the same way, found the parts of the individual +soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of +nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable +enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated, +with its mere statement. Still, in order to be sure of appreciation, in +order especially to get the reflected light on the relation between +individual and society, we must look to the facts and conditions which +are presented very closely.</p> + +<p>To begin with, such an analogy, dealing as it does with the relation of +a part to the whole, has and should have, for a reason not hard to find, +the freedom of the city of logic. Other than logical approval of it +might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychology might be called in +to give testimony. And out of the past, the more recent past at least as +known to the historian of philosophy, Leibnitz with his <i>lex analogiæ</i>, +or for that matter with the general import of his monadology, might be +appealed to. But without tarrying for assistance from these quarters, +highly respectable though they are, I make a simple, yet perhaps timely +and—with apologies for so much emotion—soul-satisfying reference to +the logic in the case, for after all biology and sociology and +psychology are always under the restraints of logic, as well as +alliterated with it; nor does the evidence of logic depend on mere +technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these +enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can +the true part of anything ever dare <a name="p157" id="p157"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.157]</span> not to have an analogy, even +a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which +it is comprised? And—this being, as in due time will appear, quite as +important—how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, +ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts +within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, +however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three +typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though +at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same +differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the +group-part or class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may +be known also as the faction, and which was so important to Plato in his +analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3) the +all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible ways—that +is, even between individual and individual, or individual and group or +group and group, as well as between either individual or group and +whole—an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original +differential operation will persist. Such, almost truistically, though +also perhaps somewhat subtly for ordinary purposes, is the logical +condition of division or differentiation. Difference, like its limit +opposition, is thus a great mixer, and division can be no mere +separation or isolation of parts. The saying comes to my mind from +somewhere, that though division may reveal distinct vertebræ, the +vertebra always conceal a spinal cord.</p> + +<p>Analogy, however, although thus universal, although <a name="p158" id="p158"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.158]</span> applicable, +as said, in all of the possible ways, must itself share in, must be +quite under the spell of, the differentiation; it must have as many +various forms as it has expressions. In every expression the relation +must indeed be one of analogy, but it can never be of the same order or +degree. That of the individual to the group or faction must be +qualitatively distinct from all others, say from that of the individual +either to another individual or to the all-inclusive whole. Nor can the +much used and frequently abused distinction between small and large +writings, as when history is taken as a large writing of personal +biography or a social institution of some special phase of personal +character, adequately represent the differentiation here in mind. +Consider how various, internally and externally, are all the terms among +which the analogies obtain. Thus, as of direct interest here, factional +differences are bound to be sharper or wider, they are inevitably more +deeply set and more openly exclusive of each other than individual +differences, and in consequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, +but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of +its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole +implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, +which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to +speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the +case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates +a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other +characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes +these on the whole only in a negative way, in <a name="p159" id="p159"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.159]</span> the way in which +opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always +implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which +it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in +one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only +potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the +primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively +active with all the different factors of the operation, and this in +spite of the restraints of any particular class-affiliation, and the +whole, though macro-cosmic with respect to the microcosmic individual, +is at the same time qualitatively distinct, as distinct at least as the +explicit from the implicit, the actual from the potential. Whatever a +merely formal logic might say, a real logic requires that at most +microcosm and macrocosm are only metaphors of each other. Even their +difference of size would be quite enough to differentiate them at least +as sharply as the difference of size differentiated imperial Rome from +her prototype the Greek City-State. Can the whole and the part be one or +many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be +material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in +qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but +without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the +whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the +operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on +analogy, must be various accordingly.</p> + +<p>But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the +case for both personality and <a name="p160" id="p160"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.160]</span> society, no idea can be more +immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of +experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those +tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but +within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither +more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the +experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other +words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general, +or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however +different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, +as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a +thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an +indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and +spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, +intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has +developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It +is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, +sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division +or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, +aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the +language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is +only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction +between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, +out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human +society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest <a name="p161" id="p161"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.161]</span> +social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual +person.</p> + +<p>And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still +undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential +operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of +experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In +him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with +some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual, +intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical, +all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without +the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may +become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the +universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of +any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the +religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any +particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any +particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the +physiological is universal—as universal, to repeat, as it is +indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the +lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has +been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it +is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism, +whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of +the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the +discussion of the rise of science.<a name="FNanchor_2_12" id="FNanchor_2_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_12" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p><a name="p162" id="p162"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.162]</span> But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever +the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before +any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can +be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our +present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If +the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with +reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, +particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. +Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has +been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal +differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal +in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society +is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become +castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An +illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession +of science.</p> + +<p>Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the typical +relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or implied, +that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of the general +to the particular, of the whole to the part, and significantly that of +the vital to the instrumental. Yet, to say no more than this would be a +serious mistake, for at least in two ways this statement must be +modified. Doubtless the required modifications are directly consequent +upon the nature and origin of the relation, but nevertheless they need +to be carefully observed. Thus, logically and sociologically <a name="p163" id="p163"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.163]</span> +factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more +definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may +be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and +efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high +degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of +corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and +in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental +character. Between individual and class there is a difference very like +that between impulse and habit, or organic life and mere physical +process, or function and structure, or say human nature in terms of its +life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and in terms of its +establishments or institutions. Accordingly the relation of the person +to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part, but of the whole +in a state that is formally undeveloped to the part more or less highly +developed, and of the whole as a living, functional activity, the +differential operation of the unity of experience, to the part as an +institution or instrument.</p> + +<p>From all this it appears that the labour involved in the maintenance and +development of human life is divided between the person and the social +classes in some such way as follows. The class life stands for analysis +and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis +and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps +for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal +life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption +and the stagnation to <a name="p164" id="p164"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.164]</span> which specialism and its formal +establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and +instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. And while +so to define the distinction between person and class, or in general to +regard their relation as one of whole to part, even with the +qualifications that were promptly added, may involve some unavoidable +abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view +is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it +rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an +indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the +same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the +relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of +development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly +the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only +a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and +possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger +than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is +the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, +but also there is clearly a real place in social life at once for the +person and for the class. Factional life lacks completeness and +vitality, and personality, the living, integral expression of the unity +of experience, supplies these defects. True, a conflict of classes or +factions may always be counted on, since the unity of the total life, +which of course includes the classes, will prevent their ever being +indifferent to each other, and this conflict will make for both +completeness and vitality, but <a name="p165" id="p165"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.165]</span> negatively, indirectly, always as +if from outside. Only through the person can vitality and completeness +be secured positively and directly and immediately. Personality, on the +other hand, lacks definiteness and practical efficiency, and only the +special mechanical life of the class can supply these needs. So in the +two together we see a most indispensable co-operation.</p> + +<p>The person, furthermore, because of his particular class affiliation, +with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this imparts, +is always naturally under constraint not merely to overcome the +specialism, but also to apply the special training beyond the immediate +sphere of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. +Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by +the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and +the factional ritual, and taking this ritual—or special professional +technique—to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit +rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional +experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. Only +so can he be true both to his special classification and to his personal +wholeness.</p> + +<p>But an insistent question: Is such translation possible? On the +possibility the case for either personality or a class-divided society +must finally depend. On the possibility hangs also the worth of this +case to the general argument of this book. Logically, there certainly +can be but one answer, and that an affirmative one, since analogy, the +primal condition of translation, must be universal <a name="p166" id="p166"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.166]</span> among the +parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole. No two +parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, +but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and +the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any +acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, +however special and however technical, may and must have meaning +throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, +with the acquired freedom of any part, the metaphors, relating part to +part, may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person's +experience-world. The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, +of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very +crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative +illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches +height after height of the beholder's outstretched world.</p> + +<p>The conclusions of logic in this matter have sometimes been questioned, +if not defied. Quite properly, it may be, many people, and particularly +many among scientists, have been in the habit of distrusting the leading +of mere logic in the solution of their problems. But in this particular +matter I think that no scientist has ever succeeded in making out a +negative case. A few have tried to do so, have thought themselves for a +time successful, and then in the end, though not without some +reservation, have gone over to the other side. Probably their +undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes +entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate <a name="p167" id="p167"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.167]</span> people +to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of +things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class +of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or +physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral +truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special +training could ever be literally applicable beyond the particular sphere +of its attainment, the relation of part and part of human nature being +only analogous and metaphorical, and that in any scientifically observed +case special training, when artificially acquired, or when a result only +of a suggested and merely imitated routine, can hardly count as +conclusive evidence, the problem would lose much of its interest, and +science would be ready even to accept the logical solution. Logically, +then, the translation is possible, and scientifically there is no real +evidence against its possibility.</p> + +<p>As to the translation being positively natural or necessary, as well as +possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that whatever is truly +possible must be also real; that is to say, certain of realization or +rather somehow and somewhere, in some manner and in some degree already +in expression. Even the possible can never have been made out of, or +sprung up out of, nothing. Moreover, the translation here spoken of, +wherein one developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual +than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can +require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different +elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as +factionally manifested, shall be <a name="p168" id="p168"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.168]</span> forever true to their origin. +The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on +the ground of the analogies of the various parts being only metaphorical +instead of literal, for already in the original differentiation that has +made person and faction, that has separated the parts, these have been +overcome. The very nature of the person is their overcoming. The unity +of experience must persist assertive and inviolable, whatever the +divisions of experience. The distinct vertebræ must always contain a +spinal cord that has a common origin with them.</p> + +<p>And it remains to be said that since the person is thus at once the +living integral exponent of the unity of experience and the member of +some class or faction, translation is his most characteristic activity. +In this translation, too, we see him a leader, or a party to real +leadership, by nature. In it lies his true genius. Indeed, this +translation is just that which makes the great leader or the great +genius, for through it the person is ever showing himself superior to +his class and training, and to the formal institutions that have brought +him up. Factional life, as we know, develops through imitation and +repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the +flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special +development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological +term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the +practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other +special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to +be distinguished in this way—the one imitative, the other inventive. +Witness <a name="p169" id="p169"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.169]</span> the familiar antitheses between the typical and the +vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the really pleasant in +morality, the legal and the sovereign in politics, the orthodox and the +spiritually alive in religion, technical skill and originality in +science, and so on. These antitheses are all very important to the +understanding of human experience, particularly of its history, but they +are frequently seriously misapplied. More than anything else they show +the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the +living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order +that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate +and appropriate its acquirements.</p> + +<p>There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy +of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or +nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as +something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. +The rôles, too, that belong to personality and society are as distinct +and as real, besides being as organic to each other, as in general are +whole and part. But the person, at once a corrector of partiality and a +leader, a distributor of special development, holds a conspicuous place +and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority +to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions +as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal +experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or +contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to +this defect. Personality must bridge all <a name="p170" id="p170"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.170]</span> the divisions of +experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must +be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation +of that spirit of truth, that principle of validity and power for +adequacy, which has already come to our notice more than once. +Factionally experience is relative, phenomenal, divided against itself; +factionally, too, it is at once formal and contradictory; but personally +it reaches beyond the forms and contradictions, and is directly in touch +with what is true and real. So the contrast between the personal and the +social, the vital and the formal, shows itself quite parallel to that +between the real and the phenomenal, the true and the paradoxical.</p> + +<p>A business man says to a friend: "Personally, as you know perfectly +well, I should prefer to do what you ask, but professionally I simply +cannot, for you know also that business is business." A preacher +declares: "Personally I should just like to speak out clearly and +without restraint, but my church will not let me." Personally the +soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, +professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The +father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than +you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life—all are +all things together, and restraints that separate man and man are +lacking; but factionally there is always restraint, and open conflict +and inner inconsistency are unavoidable. The person is thus the medium, +not of an abstract universality, but concretely, through his factional +training and his leadership, of the universal life.</p> + +<p><a name="p171" id="p171"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.171]</span> And, finally, the life of the person is gifted with a great +faith, for it is in touch with an untethered reality; but, factionally, +life is a constant doubting, for it is constantly narrow and it is a +constant contending. So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as +inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this +conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say +confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells +the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very +defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the +spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as +social, is also real and true."</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_11" id="Footnote_1_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_11"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This paragraph, and many of the paragraphs that follow it, +except for considerable revision and adaptation, were published some +time ago. See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in Society," +in the <i>Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods</i>, Vol. +II, No. 13, 1906.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_12" id="Footnote_2_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_12"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Chap. Iv., p. 72.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + +<h3>AN EARLY MODERN DOUBTER.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p172" id="p172"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.172]</span> +I referred in an earlier chapter to the great Frenchman who boldly +declared that his doubting was all that he could be certain about, but +that this, being so very real, being indeed universal, left him a belief +in himself, although only in his always doubting self. Descartes' belief +in himself has interest for us, for while his thinking followed lines +somewhat different from our own, he seems to have reached nearly, if not +quite, the same very personal conclusion, namely, the right of the +doubter to say: "I am."</p> + +<p>Descartes was born in Touraine in 1596, and for the larger part of his +life he was at least nominally a resident in the Paris of Louis XIV, +Montaigne, and the earlier Jesuits. He was educated at a school of the +Jesuits in La Flêche, and in the course of his mature life he published +works of importance not merely in philosophy, but also in science and +mathematics. His <i>Meditations</i> and <i>Search after Truth</i> are easily first +among his contributions to philosophy. He died in 1650.</p> + +<p>Yet not exactly with the Descartes of positive history, but with +Descartes as a doubter, as perhaps the most notable progenitor of the +modern confession <a name="p173" id="p173"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.173]</span> and the modern use of doubt, are we now +directly concerned; for without the license of this broader view we +might lose a large part of the advantage of the centuries that lie +between Descartes' time and our own. He had many disciples, and these +disciples uncovered much in the Cartesian philosophy that Descartes +himself failed to see, or saw only imperfectly. He was not without +faults, too, some moral and some intellectual, if the two are separate, +and these faults we shall not consider, though the conscientious +historian should never play to the sentimentalist by disregarding them. +But with our present task we can afford to forget the faults; just as we +cannot afford to lose the interpretations and corrections of the +disciples. With interests as vital and personal as ours, we seek +something more than matter of fact. Our interest is very near to that of +the historical novel, but needless to say, this book is an essay in +philosophy, not a novel. Past men and past times can be really useful to +us, only if, belonging as we do not to the seventeenth but to the +twentieth century, we really use them. What we ourselves are able to +find in any period or in any human career is always truer or realer, +possibly in a sense it is also better history, than what lay on the +surface at the time or than what was seen, however profoundly, even by +contemporaries. So much better did Descartes and all really great men +build than they knew or even willed.</p> + +<p>Descartes came into European life at a crucial moment. The period of the +Renaissance, with its rediscovery of the old world and its stirring +vision of the new, had culminated in the Reformation, not <a name="p174" id="p174"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.174]</span> merely +in the religious reformation that set Protestant against Catholic, but +in the reformation that appeared in every department of man's life—in +art, literature, and science, in morals and in politics, as well as in +religion. Man asserted his independence of established authority in any +form. Man, not king, not pope, not even God, became the real centre of +the universe. Justification by his own faith was simply overflowing with +a meaning that knew no bounds in his experience.</p> + +<p>But the birth of Descartes was fifty years after the death of Luther, +and by the time he had reached his intellectual majority, as might well +be expected, the Reformation had changed from a spiritual +enthusiasm—whether among those who were its great leaders or among +those who, not less devoutly, were bent on summarily checking its +progress—into a practical, thoroughly worldly situation. The two +opposing parties, without exaggeration, seem to have settled down to +real business, and not less in the thought of one than in that of the +other the end justified any means.</p> + +<p>The society of Jesus was definitely organized and began its notable +career in 1640, and although its members, the Jesuits, have given to +history many wonderful examples of devotion and heroism, Jesuitry itself +is synonymous with the extreme materialism to which the Roman Church +resorted in its desperate defence against the Protestants. And on the +other side, men became not less sensuous and worldly, giving as good as +they got. They simply met, or opposed, like with like. Reading the +history of the time with <a name="p175" id="p175"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.175]</span> its controversies and jealousies and +intrigues and persecutions, one can only conclude that the honours were +about even. If Catholicism felt justified in her acts of sensuous +brutality, of almost hellish violence, which culminated in the massacre +of St. Bartholomew, Protestantism was made the specious, yet not less +welcome, excuse for worldliness, general materialism, and sensualism out +of the Church and in it. Any religious reform, or reform of any sort, +must always bring an unscrupulous lawlessness with it, and the great +Reformation was by no means an exception to this rule. Extreme +humanists, naturalists, atheists, sensationalists, social and physical +atomists, Machiavellists, sceptics and opportunists of all sorts, +swarmed in every capital of Europe, and especially in Paris.<a name="FNanchor_1_13" id="FNanchor_1_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_13" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>But the extravagant, more or less unconventional things of any time are +often the best signs of its inner life, since in them we see a few men +boldly, if not prudently, stepping over the bounds of custom, and +sometimes even of decency, and giving expression to what is actively +present, though often suppressed or concealed, in the lives of all. Thus +contemporary with Descartes, and from one side or another expressing the +materialism of his day, there were at least three very significant +movements, all of them endorsed by parties, of course under different +names, from both of the contending churches, or from their outside +echoes or reflections, and all of them at least in some degree when not +in great degree beyond the bounds of common conventional respectability. +These <a name="p176" id="p176"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.176]</span> movements in one church or in the other, or in neither, as +the case might be, were, first, a scoffing scepticism; second, a +dogmatic mysticism; and third, a most visionary gnosticism.</p> + +<p>1. Vanini (1585-1619) in Italy, Montaigne (1533-1592) in France, and +Bacon (1560-1620) in England, among many others that might be named, +were more or less extravagantly, not mere doubters, but satirical, often +derisive, scoffing doubters of everything in human life. Conceit of +knowledge, whenever asserted, in church or state, in everyday +consciousness or in science, was declared idolatry and held up to +constant ridicule. Could man's wisdom at its best be anything more than +a blinding folly?</p> + +<p>2. And religion, the religion of a few, as if in acknowledged sympathy +with these sceptics, surrendered everything but God—God being more a +longing than an actual fact; a spirit than a positive thing or person. +Even within the Catholic Church the Oratory of Jesus, a society +energetically opposed for good and sufficient reasons by the Jesuits, +was organized in the interests of a purified, truly spiritual +Christianity; and among those who had broken with the Catholics appeared +new sects of many names, such as the "Friends of God," "Collegiants," +and the "Brotherhood of the Christian Life," but with one ideal, the +direct untrammelled worship of God. "God is," they proclaimed in so many +words; "and God, just God, is all. Church and creeds and rites and +priests are hindrances, not helps, to true religion." This attitude, +commentary as of course it was on the conditions of the day, had almost +more satire in it and more doubt than any of the words <a name="p177" id="p177"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.177]</span> of the +most active scoffers; it was so unconscious; so quietly and so piously +it picked up the crumbs that the scoffers left. Indeed, the sceptics and +their devout, pure-minded contemporaries, Pierre Charron (1541-1603) and +Jakob Boehme (1595-1624), both advocates of religious purity against +theology and sensuous ritual, must be said not to have engaged in +separate activities, but to have shared the labour of a single activity. +Scepticism and such mysticism are but two sides of the same shield.</p> + +<p>3. But with the scoffing scepticism and its complementary counterpart, +the dogmatic mysticism of religion, there was associated also a most +visionary gnosticism. Thus the science of mathematics was heralded as a +key to all the secrets of the universe. A few simple applications of +mathematics to physical phenomena had been successfully made by the +scientists—for example, by Galilei—and ere long certain men in the +world of the intellectual life went wild over the possibilities of +mathematics. Obliged, as soon they were, to abandon every other field of +knowledge—theology, politics, material science, tradition, and +convention—they needed but little encouragement to give themselves +heart and soul to this last resort. Their enthusiasm for mathematics +doubtless had a deeper source than this simple account of its rise would +suggest, for an intellectual atmosphere in which just such a purely +logical, abstract science would develop was the natural product of +medievalism; but Galilei's successes may be said to have precipitated +the movement, and in any case for many mathematics became, both in its +principles and in its method, an intellectual <a name="p178" id="p178"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.178]</span> cure-all, and in +consequence not only were remarkable advances made in the science +itself, but men went to the extreme of applying the methods and the +formulæ of mathematics in every conceivable direction. Religion, +morality, and politics, as well as natural science, were all subjected +to mathematical treatment. Among the surviving monuments to this +activity the <i>Ethics</i>, so called, of Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) is +certainly the most noteworthy; a work of five books on God, mind, +emotions, bondage, and freedom—each with its special quota of axioms, +propositions, corollaries, scholia, and the like, and the procedure of +the whole amazingly consistent with that of Euclid. Excuse, also, a +personal reminiscence. I can myself recall how in the enthusiasm of a +first course in geometry I formulated a Euclidean proof of the +proposition: Knowledge is power. I, too, had my axioms, my special +demonstrations, my corollaries, and my final Q.E.D.'s. But any +present-day resort to mathematics or its methods is only a shadow, or an +echo, of the movement of the seventeenth century. At that time it was a +movement of last resort and all the passion of a deceived intellect, of +a mind given over to the most far-reaching doubts, and a disappointed +faith, once more acquiring hope, was present in it. The truths and +methods of mathematics—what but veracity incarnate, the very mind of +God made manifest to mankind!</p> + +<p>Nor, furthermore, does it take much reflection to appreciate that +mathematics was after all a very appropriate form for credible knowledge +to take in a time of scepticism and of religion turning to purism. +<a name="p179" id="p179"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.179]</span> Trustworthy knowledge of actual things—that is to say, real +concrete knowledge—being held impossible, there was nothing left but +knowledge of the strictly formal relations of things. Formal principles, +just like those of mathematics, are altogether innocent of the confusion +in actual things and persons, in particular events and current issues; +and accordingly in the seventeenth century, just by reason of this +innocence, they were peculiarly timely. Doubt seemed quite unable to +touch them; controversy was turned to agreement before them; and even a +truth-loving God, so to speak, could appeal to them in support of his +right to rule the minds and the lives of men. You and I might question +the reality of the things we count or the justice of the ratio between +our wealth and the wealth of certain others in the world, but we could +not easily question that two and two are four, or in matters of wealth +that one thousand and two thousand dollars are in the same ratio as two +million and four million. Such knowledge as this may not settle any +actual quarrels that we have, for example, over the number of acres we +own or the taxes we pay or the prices charged by our butchers or +grocers; but what of that? The quarrels are idle any way, and our +mathematical wisdom, being exact from the start and self-evident, is a +basis of perfect agreement between man and man and men and God.</p> + +<p>In short, mathematics is exact and universally credible just because it +is so empty and so logically formal, being always "in the abstract," in +that ideal, wholly blessed region, where there is no disputing, where +all men readily admit anything that can be <a name="p180" id="p180"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.180]</span> suggested; and its +being exact for this cause made it the only credible knowledge for +Descartes' time, a time at once of scepticism and mysticism. With +Vanini, then, and Charron, who were separately engaged, as was remarked, +in a single activity, we may associate the mathematicians of the day, +among whom none were more distinguished than Descartes himself and the +members of the Cartesian school. To Descartes we are largely indebted +for the Analytic Geometry, and Pascal did important work in the Theory +of Equations.</p> + +<p>In rough outline we now have the times of Descartes before us, and with +deepened meaning I may say again that Descartes came into European life +at a crucial moment. Materialism was rife, not merely theoretically +among a few scientists and philosophers, nor practically in some +isolated class of dissipated human beings, but really and more or less +openly everywhere in the whole life and feeling of society. Even the +devout played into the hands of the worldly by their very purism. And an +accompanying doubt, cropping out significantly, now in positive +irreverence, now in mysticism, now in intellectual formalism, appears to +have thoroughly possessed the minds of men.</p> + +<p>There was, too, in Descartes' day a growing sensitiveness to the +paradoxes of man's experience which have occupied so much of our +attention. Nothing was what it seemed. One writer boldly declared—not +much later—that France, nay, the whole world, could not be happy until +all should turn atheists. The boast of Louis XIV, "I am the State," +whether literally made or not, was hardly less startling. The sensualism +of <a name="p181" id="p181"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.181]</span> the Catholic Church or the Pharisaism of the Protestant was +flagrantly paradoxical, and was keenly felt to be so on all sides. Men +turned doubters perforce, and in the fact that with their scepticism +rose also a movement at once of individualism and cosmopolitanism, we +cannot fail to see how the course of history illustrates the conclusions +of a previous chapter. The time was one in which through its humanism, +or its cosmopolitan individualism, civilization was to reap the harvest +from the medieval organization of society.</p> + +<p>Descartes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his training at a school +of the Jesuits, seems to have caught the spirit, the real meaning of his +time, getting behind the mere letter of their instruction and of their +point of view. Only mathematics gave him any satisfaction, and he left +the La Flêche school in the first place conscious that he had learned +little or nothing, in the second place curious about the possibility of +men ever knowing anything, and in the third place evidently through the +influence of mathematics strongly prejudiced in favour of introspection, +or of thought conducted independently of things, as the only possible +way to certainty. This education, then, and its outcome, true as it was +to the life of the day, fitted Descartes for his life work, which was +nothing more or less than the erection of a system of philosophy on the +basis of a thorough-going confession of doubt.</p> + +<p>Descartes entered upon his great task by taking his day at its word. St. +Paul, addressing the Athenians, reminding them of one of their own +temples, and quoting their own poet Aratus, was not more tactful. +<a name="p182" id="p182"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.182]</span> Thus, as if speaking directly to the sceptics about him, +Descartes doubted everything, because he found, not only in his own +consciousness, become too reflective for implicit belief, but also in +the wide experience of his race, that everything was dubitable. He +doubted church and state, science and society; and he went even farther +than this. Also he boldly doubted mathematics, so long his own support +and the reliance of many others in his time. He did not know surely that +there might not be an evil spirit in the universe, a spirit of +deception, which even in mathematics was obscuring the mind's vision, +making it see things not as they are, but as they are not. Deception was +real enough and obvious enough in life at large to make such a suspicion +as this at least plausible. Moreover, the notion of an agent of evil in +the world had been a commonplace for centuries. It was just a part of +that medieval training. So although nothing could be said with certainty +either way, the plausible mischance had to be faced; mathematics went +the way of all doubtful knowledge, and man was left with literally +nothing but his doubt, his universal doubt. "<i>Dubito</i>," said Descartes; +"to doubt is my inmost nature"; and speaking so he at once marked the +first step in his reasoning, so important then and now, and in the +simplicity and directness of real genius reported a great, deep fact of +his own experience and of that of his time.</p> + +<p>But universal doubt is a <i>real</i> experience, being real just because +universal. Nothing ever is real that is not universal. What is always +and everywhere is just the mark of something that really is substantial. +A real <a name="p183" id="p183"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.183]</span> experience, however, real because universal, be it of +doubt or of anything else, means a real self, so that in the always +doubting self Descartes found reality, or a real self; and this always +doubting self he further characterized as a thinking self. In other +words, the real thinker was for him the universal doubter, and, +contrariwise, the universal doubter was real, a real thinker, a real +self. Before Descartes' time, to speak generally, men had identified +reality with fixed condition or possession, with specific knowledge or +established power or definite prerogative, divine or human, and truth +was an object of faith rather than thought, say an unchanging programme +for life rather than a pure principle—there is such a wide difference +between a principle and a programme! But Descartes, as we have seen, +identified reality with loss or privation, with such an empty-handed +thing as doubt; he recognized no self but the thinker, and no thinker +but the doubter. We always feel the pathos of those who, suffering +constant privation, find and often declare that life is very real, and +yet the sense of reality that comes in this way—namely, in the way of a +privation that denies reality all residence in positive experience—is +especially strong, and the pathos we feel is certainly not all. +Something else hard to name appeals to us, too, and changes the pathos +into a nobler because a more positive feeling—good will, perhaps, or +honour—since the persistent holding to reality commands a deep respect. +Yet, putting this more positive feeling apart, only the pathos of +Descartes' real self, real because a thinker and thinker because a +universal doubter, can occupy us now. Enough if we see that <a name="p184" id="p184"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.184]</span> the +reality was as indubitable as the universal doubt, the self always being +real up to the reality of its experience, and that the pathos is not +more for him than for the sceptics and mystics and mathematicians of his +time. But, again, in the Latin words, burdened, as so often the Latin +has been, with the experience of all Christendom: <i>Dubito, cogito; ergo +sum</i>. I doubt, I think; I as doubter and thinker am.</p> + +<p>That "I am" seems a sort of epitome of the humanism, not to say of the +pathos of the humanism of the time. Man had lost everything but his own +self, his lacking, longing, always seeking self. Montaigne put the +situation plainly when he said in so many words, that portrayal of self +was the beginning and the end alike of physics, the science of outer +reality, and metaphysics the science of all reality. Man had been left +with his mere self, robbed of beliefs and traditions, and abandoned by +everything but his doubts and the empty companionship which these +afforded, but to that, an unshaped thing with an undefined activity, +real only for what it did not have, he clung tenaciously and often +enthusiastically. And Descartes spoke for him: <i>Knowing that I have +nothing, I am</i>.</p> + +<p>But in this self that was real only because always lacking, always +doubting, Descartes found a priceless treasure. Every one is familiar +with the principle of Christian theology, that the conviction of sin is +a real promise because the actual beginning of salvation, and every one +has some appreciation of this principle. It is a principle, too, that no +priest ever made or could ever unmake, belonging as it does to the very +nature of conscious creatures. In like manner, <a name="p185" id="p185"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.185]</span> then, Descartes +recognized in the consciousness of doubt, or say of intellectual error, +the real promise, because the actual beginning or even the very presence +of veracity in knowledge. The doubter, conscious of error as he must be, +was never without and never by any possibility could be without a sense +for truth, an idea of veracity. Doubting all things he must yet believe +in truth. Plato said centuries before that mere opinion, however false, +was nevertheless always in love with true knowledge, and this Platonic +love Descartes found in the doubter's conviction of error. In Plato's +spirit Descartes insisted that doubt was a constant yearning for truth, +a persistent faith in it. Doubt was informed with truth, with the idea +of truth, very much as one has the "idea" of a thing that one cannot +master. Man might be a doubter of all things, then, but in spite of his +doubt he must believe in the reality of things, not exactly in the +individual reality of each and every thing, but in reality in and among +all things. For him, doubting and self-conscious, there must dwell in +the world a realizing nature or power, an agent of perfect veracity, +checking any experience from being altogether deceptive. And, for the +present, to narrow our attention to a single phase of the doubter's +natural idea of veracity, as Descartes reasoned about it, truth and +everything that goes with truth, perfection and absoluteness in all its +phases, could not be solely human if to doubt was human. They must, in +consequence, be divine. So God, a spirit of truth and righteousness, was +real, as real as the real self of always doubting but ever truth-loving +man. <i>Dubito, cogito; ergo sum: etiam</i> <a name="p186" id="p186"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.186]</span> <i>Deus est. I doubt, I +think; as thinker and doubter I am: and what is more, God, veracity +incarnate, is also</i>.</p> + +<p>And here begins or began a great controversy, nor can the issues of it +be said to have been wholly settled even to-day. What did Descartes +understand when in this way he proved to himself the existence of God? +Was only the God he seemed to have lost once more restored to him, and +restored intact? Did he merely justify, and so return to its old place +of authority, the traditional theology of his day? Was his doubt, as +some would view it, not his own genuine experience, but simply the +conceit and pretence of method? These questions need an answer, for +their answer affects not only Descartes' regained religion, but also his +regained real world in general. So many have been disposed almost to +laugh outright at the simple-minded Descartes for his doubting +everything from matter and mind to God, only in the end to get +everything back. They have seen him as one chasing the verities out by +one door only to welcome them with outstretched arms as they run in at +another that had been left open for their return; and this view of him +has been strengthened by the fact that conservatives in religion the +world over have made Descartes their victim by appealing to his proof, +borrowing for themselves his philosopher's robes, as if these could be +easily assumed and as easily put off. But as to the justice of such a +view there is little if any good evidence. Matter-of-fact history is not +our first concern here, as was said; yet, whatever may or may not have +been uppermost in Descartes' mind, the doubt of his day was both general +and very <a name="p187" id="p187"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.187]</span> genuine, and the final worth and validity of his +thinking lies wholly in that, not in his or any one's mere logical +gymnastic or verbal strategy. Moreover, for reasons which hardly need to +be given, the strong probability is that, notwithstanding his well-known +lack of courage in openly living up to or even thinking up to all the +consequences of his reasoning, he did feel in his philosophy not a mere +recovery of what had seemed lost, nor a cunning apology for the old, but +the birth of a new point of view; and, if this possibility should be +verified, among other things the conservatives, who have been borrowing +so much support, have been little if any better than parasites. Still, +even the probabilities in the case are relatively insignificant to us, +since the people of the time and of later times, and we ourselves from +the scepticism and mysticism of the seventeenth century, have learned to +think of God with a fulness of meaning never attained before, as—what +shall I say?—not a definite truth, but the living spirit of truth; not +a passive perfection, but a perfect activity; and not even a divine +person, in the sense of one more separate being of consciousness and +will to inhabit the universe, but the moving and conserving power of all +personality—the very active principle of reality present in the +vicissitudes and conflicts of our existence. And, such being the outcome +of history, we have to take it as really the meaning of the great +Frenchman's formulæ. We put aside the controversy, then, with the simple +reflection that results in history or anywhere else are at least very +hard indeed to conceive if they are anything more or less than realized +motives <a name="p188" id="p188"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.188]</span> perhaps the realized motives of a man or men building +somewhat beyond their clearest knowledge. Whatever has come about must +always be what more or less clearly men have been feeling after.</p> + +<p>The God whom Descartes really proves to his time, and still more +positively to us, must surely be the God not of a satisfied +unquestioning believer, but of the universal doubter who loves truth and +whose doubting and loving make him the always curious thinker; a God +without visibly or even quasi-visibly fixed or specific character of any +sort, since with his nature set to such a character, tethered like a +beast to a stake or like the sun bound to an orbit, he would not be and +could not be divine enough—which is to say, veracious or perfect +enough—for a universal doubter's curiosity; a God, then, who has the +divine character of true infinity, who is, too, a spirit in fact as well +as in word. Infinity certainly cannot belong to a being that is apart; +such a being would at once belie his nature; and "spirits," divine or +human, must not be supposed to be, like Elijah, the merely translated +beings of this visible and tangible world, for they can belong only to +the invisible and the intangible, which is in this world and of it, in +its knowledge, in its love and strife, in its changes of all kinds, in +its work and in its suffering. Yes, a truly living God, living here and +now, is the God of Descartes' proof; the God of just that world of +movement and conflict, of poise and reality, to which the differences +and above all the contradictions of experience, as examined by us in +preceding chapters, have already borne witness. Let us recall how we +were able to say that the very conflicts of human <a name="p189" id="p189"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.189]</span> experience +were the wisdom of God. And if this all amounts to saying, as apparently +it does, that only Descartes' universal doubter, who loves truth too +much ever to claim its final possession, can believe in a real God, then +we have reached something that will surely repay the most careful +reflection.</p> + +<p>Some have criticized Descartes for what they regard as a fallacy in his +reasoning. He jumped, they claim, without any real warrant, from the +idea of a thing as his premise to the actual existence of the thing as +his conclusion, from the idea of veracity, so necessary in the +consciousness of the doubter, to the substantial existence of a +perfectly veracious being, as if, to use their time-worn analogy, the +idea even of the very smallest sum of money would make the money itself +materialize in somebody's pocket. But, whether or not Descartes fully +understood his own thought, this criticism is very superficial, and it +gets only a specious cogency from the same matter-of-fact history that +we have already pushed aside. No idea, however clear, however necessary +even to the consciousness of a doubter, of perfect truth could ever +conjure into existence the unworldly, independently existing, +spiritually and intellectually isolated God of the Middle Ages; and for +that matter one might say, I think quite pertinently, that money not in +the pocket is something less than real money, or—which comes to the +same end—that the idea of money, if the pocket be indeed empty, must +imply some sense of the emptiness as well as of the money; and with such +an implication the idea taken for its full meaning is no such conjurer +as Descartes' critics have chosen to imagine it. After <a name="p190" id="p190"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.190]</span> all the +"mere" ideas, or the "mere" things in general, that appear in +controversies, are only ingenious ways of packing the jury. An adequate +idea—that is to say, an idea taken just for its full meaning, for what +it denies as well as for what it affirms, for the complete universe of +its discourse—does and must answer to existence; yes, and to +substantial existence too. So, again, the God that Descartes by the +doubter's idea of veracity proved to his time and to us, if not also as +clearly to himself, can have been no mere substantial existence wholly +outside the doubter's life and consciousness. In such case the universal +doubting would indeed have been only the insincere verbal strategy of a +conservative, the conceit of purely artful method, and the jump objected +to would have been quite necessary. But Descartes' God answered to just +the idea of truth which a universal doubter could honestly entertain; to +truth realized only in and through doubt; a God, living in and with the +seeking, struggling consciousness of the doubter.</p> + +<p>Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, +whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is +in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always +something else, something fuller and realer, something including and +using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"—for +such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and +hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him; +there can be no outer nature, but an including and developing nature, +and no transcendent God, but an indwelling, ever uplifting, <a name="p191" id="p191"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.191]</span> +forward-bearing God. Exactly such a being was Descartes' real self, the +self of his I <i>am</i>—"I as thinker and doubter am"—and this self had +need neither of struggling with nature nor of wrestling with God in +order to get one or the other on its side, for in its doubt, in its +constant confession of incompleteness, even—though this is a flagrant +paradox—of its own reality as in a sense always outside or beyond +itself, it had won the supreme victory at the start. Negatives are +always such very sweeping, comprehensive things; and to be, so to speak, +one's own negative, to be real and lacking, is somehow to include all +things within one's own life and interest. If I may apply an ordinary +phrase in an extraordinary way, to be always "beside oneself," always +doubting, always wanting, always striving, or to be, in the words of +earlier pages, ever and always divided against oneself, is to have +enlisted man and nature and God for ever in one's service.</p> + +<p>There is truly such a difference between programme and principle 1 It is +the difference between medievalism and modernism, between supposed +finality and recognized and asserted movement, between supernatural +authority and the authority of natural growth. Enthrone a programme, and +it is arbitrary and exclusive; it claims, as it must, the sanction of +another world; it hopelessly divides human nature as personally embodied +or as socially organized; it makes life and its sphere irrational and so +dependent on a blind faith: but a principle, enthroned, draws all things +into itself, using to its own constant realization even the changes and +differences of life, making faith <a name="p192" id="p192"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.192]</span> and reason lie down together, +and transfiguring both a brutal nature and an inhuman God by revealing +them as not indeed formally but vitally rational, and not indeed +mortally yet humanly alive. In Descartes' proof of God we see the birth +of modernism; the programme deposed; the principle set in the place of +authority.</p> + +<p>Finally, then, Descartes did not simply restore what had been lost. +Though we have been regarding only the religious aspect of his +philosophy, we can see in general that, just as not the old God, but +nevertheless God, remained to the doubter's life, so also not the old +verities at large, yet nevertheless the verities, or not the old +reality, yet nevertheless reality, remained also. Man, after all his +doubting, even because of it all, was enabled to return to the world of +all those "isms," the all-pervading materialism, the scoffing +scepticism, the dogmatic mysticism, and the intellectual formalism, with +a new spirit, a spirit of real confidence, a spirit of hope, a spirit of +life, that just by reason of its wants and conflicts believes itself not +only very real but also fully worth while.</p> + +<p>And travellers to-day visiting the streets of Paris or going anywhere +the doubting and despairing world over, would do well to imagine +Descartes, as the modern doubter, travelling and thinking with them.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_13" id="Footnote_1_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_13"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See an article by H.C. Lea in the <i>American Historical +Review</i>, January, 1904, "Ethical Values in History," especially p. 238 +seq.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2> + +<h3>THE DOUBTER'S WORLD.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p193" id="p193"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.193]</span> +The doubter's world is a world in which, as we journey, we shall +discover four features that are especially noteworthy and that accord +fully with the principles of Descartes as well as with the findings of +our own confession of doubt. Thus, in the order, or suppose I say in the +itinerary, here to be followed: (1) Reality, without finality, in all +things; (2) perfect sympathy between the spiritual and the material; (3) +genuine individuality; and (4) for whatever is indeed real, immortality.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="I_REALITY_WITHOUT_FINALITY_IN_ALL_THINGS" id="I_REALITY_WITHOUT_FINALITY_IN_ALL_THINGS"></a>I. REALITY, WITHOUT FINALITY, IN ALL THINGS.</p> + +<p>Doubt is only a particular state, or phase, of consciousness, and it is +worth while to observe that any state of consciousness whatsoever, any +attitude of mind, must assume or postulate something real. Indeed, this +assumption of reality is so positive that no consciousness is ever +without some will to believe, while no will to believe is ever without +some real object believed in. Can there be smoke without some fire, or a +seeming without some being? Were either of these things possible, then +by the same token there could also be a willing without some doing or a +wanting without some having. To be conscious of something, <a name="p194" id="p194"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.194]</span> then, +means not only that something is assumed and, if assumed, willed to be, +but also that something really and truly is. Of course, the +consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have +more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or +willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. +In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and +possesses, a real world; possibly not just the world formally presented +to it, but nevertheless reality, and reality, too, in which somehow the +presented world has a place and part.</p> + +<p>This may or may not be axiomatic, but at the very least it is very near +to being axiomatic, and, near or far, it quite agrees with the +conclusions to which, although along somewhat more specific lines, our +own thinking and Descartes' thinking have been constantly pointing. As +Descartes might have said, there is no consciousness without a +thoroughly warranted "I am," and no "I am" without an also thoroughly +warranted "The world of my consciousness is and is objectively real." +But in implications about reality the doubter's consciousness differs +from the believer's consciousness; not by any mere denial, for +unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the +doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar assumption as to what +the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken +as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. Thus, for +the distinct believer—that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic +believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, +<a name="p195" id="p195"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.195]</span> tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of +doctrine and to some specific manner of life—reality is always tethered +to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to +suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. For our +doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience +can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any +possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, +I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. Indeed, it could not be +either of these without being the other. For him nothing is <i>the</i> +reality, just because all things must belong to reality. For him, again, +the world's reality is nowhere, just because everywhere; in no defined +thing fixedly and completely, just because in all things—in them not +merely distributively, it is true, but as they work together; and +invisible and intangible, indeed generally unknowable, just because any +consciousness is necessarily limited to the definite and inadequate +mediums, or forms, of positive knowledge.</p> + +<p>So the doubter has a real world, but his own real world. Moreover, in +the great freedom of its reality we see how all things taken +individually or distributively, must be, as the word is used, only +"relative"; and in the perfect inclusiveness, how nothing, however +"relative," can ever be unreal. Relativism and scepticism have been +perenially associated, but relativism is not a nihilistic, but a deeply +realistic philosophy; it is just the sceptic's natural realism. All +things are "relative," but only because reality is at once free from +anything, and yet inclusive of all things. What is relative is <a name="p196" id="p196"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.196]</span> +thus not flatly unreal, as is often supposed, but significantly both +real and unreal or neither real—not real to itself alone—nor +unreal—not without its part and place in whatever is real. The sceptic, +though always a relativist, is thus also a most profound realist, and +the nature of his realism must help us greatly to our view of the +doubter's world.</p> + +<p>Moreover, Descartes and his followers were also nativists or +intuitionists, and, at least for the freer interpretation here +permitted, their nativism was of a peculiar order, and it involved, +accordingly, a world which was real in a peculiar way. Usually nativism +has stood for the assertion of certain inborn and so necessarily valid +and unchangeable ideas or characters or powers; as when men contend that +particular ideas of God are unassailable because immediately intuited as +a part of man's very being, or again when men declare a particular +genius to be born, not made, or insist that a voice of conscience born, +not bred, in them, tells them explicitly to do and even to make others +do this or that specific thing, to live and make others live in this or +that specific way, to accept and make others accept this or that +specific programme of politics, morals, or religion. Furthermore, +nativism of this prevalent type not only has claimed final validity for +what is thus inborn—or given independently of the changing conditions +of experience—but also has commonly punctuated this claim by viewing +the inborn, or the intuited—for example, the dictates of conscience—as +direct, immediate, unequivocal signs and mandates of God himself. Genius +has been not human, but divine. The intuition at large has <a name="p197" id="p197"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.197]</span> +passed for nothing more or less than a supernatural revelation. But such +an understanding of the innate, though serviceable beyond measure to the +"specifically dogmatic believer," and though implying too, as of course +it should, the natural, appropriate world of such a believer, does not +agree with the principles of Descartes.</p> + +<p>Such an understanding of the innate can imply only a world not merely of +definite, substantial reality, but also of definite, substantial +unreality. How real to some people, how definite and substantial the +"unreal" is; how brutally fixed and yet how alien to what they are given +to finding real. They are nativists of the conventional type, and for +them the negatives of all things are as fixed and as really or as +substantially not this or that as the positives to which what is innate +for them bears its special witness. Their world, in short, is a world of +tethered error as well as tethered truth, of hopeless, unmixed evil as +well as a wholly untainted, unassailable—and why not say also +hopeless?—virtue, of absolute and effective lawlessness as well as an +unswerving law, of a free and omnipotent devil as well as a free and +omnipotent God; for, in simplest language, the rule is a very poor one +that does not work both ways. A world, however, which is so constituted, +calls emphatically for revision of the view that imparts its character +to it. Where the unreal is as real as the real, the evil as effective as +the good, the false as conclusive as the true, there is certainly need +of some second thinking. As some good Irish philosopher might put the +case, if just this is wholly good or true or real, and just that is +wholly <a name="p198" id="p198"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.198]</span> evil or false or unreal, then <i>the</i> good or <i>the</i> true or +<i>the</i> real cannot be exclusively just this, <i>the</i> evil or <i>the</i> false or +<i>the</i> unreal cannot be exclusively just that, and <i>the</i> innate, +responsible for a world so made, cannot be just in terms of certain +fixed ideas or characters or powers. When, forsooth, has the manifest +existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of +political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not +shaken man's conceits about what is and what is right? The very +conceits—and this the more as they are definite and assertive—help to +make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in +making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly +manifested, cannot fail to assail and unsettle the conceits.</p> + +<p>According to the Cartesian nativism, on the other hand, particularly as +it was developed by such men as Malebranche and Spinoza, the innate, +which is always at once the final appeal of man's conceits and the +conclusive witness to what is absolutely real, was indeed one with the +divine or supernatural, but it was perhaps just by reason of its truly +divine or supernatural character and origin untethered. How could the +universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific +programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any +quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the +purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the +sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its +importance. The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, +and what is more he cannot be born without, a real <a name="p199" id="p199"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.199]</span> interest and +constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no +special experience can ever compass the length and the breadth, the +depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native +love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as +inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt; but the very +doubting in him forever saves both the truth and the righteousness from +being destroyed by satisfaction or crucified by any final embodiment. He +loves and he trusts with all his heart, and he lives in a world that +forever serves the truth and the righteousness of his love and faith.</p> + +<p>So, taken at least for what he promised, or for what he said between the +lines, Descartes was a nativist without the nativist's disastrous +bondage to form and creed, to fixed character and specific programme. He +was a nativist, but for him the innate lacked its self-destructive +definiteness; it was just a spirit or principle, or what I have also +called a life or power, ever present not in some, but in all experience, +and so at once sanctioning all things, and, because able to find +perfection in none alone, each single thing being relative, sanctioning +also a constant conflict between things as good or true or real, and +things as bad or false or unreal. Whatever is relative is necessarily, +so to speak, both-sided or divided against itself. The relativity is +such conflict. Before the judgment-seat of the innate, in short, all +things, being relative, must be parties to conflict both individually +and collectively, nor is their conflict anything but an old story to us. +All the paradoxes of experience have been evidences of it. The conflict +apart for the present, however, the meaning <a name="p200" id="p200"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.200]</span> of Descartes' +nativism is just this: truth in all experience, reality in all things, +and reality, or truth, a principle, not a programme. Just this, too, +discloses to us the nature of the doubter's real world.</p> + +<p>In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of God which the +universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and +cherish. We saw how in the proof of God Descartes, deposing the +programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in +consequence God became identified with all that was human, with all the +seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the +suffering, of man's life. God's nature just drew all things into itself; +the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of +experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, +or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world +as well as a God; and the doubter's metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds +from this simple creed: <i>Reality in all things</i>. So runs the creed's +supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally +familiar to us: <i>Reality without form or residence</i>—real as a spirit, +not a programme, and: <i>Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet +all things working together for what is real</i>. With this creed clearly +in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that +possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before.</p> + +<p>We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so +inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all +things must be "relative"—this we saw before, but have we ever quite +understood <a name="p201" id="p201"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.201]</span> stood the meaning of relativity?—and must be +relatively <i>at once real and unreal</i>. Perhaps I am still adding little, +if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and +emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually +are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus +relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being +also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the +relative <i>ipso facto</i> puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And +so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent +conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a +genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but +instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, +that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true +and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only +employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly +interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">All service ranks the same with God—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Whose puppets, best and worst,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Are we; there is no last or first.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could +not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things. +All men serving God are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, +could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and +unceasing.</p> + +<p>So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter—and +what a world it is! No <a name="p202" id="p202"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.202]</span> finality, because so much reality. +Conflict, forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity, +that is to say finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for +the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual +infinity.</p> + +<p>And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets +new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much +fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and +competition. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own +peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other. We cannot, +however, enlarge now upon this point. Another consequence of the +peculiar realism of the sceptic has a more pressing interest.</p> + +<p>Is our universal doubter naturally and honestly an evolutionist or a +creationalist? Of course, he may be neither, or he may be one or the +other with a meaning different from that usually recognized. Terms like +these are so very hard to control. Conceivably the doubter, a very +versatile character always, might even be both evolutionist and +creationalist. But, as the terms are commonly used, he must be said at +least to have his face towards an evolutional and away from a creational +view. The difference, again, is seen in that between principle and +programme. An evolutional world is the working out of a principle; a +created world, of a programme—the fixed design of some specified being. +True, one may speak with much significance of persistent, continuous +creation, of a creation active at all times and in all things, and it is +to the point that the Cartesians made much of a doctrine that was very +near to such a notion; but a truly continuous creation <a name="p203" id="p203"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.203]</span> could be +only an orthodox substitute, or disguise, for evolution. A truly +continuous creation could be bound by no programme; by definition it +could have neither date in time nor location in space. And, what is of +even greater moment, a continuous creator, ever present and ever active, +could never be more or less than the persistent reality of the world +itself. How could he be aloof or different? So have we come, once more, +to the immanence of God as a necessary idea of the sceptic.</p> + +<p>The doubter's world, then, is the scene, as realistic as you will and +perhaps we may say, too, without unwarranted enthusiasm, as bright +beneath the morning sun, of the ever present, ever active life of God +or—with the same meaning—of an evolution which we may call God or +nature as we please. From this thought, too, if only we remember that +nothing is unreal and no experience is without some contact with +reality, there is but a step to the idea that God and man are actively +parties to one and the same life. To repeat from above, the conflicts of +human life are the perfection, the perfect living of God. God is, nay, +God's life is, not what some, but what all men do, and the doubter's +world is just the world, the world of things always relative, the world +of constant conflict, in which alone this can be true.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="II_THE_PERFECT_SYMPATHY_BETWEEN_THE_SPIRITUAL_AND_THE_MATERIAL" id="II_THE_PERFECT_SYMPATHY_BETWEEN_THE_SPIRITUAL_AND_THE_MATERIAL"></a>II. THE PERFECT SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL.</p> + +<p>But we pass to the second feature of this world in which we are +journeying, namely, to the sympathy of the spiritual and the physical.</p> + +<p><a name="p204" id="p204"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.204]</span> As a matter of course the sceptic, by his peculiar attitude of +mind, must imply something with reference to the relation of the two +worlds, or the worlds commonly supposed to be two, the spiritual and the +material, and because for him the reality cannot be exclusively one +definite thing or any number, small or large, of definite things, all of +them independent and exclusive, he must imply in the world of things, be +these two or as many as you please, that they always work together for +whatever is real. Such an implication at first hearing may or may not +appear to be a pregnant one, but at least it suggests that in some +genuine way there must be sympathy between the two things, the two +worlds—spirit and matter, mind and body. These two must work together +for whatever is real.</p> + +<p>But by this necessary sympathy between the spiritual and the material is +not meant a mere parallelism so called. Thinkers, present and past, have +tried to be satisfied with such a meaning. To be quite real, however, +sympathy must be substantial even to the point of unity, not formal. +Some friends, and even some married people, are parallel, life matching +life at each and every point, but not positively and vitally +sympathetic. Still, in parallelism, the very name for which is fairly +indicative of its import, there is a convenient approach to the meaning +here intended. Moreover, our Cartesian philosophers were much given to a +theory of parallelism in their views of the relation of the two spheres +of mind and matter; their specific doctrine of continuous creation, +already referred to, was parallelistic; and they found the human mind +and <a name="p205" id="p205"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.205]</span> the human body, though distinctly two, still "parallel." +Then, too, in more recent times, parallelism has been in evidence, +figuring conspicuously at least as a working standpoint in the +psychological laboratory, and figuring also, I venture to add, as an +important assumption in philanthropic work. Accordingly, although the +term itself does convey a good deal of its meaning, I shall try, in +words as simple as possible, to show exactly what the theory of +parallelism is. This done, we shall be able to see, or think through +parallelism to sympathy of a more genuine and a more vital sort.</p> + +<p>As was said, the doctrine of continuous creation, holding as it does +that the mental and spiritual life of God and the constant changes in +the natural world, the world said to be of his creation, are always in +accord, God in his relation to the world being, so to speak, always up +to date and having his attention on every place and part, is distinctly +a parallelistic doctrine; but, quite apart from any theological +reference, parallelism asserts that all states, or events, in the two +spheres of body and mind, of spirit and matter, are (1) equally real and +substantial, and (2) perfectly harmonious and consistent, in just the +sense that always in connection with any condition or change in one +realm there is an accompanying condition or change in the other, +although (3) between the two there exists and can exist no causal +connection whatever. Obviously to make either, whether by what is known +as causation or in any other way, the producing and wholly determining +condition of the other, or of anything in the other, would be at once to +unsettle the equivalence or balance of their reality, and <i>equally real</i> +<a name="p206" id="p206"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.206]</span> <i>they must be</i>. Thus, in more detail, mind is denied any +independent part in the production or determination of anything in the +material realm, and matter is in no way the source of what transpires in +mind. Each is, so far as the other is concerned, quite its own master. +Each is absolutely without any arbitrary influence, any influence not +natural or sympathetic or co-operative, upon the other. So to speak, +neither imposes on the other a "must" that is not at the same time +already the other's "would." In other words, any state in one is always +the occasion, but, so far as an independent causation goes, the wholly +passive occasion of something quite pertinent occurring in the other. Is +there an idea, a state of consciousness; then, corresponding, there is +some real thing, some physical object adequate to the idea. Is there an +act of will; then, corresponding to it, some movement in the material +world. Were the relation different from this, were mind and matter ever +independent causes, not merely coincidents or perhaps co-operative +causes, of each other, then, as is worth adding, besides the disturbance +of the equivalence of reality, already referred to, there would be +implied a fixity of plan, or manner of action, and a definiteness of +possessed power in the nature of the supposed causes, and these +implications would also give offence.</p> + +<p>Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation—on some +plan—of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more +sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, +independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever +localized or with an exclusive residence. <a name="p207" id="p207"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.207]</span> In very much the same +way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression +contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an +exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute +monarchy or of an absolute institution, whether church or state. +Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain +conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily +involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and +value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable +conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of +the world must always be only one among other active things, each also +with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, +if not actually through their differences working together and +harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, +lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far +from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner +meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting.</p> + +<p>To give a single illustration, though this may be quite superfluous, +parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his +shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, +comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of +the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed +task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the +other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any +independent <i>ab extra</i> causation, but <a name="p208" id="p208"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.208]</span> nevertheless at every +thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the +environment's mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within +itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in +perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so +practical? The credit here has usually been given to a <i>tertium quid</i>, +to God, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. God is the Great +Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met—how about that? +Are the workman's mind and his environment each at once acting and acted +upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the +mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some +being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as +was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot +be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a +long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its +assertion of the parallelism and in its view of God as mediator rather +than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have +seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the +fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not +openly assert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for +example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of +what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides +making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door +to recognition of such a view.</p> + +<p>In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as <a name="p209" id="p209"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.209]</span> I find myself +able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal +reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly +correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, +rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism +still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also +a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism—at +least the dualism of the medieval type—already in a shroud. Even +dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a +decent burial. With the passing of dualism, however, the sympathy +becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot +be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain +cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with +unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation. +Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism +metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical.</p> + +<p>Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it +is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in +human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a +somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of +question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant +and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the +beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on +historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, +too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily <a name="p210" id="p210"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.210]</span> +detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material +conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its +service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies +in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the +expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its +relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or +trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself +should be indeterminate—<i>always a tertium quid</i>—and, in the second +place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, +should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, +atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of assumed +unity or co-operation among all the elements—as, for example, by +Leibnitz's doctrine of pre-established harmony.</p> + +<p>But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of +parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the +doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new +things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and +matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no +longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical +world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete +correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be +changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is +not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more +vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is +difficult. Still, I submit that the <a name="p211" id="p211"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.211]</span> effect of correspondence, +whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in +the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and +teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with +the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to +something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each +other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, +self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, +to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, +and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if +this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world +mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, +not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or +mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, +being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world +man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, +that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose.</p> + +<p>As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved +from all danger of any <i>arbitrary</i> interference from the physical world, +has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the +positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being +quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, +the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of +reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be +exemplified in the <a name="p212" id="p212"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.212]</span> natural world, or—as Hegel said, giving more +direct expression to the same idea—the real is rational and the +rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the +real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even +of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our +present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls +for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; +and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between +him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half +done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well +thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and +the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already +ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, +already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental +and the physical world.<a name="FNanchor_1_14" id="FNanchor_1_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_14" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker +in the doubter's world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to +develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions +which he reaches will be exemplified in his <a name="p213" id="p213"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.213]</span> world and so to be +able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious +misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is +no single individual developing some particular point of view, although +even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought. +Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader +than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the +life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious +life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, +articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own +peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and +mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and +broader than just what he sees, or—amounting really to the same +thing—only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual +accommodation with that of others. In the doubter's world the thought +that is at once free and fully applicable is social—just as we know +doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly +free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, +distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, +<i>though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring</i>, +but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, +is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,<a name="FNanchor_2_15" id="FNanchor_2_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_15" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and +in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, +when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, +makes up for its consequent <a name="p214" id="p214"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.214]</span> relativity and subjectivity by inner +paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by +open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and assumes +accordingly only the value of a means to an end.</p> + +<p>Much has been said in earlier chapters<a name="FNanchor_3_16" id="FNanchor_3_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_16" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> of the paradoxical nature of +human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a +contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were +recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first +sight seeming to blast man's ordinary experience, and his science also, +these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience +movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the +individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon +they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were +witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity +moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free +thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is +such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of +veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the +single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but +the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing +beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only +more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all +individuals, these views always working together for what is true and +real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior +to <a name="p215" id="p215"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.215]</span> anything that is either merely individual or merely social. +The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows +or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, +consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the +practical experience of what is real.</p> + +<p>With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely +applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say +that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all +knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the +final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its +character as a general attitude or method. It is not strictly a science, +but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any +specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure +mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully +applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no +promise of future changes? But whatever has a history—can this be quite +"pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned +to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and +revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular +formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but +altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is +said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the +fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but +in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum +never is a point. The perfectly homogeneous lever, so <a name="p216" id="p216"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.216]</span> necessary +to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can +never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of +the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric +disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of +absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, +which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest +accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most +constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics +be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the +very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as +forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism. +Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, +Descartes, was almost the inventor of the Analytic Geometry, and that +this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly +to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a +doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the +application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to +say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So +Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying +doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his God or his +material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and +theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to +return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free +thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least +sometimes so called, as <a name="p217" id="p217"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.217]</span> a method or attitude exacting clearest +possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very +principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must +always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics—so much more truly +than any other discipline—is superior to anything that is either merely +individual or abstractly social.</p> + +<p>So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how +thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some +practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, +said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is +liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. +Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of +arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative +acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, +represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a +personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, +often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer +interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be +just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed +by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary +interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the +contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, +the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's +sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we +now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it.</p> + +<p><a name="p218" id="p218"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.218]</span> And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature—of this +ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we +certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to +the different phases of the thinker's life, but discussion of them all +would take too much of our space and might seriously tax an already +tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The +truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or +thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his +could ever compass the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of +nature?</p> + +<p>Corresponding to the thinker's positive knowledge, to the specific law +or order, which at one time or another he finds manifest in his world, +there is the well-known, but often misunderstood, character of nature as +a great mechanism, moving of course under the law. But corresponding to +his only tentative acceptance, though always trustful use of what he +knows, there is the much neglected character of nature as not an idle, +unproductive mechanism, always doing exactly the same thing, but, if I +may so speak, a moving, developing, ever-productive one, serving some +end larger and deeper than the known law. Nature must indeed be a +machine if the thinker's knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an +instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a +merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the +knowledge itself is never final.</p> + +<p>The material, mechanical character of nature, as I have said, is often +misunderstood. The real meaning of it is lost, and with serious results. +In the first <a name="p219" id="p219"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.219]</span> place, it is taken as if it involved a wholly +external, physical nature, and in the second place it is taken as if it +represented this nature only as moving through its changes <i>according to +a certain law</i> and as having in consequence nothing to do but keep up +the dead, strictly "mechanical" existence of its law-fixed character and +incidentally involve man in the tireless turning of its fatal wheels. +But nothing could be more superficial, or even more needlessly +superstitious, than this. Obvious facts are overlooked or, if seen, +forgotten. The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted +so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an +actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known +—of a nature not alien—ever have any but a relative value, a +provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of +her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though +what is known is always informed with the law of her moving; and this is +to make her more than a mere machine. Again, no known law is ever <i>the</i> +law, and under <i>the</i> law nature must be qualitatively different from +what under the known law she appears to be. To neglect this difference, +then, is seriously to misunderstand the mechanical character of nature.</p> + +<p>Yet some one promptly objects that I am not at all fair to the common +understanding of mechanicalism. I am told that no one ever thinks of +nature as revolving strictly in accord with any known law. All men who +give any thought to the matter concede that the really ultimate law must +be not anything that is known, but only what is yet to be known, and is +<a name="p220" id="p220"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.220]</span> merely like in kind to such laws as men have cognizance of. This +interesting concession, however, quite fails of its purpose, since it +does not meet the real difficulty here in question. It shows +mechanicalism, not indeed bound to any particular knowledge, but +nevertheless still conceiving the final lawfulness of nature <i>after the +analogy</i> of a particular law, the merely known or unknown or unknowable +character of which matters not at all. The analogy is what misleads. The +analogy only serves to deaden what really lives.</p> + +<p>When will men cease to think of the whole after the analogy of the part? +Of <i>the</i>, as if it were <i>a</i>? When will God cease to be only another +person? And the universe only another thing? And the lawfulness or unity +of all nature only another formula? This or that formula may show nature +a mechanism as smooth running and as blindly given to dead routine as +could be imagined, but nature is ever more and other than known formulæ +of men, and as more and other, or say as answering to the free spirit of +truth that moves in the thought of men, she is as free in her real +lawfulness as she is infinite. By reason of her infinity there is no law +that she may not break. <i>A</i> law may make her a mechanism, dead and idle; +<i>the</i> law makes her an organism living and productive. How a +positivistic science, making all knowledge wait on actual experience, +and accepting all knowledge only tentatively, can ever be +mechanicalistic or appeal to the ordinary understanding as an argument +for the mechanicalistic view of things is hard to conceive. If one +reasons from known forms to uniform activities, must one not also reason +from the always provisional <a name="p221" id="p221"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.221]</span> and developing knowledge to +productive activities? Must not the mechanism evolve into something +more, adding something to man's life, realizing something for all life, +enlarging even the nature of God himself?</p> + +<p>Once more, therefore, corresponding to the law that men may know and +that they can know only as their working hypothesis, there is nature, a +mechanism moving and herself at work, while corresponding to the great +living fact of nature's final lawfulness, or to the thinker's sense of +truth as a spirit or principle, not a form or creed or programme, there +is the constantly, genuinely productive life of nature, the mechanism, +as has now been said several times, ever evolving beyond its form and +law. Her law is not a law, any more than the thinker's passion for truth +can be finally satisfied by a formula or than God's continuously +creative life can ever culminate in a single finishing act. The +doubter's world, in short, or so much of it as is said to be material, +is not law-bound, but law-free:<a name="FNanchor_4_17" id="FNanchor_4_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_17" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> an organism, not a mechanism; and +upon the value of this vision of nature, upon the theoretical or the +practical value, whether to science or to philosophy, to morals or to +religion, to politics or to industry, it seems hardly necessary to +dwell. But, to add a word or two in very general appraisal of it, such a +nature, served as it is by every law, by every mechanical action, yet +bound to move, is active always from design; its life is essentially +purposive. Not that it serves the purpose of anything, or any being, +beyond itself, but in every part and movement it is itself always +maintaining an end, the end of its <a name="p222" id="p222"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.222]</span> its own untethered reality. +In words used before, and applied alike to the spiritual and the +material, it is at once dynamic and teleologic.</p> + +<p>Such a nature, be it especially observed, is the basic condition, if not +also the very inspiration of our modern industrialism. This industrial +age, struggling against the old-time militarism, in its religion, in its +art and in its literature, in its leisure and in its labour, in city and +in country, is an age of machinery; of machinery in all the manifold +forms demanded by all the various departments of human life, not of +wheels and belts alone; an age of the conscious employment, for human +purposes, of the resources of all sorts, the materials and the forces +which the natural environment affords. Freedom, not slavery, is +recognized as man's ideal portion, and in order to ensure the freedom, +not human nature, but physical nature is mechanicalized; or, with the +same intent, all the formal means, or instruments, of life are taken as +incidents of environment, not as essential to man. So is industrialism +supplanting the old-time militarism that sought, in all the relations of +life, to identify the human with the instrumental. Witness the values +now put upon theories and creeds, upon rites and institutions, upon +personal habits and social laws. All of these, to begin with, are means, +not ends; and, further, they are means whose devising—so man is +insisting, as never before—must be, as near as possible, true to +nature. The sovereign conviction of this age of industrialism appears to +be that the only sure way to human freedom is the way of nature; +employment of such instruments as she can supply; obedience to such law +as she may disclose.</p> + +<p><a name="p223" id="p223"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.223]</span> But many have found this age of industrialism insufficient. It +seems to them so materialistic. It would view things so much from the +standpoint of cold naturalism. The attitude of <i>laissez faire</i> as +meaning "Let nature do the work," has so widely possessed the minds of +men. If only we could get back some of our former idealism and regard +nature as once more subject to some supernatural will! Despair like +this, however, is blind and as needless as blind. Dependence on a +lawful, mechanical nature can bring to human life no loss of what is +truly ideal and personally worthy. Instead, it brings constant gain, for +the knowledge of law and the making of machinery do not rob men of +personal opportunity, but rather make the opportunity for personal +achievement only the more manifest. A mechanical nature is always for +man, not man for a mechanical nature; and its movement is always +productive for man. If, then, industrial life has tended, as it has been +supposed to tend, towards materialism and fatalism, the reason can lie +only in the blindness of such as refuse to see clearly this visible +fact. Not merely something always doing, but something always that man +is doing is the definite message of a nature that ever manifests herself +under the form of law. To the thinker, in no uncertain syllables, she +says: Go forth and do. And our age of industrialism, if hearing this +bidding, will lose its unnatural materialism, and find itself quick with +a moral and religious instead of a narrowly practical and commercial +motive.</p> + +<p>So in the doubter's world are the spiritual and the material genuinely +sympathetic.</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="p224" id="p224"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.224]</span> +<a name="III_A_GENUINE_INDIVIDUALITY" id="III_A_GENUINE_INDIVIDUALITY"></a>III. A GENUINE INDIVIDUALITY.</p> + +<p>Besides the reality, without finality, of all things in experience, to +which we gave our first attention in this chapter, and the perfect +sympathy of the spiritual and the material, which we have just seen to +give new dignity to the intellectual life, making thought free, and new +worth to the life and movement of nature, making nature not lifelessly +mechanical, but mechanically productive; besides these two features of +the doubter's world, there still remain two others to be observed by us. +For the first of these there is the fact of a genuine individuality. +Different persons, as well as different things, possess a substantial +worth to the real and the true. No one may be either real or worthy by +himself, but no one is unreal for being dependent on others. The +persons, like the things, that work together for what is real, find the +service its own reward. Reality, having no exclusive resting-place must +itself be dependent. It is dependent on an infinite multiplicity of +differences. Therein lies the person's chance for individuality; nay, it +is his right to it and assurance of it.</p> + +<p>Before the days of Descartes, to speak generally, the typical individual +in human society—and let me say also, though at the expense of running +into a rather violent metaphor, the typical individual in any class or +group whatsoever—was the soldier, a creature of another's will, doing +only another's work, and having reality only by virtue of characters so +apart from individual peculiarities as actually to imply existence in +another world. The individual, in other words—if <a name="p225" id="p225"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.225]</span> at once real +and worthy—was then an unearthly being. For a being so constituted, or +living as if he were so constituted, the creationalistic theology and +the analogous monarchical politics were of course largely responsible, +since in their different ways they took individual independence of +action from the general run of mankind. They imposed on men at large a +certain uniform of life and belief, and then, as it were, appeased them +for this suppression with a doctrine of another life in a world yet to +come. Plainly, then, the time was not one when personal individuality, +except as it was referred to the other world yonder and apart, was +recognized as of much positive worth. Under the regime of prescribed +routine, of life with regard to the hereafter, and of mysterious powers +of all sorts, more or less in good standing in the realm of the +unworldly, personal individuality, though in itself not without some +honour, was valued chiefly and primarily for the different conditions, +the different relations to the things of this world, and the different +views of these things, which men succeeded in overcoming, or rather in +completely denying and eschewing. A worthy individuality was thus +secured rather through self-denial than self-expression; through the +vassal's devotion to his lord, the gallant's submission to his lady, the +courtier's humility before his king, or the saint's self-abasement +before church and heaven. Just think a moment of resting your claim to +distinct personal worth on the mere fact of what you have eschewed or +escaped being in some way different, perhaps more worldly, more +dangerous, and more powerful, from what some others have eschewed or +<a name="p226" id="p226"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.226]</span> escaped, and you will be able to appreciate the main ground of +the ideally significant distinction between man and man in the days +before Descartes.</p> + +<p>But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its +appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, +and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and +the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. Authority came to +be placed not in a visible form, but in an abstract principle. Law +became superior to laws; monarchy to monarchs; divinity to Gods; truth +to truths, and righteousness to rites and habits. The abstract +principle, too, instead of being, as many might imagine, a wholly +shadowy thing, real only to the logician, stood for something vital and +substantial, for something wholly real, for an inner spirit or life or +power in the very things of experience. Authority, henceforth refused to +any specific thing, whether person or manner of life, institution or +formal belief, became a prerogative of all things together, of all +persons or all manners of life or all creeds; and, residing in the +working together of them all, it made personal worth consist no longer +in the denial of individual characters and relations, but in honest +assertion and open use of them. As some have liked to describe the +change, the "universal individual," the individual as an authoritative +and heaven-made type, that dictated a life and a belief to others +generally, passed away, and in its stead, instead of unity as itself an +individual, instead of an incarnate type, came unity as in the relation, +or the activity maintaining the relation, of all individuals. Instead of +a single planet, for <a name="p227" id="p227"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.227]</span> example, as the controlling centre of the +heavenly bodies, came the unity of the solar system through the force or +the law of gravity. Instead of a monarch or a book or a city the +self-sufficient ruler of human life and human thought, came unity +through the ballot; through freedom of thought—always loyal only to a +real unity and in being thus loyal also always tolerant; and through all +sorts of like means to individuality. The "universal individual" died, +and there arose, as it were, out of his grave the living unity of +manifold individuals, each one different, yet each quite essential.</p> + +<p>And the change brought a transfiguration. It was as if the human soul +had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. +Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise +of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical +interest in men and things the wide world over. With its valuable +accounts of the manifold experiences of different peoples and different +times, at last seen to be real parts even of the life present and at +hand, the study of history became wonderfully absorbing and inspiring; +and not less valuable than this travel in time was the travel in space, +the real travel or the imaginary, which accompanied it. Furthermore, +such ideas as balance of power and preservation of the worth and +integrity of the individual nation, and division of labour and right of +free speech and of political and religious liberty, developed into most +powerful influences in the life and consciousness of society. And, to +return definitely to the single person, he found himself, not in spite +of, but because of his <a name="p228" id="p228"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.228]</span> special place and special standpoint, an +active participant in the effective life of his time. Instead of being a +mere soldier as before, he found himself a mechanic; certainly the +proper inhabitant of a mechanically productive nature.</p> + +<p>Doubtless the term soldier lends itself more readily to philosophical +generalization than the term mechanic. Perhaps, too, distance in time +lends enchantment to the view, for the day of the soldier was, while the +day of the mechanic is. The day of the soldier has reached the stage of +romance and reflection, while the day of the mechanic suffers from what +is commonplace and prosaic, from the associations of a particular life, +from dust and smoke and factories, from tools and utilities. Yet the +mechanic must be the romantic figure of the future. He is the typical +individual of these modern times, of these times of the free because +practical thinker, and of a nature not lifelessly mechanical but +mechanically productive. Forget the grimy hands and the noisy machinery, +the overshadowing smoke and the apparent absorption in mere utility, and +think only of the man, who in his best moments feels himself +individually responsible and capable, who believes in himself as having +at once a peculiar and a necessary part in the real life of his time, +and who expresses himself through some skilful mastery over the +resources of nature, applying to them the principles his own thinking +has uncovered, and using her machinery to the ends of his own nature, +which, as we have seen, is bounded only by the "unity of experience."</p> + +<p>Remember, too, the mechanic of our modern world is <a name="p229" id="p229"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.229]</span> not the +factory labourer alone. Wherever in social life, whether in political +activity or in industrial management, in educational methods or in +religious effort, there appears a man who appreciates the need first of +observing natural conditions and finding natural laws, and then of +acting only in accord with the suggestions of the laws discovered, just +there is the mechanic, the responsible agent of a law-free but always +lawful nature. The soldier as creature of this world was only a passive, +wholly material part of a mechanism which depended for its movement upon +some outside power or will; but the mechanic, be he humble labourer +skilful in the use of tools, or political leader supporting no law that +is not, so far as can be known, in accord with natural life, or +religious reformer loyal to life as it is, shares positively in the +activity that makes the machinery go and in whatever this activity +produces.</p> + +<p>And yet one thing more must be said. Just as before we had to view free +thought in the light of a divided labour, the individual sharing in it +only as he treated his own peculiar experience as hypothetical, as a +means to an end, not merely an end in itself, or as he was subject to +the restraint and correction of the different experiences of others, so +now we must recognize that effective activity, not less than true +thinking or than realistic experience, is also necessarily the labour, +never of one alone, but of many. The successful mechanic—in other +words, the fully responsible agent of a law-free nature—is never an +isolated creature with merely such a sentimental concern for his +neighbours as might spring from the recognized chance <a name="p230" id="p230"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.230]</span> of meeting +them in that world of the hereafter, where all are to be equal and where +love and peace are to supplant the present hate and rivalry; he is, on +the contrary, one among others, different from him, it is true, and +often very positively at variance with him, but engaged with him in a +single activity and achievement. His difference works not against, but +with their differences for thoroughly controlled, truly effective +activity. As things are real, though never final, so men, at work in the +world, are individual and individually important, but never alone.</p> + +<p>The facts in the case, logically and practically, appear to be somewhat +as follows: The individual's view-point, and the special machinery by +which he undertakes to realize it, can be only tentative or provisional; +they have the character, and usually he knows that they have the +character, if I may use a somewhat extravagant term, of makeshifts; and, +such being the fact, he is bound always to be in a state of constraint +or tension, in a relation of suspense towards them and towards the +environment to which they refer or belong. He feels a positive +resistance, a something disposed to counteract what he would do, and of +course the feeling means that he is really party to a growing life, not +established in a completed life. Suppose a view-point, or a machinery +that was perfectly applicable, that worked perfectly, that never did and +never could give out, that might not even very suddenly go all to +pieces, and that therefore put no strain nor uncertainty upon him who +held or employed it; could such a view-point or such machinery be of any +service to a growing life, to productive <a name="p231" id="p231"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.231]</span> activity? Most +certainly not. Tension, or a strained relationship, is necessary to +every individual's conduct and to every individual's ideas. But this +strain, to be real, just to accomplish its own purposes must be not +merely of a person with his own ideas or with the outer world to which +the ideas refer, but of a person with other persons; not merely of +conscious man with a mechanical nature, but of conscious and +mechanically active man with other conscious and mechanically active +men.</p> + +<p>It is now an old story for us, but an important one, that there must be +society. A genuine individuality requires society. Society is a medium +not by which something is added to individual life, but by which +something in individual life is kept real and manifest. By maintaining, +as it were always from without, the natural tension of individual life, +it ensures to the individual the constant growth that is his legitimate +inheritance. The doubter is a social creature. The free thinker +accepting his ideas only tentatively, though at the same time using them +hopefully, sure that they will lead somewhere, is a social creature; and +the mechanic is a social creature, being one with others for whom life +is not routine but growth, and among whom the growth in which each has +his part induces constant tension, the tension of difference, the +tension of opposition and competition, the tension of mutual correction +and compensation, the tension, finally, of reality refusing to be bound. +Not the individual's provisional standpoint, nor yet the machinery that +he employs and that sooner or later must go to pieces, not these alone, +I must therefore reiterate, make the individual effectively <a name="p232" id="p232"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.232]</span> +active in a growing world, make him a worthy creature doing the work of +nature or of God; these have their place and part; but constant relation +to other individuals, the objects not less of hate than of love, not +less of rivalry than of friendship, is also essential.</p> + +<p>In the so-called material world all things, in and by themselves unreal, +get reality, yes, get individual reality, only as through their very +differences they work together for what is real. In the world of mind, +or thought, if this can be imagined apart from the world of things, all +thoughts or ideas, in and by themselves untrue for being subjective, +relative, and partial, get truth only as also through their differences, +so tense and interactive, they work together for what is true. And, +likewise, in the world of persons, if indeed this can be imagined apart +from the world of thought, all individuals, call them now mechanics or +what you will, though in and by themselves without personal worth or +real individuality, without freedom or immortality, get genuine worth +and are assured even immortality only as shoulder against shoulder they +work together for a life that is true and real, worthy and genuine.</p> + +<p>But in an earlier chapter, dealing with "The Personal and the Social, +the Vital and the Formal in Experience," a different argument for +individuality was insisted upon. Then the person was individual because +of his independence of particular form; now he is so because a real life +demands the particular and different, with which he is assumed to be +necessarily identified. Then he was the "living, integral exponent of +the unity of experience," free with the <a name="p233" id="p233"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.233]</span> genius of universality, +now he is one among all the particular conflicting elements of that +unity—or at least of the reality to which that unity refers. So there +appears to be even an inconsistency in my thinking. Yet, I venture still +to think, the inconsistency is only apparent. Certainly it should be +remembered that the person's asserted genius for universality was not +for the universal in an abstract sense, in the sense of the universal as +something by itself and apart from particulars; rather it was for a +constant enriching of the universal through particulars, for the +translation of any one particular relation and experience, which had +reached a higher state of development, to all the other actual or +possible relations of life; and this can mean only that the universal, +in which the personal individual has a place, is not denying or +betraying, but always holding and lifting up to itself all particular +factors or elements in the unity of experience or of reality. Simply, +though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the +particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, +therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either +side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a +tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound +to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a +genius for universality. Not in the sense of that conventional theology, +crudely dualistic and unthinkable, but in a sense that is not to be +gainsaid and that may give some meaning even to the conventional +theology, every individual is real only in having a body and a <a name="p234" id="p234"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.234]</span> +soul. The soul of a man is only his genius for universality, but for a +universality that works through, not that is independent of, the +particular.</p> + +<p>So the difference between this chapter and the former chapter is merely +one of emphasis. The double character of the individual, however, as it +is now before us, starts an inevitable question. Is the individual as +immortal as real? If he is immortal, does the immortality belong to both +sides of his character, to his body and to his soul, or only to one? +And, admittedly, this question offers more serious difficulties than the +suspicion of inconsistency. How can it be met?</p> + + +<p class="caption"><a name="IV_IMMORTALITY" id="IV_IMMORTALITY"></a>IV. IMMORTALITY.</p> + +<p>To write a useful essay on immortality has long been one of my +ambitions, and, as regards the views in that essay, my faith and my +reason alike have so far brought me to this thesis: <i>Whatever is real is +immortal</i>.<a name="FNanchor_5_18" id="FNanchor_5_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_18" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> "A most meagre contribution to the subject," I hear some +one exclaim. But is it so very meagre after all? "A most gloomy +contribution," says another, "for evil, and above all death, are real." +But is it so gloomy? Remember, not even death can be real alone. +Possibly, too, the meagreness will seem less and the gloom will be +illuminated if the need of the real being also the ideal, is brought to +mind. That the real must be ideal, that the world must be so <a name="p235" id="p235"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.235]</span> +constituted that the law of whatever is good will prevail in it, has +been a faith manifested among all men and expressed through history in +countless ways. True, no particular experience ever satisfies it. Not +even the particular things we adjudge to be best are adequate to it, and +the things we think evil, the suffering and the hardships of all kinds, +the always tragic death and the too often offensive life, seem its +eternal rebuke. Yet the faith remains, and you and I and all others are +forever calling out to it. Our very doubts are its altars; our honest, +rational thoughts, as they are uttered, are prayers; perhaps the only +prayers to which we have any right.</p> + +<p>So the real, which must be also the ideal, is immortal; and this, quite +apart from any particular questions about the body or the soul, makes a +world to live in and to hope in, whatever happens. Of body and soul, +too, it says something. These, in just so far as they are real, are +immortal, and any real relation between them is immortal also, for the +conclusive test of immortality is just reality, reality here and now. +Whatever is real in your life or in mine, whatever reality our present +personality may possess, be it physical or spiritual, be it both or +neither of these, that and only that is immortal. That and only that, +however, let it be said again, is now or never. The most serious error, +so it seems to me, in all the controversy about immortality, is the +notion, or the superstition, that something that is real now can pass +away, or that something real in the future is not real, not freely real +now. With this error corrected, of course at the expense of certain +attempts to bind reality to <a name="p236" id="p236"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.236]</span> something that is visible, if not to +the natural eye, at least to the eye of the mind, man has nothing to +fear. Reality will hold him to itself, will support whatever truly +inheres in his friendships or his family ties, in his best hopes or in +his personal conceits, for ever and ever. Reality can never betray what +it has ever harboured.</p> + +<p>And the whole trend of thinking in this book has been to make the +reality here spoken of a most hospitable harbour. So innate to all +experience is the spirit of truth, the principle of veracity, that life +can have no absolute illusions. True, life also can have no positive +knowledge final and exact, so that all things definitely manifest are +only relatively true or real. All things definitely manifest, whether to +the consciousness that looks without or that looks within, are mixedly +true or false, real or unreal. But just this impossibility, now so +familiar to us, at once of absolute illusion and of absolute knowledge, +is, as said so often, a condition of <i>the</i> true and <i>the</i> real, and it means +in this place that nothing which is ever defined, which is ever +hypostasized or apotheosized, which in any way is erected into a thing +or nature quite by itself, possessing determined or determinable +qualities, can ever be said to be either mortal or immortal, since it +must be as truly one as the other. It must be significantly, but never +purely and exclusively either. Not this hand of mine nor that picture on +the wall, not this body which, so to speak, I seem to wear, nor that +soul, which you or I imagine to be in the body and more or less loosely +connected with the body, is unqualifiedly immortal. Nor yet <a name="p237" id="p237"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.237]</span> is +any of these unqualifiedly mortal. Still, again, there is immortality, +and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole +body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a +part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just +named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just +one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any +thing, may say, "I am immortal." No one, however—to speak now only in +words directly applicable to man—may say, "My body is immortal," nor +even, "My soul is immortal," if, so speaking, he means only what he +seems to say. Body and soul alike, if two separate things, are <i>both</i> of +them at once living and dying. They are equally mortal or immortal, for +only so, as two things, can they belong to the real self. Can parts, be +they two or many more, ever be unmixedly what the whole is? There is +immortality, then, yet nothing, not the body nor the soul, is wholly or +selfishly immortal. Reflect, to take an illustration from the practice, +if not from the conscious thinking of men, how through the centuries of +the dualistic view of human nature, the saving, or the losing, of the +separate soul has been a keen human interest, and how the separate body, +living, has been neglected and despised, and, dead, has been cherished +and honoured. Yes, man's immortality is deeper, and it is more +hospitable, than any distinction, be this invidious on one side or on +the other or be it not, between the physical and the spiritual. Even in +the case of the spiritual, <i>the</i> cannot be <i>a</i>.</p> + +<p>The soldier and the mechanic have been mentioned <a name="p238" id="p238"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.238]</span> as types of +personal individuality appropriate respectively to the medieval and the +modern period, to the period of the "universal individual," on the one +hand, and of unity realized, not through a type, but through the working +together of different individuals, on the other. The type was of another +world; the living unity is here and now in this. For the mechanic, then, +death is not what the soldier has found it, and immortality is different +too. But how fully to describe the difference, and how above all really +to appraise it, I do not clearly know. Perhaps there is not enough of +the poetic in my nature. The soldier, as the political historian or as +the philosopher sees him, has had his appreciative poets, but the +mechanic has been little sung. The mechanic's death, however, and the +life following it, afford a theme that some poet of the future, let me +hope, will be able to do justice to. The soldier leaves this for another +world, by his violent death only fulfilling his extreme subjection here. +The mechanic, somewhat like the tools which he employs, actually +continues with the always productive life of this world, by his death, +natural rather than violent, even contributing to, as well as sharing +in, what is produced. Not less than the soldier's is his after-life an +appropriate fulfilment of his earthly career; each gains through death +the natural reward of his life's service. But though I find myself so +unable to say what I would, to express either in prose or in poetry all +that I seem to feel, there is just one thought that I must try to +articulate, and that will certainly assist the understanding of the +difference between the two deaths or the two after-lives.</p> + +<p><a name="p239" id="p239"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.239]</span> Soldiers are companionable, of course, but they live less in and +with each other than in and with the will which they serve or than in +and with the separate world which at any moment may suddenly take them +to itself. Their lives, accordingly, or their deaths, are aloof from +each other, and are brought together only through their common +subjection or their common destiny, through something which is without. +But the mechanic is social in his own nature, in his own right. The very +reality, too, of the world in which he works is, as in so many ways we +have seen, maintained only by a divided labour. It is, then, a reality, +or a labour, that bridges the chasm between one man's life and +another's, as well as between all separate lives and the unity of all +life. It makes the many lives "parallel" and harmonious—nay, it makes +them actively and vitally sympathetic. Not, as is certainly true, at the +expense of any one's real individuality, for each man has his place and +his part, real and immortal, and not one falls unnoticed or unguarded to +the ground; but, nevertheless, whatever all have and do, they have and +do together. They live-and-die together. There is, in a word, but one +death, as well as but one life, the life or the death, which all share, +and which accordingly is definitely and specifically nowhere and +nobody's. And in the light of this supreme unity, while any live, none +can be merely dead, or while any die, none can be merely alive or living +to themselves or their time alone. And, living and dying together, in +and with each other, all are parties to the immortality of what is real.</p> + +<p>So, again, there is immortality for mankind—the <a name="p240" id="p240"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.240]</span> immortality of +him whom I have called the mechanic. There is immortality, mine and +yours and ours. We die, but not as dies the soldier, who leaves this +life for another quite apart, securing there a companionship denied him +here; we die a death that is never death alone, and we die as we live, +in a companionship that is real now and throughout all time. +Furthermore, our death is always, or always may be, self-denial, and +self-denial, too, in its supreme moment, the moment of its greatest +achievement, but our self-denial is also very different from that of the +soldier.</p> + +<p>There is immortality, then, but what results has all that has now been +said for the interpretation of history, for our feelings about the life +and death of our fellows, and for the relevant doctrines of +Christianity?<a name="FNanchor_6_19" id="FNanchor_6_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_19" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>We commonly think of history as the passing of persons, nations, and +civilizations. Men come and go, but history goes on for ever. To be +sure, history accumulates, as if its gifts from humanity, innumerable +treasures, books, relics, institutions, buildings, machinery and the +like, but the donors, as we are wont to think, are lost to it, remaining +as ideal influences perhaps, but not as vitally active in the life they +once assisted. This common view, however, must now seem wrong. The past +must ever persist in the present, and not as an aside in some other +world, nor yet as merely so much ideal influence, but vitally as a party +to the present. Those that were must also live now. Have we their +literature? Yes, and their consciousness <a name="p241" id="p241"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.241]</span> too. Their +institutions? And also their life. Their achievements? And their power +and will. Altogether too fanciful, some one thinks; but give it meaning +from what has been said here especially about individuality. In the real +world there can be but one life and one death, and we individuals, +whatever our century, divide the labour of them both. Even our present +life and consciousness and our will must be said to belong, in return, +to those who have gone before; for it is wrong, it must be wrong, to +think of the life of the past and the life of the present as two lives, +as independent and perhaps even different in kind. Not those that are +now gone once lived and we live, but they and we are living, they in us, +and we with them; they in the world of our life, not in a world yonder +and apart. They live in us, to suggest a simple analogy, that is perhaps +more than a mere analogy, very much as our own past selves, our infancy +and our youth, are alive with us and in us to-day. If a physical +scientist can see the same force in the military weapons and engines of +ancient times that he sees in those of our own time, if a sociologist +can find the same social phenomena then and now, may not the historian +regard the older life in general and the newer life as not less +intimate? Did different winds blow in 1492 from those that blow to-day? +Was it a different sun that shone in 500 B.C.: from that which shone in +A.D. 500, or which shines, or tries to shine, to-day? We do not deny +that the animal nature is still alive in us as well as around us, +although at the same time we suppose it to belong to a very early period +in our development. Why, then, should we exclude what is <a name="p242" id="p242"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.242]</span> so much +more recent? Because it is too distinctly human to be so robbed of its +temporal independence, of its own date and place? That is certainly a +strange reason in view of the fact that men have insisted on erecting, +in their minds, for the human nature that has passed away, a place which +is altogether timeless and eternal. Why not dignify human nature, then, +by making it, and all that it bears, eternal in its own natural life, +not in a sphere that is unnatural? It is sheer materialism, in letter or +in spirit, either to entomb the historic past, as some would, in books +and monuments of all sorts, or, as others would, to lay it aside in a +so-called immaterial world. Who does either of these things forgets how +the books are written and how the monuments are erected, and how in +general the things of the past come to be. The future is always a party +to whatever is done. The men who have ever achieved anything have always +been, in their character and in their work, as if made by the future, +"ahead of their times." An uncanny phrase, unless one can think of the +deeds and men of any time as in a vital unity with the deeds and men of +all times. A man is great only as he identifies himself with some social +force, with some actual movement of his day, fulfilling it out of a long +past, bringing it to focus and so making it definite and manifest, and +as the life around him which gave him birth, adopts his will and repeats +his achievement. History has many cases of human societies repeating in +their lives as a whole the careers of great men. Only it is not +repetition exactly; it is resurrection and continuation. Great men make +history, but they make it only because they <a name="p243" id="p243"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.243]</span> are alive in it +before their birth and survive in it, in its doing and in its thinking, +after they die.<a name="FNanchor_7_20" id="FNanchor_7_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_20" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Would history be even thinkable without such +continuity? Could we honestly call it history? What good American to-day +is not, convinced that he has a share in what Washington and Lincoln +accomplished years ago, and also—and this one may, or may not, +regret—in the doings of Benedict Arnold and Booth? And, to put a very +practical question, would it not be well if in the popular consciousness +great men, good and bad, were really identified with history instead of +being treated as fixtures outside of it? Make them separate fixtures and +you make them oracles, the spirits of quite another world, with which +the demagogue, as if a medium, can excite the people; but identify them +in a vital way with history and they must grow with it, speaking quite +as much out of the present conditions as out of the past. Hero-worship +is too often idolatry, and for my part the literalism of it is only +"spiritualism" trying to be respectable. Every extravagance, of course, +has to have its lawful or conventionally respectable expression.</p> + +<p>But what, now, of friendship and family ties? Can we view these in the +same light? I think we would; I think we can; I think we must. True, it +is easier to speak in this large, "philosophical" way of history and of +the men who have had part in it, inventing and effectively using the +machinery that has enabled its progress, than of such matters as +friendship and <a name="p244" id="p244"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.244]</span> family. In these latter matters the heart more +than the mind is addressed. Still, the relations of friendship and +kinship are not themselves born, nor do they die and all friends abroad +and kin at home live and move and have their being only in these. Does +it destroy or even weaken the meaning or the reality of friendship to +have it said that the relation is as universal as particular or local, +and as eternal as temporal? Is a relationship worth less than any one of +its manifestations? Why, the universality of the relationship gives +meaning or reality to any manifestation. Friendship, then, or kinship, +for this person or that, cannot be separated from the experience in +general. Separate it, and one's friends or kin surely do die, remaining +after death, like the characters of the older history, as only ideal +"influences," or as unearthly spirits that sometimes idly chatter. But +in reality, friendship, or kinship, is one, not merely many, all of its +members labouring together for, and forever surviving in, what it truly +is. The friends, then, or the kin that lived, live still. In others +about us? Yes; and in ourselves too; or rather in the relation of man to +man or in the unity of all that lives. Not literally in others, then, +although the meaning intended was a genuine one, nor yet literally in +ourselves, for nothing crudely like transmigration of souls is in my +mind, but—to repeat—in the living relationship of friends or kin. +There is indeed a truth in transmigration, as also in other related +notions; witness all the facts of inheritance, of historical succession +or continuity, of social growth and personal character, of evolution; +but it is the truth, or is near to <a name="p245" id="p245"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.245]</span> the truth, of a reality that +is conserved even in its changing. The soldier of the past, let me say, +at his death was "translated," but the mechanic of to-day is transmuted. +The latter word may be stranger and harsher in sound than the former, +but there is truly less violence and more honour in its meaning. So, +again, friends and kin that ever lived, live still. Friendship and +fatherhood and motherhood and all the relations of kin, nay, all the +relations of life, that make our individuality real, that make it +personal, that make it social, that make, it natural, have been from the +beginning, live now, and must survive forever, and by their survival +hold for the present and the future life all who have ever been. Where +would faith go, and where worth and responsibility, if birth really +created and death destroyed, or if birth were a coming from no one knows +where, from a realm unlike and apart, and death the return? Birth cannot +create or introduce; it can only express, revealing and realizing. Death +cannot destroy or "translate"; it can be only fulfilment at a crisis.</p> + +<p>The mere wordiness of a philosopher! Possibly. And yet Christianity has +very nearly implied, if indeed it has not actually said, and said or +implied again and again, exactly the same thing. To science, I know, we +are peculiarly indebted for the conception of the organism, or the +organic, which enables us to bring together the universal and the +individual, the eternal and the temporal, the omnipresent and the local, +without losing the worth or the reality of either, and of course—for so +they would not be together—without erecting separate quarters, or +worlds, for their <a name="p246" id="p246"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.246]</span> occupation; but, when all is said, science has +only applied at large the very special and personal doctrines of +Christianity, and has therein helped Christianity to a better +consciousness of itself. The Resurrection, the Immaculate Conception, +the Divinity, the Immediacy of the Kingdom, the Sacrifice, and the +Brotherhood of Man are doctrines which one and all testify quite +directly that our real individuality, our real being, lies not in a +separate existence of any sort, here or hereafter, but in the abiding +relations of the actual life now. In these the Christ resides, the +always living Christ. What else can the following mean? "In as much as +ye have done it unto one of these, my brethren, even these least ye have +done it unto me." And again: "For whosoever shall do the will of my +father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and +mother." The living Christ, one of the dogmas of our day, is more than a +fancy and more than a dogma, and for no one so truly as the scientist, +the evolutionist. Christ was too great, too deep-lying, too far-reaching +in human history not to be more. The letter of Christianity, we are +often told, has got to go, but it is quite as true that the real letter +of Christianity has got to stay, has yet to come: the real letter, I +say, not the parody of a mere physical appearance and reappearance +nearly two thousand years ago. If Christ was really not born as men are +born, if he did not really die, if truly he still lives in and with our +lives to-day, if Christianity honestly means the brotherhood of humanity +and the divinity of man, then simply the Christ was more than a pagan's +messenger from another world, and <a name="p247" id="p247"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.247]</span> more than the creature of a +single moment in history or a single place; also he reveals to us more +in ourselves than any of these things, and instead of resorting to such +notions as parthenogenesis and trance to explain the birth and the +resurrection, we must rather recognize in him, and in ourselves, an +individuality that has, not in spite of, but because of, birth and +death, a share in, a place and a part in the immortality of what is +real. Now I am not a good preacher, plainly, nor am I exactly a +sympathetic theologian, and also I know too well the defects of argument +through scriptural quotation; but I have to hope, as personally I +believe, that in the foregoing paragraph, given in conclusion to the +discussion of immortality in the doubter's world, I have suggested what +at least is not an unchristian appreciation of Christianity.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Our journey in the doubter's world here comes to an end. All things are +real, yet none final. The spiritual and the material in life are +sympathetic even to the point of being vitally at one with each other, +thought being free and practical, and material nature being lawful but +law-free, and mechanical but productively so, and being in her +productiveness definite opportunity, not blind necessity, to human life. +And, the "universal individual" being dead, having returned to the other +world from which he came, all particular individuals have real and +personal shares in the life that is, in the work that is ever to be +done. Living or dying, the individual, as we have found him, is the +mechanic of to-day, not the soldier of yesterday.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_14" id="Footnote_1_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_14"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The last few sentences seem like a paragraph from some +psychologist of the day. My colleague, Professor W.B. Pillsbury, for +example, has just published a book on the attention, in which appears +the following statement: "It seems that the problem of voluntary +activity is largely, if not entirely, a problem of the attention ... . +The processes which are effective in the control of a man's ideas are +<i>ipso facto</i> in the control of his movements," and this, besides being +the current psychology, is quite in accord with our doubter's vision: +"Well thought is well done." (See <i>Attention</i>, chapter ix. London, +1907.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_15" id="Footnote_2_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_15"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Chap. VIII., pp. 177 seq.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_16" id="Footnote_3_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_16"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Chaps. III., IV., V., and VI.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_17" id="Footnote_4_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_17"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See also an earlier discussion in this book, chap. III., +pp. 49 seq.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_18" id="Footnote_5_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_18"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Two preliminary efforts have already been put in print. See +the Appendix, "A Study of Immortality in Outline," to a book: <i>Dynamic +Idealism: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Psychology</i> (McClurg, +1898). See, secondly, an article: "<i>Evolution and Immortality</i>," in the +<i>Monist</i>, April, 1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_19" id="Footnote_6_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_19"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Except for a few changes, the next few paragraphs are taken +from my article, "Evolution and Immortality," in the <i>Monist</i>, April, +1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_20" id="Footnote_7_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_20"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> In a small book, <i>Citizenship and Salvation, or Greek and +Jew</i>, published some years ago, I have tried to show this of Socrates +and Christ.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2> + +<h3>DOUBT AND BELIEF.</h3> + + +<p><a name="p248" id="p248"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.248]</span></p> + +<blockquote><p>There was once a brook that ran, at times slowly, at times more +rapidly, through fields and woods, under trees and over rocks. At +every chance, whatever the obstacles in its course, it fell, much +or little, as it could; but impatience and uncertainty filled its +life as the minutes and the hours passed. Had life nothing more in +store for its troubled waters? Was this groping downward all? Were +the memory and the accompanying hope, which haunted every thwarted +move, of no avail? Would true fulness of life never be attained?</p> + +<p>But a great moment for the brook came, rewarding it at last, +bringing assurance in place of threatened despair. A precipice +intervened, and the waters fell hundreds of feet; a glorious fall +—spray, sunlight, colour, eloquence.</p> + +<p>"Now," spoke the brook from the deep, smooth pool below, "now I +have lived; now I know that my life was real and that my life was +good, for I have found myself, I have found my world; and I have +found them where I thought them not. And, speaking so, the brook +flowed on contented. </p></blockquote> + +<p>The confession of doubt, which we set out to make with all possible +candour, is now nearly concluded even to the harvesting of the promised +fruit. The confession began, as will be remembered, with recognition of +certain general and easily demonstrated facts, of <a name="p249" id="p249"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.249]</span> which there +were five, as follows: (1) We are all universal doubters. (2) Doubt is +essential to all consciousness. (3) Even habit, though confidence be the +horse, has doubt sitting up behind. (4) Like pain or ignorance, doubt is +a condition of real life. (5) And the sense of dependence, so general to +human nature, gives rise to doubt, although also, like misery, it always +seeks company—the company of nature, of man, of God. Then, after this +beginning, which left us by no means so hopeless as might have been +expected, we proceeded to try the doubter, nay, to try ourselves, first +before the court of ordinary life with its ordinary views of things, and +secondly, before the court of science, and, in both trials, we found the +doubting justified. Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in +science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found +what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and +almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of +contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and +the very heart of our human experience. This spirit of violence, too, as +the evidence of its presence accumulated, bade fair to dispel whatever +hope our confession had left us. Yet out of the evidence there gradually +did appear a reason for deepest assurance, and in the end our fear, not +our hope, was dispelled. Contradiction was seen in its very nature to +possess positive value. It was seen to protect experience, even while +experience was specific and concrete, definite and individual, against +any fatal digression or partiality of view. It was deeply conservative, +corrective, and <a name="p250" id="p250"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.250]</span> compensative in its effect, but it was all this +without ever being merely negative or destructive towards anything, +since its own efficiency required persistent individual differences. To +experience it gave movement, constant unity or wholeness, realistic +value and poise, practicality, and, lastly, social expression. And we +were able, accordingly, to conclude, in so many words, that both +ordinary life and science, so given to duplicity in their standpoint and +in their ideas, were really building well, far better, indeed, than they +seemed or than they clearly knew. Contradiction, in short, as we came to +see it, meant unity, but not an empty, abstract unity; it meant unity +rich and real with an infinity of differences; and so what had at first +appeared an uncompromising reason for doubt turned, right before our +doubter's eyes, into an unassailable ground of belief, making the very +world which we had been so uncertain about a world for an inviolable +faith. But truth, we saw at once, could no longer be identified with a +formal idea, known or unknown or unknowable; reality could no longer +have the character of a fixedly constituted thing, whether such a thing +were present in experience or not; and perfection, even the perfection +of God, could no longer be a mere status, a passive possession of +certain characters, attributes, or prerogatives. Truth became, as was +said, in want of a better word, a spirit; reality was a life; perfection +was a power. And thereupon, with the new view thus afforded us, coupled +as it was especially with the sense in which personally a man could +claim reality for himself and yet be party to the factional life of +society, we were able to turn to <a name="p251" id="p251"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.251]</span> Descartes, an early modern +doubter, a father confessor of many doubters, and, overlooking some of +his shortcomings in thought and character, to appreciate both the use +that he made of doubt, the intimacy that he, too, found between doubt +and faith, and the world of reality, of most vital sympathy between the +material and the spiritual, of genuine, personal individuality, and of +immortality, through which he led us, doubter, universal doubter though +he was. That great Frenchman, as we were enabled to understand him, got +back the world, the self and the God which he seemed to have lost, but +he got them all back transfigured. He got them back, not by denying and +excluding what appeared negative and treacherous in their nature, but by +facing this and using it, by accepting it and turning it even against +itself. The very Paris to which he returned as believer was the same +Paris, the Paris of doubt and of evil in all its forms, that earlier, +hopeless and despairing, he had put behind him. And, once more, his +experience was ours, and so helped us to interpret and deepen ours, +quickening the value of our own previous discovery that within the very +sources of doubt lay the real bases of belief. Our own doubted world of +what was relative and artificial, and above all contradictory, had +already turned, without loss of anything that was in it, into a world of +reality and belief.</p> + +<p>And so, for this concluding chapter, as but a sort of focussing of what +almost from the beginning has been borne in upon us, but especially at +the close has been rich in reality and meaning, we have a sixth general +fact, which may now be added to the original five. <a name="p252" id="p252"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.252]</span> <i>We believe +through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very +things we doubt</i>. To this fact really inclusive of all the others, or if +not to this fact at least to this conviction which we have achieved +here, we shall now turn, and in our concluding chapter we may even +forget, or retain only as the appropriate background, many of those more +special or more technical details that from time to time have occupied +us. After so much, that to some, if not to all, who have followed me to +this place, may have appeared open to the charge of being mere theory, +certain simple, very practical considerations, appealing quite as much +to the emotions as to the reason, can hardly be out of place. Those who +are already satisfied, who foresee only repetition, who are themselves +without emotion, or who consider anything like the drawing of a moral to +be as useless as it is inartistic, need read no further.</p> + + +<p class="caption">I.</p> + +<p>We believe in the very things we doubt. Doubt, this is to say, can +destroy nothing. It only calls for closer scrutiny, for wider and deeper +view, for greater achievement. Its effect is only to make over, renew, +or fulfil what has already been and must ever remain an object of faith, +and so doing it keeps the old faith alive. It questions all things, but +properly, consistently it raises, not questions of mere existence or +reality, but questions of meaning and worth, and whatever it truly +questions it always quickens. Have <a name="p253" id="p253"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.253]</span> we not found that with its +inborn and insatiable passion for truth doubt must believe in +everything, and that to satisfy this passion, since all things must work +together for what is real and true, it must reject nothing but seek even +the universe in everything? All things, from the momentary sensation in +your little finger, or the tree yonder on the lawn, to the personality +of God or the divinity of Christ as an idea in the consciousness of +millions of people, all things are; they are in experience; they are +unassailable realities of experience; but—and just this is as far as +the truth-loving doubter, the doubter who is honest with his own +self-consciousness, can go—what really are they? <i>What are they?</i> is +such an honest question. In this question, too, there is more reality +for the things inquired about even than in any man's assertion that they +are this or that they are that. But the question <i>Are they?</i> would be +downright treachery. We doubters, then, believe, but would ever know +what we believe; we have, yet would realize every possibility that what +we have affords.</p> + +<p>Doubt, I repeat, destroys nothing. From time to time certain doubting +people have called their prophets impostors, and have imagined +themselves able to put the impostors out of the way, but, as history has +always shown, only with the result of reviving among themselves and +often of awakening in the minds and hearts of others the sense and +conviction of just that for which the offensive impostors may have +suffered violent death. Even history's petty impostors, too, as well as +those who have proved heroes and great leaders, have always had their +justification. An <a name="p254" id="p254"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.254]</span> absolute impostor has never been. Again, +certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or +moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to +make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual +dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is +valid and real. Nothing can be, or ever has been, unreal. And, in +general, doubt of a thing or a person or a God only needs its own +conscious assertion to turn actually into an appeal from its particular +object to the ideal or spirit or principle for which the object had +stood, and upon this appeal even the object that has been for a moment +condemned is justified and glorified. Thus, doubt may deny or depose or +put to death, but as it is honest it also realizes or restores or +revives. Through doubt the sensuous, which is the particular and +visible, is ever becoming spiritualized; even this corruptible puts on +incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. Or, in these words, if +we doubt we may reject the object, the letter, but we cannot reject the +letter without accepting and asserting the spirit, and we cannot assert +the spirit without recalling and exalting and even worshipping the +letter. The rejection makes for universality by casting down the +barriers of the particular experience of time or place, of person or +nation, of the Greek perhaps, if again I may look to history, or of the +Jew or of the Christian, while the recall and the worship make for +definiteness. Without the previous rejection the worship could be only +idolatry. So, as Descartes will be remembered virtually to have said, +doubt is innately loyal to reality in <a name="p255" id="p255"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.255]</span> everything, and just +through this loyalty the world it spurns, the world of God and man and +nature, is for ever called back, a real world once more, because a +realized, a spiritually realized world. Why forget, as so many seem to, +that reality is an achievement; achieved it may be, as with the brook, +even by a great fall?</p> + +<p>But have you ever climbed a mountain up and up and up, through thick +woods, over rough, almost impassable trails, into clouds dense and +chilling, stormy and angry, over treacherous snows and frightful cliffs, +and come out at last on the very top to see both earth and heaven, +yourself between, the clouds dispersed, the hardships and dangers all +forgotten, the whole world real and yours? Well, that is doubt become +achievement. Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a +problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all +the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to +you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when +failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and +the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? +That, too, is doubt rewarded. Have you ever visited, perhaps more +curiously than reverently, some great Catholic cathedral, or, better +still, some temple of the far Orient, and watching the worshippers +there, suddenly had a vision of religion as greater and deeper than any +Protestantism or even than Christianity? That, again, is doubt's +achievement. Have you ever suffered a great heartrending disappointment, +let me say a great personal loss, and <a name="p256" id="p256"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.256]</span> found it seemingly +impossible to return to the routine of your former life, but +nevertheless, almost imperceptibly, come into a sense of presence and +gain from the very thing that seemed taken from you? That, once more, is +doubt without its sting, robbed of its victory. Doubt means sacrifice, +often enormous sacrifice, but always a more than equal gain. The light +that casts the shadows of doubt, when one can face it, and really does +face it, as, for another example, in this book we have been trying to +face it, is so splendid and so uplifting.</p> + +<p>So, a third time, doubt destroys nothing; it only makes reality forever +an achievement and belief a constantly active life. The fact, now no +stranger to us, that doubt is social, also shows this. Doubt is social, +as has been said, since by its isolation it makes the longing for +company, and by its greater freedom the larger opportunity for company; +and since also the very contradictions or controversies which arouse it +are never merely individual, being always social also, and social +relationship means effort and sacrifice, and is accordingly a peculiarly +interesting witness to the losses that doubt must suffer for its greater +gains. Doubt, in short, shows belief, working not merely for the reality +of all things, but also for the love of all men. As social, then, as +working for the love of all men, doubt involves sympathy. Yet not an +easy, passive sympathy. A restless, labouring, always growing sympathy +is the sympathy of the doubter; a sympathy that makes all it covers +labour and grow also. Does it hurt your business to doubt it +sufficiently to make you able to sympathize with the interests of +<a name="p257" id="p257"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.257]</span> another? To this question Adam Smith gave a timely answer when +at a critical moment in industrial history he found in sympathy a +condition of successful competition. Does it hurt your politics, if you +can lose enough of the partisan's conceit or the jingo's bombast to +sympathize with the other parties or the other nations? The value of +real independence in politics is one answer, and the idea of federation +among competing states, or of international polity as a basis of +successful national life, is another. Does it hurt your understanding to +outgrow your own profoundest ideas and see some validity in the +doctrines and formulæ of others? Does it hurt your Christianity to make +concessions to another's Christianity or to the worship of any land or +any time? The reading of the last great book, or the visit to the pagan +temple, is an answer. Simply the doubter the world over, social being +that he is by nature, imbued as he is with a living sympathy, must +recognize, and must labour to maintain or achieve, the unity of +humanity. For him just this is God, or truth, and it is worth far more +than anybody's religion or than anybody's rational formulæ. It must +stand, too, both as the universal authority which both religion and +reason have over the lives of men and as the motive or living principle, +or spirit, by which particular religions and particular formulæ, however +serviceable, are forever unstable.</p> + +<p>But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and +which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes +belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still +another way. It shows mankind using or spending <a name="p258" id="p258"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.258]</span> instead of +either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and +faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life +accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest +what they have; some speculate. Some are conservative, even timorous; +some are very rash. Yet doubt as expenditure is necessary to all who +would enjoy the proper, natural increase of their possessions, and while +the rash, be they transgressors or reformers, sensualists or +materialists, or equally impractical idealists, at a throw may win or +lose great riches of mind or spirit, the timorous and +ultra-conservative, the "practical" and conventional, are not less +dependent on chance. There are the new rich, too, and the aristocratic +poor, and both remind us strongly that the real use of what we have is +not only a duty, but also a very sober duty. To hoard blindly or spend +rashly is to risk unwisely, perhaps to lose all, or, if to win, to win +idly; while to use well, to doubt clearly and honestly, to doubt even in +one's belief, to doubt only for fuller meaning, for broader and deeper +life, for richer companionship, is personally to earn lasting spiritual +treasure.</p> + +<p>Modern science, whose knowledge comprises merely working hypotheses, the +means to truth, not truth itself, or if truth, then only a living, +growing truth, affords one of the best examples of this. Modern science +is a great faith, a great belief, but only because it is a life, not a +status or possession, only because it is a constant spending, a constant +using of knowledge, that earns interest, even compound interest, as +regularly as the years go by. And experience in <a name="p259" id="p259"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.259]</span> general, as well +as science, is also a great belief, and also only because always +doubting and so always using and always earning.</p> + +<p>Doubt, in a word, is more than a necessity of experience; it is +distinctly a duty. Experience itself is but another name for that hard +master who says to every unprofitable servant: "Thou wicked and slothful +servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I +did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the +bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with +interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him and give it unto +him that hath the ten talents."</p> + + +<p class="caption">II.</p> + +<p>That doubt is only the expenditure of the treasures of life for future +gain human history bears witness in a striking way. Times of a general +scepticism among any people have always been also times of +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards all things great and small. +To employ again a word used before, this means that life has come to +regard its establishments of all sorts as only "instrumental," not +final. Of course, conventionalism and utilitarianism are commonly +decried, just as the accompanying attitude of doubt is commonly decried; +but the fears, though not altogether idle, are usually short-sighted, +for there is gain ahead. In a certain community, for example, +patriotism, morality, and piety, long identified with specific forms and +customs and doctrines, have come at last to seem quite unsubstantial. A +rising cosmopolitanism perhaps has undone the first, sensationalism +<a name="p260" id="p260"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.260]</span> or naturalism the second, and mingled ritualism and secularism +the third. But however unsubstantial all three may appear in +consequence, they are nevertheless retained as still useful, as means to +some end, being at least good things to wear or to assume in any way, +and from the change, though it appear so like decline, the community in +the end is most decidedly enriched.</p> + +<p>How can this be? In answer, let us beard the very king of the race of +the conventionalists and utilitarians in his forbidding den. +Machiavelli, with his teaching that the end always justifies the means, +and his open advice to the leader who would be successful, to make a +point of at least seeming loyal and good and pious, shows a typical +mingling of the sceptic and the utilitarian in sacred things. Moreover, +what Machiavelli taught was also common practice in his time, and soon +became a principle of brilliant statesmanship all over Europe. And to +add meaning to his case by associating it with others, conspicuously in +Descartes' time, as we have observed, and also in Athens at the time of +the Sophists, and in Jerusalem when the Pharisees flourished, the same +standpoint was much in vogue; while in our own times we do not need to +look far to find it. Education, social life, politics, religion abound +in it, for the tribe of the Machiavellists is no more a lost tribe than +it is one that began with him whose name it bears. If the name is too +offensive to some by reason of its connection with a particular +character and a particular period in Italian history, for Machiavellism +they may substitute institutionalism, certainly a more innocent term at +first sight; but the offensiveness, though hidden, <a name="p261" id="p261"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.261]</span> or +half-hidden, still remains a part of the fact with which we have to +deal. The meaning of institutionalism is just that of some asserted end +justifying any available means, and so under cover of its peculiar +conceits sanctioning violence. Watch any institution and see how one or +another of life's objects of devotion is become, or fast becoming, a +mere utility. The institution makes life mechanical, and doing this it +is as treacherous as it seems loyal to the treasured things of life, the +developed ideas and established customs; it is even as sceptical towards +them as it seems faithful; and in the spirit, if not in the letter, of +Machiavellism it shows them no longer implicitly worshipped, but in use, +which is to say, "put to the bankers," and so robbed of their character +of sacred treasures. And as for Machiavelli himself, it may be worth +while to remember that with all his offensiveness he has undoubtedly +been very much maligned, and that to any student of history he seems +only a very apt though an unpleasantly outspoken pupil of the most +powerful institution of his time—the Roman Church—for which things +moral and religious had certainly become effective instruments of very +worldly ambitions. So in Machiavellism or in institutionalism, the name +now being indifferent to us, we see worship passing into use; we see +sacred things become secular, or things supposed final becoming only +instrumental; and we see, therefore, what appears like loss or +decline.<a name="FNanchor_1_21" id="FNanchor_1_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_21" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p><a name="p262" id="p262"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.262]</span> But can there be anything besides loss or decline? This again is +our question, and the answer now comes quick and decisive, whether we +are thinking of Machiavelli or the Sophists, of the old-time Pharisees, +or of those in our own life. Decline and even fall never tell the whole +story of anything, and just because they mean use, even secular use. +That men must worship is surely true, but also men must and do use, and +the use, in spite of the strain of the offence and resistance which it +is sure to arouse, brings profit always. Use, secular use, may imply +sacrifice of the letter or the established form, but it always leads to +liberation of the spirit. In scepticism, therefore, and the coincident +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards sacred things, in the +institutionalism which harbours all these, though often darkly and +secretly, we may always read, what in truth history has again and again +exemplified, the throes of birth, the birth of the spirit. Must it not +be that any visible institution, be it ecclesiastical or industrial or +political or educational or ceremonial, just because an institution +designed in some way to serve an active, growing life, is always an +outgrown, falling institution? As in the case of the Roman Church in the +days of Machiavelli, an institution upon its establishment actually +justifies its enemies by its own practices, while the enemies, so +justified, do but lay it bare, exposing its hidden thoughts and ways, +forcing reform upon it, and perhaps in the end themselves "remaining to +pray."</p> + +<p>So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of +society what a wonderful triumvirate, working <a name="p263" id="p263"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.263]</span> for the real +growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by +the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and +utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. Even +Machiavelli in his most offensive pronouncements must have felt +something between his lines which expressed would have transfigured +their meaning, not to say also his reputation, greatly, and, consciously +or unconsciously, he was certainly a party to the development of what is +best in modern life. As for the Sophists, whether we see them as +sceptics or conventionalists, did they not have Socrates among them? +Between them and him, when all is said, the difference was only that +between talent and genius, between great formal ingenuity, which always +means opportunism, and really vital insight, which, shattering +opportunism with its own weapons, means loyalty, not to existing forms, +but to the spirit dwelling in the forms. Much in the same way, too, the +Jewish Pharisees had Jesus, a contemporary, who did but recognize and +earnestly teach what they were really practising, namely, the utility of +the law, or the law for man, not man for the law. Only what for them was +merely a selfish opportunity, absorbed as they were in the vested +interests of their time and generation, was manifest to him—who was a +genius and who used for real gain the talent which they hoarded—as a +great spiritual fact, as a universal truth, bringing opportunity and +freedom to all men under all law, not to some men under one law. Thus +they were institutionalists; he, by merely turning their narrowness into +a principle of all life, became a reformer, and, indebted to them as he +was, he could <a name="p264" id="p264"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.264]</span> forgive them even when they opposed him. Genius +always forgives; the spirit always recalls and cherishes the letter that +has given it birth.</p> + +<p>So the institution as an historical fact, whether we see it with the +eyes of Machiavelli or with those of a pope, with the eyes of Protagoras +or with those of Socrates, with the eyes of the Pharisees or with those +of Christ, may show worship turning into use, the sacred becoming +secular, but it shows also the life of society becoming enriched; it +shows investment for future gain; it shows doubt, not destroying +anything, but achieving only what is real; it shows the life of the +spirit.</p> + + +<p class="caption">III.</p> + +<p>No period of man's earlier doubting can be more interesting than that of +the centuries just prior to the Christian era, when the peoples of the +Mediterranean contributed so much, directly and indirectly, to the +preparation for Christianity and to the discovery, or revelation, which +finally came and in due time changed the ancient to our modern world. +What the preparation was has already been indicated, at least partially, +in the references that have been made to the Sophists and to the +Pharisees. Christianity has been only the interest, the earned +increment, or rather should I not say the compounded principal, of the +scepticism, of the formalism and the utilitarianism which beset the +Greeks and the Hebrews, to mention no others, as their peculiar +civilizations were merging into the larger and deeper life of a great +empire. In their several lives the demand came, and came, too, from +within, not merely from without, as in all life <a name="p265" id="p265"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.265]</span> it must come, +for use of their gathered treasures, whether spiritual or material, and +the rise of Rome was but the result of that demand satisfied, of the use +realized. As for the scepticism, this with all its incidents made the +use possible, made it possible for the peoples to give or relinquish +what they had to the larger life to which they all belonged, while the +religion of Christianity spiritualized for them all the resulting +empire.</p> + +<p>Those wonderful races of the Mediterranean, who achieved—at least some +of them—such great things in all that counts for civilization, became +at the last most extravagant sceptics, not only formulating, but also +very generally living up to, the conviction of ignorance and +forgetfulness of reality. Everything which their long past had gathered +for them they resigned—or let me say crucified—and themselves they +threw, as if with an investor's recklessness, upon a world of chance or +fate, upon a world seemingly of empty forms in all human relations, a +world of disguises for license and of mere conceits of moral power and +religious piety. Sensuous mysticism and pantheism, formalism of all +kinds, Stoicism, Epicureanism, legalism, and cosmopolitanism were +crosses upon which one people and another, one class and another, nailed +their long-cherished devotions, their love of God and man and nature, of +temple and family and country. A great doubting, then, was truly theirs. +A great sacrificial offering was their preparation for Christianity. In +a way, with a completeness that seems to have no parallel in history, +they put their talents to the bankers—despairing, of course, but hoping +also, <a name="p266" id="p266"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.266]</span> if only their doubting, when it came, may be supposed as +genuine as their earlier believing. From the North and from the East and +from the South their good men came, and their rich and their wise, and +laid what they had at the feet of the life that was new born.</p> + +<p>People read their histories so differently. The pagan doubt, the +Christian revelation and belief, the conversion of the pagan world to +Christianity, the Renaissance, in which the conversion was in a sense +reversed, and the Reformation mean such different things to different +people. Some must still have it that paganism, or pre-Christianism, +ended in absolutely blind despair, in the avowal of complete failure—as +if such despair or failure could ever find words for its own utterance; +that Christianity came into a hopelessly pagan world wholly from +without, came into a world of nothing but unmixed doubt, and brought +with it nothing but unmixed belief; that the conversion was a sort of +conquest, by a power all its own capturing the pagans, so wholly +unnerved as to be quite incapable even of a futile resistance; that the +Renaissance, restoration as it was of the pagan life and thought, was at +best a great condescension on the part of Christendom and at worst an +unfortunate return to the pagan idols; and that in the Reformation the +Christian Religion Militant did but retreat upon the Bible as its +impregnable fortress. But such history can hardly be our history here. +For us the rise and the progress of Christianity have had quite a +different character. To strike at the foundation of that whole structure +the pagan doubting was too articulate. It was, also, too earnest. It was +too genuine. The races did indeed resign, as with <a name="p267" id="p267"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.267]</span> an investor's +recklessness, all that they had, but their recklessness was not unmixed. +Their doubting had hope in it as well as despair. It still loved the +spirit of what had been even when it betrayed the letter. It had its +martyrs, too, as well as its suicides; its sense of life as well as its +enervating fear of death. Say what you will, then, a great, warm, +yearning belief dwelt within it. And so, just because the pagan doubting +was too earnest and too genuine and too articulate, because it was, in +truth, a great sacrificial offering, the crucifixion on Calvary was also +too true to life at Athens and Alexandria, as well as to life at +Jerusalem, and the resurrection of the spirit was too true to life at +Rome; they were too true to mean anything but fulfilment and +achievement. Everywhere, in every place and in every department of life, +the letter had been rejected; but everywhere also—and this, nothing +else, was the true conversion to Christianity—the spirit was accepted. +Acceptance of the spirit, too, meant that in good time the letter would +be restored, as indeed at the Renaissance it surely was.</p> + +<p>Christianity, therefore, came when the times were ripe for it. It came +not from without, but deeply from within the pagan life of the +Mediterranean. Moreover, if in this way, not in that other way, we must +read the rise of Christianity, then we must read both the Renaissance +and the Reformation under the same light. The Renaissance, as was just +said, brought a restoration of the letter; but, necessarily, of the +letter under the light of the spirit, of the letter transfigured. The +Renaissance, so dramatically manifested in the Crusades, was only +Christendom returning to its <a name="p268" id="p268"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.268]</span> birthplace. With its crusades to +Jerusalem, to all the old capitals, to the pagan ideas and institutions, +to the ancient languages and literatures, Christianity rediscovered +itself in the past, winning back in this way some of its childhood, +curing a homesickness that a worldly church had made it feel, securing +for itself such a deep experience as comes to a man who, after years of +wandering and forgetting, has returned to the home of his infancy. And +as for the Reformation—if indeed this was a retreat, shall we say, of a +defeated religion upon the Bible, its supposed impregnable fortress—we +need only to remember the pagan origin, the Hebrew and the Greek +inspiration, and the Roman atmosphere of that sacred book.</p> + +<p>And of the relation of Christianity to paganism, just one thing more. +The Christian revelation, so wonderfully portrayed and enacted in the +life and character of Jesus, was only an idealization, a spiritual +interpretation, of the very present, the thoroughly actual life of the +time, of the life that the pagans, doubting but believing, despairing +but also trusting, resigning all but hoping for more, had already +brought upon themselves; a life of self-denial, of common, universal +humanity, all men being "members one of another," and of perfect faith. +Perhaps the self-denial was bravely concealed in an accepted subjection, +but it was not less real. Perhaps the common humanity was military and +imperial, yet it also was real. Perhaps, too, the faith was blind and +fatalistic, but it was nevertheless faith. Can faith go farther or do +more than fatalism? The pagans, then, had become Christians in fact or +status, and Christianity came, breathing <a name="p269" id="p269"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.269]</span> life into the bare +fact, into the self-denial, and the broad humanity and the faith, and +made these not the mere phases of bare fact or condition, but motives +and ideals, manifesting them heroically in a single human life, and so +in the form and with the power of a personal discovery of self.</p> + +<p>Where genuine doubt is the God is always born.</p> + + +<p class="caption">IV.</p> + +<p>To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, +for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising +questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality +and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous +as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often +become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage +casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the +English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics +have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, +given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for +example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in +the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and +intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an +unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail +to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the +formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English +history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. +Frenchmen, though <a name="p270" id="p270"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.270]</span> so neighbourly to England, have been +conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and +problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more +vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, +throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and +consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear +or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. +Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more +effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not +revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. +Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this—witness +their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises—or only +other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this—witness the +testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic +example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English +people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in +religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their +past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the +forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in +Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it +now to give it point.</p> + +<p>Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may +be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude +doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is +peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own +dangers. To be candid, in the <a name="p271" id="p271"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.271]</span> sense of the word here intended, +is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, +and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and +fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or +reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the +possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, +and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the +reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full +due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the +same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his +philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was +taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid +English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to +anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or +subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable—in a word, to +nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, +again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a +positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been +a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great +enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal—if not unideal—substitute for the +present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and +government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present +responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or +almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost +never, something that lives in and <a name="p272" id="p272"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.272]</span> through God and government +and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and +Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare +and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or +Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature +has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest +English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand +English deism; the <i>laissez faire</i> economics; the peculiar nature and +growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; +the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and +bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English +people's progressive conservatism?</p> + +<p>The most radical doubt must +eventually appeal to nature and, what is more, must sooner or later +bring man to live with nature practically and responsibly, intimately +and sympathetically; but candour, like the candour of the English, that +never doubts without at the same time believing, lives ever with her. +Perhaps the English people need to have what they seem never to have +had—though the Armada threatened something of the kind, and the loss of the +thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war was, not without its value—a +great, overpowering disaster, a deep all-searching despair; yet, be this +as it may, their part in the struggle of a life that must always doubt +in order to grow is always instructive and is often inspiring.</p> + + +<p class="caption">V.</p> + +<p><a name="p273" id="p273"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.273]</span> The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful +triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we +must return to that characterization. The other members of the +triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great +spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of +the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the +others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there +are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and +the believer face each other squarely and honestly. <i>Both</i> are parties +to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the +contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional +conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always +belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can +there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental +sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the +differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized +society, without betraying them?</p> + +<p>At once opponents and companions—this is the truth about the doubter +and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite +justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for +that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to +you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him +who hides his doubts in an outward show that <a name="p274" id="p274"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.274]</span> almost deceives him +as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of +intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or +individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a +camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or +has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life +everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, +law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or +treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to +stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, +have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, +and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The +doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; +the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which +each has and must feel his social rôle, but, at most and worst, they are +only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to +quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part +of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just +one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"—instead of off +at some tangent.</p> + +<p>Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have +him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold +to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he +turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he +could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place, +that his decision <a name="p275" id="p275"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.275]</span> not only must be made, and made strongly, one +way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third +place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement. +Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing +finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the +contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know +they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent +harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them +really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home, +making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to +my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with +yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with +his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So +fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions.</p> + + +<p>VI.</p> + +<p>Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those +well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring +injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to +be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and +seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all +the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of +these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat +old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,<a name="FNanchor_2_22" id="FNanchor_2_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_22" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> <a name="p276" id="p276"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.276]</span> +once published a book entitled, <i>Poetry, Comedy and Duty</i>. Exactly what +his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of +life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly +and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in +substance if not in form, can not be very far from his.</p> + +<p>Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where +extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of +such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also +in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics +cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for +comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no +residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may +utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily +confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is +bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no +understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest +sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are +companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment—at +least among the gods.</p> + +<p>But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly +comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but +also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is +the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its +conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct +<a name="p277" id="p277"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.277]</span> way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem, +can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they +insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be +dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the +metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never +can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant +always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never +prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience, +it is always a <i>tertium quid</i>, can such a reality ever be present to any +other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face; +it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and +informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge; +for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation +and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man +thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity +of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the +analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily +partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its +parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy—that is, by +projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its +natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both +insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the +grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the +crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life, +is poetry. For <a name="p278" id="p278"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.278]</span> him who is lacking in both insight and humour, +who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality +accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose +is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly +bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it +presents—that is, in its subject-matter—it is always, not adequate and +inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in +short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, +to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is +above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license +poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever +prefers reality to prosaic peace.</p> + +<p>So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and +inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular +in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all +well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and +complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is +quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too +precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when +not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any +way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's +notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even +profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a +word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such +questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, +<a name="p279" id="p279"></a><span class="pagenum">[p.279]</span> though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that +the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, +only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry +always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry +of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring +relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme +or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he +continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a +responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal +precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not +if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? +Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real +duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as +they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly +feel their living obligation.</p> + +<p>For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is +both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than +just the principle, deeply true: <i>Whatever is, is right</i>. Men have +laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect +mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic +fact? But truth it is; <i>the</i> truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal +comedy—the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_21" id="Footnote_1_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_21"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth +and sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great +change of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or +economics, of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual +life, were becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting +monarchy, Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_22" id="Footnote_2_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_22"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> + +<p> +A<br /> +<br /> +Abstraction, of science, <a href="#p058">58</a>, <a href="#p107">107</a>; and duplicity, + <a href="#p061">61</a><br /> +Agnosticism, <a href="#p075">75</a>, <a href="#p106">106</a>; special dangers of, +<a href="#p111">111</a>, <a href="#p117">117</a>; dogmatic and<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">instrumental, <a href="#p120">120</a>; as call for action, +<a href="#p125">125</a>; as passion for real</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">life, <a href="#p128">128</a></span><br /> +Analogy, among the sciences, <a href="#p097">97</a>; of individual self to environment, +<a href="#p155">155</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of universal to particular, <a href="#p033">33</a>, +<a href="#p220">220</a></span><br /> +Anaxagoras, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +Anaximander, <a href="#p034">34</a>, <a href="#p094">94</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Anti-vitalism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Aristotle, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p156">156</a><br /> +Atomism, <a href="#p097">97</a>, <a href="#p102">102</a><br /> +<br /> +B<br /> +<br /> +Babylonians, <a href="#p106">106</a><br /> +Bacon, <a href="#p176">176</a><br /> +Baldwin, <a href="#p015">15</a><br /> +Belief, as unquestioning, <a href="#p008">8</a>, 194; and doubt, <a href="#p053">53</a>, +<a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p107">107</a>, <a href="#p130">130</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p192">192</a>, <a href="#p248">248</a></span><br /> +Biology, <a href="#p088">88</a>, <a href="#p090">90</a>, <a href="#p104">104</a>, <a href="#p110">110</a><br /> +Boehme, <a href="#p177">177</a><br /> +Body, and soul, <a href="#p227">227</a>, <a href="#p237">237</a>; immortality of, <a href="#p141">141</a>, +<a href="#p234">234</a><br /> +Bradley, <a href="#p153">153</a> n.<br /> +Burns, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +<br /> +C<br /> +<br /> +Candour, of the English, <a href="#p270">270</a><br /> +Carlyle, <a href="#p126">126</a><br /> +Catholicism, <a href="#p175">175</a><br /> +Causation, <a href="#p039">39</a>, <a href="#p082">82</a>, <a href="#p083">83</a>, <a href="#p109">109</a>, +<a href="#p205">205</a><br /> +Change, and habit, <a href="#p015">15</a>; as motive, <a href="#p017">17</a>; of purpose, <a href="#p011">11</a><br /> +Charron, <a href="#p177">177</a>, <a href="#p180">180</a><br /> +Chemistry, <a href="#p034">34</a>, <a href="#p036">36</a>, <a href="#p088">88</a>, <a href="#p090">90</a>, +<a href="#p091">91</a>, <a href="#p110">110</a><br /> +Christ, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Christianity, and immortality, <a href="#p240">240</a>; preparation for, <a href="#p266">266</a>; +different<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">views of history of, <a href="#p266">266</a></span><br /> +Christian Science, <a href="#p002">2</a>, <a href="#p032">32</a> n.<br /> +Class, the social, <a href="#p062">62</a>, <a href="#p126">126</a>, <a href="#p162">162</a>; relation of, +to doubt and belief, <a href="#p171">171</a><br /> +Comedy, <a href="#p275">275</a><br /> +Companionship, with nature, <a href="#p021">21</a>, <a href="#p071">71</a>; with man, +<a href="#p024">24</a>; with God, <a href="#p026">26</a><br /> +Contradiction, in ordinary views, <a href="#p030">30</a>; in idea of reality, +<a href="#p030">30</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of unity, <a href="#p033">33</a>; of space and time, +<a href="#p038">38</a>; of causation, <a href="#p039">39</a>; of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">knowledge, <a href="#p041">41</a>; of morality, <a href="#p044">44</a>; +of law, <a href="#p049">49</a>; as of value in</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">experience, <a href="#p004">4</a>, <a href="#p037">37</a>, +<a href="#p131">131</a>; and dualism, <a href="#p101">101</a>; as corrective of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">narrowness, <a href="#p100">100</a>, <a href="#p116">116</a>, +<a href="#p143">143</a>; as meaning action, <a href="#p136">136</a>; as realizing</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">unity, <a href="#p137">137</a>; as securing reality and practicality, +<a href="#p145">145</a>; as</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">requiring society, <a href="#p147">147</a>; as not to be cultivated for its own</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">sake, <a href="#p151">151</a>; as related to person and class, <a href="#p170">170</a></span><br /> +Conventionalism, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p260">260</a><br /> +Creationalism, <a href="#p082">82</a>, <a href="#p202">202</a><br /> +Crusades, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +<br /> +D<br /> +<br /> +Death, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p151">151</a>, <a href="#p239">239</a><br /> +Deduction, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +Democritus, <a href="#p065">65</a><br /> +Development, special, transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Descartes, <a href="#p006">6</a>, <a href="#p172">172</a>, <a href="#p196">196</a>, <a href="#p251">251</a>, +<a href="#p254">254</a><br /> +Dichotomy, <a href="#p101">101</a><br /> +Dogmatism, and fear, <a href="#p009">9</a>; and belief, <a href="#p194">194</a><br /> +Doubt, as widespread, <a href="#p001">1</a>, <a href="#p007">7</a>; actual, if possible, +<a href="#p006">6</a>; as essential to<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">consciousness, <a href="#p009">9</a>; and habit, <a href="#p014">14</a>; +as making life real, <a href="#p018">18</a>; and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">feeling of dependence, <a href="#p021">21</a>; as Basking company, +<a href="#p021">21</a>, <a href="#p255">255</a>; as mediator</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">between old and now, <a href="#p025">25</a>; and atheism, +<a href="#p027">27</a>; and belief, <a href="#p055">55</a>, <a href="#p105">105</a>, +<a href="#p130">130</a>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p192">192</a>, <a href="#p248">248</a>, +<a href="#p273">273</a>; as investment for gain, <a href="#p259">259</a>; and candour, <a href="#p270">270</a></span><br /> +Dualism, <a href="#p064">64</a>, <a href="#p101">101</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p209">209</a><br /> +Duplicity, of science, <a href="#p061">61</a>; of life, <a href="#p118">118</a><br /> +Duty, <a href="#p047">47</a>, <a href="#p278">278</a><br /> +<br /> +E<br /> +<br /> +Education, and interest, <a href="#p018">18</a> n.<br /> +Emerson, <a href="#p144">144</a><br /> +Energism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +England, peculiar scepticism in, <a href="#p269">269</a><br /> +Environment, as source of conduct, <a href="#p046">46</a>; social environment and personal<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">individual, <a href="#p169">169</a>, <a href="#p231">231</a></span><br /> +Epicureanism, <a href="#p116">116</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a><br /> +Epistemology, <a href="#p092">92</a><br /> +Evil, and good, <a href="#p045">45</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p150">150</a>, <a href="#p276">276</a><br /> +Evolution, <a href="#p078">78</a>, <a href="#p202">202</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a><br /> +Experience, unity of, <a href="#p160">160</a><br /> +Experimentalism, <a href="#p068">68</a><br /> +<br /> +F<br /> +<br /> +Fatalism, <a href="#p049">49</a><br /> +Fear, and dogmatism, <a href="#p009">9</a><br /> +France, peculiar scepticism in, <a href="#p271">271</a><br /> +Freedom, of will, <a href="#p047">47</a>; of thought, <a href="#p211">211</a>, <a href="#p227">227</a><br /> +<br /> +G<br /> +<br /> +Galilei, <a href="#p177">177</a><br /> +Genius, <a href="#p168">168</a>, <a href="#p196">196</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +God, Descartes' proof of, <a href="#p181">181</a>; fallacy in D.'s proof of, <a href="#p189">189</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">D.'s idea of, <a href="#p186">186</a>, <a href="#p190">190</a>; +sceptic's idea of, <a href="#p026">26</a>, <a href="#p187">187</a>, <a href="#p190">190</a>, <a href="#p203">203</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">death of, <a href="#p237">237</a>; birth of, <a href="#p269">269</a></span><br /> +<br /> +H<br /> +<br /> +Habit, and doubt, <a href="#p014">14</a><br /> +Hebrews, <a href="#p025">25</a>, <a href="#p264">264</a><br /> +Hedonism, <a href="#p064">64</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a><br /> +Hegel, <a href="#p020">20</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Heraclitus, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p152">152</a><br /> +Hering, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Hero-worship, <a href="#p243">243</a><br /> +History, standpoint of, <a href="#p079">79</a>; of Christianity, different views of, <a href="#p266">266</a><br /> +Hope, even in doubt, <a href="#p013">13</a>, <a href="#p019">19</a>, <a href="#p037">37</a>, +<a href="#p048">48</a>, <a href="#p053">53</a>, <a href="#p105">105</a><br /> +Horace, <a href="#p021">21</a><br /> +Hypotheses, working, <a href="#p089">89</a>, <a href="#p093">93</a>, <a href="#p258">258</a><br /> +<br /> +I<br /> +<br /> +Idealism, <a href="#p065">65</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Illusions, <a href="#p002">2</a>, <a href="#p023">23</a> n., <a href="#p254">254</a><br /> +Immortality, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p234">234</a><br /> +Impostor, the, <a href="#p253">253</a><br /> +Individualism, <a href="#p072">72</a>, <a href="#p116">116</a><br /> +Individuality, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>, <a href="#p224">224</a><br /> +Induction, <a href="#p072">72</a>, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +Industrialism, <a href="#p222">222</a><br /> +Infinity, <a href="#p052">52</a>, <a href="#p102">102</a>, <a href="#p142">142</a><br /> +Institutions and institutionalism, <a href="#p016">16</a>, <a href="#p059">59</a>, <a href="#p260">260</a><br /> +Interest theory, in education, <a href="#p018">18</a> n.<br /> +<br /> +J<br /> +<br /> +Jesuits, <a href="#p172">172</a><br /> +Jesus, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Jews, <a href="#p025">25</a>, <a href="#p264">264</a><br /> +Jurisprudence, standpoint of, <a href="#p013">13</a>, <a href="#p047">47</a><br /> +<br /> +K<br /> +<br /> +Kant, <a href="#p110">110</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Knowledge, contradictory views of, <a href="#p041">41</a>; of law, and freedom, <a href="#p051">51</a>, +<a href="#p212">212</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and the unknowable, <a href="#p106">106</a></span><br /> +<br /> +L<br /> +<br /> +Labour, division of, in special relation of person and class, <a href="#p163">163</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">division of, in experience, <a href="#p232">232</a></span><br /> +Law, standpoint of, <a href="#p013">13</a>; courts of, <a href="#p047">47</a>; contradiction in idea of, +<a href="#p049">49</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and nature, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p218">218</a></span><br /> +Lawlessness, <a href="#p051">51</a>, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p261">261</a><br /> +Leadership, <a href="#p168">168</a>, <a href="#p196">196</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Leibnitz, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p154">154</a>, <a href="#p210">210</a><br /> +Lessing, <a href="#p019">19</a><br /> +Louis XIV, <a href="#p172">172</a><br /> +Luther, <a href="#p174">174</a><br /> +<br /> +M<br /> +<br /> +Macaulay, <a href="#p270">270</a><br /> +Machiavelli, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p261">261</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Malebranche, <a href="#p198">198</a><br /> +Materialism, <a href="#p065">65</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p175">175</a><br /> +Mathematics, <a href="#p088">88</a>, <a href="#p091">91</a>, <a href="#p096">96</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, +<a href="#p177">177</a>, <a href="#p215">215</a><br /> +Mechanic, the, as social type, <a href="#p228">228</a>; peculiar death of, <a href="#p238">238</a><br /> +Mechanicalism, <a href="#p082">82</a>, <a href="#p218">218</a><br /> +Method, Socratic, <a href="#p071">71</a>; historical, <a href="#p095">95</a>; experimental, <a href="#p084">84</a>, +<a href="#p095">95</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">mathematical, <a href="#p096">96</a></span><br /> +Miracles, <a href="#p053">53</a>, <a href="#p246">246</a><br /> +Monism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Montaigne, <a href="#p172">172</a>, <a href="#p176">176</a>, <a href="#p184">184</a><br /> +Münsterberg, <a href="#p109">109</a> n., <a href="#p112">112</a>, <a href="#p119">119</a><br /> +Mysticism, <a href="#p176">176</a><br /> +<br /> +N<br /> +<br /> +Nast, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +Nativism, <a href="#p196">196</a><br /> +Nature, return to, <a href="#p022">22</a>; relation of science to, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p056">56</a>, +<a href="#p074">74</a>; and<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">God, <a href="#p026">26</a>, <a href="#p203">203</a>, <a href="#p271">271</a>; +sympathy of, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p203">203</a>; and law, <a href="#p051">51</a>, +<a href="#p220">220</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as mechanical, <a href="#p217">217</a>; English and French views of, +<a href="#p271">271</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">knowledge of law of, and freedom, <a href="#p049">49</a>, <a href="#p212">212</a></span><br /> +Necessity, in conduct, <a href="#p047">47</a>; superstition of, <a href="#p049">49</a>, <a href="#p212">212</a><br /> +Negativity, <a href="#p003">3</a>, <a href="#p020">20</a>, <a href="#p037">37</a>, <a href="#p083">83</a>, +<a href="#p085">85</a>, <a href="#p094">94</a>, <a href="#p101">101</a>, <a href="#p125">125</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, +<a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Newton, <a href="#p097">97</a><br /> +<br /> +O<br /> +<br /> +Oratory of Jesus, <a href="#p176">176</a><br /> +<br /> +P<br /> +<br /> +Paradoxes, in ordinary consciousness, <a href="#p030">30</a>; in science, <a href="#p075">75</a>, <a href="#p098">98</a>; in<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">religion, <a href="#p103">103</a></span><br /> +Parallelism, <a href="#p204">204</a><br /> +Paris, <a href="#p172">172</a>, <a href="#p192">192</a>, <a href="#p251">251</a><br /> +Parmenides, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +Pascal, <a href="#p180">180</a><br /> +Person, nature of, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>; relation to reality, <a href="#p170">170</a>, <a href="#p184">184</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">relation to doubt and belief, <a href="#p171">171</a>; part in society, <a href="#p169">169</a>, <a href="#p231">231</a></span><br /> +Pharisees, <a href="#p262">262</a><br /> +Physics, <a href="#p087">87</a>, <a href="#p090">90</a>; epistemological, <a href="#p094">94</a><br /> +Pillsbury, <a href="#p212">212</a> n.<br /> +Plato, <a href="#p065">65</a>, <a href="#p155">155</a>, <a href="#p156">156</a><br /> +Poetry, <a href="#p276">276</a><br /> +Positivism, <a href="#p073">73</a>, <a href="#p106">106</a>, <a href="#p122">122</a><br /> +Practice, and theory, <a href="#p113">113</a><br /> +Principle, and programme, <a href="#p183">183</a>, <a href="#p191">191</a>, <a href="#p194">194</a><br /> +Programme, and principle, <a href="#p183">183</a>, <a href="#p191">191</a>, <a href="#p194">194</a><br /> +Protagoras, <a href="#p264">264</a><br /> +Protestants and Protestantism, <a href="#p174">174</a>, <a href="#p268">268</a><br /> +Psychology, <a href="#p010">10</a>, <a href="#p087">87</a>, <a href="#p091">91</a>, <a href="#p210">210</a>, <a href="#p212">212</a> n.; +physical, <a href="#p092">92</a><br /> +Purpose, <a href="#p011">11</a>, <a href="#p083">83</a>, <a href="#p084">84</a><br /> +<br /> +Q<br /> +<br /> +Question of fact, in science, <a href="#p083">83</a><br /> +<br /> +R<br /> +<br /> +Radicalism, <a href="#p066">66</a><br /> +Realism, of doubter, <a href="#p193">193</a>; of believer, <a href="#p193">193</a>; +in contradiction, <a href="#p143">143</a><br /> +Reality, double views of, <a href="#p030">30</a><br /> +Reformation, <a href="#p173">173</a>, <a href="#p266">266</a>, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +Relative, the, <a href="#p010">10</a>, <a href="#p136">136</a>, <a href="#p199">199</a>, <a href="#p200">200</a><br /> +Relativity, law of, <a href="#p010">10</a>, <a href="#p136">136</a><br /> +Religion, and scepticism, <a href="#p027">27</a>, <a href="#p184">184</a>, <a href="#p189">189</a>, +<a href="#p268">268</a>; as paradoxical, <a href="#p103">103</a><br /> +Renaissance, <a href="#p173">173</a>, <a href="#p268">268</a>, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +Rome, <a href="#p267">267</a><br /> +Rousseau, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p271">271</a><br /> +<br /> +S<br /> +<br /> +Scepticism, <a href="#p176">176</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a>, <a href="#p269">269</a><br /> +Science, as a return to nature, <a href="#p023">23</a>; like ordinary consciousness, <a href="#p057">57</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as confessing to limitations, <a href="#p056">56</a>; defined, <a href="#p058">58</a>; +as abstract, <a href="#p058">58</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as a "looking before leaping," <a href="#p058">58</a>; and duplicity, +<a href="#p061">61</a>, <a href="#p129">129</a>; method</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of, and environment, <a href="#p071">71</a>; specialism of, <a href="#p071">71</a>, +<a href="#p084">84</a>; as inductive, <a href="#p072">72</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">objectivism of, <a href="#p075">75</a>; technique of, <a href="#p076">76</a>; +and real life, <a href="#p080">80</a>, <a href="#p125">125</a>, <a href="#p128">128</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as conservative, <a href="#p081">81</a>; and question of fact, +<a href="#p083">83</a>; as negative and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">destructive, <a href="#p083">83</a>; specialism of, <a href="#p071">71</a>, +<a href="#p086">86</a>; "mergers" in, <a href="#p091">91</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">physical, as self-consciousness, 94; as paradoxical, <a href="#p075">75</a>, +<a href="#p098">98</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">agnosticism of, <a href="#p106">106</a>; aloofness of, in ideas of space and time and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">causation, <a href="#p108">108</a>, <a href="#p109">109</a>; application of, +<a href="#p114">114</a>; scepticism of, <a href="#p023">23</a>, <a href="#p258">258</a></span><br /> +Sin, original, <a href="#p131">131</a><br /> +Skill, special, as transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Smith, Adam, <a href="#p257">257</a><br /> +Socialism, <a href="#p116">116</a><br /> +Society, as sought by sceptic, <a href="#p021">21</a>; as related to individual, <a href="#p042">42</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p171">171</a>, <a href="#p231">231</a>; and science, <a href="#p023">23</a>, +<a href="#p060">60</a>; division of experience in, <a href="#p060">60</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as real to lower organisms, <a href="#p084">84</a>; as medium of conflict, +<a href="#p147">147</a></span><br /> +Society of Jesus, <a href="#p174">174</a><br /> +Sociology, <a href="#p088">88</a><br /> +Socrates, <a href="#p020">20</a>, <a href="#p070">70</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +Soldier, the, <a href="#p228">228</a>, <a href="#p238">238</a><br /> +Sophists, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p262">262</a><br /> +Soul, contradiction in idea of, <a href="#p035">35</a>; and body, <a href="#p227">227</a>, <a href="#p237">237</a>; immortality<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p234">234</a></span><br /> +Space, <a href="#p037">37</a>, <a href="#p038">38</a>, <a href="#p108">108</a><br /> +Specialism, blindness of, <a href="#p087">87</a>; in social organization, <a href="#p071">71</a>; of science,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#p071">71</a>, <a href="#p086">86</a>; dreams of, <a href="#p087">87</a>; +artificiality of, <a href="#p087">87</a>, <a href="#p097">97</a>; contradictions</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">due to, <a href="#p063">63</a>, <a href="#p098">98</a>; passing of, <a href="#p128">128</a></span><br /> +Spinoza, <a href="#p024">24</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a>, <a href="#p179">179</a>, <a href="#p198">198</a><br /> +Spirit, reality, or truth, as a, <a href="#p152">152</a>; of veracity, <a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, +<a href="#p170">170</a>, <a href="#p214">214</a><br /> +Stoicism, <a href="#p116">116</a>, <a href="#p265">265</a><br /> +Supernaturalism, <a href="#p032">32</a>, <a href="#p052">52</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +Superstition, <a href="#p049">49</a>, <a href="#p218">218</a><br /> +<br /> +T<br /> +<br /> +Technique, <a href="#p076">76</a>, <a href="#p119">119</a>; special, as transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Tennyson, <a href="#p089">89</a><br /> +Thales, <a href="#p034">34</a><br /> +Theology, <a href="#p026">26</a>, <a href="#p131">131</a><br /> +Time, <a href="#p037">37</a>, <a href="#p038">38</a>, <a href="#p108">108</a><br /> +Training, special, as transferable, <a href="#p165">165</a><br /> +Truth, spirit of, <a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p170">170</a>, <a href="#p214">214</a><br /> +<br /> +U<br /> +<br /> +Unity, contradiction in idea of, <a href="#p031">31</a>; as expressed through<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">contradiction, <a href="#p137">137</a>; of experience, <a href="#p160">160</a></span><br /> +Universality, of doubt, <a href="#p001">1</a>, <a href="#p007">7</a>; of human characters in general, <a href="#p161">161</a><br /> +Utilitarianism, <a href="#p066">66</a>, <a href="#p261">261</a>, <a href="#p263">263</a><br /> +<br /> +V<br /> +<br /> +Validity, spirit of, <a href="#p105">105</a>, <a href="#p133">133</a>, <a href="#p153">153</a>, <a href="#p214">214</a><br /> +Vanini, <a href="#p176">176</a>, <a href="#p180">180</a><br /> +Vitalism, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +<br /> +W<br /> +<br /> +Will, nature of, <a href="#p011">11</a>; freedom of, <a href="#p047">47</a>; to believe, <a href="#p193">193</a>; in relation<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">to agnosticism, <a href="#p121">121</a>, <a href="#p125">125</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Z<br /> +<br /> +Zeno, <a href="#p109">109</a>, <a href="#p147">147</a><br /> +</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Will to Doubt, by Alfred H. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Will to Doubt + An essay in philosophy for the general thinker + +Author: Alfred H. Lloyd + +Release Date: November 3, 2010 [EBook #34198] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILL TO DOUBT *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + + + + +THE WILL TO DOUBT + +AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY FOR THE + +GENERAL THINKER + +BY + +ALFRED H. LLOYD + +Truth hath neither visible form nor body; it is without habitation or name; +like the Son of Man it hath not where to lay its head. + + +LONDON + +SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim. + +25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C. + + +1907 + + + + +PREFACE. + + +The chapters that follow comprise what might be called an introduction +to philosophy, but such a description of them would probably be +misleading, for they are addressed quite as much to the general reader, +or rather to the general thinker, as to the prospective student of +technical philosophy. They are the attempt of a University teacher of +philosophy to meet what is a real emergency of the day, namely, the +doubt that is appearing in so many departments of life, that is +affecting so many people, and that is fraught with so many dangers, and +in attempting this they would also at least help to bridge the chasm +between academic sophistication and practical life, self-consciousness +and positive activity. With peculiar truth at the present time the +University can justify itself only by serving real life, and it can +serve real life, not merely by bringing its pure science down to, or up +to, the health and the industrial pursuits of the people, but also by +explaining, which is even to say by applying, as science is "applied," +or by animating the general scepticism of the time. + +That this scepticism is often charged to the peculiar training of the +University hardly needs to be said, but except for its making such an +undertaking as the present essay only the more appropriate the charge +itself is strangely humorous. One might also accuse the University of +making atoms and germs, or, by its magic theories, of generating +electricity or disease. Scepticism is a world-wide, life-wide fact; even +like heat or electricity, it is a natural force or agent--unless +forsooth one must exclude all the attitudes of mind from what in the +fullest and deepest sense is natural; scepticism, in short, is a real +phase of whatever is real, and its explanation is an academic +responsibility. Its explanation, however, like the explanation of +everything real or natural, can be complete only when, as already +suggested here, its application and animation have been achieved, or +when it has been shown to be properly and effectively an object of will. +So, just as we have the various applied sciences, in this essay there is +offered an applied philosophy of doubt, a philosophy that would show +doubt to have a real part in effective action, and that with the showing +would make both the doubting and the acting so much the more effective. + +But it may be said that effective acting depends, not on doubt, but +rather on belief, on confidence or "credit." This will prove to be true, +excepting in what it denies. To be commonplace, to write down here and +now what is at once the truism and the paradox of this book, a vital, +practical belief must always live by doubting. Was it Schopenhauer who +declared that man walks only by saving himself at every step from a +fall? The meaning of this book is much the same, although no pessimism +is either intended or necessarily implied in such a declaration. Doubt +is no mere negative of belief; rather it is a very vital part of belief, +it has a place in the believer's experience and volition; the doubters +in society, be they trained at the University or not, and those +practical creatures in society who have kept the faith, who believe and +who do, are naturally and deeply in sympathy. And this essay seeks to +deepen their natural sympathy. + +Here, then, is my simple thesis. Doubt is essential to real belief. +Perhaps this means that all vital problems are bound in a real life to +be perennial, and certainly it cannot mean that in its support I may be +expected by my readers to give a solution of every special problem that +might be raised, an answer to every question about knowledge or +morality, about religion or politics or industry, that might be asked. +Problems and questions, of course the natural children, not of doubt, +but of doubt and belief, may be as worthy and as practical as solutions. +Some of them may be even better put than answered. But be this as it +may, the present essay must be taken for what it is, not for something +else. It is, then, for reasons not less practical than theoretical, an +attempt to face and, so far as may be, to solve the very general problem +of doubt itself, or say simply--if this be simple--the problem of +whatever in general is problematic; and, this done, to suggest what may +be the right attitude for doubters and believers towards each other and +towards life and the world which is life's natural sphere; emphatically +it is not the announcement of a programme for life in any of its +departments. + +The substance of chapters I., II., III., IV., and V. in small parts, and +VI. and VIII. was given during the summer of 1903 in lectures before the +Glenmore School of the Culture Sciences at Hurricane in the Adirondacks, +and except for some revision chapters V. and VII. have already been +published--Science, July 5, 1902, and the journal of Philosophy, +Psychology and Scientific Methods, June, 1905. + +To Professor Muirhead, the Editor of the Ethical Library, I wish here to +express my hearty appreciation of his interest and assistance in the +final preparation of this volume for publication. + + A. H. L. + + THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, + ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + I. Introduction + II. The Confession of Doubt + III. Difficulties in the Ordinary View of Things + IV. The View of Science: its Rise and Consequent Character + V. The View of Science: its Peculiar Limitations + i. Science would be Objective + ii. Science would be Specialistic + iii. Science would be Agnostic + VI. Possible Value in these Essential Defects of Experience + VII. The Personal and the Social, the Vital and the Formal in Experience + VIII. An Early Modern Doubter + IX. The Doubter's World + i. Reality, without Finality, in all Things + ii. Perfect Sympathy between the Spiritual and the Material + iii. A Genuine Individuality + iv. Immortality + X. Doubt and Belief + Index + + + +THE WILL TO DOUBT. + + +[p.001] + +I. + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of +doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different +departments of life one sees doubt. And one sees, too, some of the +blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that +one sees. There is heat everywhere in the physical world, but not +necessarily only arson or even destructive fire. Morals, however, social +life, industry, politics, religion, have suffered somewhat--and many +would insist very seriously--from the prevailing doubt. Moreover, if the +outward view shows doubt everywhere, the inward view is at least not +more reassuring. Who can examine his own consciousness without finding +doubt at work there? We would often hide it from others, not to say from +ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. Other times +may also have been times of doubt, but our day, as the time to which we +certainly owe our first and chief [p.002] duty, is very conspicuously +and very seriously a time of doubt. + +Now there are some, and they are many, who would decry the discussion of +such a thing as doubt, for they see only danger ahead. Doubt they +compare with death or disease, and to dwell upon any of these is idle, +unnatural, morbid. Why not let such things alone, and look only to what +is pleasant, to what is good and true and beautiful? Then, too, doubt, +the confession of doubt, is the royal entrance to philosophy and the +risk of an entanglement with philosophy, which seems to them the source +of much that is harmful, the essence of all that is impractical, is +altogether too great. Doubt for them is even less to be played with than +fire, with which already it has been compared here. Again, as others in +matters political and industrial, so they in matters intellectual and +spiritual resent anything that appears likely in any way to disturb the +standing credit of the country. To doubt is just to join the opposition, +and the opposition is made up of heretics and agents generally of mere +destruction. To treat doubt as real and positively significant, as +having any true worth in human experience, as being even a proper object +of will, is to stop permanently, not the wheels of commerce and +industry, but the wheels of the present life in all its phases. In a +word, perhaps one of the words of the hour, Christian Science has not +wished to be more inhospitable to the reality of disease than have these +believers to the reality and usefulness of doubt. + +Yet all who feel in this way are short-sighted. Their contentions, like +those of their cousins, perhaps [p.003] their country cousins, the +Christian Scientists, may have worth for being corrective, but at very +best they are only one-sided. In a fable, never in real life, a man +might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize +the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the +alarm of fire would involve; but doubt is not less real nor less +dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful +applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, +then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook +or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a +part in real life? The negative things of life can be so only +relatively. Death itself cannot possibly be absolute, and doubt, not +unlike death, indeed perhaps only one of death's messengers, must be +even a gift, or an agent, of the gods. Some things, dangerous when +hidden, are wonderfully serviceable, when recognized and controlled. +Sometimes men really have entertained angels unawares. + +And so throughout these chapters, although some may think me and those +who follow me morbid, and although we may have to enter the dangerous +parlour of philosophy, the doubt of our time is to be squarely and +fairly faced. In all candour, we are from the start to be confessed +parties to it, hiding nothing intentionally, and at the same time trying +always to give nothing undue emphasis. The doubt that all seem to know, +that many really feel without perhaps clearly confessing, and that some +confess or even actually boast, we shall face and examine closely, +[p.004] trying as we can to find its true meaning and real worth. In +short, the confession of doubt, of our doubt, and the fruits of +confession are the burden of these chapters. + + + +[p.005] + +II. + +THE CONFESSION OF DOUBT. + + +Our confession must, of course, be thorough-going, and can be made so +only through a complete statement of every possible reason that +experience affords for the attitude of doubt. To the end, therefore, of +such a statement we shall consider in this chapter certain general and +easily recognized facts about doubt itself, while in chapters that +follow we shall continue the confession by examining, first, our +customary or "common-sense" view of things, and then the view of +science, and having brought together in each case numerous +incongruities, or contradictions, which ordinarily are at best only +casually noticed or timorously overlooked, we shall find ourselves +facing in a peculiarly telling way, not only certain strong reasons for +doubt, but also some of the real issues that doubt raises. As no issue, +moreover, can be more central or crucial than the meaning of the +contradictions found to pervade our views of things, before completing +our confession we shall allow ourselves some reflections, that should +prove useful to us in the end, upon the possible worth of contradiction +in human experience; for even to casual thinking contradiction, although +good ground for scepticism, suggests some positive advantage and +opportunity; the advantage of breadth, [p.006] for example, of freedom +from special form, or the opportunity of personal spontaneity and +initiative as against the restraints of formal consistency, of class, +and of institution; and if these things, among others, can be associated +with our case for doubt, our reflections will certainly not have been in +vain. Then we shall close our confession by seeking the companionhip of +a great doubter of modern times, and by learning what we can from him of +doubt itself and of the doubter's natural world. And finally, as a +result of all our own efforts, supplemented by his help, we shall be +able to reap some of the fruits for life and thought that a confession +so fully made may fairly claim. + +From start to finish, moreover, of this study of doubt we have to +remember that there can be no important difference between what is +possible and what is real. Thus anything whatsoever that can possibly be +doubted is really doubtful. Also, if anybody is amazed to hear mention +of facts about doubt, as if doubt should not somehow submit to its own +nostrum, let him merely reflect that, strangely enough, nothing is quite +so indubitable as doubt, nothing so convincing as the reasons for doubt. +Let me not be too subtle, but to doubt doubt is only to affirm it, and +somehow--whether for good or ill need not now be said--all the negative +things of life possess a peculiar certainty, and are all most easily +proved. A great Frenchman once put the case quite plainly when he said, +after canvassing very carefully the whole field of his consciousness, +that his doubts were the only things there, the only things he could be +quite certain about, and these were so very real that they left him +absolutely [p.007] nothing but belief in himself, in his all-doubting +and ever-doubting self, to rest upon. His was surely a sweeping +confession, and his residuum of belief may not at first sight seem very +promising or very substantial, but quickly, I think, we shall find +ourselves in agreement with him, at least as to the reality and the wide +scope of our doubting, and it is also a possibility well worth +foreseeing that we may even find his belief in the reality of an +ever-doubting and all-doubting self a rock for our own saving. + +So, to turn now to those general and easily recognized facts, which were +to be the special interest of the present chapter, in the first place: +_We are all universal doubters_. We are all universal doubters in the +sense that every one of us doubts something, and there is nothing which +some of us have not doubted. Who would be so rash as to say that what a +fellow-being had questioned might not be questionable to himself also, +or that, if anything in his own experience had ever been subject to +question, all the other things might not also be subject to question? +But the merely dubitable is the already doubtful. In this sense, +therefore, not so abstruse and formally logical as it may appear, we are +all universal doubters. + +Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, +some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and +science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive +things these verities are! How shallow, or how hollow all of them are, +or at one time or another may become. To take a rather minute case, such +as it is [p.008] always the philosopher's license to make use of, a case +that is, however, quite typical in experience; here is a word--any word +you like--that has been spoken and written by you for years. Always +before it has been spelt correctly and clearly understood, but to-day +how unreal it seems. Are those the right letters, and are they correctly +placed? Is that the true meaning? What has happened, too, to give rise +to these unusual questions? Well, who can say? And who has not +substantially asked every one of them, not merely with reference to some +long-familiar word, but also with reference to much larger things in +life? Self and society, love and friendship, mind and matter, nature and +God have again and again been subjected to essentially the same +questioning. The verities of life, all the way from simple words used +every day to the great things of our moral and spiritual being, have +lost, sometimes slowly, sometimes very suddenly, the reality with which +we have supposed them endowed, and although we may still bravely believe +we find ourselves crying out passionately for help in our unbelief. +There certainly are the verities; not one of them can possibly fall to +the ground; yet these very verities are never quite in our experience. + +Still the world has its thoroughly confident people. Every one of us has +met some of those estimable beings to whom doubt seems wholly foreign, +people who assert with trembling voice and sacred vow that their +convictions, political perhaps or religious, are unassailable, and that +they must hold them to the grave. But, whatever may be said of political +convictions, religious convictions have often been [p.009] regarded as a +contradiction of terms. How can one be sure and religious at the same +time? Moreover, positive people under any standard are notoriously as +fearful as they are dogmatic. Fear is often, if not always, the chief +motive of dogmatism, and fear is hardly the most natural companion of +genuine confidence. The part which the emotion of fear has had, both in +the personal life and in the doctrine of the dogmatic among men, would +make a most instructive study. + +If, then, dogmatic people are slaves to their fears, while more +thoughtful people, as has not needed to be said, seem to get no reward +from their self-consciousness but the uncertain reward of their doubts, +then only such as live quietly, asserting nothing, depending on nothing, +and even assuming nothing, but simply taking what comes, are left to +represent genuine belief. Yet how many such are there? A few may seem to +approach the ideal, if ideal it be, but the class itself in realization +must be said to be a hypothetical one, and few, if any, of us could ever +really envy or strive to imitate its supposed manner of living; for, in +spite of all the dangers and all the doubts and fears, only the +constantly examined life can ever really lure us. Doubt, besides being a +general condition of life, seems to be also incident to what gives life +worth. + +But, furthermore, not only are we all universal doubters; the case for +doubt in the world is, if possible, even stronger; for also--and this is +the second general fact: _Doubt is a phase, nay, a vital condition of +all consciousness_. To be a conscious creature is to be a doubting +creature. + +[p.010] In so many ways psychology is teaching us to-day with renewed +emphasis that we are conscious of nothing as it is, and that more or +less clearly we all know our shortcoming in this regard; or again, with +still more directness and emphasis, that for us there is no such thing +as a state of consciousness which does not indicate tension, or unstable +equilibrium, that is to say uncertainty, in our activity. Nor have we +need of the testimony of science to these facts, since common personal +experience is well aware of them. In small things and in great +consciousness transforms or refracts. In small things and in great +consciousness marks a moment of poise between an impulse to do +something, and more or less distinctly recognized conditions or +relations that would put restraint upon the doing of it. Even the law of +relativity, a psychological law only in its definite formulation, in its +idea a simple fact of everyday experience, true for all conscious states +from the crudest perceptions of the organs of sense to the most highly +developed ideas of critical reflection, by binding as it does all the +details of actual or possible experience into a whole, every part of +which acts upon the other parts, points very directly to this fact of +poise and instability, besides indicating also that knowledge never can +be literally or objectively exact, and that at least with some clearness +every knower must know it cannot. How can there ever be even a single +stable or a single finally accurate element in the consciousness of a +creature whose experience, in the first place, can comprise only +related, interdependent parts, and whose nature, in the second place, is +an essentially mobile and active [p.011] one? Moreover, as just one +other way of suggesting the inexactness and uncertainty of consciousness +and the balancing, tentative nature of all conscious life, we always +think, and think properly, of conscious creatures as having will, as +doing what they do purposely or from design. The new psychology, +however, to which we naturally turn, and which again has only formulated +what we can recognize from everyday experience, declares that the +purpose in conscious activity is not a developed, but an always +developing one. Purposive action is action that never finally knows, but +is ever finding out its real intent, purpose being identical with the +progressively discovered meaning of action. A volitionally, purposively +active being is always a seeker as well as a doer. Indeed, any doing +would itself be empty, or idle, if it were not a seeking, and so if it +were not subject to conditions of some uncertainty. In so many ways, +then, through the necessary inexactness of consciousness, through the +unstable equilibrium of all conscious activity, through the law and fact +of relativity, and through the tentative and provisional nature which +must always belong to purpose, we see how doubt must be a phase or +condition of all consciousness. + +Illustrations are abundant. Thus, once more to take a somewhat minute +case, which is really more significant for being minute, with regard to +conscious activity being in a state of tension, visual sensations always +involve muscular sensations, and these are incident not only to +expressed, but also to possible, yet restrained, movements. The eyes may +have been [p.012] moved and the head turned, but in spite of the +impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the +observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been +raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines, +although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always +present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. Or, +again, to adopt an illustration used for a different purpose by +Professor William James, so simple a process as the spelling of a word +is complicated with all sorts of diverting and unsettling impulses as +each letter is expressed. Let the word be _onomatopoetic_. Can I really +spell it correctly? And what a gauntlet of dangers I have to run. The +initial letter _o_ tempts, perhaps with childhood memories of the +alphabet, to _p-q-r-s-t_, etc., or to indefinite words or syllables, +actual from my past or possible to my future experience, such as _of, +off, opine, October, -ology, -ovy_, and so on, or, to suggest mere +possibilities, such as _ontic, oreate, ot_, or _ow_; and every +succeeding letter is equally a scene of combat, a place of dangers +met--safely met, let us hope, and triumphantly passed. Worthy the boy, +or the man, who reaches the end unhurt. And what a voyage of +uncertainties, what a course between hope and fear, confidence and +doubt, the spelling of words or the spelling of life as a whole always +is. One's whole vocabulary, real or possible, or one's whole repertory +of acts is more or less directly involved, whatever one does. As to the +tentative nature of purpose, which seems the only other point here that +can possibly require illustration, the right we all [p.013] reserve to +change our minds in the different affairs of life tells its own story. +We never do do, or can do, exactly what we consciously would do; and +recognizing this, men, as well as women, insist on the right of a change +of mind, and sometimes even of conscious misrepresentation or of +disparity between their seeming and their being in thought or in deed. +That such a claim has its dangers does not now concern us; it has also +its opportunities; but the fact of it and the ground for it are quite +evident. Even jurisprudence, for which loyalty to established and +visible forms is peculiarly sacred, has its ways, direct and indirect, +of recognizing that purposes develop, that the returns are never all in, +that any purpose or meaning must sooner or later assume a new form, and +so may even now be other than it seems. Bequests for institutions, for +example, are allowed to continue in force, although, with the demands of +a more enlightened day, the formal conditions under which they were made +have been openly violated. In short--for it all comes to this--"Not the +letter, but the spirit," is an inevitable comment, or at least an +inevitable feeling about everything that is done. A man vaults a fence, +and then, even if he get over fairly well, vaulting is not what it was +for him. He may continue to use the old word, or the same arms and legs, +but with a changed meaning and a changed feeling of limb and muscle, and +so with a new purpose and a new body to control and modify his next +performance. And what is true for vaulting is true also for making boxes +or tables, for writing essays, for talking, for thinking, for founding +colleges or theological seminaries, or finally, for [p.014] what we so +indefinitely call living. An activity such as throughout its length and +breadth ours is, conscious activity that must for ever heed the call: +"Not the letter, but the spirit," an activity that never is, therefore, +and never can be without the elements of the game, since it must ever +wait on its own revealed consequences in order to grow into an +understanding of its real meaning; such an activity, among other things, +cannot but fasten doubt upon us as a most natural heritage. As man is +conscious, to doubt is human. Other things may be human, too, but doubt +is so certainly and conspicuously. + +Thirdly, in this presentation of general facts: _Doubt is inseparable +from habit_. Habit is usually associated with what is permanent and +established, but just here lies its undoing. As we usually understand +it, habit really deadens what it touches by leading to abstraction or +separation from actual conditions. Conservative as it surely is in +things important and in things unimportant, in things personal and in +things social, it sets him who is party to it behind the times, for no +act in its second expression, no simply repeated act, no mere habit +could ever be up to date in the sense of really meeting all the +emergencies of its own time. Personal habits make fixed characters; +social habits make customs and laws; religious habits make churches and +creeds; intellectual habits make schools; and of all these products, +which for the sake of the single term we will call institutions, it must +be said, however paradoxically, that in being made they are also +outgrown, for the habitual turns formal and unreal and so unsatisfying. +A growing nature has [p.015] her ways of making even conservatives keep +pace with her. An institution in the sense of an acquired manner of +action, personal or social, can never really be an end in itself, +although to a narrow view it may often seem to be; it is at best only +the manifested means to a newly developed or developing end which must +eventually transform it. In so large a thing, for example, as political +life, the institutes of monarchy have become the instruments of +democracy, and this conspicuously ever since the French Revolution; in +the history of thought, of man's intellectual life, the objective dogmas +of one time have been only the subjective standpoints of the next, the +metaphysics of one time has made the scientific method, the working +hypothesis, of the succeeding time; and in so small a thing as a child's +vocabulary, the oft-repeated and finally mastered syllable _ba_, or some +other equally intellectual, has become in time only one of the means to +a whole word, say _baby_ or _bath_, or even _basilica_ or +_barometrograph_. In all life the thing we get the habit of is only a +tool with which we strive towards something else. Some one thinking no +doubt of Hercules has called the institutions of life a great club which +the irresistible arm of society, always a hero when looked back upon, +swings fatally against the present. + +So intimately is change seen nowadays to be related to habit, or +indirectly involved in it, that in technical science a new account of +habit has been formulated. To cite but one case, Professor Baldwin, +says:[1] "Habit expresses the tendency of the organism [p.016] to secure +and retain its vital stimulations," and such an account, placing the +interest of habit in so general and so changeable a thing as "vital +stimulations," is designed to make habit fundamentally, not merely a +tendency to repetition or imitation, but instead a demand for constant +adaptation or differentiation. In the doctrines of inheritance, also, +always moving necessarily in close sympathy with those of habit, a +similar departure has been made. Both habit and inheritance are in fact +seen to belong to life in a world of change, or variation, and they have +assumed what I will style a protective colouring accordingly. The habit +of always being adapted is at least as radical as it is conservative. + +With this reform in the account of habit we have not only analogous +reforms, as was said, in the account of inheritance, but also in the +scientific view of character, custom, law, creed, and the institution +generally. Moreover, if in scientific theory we find these new views, in +practical life there are at least signs of the same standpoint. What may +be called a new conservatism--the most truly conservative thing being +taken to be the most thoroughly pertinent or adaptive thing--has for +many years been getting possession of us, and is now quite manifest. Our +political constitutions are amendable constitutions; our religious rites +and doctrines are recognized as only symbols; our theories are only +standpoints. + +So, once more, because change is at least an ever-present companion, if +not actually an integral part of habit, doubt must be as real and +general as habit. [p.017] Change must make doubt. Sociologically, +institutionalism must always imply a contemporary scepticism; the +conservative must have an unbeliever for his neighbour. Indeed, to add +an important point, some go so far as to say in general that change, +that is, something new and different, is not only a necessary incident +but also an actual motive in all activity, and when all is said they +seem quite right. Perhaps habit, as always an interest in adaptation, +would imply as much. Certainly novelty is a universal motive, and as for +society there can be no question that it has a very strong predilection +for lawlessness in all its forms. True, it may be objected that at times +men, individually or collectively, seek not something else, but simply +_more_ of something already secured; more money, it may be, or more +learning, or more territory, or more pleasure. There is, however, in +spite of man's many conceits to the contrary, no change that is purely +quantitative. _More_ is also _different_ or _other_. Accordingly, we +both always find, and, what is even more to the point, always seek a +real change whenever we do anything. To speak again in most general +terms, the motion in the outer world, which is the fundamental stimulus +of all 'consciousness, both physically, that is, literally, and +figuratively, is more than merely an outer stimulus; something there is +within the nature of the subject which answers to it with perfect +sympathy and makes it equally an inner motive. Forsooth, could any +stimulus ever produce a response without its being in accord with an +existing motive? Life, then, is a game, and the game of life, doubts and +all, is a real interest as well as a necessity. We are [p.018] creatures +of habit, but we have, and we cherish, no habit stronger or more +essential than the habit at once of adaptation and variation.[2] + +A fourth general fact, very closely related to the foregoing, is this: +_Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience_. Doubt is +but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real +life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the +challenge finds expression. The doubter is a questioner, a seeker; he +has, then, something to overcome; he fears, too, as well as hopes. + +Were all things settled once for all, were all things clearly known and +freely executed, or were the consequences of the things to be done +always capable of being accurately foretold, there would be no real +[p.019] living, there would be nothing really to do. In such case life +in general, or in any of its different expressions, religion, or +politics, or art, or science, or industry, or morals, if one may suppose +for a moment that any of these differences could ever develop, would +consist in a purely passive condition, a mere fixed status; it would be +a wholly static thing falsely called life; its movement, if movement +there were, could be only the rest or routine of strictly mechanical +motion. + +To a real life, then, doubt, as an evidence of challenge and resistance, +is absolutely necessary, and appreciation of just this necessity is +certainly an important part of our present confession, and the +confession is important, because it is sure somewhat to brighten what +heretofore may have seemed a dark horizon. Confession often changes +night to dawn, and here the association of doubt with real living, with +a world in which there is always something to do, awakens emotions that +such words as relativity, and instability, and change, and even game, +have discouraged, or even wholly suppressed. Leasing, perhaps better +than any one else, has given expression to these emotions, and has at +the same time reflected what in his day had certainly begun to be, and +what in our own time very widely and very deeply is, the ideal spirit. +Thus, as he wrote:-- + +"Not the truth that any one may have or may think he has, but the honest +effort which has been exerted to compass it, makes what is really worthy +in human life. For not in having, but in seeking truth, are those powers +developed, in which alone man's ever-increasing [p.020] perfection +consists. Possession makes us inert, lazy, proud. If God held in his +right hand the perfect truth, and in his left the ever-restless struggle +after truth, and bade me choose, although I were bound to be ever and +always in the wrong, I should humbly select the left, saying: 'Father, +give; surely the pure truth is for Thee alone.'" + +This is a splendid utterance, and it has touched a responsive chord in +human nature the civilized world over, not so much, however, for the +humility of the choice as for the zeal in a life of seeking and +striving, or for the idea that knowledge is itself a dynamic thing, a +living, moving function, not a passive possession. The knower is made +also a doubter, and the doubter appears as having, in a sense, +forgotten, without for a moment betraying, the constant doubting within +him. If I may so speak, he has, even while he lacks; such is the +condition of his seeking; such is the way in which doubting is necessary +to real living. Doubt saves from the possession that makes "inert, lazy, +proud," yet does not take away. Doubt makes experience always deep, even +putting consciousness in touch with reality, and it makes life for ever +living. + +Still others may be quoted in the same vein. Socrates made life, +particularly mental life, if this may be supposed distinct, essentially +active or dynamic when he identified true wisdom with self-conscious +ignorance, with a power in one of always finding oneself in error, and +in modern times Hegel has done the same thing as effectually, though +perhaps not in general so intelligibly, by finding a principle of +negativity or contradiction the very mainspring of all [p.021] +consciousness, of all thinking. Known truth is at once imperfect or even +false, being necessarily partial, relative, and at best only tentative, +very much, let us say, recalling something already remarked, as an +established form of life is no longer the real life, but merely the +developed means to a revolution, a life that is passing even as soon as +it has come. + +For the rest, the positive value of doubt to real life can hardly need +further emphasis. In one form or another the idea, as important as many +may find it commonplace, must constantly recur in these pages. We turn, +therefore, to our fifth, and for the present, last general fact, with +which we shall find ourselves still in sight, perhaps even in clearer +sight of the brighter horizon. We are all universal doubters; doubt +underlies all consciousness; even habit has gloomy doubt, as Horace +would say, sitting up behind; like pain or want, like ignorance or +contradiction, doubt is a dynamic principle, making experience deeper +and ever deepening, and life real and alive; and fifthly: _As man is +dependent and feels dependent, he is a doubter. His widespread, or +rather his universal, sense of dependence begets doubt_. Witness the +fact that doubt shows man a seeker after company; the company of nature, +the company of his fellows, the company of God. + +Of course the social impulse, thus to be associated with doubt, is only +one of the phases of its dynamic and life-giving character, for a social +life, a life of dependence on what is without, of real relations beyond +self, must be a life of real and constant movement. Nothing so much as +such relations gives [p.022] vitality. This special phase, however, of +the place of doubt in real life is a very interesting one, and it +suggests, besides, so much that is of positive value as almost to +transform what so far has been in large part a sceptic's confession into +a sceptic's boast. + +Thus, in the first place, doubt seeks the company of nature. "Return to +nature!" has time and again in human history been the cry of the human +heart. Has civilization lost its hold, seeming unreal, artificial, +formal? Has morality become hollow? Has a lover suffered the shattering +of his dearest hopes? Has a creed lost its credibility? Have you and I +wearied of our study or our labour, whatever it be, and come to wonder +if it, or anything, is worth while after all? Have friends, ideals, and +God Himself deserted us? We turn, and all people turn to nature. Exactly +so the homesick traveller takes himself homeward, or the prodigal arises +and goes to his father. And your experience and mine, and the poetry of +all literatures, which tells so deeply the experiences of all men of all +times, are a constant witness to the comfort, and forgiveness, and +renewed confidence in self that nature imparts. Nature is our infancy, +in which all things are possible; she is our untrammelled will; she is +infinitely hopeful for us and infinitely kind; her necessity is so wide +and so open that its very law, so different from any human law, is our +greatest opportunity. True, our resort to nature is sometimes, perhaps +in greater or less degree always, by the way of moral dissipation, or +political anarchy, or intellectual suicide, or religious profanity; but +even these dark ways to the home and the great mother-heart of [p.023] +us all have never been hopelessly misleading. If history and literature +and personal experience can be trusted, even they have led to a kind +nature. Have you never failed in anything and become reckless, and then +profited from the very knowledge of yourself which the recklessness +uncovered? Personally and socially recklessness, return to nature that +it is, is always a helpful assistant to nature's great teacher, +experience. Great is the pathos, but also, as it is understood, great is +the inspiration of Rousseau's passionate outcry that his will was +perfectly good. He was incapable of a single wholesome relation in life, +yet, so he said, no man was better than he! Rousseau, philosopher of +revolution, spoke for nature. Out of her great love, nature always takes +the will for the deed--and perhaps she alone should have the privilege +of doing that; for she knows that the deed, however violent, however +bad, is sure to leave at least the will good. + +But intellectually, as well as morally or politically, or as well as in +any of the departments of the practical, emotional life, when trouble +comes we turn to nature. Nature has a mind as well as a heart, and when +state, and church, and social tradition have lost their validity and +infallibility, their various formulae being no longer reasonable to us, +when we have to depose them from their position as our accepted +teachers, then we become scientists, which is to say, intellectual +prodigals. Science, the open-minded study of nature, is only a +homesickness for truth seeking relief. Does the scientist doubt? He is +one of the princes of doubters. He doubts, as in due time we [p.024] +shall more fully appreciate, even to the extreme position of +agnosticism. He doubts all things human that always he may be learning +of nature. + +So the companionship of nature for the comfort and pardon which she is +sure to give, and for the deeper knowledge which she is certain to +impart, is a passion of the doubter. True, no passion is free from +dangers; yet this passion, at least this passion, has somewhat of hope +in it. + +But, secondly, the companionship of one's fellows is not less strongly +desired. Huddling together in time of distress is by no means peculiar +to the animal world; in human life it has more than once made distress +seem richly worth while. "We have each other" in word or thought has +been the comforting reflection of many a family, or many a community, +when the money has gone, or when in other ways, possibly through a great +fire, or a great earthquake, or the ravages of a disease, afflictions +have come, and "Now we know how others have suffered" has been not less +common. Indeed, it is my own conviction that these two reflections +always rise together. The distress or affliction of doubt, however, is +certainly no exception to the rule. Doubt often separates an individual +from the customary corporate life with which he has long identified +himself, throwing him out of his church, or his party, or his society, +or even his immediate family, but the doubter at once feels his +loneliness, and gets a yearning, never realized before, for social +relations. Benedict Spinoza may have been better than most of us, but he +was not in any other way different, and though maligned and insulted, as +earlier in history [p.025] another of his race had been, for his doubts +and heresies, and though exposed to the dangers of the assassin's knife, +and finally, when other measures failed, with special cruelties +excommunicated by his synagogue, he loved his people, and all men +besides, as few have loved them. Doubt makes one dependent; isolation +gives a sense of loss; and, if ever a solution of the doubt comes, in +the life and consciousness which it enjoins the lost companions, whether +they will or not, are included with oneself. In many ways this is an +important fact; yet it must suffice that we see the affinity of the +doubter for society. Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. +Dependent man and doubting man must have society. + +That doubt, furthermore, not only creates a motive to social life, even +to the restoration of lost companions, but also by weakening the +barriers which have divided some class, a sect perhaps, or a party, or a +nation, or a race, from some other class, puts social life on a broader +and deeper basis, is also an important fact, and full of significance +beyond our immediate interest. Thus, to suggest indeed how those two +reflections mentioned in the preceding paragraph are inseparable, +besides his wish to retain or recover his wonted companions, the doubter +would also associate them and himself with new companions, I venture to +say, as if in a figure, with Gentiles as well as with Jews, and this +gives to doubt, or to those who experience it and adequately use it, a +most significant role in the evolution of society, the role of mediation +between old friends and new, between the past and the future, the narrow +life and the broader [p.026] and deeper life, what is conservative and +what is progressive; but at least for the present it is again enough if +we see that doubt, not only by its personal losses gives the motive, but +also by its removal of barriers gives the larger possibility of society. + +And, in addition to the company of nature and the company of man, doubt, +springing as it does from man's sense of insufficiency, seeks also the +company of God; yet not of the God of any theology. As here conceived, +God is that which lies at the back of nature, and at the back of man in +the sense of being in character broader and deeper than either of these, +and quite superior to any difference between them; he is the single, +all-inclusive, wholly indeterminate reality upon which the doubter +depends, and must depend; he is as nameless and unspeakable as he is +indeterminate and all-inclusive, and he is real and perfect only as so +nameless. To theology, God is determinate; to doubt, imperfect if +determinate. At times, perhaps only half in earnest, or at least not +clearly knowing if he is in earnest or if he wishes others to think him +so, the doubter speaks of nature as his God, of the hills, or the +fields, or the sea, or the sky, or the busy street as his church, or the +great book of the universe as his Bible. At times, with the deepest +emotion and with open avowal, nature and God are fully one to him, and +the poetry, or the science, or the philosophy, to which his doubting +leads him, is veritably a religious revelation. But always his doubting, +as he knows it, as he is honest with it, is an appeal, not merely to +nature as physically a powerful agent in the life he is pursuing, nor to +others like himself who, by sharing, [p.027] may lighten his distress +and enhance his final victory, but also to a full, inclusive experience; +to a life, perhaps like his own, yet indeterminately deeper than any he +has known; to a mind and a heart, such as he knows must be present in +that which surrounds him and moves within him, in knowledge more +enlightened and in emotion more inspired, than his doubting mind and +faltering heart have ever been; and such a life or such a mind or heart, +whatever name it be called by, is God. Can mind appeal to anything but +mind, or heart to anything but heart? And doubt--can it be doubt without +the appeal? + +The doubter who refuses or hesitates to speak the name of God may thus +be a protestant, but plainly he is no atheist. A mere name, in any case, +is quite as likely to obscure as to illumine the reality; the +chiaroscuro effect must ever belong to it. Doubt is no road to atheism. +As a way to theism it may be beset with hardship, and its goal may be +quite beyond the horizon; but the doubter is not by nature an atheist; +quite the contrary. As no other, feeling dependent, he is a seeker, and +even a confident seeker after what is perfect. He truly and confidently +seeketh, for he seeketh after what hath neither visible form nor body, +what is without habitation or name, what, like the Son of Man, hath not +where to lay its head. He seeketh, what his very seeking itself is, not +a God, but the life of the God. + + * * * * * + +The general facts about doubt are now before us, and although much needs +yet to be said in explanation, and a further fact is reserved for a +[p.028] concluding chapter, still not so darkly as it began this first +chapter in our confession of doubt has come, perhaps somewhat abruptly, +to an end. We have next, entering more fully and critically into the +conditions of our human experience, to scrutinize closely our ordinary +habits of mind, those common-sense views of things that on the whole +prevail among men. In these ideas, impulsive, unreasoning, above all +often flatly contradictory, we shall find some of the strongest reasons +for our doubting nature. + + +[1] _Mental Development of the Child and the Race. Methods and +Processes_. By James M. Baldwin. Macmillan, 1895. + +[2] Let me add, that if certain people, struggling in the present maze +of educational theory, and objecting, with a zest and a combativeness +that fairly belie their contentions, to the use of interest as the +primal educational motive, if these people would only recognize change +as always a part of interest, their greatest trouble would be removed. +They refuse to have education easy or pleasant; interest, they insist, +must make it so; and doubtless the advocates of interest are in part to +blame for this view; but change, which to my mind is involved in all +interest, includes resistance and struggle; change is ever a challenge +to effort; and, such being the case, an education led by interest is not +necessarily easy or idly pleasant. The real meaning of the interest +theory, at least as I have to understand it, is simply (1) that the +natural child or the natural man always has something to do, and (2) +that education should promote that something. It is far from meaning +that there should be no compulsion or discipline, no pain or +self-denial. Whoever honestly over expected to do, or ever did any thing +without these? The interest theory, then, would not eliminate hardship +or discipline, but, to my understanding, by making education serve +actual life, would substitute a natural for an artificial and externally +imposed hardship. Not hardship, but real achievement makes the educated +man. + + + +[p.029] + +III. + +DIFFICULTIES IN OUR ORDINARY VIEWS OF THINGS. + + +If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences +against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the +jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it +would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the +different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be +offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the +consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. True, for some +reason lying deep in human nature, a defence that ends by convicting the +jury of error, is hardly likely to lead to the immediate discharge of +the prisoner; judges or jurymen are not in the habit of taking a rebuff +in that way; but in course of time the prisoner will be justified, and +his justification, however tardy, is all that now concerns us. To his +defence, therefore, and the discomfiture of his judges, but to the +latter without any malice, we turn at once. + +And where shall we begin? Our predicament in this defence is something +like that of the small boy, bewildered over the task of "picking up" his +nursery. [p.030] "I can't do it," he says. "There are so many things; I +can't tell which to take first." Poor little fellow! If he halts now, +what will he do when the littered room--I had almost said the littered +playroom--of his later life confronts him? Contradictions under foot +everywhere are certainly not less confusing than blocks, horses, papers, +trains, marbles, picture-books, and the like--or unlike--scattered over +a nursery floor. + +Here, for example, in practical life is the natural, physical world. How +real, brutally real, it is; its very law is fate; its forces are no +respecters of persons, inexorably ruling and compelling all alike, +giving life and taking it, full of the grimmest humour, raising hopes +only to cast them down. Is some one rash enough to suggest that things +physical are only so many ideas, real only as states of mind, of God's +mind possibly, in some way coming to consciousness in the senses of men? +The practical man knows a thing or two about that. He kicks a stone, or +strikes his fist loudly upon a table, and so ends the matter, laughing +the mad idealist away. And yet, prestissimo change! What do we hear him +saying now? This brutally real world of physical things and powers is +but a fleeting show; a thing only of space and time. What is really real +and abiding is the spiritual that is everywhere and always. Another +world there is, not to be spoken of in the same breath with this present +world, a world compared with which this is but a mist before the eyes. + +In so many familiar ways this duplicity towards what is real is +manifest. People go to church to do such a wonderfully strange thing; +nothing more [p.031] nor less than to save their real souls from an +unreal world, or sometimes to hide a real worldliness under unreal rites +or symbols. "You may think me worldly, selfish, sensuous," says some +one, "and I can not deny that often I do seem so, but this life of mine +is ever only a yearning after the things that are spiritual, for which, +as you see, I pray so earnestly, and which have nothing at all to do +with one's worldly life." Yes, we do see, and particularly we see that +things spiritual are often an impertinence in worldly affairs. The "real +self" never does the things that are really done. Only this, just this +is where the duplicity lies. Again, from some one else, a practical man +presumably and an accuser of the doubter, we hear the following: "Only +the spiritual life is real; look to it that you fear, as I fear, deeply +and constantly the material world hanging like a sword over us all." Can +it be, as would certainly appear, that superstition is still among us, +that so readily we can give reality to unreality, that belief in ghosts +still holds our human minds? Once upon a time--at least once--the +Christian Church rose in bitter resentment because a certain man, by +merely questioning the separate reality of the physical world, +threatened to deprive the holy priesthood, with all its time-honoured +prerogatives, of its heaven-appointed labour. Yet what is to be said of +a church that prefers to think of an independent physical world, by +which man is bound and damned, in order to save for itself the task, +either hopeless or useless, of rescuing him? Labelling a man "rescued" +or "Christian" does not make another-world creature of him. In political +history, too, what [p.032] a paradox it is that kingship by divine right +has always been also kingship by physical might. The practices of an +avowed supernaturalism have always been strangely materialistic. + +So, in high places and in low, in the affairs of men now and in the +past, the physical and the spiritual have ever been in a most remarkable +relation; each real in and by itself, but with a most unusual courtesy +also unreal at the slightest motion from the other; each now supreme, +and now wholly subject; each now the whole life of man, and now the very +opposite, the antipodes of all that is human; and each self-existent and +independent, yet never without its real need of the other. Here surely +is contradiction, or vacillation, in experience that is, to say the +least, very confusing to him who reflects.[1] + +But, to take up something else certainly not less confusing to the +ordinary mind, "practical," and unaccustomed to reflection, this is a +world of separate, individual things, of chairs, hands, atoms, eyes, +stars, men, stones, books, leaves, rivers, lives, mountains, relations, +notions, distances, days or years, and so on, [p.033] indefinitely and +above all indiscriminately; a world, moreover, into which in part God, +in part man, defying an equally powerful agent of chaos or dissipation, +has put at least for a time a certain kind of order, an order that might +be said to be good enough for all practical purposes. Yet with all its +indiscriminate manifoldness, and with the irregular, uncertain conflict +between chaos and order, it is nevertheless a single world, in short, +just one more individual thing, one more example, perhaps outdoing all +others, of the marvellous license with which human beings are wont to +speak and think of a "thing." Chairs, hands, mountains, men, stars, and +the whole universe, are all "things," and in this world of things, that +is itself another thing, or, should I rather say, _apart from_ this +world of things, that is another thing, there are two, at least two, +discordant powers taking turns at making order and disorder. + +Confusion indeed! Nor have I exaggerated it. The loose association of +chairs, distances, and days; the easy assumption of two supreme agents +working against each other; the certain uncertainty about these agents +being in the world or out of it, of it or not of it; and the readiness +with which the whole universe, the all-inclusive thing, is treated as +only one more thing to be included: these habits of the ordinary mind +show a confusion that seems like insanity. Can we even face them safely +and soberly? + +For special regard I select just one, perhaps the central one; the habit +of treating the universe, the unity of all things, as but one additional +thing, the whole, as if it were only another part, the complete [p.034] +and infinite as if distinct from or outside of what is finite or +incomplete; or again, in good old philosophical terms, the One as if it +were another and so in effect, but one of the Many. Now some there are, +and their number may be large, who never have thought of the +contradiction and consequent confusion in the notion of a single world +made up of many single things, yet itself another thing, or of the +Infinite as external to the Finite, or of the One as not in and of the +Many, but the contradiction is there, and can scarcely need more than +mention to be seen. + +Even in theory, scientific or philosophical, the wholeness or unity of +the many things of the world has sometimes been taken for just one more +thing, as when Anaximander taught that it was "that thing which is no +one of the world's things," or for one of the many things supposed by it +to be unified, as when Thales so naively declared all things to be +water. Anaximander and Thales were only ancient Greeks, albeit very wise +and enlightened Greeks, living as early as 600 B.C., but in very recent +times they have had followers. Electricity has been taken as the one +force of all other forces. Our chemists, some of them, have been hunting +down the one element among the rest. Statesmen and churchmen have often +dreamt of one man as somehow in his single person expressing the unity +of all human life, and more than once they have even imagined him +present in the flesh. God, although the Being in whom we, as ourselves +persons, live and move and have our being, has Himself been another +person. Society and its supposed component individuals have made two +orders [p.035] of existence. Life and living creatures; history and its +many events; the solar system and its planets: nature and all her +various kingdoms: these have also been held apart, making amazing +dualisms. But, simply to repeat from above, taking the whole or the +unity of all things as itself an independent thing, as itself one more +thing, is a contradiction that needs only to be stated clearly to be +appreciated. Let me hope that I have stated it clearly. + +Nor is this particular conflict in our ordinary ideas yet before us in +all its fatefulness, for--as if to defy the principle of consistency to +the very last degree of its forbearance--we are often, if not usually, +given not only to unifying our world of things in terms of just one more +thing, or of persons in terms of just one more person, but also to +thinking of this one more thing, or person as _sui generis_, as +altogether different in nature and substance. So do we mingle our +duplicity about reality with that about the unity of things. The many, +for example, are physical or of the substance of matter; the one is +ideal or of the substance of mind or spirit. The many persons are merely +human, the One is divine. Strange, indeed, that men should ever take one +more as the unity of all the rest, but if possible it is at least, at +first sight, stranger that this one more should be relegated to a sphere +wholly apart and peculiar. In the madness of such compounded +contradiction there may lurk real method, but of the contradiction and +of the compounding there can be no question. + +Even the soul, a something, an entity, that each one of us has been in +the habit of claiming for himself [p.036] and of holding very sacred and +inviolate too, has been subjected to the same way of thinking. +Doubtless, since God has not been spared, we should hardly expect the +soul to escape. We view the soul so materialistically, even while we +insist that it is not material. We say, we think, that it is something +in the body; yet, of course, we are at our wit's end to tell just what +particular place it occupies there. Similarly, God is supposed to be +somewhere in the Universe, yet in no assignable place, and the chemist's +universal atom is somewhere also, though surely not in the same place, +and, wherever it be, waiting with its own, yet certainly a divine +patience that ought to be inspiring, for experimental discovery. But +with regard to the soul, although the life and unity of the body, +although one of the things in the body, the soul itself is not bodily at +all; it can enter the body and is important--who dares say how +important?--to the body, and it can, as at death, leave the body, but +though for a time in, it never is of the body. A strange standpoint +certainly, but men insist that it is quite as true as it is strange. It +seems very much like saying that when you build a house, in order to +ensure it real solidarity, to give it real permanence and integrity, you +should make a special point of putting your bricks or your lumber +together, not with clinging, well-set mortar, or strong pins and +straight-driven nails, but so much more sensibly, because so much +further from what would be like the material bricks or lumber, or like +the equally material mortar or nails, with those real and really compact +things, absolutely continuous or indivisible, or at least indestructible +[p.037] even when disintegrated, empty space and pure uneventful time. +With such space and time there would be union indeed I But, again, +strange as such a procedure in building a house would be, men insist or +at least I can readily imagine their insistence, that houses are built +in that way, and built successfully. The method may seem absurd, but +they insist that it is not madness. Are not abstract plans and such +seemingly unsubstantial things as mathematical formulae, which are very +near to being made of empty space and time, the real strength and +integrity of all our great modern structures? And the soul, whatever be +said of its being an immaterial thing, is nevertheless, even for being +both immaterial and thing, the very sinew of the body. + +Here may be method, then, and sanity, but there is always contradiction, +obstinate contradiction, compounded contradiction! The soul, unity of +the body, is only another thing or part in the body, and at the same +time, though in the body, it is after all not really of the body. +Possibly, perhaps necessarily, such patent contradiction, and, more than +all, such compounding of contradiction, like doubling a negative, make +for what is without contradiction, but this wholesome result is not +consciously intended, and in the face of all, whatever our hopes or our +beliefs, we must feel grave doubts and confess our doubting. Those who +do build better than they know, if enlightened, would not again build in +the same way. Two contradictions may be better than one, but even two +make us wonder. + +Closely connected with the contradictions in our [p.038] customary ideas +of reality, and ideas of wholeness or unity, there is the way in which +we calmly take opposite sides in our notions about space and time, and +about that very fundamental factor of our experience--causation. These +are, all of them, so general and fundamental as possibly to seem too +abstruse even for mention in this place, since throughout these chapters +we are courting simplicity, but of space, and time, and causation, only +what is very simple needs to be said. Thus to the ordinary consciousness +how fatally things are separated from each other by conditions of space +and time. Then is not now. Here is not there. Space and time are only +physical and as brutal as all things physical, separating this from that +with a finality that knows no degree. Lovers, continents apart, despair +over the cruel distance. Time tears us ruthlessly from those dear to us. +What is to be, as well as what was, though in the next moment, is +absolutely beyond our grasp. Could anything be freer from dispute than +the reality and the separating brutally of space and time? Yet, almost +at a whisper, all distance and all duration become as nothing. Do not +the lovers write to each other, flatly and passionately denying that +they are far apart? Do we not constantly forestall the future and retain +the past? Indeed, when all is said, a thousand years are as one day, and +all the places of the earth are one. So real, and so vast, and so +physical to us but a moment ago, space and time have now passed into +mere phantoms of the imagination. We live, then, not only in a world +that is brutally spatial and temporal, but also, and at the same time, +[p.039] in a world that is not spatial and not temporal at all; and +living here--or there?--we have again to wonder and to doubt even in our +belief. To our own constant amazement we find that we make our life a +bridge over what would seem to be an absolutely impassable chasm. + +As for causation our temerity is not less surprising. Wet and dry moons, +unlucky Fridays, holy and unholy numbers, haunted houses, so-called +providences, free in the sense of indifferently, irresponsibly free +wills and fiat deities with their suddenly made worlds may not be +generally in vogue at the present time, at least among the better +educated, the enlightened and not infrequently conceited classes, but +even among the wise and the consciously informed they have their natural +offspring, and I am not so sure that many of them might not be found +almost intact, at least in the more retired parts of the consciousness +of my readers. To illustrate, for some if not for all of us, this is a +world of many free and independent causes, yet also it is the single +effect of one cause; it is again, our mood having changed, the single +effect of two absolutely unlike beings or natures, each of them an +all-powerful cause; it is a sphere here and now of causal, creative, +productive activity, but it was itself created once for all long ago, at +a date which the exegete hopes--in the equally distant future!--to +determine for us; it contains some things that are only causes and some +that are only effects, or some, or all, that are both causes and +effects; it has parts that are the accepted causes of other parts; it +has causes, those acting now and the one original cause, that are +temporally [p.040] antecedent to their effects; and, not to make the +list longer, it is variously a world of one last effect, of one first +and only cause, of an infinite series of causes and effects, and in +whole, or in part, it constantly shows something made out of nothing or +nothing resulting from something. A wondrous world most assuredly; and +yet at first statement this record of our various notions of causation +may not appear as a very serious arraignment of the consciousness which +it exposes. Moreover some people actually glory in such a wonder as it +presents. But, to be plain, though also monotonous, the uncaused cause +or the effect that is only a part of the whole, or the cause or the +effect that refuses to share in the other's nature, or finally the +causation that is now so individual and so manifold and so effective, +and that was once so single and so complete, is something that must give +any thinker pause. Can a moving body move an immobile body? Can some +things in the universe be mobile; others not? Can the moving body and +the moved body belong to different moments of time? Can motion lead to +rest or rest to motion? But our ordinary ideas of causation would allow, +or even require, an affirmative answer to every one of these questions. + +Alas! Shall this labour proceed? Can we afford to continue it? The +defence of the doubter is getting almost too successful; it is becoming +too personal to be pleasant. The task of picking up the room of our +ordinary life grows harder, not easier, as it moves forward. Every thing +that we touch tells of a spirit of violence in our nature. Even the +small boy can not have been more lawless, for his toys were all [p.041] +battered perhaps, but not, like ours, all broken. Can we afford to go +on? Afford it or not, we simply can not help ourselves, for our +self-confidence is already shattered; our attention to the disorder is +already beyond our control; each one of us is the doubter we would +defend. + +Here close at hand, where we have to see it, is another contradiction +common in all human experience. It inheres in our conceits about +knowledge. For us, on the one hand, the world we know not only really +is, the tree out yonder or the planet miles and miles away being really +and actually there, but also is just the world which our knowledge +reports to us. What we have knowledge of is in our belief a real thing +in and by itself, and we know it literally and directly, not +figuratively, not afar off through symbols; we know it as it is; we know +a real world, and we know it face to face. Yet, on the other hand, with +all this simple confidence in our knowledge, what are we also given to +saying, or assuming when we do not say it? Even in the moment of our +confidence we humble ourselves with the cry of our utter foolishness, +making our recognized foolishness only a counter-conceit. What but +perfect folly is our knowledge before God's knowledge! "Illusion! The +dream of a few hours or a few years!" is so often the best we can say of +the whole fabric, past and present, of human consciousness. Not now, but +only in the hereafter are we to see reality face to face; now we see +only very darkly, if at all. + +Some one here protests strenuously, raising an objection that might very +properly have been raised [p.042] before. Thus, I am told that only +different people, or only the same people at different times, ever hold +two opposite views, whether about knowledge or any thing else; never one +and the same person at the same time holds them both; and so the present +arraignment can not be as serious as it is made to appear. Well, with +this objection I can agree in part, for there is at least a half-truth +in it, but by no means does it tell, either in general or in particular, +that is, with regard to the special case of the conceits about +knowledge, the whole story of double living or double thinking among +men. Indeed the easy way, in which men make the distinctions of society +or the distinctions of time bear the responsibility for what must always +in the end be the conflicts of their personal lives, is but another +illustration of the difficulties besetting their ordinary views of +things. Duplicity of view, like anything else in experience, must always +be more than a matter of different people or different times, for the +simple reason that, whether directly personal or not, it is present in +the environment of the individual person. So, even if those two +positions, confidence in worldly knowledge and religious trust and +humility, for the sake of argument be momentarily associated only with +different persons or social classes or times, our present point will +really be just exactly as pointed, for there is always a third person or +class or time into whose direct single experience the duplicity or +contradiction is bound to enter. Consider, for example, the case of a +child. For a part of the week he is perhaps at school; on Sunday at +church; and the life in which he thus takes part must [p.043] appear to +him, there being in all probability little or no reservation on either +side, to be hopelessly divided against itself. Now is knowledge power; +now hindrance and greatest danger. Now he is to learn all he can; now, +on the other hand, to forget what he may have learned. So is the +conflict about him made his personal conflict, and exactly as in his +case, so in all human experience the individual must share personally +whatever the environment affords. + +The individual and the environing society are the closest of blood +relations, though we often allow ourselves, all too easily as has been +said, to lose sight of the fact; they live under the same roof, and rely +for sustenance on the same fare; and while to some the contradictions of +life may be overlooked as personally impertinent and unimportant, being +referred wholly to the environment, they are plainly the unavoidable +heritage and the personal responsibility of every individual that counts +himself a member of the human race. The objection, then, that was raised +does not remove contradiction as a cause of doubt, but merely emphasizes +what in a subsequent chapter must occupy us, the social aspect of +experience.[2] Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our +view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, +but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a +matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of +the single person's inner responsibility. Society in its manifold +classes, in its conflicts and in its history, may help us to see the +whole of experience, the unity [p.044] of experience on all sides and in +all parts, but it never does, and it never can, relieve the individual, +or deprive the individual, of any side or part of what makes up an +experience-whole. Grown men and women may be more definitely set in +their lives and their ideas to certain specific things than children, +but in no one, young or old, can such specialism ever be wholly +exclusive of any of the other things. + +To return to our immediate interest, if men are given to being doubters +in their views about reality, spiritual and material; about unity or +wholeness; about space and time, on the one hand fatally vast and +independently real, and on the other formal and illusory; about +causality, so actual and positive now, and yet so complete yesterday, or +ever and ever so long ago; and about knowledge, so perfectly wise and so +thoroughly vain and foolish; if, I say, men are double in all these +different ways, in their moral judgments they seem, if possible, even +more confused, and the confusion, the division against themselves, is +the more serious for being with regard to what so directly concerns +personal life and human fellowship. + +To begin with, as will indeed readily appear, the offences of our moral +judgments, which often, if not always, are largely influenced by +religious or rather theological conceptions, are only a peculiar +expression of the two-faced attitude towards causation, human persons or +wills being the causes specially involved. In general the causes of the +universe are of three sorts, those of natural force, those of +supernatural agency, and those of human agency, and although toward them +all essentially the same attitude is [p.045] assumed, it is worth our +while to consider particularly the causation that is commonly adjudged +to belong to the human will and the moral ideas that spring from it. + +For the purposes of the moral consciousness we translate the two +conflicting powers of our world, or the spiritual reality and the +material, into two agents of good and evil respectively, each having a +power of doing whatever, true to its peculiar character, it may will to +do, and then, as if in accord with this way of thinking, we find two +distinct selves, a good self and an evil self, within each one of us, +and we also divide the body social into two exclusive classes, the class +of those who are identified with the righteous life and the class of +those given to the unrighteous life, the sheep and the goats, the elect +and the damned. But, to say nothing of the fact that these three ideas +of the two powers, the two selves and the two classes, cannot be made +really to accord with each other, although they possess an outward +agreement, is it not clear that any attempt to take the good and the +evil as two mutually exclusive things, be they spirits or selves or +classes, is to destroy at once the real substance of virtue and the real +value of the consciousness of evil? In practical life this means, what +everybody knows so well, that an isolated, unduly holy righteousness, a +sort of touch-me-not goodness, is bound to be empty, to be only +ritualistic and aristocratic or pharisaical, and in any one of these +respects it appears decidedly unrighteous; while an isolated +unrighteousness, besides having at least the moral worth of a protest +against its counterpart, is in itself exactly like the original [p.046] +sinfulness of the theologian; being unavoidable, it is wholly without +any warranted opprobrium. Indeed, it all but comes to this, that +righteousness as a fixed thing, fixed to a part of the universe or to a +part of the individual self or to a part of society, is really in just +so far evil, and the direct opposite of such righteousness is +proportionately good. Good and evil, then, may not mix well, but certain +it is that contradiction results from the common attempt of men to +regard either as untainted or untempered by the other. + +Still, not upon this real difficulty in our moral judgments would I now +lay greatest stress, although it is real enough and important. In yet +another way our moral consciousness is at war with itself. In estimating +the worth of human conduct, so far as this is determined by its +initiation, we are in an almost hopeless tangle. We are more than likely +to think of other people as influenced by their environment in what they +do, of ourselves as quite original and responsible, as independent of +any such influences; or, more fully and more exactly, we are given to +referring our own bad deeds to environment, our good deeds to ourselves, +while for others we are prompted to do just the reverse, referring their +good deeds to environment, their bad deeds to themselves. Such is human +nature--not, to be sure, at its best, but common human nature; and even +when we escape the foregoing personally invidious distinctions, we +still--and this is the main point--treat self and environment as two +naturally conflicting, altogether independent sources of conduct. Two +different and independent sources of anything, [p.047] however, can only +make for conflict and contradiction. If only our courts of law could +judge responsibility either wholly from the determinations of +environment or wholly from those of personal will, or again, if only the +will and the environment could be seen as not so radically opposed, what +a simplification would ensue, and how much freer and more certain +justice would be. To venture on a variation of an aphorism, where +there's another way there is always a loophole; where there's +environment there is always a shifted responsibility; where there's a +"free will" there is always a will taken for some unperformed or +imperfectly performed deed. + +So the double origin of conduct offers a very serious difficulty, which, +when it is understood, is not unlike that of the two powers or selves or +classes, but even more is to be said in exposure of our moral judgments. +Thus we have the confident conceit of freedom, of our own freedom in +good or our neighbour's freedom in evil, or in general of man's freedom +to act without regard to the determinations from environment, but we +have also a strange though possibly a fortunate way of qualifying the +very freedom that we claim. We claim freedom only to avow, almost in the +same breath, duties and responsibilities. We have the freedom, but only +the duties make it worth anything. A startling paradox this, so familiar +to us all: "I am free to do all that I ought to do," or, "I am free to +carry out certain necessities of my true life." A startling paradox; +and, above all, a strange way of escaping the necessities of +environment, unless, forsooth, it really opens the door, or supplies a +secret door, by which the [p.048] necessities of environment and the +necessities of one's true life can come together? If freedom demands +law, why should it hold aloof from the natural law, the law of +environment so definitely present? Possibly, then, as once before +suggested, one contradiction in experience may be the corrective of +another, the paradox of freedom and duty only correcting the +contradiction of two sources of conduct, personal will and environment. +In the case, for example, of the disposition to distinguish between +one's own acts and another's, with respect to their initiation by will +or by environment, to mingle duty and necessity with one's own supposed +freedom is equivalent in effect to denying one's neighbour's freedom +because of the restraints of his environment. But such considerations, +however promising for future reflection upon the conflicts in our moral +consciousness, are not of immediate interest. Our doubts may once more +find hope in the reflection that the faults of experience may balance +themselves, but we have no occasion to abandon our doubting as idle or +meaningless. Contradictions that balance each other, errors that are +mutually corrective, are still contradictions, are still errors. + +So, to reduce our moral judgments, confusion and all, to small compass, +we are free, others are not; they are free, we are not; and our freedom +is bound by duty, by duty to the moral law, while their freedom, unless +a hopeless lawlessness, is bound by the environment and its law. Again, +good and evil are each unmixed, and moral acts serve two masters--that +is to say, spring from two sources. We may, therefore, [p.049] still +believe in morality--yet how can this be? And freedom--yet how is +freedom possible? + +But finally, as last to be examined, there is the idea of law, just now +brought to attention. This idea is a focus for a good many conflicting +views. Witness the familiar argument from the knowledge of law in nature +to fatalism, an argument as absurd as it is widespread, for the bare +fact that we know the laws of nature really emancipates us from the +blind fate to which the argument points. Can knowledge ever mean +anything but freedom? Certainly no law can ever be known unless the +sphere of its operation accords with the nature of those who have the +knowledge. Simply to know is to share in and be at one with whatsoever +is known, and the clearer and more cogent or rational the knowledge, the +truer and realer is this participation or union. The law we know, then, +must have all the meaning and the natural authority of a law of our own +enactment, and so must actually have the sanction of our will. Will, I +say, cannot help sanctioning knowledge, for knowledge is always true to, +because conditioned by, the natural action of the knower. But no such +message of freedom, or say of human opportunity in natural necessity, is +commonly received by men at large from the evidences of law in nature. +Superstitiously they see only fate. Clear knowledge and blind fate! + +Nor are we commonly satisfied with only so much superstition. We go +still further and make the case as bad as possible by treating the law +we know as if in its spirit, if not in its letter, it were final. In +other words, we view nature, with some of whose ways we [p.050] have +become conversant, not merely as a source of blind fate, or external +necessity, for our lives, but also as essentially and ultimately a +sphere of strictly mechanical routine. Yet here again we are surely +reasoning beyond our premises--the very essence of superstition--for the +routine we know can never answer substantially, or even formally, to +nature as she really is. Our positive knowledge, our knowledge that +arrives at specific formulae, even though these formulae reach the noble +dignity of mathematics, is bound to be in terms of some particular +experience, personal or national or racial; it is relative and special; +it is partial knowledge; and he is superstitious, and does, indeed, +argue beyond his premises, who takes the whole, whose law he does not +know, to be literally analogous to the part, whose law he thinks he +knows, but can in fact know only partially. No whole ever is one of its +parts, or merely analogous to one of its parts; _a_ law never is _the_ +law, or even in its lawfulness literally analogous thereto; and +mechanicalism, whether as a popular or a philosophical "ism," has no +justification save just this false analogy. + +And the prevalent confusion in the notions of law or lawfulness is of +course reflected in the corresponding notions of lawlessness. Here, as +with other negative terms, men forget that negatives necessarily are +quite relative to their positives. All specific, definitely manifest, +known and positive lawlessness simply must have some place in _the_ law +of things; it can no more be an absolute lawlessness than any human +routine can be supposed final; and, on the other hand, there can be no +positive law whose breaking has not some [p.051] sanction; there can be +no lawfulness which does not warrant some lawlessness. This truth, +perhaps as nothing else could, must show the error in the notion of +mechanical routine as affording an adequate description of the ultimate +nature of things. Where the whole always gives point to the negation of +any of its parts, where _the_ law always sanctions some breaking of any +law, to think of the whole in terms of its parts may be human, but it is +of the human which is prone to err. Those who would still insist upon +seeing only routine in law, and upon judging lawlessness as only +relative to such seeing, might do well, rising above their ordinary +views, to remember with some real appreciation that once upon a time the +law-breakers and the reformer were very closely associated; they were +associated in life, and at the end they were crucified together. +Whatever may be one's theology, there is a deal of food for thought in +those deaths on Calvary and in the several lives which they closed. + +Lawlessness suggests the supernatural. So many have promptly concluded +that just as with the knowledge of law in nature human freedom must be +resigned, blind fate taking its place, so anything or anybody at all +supernatural, Satan--for example--as well as God, must once for all +withdraw. If law reigns, God can will whatever he wills only because the +law is so; the law is not so because he wills it; and this in common +opinion only makes him decrepit, without real initiative, dead. Yet, +once more, what superstition! The knowledge of law has never robbed man +of his freedom, nor even slain his God; or this at least: the loss of +freedom or the death of God, for [p.052] which any law that man has had +knowledge of has been responsible, has always been only the forerunner +of a larger and fuller freedom and of his God's resurrection and +glorification. This or that law may rob and may kill, but this or that +law, let me reiterate, never is _the_ law, and why common opinion has to +judge all things in heaven and earth, as if it were, is hard to +comprehend. Neither nature nor God, if these two need to be thought of +as two, is law-bound; each rather, with a meaning which I must hope now +to have made clear, is law-free. The law in which nature is free is as +infinite, as transcendent of any particular human experience as the +ever-developing freedom of man or as the will of God. And God, or the +Supernatural, is not confined to the narrow sphere of what man knows, as +man knows it; this stands only for what man calls nature. God is the +all-inclusive sphere or source of the absolute law, for which knowledge +can be only a constant striving, or which is itself even a party to the +constant striving. Somehow _the_ law must be a living thing, not a +routine: the supernatural must be not nature as she is known, but +nature's fullest and deepest life. + +Very emphatically what has just been said about nature or God being +law-free, or about _the_ law being infinite, or not analogous in form or +substance, in spirit or letter, to any thing in positive knowledge, is +no argument for the Jonah story or even for the miracle of the wine at +Cana's wedding feast; and yet time and again people who apparently +should have done enough thinking to know better, to the great +satisfaction of thousands have used the infinity of [p.053] nature's or +God's lawfulness, which is to say the only partial and tentative +character of all human knowledge of law, as a clinching proof of all the +miracles in the Bible. Can they not see that like what is lawless in +general, the miraculous must be in the premises only relative to the +experience of the time? Even chance is not less so. The spiritual +meaning of those miracles may persist, for the miraculous we must always +have with us; but if even our relative, imperfect knowledge stands for +anything, if it be even a tentative knowledge, a working standpoint, the +literal truth of most, or even all of them, disappeared long ago. +Miracles, like laws, come and go; only the miraculous, like _the_ law, +goes on forever. + +And this leads to something else, to something also very common, perhaps +the reverse of the foregoing. With what an unaccountable delight many of +us have accepted naturalistic explanations, for example, of the sun +standing still, or of the retreat of the waters of the Red Sea, or of +the Immaculate Conception, or of any of the many other marvels in either +the Old or the New Testament, and have thought that so our old beliefs +are to be preserved. I have myself heard honest and earnest men, even +members of an academic community, appeal to parthenogenesis as a fact in +nature which would at least make the miracle of Christ's birth +scientifically plausible as well as spiritually significant; but such an +appeal, besides being, in my opinion, positively irreverent, is as blind +religiously as it is ignorant scientifically. Cannot such men +appreciate, and cannot all others who do as they do also appreciate the +fact that naturalistic explanation of [p.054] any miracle, if really a +genuine explanation, may prove the fact, but must in just so far +destroy, I do not say the miraculous, which is indestructible, but the +particular miracle? + +The lawful miracle, then--lawful, of course, so soon as explained--is +one more contradiction in our prevalent notions about law. That it +exemplifies, too, a habit of mind which is exercised by us in many +directions besides that of interpretation of the arbitrary things of the +Bible can hardly need be said. In life generally the arbitrary is +peculiarly fond of going to law, sometimes to what is called nature's +law, as when revolutionists of all sorts--strikers and radical +reformers--raise the cry of "natural rights," laying down the law as to +what men are by nature, and sometimes to "human" law, as when the +conservatives in government or business with their vested rights, be +these coal mines, oil fields, or political privileges, appeal for +"justice" to the courts or to the military. + +But, to say no more, with the lawful miracle, with law the strange +support of what is arbitrary, with this as a very good example of the +duplicity which in general we are all of us wont to allow in our +practical life, the present exposure of our ordinary consciousness must +come to an end. With regard to the real substance of things, or to their +unity, or to the nature of space and time and causation, with regard to +the worth of knowledge, with regard to our human conduct, to its freedom +and responsibility, or finally with regard to the place of law in nature +and in the life of man, our ordinary consciousness is manifestly +inconsistent and vacillating--nay, is grossly contradictory; and we are +[p.055] led at least to suspect that the disorder which we have found is +inherent and essential, having the nature of an original human defect. +Such a defect, however, is cause for doubt; so that man, above all +"practical" man, having inconsistency or duplicity as almost, if not +quite, an uncontrollable habit with him, should be himself a prince of +sceptics. + +And yet, although we have indeed found man spending at least his waking +hours in a room that seems disorder incarnate, and although before the +court of practical life the doubter seems thus to have been thoroughly +justified, while his too hasty judges are in turn condemned, +nevertheless the case for doubt is not of such a character as to leave +absolutely no hope for belief. Now and again in the evidence, as it has +been disclosed, have we not felt the presence of something, not yet +given its due weight, that would make man more than a mere doubter and +unbeliever? Have we not been led to suspect that somehow, without loss +of their reality and validity, the most cogent reasons for doubt, even +the contradictions in our views of things, might turn into bases of +belief, that an experience essentially paradoxical may not be as +hopeless as at first sight it may appear, that in all the madness there +is at least a chance of some method? The view of science, however, must +be examined before our attention can be turned definitely upon such a +possibility. Enough if in our present doubting we are still left with a +little hope. + + +[1] In the rise of Christian Science, against which I have no special +grudge, although I have already taken exceptions to its claims, there is +a special case, special because affecting a single, relatively small +class, of the popular hospitality to contradiction. Thus, the Christian +Scientists would reduce all reality to mind, but at the same time they +busily deny reality to a large group of mind facts, namely and notably, +the ideas of disease. Recently, it is true, according to the newspapers, +their healers have been told to "decline to doctor infectious or +contagious diseases," yet not because such diseases have any reality, +but because the illusion of them is so real as to make the "Christian" +treatment of them both imprudent and impractical. Philosophies and +religions of illusion are certainly weird, uncanny things! + +[2] Chapter VII. + + + +[p.056] + +IV. + +THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS RISE AND CHARACTER. + + +With science we usually associate accuracy and consistency, and at first +thought we are not likely to expect that the work and standpoint of +science can contain anything substantial enough for the doubter to base +his claim upon; but second thought is our first duty at this time, and +second thought always changes the view, and in this particular instance +it will show science in important respects to be quite as vulnerable as +the unreflective consciousness of practical life, for science also is +honeycombed with contradiction and paradox. + +More than once scientists themselves have turned sceptical about their +work and its results. The cry of bankruptcy in science, not merely as a +charge, but also as a confession, has been heard in the land not +infrequently; now perhaps low and uncertain, but again clear and strong. +And why not? Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other +men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? +Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally +different from the ordinary consciousness. The same eye is looking at +[p.057] the same world, only through microscopes and telescopes. The +same mind is measuring the same environment, only with carefully devised +instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and +rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness +highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps +without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say +that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the +inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple +sensations of a bird. The mechanics of flying, so elaborately present to +the former, are nevertheless also present in the latter, while with both +we have the same eye or the same mind looking and the same world seen. +The boasted methods and ideals of the one are but the only half-waking +instincts of the other, and whatsoever is essential to either belongs +also to the other. But, to mark the great difference between them, the +inventor has the disposition to treat flying abstractly--that is, as if +a thing by itself, as if for its own sake; and he goes even farther, +making abstraction of the mere explanation and mechanical expression of +flying; while the bird simply flies, and, if I may hope to be +understood, all things else, the sun and the wind, the trees, and all +living things, and you and I who follow his course are flying with him. + +But no poetic soaring such as this can satisfy our present needs. To +understand and appraise the view of science we must trace its rise as +clearly as we can, [p.058] and then critically examine its peculiar +conceits, its own ideal methods and attitudes. + +As for the rise of the scientific view, we may well return to the +definition of science given above: the ordinary consciousness highly +developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically +conscious method and clearest possible perception. Perhaps development +of anything is always at the cost of abstraction; but be this as it may, +science certainly arises through an abstraction, namely, through the +abstraction of consciousness of one's world, through the treatment of +this mere consciousness as something to be cultivated quite for its own +sake; and the motive and the meaning of such a treatment are not far to +seek. Consciousness, to the exclusion or inhibition of direct, overt +action, becomes a matter for abstract, which is to say, exclusive +cultivation, with any serious change, with any upheaval in the familiar +conditions of life. A man--or boy, if you prefer--is taking a +cross-country run, and for a time all goes well; the manner of his going +suffers no interruption, or no serious interruption; but gradually the +undergrowth thickens from low bushes to higher brushwood, and at last, +perhaps quite suddenly, breaking through some wild hedge, the runner +finds himself at the very edge of a stream too wide and too deep for any +ordinary crossing. Thereupon his running, or at least his forward +running, say the running of his "real life," ceases, and looking takes +its place. He is now, in a familiar phrase, "looking before leaping"; +yet with his looking there is a good deal of running too, more or less +overt, but also more or less [p.059] instrumental or merely mechanical, +as, going from one point to another, he measures the relations of bank +to bank, or of possible stepping-stones to each other, or hunts for +fallen logs or for shallow places. But, finally, the measurements all +made, the peculiar conditions as fully as possible appreciated, in the +way found to be most feasible he crosses the stream and runs again. And +just in that "looking before leaping," with the accompanying check put +upon the forward running and with the change of the "real life" of +running into merely instrumental action, we get at least a glimpse of +what science is, of the sort of abstraction that its rise implies. + +Only science, specifically so called, is more than such a casual, merely +personal study of a new situation. Science is the distinct work of a +distinct class abstractly studying a new situation that has confronted +the progress not of an individual, but of a whole people, and in this +character it gets at once all the advantages and all the conceits that +belong in general to the life of a class. It gets, too, all the +limitations. Science, once more, is not strictly a personal experience, +although in personal experience, like that of the cross-country runner, +we can get a glimpse of just that which may develop into science. +Science is characteristically a profession. The runner withholds his +running for a time and merely looks and studies, yet his looking is only +for a time; sooner or later he will run again; and even while he studies +there is his continued moving about, his instrumental action, as we +called it; but the professional scientist waives all thought of possible +future activity. Although in reality [p.060] his looking is before +leaping, it is not consciously so for him; he is one who under the +constraints of his class merely looks and studies, making of these +processes things quite worthy in themselves. + +In other words, to enlarge somewhat on what has just been said, the rise +of the profession of science does indeed involve both the same check +upon the "real life" and the same reduction of activity to a purely +mechanical or instrumental character that we have pointed out in the +case of the runner at the bank of the stream, but a number of different +social classes divides the labour. In general, society as a means to the +expression and development of human activity, be the activity running or +living in a broader and fuller sense, always shows the different phases +or factors of the experience identified more or less exclusively with as +many different classes or groups, and, in respect to the particular case +here under consideration, upon the rise of science society appears to +delegate the work of careful observation and critical thinking to a +separate class, which, as already suggested, gives up any direct +responsibility to the real life. Another distinct class, arising +contemporaneously, is composed of those who do feel directly +responsible, or "practical," continuing the life of positive, overt +action. This second class maintains the vital processes, although in a +more or less consciously instrumental way, since its members have the +lives of others as well as their own lives to support. So society gets +its workers or labourers as well as its observers and thinkers. + +The rise of science, then, involves a disrupted society. Moreover, the +division is by no means so [p.061] simple as the foregoing analysis may +seem to have implied. Observing and thinking, for example, have often +made, too, separate sub-classes, and also there have been many distinct +groups among the workers, such as clerks, soldiers, artisans, +road-menders, and tillers of the soil. The simple analysis, however, has +been quite enough to show, what has seemed to need emphasis, that all +the passions of social life, or rather of social caste, are brought to +bear upon the profession of science, giving it the peculiar conceits and +advantages of class or caste, and also imposing upon it the peculiar +limitations. The advantages, among others, are the strength that lies in +union, and the long continuity and the imitation that always ensure an +accumulation of experience and a refinement of method and an attainment +to impersonal, impartial standards; the conceits are exclusiveness, +sense of sanctity or intrinsic worth, and consequent claims to +aristocracy; and the limitations, although possibly already quite +obvious, are hereafter to be pointed out. But whatever the limitations +or the opportunities, it is now our chief concern that the social +conditions of its rise must greatly intensify the abstraction of +science, the treatment of the consciousness of the world, which is but +the sphere of action, the totality of the manifested conditions of +action, as something to be cultivated wholly for its own sake. + +Nor is this fact that science is an abstraction, intensified by the +conditions of class life, the only fact to which the rise of science +bears witness. There is something else equally significant--something, +indeed, so intimately involved in this as perhaps not [p.062] properly +to be referred to as another fact at all, being only a further +manifestation of what is already before us. _There never arises +abstraction without duplicity._ + +Plainly a disrupted society, such as has been seen to be incident to the +rise of science, means also a disrupted life. In general the corporate +life of any single class resulting from the division can be only +partial, I do not say in respect to "real life," since this phrase has +itself been associated with too narrow a meaning, but to human nature, +to human life in its entirety, in its real fulness, in its true breadth +and its true depth. All class life, I repeat, involving as it does +disruption and selection of some particular interest or relation, is +inadequate to any human being, and the life of science is no exception +to this rule. Membership in any class and conformity to its peculiar +life, which is partial and abstract as partial, have never satisfied +anybody, and the life of the professional scientist, again, is no +exception to this rule. Accordingly any abstraction in life, the +isolation of any specific interest, when seen in just the light of its +necessary inadequacy, of its definite, more or less exclusive +partiality, must imply in life a demand for reality and completeness, +and this the more as the abstraction is assertive, as the isolation is +insistent. Simply, the whole life will never brook an untempered neglect +from any of its always self-assertive parts. Plainly, however, as +plainly as a disrupted society must mean a disrupted life for each +resulting group, such a demand can be met only in one way, if the cause +for it continues; it can be met only by some form of duplicity, by some +way in which, however indirectly, the life of those [p.063] concerned +will always really be more than it seems or will always actually imply +what explicitly or formally it appears to exclude. No such narrow life, +in short, as must always characterize any social group, can ever be +without its compensating innuendoes or indirections for the life from +which it is outwardly aloof, and while the peculiar manner in which the +true reality and the wholeness of life are thus conserved will very +naturally always be determined by the particular class or the particular +class-character involved, being of one sort for road-menders and of +quite a different sort for scientific observers, the organization of +society seems bound at every turn to show that duplicity, compensation +as it always is for partiality, is an indispensable condition. +Duplicity, whatever may be its own special dangers, is always better, +being nearer to reality, than narrowness. + +Is not the road-mender also a good Catholic, or in some other way, +conventional or unconventional, religiously devout, piously doing, not +his own, but another's work? Does not the scientist give point to the +idea of another and different life, that is to say, of his life of +knowledge not being the whole of life, by the agnosticism which he not +only carefully asserts but also actually embodies as a factor in his +method? The road-mender slaves at his humble task, ignorant and yet +trustful, believing in an infallible wisdom and an absolute power, and +the scientist lives with great enthusiasm to know the world as it is, +but tells us at the same time with no less enthusiasm and with a meaning +that certainly ought to temper his exclusiveness that the object which +he studies and describes [p.064] is nevertheless really unknowable. To +quote Mr. Spencer: "The man of science ... more than any other, truly +_knows_ that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known." Surely there +is meaning for Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in other +fields besides that of morality. Class life must always involve its +members in a protective or compensating duplicity. + +But now, whatever in the life of other classes this duplicity, which +conserves the wholeness of life even when formally life is narrow and +partial, ought to be called, in the profession of science it often goes +under the name of dualism. Seen at different angles, it is now dualism, +now objectivism, now agnosticism. In each of these different ways the +scientist, quite outdoing or transcending his profession, recognizes a +sphere of reality or a sphere of activity, that is beyond that of the +knowledge which he makes his special business, and, as is very important +to observe, the peculiar manner of his recognition of this sphere, or +the peculiar character of his duplicity, is relative to just the +abstraction which makes his science what it is. Thus his peculiar +duplicity is one of conscious subject and unconscious, external object, +of observing man and objective nature, of real knowledge and unknowable +reality. + +Yet here, before discussing further the relation of dualism to science, +it is well to observe that the positive history of science justifies the +account of its rise which has now been given. The age of science among +the Greeks was coincident with the closing conflict between Greek +civilization and the general life [p.065] of the Mediterranean, and the +age of modern science began, not to attempt a long story, with the +discovery of America. All "looking before leaping" is transitional or +revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and +degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs +to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern +science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from +Christendom to--who can say to what? But not only does history show +science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life +of the time, in the first place, to be sharply disintegrated, its +different factors being separately and abstractly expressed through as +many different social groups, and, in the second place, in each of the +groups to be given to double living, to the storm and stress of being +one thing and seeming another. Always an age, conspicuously and +characteristically scientific, has been an age of clearly developed +classes and of a general duplicity in living. + +Thus, to give a striking, although possibly too philosophical an +illustration of the duplicity, Democritus, the great materialist and +atomist, and Plato, the great idealist, were contemporaries and equally +were creatures of their day and generation, and their century was the +century of great achievements in Greek science. Moreover, as regards the +coincident organization of society, we know at least of Plato that he +was keenly conscious of the divisions of society into distinct classes. +And in very much the same way materialism and idealism, not to mention +hedonism and rigorism, or naturalism and supernaturalism, [p.066] have +been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern +science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than +so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special +conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes +or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they +are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, +that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or +profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of +Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in +all the different and separately organized phases of life--moral, +industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the +conservatives and the radicals? And were there not also, as typical +individual characters, each of them revealing to everybody something +present within his own life, the only conventional loyalist and the more +truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and +the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously +impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity. + +Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of +science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor +yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a +thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or +idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as +means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all +activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental. +As we know, the disruption means [p.067] actual, when not also +intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been +division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of +the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than +things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes +and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and +independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to +give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the +conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people +instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as +some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, +and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the +instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to +be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power +to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, +the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of +society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way +is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites +conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost +notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the +Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for +pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be +questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or +purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the +Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks, +being too conservative, though [p.068] utilitarian, failed to make full +use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally +appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as +unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the +Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism, +which has characterized them throughout. + +One thing more, too, from the facts of history may have our attention, +although possibly this addition is quite unnecessary--the fact, namely, +of scepticism coupled always with a hopeful curiosity. A disrupted +society, dividing the labour of human life, is as sceptical as it is +conventional, and as given to experiment and exploration, which are +never without their sense of mystery, and even to conquest, never +without its risks, as it is utilitarian. Was it curiosity or mere +Hellenic conceit, the sense of adventure or the mere dogmatism of a +Greek, that took Alexander abroad with his armies, or that earlier +turned the attention of Athens to the possibilities of the West? And +which, curiosity or religious and political propagandism, a pagan greed +or a Christian piety, inspired the Western and Southern voyages of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Which gave rise even to the Crusades? +It would be interesting, if our present purposes only warranted the +undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of +scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity +has developed as but one expression of a general interest in +experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and +especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and [p.069] +confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as +it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some +given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a +mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet +willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those +activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of +course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it +never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of +art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective, left far behind. +But to follow out the line of thought here suggested would take us too +far afield. Let it suffice, then, that we see these two things: how +historically and socially the investigations of science, whatever their +relations to an antecedent art, such as that of the Greeks or of +Christendom in the Renaissance, are but an incident within a general +life of appeal to nature--that is, of exploration and conquest--and then +how the scepticism, involved in the inquiries of science, is intrinsic +to a life that, for reasons now clear to us, has become both +conventional and utilitarian, both formal--or unreal in itself--and +consciously only instrumental. The first of these brings to mind what +was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt +seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly +in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having +the evidence of history, we have next to turn. + +We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the +various factors in human [p.070] life, and to be itself, in particular, +the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the +totality of the manifest conditions of life. This abstraction has been +developed and intensified by the formation of distinct social classes; +and, in the special case of the consciousness of nature, by the +formation of a class of scientists, so called, who cultivate their +science for its own sake. We have found the rise of science to imply +also a general duplicity, evident within the field of science in what is +known as dualism. Duplicity is a natural accompaniment of all +abstraction, and it has, as we saw at least in part, a certain +protective and corrective function, which both the logic of experience +and the social and historical conditions of its expression and +development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found +that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional +and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or--let me now +say--experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general +abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for +utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, +formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set +of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions +themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so +fatal to all ideas that should give knowledge any visible form or +resting-place, was but the spirit of his time, the spirit of radical +inquiry become incarnate and assertive in public places. He was but a +visible, public exponent of the critical examination of life which the +self-consciousness of his time made necessary. [p.071] Indeed, no +organic form, no living creature, ever reflected the character of its +environment more fully, or more successfully effected an adaptive life +than the method, with its searching questions, and its subtle, logical +gymnastic, of that honestly and radically inquisitive Sophist. And the +standpoint and the procedure of science, in respect to the relation to +their environment, are closely comparable with the method of Socrates. + +Thus science seeks a complete abstraction of the looking consciousness, +and then with a timely duplicity it looks to a wholly external, natural +world. So in the field of its peculiar abstraction does science take the +character and colour of its surroundings. But, further, it presumes upon +the peculiar forms and conditions of its subjective, looking +consciousness, the activities of the mind, being mediative or +instrumental to the presentation of the external objective world, and it +uses also the activities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter +activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the +industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for +just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is +presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take +the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own +purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly +when we remember that, besides being experimental, treating the mind as +an instrument and life's activities at large as only aids more or less +directly pertinent to the mind's work, it is agnostic. Its peculiar +agnosticism not only reflects [p.072] its duplicity, as was before +suggested, but in addition shows how very abstract its knowledge is, +and--I know no better phrase--how timelily adventurous. A time of +science is a time when all things final are beyond; yet also, when all +things present, however mysteriously, are really leading yonder. + +Further, science always divides the field of its operations, and so, +besides greatly compounding its abstractness, reflects in its own way, +or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the +specialism of the contemporary social organization. There is division of +labour in this, but there is also a difficulty, which, among other +difficulties, is hereafter to be considered. + +And there is, finally, one more characterization of science which is +suggested by the conditions of its rise, but by something in those +conditions not yet brought into clear view. An age of science is an age +of a rising, although perhaps formally suppressed and disguised +individualism, and quite in sympathy, the method of science is +"inductive," science, though interested in classification, always having +regard for the natural rights of particular things, of single +individuals, reasoning from the particular to the general, as the phrase +runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much +misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of +inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has +been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any +discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that +the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I +would only assert, but I venture to assert [p.073] strongly, first, that +behind the conventionalism and utilitarianism of the life of a society +divided into distinct classes, behind the abstraction and the inevitable +duplicity, behind the sense of experiment and adventure, the individual +person is the real power, and secondly, that in induction science has +only translated this real individualism of its time into an attitude or +method for the conduct of its looking consciousness. In this way, as in +those other ways, has science been educated to its peculiar manner. + +We have thus seen how science arises, and how its rise gives it a +certain character. But already suspicion of limitations in the view of +science, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. +Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not +be unmixed. What the specific difficulties are, however, and how far +they really justify our doubting, must be reserved for the ensuing +chapter. + + +[p.074] + +V. + +THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS PECULIAR LIMITATIONS. + + +Limitations or opportunities? Error or truth? In the familiar +illustration the tracks which limit the locomotive to a certain course +are essential to its successful movement, and something of the same kind +may be true of science. A man's vices and virtues are never really far +apart, and, again, the same may be true of science. But for the moment +we are to approach science from the standpoint of its limitations; we +are to see how its own natural ideals, as suggested by our +characterization of the scientific view, are evidence of its inadequacy. +So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going +confession of doubt. + +Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and +genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science +must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether +personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or +religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, +the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but _persona grata_ +among scientific men; and (3) agnostic or "positivistic," all conceits +[p.075] about what is beyond positive experience, and even all dogma +about what seems really present to experience, being most arrant heresy; +and every one of these ideals, besides being derived from the habits or +instincts, commonly unrecognized and unappreciated, of the ordinary +consciousness, is wholly in accord with the conclusions of the preceding +chapter. The attitude of science, as there disclosed, involved a looking +to an external world--the objectivism; a division of the field--the +specialism; and an experimental, adventurous mind--the agnosticism or +positivism. It involved other things, too, but these three are now +selected, so to speak, as three determining points of science's +circumference. Consideration of them, to whatever results it may lead, +should meet all the demands of the present task. As for the results, +these will show fundamental difficulties, very like to those of ordinary +experience, to lurk in each one of the three ideals. The scientific +consciousness is abstract and just for being in consequence +objectivistic, specialistic, and agnostic it is artificial and unreal, +though perhaps only relatively or not unmixedly unreal, and especially +it is honeycombed with paradoxes and contradictions, with the translated +but not transcended contradictions of ordinary life. + +To the examination, therefore, of these difficulties, or limitations, we +must now turn, taking the three ideals in order. + + +I. SCIENCE WOULD BE OBJECTIVE. + +The ideal of a purely objective science is in many ways a great +delusion, for it may effectually blind [p.076] science to its necessary +subjectivism, so far as it gets any substance or content, and to its +necessary formalism, so far as it acts upon a merely external world. +With regard, for example, to the last point, just so far as the ideal of +objectivism is realized, science becomes merely so much technique. By +technique here is meant everything that makes scientific work purely +mechanical. A purely mechanical procedure is the inevitable, the natural +and necessary method of a pure objectivism. Scientists have their formal +etiquette about pre-empted problems or fields of research, their notions +about originality as dependent merely on working a new field--hence the +pre-emption to prevent transgression or theft of originality, their +conceits about bibliographical information, linguistic proficiency and +technical phraseology, their satisfaction over "publication," +"contribution," "production," and "research," and an almost +Gaston-Alphonse deference of each to each among the different branches +of scientific inquiry; and under technique all these things, as well as +the more familiar matters of method and apparatus and material, are here +included. Physicians, we are told, and not infrequently also their +patients, suffer from a professional ritual and etiquette, but they are +far from being alone in their misery. Scientists, would-be objective +scientists, and all who appeal to them, are a close second. Technique +must have its real uses, but plainly it has its limitations. It is one +of the enabling conditions, a _sine qua non_ of science, if science is +to be objective, but it takes the life out of science. A science that +gets no further, that is only "objective," that is, "pure" and +"inductive" [p.077] is wholly vain, being like a domestic animal which +is only a pet, or rather like a vigorous plant that runs luxuriously to +leaves, never bearing either flowers or fruit. Its much vaunted +observation and experiment may fill a good many pages and a good many +volumes, but material, even material in books, and experiments, even +carefully, minutely reported experiments, are neither roses nor apples. + +A fruitful science relates itself to something more than a mere +independent object. A fruitful science involves synthesis, not formal, +but real synthesis, as well as analysis, its decomposed object being +also only the separated details of some organizing activity. Indeed, +however unconsciously, or even however against its own avowed interest +and desire, science has that organizing activity in the real life. The +"real life" has seemed aloof, but science is truly an integral part of +this life. Science's very genesis in social evolution, in spite of, nay, +even because of its abstraction by a distinct class and the assumption +of a professional garb, is witness to this relationship. Again, fruitful +science is practical invention, not abstract discovery, and the real +life of a person or a society or a race is as important to it, as much a +warrant of its conclusions, as any object, however mathematically +described or describable, with which science was ever concerned. As for +the thing invented, the tool or the machine, in general the instrument +of adaptation to environment, this sometimes takes visible, wholly +material form; sometimes it appears as a method in the practical arts or +in the fine arts or in education or government; sometimes it is only an +[p.078] atmosphere or point of view, a habit of mind; but whatever it +is, it is useful, incalculably useful, and its invention as something +that is widely distinguished from mere receptive observation, if this be +even possible, or from mere accurate description, is science's primary +justification. + +But this, objects somebody, is sentiment, and sentiment of the sort that +quite destroys science, making real science, serious and accurate +science, quite impossible. Well, it does of course dispense with a +purely objective science. It suggests the idea, perhaps the +uncomfortable idea, that, as in some other departments in life, so in +science, death is a condition of success. Science must die to its +objective self before it is saved; it must lose its whole world to gain +its own soul. Or, to put the same idea differently, if the assertion be +not too much like verbal play, a subjective science is not hopelessly +unscientific. Is a man less interested in having a proper edge on his +razor because eventually he must use it on himself? Nothing but a keen +edge can ever ensure a "velvet shave," and nothing but the truth, the +more accurate it be the better, can ever set anybody free. + +Still, all questions of sentiment or of sharp razors or of the accuracy +that liberates aside, we can get support for our scepticism about a +science that, if purely objective, must be also empty and mechanical +from science itself. The consistent evolutionist is obliged to deny pure +objectivity to any scientific knowledge, just as in general he is +obliged to think of all consciousness as never something by itself, but +one of the positive conditions of organic development. To [p.079] be an +evolutionist, and at the same time to think of consciousness as only an +external ornament of life, or in its higher development as the exclusive +privilege of a distinct class, to think of it as an aside in life, +perhaps a sudden result without in any way being also a condition of +development, to suppose science to be solely objective and for its own +sake, is nothing more or less than simply to stultify oneself +completely. Even for the historian, whether avowed evolutionist or not, +whose great business is to remind us that what is here or what is now is +not all, the devotion to science for its own sake, which also in other +times has possessed the minds and hearts of certain men, can be at best +only a local and a passing phenomenon. Finally, apart from the +standpoint of evolution or history, it is to be said that human society +at large is sure to resent what may be styled the aristocratic temper +which pure, objective science is all too likely to acquire from the +exclusiveness of its ritual or technique, or say from its abstract and +academic dress, and the resentment of society is important evidence +always. Aristocratic temper, whatever its direction, is certainly as +desirable in social life as it is necessary; it is incident to the +development of all institutions--political, ecclesiastical, industrial, +ceremonial, educational, and, to add to the familiar list, +epistemological; but the resentment which it is sure to awaken is not +one whit less serviceable to society, ensuring as it does, among other +things, the extension of science, the translation of science into life. + +So, to gather the threads together, two difficulties [p.080] have now +appeared as affecting the objectivism of science. The first, that of +burial in technique, gave us our starting-point, and the second has come +to light with discussion of the first. Thus, not merely is a would-be +objective science, through its bondage to technique, made formal and +empty, but also, as perhaps only the other side of the same truth, a +would-be objective science materially--that is, for its scientific +doctrines--and formally--that is, for its motives and methods--is always +in practice dependent upon the demands and sanctions of real life, and +so not purely, or not dualistically, objective after all. There is, in +brief, no other conclusion. Either science must be empty, a matter +merely of dead rites and dry symbols and irrelevant ideas, or it must be +pertinent and practical; and, if the latter, its boasted independence is +gone. A purely objective science seems to get only subjectivity for its +pains. + +Yet this conclusion is easily misunderstood. It is far from denying any +meaning to such words as object or objectivity. The object is denied +only as an external independent existence. The object still remains to +experience as possibly of mediative value to its beholders, mediating +between the actual in their life and the possible, between the partial +life and the whole life, the old and the new, the social, which is +always narrow, and the personal. The whole must be always "objective" to +the part, the possible to the actual, the personal to the social; or, +conversely, the "objective," natural world can be only the convincing +witness to the part or to the actual or to the social, not that there is +an independent, wholly external world, but [p.081] that there is a whole +or a possible or a personal. "Truly, we are all one," writes Fiona +Macleod. "It is a common tongue we speak, though the wave has its own +whisper, the wind its own sigh, and the lip of man its word, and the +heart of woman its silence." We are all one. Man and nature, which man +beholds, or the subject and the object, of which the subject is +conscious, are one; but an objective science would hide this from us, +not tell it to us. + +But besides burying science in technique, and besides involving it in an +only disguised, albeit a socially significant subjectivity, the ideal of +wholly objective knowledge has also made science conservative in a way +that must have peculiar interest here. Reference is not now made to the +double truth or the double life which an objective science sanctions so +cordially that men can hold so-called advanced scientific ideas without +feeling them in any serious conflict with the traditional teachings of +religion and morality, but to something else perhaps not wholly +unrelated to this, and certainly not less suggestive of contradiction. +While science is commonly supposed to be advanced and radical and up to +date, if anything is, it is so only in a way which calls for a very +important qualification, for it manages to perpetuate, not indeed the +letter, but the spirit of old views. At its best a purely objective +science can give only a new material content, or a new arrangement +perhaps of an old content, to existing and time-worn forms of thought; +it cannot possibly do that in which real progress must always consist, +namely, develop, recognize, and adopt new forms of thought, new +categories; [p.082] it cannot do that without betraying its own ideal of +mere objectivism. Objective science--to give a commonplace example--has +said relatively to a certain doctrine of creation that spirit did not +precede matter, but instead matter preceded spirit, and--except for the +excitement of the drawn battle which such a startling declaration has +precipitated--this can hardly be said to have involved any great +advance. Cause and effect have indeed been made to change places by the +new deal, and perhaps in common fairness it was high time that a change +be made, but no new conception of causation itself has been recognized. +The new creationalism, the materialistic, has no essential advantage +over the old. Again, while deposing the First Cause, an objective +science has made all things causes after the same plan--individual, +arbitrary, antecedent causes; and this is only to multiply indefinitely, +perhaps infinitely, the offensive creationalism. "Not so," says some +one; "there is a splendid democracy in it, and it implies a great deal +more than mere multiplication. Indefiniteness, or at least infinity, +transforms anything or everything to which it is applied. By making all +things causes one forces into science the important principle of the +equation of action and reaction, everything being seen as acted upon as +well as acting, and this principle, as if by turning creationalism +fatally against itself, yields a new standpoint, that of mechanicalism." +Granted, and granted cordially, but has a purely objective science any +right to change its standpoint? + +Possibly this does not mean very much. Then approach the matter from +another side, risking a [p.083] reference to one of science's pet +conceits, the "question of fact." It has been for science a question of +fact, of mere objective fact, whether matter made mind or mind made +matter; whether this or that thing is or is not a cause of some other +thing; whether certain very low, perhaps unicellular organisms show +purpose in their activities or do not, are gifted with a natural +tendency to social life, a real interest in their kind, or are not so +gifted; or--to take just one more case--whether the changes in the brain +that precede bodily movement are or are not directed by consciousness, +consciousness being in one case in causal relation with the brain, and +in the other only an idle, external accompaniment, an "epi-phenomenon"; +but in each of these questions of objective fact we see the scientist +only standing in his own light, obscuring the view of what above all +else it is important to see. Are mind and matter, cause and effect, +purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such +well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the +scientist's formulae, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all +that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, +to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to +assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as +blinding and ill-advised as could well be. It has the pleasing form of +open-mindedness, but only the form. It is very much as if some earnest, +yearning truth-seeker should exclaim: "I would see clearly; therefore I +will not open my eyes." No doubt it keeps the scientist busy, eternally +busy, dealing and redealing his facts or data, as busy indeed as the +playful [p.084] cat that so hotly pursues her own tail, but it does not +contribute much that is positive and progressive. The very best that one +can say for it is that it turns the kaleidoscope of human experience, +leading as it usually does to a new arrangement of hard, unchanging +things. To the question, for example, about lower organisms showing +purpose or social feeling in their activity, the scientist, after most +careful experiments, may answer in the negative, and be quite emphatic +in his answer too; but almost at once he--or some one for him--will +appreciate that mankind, when scrutinized and experimented upon in the +same way, under the same instruments and through the same laboratory +methods, is similarly deficient; and then, somehow, the wind is taken +out of his sails, since social feeling and purpose refuse to be so +easily disposed of. In this case, as in all cases, the question of mere +objective fact simply returns, as importunate as ever, for another +reckoning, with Shelley's cloud silently laughing at its own cenotaph. + +And what is the difficulty? Once more the difficulty is in the +assumption, so natural to an objective science, of fixed conceptions. +Are purpose and social feeling so fixed in their nature, and above all +so well understood, that their presence or absence can be established by +an experiment or two or ten thousand conducted on strictly objective +principles? No conceptions are fixed, and instead of questions of fact +we should have, what a strictly objective science cannot have, questions +of meaning. Thus, not: Are low organisms, or any organisms, social or +purposive? but: What, if anything, do the processes of their [p.085] +lives testify as to the real nature of society or purpose? + +The conservative character of objective science, or the view-point in +its question of fact which the conservatism determines, is the chief +source of the negative attitude of science so familiar to all and so +often an object of complaint. To take, perhaps, the most widely +interesting case, for science to suppose that God either is or is +not--because he must either be or not be the particular thing men have +thought him--is to beg the theological question altogether. Indeed, for +this question of God's existence and for any other question of objective +fact a negative answer is almost, if not quite, a foregone conclusion, +since the very putting of the question is, _ipso facto_, evidence that a +new idea of the thing inquired about--of God, perhaps, or purpose or +society--is at least just below the horizon of man's consciousness, and +so that the old idea has already lost its validity. Nothing ever is +where you seek it, or what you seek in it, for the simple reason that +your conscious seeking has changed it. Why, then, look--perhaps with a +telescope after a God in the skies--for what you should know you cannot +find? Why despair when a question meets a "no" of its own dictation? The +real questioner lives in a living world, in which all things change and +die, yet only for rebirth, while the "objective" questioner simply +cannot see that the negative of his answer can be only relative to what +is already passing. + +In so many ways, then, a would-be objective science is open to +criticism, and affords in consequence a cause for doubt. Only +subjectivity can make it fruitfully [p.086] and worthily scientific. +Only a change in the form of its question can make it substantially as +well as formally progressive. Only a tempering of its negative answers +to a merely relative meaning can make it honest. It is looking at what +is not, and in a way which is artificial, and it sees everything only in +the clear light of its own shadow. Surely to be scientific is human; to +be objective is to rival the lover's unselfishness. + + +II. SCIENCE WOULD BE SPECIALISTIC. + +But, secondly, there is the scientist's ideal of specialism, which is at +once not less earnestly cherished and not less strikingly at constant +war with itself. What specialism for science means is known at least in +a general way to everybody, and that an objective science must be made +up of numberless independent inquiries needs only mention, since the +objective world, if really innocent of all personal or subjective +relations, is necessarily manifold and discrete, being made up of a +number of wholly separate details, and being approachable in every one +of its parts from a number of wholly separate standpoints. The objective +world apart from a subject is like a workshop without a workman--a +collection of unused and so unconnected tools and materials each one of +which may have an infinite number of uses; and the objective scientist +views it very much as a stranger, perhaps a savage--may I be forgiven +that mark--might view the lifeless shop, seeing now this thing, now +that, but never the living unity of all the things. So, to repeat, as +soon as the self or subject is removed and the world is turned +objective, all things and all views of things must fall [p.087] apart, +and science as the observation of such a world can be only "special." +Not so clear, however, or at least not so commonly appreciated, is the +peculiar fallacy and contradiction of specialism to which attention is +asked here. Once more is science to be seen as in a sense standing in +its own light, since it cannot be at once special and directly and +literally true and adequate. + +To begin with, specialism makes vision, the mind's vision as well as the +sensuous vision, dim or distorted. It may even be said to induce a +species of blindness or, as virtually the same thing, to create in +consciousness curious fancies, strange perversions of reality, seen not +with the natural eye at all, but with the imagination, always so +ingenious and so original, and one might almost add so hypnotic, in its +power of suggestion over the senses. In ways and for reasons neither +unknown nor unappreciated by most men, specialism even closes one's eyes +and makes one dream. It makes the specialist among physicians see his +special ailment in every disorder, and every disorder in his special +ailment, and this so truly that merely to consult him may be to fall his +victim. True, he may never be, perhaps can never be, wholly wrong, and +his transgressions, conscious or unconscious, have often helped +discovery, but nevertheless his situation, not to say that of his +patient, is full of humour, and always among other troubles he is under +the error of partiality or one-sidedness. And in science generally the +specialist always does and always must dream. His dreams may be waking +dreams, but he is always transgressing his own proper bounds without +ever [p.088] clearly comprehending that he has transgressed. Nor, be it +admitted, can this necessity of dreaming be a wholly unmixed evil to +science. However unfavourably it may reflect on the final, literal +validity of any special science, it only shows nature, or reality, +preserving her unity against the attempted violence of specialism. It +shows that in spite of the specialist being all eyes for his own +peculiar object, the mind that is within him and that is above all +else--such, apparently, is the nature of mind--responsible not +exclusively to the special and sensuous, but to the all-inclusive and +essential, and is therefore bound to conserve for experience the +interests of an indivisible universe in every particular thing, leads +him, devotee that he is, patiently repeating his sacred syllable, into +most wonderful visions. For the sake of inclusiveness and reality his +mind projects his would-be special consciousness into regions of strange +subtlety and marvellous logical construction; as Oriental priest or +Occidental scientist he is a specialist, yet not without a mind, or a +real, ever-present world, which refuses to be special, and as he dreams +he comes to see, yet knows not that he sees, the whole universe. A +seeing blindness, then, is this specialism; a monomania too, but, of +course, conventional and respectable. + +Mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology and psychology, not to +say also the social sciences, all depend upon the far-seeing mystical +visions of the mind, if not of the eye, upon the subtle, logical +constructions which their would-be scientific specialism, their desire +to know all things narrowly, forces upon them. Each one may be special, +but each as it [p.089] gains precision and as it becomes truly an +account of the facts, under the guidance of an exacting mind that at any +cost must present the whole to consciousness, conserves within itself +the common universe of them all by developing under what is called the +"scientific imagination" all sorts of indirections, disguises, +abstractions, logical constructions for the things and view-points of +the others. Each to be veracious has no choice but to be also voracious, +and when, for example, a physical scientist insists on seeing his world +only physically, while in reality it is of course, to say no more, a +world of chemical process also, and even of vital and mental character, +he is sooner or later constrained to admit to his thinking what above +were called abstractions or logical constructions, but what also pass +under the name of "working hypotheses." These are formally true to his +physical standpoint, but any outsider in order to explain why they are +hypotheses that _work_ must call them compensating or conserving +conceptions--in short, logical constructions that are, or that in part +involve, substitutes for the neglected points of view, being, as it +were, the secret agents of a universe refusing to be divided. To +characterize them in just one more way, a science's working hypotheses, +results as they are of science's blind but brilliant dreaming, many or +all of them, are doors in the panelling by which the other sciences are +quietly admitted to a room seemingly tightly closed to all comers. Every +science, and this the more as it becomes scientific, must entertain all +the others, however unwittingly. Tennyson's "flower in the crannied +wall," so often plucked, is nothing in [p.090] all-inclusiveness when +compared with a well-developed special science. No science, physical or +psychical, biological or social, ever does or ever can live to itself +alone. It may will to, but it does not and it cannot. All the others +live with it and for it--nay, they all live in it. + +Yet in actual practice, what are these working hypotheses that work +because they are compensating conceptions or doors in the panelling? No +veracity without unrestrained voracity is interesting as a formula, but +how verify it? Verification, or illustration, is now imperative. +Illustration, however, is very difficult for a reason which the +scientists now on trial must allow me to mention. The scientists know +too much about the sciences, or at least of them, while I know too +little. Still, as too much knowledge is often the source of obscurity, +and so only a form of ignorance, my situation is not altogether +hopeless. Thus, while it is true that the scientists are likely to +insist, even in the face of a mind bound to preserve the unity of an +indivisible universe in all the varied studies and conclusions of +science, that physics is only physics and chemistry only chemistry and +biology only biology and psychology only psychology, and while also all +illustrations must come from the field of their special studies, and may +therefore only set them more firmly in the wilful blindness of their +specialism, still the principle of a conserving mind, or an eternally +conserved truth or an indivisible reality, is a disturbing influence +which they cannot evade. Then, too, I am forgetting and allowing them to +forget a very important fact in scientific work to-day. In these [p.091] +times the running together or merging of different sciences, as if +through something of the nature of a chemical reaction, is a very +familiar phenomenon. It is as familiar, although not so loudly heralded, +as that of the railroads and industrial companies; and it has been +taking place with such persistence and confidence as actually to suggest +a natural affinity, each of the sciences involved having the rich +experience of discovering itself already in the others. This fact, then, +must make illustration less difficult, since, in a way that must appeal +to the scientist as no merely theoretical considerations can, it proves +or goes very far toward proving what is to be illustrated. Moreover, +specific illustration is hardly necessary in the sphere of the different +physical sciences, or again, in that of the social or the psychological +sciences, for within each one of these groups the affinity but just now +referred to has been very clearly exemplified, as in the interesting +case of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which nowadays are one +science, not three, and which can be held apart only on methodological +grounds, not metaphysically. Illustration, accordingly, appears, after +all, to be needed only for the specialism that separates the physical +and the psychical sciences. + +Physiological psychology and physically experimental psychology, both of +them suggestive of nothing less incongruous than seething ice, are sure +to come to mind at once; but also there is a mathematical psychology, +comparable with a developmental mechanics and biometrics in biology, and +hardly a single field of science, however apparently distant and alien +in nature and interest, has not contributed something [p.092] to +psychology or to epistemology, the general science of knowledge. But now +it is likely to be objected by some one that just because sciences, +whether in clearly related or in widely separated fields, are useful to +each other, just because they can serve, as they do, in the role of +methods of each other, they are not necessarily in any real and natural +affinity. May not their association be purely one of utility, involving +no surrender of special individuality and requiring in any case only +temporary relationship? The question is absurd. Any means that really +serves an end must have something in common with the end it serves; and, +again, an end that really sanctions a means, whatever the means be, must +itself be, at least potentially, which is after all to say essentially, +in and of the means employed. Different sciences, then, even physics and +psychology, or natural science and theology, cannot be even temporarily +methods of each other without partaking in some way, under some disguise +or other, through some peculiarity in their conceptions or in the +relations of their conceptions, of each other's subject-matter. + +In view of this fact of mutual participation of nature and idea among +the sciences that use each other, I have myself conceived, and in +another place have given expression to, what appropriately may be called +a physical psychology or epistemology.'[1] This new hybrid science is +especially concerned with nothing more nor less than those substitutes, +disguises, or [p.093] indirections, really present in all the physical +sciences, for the peculiar nature, for the peculiar sort of unity, +intensive instead of extensive or qualitative instead of quantitative, +or say also even vital and spiritual instead of physical, which is +always associated with mind. In conservation of matter, energy, what you +will, in plenitude, in motion as only relative and so as always under a +principle of uniformity and constancy or even immobility, in motion too +as inclining to vibration, which suggests poise or tension, or to +rotation, in which we see rest as well as motion, and finally, not to +extend what might be a long list, in the infinity of space and time or +of quantity, the physical sciences have hidden entrances for the silent, +usually unnoticed admission of what is psychical. But I may seem to be +jumping too far, to be presuming too much. Then put the case in this +way--not quite so direct, but to the same goal. All of these +conceptions, so necessary to a "working" physical science, need very +little examination to be seen to be treacherous to the physical +standpoint and its peculiar categories. One might as well try to make +water unsupported assume definiteness of form as to conceive the +conservation of energy or plenitude or the relativity of motion in the +character of what is physical, or at least of what is properly and +conventionally physical. Being treacherous, then, to the physical +science that has conceived them, they are, as was said, doors for what +is not physical; hidden doors, perhaps, but certainly doors to be opened +at will; and by them mind is bound to enter the physical world and its +sciences. To those familiar with the history of philosophy, the +speculation [p.094] of the early Greek thinkers, notably Anaximander, +Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, will afford illustration of the physical +view running, in spite of itself, into treacherous conceptions, and +eventually reaching the discovery of their treachery and with it the +idea of mind or _Nous_.[2] + +So for science is the material world, what properly it is often said to +be, a sort of dark mirror of man's inner life, of his psychical nature. +Physical science as consciousness of the outer material world is not, +and has itself shown that it cannot be, merely and exclusively physical. +By virtue of its working hypotheses, which are as secret doorways, it is +psychical also. Though darkly and indirectly it is our human +self-consciousness. Perhaps it is our self-consciousness rendered +impersonal or the self seen through the mirror of not-self or through +the disguise of what a photographer would call a "negative"; and, if it +may be so described, we are reminded of Burns:-- + + O wad some power the giftie gie us, + To see oursels as others see us! + It wad frae monie a blunder free us, + And foolish notion. + +Only the bonnie Robert himself was too much of a specialist in poetry to +see that natural science was the very thing he prayed for. + +And just as there is thus a physical psychology, so [p.095] in like +manner there is a psychological or epistemological physics, which in its +turn is concerned with the indirections, or doors in the panelling, +present in all the psychical sciences, for those very physical things +quantity and matter. The devil will have his due; even an optimistic +theology has to recognize him. And psychology has a sensuous self, the +self of the purely sensuous consciousness, which has always involved it +in a curious psychical atomism, a projection, in a word, of the physical +on the plane of the psychical. Sensationalism, too, as a psychological +theory in the history of thought has always been associated with +materialism. + +With regard, then, to the separation even of the psychical and the +physical sciences, which obviously has at its base the distinction +between mind and matter, we observe that our principle of affinity and +mutual participation still holds. By a sort of projection or +reproduction mind and matter both appear, the one openly, the other in +disguise, in each kind of science. However unawares, the physical +entertains mind; the psychical matter; and specialism, so far as +standing for anything more than scientific method, has to withdraw from +its last stronghold. The very dreaming of the scientific imagination is +its undoing. + +For other evidence against the integrity and adequacy of specialism, +showing how mind defies specialism and conserves its indivisible +universe, there are the following simple but certainly interesting +facts. All the different sciences, however special and however +apparently alien in subject matter, are wont to use the same general +methods--as, for example, the laboratory or experimental method or the +historical [p.096] method, the fatal consequences of which to the cause +of pure specialism may easily be inferred. History is famous for +overcoming differences. The common interest in mathematics must also be +mentioned, for mathematics, through its latest developments in danger of +turning into a pure logic, is quite independent of all those material +differences that separate the different sciences. It is formal and +universal, not special; so that the special science that would also be +mathematical appears somehow to be at least in aim as universal as it is +special. Perhaps mathematics more than anything else has fed the +voracity which we have seen veracity to exact. Has it not been the chief +agent in the virtual annihilation of the barriers between physics and +chemistry? This particular mingling of the special sciences has been +mentioned here already, but mathematics is threatening the party-walls +of all the other sciences also. Further, what are we to infer from the +idea that all sciences seek law? Certainly law is not special as science +has seemed to be. Somehow law is not many, but one. Many laws can only +be different phases or cases of one law. The very essence of law is to +be one and single and all-embracing. To put the case theologically, +could any one suppose that God made the laws of chemistry and sociology +and psychology as so many separate and independent enactments? On such a +supposition he had been a strange God indeed, lacking the very thing, +unity of being and character, which men have come to associate with +divinity, and what theology demands of God, science, even against its +own specialism, must demand of its object. Again, [p.097] the way in +which by implication, when not openly, one science is given to handing +over its hardest problems to another is very instructive as well as +amusing. Not many years ago I was present at a joint meeting, a +good-natured and doubtless honestly ambitious conference of biologists, +physiologists, and psychologists, and the addresses then made have often +reminded me of one of Thomas Nast's famous cartoons: A closed ring of +political grafters, none other than the notorious Tweed and his +followers, each pointing to his neighbour and putting on him the +responsibility of a very embarrassing situation. "Find the rogue" was +the artist's inscription; but with apologies for the association, we can +easily change it to "Find the special science." And, lastly, in this +list of the simple evidences against an adequate specialism there are +the conspicuous analogies other than those of common method or common +interest in law, which are always easily traced among the sciences, even +the sciences in the opposite camps of matter and mind, of any particular +time. Atomism in physics is contemporary with atomism in psychology and +with individualism in political philosophy; a monarchical politics with +an anthropomorphic, creationalistic theology and an also monarchical +physically centred astronomy, whether heliocentric or geocentric; and a +Newtonian astronomy, which really makes a law or force instead of an +individual body the centre and control of the solar system, with +democracy or constitutionalism, and with inductive instead of deductive +logic and naturalistic instead of dogmatic theology; so that at no time, +whatever the scientist's special interest, whatever his [p.098] special +syllable, can he fail to have at least a formal sympathy with others. +Such analogies among the sciences, so often recognized and so +absorbingly interesting to the students of the history of thought, if +not exactly doors in the panelling, may be said to make the panelled +partitions at least translucent if not unsubstantial and transparent. + +But the most important fact in illustration of our case against +specialism is yet to be considered, and unfortunately it takes us where +to some the waters may seem dangerously deep. Not only for reasons +already given and emphasized is the special science a misnomer, a +contradiction in terms, except in so far as specialism be taken merely +as an incident, not without its humour, of scientific method, but also +for the same reasons (and chiefly because the truth and reality of the +universe are bound to be conserved) every special science must sooner or +later develop its doctrines either into direct paradoxes or into tenets +that oppose and contradict each other. Thus, as has been shown, +specialism in science is itself a paradox, and, as now asserted, every +special science assuming precise form and real validity becomes a home +of paradoxical or contradictory doctrines. Indeed, these doctrines just +through their opposition appear be the most effective agents of that +compensation for neglected points of view, or conservation of all points +of view, which we are insisting is for ever forced upon the scientific +specialist. In the cases of physical epistemology and epistemological +physics we have already seen doctrines working to this end. In those +cases the real treachery to the avowed [p.099] standpoints lay in +virtual when not open contradiction. And, for the general principles, is +it not quite clear that nothing so surely as contradiction in any given +point of view, or in the specific doctrines developed under it, can +serve the interests of any other points of view? I have heard it said, +but by whom originally I do not know, that a paradox or contradiction +was only the mind on tiptoe struggling to look over a very high wall. + +The point is just this. The special science, because special or partial +and because at the same time courting scientific character or validity, +that is, conformity with reality, must be relative, formal, abstract, +artificial, unreal, but also for exactly the same reason it must +contrive to admit to its conceptions other view-points than its own. Its +own peculiar view-point is relative, but that it may attain actual +validity it is bound to overcome its relativity by admitting, secretly +perhaps yet not less truly, other points of view; and paradox or +contradiction is the natural door for such admissions, the original +view-point being tenacious to the last. Physics says: "I will be physics +through thick and thin; I will be physics though the heavens fall and +though dreadful paradoxes arise"; and in like manner psychology cries +aloud: "I will be psychology though I suffer from a splitting dualism +for my pains." Have you, gentle reader, never held and held and held to +some particular notion about things, modifying the details perhaps +little by little, but always imagining yourself strictly loyal to the +old, old view, and then suddenly discovered your consciousness alive +with contradictions? If you have, you know, possibly [p.100] too well, +the natural history of every special science, and also you can +sympathize deeply with the hen and her cherished chicks that proved ugly +ducklings. The special science, I repeat, must be hospitable, however +grudgingly, to strangers, though at the expense of becoming thoroughly +divided against itself. Such hospitality is an obligation--call it +logical if you will, or moral or metaphysical, for the name matters not +if it only suggests coercion--which is not less binding upon the +scientific spirit than upon the spirit of racial unity, always urgently +present in you and me. You and I may be so special or exclusive as to +drive strangers from our doors, but an impulse to call them back and +give them entertainment always follows--an impulse that is only the +necessary reaction of the expulsion. Humanity is indivisible in spite of +our asserted exclusiveness, and nature is indivisible, too, in spite of +specialism. Partiality of any sort, along any line, in any field, can +never long persist without, though often darkly and indirectly, though +by the way of bold, unrecognized, or unconfessed paradox, receiving from +outside all that it would exclude. I am not merely repeating. At first, +we saw only that the scientific imagination brought to the special +science as its working hypotheses certain conserving or compensating +conceptions; then, that these conceptions involved treachery to the +science that harboured them; but now we are face to face with the fact +that their complete, their most effective form is the paradox. + +Would that I had the ability to write with the penetration and the +clearness of statement that the [p.101] subject should certainly elicit, +upon the strange equanimity with which mankind, in science or in +practical life, receives and faces a direct negative or an open +contradiction. Perhaps the habit of easy division into positive and +negative, the ready resort to dichotomy, explains the mystery; perhaps +the fact that negation or opposition is and can only be in kind, that +there never is or can be any real change or need of change in a mere +negation, is at least an important factor in the case; perhaps, again, +the very hopelessness of the dualism, which a flat, unequivocal negation +plainly involves, is also to the point; but, beyond all peradventure, we +do accept the direct negative with a patience, even an indifference, +that may greatly assist our natural conservatism, whether of thought or +life, but that on being recognized certainly does arouse our wonder. +Good and its opposite evil, true and false, real and unreal, unity and +plurality, life and death, the indivisible and the divisible, rest and +motion, plenum and vacuum, immaterial and material, actuality and +illusion, lawfulness and lawlessness: these and so many other opposites +are the common stock-in-trade of our living and thinking, and we accept +and use them with a complacency that cannot easily be exaggerated. Yet +the negative in each and every one of them holds the future of the +universe in the palm of its hand. And the special scientist before his +inevitable paradoxes is as conservative and as complacent as the rest of +us. + +But it is one thing to say, or even to reason out cogently and +satisfactorily in every way, that the [p.102] special science, if both +persistently special and honestly scientific, must be sooner or later +inwardly contradictory and treacherous to itself, and it is quite +another thing to show the contradiction in actual cases. The actual +cases, however, are more easily found than many are likely to suppose, +and at mention they may even seem like forgotten memories, like things +which at some time we have noticed but become callous towards. Thus the +atom is through and through a self-contradiction, being itself only a +part of a divided reality, yet at the same time itself real only because +indivisible; and a science harbouring such an atom can hardly be said to +be unmixedly physical. The vibration, too, already referred to here as +motion in poise or at rest; infinity as one more quantity that is +significant because not quantitative; the sensation, a component element +of consciousness that cannot possibly be composite; the plenal physical +medium, which can be physical only if displaceable by other material +things, and so plenal only if not physical, and which has served besides +as an immobile yet infinitely elastic basis of motion or its +transmission; and, to give just one more instance, in moral and +political science the person, a self-existent, actively free being or +entity whose every deed as well as whose every thought is responsible to +something, being adaptive and therefore social, social with other +persons and with nature, and whose every virtue implies dependence and +an existence shared with something else: these are all also +self-contradictions. And in view of them who must not see how the +special sciences are always more than special, ever correcting [p.103] +in ways that may be unappreciated by themselves their partiality of +view, ever responsible to the totality of things even while they would +observe things only under selected view-points. Such contradictions, +once more, show mind loyal to what students of logic are familiar with +as the "universe of discourse." Even in science you cannot discourse +about anything without at least implicitly discoursing about everything, +although in order to do so you must speak in such paradoxes as the atom, +the person, the biologist's "vital unit," the vibration, the plenum, and +the like indefinitely. + +Nor is the scientist the only dreamer of paradoxes among men. Ordinary +practical life, as we have seen, teems with paradoxes. But, for purposes +of illustration, not to say also of giving greater breadth and depth to +the view, a reference to the situation in the religious consciousness +will have peculiar value here. A religion that supplements reverence for +a personal God, working miracles and caring for the elect, who even +nowadays are more or less elect, with belief in a devil, even nowadays +more or less personal, is clearly a blood relation to science, and it is +besides by no means so unnatural or irrational as is often declared, +particularly by the scientists. Its two errors, just because opposed, +conserve what is real, and no science can claim more than that. Indeed, +a science, notably a special science, like a theology, might well be +described as a system of mutually corrective errors, of abstractions +that, because abstract, distort the reality of things, but that also +because being at difference with each other and eventually [p.104] +falling into contradictory and so counteracting pairs are at least +parties to what is real and true. By hook or crook, by the hook of +abstraction or the crook of contradiction, every science gets in touch +with the universe as a whole, and so even with its errors is a "working" +science. The errors of many a religion, by their working together, have +not failed to save men. + +So we may return to the assertion that in its specialism, as well as in +its demand for objective knowledge, science is self-contradictory, and +with this conclusion established the exposure of science already offers +a very strong case for the doubter. Yet it does this only to the extent +and in the sense that contradiction warrants doubt. After all is said, +have we been only exposing science? Has attack been our only procedure? +Do we not find, as we reflect, that in our exposure there has also been +something very near to defence? Or, once more, through the science to +which we have taken exception have we not seen a science in which we +could believe? In the examination of science's objectivism we saw that +technique buried science, but--though we did not say this in so many +words--that there might be a resurrection. If fruitful in inventions +serviceable to life, science was justified in spite of its cultivated +objectivism, and the objectivity itself, besides an aid to accuracy, has +further significance as possibly an earnest of wider social +relationship, of broader and deeper life. The question of fact, too, if +appreciated and so made subordinate to the question of meaning, was even +allowed, and science, although at once formally conservative [p.105] and +materially negative and destructive, seemed after all to be the promise, +so to speak, of a new dawn for the very things denied. And now in what +has been said of the specialism of science, the same turning of the edge +of attack is all but manifest. Every special science is narrow and +relative--it is in the form of an unreal dream; but reality somehow +gives form to the dream, for there are always the compensating +conceptions. The contradictions by which the compensation has been +effected are, then, interpretable not more as causes of doubting science +than as reasons for confidence in it. Thus, to be tedious again, the +special science is relative and formal; it is a peculiar system of +ingenious abstractions that in so far are also errors; but its formal +character includes also contradiction; its errors are so related as to +correct and balance each other; so that, even in the face of our +necessary scepticism about it, science has been evident to us, as also +was the consciousness of ordinary life, as somehow always building +better than it knows or than its methods or ideals and doctrines viewed +only from without would lead one to expect. Moving in it we have +certainly felt the presence of, something, not yet called by name, which +is very like a principle or power of validity, preserving the reality of +things even in and through the relativity and contradiction under which +the things are seen. While the letter of our knowledge, even of our +scientific knowledge, must ever have an indeterminate future; while rest +or stability, ultimate reality or consistency is quite impossible to it, +still its inner, active spirit seems a source of faith that is +inviolable, that cannot be shaken. Different [p.106] quantities, such as +four and two, and sixteen and eight, do not make the same sum, much less +are they the same digits; but they are in the same ratio, and similarly +the truth of science would seem to lie in the ratio, the working +together, of the errors of science. Outwardly and materially changing +with time and with people, assuming ever new forms and comprising always +new doctrines, science nevertheless, as an active force, as a positive +resultant, is at least now conceivably always the same and applicable to +the same life. Even the Babylonians of an ancient day successfully +predicted eclipses, the very errors of their astronomy working together +for truth, exactly as the heresies of pagan religion seem to have +balanced each other to the preservation and the development of the life +which we of the present day and the Christian civilization are pleased +to call our own. + +Accordingly the science we have to doubt is also manifest to us as at +least a possible object of faith. The very causes of our doubt before +our very eyes have turned, or are in process of turning, into possible +bases of belief, and our confession of doubt as it proceeds is proving +ever more worth making. We are trying to be such honest doubters. We are +indeed such penitent believers. + + +III. SCIENCE WOULD BE AGNOSTIC. + +Still we have, thirdly, the agnosticism of science to consider and +appraise. Agnosticism confines knowledge to actual positive experience, +and in its form of "positivism" to an only tentative acceptance of +actual experience, and it is thus in effect an admission of [p.107] just +those limitations which have been found to belong to science as +objective and special. Objectivism and specialism have both shown +science to be standing in its own light, or at least to be standing in +the way of any direct and positive knowledge of reality. Whatever they +make possible to our virtual as distinct from our positive +consciousness, whatever indirectly or implicitly may through them belong +to our conscious life, formally and visibly, positively and directly, we +cannot know reality. In a word, science must and does recognize an +unknowable, or at least an unknowability in things, and agnosticism is +accordingly important among the three determining points of science's +circumference. But here is now our problem: Does science put the right +value upon, does it ascribe the right meaning to, its agnosticism? Is +the implied scepticism of the sort that we can cordially accept? +Especially, does science have any due appreciation of the negative, not +to say of the suggested dualism, in the opposition between the knowable +and the unknowable? + +Now both objectivism and specialism plainly involve aloofness, which is +perhaps only another word for what in the preceding chapter was called +abstraction. By the first of these two "isms" science is held aloof from +life; by the second, through the many divisions, from itself, that is to +say, part from part. Men who would be scientists withdraw, as we hear +them boast, from affairs, and as they withdraw it is also as if they put +on distorting and even discolouring glasses, through which in one and +another "special" way they would behold the "objective" world. Their +withdrawal [p.108] is thus not merely physical; it is also mental. To +look out of the window one must turn one's head and lift one's eyes and +adjust both head and eyes in other ways; but looking in general, whether +from the needs of an objective or a special view, also demands certain +pertinent adjustments, and the demanded adjustments make the resulting +experience just so far aloof, just so far discoloured and distorted. +Granted that these terms can be only relative in significance. To be +aloof from something is to have it equally aloof from you, and you +should be no more discredited by the separation than it. To be distorted +and discoloured is to be so only with regard to something that in its +own peculiar way may be equally transformed. Such relativity, however, +cannot deprive the differences involved of real significance; it can +only emphasize the general instead of the narrow, local application of +the terms found to be relative. What is relative is not unreal; it is +simply shared, like cousinship. So science, the looking of science, +means real aloofness and real disfiguration. + +The truth of this has already been apparent to us in a general way, but +it will be worth while here to be more specific. The space and time, for +example, in which scientists observe things are widely different from +the space and time of will and action. In ordinary life a difference is +felt between the world we know and the world we live, but the extreme +professional attitude of science greatly widens the differences. For +science space and time are quantitative, divisible, formal, +mathematically correct, and independent of what is in them, their +reality or qualitative [p.109] value to active life being hidden or at +least only very indirectly presented--I suggest, in the constant +opposition of their finiteness and infinity--while for will and action +they are qualitative, indivisible, inseparable from what is in them. Who +ever did anything in a composite, divisible space and time? Action in +such a sphere would be hopelessly jerky; with Zeno's flying arrow it +would just always rest _in statu quo_, though its _status in quo_ might +have an indefinite series of positions. Again, the scientists reduce +causation to mere uniformity of co-existences or sequences, which is no +real causation at all, being only so much passive existence or +mechanical process, while will or action is causation, the positive +interaction of things, the active relation, the vital unity, of what was +and is and is to be. It is true that here, too, the causation of real +life is darkly presented by science in a constant opposition between a +single first cause and an eternal series of causes, for such an +opposition makes real causation in an important way quite transcendent +of the mere differences of time; but, setting this concession aside, who +ever did anything in a world either of one cause active long ago or of +an infinite series of causes? And, once more, science needs elements, +while will or life is the eternal denial of elements or anything like +them. Says a well-known writer:[3] "It is one of the greatest dangers of +our time that the naturalistic (or scientific) point of view, which +decomposes the world into elements for the purpose of causal connection, +interferes with the volitional point of view of real life, [p.110] which +can deal only with values, and not with elements." The danger involved +will occupy us in a moment, but the bondage of science to elements, to a +composite world, to a thoroughly "decomposed" reality, will hardly be +questioned. Through contradiction, again, as in the chemist's component +atom, itself not composite; or the biologist's "vital unit," which bids +fair to be the master paradox of the day, science may darkly and +indirectly preserve the world of real life, the world that is neither +one element nor many, but in this case as in the others the indirection, +after all is said, only emphasizes the aloofness. + +So science is aloof, and in being aloof it disfigures and defaces +reality, and the argument for agnosticism is consequently unassailable. +No one more effectively has shown this than Immanuel Kant, although one +may question Kant's final appraisal of the fact. Here certainly is no +place for an exposition of the Kantian philosophy, but, briefly and +simply put, that philosophy has characterized space and time and the +relation of cause and effect, not to mention certain other very general +data of experience, as the _a priori_ forms of all valid, objective +knowledge, and being translated this is to say that these so-called +forms are the enabling attitudes of the merely looking consciousness or +the peculiar glasses which, as it were, the mind puts on whenever it +turns just to look. The typical Boston girl, according to the +cartoonists, is never without her glasses. In like manner the typically, +professionally correct looking consciousness, the observing, scientific +mind, is never without those enabling attitudes. Do you ask if they are +then only subjective attitudes? [p.111] They are subjective only as they +are relative. They are subjective only as they express the aloofness of +the scientific observer. And they are subjective, lastly, only in so far +as can be consistent with Kant's further characterization of them as in +every instance imbued with essential opposition or "antinomy." Remember +that an attitude that harbours opposition is always tip-toeing to +overcome the bounds of its own natural vision. Such an attitude cannot +be unmixedly subjective. + +But what now is the danger of science's agnosticism, of science's own +admission that being "objective" and "special," or being under the +constraint of certain enabling attitudes, or being at best only +tentative in all its doctrines, it is not and cannot possibly be +formally realistic? One might imagine, or expect, that confession of its +limitations would be good for the soul of science, and in truth we shall +certainly find some advantage resulting from the confession, but even +science's agnosticism is faulty in a serious way. The writer quoted +above has told us that the great danger always threatening science is +that the scientific will interfere with the volitional point of view, +and this is equivalent to fearing, in the interests of science, that the +scientist will forget his agnosticism and try to render what he cannot +know in terms of what he does know, or that the man of affairs will look +to science for his programmes of action. Such a fear, however, may play +to the professional conceits and the professional isolation and +abstraction of the scientific point of view, but it is very far from +grasping the true import of the conflict between knowledge and +unknowable [p.112] reality. I should myself assert, in partial if not in +complete opposition to Professor Muensterberg, that science's very +natural danger is that the scientific and the volitional point of view +will be kept apart, that the professionalism and the formalism and what +Kant called the phenomenalism of science will prevent their +interference. At least, this danger is just as great, and just as +seriously a danger, as the other. Most people know well enough that +keeping science and life or theory and practice apart has the effect of +making the former lose itself in a highly morbid intellectualism, and +the latter in the dead monotony, of a mere existence, sometimes +presumptuously styled "practical life," but such a result seems not to +trouble either Professor Muensterberg or the conventional scientist whose +cause the vigorous professor has espoused. In other regions, +fortunately, a formal disparity is not accepted as arguing to a natural +divorce, but is even considered, let it be said, a reason for +association; and as for the disparity between science and will, it is +quite true that life without science is lifeless and that science +without life is meaningless. + +Perhaps the crowning fault of the agnostic scientist is his lack of +humour. He takes himself too seriously. The lover, when his fair one has +formally disagreed with him, rejecting his suit with her outspoken "No" +and promising lasting friendship and good-will even to assurances of +assistance in his next venture, takes hope, smiles grimly within +himself, and feels sure still that she and he, however disparite, are +meant to live together for better or worse. But the rejected scientist +takes the unknowable's "No" as if it [p.113] were final, and then, +retiring to his study or laboratory, proceeds, though in a morbid, +abnormal way, to mingle the scientific and volitional standpoints every +time he writes a line or makes an experiment. We watch him as he goes, +and find his case not without its humour. If the true lover upon being +rejected were satisfied thereafter with caressing the lady's photograph, +then he and the agnostic scientist would be in the same class. + +But, as is needless to say, I am not writing a novel. So, romance aside, +unquestionably the forms and doctrines of the scientific consciousness +are peculiar, being, as has been shown, logically subtle, imaginary and +innocent of direct practical realism, being, in short, the inhabitants +of a world quite their own, and to impose them intact upon active life +cannot fail to bring disaster, the usual disaster of a misfit. Yet, let +us bring to mind, in the first place, that the scientific consciousness +is not essentially different from consciousness in general, and that +consciousness in general deals, and always must deal with artificial +forms, with symbols, constructions, and transformations; and in the +second place, that it always knows with some measure of sophistication +that what it deals with is symbolic or constructed. Conscious creatures, +from the moment they begin to draw breath, are trained to see one thing +objectively and to understand or construe quite another thing for active +expression. There is no visual sensation without muscular sensation, and +most men, if not all men, have really learned in the long years of their +own and their race's experience to get along without _seeing_ [p.114] +and yet also without foregoing the sensations in their muscles! Man's +long training, in a word, has taught him to use what he sees as not +direct reality, but only a symbol of reality, and so in volition always +to allow for the "practical" unreality of the objects before his +consciousness. The mere words bread and butter, for example, or even the +visible things in a restaurant window, have never brought satiety to a +hungry child, nor do I myself fear that they ever will. Moreover, the +long training that is the surety against danger, and that at the same +time has made man keenly awake to the value as well as the humour of +symbolism, is just what has rendered the high development of +professional science possible, and is also what makes possible and +properly controls the application of science to practical life. + +It may now be asserted that the facts are not in accord with the view to +which I have just given expression, that sometimes, and very of ten too, +the forms and doctrines of science are imposed without modification or +translation upon practical life. Thus, though the names for edibles +themselves as present to the eye--or to any other sense--are not normal +substitutes for food, nevertheless some people, whether from poverty or +from indigestion, have fed on them, just as they have taken long +journeys with maps, time-tables, and guide books. In education, too, the +formal conditions of science have suggested object-lessons and pure +induction; in political organization we have had programmes of extreme +elemental individualism, of lawless democracy, and of abstract communism +and Christian Socialism; in religion God [p.115] has been like a thing +seen, perhaps a tree walking or a man working, whether with hoe or rake +or with other implement, perhaps a trident, and belief has been +identified with an articulate dogma or formula; and many a realistic +novel, treating the details of life as a scientist might treat them, or +many a psychological novel, more problematic than artistic, has been put +upon the market. But what can all this mean, undoubtedly true as it is, +save that science belongs to life, yet is applied to it with difficulty +and only under conditions of conflict? In the case of the edibles, +poverty or illness, both of them incidents of conflict, is responsible +for the unnatural substitution, and in cases of education, politics, +religion, and literature, the substitution is equally a makeshift which +the conditions of conflict impose upon life. An individualistic +programme will not work, nor will a purely socialistic programme work. +Mere induction will not educate. No visible God ever was divine, and no +articulate creed ever was true. Life is a game throughout; its vital +character, its very integrity is its experimental character; it is not a +settled, abstractly perfect thing. Life is dynamic, not static. +Accordingly it must move forward by its mistakes, or by storm and stress +of the incongruous and misapplied, being inspired, not by somebody's +complacent optimism, but by a sacrificial, always heroic idealism; and +its scientific practices, however truly a mixing of things formally +incongruous or disparite, are just aids to its reality. Moreover, those +science-formed practices are always in some measure sophisticated. Human +nature is rather a fine thing in its way, as [p.116] many a man has +flattered himself and his kind by saying. Witness the homeless, +ill-clad, starving child feeding over the odorous grating and before the +well-stocked window of the restaurant, and feeling, if not actually +saying: "As long as I cannot have and eat, it is good to smell and see." +Witness, also, the educator or the statesman or the priest or the +novelist. Each knows his makeshift and feels some of the humour of it, +and in his closet, when not before his public, acknowledges the violence +to which he is lending himself. + +And another fact, besides that of the actual applications of science, +which, however violent, prove the need as well as the dangers, and +besides the sophistication, perhaps also the sense of humour, which +always accompanies the applications and at least tempers their violence, +must also be mentioned. Those science-formed programmes always go in +pairs. Individualism and socialism, realism and mysticism, Epicureanism +and Stoicism, orthodoxy and heresy are inseparable, socially and +historically; and the effect of such pairing is plainly to correct +whatever of violence the sense of symbolism and the sophistication and +the humour of the time may be unequal to. Thus in the movements and +programmes of society for any given misfit there is always a +counter-misfit. Possibly human life, at least as socially organized, is +only a competition of misfits, its programmes coming, not through the +acquired supremacy of one side or the other, but through the constant +mediation, the balancing and interacting of the two, and the misfits are +perhaps exclusively the gifts of science or at least [p.117] of the +observer's consciousness generally, and man is at once serious and +humorous enough to impose what science gives on the real life of his +fellows, as a ready-made clothier might on a stray countryman; but is a +city, then, to have no Hyam, and is the life of society also to dispense +with the gifts of science because they are imperfect? There are worse +things than clothes not made to measure or than the men who sell or buy +them. There is the life that never changes its old clothes for new. +There are the clothes that never get on the market at all. + +Accordingly the interference of the scientific with the volitional point +of view is, to say the least, not the only danger which the scientist or +the practical man needs to recognize. There is also the danger that the +disparity between science and life, or between knowledge and the +unknowable, will be construed to mean that the two are never to live +together. Science may be innocent of any direct accord with reality, +being in form quite innocent of a real realism, but after all, whether +by itself or in its various applications or renderings in human life, it +is so innocent only in a qualified sense, only with reference to the +form of its specific doctrine and attitudes taken individually. As +itself a living whole, part acting upon part, each abstraction corrected +by some counter-abstraction or perhaps by some inner self-opposition, as +conscious too of its own conditions and limitations, as sophisticated +and even humorous, both for all logical purposes and for all purposes of +applicability in the life of society it is realism itself. As harbouring +what above was called, in so many words, an [p.118] inner active spirit +of veracity or power for reality, a constant agent of validity and +applicability, it is itself a party to the real life. + +But return to the idea of the divorce of science and life, which is such +an easy conclusion of agnosticism. If divorced, it was said, they are +lost, the one in a morbid intellectualism, the other in the dead +monotony of mere existence. Now, in view of the fact that many have +found such a divorce to possess the highest ideal value, it seems worth +while to remark that after all is said the separation can be only +apparent, not real. Even if we neglect wholly the writing and the +experimentation of the scientist, as volitional as they are scientific, +and the practical consciousness, moral or prudential, of the disciple of +the "real life," as scientific as it is volitional, we shall find such +to be the case. We know men who have what may be styled, and what +sometimes is abusively styled, a double life. They have their science, +perhaps their laboratories and their books and their own pet doctrines, +and they have also their social affiliations in business and in politics +and in religion; and, whether it be ideal or unideal, admirable or +reprehensible, their life certainly does seem double, because their +sociology and their business, or their political theory and their party +ties, or their biology and their religion simply will not mix; but their +apparent duplicity has apparently little or nothing to rest upon. It may +count as two, numerically, but such counting never makes being. Men +should count less and think more. On the terms of such a numerical +separation, as was said, the science can be only formal, the life only +dead; but such a [p.119] science and such a life make one existence, not +two; and, however amusing the conclusion may be, it is nevertheless true +that the science, for just what it is, has been applied, making the life +just what it is. Are scientific technique with its aloofness and logical +abstractions and a life that in its own special, affairs can be only +conventional and ritualistic, or say routine in the study or the +laboratory and routine in the church or market-place, are these so +different as really to be, whatever the appearances, independent and +distinct? They may count as two for being in just so many different +places, but the man, scientist or practitioner, is always necessarily +with himself, and in this sense never in more than one place, so that in +character and value the two routines are one and the same. Moreover, the +ennui which together they are sure to induce must end sooner or later in +a common cry for help, in a passion for reality that will turn each +toward the other with an irresistible appeal. + +Once more, then, there is danger for science not merely in the +interference, but in the obstinate independence of the scientific and +the volitional point of view. A protected science may have no less, but +also it has no more justification than a protected industry. Competition +with life and will may often bring science low, degrading its methods +and impairing its professional success, but protection involves at least +equal risks. Professor Muensterberg--but may he forgive me my Homeric +epithets--is a too zealous epistemologic protectionist. + +The difficulty as to the agnosticism of science may be presented in +another way. Dismissing all thought [p.120] of either interference or +divorce and all thought of the scientist forgetting his agnosticism or +taking it too soberly, we may say that the scientific agnostic, being +under the spell of the scientific way of dealing with things, is +disposed to treat the unknowable as if it were but one more thing or +fact among all the other things or facts with which he is wont to deal. +The world for him is then composed of two departments or groups, which +like a good scientist he classifies and labels, the knowable and the +unknowable; and nothing could be simpler or more natural. Though the +point of what follows may be lost in its appearance of mere wordiness, +so to speak, the world of his interest, of his formal knowledge, +includes, among the other things, that which he knows to be unknowable, +and with the inclusion and the knowledge of unknowability he imagines +his responsibility to the unknowable both to begin and end. Or, again, +the agnostic scientist regards the unknowable as something apart from +the knowable, as something not for him to know and also not having any +vital, intrinsic relations to what he does know, but something +nevertheless objectively presentable to a creature with knowing +faculties altogether different from his. The unknowable is thus for him +still the object of a looking and thinking consciousness, yet never of +his looking and thinking consciousness; it is knowable, and formally +knowable, yet not to him, not through any of the forms of knowledge, the +enabling attitudes, at his command. And nothing, I say once more, could +be simpler or more natural. But, properly and professionally scientific +as it may be to give to agnosticism this turn, it is very [p.121] +decidedly an excellent example of professional blindness, being a sort +of _reductio ad absurdum_, of the scientific point of view, for plainly +it treats the unknowable as a matter, first, of knowledge--the scientist's +knowledge of its unknowability, and as a matter, second, for +knowledge--the knowledge of the creature with the different faculties. +Surely such treatment is not honestly agnostic. Science, therefore, if +it would be honest as well as scientific, must forget its +professionalism and take the negative of the unknowable in another way. + +In what way? In making reply to this question I must resort to a +distinction, which I have frequently found useful, between the dogmatic +and the merely instrumental. Thus agnosticism may be dogmatic, as the +conventional scientist would hold it, flatly declaring for an +unknowable, or it may be instrumental, esteeming the unknowability in +things, not merely as relative to the existing conditions of knowledge, +but also as a constant demand upon science that it never rest in itself, +that it for ever treat its results as only a means to some end. So +viewed an instrumental agnosticism is also teleological, but not in any +sense of a fixed and static telos. Telic character or purposiveness and +fixity are like oil and water. Whatever the traditional theologian may +think or say, they simply will not mix. + +Of the two kinds of agnosticism, the first hardly calls for further +treatment, for it is plainly that which has been recently examined and +found to be more scientific, or at least more professionally scientific, +than fully and personally honest, and the second is [p.122] very nearly +akin to positivism, but must be scrutinized closely, for it certainly +leads beyond the usual bounds of positivism. The positivist in science, +as has been indicated above, accepts only actual positive experience and +accepts that only tentatively. The working hypothesis is thus the master +of his mind. What he knows, however well established in his actual, +positive consciousness, is at best only relative and mediative. But--and +just here appears the defect of his position, or just here we see him +still only the professional scientist--the mediation which absorbs his +interest is merely one of formal knowledge; what he knows always leads +him just to more knowledge; his formulated hypotheses as they are tested +are but aids to new formulations: whereas, besides this mediation, there +always is another at least equally significant, for knowledge under the +very conditions of its rise and formulation must for ever be a means to +something besides mere knowledge. Recognition of this other mediation, +accordingly, is all-important to any final appraisal of the meaning of +agnosticism, to an appraisal that is justified just through being +superior to the special interests of formal and professional science. Is +it not one of the functions of the various negatives in our human life +really to save life from the narrowness of its various professional +abstractions, and is not the attitude of agnosticism but one of these +negations? + +And now, if for a paragraph or two I may be even offensively abstruse, +the conditions of our positive experience, of our actual knowledge, are +such, and are commonly recognized to be such, that there must always be +an unknown. Every working hypothesis [p.123] by implication points to an +unknown. It is equally true, however, that the conditions of positive +experience are such that there is no fixity to this unknown; and the +unknown changes in consequence, both in possible content and in possible +quality or value, with every change in knowledge. But _always_ an +unknown which is _never_ the same unknown must mean something more than +merely a yet-to-be-known; yes, it must mean even more than an +infinitely, eternally remote yet-to-be-known, for its being always, or +its being infinitely distant, simply makes it something besides positive +knowledge actual or possible. It must mean something which, though not +knowledge, is nevertheless in knowledge, now and always; something +served by all knowledge but itself other than any knowledge; something, +then, which exceeds or transcends whatever the formal enabling +conditions of knowledge are capable of presenting, but is itself +intimately and vitally involved in the presentation; or, once more, +something which is not at all in the character of a separate unknowable +thing or sphere of things, nor even of a separate part in the things +known or knowable, but is in the character rather of an unknowability, +perhaps in a sense a relative unknowability, belonging to the very +things and to every part of the very things that are known or, let me +say, inhering in the bare possibility of all knowledge. Must there not +be a sense in which just that which makes knowledge possible is itself +quite impossible to knowledge? Who makes a law must be superior to the +law, or "legally supreme," and what makes knowledge possible can hardly +be fully and directly an object [p.124] of knowledge. Given actual, +positive knowledge, then, and there must always be not merely an +unknown, but also an unknowable; an unknowable, however, that is in and +of the knowledge, not in place or in character a thing by itself. + +I said I should be abstruse, and I have not yet finished. In fully +appraising agnosticism we need to consider at close range another idea +of the positivist. Thus for the positivist knowledge is not a having, +but a getting--on the principle that unto him that hath shall be given; +not a knowing, but a questioning and seeking; not a being, but a +becoming--that has its ground in a being so real as to be without fixity +of form. And this is plainly equivalent to making movement and action +essential to the very nature of the knowing mind or to making knowledge +dynamic instead of static, and infinitely plastic--even like life +itself, that is always greater than its cross-sections or specific +forms. But in general to an active nature nothing can ever be quite +external; to a truly active nature there can be no essential +impossibility. For reflect. The mere existence of anything external or +of anything impossible would in just so far remove and deny the +intrinsic character of the activity; in just so far it would set the +supposedly active being in fixity of life and definiteness of form. For +an essentially active nature, therefore, all things--all things in +heaven and earth--are both present and possible, and so, specifically, +if that active nature be the knowing mind there can be no unknowable +that is at the same time alien and altogether impossible to the knower. +Even the very forms of the knower's knowledge must for ever compass +[p.125] pass more than they may visibly present. The knowing itself in +its own right and nature must be more than formal knowing, or than the +"objective," "special" science, in which the formal knowing has its +professional realization. And the knower, as he knows, in and through +his knowledge must always be compassing just that which is not +impossible to him, but only unknowable--that is, impossible merely to +his direct, formal knowledge. Is the inedible or the invisible or the +impenetrable or the unbearable or the illegible or even the +unintelligible ever wholly impossible? Such negatives, and in fact all +negatives, besides saving life from the narrowness of its various forms, +do this positive thing: they open the door of life's wider, nay, of +life's infinite opportunity or possibility, and at the same time they +render those various definite forms really mediative or instrumental, +making them parts in an essentially purposive existence. With just this +meaning, then, a meaning larger and deeper than that usual to +positivism, the attitude of the agnostic is instrumental and +teleological. Agnosticism simply endows the knower--must we not even put +our conclusion so?--with a wider freedom than that of knowledge, and yet +also makes his knowledge both share and serve the wider freedom that is +given. + +Instead, then, of pointing to a known "unknowable," before which either +some non-human creature or some human vice-regent of such a creature is +not obliged to be so knowingly humble, instead of establishing the +conceit that knowledge or science is wholly for its own sake and so of +divorcing knowledge and real life, instead of making castes out of the +social [p.126] classes of those who look and those who do, the +unknowable must be taken to point to the necessary unity of knowledge +and life, of theory and practice, to the fact that all looking is +incident to a running and before a leaping, that all knowledge is +responsible to life, and that only life, however directly unknowable, +can ever inform knowledge. It even suggests I think with Carlyle that +"the end of man is action, not thought, though it were the noblest." +Yet, in truth, though its own emphasis may thus exalt action, it cannot +mean any depreciation of thought or knowledge, only their enlistment in +the service of life. + + * * * * * + +At this point it would be interesting to show in detail how action--that +is, volition or application to life as central to the meaning of +agnosticism--is not only the logically appropriate nor yet only the +sentimentally ideal, but also the inevitable, the inner and actually +real motive, the natural outcome of the scientific standpoint in each +one of its three attitudes. Such a showing might follow historical and +sociological lines, or it might appeal to psychology or it might be +abstrusely logical, but I can ask attention only to a few suggestions of +so general a character as not to be easily classified. + +The natural consequence of objectivism is something like that attributed +by many to modern militarism, since it ends by inducing the very thing +it claims to prevent. An objective science discloses the mechanical +nature of man's environment, besides making man himself also a good deal +of a machine. But a machine, whether environment or personal being, is +always a [p.127] tool whose fine, accurate adjustments are just so much +presented opportunity that by a sort of hypnotism turns the scientist's +consciousness into that of an effective agent in the world. Somehow a +real machine must move, and in the case before us with the movement the +asserted distinction between looking subject and seen object collapses +hopelessly. Witness such a collapse, as the runner, who has been +studying the stream before him, takes his leap, or in history as an age +of self-consciousness, conventionalism, and utilitarianism, is followed +by the rise of Napoleon. So does objectivism pass over into action. As +for the special Science, it may be impractical, because partial, but we +have seen how at least formally it loses its partiality, becoming even +all-inclusive, indirectly compensating for its narrowness of view and so +becoming virtually co-extensive with all its associates in science. The +dividing partitions may still stand, but only as unsubstantial forms +wholly transparent and ineffective, so that the undivided universe is +really present to consciousness. The undivided universe, however, as +present to consciousness, is a call for will, since it cannot be fully +realized in any formal consciousness. The natural decline of an asserted +specialism, then, or the development of specialism into a mere form +without substance, into a virtual universalism, makes science +applicable. It makes science applicable, for in the first place it gives +freedom from the bondage of mere special technique, just as, for +example, the decline of religious--or irreligious?--sectarianism, a form +of specialism certainly, is sure to free religion from the bondage of +ritual, and in the second place, as was the [p.128] fate of objectivism, +it makes the distinction between self and not-self, subject and object, +man and nature, only a formal one, since the real unity of the objective +world is exactly that in which the self has its true realization. In +like manner a religion turned non-sectarian shows man truly living and +moving and having his being, not aloof from God, but in God. Thirdly, +whether because of the freedom from technique or ritual or because, as +the waters of science become quiet with the union of its many streams, +the objective world does clearly mirror the image of the self, the +decline of specialism, like the decline of sectarianism, brings what +some are pleased to call the liberation of the human spirit. The +psychologist would call it the development of knowledge into will--in a +word, the application of science, and the historian would record it as +the dawn of a new era. Psychologically and historically the human spirit +is liberated and nature is let loose at the same time. Details can +always be observed objectively and specially or separately; the whole, +on the other hand, is bound to draw the observer into itself and so to +change the observation into motive and will. And, lastly, as for +agnosticism, suffice it to say, in addition to what has been said, that +the suppressed passion for reality to which agnosticism must always +testify ensures in good time the assertion of the volitional as distinct +from the merely scientific point of view. Whatever this may mean +psychologically, historically and sociologically it means that a time of +agnosticism leads to all sorts of applications of science, such as +those, for example, in legislation and in industry. In morals [p.129] +and religion, too, the same wish and will to use the results of science +shows itself, as in the social settlements, in scientific charity, in +the "institutional" church, and in the university extension movement. +Agnosticism, marking, as it always does, dissatisfaction both with the +uninformed and with the conventionally informed life, and also rendering +mere formal knowledge, however logically correct and thinkable, unreal +or artificial, calls for a larger freedom of life through the mediation +of knowledge. + +But interesting as such reflections as the foregoing are, and +interesting also as it would be to undertake an account of will in +general in its relation to a consciousness which in so far as scientific +is always artificial and symbolic, and is in particular, as we have +found, always a poise between opposing points of view,[4] I must bring +to an end this rather lengthy examination of the standpoint of science. +If I have not already tarried too long, the special task of this volume +certainly does not warrant further attention even to so important a +department of human experience. + +In conclusion, then, it is now quite apparent that science is a fruitful +field for the doubter. Science lacks self-sufficiency. Socially it means +the rise of a caste, and logically it involves abstraction and +consequent division against itself. Its most cherished ideals, as shown +in its attitudes and methods, are chimerical, or impossible. In general +and in particular it has a [p.130] paradoxical standpoint, being not +less given to contradictions than ordinary consciousness. + +But, as must be added, the case for the doubter of science has led also +toward a belief in science. Not infrequently in the course of the +foregoing discussion it must have seemed even as if belief rather than +doubt were the controlling motive. A little child has said that faith +consists in "believing what you know to be untrue," and our present +state of mind cannot be far from such a faith. Actually the science +which we may believe in is the science of which we are also confirmed +doubters. We doubt the formal attitude and the formal doctrines just +because they are abstract, phenomenal, paradoxical, but at the same time +we have to believe in the spirit--there seems to be no other word +available--as an ever-present agent of validity, because, in spite of +all, the very incongruities save these formal doctrines from their +apparent artificiality and abstraction, and put them in touch with what +is whole and real. And if, as was suggested, the scientific +consciousness is only the specially developed consciousness of ordinary +life, then we have gained also a new confidence even in the unreflective +paradoxical consciousness of everyday life. Yet, that we may more fully +comprehend what this means, we shall next consider at some length the +possible value of the defects in experience which have now been +observed. Ideas, which have appeared heretofore as little better than +hints or suggestions, can then be presented in clearer form. + + +[1] See an article: "Epistemology and Physical Science--A Fatal +Parallelism," in the _Philosophical Review_, Vol. VII, No. 4, July, +1896. + +[2] See articles: "Pluralism: Empedocles and Democritus," in the +_Philosophical Review_, Vol. X, No. 3, May, 1901; "A Study in the Logic +of the Early Greek Philosophy--Being, not-Being, and Becoming," in the +_Monist_, Vol. XII, No. 3, April, 1902; and "The Poetry of Anaxagoras's +Metaphysics," in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Method_, Vol. IV, No 4. + +[3] See Muensterberg's _Psychology and Life_, p. 267. Houghton Mifflin +and Co., 1899. + +[4] For an interesting account, mainly psychological in standpoint, of +will as involving such a poise, see Muensterberg's _Grundzuege der +Psychologie_, Vol. I, chap. xv., Leipzig, 1900. + + + +[p.131] + +VI. + +POSSIBLE VALUE IN THESE ESSENTIAL DEFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. + + +An original sin, or an essential defect, must somehow be for some good +purpose. At least, if a general faith in the ultimate propriety of all +things has any ground to stand on, such must be the case. The sin or the +defect cannot be unmixed; its very originality, its essentiality, must +line it, though it be the blackest of clouds, with some silver. Theology +has sometimes forgotten this, but an honest doubter cannot afford such a +lapse. + +Yet before examining the possible worth of the original defects of +experience, or, as some might regard the present enterprise, before +attempting to give the devil himself a "character," we must recall the +various steps of our general undertaking as it has progressed so far. We +have been, in the first place, occupied with a thorough-going confession +of doubt, with the greatest possible candour hunting down all the +reasons for the attitude of doubt which experience affords, and so far, +in the second place, we have found doubt justified, whether for good or +for ill, because of its potential when not actual universality among +men, of its character as a condition of all conscious life, of [p.132] +its importance to real active life and deep experience, of its intimacy +even with habit, and of its natural sense of dependence and consequent +impulse to companionship with nature, man and God, but more than +all--and this was the special interest of the last two chapters--because +of the paradoxical and self-contradictory nature of all human +experience. As regards the last point, our ordinary consciousness, the +often-boasted consciousness of common sense, was found to harbour a +widespread, very persistent duplicity towards such vital things as +reality, wholeness or unity, space and time, the causal relation, +knowledge, moral freedom and natural law; and science, to which many +when dislodged from their ordinary standpoint have been accustomed to +retreat with greatest confidence and hope, was examined with similar +results. Science was found in its rise to involve abstraction of +interest and disruption of life, and in its avowed point of view to +be--suppose I say at this point--impossible but contradictory. So, in a +word, as a clinching argument for doubt, as an argument that at least on +the surface has less of hope in it than any of the others, we are face +to face with the bare, hard fact that in the very nature of human +experience, besides the relativity and instability and subjectivity, +there dwells a spirit of positive violence. Contradiction is just one +phase of the error to which all men are said to be addicted. As a +background for the inconsistent theologian, the fickle woman, the +shifting politician and other equally double-faced monsters, we see +both-sidedness, individually and to a certain extent socially, to be a +basal habit of human nature, [p.133] and if the doctrine of original sin +is tenable at all, in just this fact it would appear to have its +strongest support. _Humanum est errare_ may be translated: Man is most +human when hopelessly divided against himself. + +But just here our confession of doubt has reached a critical stage; +since in experience apparently at its very worst, as if in a medley of +discords we have caught a promise of real harmony, and so something from +which to get genuine hope. In the very habit of duplicity or +contradiction we have again and again had suggestion of an agent of +validity, a power for adequacy in experience, which would hold even a +phenomenal, relative, partial experience to a real world. In short, +really the strongest reason for doubt is possibly a ground of belief; +or, as was said in substance at the close of the foregoing chapter, the +very experience of which we are already confirmed doubters is, after +all, just the experience which we seem to see our way to believing in. + +Since the time of the great Leibnitz, and probably since the time +self-conscious man drew his first breath, all genuine optimism has +caught its most assuring vision of what was good, not in something quite +apart from what was evil, but in and through evil itself, as if what is +evil must be ever building better than it seems or than it knows. Very +much as mathematics has viewed the negative quantity as an integral part +of the whole system of quantities, so in the person of +Leibnitz--statesman, historian, scientist, mathematician, and +philosopher--and I imagine in the person also of you or me, though we +may not claim the same [p.134] authority, the human mind has been wise +and deep enough to see evil, representing all the negative things of +life as an organic part of the best possible world, even of the world +created by an infinite God. At least since Leibnitz's time, I say, +optimism has generally justified itself, not by denial of evil in the +world, but in and through evil. Not long ago a young man who was perhaps +more profound and reflective in his habits of mind than wise in his +manner of statement, said to me that the most spiritual truth as yet +disclosed to him was the identity of God with the devil. A shocking +declaration, of course; yet, to say the least, not very far from the +very spiritual idea, welcome to most, if not to all, that the conviction +of sin is the beginning of salvation, or that the consciousness of +ignorance is the very ground of wisdom. And here, similarly, belief +within doubt, not belief apart from doubt, or validity and reality only +in a contradictory experience, not aloof from a contradictory +experience, is the sum and substance of what our confession has +certainly been leading towards. + +Nothing, it is indeed true, so blasts a man's assurance as to have his +ideas and arguments on a certain matter, or on matters in general, +exposed as defective, and worst of all as positively inconsistent, and +with his discomfiture human nature must always entertain the warmest +kind of sympathy. In fact, upon just this sympathy I have been depending +in the development of the argument of this book. But human nature, +however sympathetic, is really superior to any momentary discomfiture, +and most if not all men sooner or later come to value highly [p.135] +even their once discomfiting inconsistencies. "I am glad," we seem to +hear a fellow-being say, "that after all, in spite of myself, I did +recognize the other side. You abused me and called me double; yet so +doing you were double too. I see now that my duplicity saved me, not, +however, for your view or for another's, but for the both-sided and +true, which we both shared and served"; and exactly such a reflection on +the inconsistencies of experiences, in their less or in their more +fundamental manifestations, is the burden of the present chapter. Again, +to one who complained that with every breath he took he had to +contradict himself, respiration being as necessary to his breathing as +inspiration, just as in walking falling is as necessary as rising, we +might properly and satisfactorily reply: "You are really alive, sir," +and just this answer is also quite pertinent to any who might be +disposed in their doubting to despair over the essential duplicity of +human experience. Is not experience more than any one idea or any one +ideal? Being really alive, is it not infinitely more than this or that +thing, than this or that place or time, than this or that power or will, +than this or that point of view? And, if more, what so surely as +universal duplicity and self-opposition can ensure at once its vitality +and its integrity? + +I am not forgetting or wishing my readers to forget that there are other +defects in experience besides this of self-opposition, besides +experience's habit of never failing to induce its own conflicts; but no +defect seems to me so central or so conclusive as this, and none is at +the same time so clear in its testimony to the intimacy of doubt and +belief. [p.136] Subjectivity, relativity, phenomenality, artificiality, +partiality, and instability--certainly an imposing and appalling list, +though logically I must suspect it of being at least a +cross-division--are all noteworthy defects; but supposing the list exact +and complete, we must recognize that all these either beget +contradiction or are begotten by it. Contradiction is just the life or +the heart of the interesting family to which they belong, and so in +applying our thinker's stethoscope to that heart we shall have +determined the hold upon life of the whole race. + +Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem +worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they +seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they +warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we +may rest a genuine case for belief. + +Thus, for the first of the five, contradiction incites and even in +itself implies movement; it requires, or positively it is, action. As a +mode of thinking, as a logical form, it is the way, perhaps the only +possible way, in which the mind can, so to speak, make a cross-section +or take a picture of activity or give the semblance of fixity, the +formal appearance of static nature, to what is dynamic. The photographer +trying for a portrait of reality might ask it only to look pleasant, but +the logician, for whom reality was essentially dynamic, would demand +manifest opposition, for in no other way could his art, limited to +conditions of rest,[1] [p.137] be equal to its subject. Where experience +is contradictory, then, there is movement, whether for that which is +known or for him that has the knowledge. In your character or mine, so +like a lover's unselfish selfishness in its apparent inconsistencies, in +our double views about reality or unity or law, in a +subjective-objective science, in an agnostic philosophy, in all these +the contradictions are only the marks of essential unrest, of necessary +movement, that make the picture possible. For a world of opposites there +can be no peace. The very things opposed are themselves fluent and +unstable, and that third something, the _tertium quid_, a picture of +which the opposition tries to be or to which the things opposed +necessarily point, belongs, as Alice in Wonderland seems to have +discovered, to yesterday or to-morrow, never to to-day. + +But, secondly, contradiction, at least as here understood, is an +expression, or in experience a means to the expression, as well as to +the maintenance, of real unity. In general this is because real unity +cannot take sides, and so can never reside in anything that is, but must +rather be served by the co-operation of all things and in particular by +their mutually corrective or balancing differences. This no doubt will +appear to some readers as just one more example of a philosopher's +impossible subtleties, as a mountain with its top in so rare an +atmosphere that the common man would not dare to climb it if he could. +Yet, suppose together we rise to the heights of this seeming +impossibility by a little unprejudiced study of the conditions, +remembering that the summits of very wonderful mountains, plainly +impossible of ascent, have often been reached [p.138] from the other +side, and that difficulties of breathing are often due to a needless +exhaustion. To take a first step, then, contradiction is only +difference, or contrast, at its limit. Naturally there is some +opposition, some mutual resistance, in all difference, in that, for +example, between one man and another, or one thing and another, between +religion and art, red and green, or warm and hot, and often the +difference or the opposition seems very slight; but contradiction, so +called, is only this difference abstracted and unrestrained--it is +difference at its worst or best, difference as only opposition, or, once +more, difference where any possible unity of the things opposed has lost +all material ground or all chance of actual, visible form, and has +become, accordingly, at most merely an empty, abstract principle. +Contradiction, then, is difference so wide that unity seems wholly +betrayed rather than served or maintained. A real unity, however, +requires for its realization just the freedom from material form or +ground which such extreme difference would force upon it. It therefore +gains instead of losing reality by passing into the world of the +materially and visibly empty and abstract, or, say, by leaving behind +any hope of a finite residence and entering the sphere of the infinite, +to which difference, or at least contradiction, so cordially invites--or +expels--it. And, this being true, we can see how unity is served or +maintained, as was said, by the contradictions of experience. + +Commonly men have an idea that differences mean, or point to, unity, but +they are more likely to suppose that the unity is by mere contrast or +antithesis than [p.139] clearly to recognize that it is a most intimate +fact of the differences themselves. They will even see in a number of +things only so many varying aspects of some one thing, and will go so +far as to look upon the aspects as actually enriching and deepening the +unity, but they still fail fully to appreciate how the real unity is +immanent and immediate in the differences. Again, in all their thinking +they contrast, and may consciously observe that they contrast, only +objects or people that really have something in common, comparing, on +the other hand, only such as in some way are manifestly different, and +in their practical affairs they compete only with those who with them +are parties to one and the same life, a fundamental sympathy, indeed, +being a necessary condition of their rivalry, and actually and actively +hate only the beings whom because of a common humanity they might love; +but here, too, their appreciation lags behind the fact. + +In life generally, moreover, in small things and in large, extremes do +have the habit of meeting. A man's virtues are so near to his vices. The +widest variations in things are only relatively at variance. Even what +is cold is somewhat warm. Nothing is absolutely anything. In history a +single ideal, rising to influence, has always divided men into two +opposing camps. Witness the fact of bipartisanship, not in politics +alone, but in all of life's interests. Democrats and Republicans, +Radicals and Conservatives alike have loved their country and honoured +their country's flag and, regardless of party, their country's heroes or +patriots. Epicureans and Stoics--in recent times or long ago--have found +the same life worth living. The [p.140] Roman Law and the Roman Holiday, +working together, like the right and the left hand, different yet in +sympathy, made the great empire. Two men, furthermore, in active, open +conflict are in truth at serious difference with each other; but, as +they might even say, if their conflict were in the form of a debate, +where words instead of fists or pistols were the weapons, in the bare, +unapplied principle involved, or say in the abstract, in the final +success of whichever is the "best man," they do and they must agree. +Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no +idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the +manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common +relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is +it but a demand for real unity? And the common weapons, or for quite +general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition +is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, +only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, +even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, +truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at +most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is +intrinsic to a real unity. + +Where unity is real, then, there must be infinite difference, and +infinite difference is just what the contradictions of experience impose +upon experience and make it responsible to. Infinite difference gives to +everything an opposite and to all things unity; to every man a rival and +to human society, as a whole, solidarity. Against the material it sets +the spiritual; against [p.141] the particular, the general; against the +subjective, the objective; against the living, the dead; against the +lawful, the lawless; against the caused, the uncaused; and to all these, +the spiritual and the material, the subjective and the objective, the +living and the dead, the lawful and the lawless, the caused and the +uncaused, it gives place in a perfect unity; not, of course, in any +material unity, since such unity could not be perfect, but nevertheless +in a real unity. + +For our first step, therefore, in the ascent of that "impossible +subtlety," contradiction is only difference at its greatest limit; for +the second, difference in general, whether partial or extreme, marks an +underlying, or more precisely an indwelling unity; and for the last +step, real unity is served, not betrayed by difference. Moreover, the +wider the difference, the nearer it be to positive contradiction or +opposition, the more conclusive and effective is the service. Remember, +real unity can never take sides; in the world of things it must be +always both-sided. It cannot be here or there, now and then--be the then +in the past or in the future, this or that. In the words, used of truth, +perhaps an appropriate refrain for this book, it can have neither +visible form nor body, neither habitation nor name; like the Son of Man, +it cannot have where to lay its head. The particular opposition of life +and death affords a peculiarly serviceable illustration, for it is, of +course, at the bottom of many of the most searching paradoxes of our +human experience. Real life cannot be confined to any single organic +form or to any single group of organic forms. In fact, it cannot be +bound even to the organic as commonly distinguished from the [p.142] +inorganic world. So for the biologist, very much as for the theologian, +whenever life takes a residence, death must ensue sooner or later. Life +and death, then, as opposites, become the medium of real life. But not +only have we here a helpful illustration, also we have a suggestion that +should prevent an easy misunderstanding. In general, as so plainly in +this special case, the opposition, so necessary to reality in +experience, to a real life or to any real unity, can itself be complete +and effective, not through any single instance of extreme difference, +not through the opposition of just two distinct things, but only through +an accumulation or summation of all possible instances, so to speak, +from difference at zero to difference at infinity. In fact, a real +opposition or rather a truly infinite difference, could be only in such +a sum. Not the single climax of death, but the constant dying, to which +it is only a climax, is what makes real the opposition of life and death +and makes this the medium, as was said, of the real life. Death must +constantly condition all the movements and processes of life: it must +have all possible degrees. And, in like manner, extreme difference at +large, just to be real itself and to make for real unity, must be in and +through all possible degrees of difference. In other words, the perfect +opposition, or contradiction, upon which reality depends, like the +perfect death, is rather a continuum than the wide gap, or chasm, which +so many have thought it; it is a graduate difference, not a single +cataclysmic difference. Difference in gradation or degree, I have +sometimes heard it said, is not real difference; but this statement, +though by no means without warrant or meaning, is [p.143] misleading. +Surely a cataclysmic difference, a "difference in kind," can be only one +finite case of difference; the negative, or opposition, in it can be +only relative; whereas, when in degree, difference becomes necessarily +infinite. Accordingly, as we must not forget, from this point on through +the remainder of this book, the contradiction of which we have been +thinking and which we have found infecting experience at every turn, is +not, what at first and even second thought it may have seemed, just an +opposition of two things; between its lines, as it were, it is inclusive +of, or maintained by, all the manifold and various things in life and +consciousness; it is the completed, short-circuited sum of an infinite +series. An infinitely many-sided world is the only world that can claim +real unity, and a world of such real unity is the world to which the +habit of contradiction, which we have observed, relates our human +experience. + +So far, then, in estimating the possible value of this central and +essential defect of experience, we have found that it implies action and +that it makes for, or testifies to, real unity. Now, thirdly, perhaps +only to enlarge upon what has just been said, contradiction is an +absolutely effective correction of narrowness or partiality or +relativity or one-sidedness in life or consciousness, and so it makes +experience not abstract, but realistic. This is in truth only another +view of the worth of contradiction to integrity and vitality, to unity +and reality, but it would emphasize, what is very interesting at least +to the metaphysician, and cannot fail to be of some interest to the +moralist and the theologian, that where there is real unity there +[p.144] is also true reality. Only the One is. The One and Being are the +same. There can be but one substance, as also but one God. So men have +said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality +or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply +concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the +intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, +then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and +intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. Now +individual things or ideas always show life suffering in some measure +under tangential digressions from the circle of its real wholeness, and +only opposition can save them or can preserve the reality to which they +both belong and contribute. Has not Emerson, among many others, declared +with a cogency and a depth of meaning which quite defy the +superficiality and levity attractive to a few, that mere consistency is +narrow and confining? Any particular view-point or idea or ideal, any +particular thing or activity, simply needs an opposite to balance the +abstraction or digression which being particular must always involve. +Particularity, specific individuality, is certainly a necessary +condition of real worth in life, but with an equal necessity there could +be no life, no conservation and wholeness of life if the particular, +individual things stood unchallenged in the world, and no realistic +experience, if experience were not thus paradoxical and divided against +itself. Life, therefore, gets not only movement and unity from the +contradictions that lie at the very heart of experience, but in getting +unity it gets also contact [p.145] with reality, and the three together +may be summed up in the one word poise. Montaigne marvelled at the +hopeless folly of mankind as compared with the wisdom of God, but man's +folly is divided against itself and so imbued with God's wisdom; and +with countless others he saw the ideas of man to be only subjective and +unsubstantial and irresponsible, but man's ideas, though fanciful and +illusory, though subjective and imaginative, work against each other for +what is real and substantial. Man's ideas co-operate for their own +correction and so for communion or intimacy with a character that is not +less substantial or responsible than that of God himself. + +And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience +supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make +realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be +abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the +hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express +satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the +both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive +experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite +to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there +always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In +practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there +always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to +leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is +all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social +classes or parties, can never be confined to a [p.146] single individual +representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly +practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but +instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely +many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed +individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and +competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly +practical, whether of things or realities--for the metaphysician--or of +ideas or categories--for the logician--or of persons or classes--for the +statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the +truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which +is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life +must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding +over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real +leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a +labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences +and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or +"entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for +morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and +platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a +labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites, +that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which +is real and practical. + +It would be peculiarly interesting to examine further this principle of +a practical, truly realistic experience ensured to human life through +the inner [p.147] conflicts of experience. The history of morals and +ethics, for example, notably of the perennial conflict between hedonism +and idealism, could not but cast a good deal of light upon it; and the +history of political struggles, or the history of the great +controversies in science--such as that between vitalism and +anti-vitalism or that between atomism and energism; or in philosophy, +between dualism and monism; or in theology, between naturalism and +supernaturalism, would also be most illuminating; while, also perhaps +appealing only to the few, in the logic of the negative, as it has +developed from the earliest times, or in psychological theory--for +example, in the dispute of the advocates of the innervation theory and +the afferent theory, or in Hering's theory of vision, or, again, in the +life and movement of any one of the time-worn paradoxes of popular or +scientific or philosophical ideas, one might expect to find suggestive +illustration. In philosophy, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Zeno, Socrates, +Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel have all found negation, or contradiction, +necessary to any adequate account of reality. Explorations, however, in +their teachings or along any of the paths that were suggested, would +lead us too far astray. + +Fifthly, then, not only do the contradictions make experience realistic +and so practical, but also they make it essentially social. A life or an +experience that is contradictory has (1) movement, (2) unity or +integrity, (3) reality and poise, and (4) practicality; and then it has +besides, as if the medium through which these four things are sustained, +(5) social character, society being only the visible expression, the +[p.148] outer realization, of the both-sidedness, of the infinitely +differential unity or the divided labour, which an active, yet +thoroughly self-controlled, truly realistic, practical experience +requires. In a former chapter, it will be readily recalled, an impulse +to social life was found to be intimately connected with the attitude of +doubt, and here clearly we are confronted with only another view of the +same fact, since contradiction has become our most cogent reason for +doubt and is now seen to require the social relations. An individual +whose experience is ever divided against itself is, _ipso facto_, a +social character, his social environment, whether in its narrowest or +broadest manifestation, adding nothing to his nature or to the struggles +of that nature, but only making the division against himself constantly +and manifestly real. The social environment, as it were, just proves the +man, his struggle and all, to himself. Some have agreed that the +individual consciousness contained nothing on which to ground a positive +case for society, for direct positive social interest; but so long as +man's experience is necessarily paradoxical or contradictory, so long as +man is divided against himself, or as the labour of life and reality is +a divided labour, the case for society and for personal interest in +society is clear and conclusive. A basis for society lies in the very +nature of experience. Society is not something added to individuality +from without. + +Let us here beware of easy sentiment. Let not our thinking conjure false +sweetness and light. Experience is truly and essentially social; the +individual was not meant to dwell alone; but herein is no immediate +[p.149] cure-all, no promise of an unperturbed brotherly love, of a life +for one and all of simple peace and blissful quietude. On such a plan +society would hardly suit the individual with whom, and with whose +natural experience, we have become acquainted. To speak with the +extravagance of a counter-sentimentalism, the individual of our present +acquaintance is forever spoiling for a fight. In the life of the society +to which he belongs; in the life where he watches for his incoming ship, +there must always be hate and evil in all their forms, lawlessness and +destruction, illusion and error; but--and just here sentiment, the +sentiment of a really searching optimism, called once before a +sacrificial and heroic optimism, may find some assurance--never an +unmixed hate, never a wholly idle destruction, never an unmeaning error. +Can anything, indeed, that has another thing against it--that has, in +short, an opposite--ever be itself unmixed? The good or the evil in +society, being always opposed, is always also shared. So few people +recognize, or appreciate, what a great mixer opposition is. Death is the +passing only of inadequate or unworthy life. Hate witnesses only a false +love; sin, a pharisaical righteousness. Destruction marks an imperfect +construction. And in all its forms, evil is not so much something in and +by itself as an exposure and reproach of what is supposed to be +unmixedly good. Public crime, for example, is not so local as it +appears; it is only a generally, widely private vice made locally +manifest, and the respectable and law-abiding, who adjudge it evil, are +bound to feel as if adjudging and condemning themselves. In a word, the +individual's natural society [p.149] is never without evil, but in all +its forms the evil has somewhat of good in it; and although social life, +not less than individual life, must be one of conflict and discord, +nevertheless, because the various factors or factions, however opposed, +can never be unmixed, because the members of society must all be good +and bad, right and wrong--I almost said living and dead +together--instead of being hopeless for having evil in it, the life of +society is so much the more worth living. Shallow sentimentalism may not +so esteem it, but we need give little thought to shallow sentimentalism. + +So our use of the word "society" is not sentimental. Society means +conflict. It is just the natural sphere of life and reality as for ever +a divided labour, as for ever divided and laborious--divided even +between the powers for supposed good and for adjudged evil, and through +the conflicts, in which the division is expressed, what is true and good +and vital is being forever kept real. Or, to repeat, society is the +natural medium through which movement, unity or integrity, poise and +reality, and practicality are secured and realized in human experience; +it is that which makes the individual's division against himself +manifestly real and positively and progressively effective for a life, +yes, for his life, at once of vitality and perfect wholeness. + +But now that the five things are said, now that the contradictions of +experience have been seen to serve experience by giving it movement, +unity, poise, practical reality and social character, somebody is sure +to remark facetiously that on the evidence contradiction is something we +should all cultivate assiduously, and [p.151] that henceforth to face +both ways, the butt of so much opprobrium, should be one of man's +greatest ideals; in brief, that the inconsistent creatures in politics, +morals, and theology are the coming examples for mankind. Verily the +devil has been given his promised "character." But, alas! in the spirit +of such startling humour one would have to conclude also that because +crime has beyond all question been a means of social development, being +all-important to the awakening of the social consciousness and +conscience, all men should at once take thought and find it their duty +to turn criminals; or, again, that because death has a fundamental part +in the order of nature and is, moreover, of greatest spiritual worth and +significance, we should all morbidly seek it, being successfully +righteous only by being suicides. True, we do need to recognize the +positive function of crime in the progress of civilization, or in the +history of law, and also to be aware of crime as a possibility in our +own lives, and we need to be ready to die and to feel besides that dying +we are far from losing all that is worth having, but to court crime or +to seek death would certainly be to deprive either of the very worth +which has made it significant. And in much the same way we may very +profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or +social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on +that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always +blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly +courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The +both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and +conserves human life, is only [p.152] that which is maintained with a +tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every +side. + +So, although grossly misused if directly courted, this defect of +experience has its place, even its ideal value, in experience, and what +on the surface seemed an almost if not quite hopeless reason for doubt, +has truly become all but transfigured, seeming now a source of real +assurance. With Heraclitus of old, only perhaps seeing even more than he +saw, we can glory in a world of strife. Doubting all things, we can yet +believe that all things work together for what is real, for what is +good. + +But let me now put the result, so far secured, of our confession of +doubt in a new way. For a life in which every thing has an opposite, +every idea a counter-idea, truth very plainly, as has indeed been +frequently said, cannot be a specific consciousness nor reality a fixed +thing. Truth is not a creed, but a spirit. Reality is not a thing, but a +life. And for being a spirit truth is only the more realistic? For being +a life, reality is only the more substantial. Perfection, too, even the +Perfect One, with whom we associate the true and the real, is no +particular separate being in a certain established exclusive status, at +once infinitely and passively excellent, but a power ever dwelling in +the strife that makes for movement and poise. For being such a power, +too, he is only more surely perfect, only more certainly infinite and +excellent. + +Such terms as spirit, life, and power are confessedly somewhat dangerous +terms to use. Especially the first is liable to misunderstanding. Yet, +whatever [p.153] common usage may be, when I say that truth is not a +creed but a spirit, that reality is not a thing but a power, the +reference is directly to that agent or principle of validity which has +been found to hold our experience, naturally so faulty, to contact and +intimacy with the real world. A spirit of truth, a principle of validity +there is, to which the very faults of experience give witness, and in +view of this we who doubt, who doubt the particular things, the creeds +and the objects generally, the definite forms and ideas, the habits and +standpoints of our everyday life or our scientific theory, may yet +believe; we may believe in the real spirit, or power, which makes all +things parties to the divided labour of a real life.[2] + + +[1] This limitation is shown, for example, in the logical principle of +identity. + +[2] The worth assigned in this chapter to the contradictions of +experience involves a standpoint which apparently is at variance with +that of Mr. F.H. Bradley, whose book, _Appearance and Reality_, has +occupied such an important place in the philosophical study and +controversy of the last ten years. Of course, here is not the place for +final criticism of Mr. Bradley, since the present examination of doubt +is no such scrutiny of experience as his; it is far short of what would +make a complete philosophical argument. Nevertheless, a word or two +expressing the nature of the difference between his view and the view +advocated here can hardly be impertinent. Thus, if I read him rightly, +Mr. Bradley has argued from the paradoxes of experience to the complete, +hopeless phenomenality of experience, while in this study of doubt the +argument has been from the paradoxes of experience to a thoroughly +realistic experience. Again, Mr. Bradley's Absolute is able to include +the phenomenal, the relative and contradictory, only because this is so +unsubstantial as to offer no resistance, while here there has not even +been any question of inclusion. _All experience_, our position has been, +_is informed with reality; its very contradictions hold an otherwise +phenomenal, relative, changing experience close down to a real world_; +and this position, I repeat, is at variance with what Mr. Bradley has +_seemed_ to say. See, however, a short article, "Relativity and +Reality," in the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods_, Vol. I, No. 24, November, 1904. + + + +[p.154] + +VII. + +THE PERSONAL AND THE SOCIAL, THE VITAL AND THE FORMAL IN EXPERIENCE. + + +Contrasts such as those in the title of the present chapter, the +personal and the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are +always dangerous to clear thinking, and yet in spite of the danger no +thinking can avoid them. They can be only relatively true; the terms in +which they are couched cannot fail, sooner or later, from one standpoint +or another, to make an exchange of the very things to which they apply, +since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective +mixer, and therefore they can only punctuate the naturally chiaroscuro +character that belongs to all articulate thinking. Nevertheless, used +with self-control, they are distinctly serviceable. + +In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of +experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character +with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the +social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this +contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was +said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general +purpose. It was [p.155] said that society was nothing alien, or +additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society +lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided +against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a +divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in +society was clear and conclusive; but this was not fully to define the +parts that are played by the individual person and the social group in +the development and maintenance of human life. Some, for example, would +fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that +of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, +who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our +defences. + +Long ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, of the human +individual, to society, and so, too, Aristotle, though not to society, +but much more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the other +has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, +for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of +the implications of the idea has never been fully stated or appraised, +and this is much to be wondered at, since there is involved a strong +case for both the personal and the social in the maintenance of +experience.[1] + +Plato found reason, will, and sensuous nature in the individual and +analogously a thinking or law-making class, an official or military +class, and an industrial or [p.156] appetitive class in society; and +Aristotle, in very much the same way, found the parts of the individual +soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of +nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable +enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated, +with its mere statement. Still, in order to be sure of appreciation, in +order especially to get the reflected light on the relation between +individual and society, we must look to the facts and conditions which +are presented very closely. + +To begin with, such an analogy, dealing as it does with the relation of +a part to the whole, has and should have, for a reason not hard to find, +the freedom of the city of logic. Other than logical approval of it +might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychology might be called in +to give testimony. And out of the past, the more recent past at least as +known to the historian of philosophy, Leibnitz with his _lex analogiae_, +or for that matter with the general import of his monadology, might be +appealed to. But without tarrying for assistance from these quarters, +highly respectable though they are, I make a simple, yet perhaps timely +and--with apologies for so much emotion--soul-satisfying reference to +the logic in the case, for after all biology and sociology and +psychology are always under the restraints of logic, as well as +alliterated with it; nor does the evidence of logic depend on mere +technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these +enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can +the true part of anything ever dare [p.157] not to have an analogy, even +a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which +it is comprised? And--this being, as in due time will appear, quite as +important--how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, +ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts +within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, +however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three +typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though +at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same +differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the +group-part or class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may +be known also as the faction, and which was so important to Plato in his +analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3) the +all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible ways--that +is, even between individual and individual, or individual and group or +group and group, as well as between either individual or group and +whole--an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original +differential operation will persist. Such, almost truistically, though +also perhaps somewhat subtly for ordinary purposes, is the logical +condition of division or differentiation. Difference, like its limit +opposition, is thus a great mixer, and division can be no mere +separation or isolation of parts. The saying comes to my mind from +somewhere, that though division may reveal distinct vertebrae, the +vertebra always conceal a spinal cord. + +Analogy, however, although thus universal, although [p.158] applicable, +as said, in all of the possible ways, must itself share in, must be +quite under the spell of, the differentiation; it must have as many +various forms as it has expressions. In every expression the relation +must indeed be one of analogy, but it can never be of the same order or +degree. That of the individual to the group or faction must be +qualitatively distinct from all others, say from that of the individual +either to another individual or to the all-inclusive whole. Nor can the +much used and frequently abused distinction between small and large +writings, as when history is taken as a large writing of personal +biography or a social institution of some special phase of personal +character, adequately represent the differentiation here in mind. +Consider how various, internally and externally, are all the terms among +which the analogies obtain. Thus, as of direct interest here, factional +differences are bound to be sharper or wider, they are inevitably more +deeply set and more openly exclusive of each other than individual +differences, and in consequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, +but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of +its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole +implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, +which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to +speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the +case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates +a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other +characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes +these on the whole only in a negative way, in [p.159] the way in which +opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always +implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which +it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in +one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only +potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the +primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively +active with all the different factors of the operation, and this in +spite of the restraints of any particular class-affiliation, and the +whole, though macro-cosmic with respect to the microcosmic individual, +is at the same time qualitatively distinct, as distinct at least as the +explicit from the implicit, the actual from the potential. Whatever a +merely formal logic might say, a real logic requires that at most +microcosm and macrocosm are only metaphors of each other. Even their +difference of size would be quite enough to differentiate them at least +as sharply as the difference of size differentiated imperial Rome from +her prototype the Greek City-State. Can the whole and the part be one or +many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be +material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in +qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but +without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the +whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the +operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on +analogy, must be various accordingly. + +But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the +case for both personality and [p.160] society, no idea can be more +immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of +experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those +tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but +within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither +more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the +experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other +words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general, +or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however +different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, +as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a +thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an +indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and +spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, +intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious, and in its social life has +developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It +is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, +sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division +or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, +aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the +language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is +only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction +between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, +out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human +society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest [p.161] +social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual +person. + +And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still +undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential +operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of +experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In +him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with +some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual, +intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical, +all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without +the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may +become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the +universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of +any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the +religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any +particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any +particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the +physiological is universal--as universal, to repeat, as it is +indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the +lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has +been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it +is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism, +whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of +the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the +discussion of the rise of science.[2] + +[p.162] But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever +the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before +any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can +be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our +present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If +the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with +reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, +particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. +Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has +been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal +differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal +in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society +is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become +castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An +illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession +of science. + +Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the typical +relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or implied, +that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of the general +to the particular, of the whole to the part, and significantly that of +the vital to the instrumental. Yet, to say no more than this would be a +serious mistake, for at least in two ways this statement must be +modified. Doubtless the required modifications are directly consequent +upon the nature and origin of the relation, but nevertheless they need +to be carefully observed. Thus, logically and sociologically [p.163] +factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more +definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may +be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and +efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high +degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of +corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and +in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental +character. Between individual and class there is a difference very like +that between impulse and habit, or organic life and mere physical +process, or function and structure, or say human nature in terms of its +life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and in terms of its +establishments or institutions. Accordingly the relation of the person +to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part, but of the whole +in a state that is formally undeveloped to the part more or less highly +developed, and of the whole as a living, functional activity, the +differential operation of the unity of experience, to the part as an +institution or instrument. + +From all this it appears that the labour involved in the maintenance and +development of human life is divided between the person and the social +classes in some such way as follows. The class life stands for analysis +and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis +and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps +for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal +life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption +and the stagnation to [p.164] which specialism and its formal +establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and +instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. And while +so to define the distinction between person and class, or in general to +regard their relation as one of whole to part, even with the +qualifications that were promptly added, may involve some unavoidable +abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view +is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it +rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an +indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the +same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the +relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of +development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly +the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only +a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and +possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger +than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is +the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, +but also there is clearly a real place in social life at once for the +person and for the class. Factional life lacks completeness and +vitality, and personality, the living, integral expression of the unity +of experience, supplies these defects. True, a conflict of classes or +factions may always be counted on, since the unity of the total life, +which of course includes the classes, will prevent their ever being +indifferent to each other, and this conflict will make for both +completeness and vitality, but [p.165] negatively, indirectly, always as +if from outside. Only through the person can vitality and completeness +be secured positively and directly and immediately. Personality, on the +other hand, lacks definiteness and practical efficiency, and only the +special mechanical life of the class can supply these needs. So in the +two together we see a most indispensable co-operation. + +The person, furthermore, because of his particular class affiliation, +with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this imparts, +is always naturally under constraint not merely to overcome the +specialism, but also to apply the special training beyond the immediate +sphere of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. +Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by +the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and +the factional ritual, and taking this ritual--or special professional +technique--to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit +rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional +experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. Only +so can he be true both to his special classification and to his personal +wholeness. + +But an insistent question: Is such translation possible? On the +possibility the case for either personality or a class-divided society +must finally depend. On the possibility hangs also the worth of this +case to the general argument of this book. Logically, there certainly +can be but one answer, and that an affirmative one, since analogy, the +primal condition of translation, must be universal [p.166] among the +parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole. No two +parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, +but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and +the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any +acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, +however special and however technical, may and must have meaning +throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, +with the acquired freedom of any part, the metaphors, relating part to +part, may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person's +experience-world. The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, +of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very +crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative +illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches +height after height of the beholder's outstretched world. + +The conclusions of logic in this matter have sometimes been questioned, +if not defied. Quite properly, it may be, many people, and particularly +many among scientists, have been in the habit of distrusting the leading +of mere logic in the solution of their problems. But in this particular +matter I think that no scientist has ever succeeded in making out a +negative case. A few have tried to do so, have thought themselves for a +time successful, and then in the end, though not without some +reservation, have gone over to the other side. Probably their +undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes +entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate [p.167] people +to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of +things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class +of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or +physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral +truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special +training could ever be literally applicable beyond the particular sphere +of its attainment, the relation of part and part of human nature being +only analogous and metaphorical, and that in any scientifically observed +case special training, when artificially acquired, or when a result only +of a suggested and merely imitated routine, can hardly count as +conclusive evidence, the problem would lose much of its interest, and +science would be ready even to accept the logical solution. Logically, +then, the translation is possible, and scientifically there is no real +evidence against its possibility. + +As to the translation being positively natural or necessary, as well as +possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that whatever is truly +possible must be also real; that is to say, certain of realization or +rather somehow and somewhere, in some manner and in some degree already +in expression. Even the possible can never have been made out of, or +sprung up out of, nothing. Moreover, the translation here spoken of, +wherein one developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual +than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can +require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different +elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as +factionally manifested, shall be [p.168] forever true to their origin. +The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on +the ground of the analogies of the various parts being only metaphorical +instead of literal, for already in the original differentiation that has +made person and faction, that has separated the parts, these have been +overcome. The very nature of the person is their overcoming. The unity +of experience must persist assertive and inviolable, whatever the +divisions of experience. The distinct vertebrae must always contain a +spinal cord that has a common origin with them. + +And it remains to be said that since the person is thus at once the +living integral exponent of the unity of experience and the member of +some class or faction, translation is his most characteristic activity. +In this translation, too, we see him a leader, or a party to real +leadership, by nature. In it lies his true genius. Indeed, this +translation is just that which makes the great leader or the great +genius, for through it the person is ever showing himself superior to +his class and training, and to the formal institutions that have brought +him up. Factional life, as we know, develops through imitation and +repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the +flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special +development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological +term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the +practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other +special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to +be distinguished in this way--the one imitative, the other inventive. +Witness [p.169] the familiar antitheses between the typical and the +vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the really pleasant in +morality, the legal and the sovereign in politics, the orthodox and the +spiritually alive in religion, technical skill and originality in +science, and so on. These antitheses are all very important to the +understanding of human experience, particularly of its history, but they +are frequently seriously misapplied. More than anything else they show +the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the +living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order +that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate +and appropriate its acquirements. + +There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy +of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or +nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as +something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. +The roles, too, that belong to personality and society are as distinct +and as real, besides being as organic to each other, as in general are +whole and part. But the person, at once a corrector of partiality and a +leader, a distributor of special development, holds a conspicuous place +and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority +to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions +as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal +experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or +contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to +this defect. Personality must bridge all [p.170] the divisions of +experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must +be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation +of that spirit of truth, that principle of validity and power for +adequacy, which has already come to our notice more than once. +Factionally experience is relative, phenomenal, divided against itself; +factionally, too, it is at once formal and contradictory; but personally +it reaches beyond the forms and contradictions, and is directly in touch +with what is true and real. So the contrast between the personal and the +social, the vital and the formal, shows itself quite parallel to that +between the real and the phenomenal, the true and the paradoxical. + +A business man says to a friend: "Personally, as you know perfectly +well, I should prefer to do what you ask, but professionally I simply +cannot, for you know also that business is business." A preacher +declares: "Personally I should just like to speak out clearly and +without restraint, but my church will not let me." Personally the +soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, +professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The +father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than +you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life--all are +all things together, and restraints that separate man and man are +lacking; but factionally there is always restraint, and open conflict +and inner inconsistency are unavoidable. The person is thus the medium, +not of an abstract universality, but concretely, through his factional +training and his leadership, of the universal life. + +[p.171] And, finally, the life of the person is gifted with a great +faith, for it is in touch with an untethered reality; but, factionally, +life is a constant doubting, for it is constantly narrow and it is a +constant contending. So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as +inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this +conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say +confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells +the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very +defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the +spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as +social, is also real and true." + + +[1] This paragraph, and many of the paragraphs that follow it, except +for considerable revision and adaptation, were published some time ago. +See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in Society," in the +_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. II, +No. 13, 1906. + +[2] Chap. Iv., p. 72. + + + +[p.172] + +VIII + +AN EARLY MODERN DOUBTER. + + +I referred in an earlier chapter to the great Frenchman who boldly +declared that his doubting was all that he could be certain about, but +that this, being so very real, being indeed universal, left him a belief +in himself, although only in his always doubting self. Descartes' belief +in himself has interest for us, for while his thinking followed lines +somewhat different from our own, he seems to have reached nearly, if not +quite, the same very personal conclusion, namely, the right of the +doubter to say: "I am." + +Descartes was born in Touraine in 1596, and for the larger part of his +life he was at least nominally a resident in the Paris of Louis XIV, +Montaigne, and the earlier Jesuits. He was educated at a school of the +Jesuits in La Fleche, and in the course of his mature life he published +works of importance not merely in philosophy, but also in science and +mathematics. His _Meditations_ and _Search after Truth_ are easily first +among his contributions to philosophy. He died in 1650. + +Yet not exactly with the Descartes of positive history, but with +Descartes as a doubter, as perhaps the most notable progenitor of the +modern confession [p.173] and the modern use of doubt, are we now +directly concerned; for without the license of this broader view we +might lose a large part of the advantage of the centuries that lie +between Descartes' time and our own. He had many disciples, and these +disciples uncovered much in the Cartesian philosophy that Descartes +himself failed to see, or saw only imperfectly. He was not without +faults, too, some moral and some intellectual, if the two are separate, +and these faults we shall not consider, though the conscientious +historian should never play to the sentimentalist by disregarding them. +But with our present task we can afford to forget the faults; just as we +cannot afford to lose the interpretations and corrections of the +disciples. With interests as vital and personal as ours, we seek +something more than matter of fact. Our interest is very near to that of +the historical novel, but needless to say, this book is an essay in +philosophy, not a novel. Past men and past times can be really useful to +us, only if, belonging as we do not to the seventeenth but to the +twentieth century, we really use them. What we ourselves are able to +find in any period or in any human career is always truer or realer, +possibly in a sense it is also better history, than what lay on the +surface at the time or than what was seen, however profoundly, even by +contemporaries. So much better did Descartes and all really great men +build than they knew or even willed. + +Descartes came into European life at a crucial moment. The period of the +Renaissance, with its rediscovery of the old world and its stirring +vision of the new, had culminated in the Reformation, not [p.174] merely +in the religious reformation that set Protestant against Catholic, but +in the reformation that appeared in every department of man's life--in +art, literature, and science, in morals and in politics, as well as in +religion. Man asserted his independence of established authority in any +form. Man, not king, not pope, not even God, became the real centre of +the universe. Justification by his own faith was simply overflowing with +a meaning that knew no bounds in his experience. + +But the birth of Descartes was fifty years after the death of Luther, +and by the time he had reached his intellectual majority, as might well +be expected, the Reformation had changed from a spiritual +enthusiasm--whether among those who were its great leaders or among +those who, not less devoutly, were bent on summarily checking its +progress--into a practical, thoroughly worldly situation. The two +opposing parties, without exaggeration, seem to have settled down to +real business, and not less in the thought of one than in that of the +other the end justified any means. + +The society of Jesus was definitely organized and began its notable +career in 1640, and although its members, the Jesuits, have given to +history many wonderful examples of devotion and heroism, Jesuitry itself +is synonymous with the extreme materialism to which the Roman Church +resorted in its desperate defence against the Protestants. And on the +other side, men became not less sensuous and worldly, giving as good as +they got. They simply met, or opposed, like with like. Reading the +history of the time with [p.175] its controversies and jealousies and +intrigues and persecutions, one can only conclude that the honours were +about even. If Catholicism felt justified in her acts of sensuous +brutality, of almost hellish violence, which culminated in the massacre +of St. Bartholomew, Protestantism was made the specious, yet not less +welcome, excuse for worldliness, general materialism, and sensualism out +of the Church and in it. Any religious reform, or reform of any sort, +must always bring an unscrupulous lawlessness with it, and the great +Reformation was by no means an exception to this rule. Extreme +humanists, naturalists, atheists, sensationalists, social and physical +atomists, Machiavellists, sceptics and opportunists of all sorts, +swarmed in every capital of Europe, and especially in Paris.[1] + +But the extravagant, more or less unconventional things of any time are +often the best signs of its inner life, since in them we see a few men +boldly, if not prudently, stepping over the bounds of custom, and +sometimes even of decency, and giving expression to what is actively +present, though often suppressed or concealed, in the lives of all. Thus +contemporary with Descartes, and from one side or another expressing the +materialism of his day, there were at least three very significant +movements, all of them endorsed by parties, of course under different +names, from both of the contending churches, or from their outside +echoes or reflections, and all of them at least in some degree when not +in great degree beyond the bounds of common conventional respectability. +These [p.176] movements in one church or in the other, or in neither, as +the case might be, were, first, a scoffing scepticism; second, a +dogmatic mysticism; and third, a most visionary gnosticism. + +1. Vanini (1585-1619) in Italy, Montaigne (1533-1592) in France, and +Bacon (1560-1620) in England, among many others that might be named, +were more or less extravagantly, not mere doubters, but satirical, often +derisive, scoffing doubters of everything in human life. Conceit of +knowledge, whenever asserted, in church or state, in everyday +consciousness or in science, was declared idolatry and held up to +constant ridicule. Could man's wisdom at its best be anything more than +a blinding folly? + +2. And religion, the religion of a few, as if in acknowledged sympathy +with these sceptics, surrendered everything but God--God being more a +longing than an actual fact; a spirit than a positive thing or person. +Even within the Catholic Church the Oratory of Jesus, a society +energetically opposed for good and sufficient reasons by the Jesuits, +was organized in the interests of a purified, truly spiritual +Christianity; and among those who had broken with the Catholics appeared +new sects of many names, such as the "Friends of God," "Collegiants," +and the "Brotherhood of the Christian Life," but with one ideal, the +direct untrammelled worship of God. "God is," they proclaimed in so many +words; "and God, just God, is all. Church and creeds and rites and +priests are hindrances, not helps, to true religion." This attitude, +commentary as of course it was on the conditions of the day, had almost +more satire in it and more doubt than any of the words [p.177] of the +most active scoffers; it was so unconscious; so quietly and so piously +it picked up the crumbs that the scoffers left. Indeed, the sceptics and +their devout, pure-minded contemporaries, Pierre Charron (1541-1603) and +Jakob Boehme (1595-1624), both advocates of religious purity against +theology and sensuous ritual, must be said not to have engaged in +separate activities, but to have shared the labour of a single activity. +Scepticism and such mysticism are but two sides of the same shield. + +3. But with the scoffing scepticism and its complementary counterpart, +the dogmatic mysticism of religion, there was associated also a most +visionary gnosticism. Thus the science of mathematics was heralded as a +key to all the secrets of the universe. A few simple applications of +mathematics to physical phenomena had been successfully made by the +scientists--for example, by Galilei--and ere long certain men in the +world of the intellectual life went wild over the possibilities of +mathematics. Obliged, as soon they were, to abandon every other field of +knowledge--theology, politics, material science, tradition, and +convention--they needed but little encouragement to give themselves +heart and soul to this last resort. Their enthusiasm for mathematics +doubtless had a deeper source than this simple account of its rise would +suggest, for an intellectual atmosphere in which just such a purely +logical, abstract science would develop was the natural product of +medievalism; but Galilei's successes may be said to have precipitated +the movement, and in any case for many mathematics became, both in its +principles and in its method, an intellectual [p.178] cure-all, and in +consequence not only were remarkable advances made in the science +itself, but men went to the extreme of applying the methods and the +formulae of mathematics in every conceivable direction. Religion, +morality, and politics, as well as natural science, were all subjected +to mathematical treatment. Among the surviving monuments to this +activity the _Ethics_, so called, of Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) is +certainly the most noteworthy; a work of five books on God, mind, +emotions, bondage, and freedom--each with its special quota of axioms, +propositions, corollaries, scholia, and the like, and the procedure of +the whole amazingly consistent with that of Euclid. Excuse, also, a +personal reminiscence. I can myself recall how in the enthusiasm of a +first course in geometry I formulated a Euclidean proof of the +proposition: Knowledge is power. I, too, had my axioms, my special +demonstrations, my corollaries, and my final Q.E.D.'s. But any +present-day resort to mathematics or its methods is only a shadow, or an +echo, of the movement of the seventeenth century. At that time it was a +movement of last resort and all the passion of a deceived intellect, of +a mind given over to the most far-reaching doubts, and a disappointed +faith, once more acquiring hope, was present in it. The truths and +methods of mathematics--what but veracity incarnate, the very mind of +God made manifest to mankind! + +Nor, furthermore, does it take much reflection to appreciate that +mathematics was after all a very appropriate form for credible knowledge +to take in a time of scepticism and of religion turning to purism. +[p.179] Trustworthy knowledge of actual things--that is to say, real +concrete knowledge--being held impossible, there was nothing left but +knowledge of the strictly formal relations of things. Formal principles, +just like those of mathematics, are altogether innocent of the confusion +in actual things and persons, in particular events and current issues; +and accordingly in the seventeenth century, just by reason of this +innocence, they were peculiarly timely. Doubt seemed quite unable to +touch them; controversy was turned to agreement before them; and even a +truth-loving God, so to speak, could appeal to them in support of his +right to rule the minds and the lives of men. You and I might question +the reality of the things we count or the justice of the ratio between +our wealth and the wealth of certain others in the world, but we could +not easily question that two and two are four, or in matters of wealth +that one thousand and two thousand dollars are in the same ratio as two +million and four million. Such knowledge as this may not settle any +actual quarrels that we have, for example, over the number of acres we +own or the taxes we pay or the prices charged by our butchers or +grocers; but what of that? The quarrels are idle any way, and our +mathematical wisdom, being exact from the start and self-evident, is a +basis of perfect agreement between man and man and men and God. + +In short, mathematics is exact and universally credible just because it +is so empty and so logically formal, being always "in the abstract," in +that ideal, wholly blessed region, where there is no disputing, where +all men readily admit anything that can be [p.180] suggested; and its +being exact for this cause made it the only credible knowledge for +Descartes' time, a time at once of scepticism and mysticism. With +Vanini, then, and Charron, who were separately engaged, as was remarked, +in a single activity, we may associate the mathematicians of the day, +among whom none were more distinguished than Descartes himself and the +members of the Cartesian school. To Descartes we are largely indebted +for the Analytic Geometry, and Pascal did important work in the Theory +of Equations. + +In rough outline we now have the times of Descartes before us, and with +deepened meaning I may say again that Descartes came into European life +at a crucial moment. Materialism was rife, not merely theoretically +among a few scientists and philosophers, nor practically in some +isolated class of dissipated human beings, but really and more or less +openly everywhere in the whole life and feeling of society. Even the +devout played into the hands of the worldly by their very purism. And an +accompanying doubt, cropping out significantly, now in positive +irreverence, now in mysticism, now in intellectual formalism, appears to +have thoroughly possessed the minds of men. + +There was, too, in Descartes' day a growing sensitiveness to the +paradoxes of man's experience which have occupied so much of our +attention. Nothing was what it seemed. One writer boldly declared--not +much later--that France, nay, the whole world, could not be happy until +all should turn atheists. The boast of Louis XIV, "I am the State," +whether literally made or not, was hardly less startling. The sensualism +of [p.181] the Catholic Church or the Pharisaism of the Protestant was +flagrantly paradoxical, and was keenly felt to be so on all sides. Men +turned doubters perforce, and in the fact that with their scepticism +rose also a movement at once of individualism and cosmopolitanism, we +cannot fail to see how the course of history illustrates the conclusions +of a previous chapter. The time was one in which through its humanism, +or its cosmopolitan individualism, civilization was to reap the harvest +from the medieval organization of society. + +Descartes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his training at a school +of the Jesuits, seems to have caught the spirit, the real meaning of his +time, getting behind the mere letter of their instruction and of their +point of view. Only mathematics gave him any satisfaction, and he left +the La Fleche school in the first place conscious that he had learned +little or nothing, in the second place curious about the possibility of +men ever knowing anything, and in the third place evidently through the +influence of mathematics strongly prejudiced in favour of introspection, +or of thought conducted independently of things, as the only possible +way to certainty. This education, then, and its outcome, true as it was +to the life of the day, fitted Descartes for his life work, which was +nothing more or less than the erection of a system of philosophy on the +basis of a thorough-going confession of doubt. + +Descartes entered upon his great task by taking his day at its word. St. +Paul, addressing the Athenians, reminding them of one of their own +temples, and quoting their own poet Aratus, was not more tactful. +[p.182] Thus, as if speaking directly to the sceptics about him, +Descartes doubted everything, because he found, not only in his own +consciousness, become too reflective for implicit belief, but also in +the wide experience of his race, that everything was dubitable. He +doubted church and state, science and society; and he went even farther +than this. Also he boldly doubted mathematics, so long his own support +and the reliance of many others in his time. He did not know surely that +there might not be an evil spirit in the universe, a spirit of +deception, which even in mathematics was obscuring the mind's vision, +making it see things not as they are, but as they are not. Deception was +real enough and obvious enough in life at large to make such a suspicion +as this at least plausible. Moreover, the notion of an agent of evil in +the world had been a commonplace for centuries. It was just a part of +that medieval training. So although nothing could be said with certainty +either way, the plausible mischance had to be faced; mathematics went +the way of all doubtful knowledge, and man was left with literally +nothing but his doubt, his universal doubt. "_Dubito_," said Descartes; +"to doubt is my inmost nature"; and speaking so he at once marked the +first step in his reasoning, so important then and now, and in the +simplicity and directness of real genius reported a great, deep fact of +his own experience and of that of his time. + +But universal doubt is a _real_ experience, being real just because +universal. Nothing ever is real that is not universal. What is always +and everywhere is just the mark of something that really is substantial. +A real [p.183] experience, however, real because universal, be it of +doubt or of anything else, means a real self, so that in the always +doubting self Descartes found reality, or a real self; and this always +doubting self he further characterized as a thinking self. In other +words, the real thinker was for him the universal doubter, and, +contrariwise, the universal doubter was real, a real thinker, a real +self. Before Descartes' time, to speak generally, men had identified +reality with fixed condition or possession, with specific knowledge or +established power or definite prerogative, divine or human, and truth +was an object of faith rather than thought, say an unchanging programme +for life rather than a pure principle--there is such a wide difference +between a principle and a programme! But Descartes, as we have seen, +identified reality with loss or privation, with such an empty-handed +thing as doubt; he recognized no self but the thinker, and no thinker +but the doubter. We always feel the pathos of those who, suffering +constant privation, find and often declare that life is very real, and +yet the sense of reality that comes in this way--namely, in the way of a +privation that denies reality all residence in positive experience--is +especially strong, and the pathos we feel is certainly not all. +Something else hard to name appeals to us, too, and changes the pathos +into a nobler because a more positive feeling--good will, perhaps, or +honour--since the persistent holding to reality commands a deep respect. +Yet, putting this more positive feeling apart, only the pathos of +Descartes' real self, real because a thinker and thinker because a +universal doubter, can occupy us now. Enough if we see that [p.184] the +reality was as indubitable as the universal doubt, the self always being +real up to the reality of its experience, and that the pathos is not +more for him than for the sceptics and mystics and mathematicians of his +time. But, again, in the Latin words, burdened, as so often the Latin +has been, with the experience of all Christendom: _Dubito, cogito; ergo +sum_. I doubt, I think; I as doubter and thinker am. + +That "I am" seems a sort of epitome of the humanism, not to say of the +pathos of the humanism of the time. Man had lost everything but his own +self, his lacking, longing, always seeking self. Montaigne put the +situation plainly when he said in so many words, that portrayal of self +was the beginning and the end alike of physics, the science of outer +reality, and metaphysics the science of all reality. Man had been left +with his mere self, robbed of beliefs and traditions, and abandoned by +everything but his doubts and the empty companionship which these +afforded, but to that, an unshaped thing with an undefined activity, +real only for what it did not have, he clung tenaciously and often +enthusiastically. And Descartes spoke for him: _Knowing that I have +nothing, I am_. + +But in this self that was real only because always lacking, always +doubting, Descartes found a priceless treasure. Every one is familiar +with the principle of Christian theology, that the conviction of sin is +a real promise because the actual beginning of salvation, and every one +has some appreciation of this principle. It is a principle, too, that no +priest ever made or could ever unmake, belonging as it does to the very +nature of conscious creatures. In like manner, [p.185] then, Descartes +recognized in the consciousness of doubt, or say of intellectual error, +the real promise, because the actual beginning or even the very presence +of veracity in knowledge. The doubter, conscious of error as he must be, +was never without and never by any possibility could be without a sense +for truth, an idea of veracity. Doubting all things he must yet believe +in truth. Plato said centuries before that mere opinion, however false, +was nevertheless always in love with true knowledge, and this Platonic +love Descartes found in the doubter's conviction of error. In Plato's +spirit Descartes insisted that doubt was a constant yearning for truth, +a persistent faith in it. Doubt was informed with truth, with the idea +of truth, very much as one has the "idea" of a thing that one cannot +master. Man might be a doubter of all things, then, but in spite of his +doubt he must believe in the reality of things, not exactly in the +individual reality of each and every thing, but in reality in and among +all things. For him, doubting and self-conscious, there must dwell in +the world a realizing nature or power, an agent of perfect veracity, +checking any experience from being altogether deceptive. And, for the +present, to narrow our attention to a single phase of the doubter's +natural idea of veracity, as Descartes reasoned about it, truth and +everything that goes with truth, perfection and absoluteness in all its +phases, could not be solely human if to doubt was human. They must, in +consequence, be divine. So God, a spirit of truth and righteousness, was +real, as real as the real self of always doubting but ever truth-loving +man. _Dubito, cogito; ergo sum: etiam_ [p.186] _Deus est. I doubt, I +think; as thinker and doubter I am: and what is more, God, veracity +incarnate, is also_. + +And here begins or began a great controversy, nor can the issues of it +be said to have been wholly settled even to-day. What did Descartes +understand when in this way he proved to himself the existence of God? +Was only the God he seemed to have lost once more restored to him, and +restored intact? Did he merely justify, and so return to its old place +of authority, the traditional theology of his day? Was his doubt, as +some would view it, not his own genuine experience, but simply the +conceit and pretence of method? These questions need an answer, for +their answer affects not only Descartes' regained religion, but also his +regained real world in general. So many have been disposed almost to +laugh outright at the simple-minded Descartes for his doubting +everything from matter and mind to God, only in the end to get +everything back. They have seen him as one chasing the verities out by +one door only to welcome them with outstretched arms as they run in at +another that had been left open for their return; and this view of him +has been strengthened by the fact that conservatives in religion the +world over have made Descartes their victim by appealing to his proof, +borrowing for themselves his philosopher's robes, as if these could be +easily assumed and as easily put off. But as to the justice of such a +view there is little if any good evidence. Matter-of-fact history is not +our first concern here, as was said; yet, whatever may or may not have +been uppermost in Descartes' mind, the doubt of his day was both general +and very [p.187] genuine, and the final worth and validity of his +thinking lies wholly in that, not in his or any one's mere logical +gymnastic or verbal strategy. Moreover, for reasons which hardly need to +be given, the strong probability is that, notwithstanding his well-known +lack of courage in openly living up to or even thinking up to all the +consequences of his reasoning, he did feel in his philosophy not a mere +recovery of what had seemed lost, nor a cunning apology for the old, but +the birth of a new point of view; and, if this possibility should be +verified, among other things the conservatives, who have been borrowing +so much support, have been little if any better than parasites. Still, +even the probabilities in the case are relatively insignificant to us, +since the people of the time and of later times, and we ourselves from +the scepticism and mysticism of the seventeenth century, have learned to +think of God with a fulness of meaning never attained before, as--what +shall I say?--not a definite truth, but the living spirit of truth; not +a passive perfection, but a perfect activity; and not even a divine +person, in the sense of one more separate being of consciousness and +will to inhabit the universe, but the moving and conserving power of all +personality--the very active principle of reality present in the +vicissitudes and conflicts of our existence. And, such being the outcome +of history, we have to take it as really the meaning of the great +Frenchman's formulae. We put aside the controversy, then, with the simple +reflection that results in history or anywhere else are at least very +hard indeed to conceive if they are anything more or less than realized +motives [p.188] perhaps the realized motives of a man or men building +somewhat beyond their clearest knowledge. Whatever has come about must +always be what more or less clearly men have been feeling after. + +The God whom Descartes really proves to his time, and still more +positively to us, must surely be the God not of a satisfied +unquestioning believer, but of the universal doubter who loves truth and +whose doubting and loving make him the always curious thinker; a God +without visibly or even quasi-visibly fixed or specific character of any +sort, since with his nature set to such a character, tethered like a +beast to a stake or like the sun bound to an orbit, he would not be and +could not be divine enough--which is to say, veracious or perfect +enough--for a universal doubter's curiosity; a God, then, who has the +divine character of true infinity, who is, too, a spirit in fact as well +as in word. Infinity certainly cannot belong to a being that is apart; +such a being would at once belie his nature; and "spirits," divine or +human, must not be supposed to be, like Elijah, the merely translated +beings of this visible and tangible world, for they can belong only to +the invisible and the intangible, which is in this world and of it, in +its knowledge, in its love and strife, in its changes of all kinds, in +its work and in its suffering. Yes, a truly living God, living here and +now, is the God of Descartes' proof; the God of just that world of +movement and conflict, of poise and reality, to which the differences +and above all the contradictions of experience, as examined by us in +preceding chapters, have already borne witness. Let us recall how we +were able to say that the very conflicts of human [p.189] experience +were the wisdom of God. And if this all amounts to saying, as apparently +it does, that only Descartes' universal doubter, who loves truth too +much ever to claim its final possession, can believe in a real God, then +we have reached something that will surely repay the most careful +reflection. + +Some have criticized Descartes for what they regard as a fallacy in his +reasoning. He jumped, they claim, without any real warrant, from the +idea of a thing as his premise to the actual existence of the thing as +his conclusion, from the idea of veracity, so necessary in the +consciousness of the doubter, to the substantial existence of a +perfectly veracious being, as if, to use their time-worn analogy, the +idea even of the very smallest sum of money would make the money itself +materialize in somebody's pocket. But, whether or not Descartes fully +understood his own thought, this criticism is very superficial, and it +gets only a specious cogency from the same matter-of-fact history that +we have already pushed aside. No idea, however clear, however necessary +even to the consciousness of a doubter, of perfect truth could ever +conjure into existence the unworldly, independently existing, +spiritually and intellectually isolated God of the Middle Ages; and for +that matter one might say, I think quite pertinently, that money not in +the pocket is something less than real money, or--which comes to the +same end--that the idea of money, if the pocket be indeed empty, must +imply some sense of the emptiness as well as of the money; and with such +an implication the idea taken for its full meaning is no such conjurer +as Descartes' critics have chosen to imagine it. After [p.190] all the +"mere" ideas, or the "mere" things in general, that appear in +controversies, are only ingenious ways of packing the jury. An adequate +idea--that is to say, an idea taken just for its full meaning, for what +it denies as well as for what it affirms, for the complete universe of +its discourse--does and must answer to existence; yes, and to +substantial existence too. So, again, the God that Descartes by the +doubter's idea of veracity proved to his time and to us, if not also as +clearly to himself, can have been no mere substantial existence wholly +outside the doubter's life and consciousness. In such case the universal +doubting would indeed have been only the insincere verbal strategy of a +conservative, the conceit of purely artful method, and the jump objected +to would have been quite necessary. But Descartes' God answered to just +the idea of truth which a universal doubter could honestly entertain; to +truth realized only in and through doubt; a God, living in and with the +seeking, struggling consciousness of the doubter. + +Furthermore, for a being, call him doubter or thinker or what you will, +whose very nature in deed and in word is awake to a sense of lack and is +in consequence making a continued outcry: "Never this, but always +something else, something fuller and realer, something including and +using this, something maintained by the very conflicts of this,"--for +such a being very plainly there never can be anything that is wholly and +hopelessly beyond, that is not potentially and so actively real in him; +there can be no outer nature, but an including and developing nature, +and no transcendent God, but an indwelling, ever uplifting, [p.191] +forward-bearing God. Exactly such a being was Descartes' real self, the +self of his I _am_--"I as thinker and doubter am"--and this self had +need neither of struggling with nature nor of wrestling with God in +order to get one or the other on its side, for in its doubt, in its +constant confession of incompleteness, even--though this is a flagrant +paradox--of its own reality as in a sense always outside or beyond +itself, it had won the supreme victory at the start. Negatives are +always such very sweeping, comprehensive things; and to be, so to speak, +one's own negative, to be real and lacking, is somehow to include all +things within one's own life and interest. If I may apply an ordinary +phrase in an extraordinary way, to be always "beside oneself," always +doubting, always wanting, always striving, or to be, in the words of +earlier pages, ever and always divided against oneself, is to have +enlisted man and nature and God for ever in one's service. + +There is truly such a difference between programme and principle 1 It is +the difference between medievalism and modernism, between supposed +finality and recognized and asserted movement, between supernatural +authority and the authority of natural growth. Enthrone a programme, and +it is arbitrary and exclusive; it claims, as it must, the sanction of +another world; it hopelessly divides human nature as personally embodied +or as socially organized; it makes life and its sphere irrational and so +dependent on a blind faith: but a principle, enthroned, draws all things +into itself, using to its own constant realization even the changes and +differences of life, making faith [p.192] and reason lie down together, +and transfiguring both a brutal nature and an inhuman God by revealing +them as not indeed formally but vitally rational, and not indeed +mortally yet humanly alive. In Descartes' proof of God we see the birth +of modernism; the programme deposed; the principle set in the place of +authority. + +Finally, then, Descartes did not simply restore what had been lost. +Though we have been regarding only the religious aspect of his +philosophy, we can see in general that, just as not the old God, but +nevertheless God, remained to the doubter's life, so also not the old +verities at large, yet nevertheless the verities, or not the old +reality, yet nevertheless reality, remained also. Man, after all his +doubting, even because of it all, was enabled to return to the world of +all those "isms," the all-pervading materialism, the scoffing +scepticism, the dogmatic mysticism, and the intellectual formalism, with +a new spirit, a spirit of real confidence, a spirit of hope, a spirit of +life, that just by reason of its wants and conflicts believes itself not +only very real but also fully worth while. + +And travellers to-day visiting the streets of Paris or going anywhere +the doubting and despairing world over, would do well to imagine +Descartes, as the modern doubter, travelling and thinking with them. + + +[1] See an article by H.C. Lea in the _American Historical Review_, +January, 1904, "Ethical Values in History," especially p. 238 seq. + + + +[p.193] + +IX. + +THE DOUBTER'S WORLD. + + +The doubter's world is a world in which, as we journey, we shall +discover four features that are especially noteworthy and that accord +fully with the principles of Descartes as well as with the findings of +our own confession of doubt. Thus, in the order, or suppose I say in the +itinerary, here to be followed: (1) Reality, without finality, in all +things; (2) perfect sympathy between the spiritual and the material; (3) +genuine individuality; and (4) for whatever is indeed real, immortality. + + +I. REALITY, WITHOUT FINALITY, IN ALL THINGS. + +Doubt is only a particular state, or phase, of consciousness, and it is +worth while to observe that any state of consciousness whatsoever, any +attitude of mind, must assume or postulate something real. Indeed, this +assumption of reality is so positive that no consciousness is ever +without some will to believe, while no will to believe is ever without +some real object believed in. Can there be smoke without some fire, or a +seeming without some being? Were either of these things possible, then +by the same token there could also be a willing without some doing or a +wanting without some having. To be conscious of something, [p.194] then, +means not only that something is assumed and, if assumed, willed to be, +but also that something really and truly is. Of course, the +consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have +more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or +willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. +In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and +possesses, a real world; possibly not just the world formally presented +to it, but nevertheless reality, and reality, too, in which somehow the +presented world has a place and part. + +This may or may not be axiomatic, but at the very least it is very near +to being axiomatic, and, near or far, it quite agrees with the +conclusions to which, although along somewhat more specific lines, our +own thinking and Descartes' thinking have been constantly pointing. As +Descartes might have said, there is no consciousness without a +thoroughly warranted "I am," and no "I am" without an also thoroughly +warranted "The world of my consciousness is and is objectively real." +But in implications about reality the doubter's consciousness differs +from the believer's consciousness; not by any mere denial, for +unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the +doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar assumption as to what +the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken +as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. Thus, for +the distinct believer--that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic +believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, +[p.195] tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of +doctrine and to some specific manner of life--reality is always tethered +to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to +suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. For our +doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience +can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any +possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, +I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. Indeed, it could not be +either of these without being the other. For him nothing is _the_ +reality, just because all things must belong to reality. For him, again, +the world's reality is nowhere, just because everywhere; in no defined +thing fixedly and completely, just because in all things--in them not +merely distributively, it is true, but as they work together; and +invisible and intangible, indeed generally unknowable, just because any +consciousness is necessarily limited to the definite and inadequate +mediums, or forms, of positive knowledge. + +So the doubter has a real world, but his own real world. Moreover, in +the great freedom of its reality we see how all things taken +individually or distributively, must be, as the word is used, only +"relative"; and in the perfect inclusiveness, how nothing, however +"relative," can ever be unreal. Relativism and scepticism have been +perenially associated, but relativism is not a nihilistic, but a deeply +realistic philosophy; it is just the sceptic's natural realism. All +things are "relative," but only because reality is at once free from +anything, and yet inclusive of all things. What is relative is [p.196] +thus not flatly unreal, as is often supposed, but significantly both +real and unreal or neither real--not real to itself alone--nor +unreal--not without its part and place in whatever is real. The sceptic, +though always a relativist, is thus also a most profound realist, and +the nature of his realism must help us greatly to our view of the +doubter's world. + +Moreover, Descartes and his followers were also nativists or +intuitionists, and, at least for the freer interpretation here +permitted, their nativism was of a peculiar order, and it involved, +accordingly, a world which was real in a peculiar way. Usually nativism +has stood for the assertion of certain inborn and so necessarily valid +and unchangeable ideas or characters or powers; as when men contend that +particular ideas of God are unassailable because immediately intuited as +a part of man's very being, or again when men declare a particular +genius to be born, not made, or insist that a voice of conscience born, +not bred, in them, tells them explicitly to do and even to make others +do this or that specific thing, to live and make others live in this or +that specific way, to accept and make others accept this or that +specific programme of politics, morals, or religion. Furthermore, +nativism of this prevalent type not only has claimed final validity for +what is thus inborn--or given independently of the changing conditions +of experience--but also has commonly punctuated this claim by viewing +the inborn, or the intuited--for example, the dictates of conscience--as +direct, immediate, unequivocal signs and mandates of God himself. Genius +has been not human, but divine. The intuition at large has [p.197] +passed for nothing more or less than a supernatural revelation. But such +an understanding of the innate, though serviceable beyond measure to the +"specifically dogmatic believer," and though implying too, as of course +it should, the natural, appropriate world of such a believer, does not +agree with the principles of Descartes. + +Such an understanding of the innate can imply only a world not merely of +definite, substantial reality, but also of definite, substantial +unreality. How real to some people, how definite and substantial the +"unreal" is; how brutally fixed and yet how alien to what they are given +to finding real. They are nativists of the conventional type, and for +them the negatives of all things are as fixed and as really or as +substantially not this or that as the positives to which what is innate +for them bears its special witness. Their world, in short, is a world of +tethered error as well as tethered truth, of hopeless, unmixed evil as +well as a wholly untainted, unassailable--and why not say also +hopeless?--virtue, of absolute and effective lawlessness as well as an +unswerving law, of a free and omnipotent devil as well as a free and +omnipotent God; for, in simplest language, the rule is a very poor one +that does not work both ways. A world, however, which is so constituted, +calls emphatically for revision of the view that imparts its character +to it. Where the unreal is as real as the real, the evil as effective as +the good, the false as conclusive as the true, there is certainly need +of some second thinking. As some good Irish philosopher might put the +case, if just this is wholly good or true or real, and just that is +wholly [p.198] evil or false or unreal, then _the_ good or _the_ true or +_the_ real cannot be exclusively just this, _the_ evil or _the_ false or +_the_ unreal cannot be exclusively just that, and _the_ innate, +responsible for a world so made, cannot be just in terms of certain +fixed ideas or characters or powers. When, forsooth, has the manifest +existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of +political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not +shaken man's conceits about what is and what is right? The very +conceits--and this the more as they are definite and assertive--help to +make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in +making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly +manifested, cannot fail to assail and unsettle the conceits. + +According to the Cartesian nativism, on the other hand, particularly as +it was developed by such men as Malebranche and Spinoza, the innate, +which is always at once the final appeal of man's conceits and the +conclusive witness to what is absolutely real, was indeed one with the +divine or supernatural, but it was perhaps just by reason of its truly +divine or supernatural character and origin untethered. How could the +universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific +programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any +quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the +purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the +sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its +importance. The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, +and what is more he cannot be born without, a real [p.199] interest and +constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no +special experience can ever compass the length and the breadth, the +depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native +love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as +inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt; but the very +doubting in him forever saves both the truth and the righteousness from +being destroyed by satisfaction or crucified by any final embodiment. He +loves and he trusts with all his heart, and he lives in a world that +forever serves the truth and the righteousness of his love and faith. + +So, taken at least for what he promised, or for what he said between the +lines, Descartes was a nativist without the nativist's disastrous +bondage to form and creed, to fixed character and specific programme. He +was a nativist, but for him the innate lacked its self-destructive +definiteness; it was just a spirit or principle, or what I have also +called a life or power, ever present not in some, but in all experience, +and so at once sanctioning all things, and, because able to find +perfection in none alone, each single thing being relative, sanctioning +also a constant conflict between things as good or true or real, and +things as bad or false or unreal. Whatever is relative is necessarily, +so to speak, both-sided or divided against itself. The relativity is +such conflict. Before the judgment-seat of the innate, in short, all +things, being relative, must be parties to conflict both individually +and collectively, nor is their conflict anything but an old story to us. +All the paradoxes of experience have been evidences of it. The conflict +apart for the present, however, the meaning [p.200] of Descartes' +nativism is just this: truth in all experience, reality in all things, +and reality, or truth, a principle, not a programme. Just this, too, +discloses to us the nature of the doubter's real world. + +In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of God which the +universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and +cherish. We saw how in the proof of God Descartes, deposing the +programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in +consequence God became identified with all that was human, with all the +seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the +suffering, of man's life. God's nature just drew all things into itself; +the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of +experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, +or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world +as well as a God; and the doubter's metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds +from this simple creed: _Reality in all things_. So runs the creed's +supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally +familiar to us: _Reality without form or residence_--real as a spirit, +not a programme, and: _Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet +all things working together for what is real_. With this creed clearly +in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that +possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before. + +We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so +inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all +things must be "relative"--this we saw before, but have we ever quite +understood [p.201] stood the meaning of relativity?--and must be +relatively _at once real and unreal_. Perhaps I am still adding little, +if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and +emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually +are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus +relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being +also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the +relative _ipso facto_ puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And +so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent +conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a +genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but +instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, +that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true +and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only +employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly +interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines: + + All service ranks the same with God-- + Whose puppets, best and worst, + Are we; there is no last or first. + +All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could +not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things. +All men serving God are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, +could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and +unceasing. + +So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter--and +what a world it is! No [p.202] finality, because so much reality. +Conflict, forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity, +that is to say finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for +the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual +infinity. + +And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets +new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much +fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and +competition. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own +peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other. We cannot, +however, enlarge now upon this point. Another consequence of the +peculiar realism of the sceptic has a more pressing interest. + +Is our universal doubter naturally and honestly an evolutionist or a +creationalist? Of course, he may be neither, or he may be one or the +other with a meaning different from that usually recognized. Terms like +these are so very hard to control. Conceivably the doubter, a very +versatile character always, might even be both evolutionist and +creationalist. But, as the terms are commonly used, he must be said at +least to have his face towards an evolutional and away from a creational +view. The difference, again, is seen in that between principle and +programme. An evolutional world is the working out of a principle; a +created world, of a programme--the fixed design of some specified being. +True, one may speak with much significance of persistent, continuous +creation, of a creation active at all times and in all things, and it is +to the point that the Cartesians made much of a doctrine that was very +near to such a notion; but a truly continuous creation [p.203] could be +only an orthodox substitute, or disguise, for evolution. A truly +continuous creation could be bound by no programme; by definition it +could have neither date in time nor location in space. And, what is of +even greater moment, a continuous creator, ever present and ever active, +could never be more or less than the persistent reality of the world +itself. How could he be aloof or different? So have we come, once more, +to the immanence of God as a necessary idea of the sceptic. + +The doubter's world, then, is the scene, as realistic as you will and +perhaps we may say, too, without unwarranted enthusiasm, as bright +beneath the morning sun, of the ever present, ever active life of God +or--with the same meaning--of an evolution which we may call God or +nature as we please. From this thought, too, if only we remember that +nothing is unreal and no experience is without some contact with +reality, there is but a step to the idea that God and man are actively +parties to one and the same life. To repeat from above, the conflicts of +human life are the perfection, the perfect living of God. God is, nay, +God's life is, not what some, but what all men do, and the doubter's +world is just the world, the world of things always relative, the world +of constant conflict, in which alone this can be true. + + +II. THE PERFECT SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL. + +But we pass to the second feature of this world in which we are +journeying, namely, to the sympathy of the spiritual and the physical. + +[p.204] As a matter of course the sceptic, by his peculiar attitude of +mind, must imply something with reference to the relation of the two +worlds, or the worlds commonly supposed to be two, the spiritual and the +material, and because for him the reality cannot be exclusively one +definite thing or any number, small or large, of definite things, all of +them independent and exclusive, he must imply in the world of things, be +these two or as many as you please, that they always work together for +whatever is real. Such an implication at first hearing may or may not +appear to be a pregnant one, but at least it suggests that in some +genuine way there must be sympathy between the two things, the two +worlds--spirit and matter, mind and body. These two must work together +for whatever is real. + +But by this necessary sympathy between the spiritual and the material is +not meant a mere parallelism so called. Thinkers, present and past, have +tried to be satisfied with such a meaning. To be quite real, however, +sympathy must be substantial even to the point of unity, not formal. +Some friends, and even some married people, are parallel, life matching +life at each and every point, but not positively and vitally +sympathetic. Still, in parallelism, the very name for which is fairly +indicative of its import, there is a convenient approach to the meaning +here intended. Moreover, our Cartesian philosophers were much given to a +theory of parallelism in their views of the relation of the two spheres +of mind and matter; their specific doctrine of continuous creation, +already referred to, was parallelistic; and they found the human mind +and [p.205] the human body, though distinctly two, still "parallel." +Then, too, in more recent times, parallelism has been in evidence, +figuring conspicuously at least as a working standpoint in the +psychological laboratory, and figuring also, I venture to add, as an +important assumption in philanthropic work. Accordingly, although the +term itself does convey a good deal of its meaning, I shall try, in +words as simple as possible, to show exactly what the theory of +parallelism is. This done, we shall be able to see, or think through +parallelism to sympathy of a more genuine and a more vital sort. + +As was said, the doctrine of continuous creation, holding as it does +that the mental and spiritual life of God and the constant changes in +the natural world, the world said to be of his creation, are always in +accord, God in his relation to the world being, so to speak, always up +to date and having his attention on every place and part, is distinctly +a parallelistic doctrine; but, quite apart from any theological +reference, parallelism asserts that all states, or events, in the two +spheres of body and mind, of spirit and matter, are (1) equally real and +substantial, and (2) perfectly harmonious and consistent, in just the +sense that always in connection with any condition or change in one +realm there is an accompanying condition or change in the other, +although (3) between the two there exists and can exist no causal +connection whatever. Obviously to make either, whether by what is known +as causation or in any other way, the producing and wholly determining +condition of the other, or of anything in the other, would be at once to +unsettle the equivalence or balance of their reality, and _equally real_ +[p.206] _they must be_. Thus, in more detail, mind is denied any +independent part in the production or determination of anything in the +material realm, and matter is in no way the source of what transpires in +mind. Each is, so far as the other is concerned, quite its own master. +Each is absolutely without any arbitrary influence, any influence not +natural or sympathetic or co-operative, upon the other. So to speak, +neither imposes on the other a "must" that is not at the same time +already the other's "would." In other words, any state in one is always +the occasion, but, so far as an independent causation goes, the wholly +passive occasion of something quite pertinent occurring in the other. Is +there an idea, a state of consciousness; then, corresponding, there is +some real thing, some physical object adequate to the idea. Is there an +act of will; then, corresponding to it, some movement in the material +world. Were the relation different from this, were mind and matter ever +independent causes, not merely coincidents or perhaps co-operative +causes, of each other, then, as is worth adding, besides the disturbance +of the equivalence of reality, already referred to, there would be +implied a fixity of plan, or manner of action, and a definiteness of +possessed power in the nature of the supposed causes, and these +implications would also give offence. + +Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation--on some +plan--of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more +sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, +independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever +localized or with an exclusive residence. [p.207] In very much the same +way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression +contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an +exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute +monarchy or of an absolute institution, whether church or state. +Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain +conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily +involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and +value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable +conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of +the world must always be only one among other active things, each also +with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, +if not actually through their differences working together and +harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, +lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far +from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner +meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting. + +To give a single illustration, though this may be quite superfluous, +parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his +shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, +comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of +the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed +task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the +other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any +independent _ab extra_ causation, but [p.208] nevertheless at every +thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the +environment's mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within +itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in +perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so +practical? The credit here has usually been given to a _tertium quid_, +to God, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. God is the Great +Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met--how about that? +Are the workman's mind and his environment each at once acting and acted +upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the +mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some +being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as +was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot +be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a +long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its +assertion of the parallelism and in its view of God as mediator rather +than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have +seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the +fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not +openly assert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for +example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of +what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides +making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door +to recognition of such a view. + +In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as [p.209] I find myself +able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal +reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly +correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, +rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism +still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also +a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism--at +least the dualism of the medieval type--already in a shroud. Even +dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a +decent burial. With the passing of dualism, however, the sympathy +becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot +be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain +cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with +unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation. +Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism +metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical. + +Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it +is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in +human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a +somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of +question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant +and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the +beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on +historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, +too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily [p.210] +detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material +conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its +service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies +in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the +expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its +relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or +trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself +should be indeterminate--_always a tertium quid_--and, in the second +place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, +should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, +atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of assumed +unity or co-operation among all the elements--as, for example, by +Leibnitz's doctrine of pre-established harmony. + +But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of +parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the +doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new +things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and +matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no +longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical +world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete +correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be +changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is +not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more +vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is +difficult. Still, I submit that the [p.211] effect of correspondence, +whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in +the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and +teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with +the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to +something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each +other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, +self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, +to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, +and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if +this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world +mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, +not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or +mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, +being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world +man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, +that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose. + +As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved +from all danger of any _arbitrary_ interference from the physical world, +has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the +positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being +quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, +the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of +reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be +exemplified in the [p.212] natural world, or--as Hegel said, giving more +direct expression to the same idea--the real is rational and the +rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the +real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even +of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our +present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls +for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; +and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between +him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half +done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well +thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and +the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already +ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, +already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental +and the physical world.[1] + +Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker +in the doubter's world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to +develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions +which he reaches will be exemplified in his [p.213] world and so to be +able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious +misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is +no single individual developing some particular point of view, although +even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought. +Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader +than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the +life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious +life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, +articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own +peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and +mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and +broader than just what he sees, or--amounting really to the same +thing--only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual +accommodation with that of others. In the doubter's world the thought +that is at once free and fully applicable is social--just as we know +doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly +free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, +distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, +_though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring_, +but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, +is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,[2] and +in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, +when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, +makes up for its consequent [p.214] relativity and subjectivity by inner +paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by +open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and assumes +accordingly only the value of a means to an end. + +Much has been said in earlier chapters[3] of the paradoxical nature of +human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a +contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were +recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first +sight seeming to blast man's ordinary experience, and his science also, +these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience +movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the +individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon +they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were +witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity +moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free +thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is +such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of +veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the +single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but +the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing +beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only +more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all +individuals, these views always working together for what is true and +real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior +to [p.215] anything that is either merely individual or merely social. +The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows +or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, +consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the +practical experience of what is real. + +With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely +applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say +that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all +knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the +final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its +character as a general attitude or method. It is not strictly a science, +but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any +specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure +mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully +applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no +promise of future changes? But whatever has a history--can this be quite +"pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned +to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and +revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular +formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but +altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is +said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the +fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but +in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum +never is a point. The perfectly homogeneous lever, so [p.216] necessary +to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can +never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of +the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric +disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of +absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, +which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest +accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most +constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics +be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the +very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as +forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism. +Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, +Descartes, was almost the inventor of the Analytic Geometry, and that +this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly +to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a +doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the +application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to +say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So +Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying +doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his God or his +material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and +theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to +return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free +thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least +sometimes so called, as [p.217] a method or attitude exacting clearest +possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very +principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must +always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics--so much more truly +than any other discipline--is superior to anything that is either merely +individual or abstractly social. + +So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how +thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some +practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, +said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is +liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. +Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of +arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative +acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, +represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a +personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, +often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer +interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be +just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed +by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary +interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the +contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, +the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's +sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we +now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it. + +[p.218] And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature--of this +ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we +certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to +the different phases of the thinker's life, but discussion of them all +would take too much of our space and might seriously tax an already +tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The +truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or +thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his +could ever compass the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of +nature? + +Corresponding to the thinker's positive knowledge, to the specific law +or order, which at one time or another he finds manifest in his world, +there is the well-known, but often misunderstood, character of nature as +a great mechanism, moving of course under the law. But corresponding to +his only tentative acceptance, though always trustful use of what he +knows, there is the much neglected character of nature as not an idle, +unproductive mechanism, always doing exactly the same thing, but, if I +may so speak, a moving, developing, ever-productive one, serving some +end larger and deeper than the known law. Nature must indeed be a +machine if the thinker's knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an +instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a +merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the +knowledge itself is never final. + +The material, mechanical character of nature, as I have said, is often +misunderstood. The real meaning of it is lost, and with serious results. +In the first [p.219] place, it is taken as if it involved a wholly +external, physical nature, and in the second place it is taken as if it +represented this nature only as moving through its changes _according to +a certain law_ and as having in consequence nothing to do but keep up +the dead, strictly "mechanical" existence of its law-fixed character and +incidentally involve man in the tireless turning of its fatal wheels. +But nothing could be more superficial, or even more needlessly +superstitious, than this. Obvious facts are overlooked or, if seen, +forgotten. The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted +so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an +actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known +--of a nature not alien--ever have any but a relative value, a +provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of +her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though +what is known is always informed with the law of her moving; and this is +to make her more than a mere machine. Again, no known law is ever _the_ +law, and under _the_ law nature must be qualitatively different from +what under the known law she appears to be. To neglect this difference, +then, is seriously to misunderstand the mechanical character of nature. + +Yet some one promptly objects that I am not at all fair to the common +understanding of mechanicalism. I am told that no one ever thinks of +nature as revolving strictly in accord with any known law. All men who +give any thought to the matter concede that the really ultimate law must +be not anything that is known, but only what is yet to be known, and is +[p.220] merely like in kind to such laws as men have cognizance of. This +interesting concession, however, quite fails of its purpose, since it +does not meet the real difficulty here in question. It shows +mechanicalism, not indeed bound to any particular knowledge, but +nevertheless still conceiving the final lawfulness of nature _after the +analogy_ of a particular law, the merely known or unknown or unknowable +character of which matters not at all. The analogy is what misleads. The +analogy only serves to deaden what really lives. + +When will men cease to think of the whole after the analogy of the part? +Of _the_, as if it were _a_? When will God cease to be only another +person? And the universe only another thing? And the lawfulness or unity +of all nature only another formula? This or that formula may show nature +a mechanism as smooth running and as blindly given to dead routine as +could be imagined, but nature is ever more and other than known formulae +of men, and as more and other, or say as answering to the free spirit of +truth that moves in the thought of men, she is as free in her real +lawfulness as she is infinite. By reason of her infinity there is no law +that she may not break. _A_ law may make her a mechanism, dead and idle; +_the_ law makes her an organism living and productive. How a +positivistic science, making all knowledge wait on actual experience, +and accepting all knowledge only tentatively, can ever be +mechanicalistic or appeal to the ordinary understanding as an argument +for the mechanicalistic view of things is hard to conceive. If one +reasons from known forms to uniform activities, must one not also reason +from the always provisional [p.221] and developing knowledge to +productive activities? Must not the mechanism evolve into something +more, adding something to man's life, realizing something for all life, +enlarging even the nature of God himself? + +Once more, therefore, corresponding to the law that men may know and +that they can know only as their working hypothesis, there is nature, a +mechanism moving and herself at work, while corresponding to the great +living fact of nature's final lawfulness, or to the thinker's sense of +truth as a spirit or principle, not a form or creed or programme, there +is the constantly, genuinely productive life of nature, the mechanism, +as has now been said several times, ever evolving beyond its form and +law. Her law is not a law, any more than the thinker's passion for truth +can be finally satisfied by a formula or than God's continuously +creative life can ever culminate in a single finishing act. The +doubter's world, in short, or so much of it as is said to be material, +is not law-bound, but law-free:[4] an organism, not a mechanism; and +upon the value of this vision of nature, upon the theoretical or the +practical value, whether to science or to philosophy, to morals or to +religion, to politics or to industry, it seems hardly necessary to +dwell. But, to add a word or two in very general appraisal of it, such a +nature, served as it is by every law, by every mechanical action, yet +bound to move, is active always from design; its life is essentially +purposive. Not that it serves the purpose of anything, or any being, +beyond itself, but in every part and movement it is itself always +maintaining an end, the end of its [p.222] its own untethered reality. +In words used before, and applied alike to the spiritual and the +material, it is at once dynamic and teleologic. + +Such a nature, be it especially observed, is the basic condition, if not +also the very inspiration of our modern industrialism. This industrial +age, struggling against the old-time militarism, in its religion, in its +art and in its literature, in its leisure and in its labour, in city and +in country, is an age of machinery; of machinery in all the manifold +forms demanded by all the various departments of human life, not of +wheels and belts alone; an age of the conscious employment, for human +purposes, of the resources of all sorts, the materials and the forces +which the natural environment affords. Freedom, not slavery, is +recognized as man's ideal portion, and in order to ensure the freedom, +not human nature, but physical nature is mechanicalized; or, with the +same intent, all the formal means, or instruments, of life are taken as +incidents of environment, not as essential to man. So is industrialism +supplanting the old-time militarism that sought, in all the relations of +life, to identify the human with the instrumental. Witness the values +now put upon theories and creeds, upon rites and institutions, upon +personal habits and social laws. All of these, to begin with, are means, +not ends; and, further, they are means whose devising--so man is +insisting, as never before--must be, as near as possible, true to +nature. The sovereign conviction of this age of industrialism appears to +be that the only sure way to human freedom is the way of nature; +employment of such instruments as she can supply; obedience to such law +as she may disclose. + +[p.223] But many have found this age of industrialism insufficient. It +seems to them so materialistic. It would view things so much from the +standpoint of cold naturalism. The attitude of _laissez faire_ as +meaning "Let nature do the work," has so widely possessed the minds of +men. If only we could get back some of our former idealism and regard +nature as once more subject to some supernatural will! Despair like +this, however, is blind and as needless as blind. Dependence on a +lawful, mechanical nature can bring to human life no loss of what is +truly ideal and personally worthy. Instead, it brings constant gain, for +the knowledge of law and the making of machinery do not rob men of +personal opportunity, but rather make the opportunity for personal +achievement only the more manifest. A mechanical nature is always for +man, not man for a mechanical nature; and its movement is always +productive for man. If, then, industrial life has tended, as it has been +supposed to tend, towards materialism and fatalism, the reason can lie +only in the blindness of such as refuse to see clearly this visible +fact. Not merely something always doing, but something always that man +is doing is the definite message of a nature that ever manifests herself +under the form of law. To the thinker, in no uncertain syllables, she +says: Go forth and do. And our age of industrialism, if hearing this +bidding, will lose its unnatural materialism, and find itself quick with +a moral and religious instead of a narrowly practical and commercial +motive. + +So in the doubter's world are the spiritual and the material genuinely +sympathetic. + + +[p.224] + +III. A GENUINE INDIVIDUALITY. + +Besides the reality, without finality, of all things in experience, to +which we gave our first attention in this chapter, and the perfect +sympathy of the spiritual and the material, which we have just seen to +give new dignity to the intellectual life, making thought free, and new +worth to the life and movement of nature, making nature not lifelessly +mechanical, but mechanically productive; besides these two features of +the doubter's world, there still remain two others to be observed by us. +For the first of these there is the fact of a genuine individuality. +Different persons, as well as different things, possess a substantial +worth to the real and the true. No one may be either real or worthy by +himself, but no one is unreal for being dependent on others. The +persons, like the things, that work together for what is real, find the +service its own reward. Reality, having no exclusive resting-place must +itself be dependent. It is dependent on an infinite multiplicity of +differences. Therein lies the person's chance for individuality; nay, it +is his right to it and assurance of it. + +Before the days of Descartes, to speak generally, the typical individual +in human society--and let me say also, though at the expense of running +into a rather violent metaphor, the typical individual in any class or +group whatsoever--was the soldier, a creature of another's will, doing +only another's work, and having reality only by virtue of characters so +apart from individual peculiarities as actually to imply existence in +another world. The individual, in other words--if [p.225] at once real +and worthy--was then an unearthly being. For a being so constituted, or +living as if he were so constituted, the creationalistic theology and +the analogous monarchical politics were of course largely responsible, +since in their different ways they took individual independence of +action from the general run of mankind. They imposed on men at large a +certain uniform of life and belief, and then, as it were, appeased them +for this suppression with a doctrine of another life in a world yet to +come. Plainly, then, the time was not one when personal individuality, +except as it was referred to the other world yonder and apart, was +recognized as of much positive worth. Under the regime of prescribed +routine, of life with regard to the hereafter, and of mysterious powers +of all sorts, more or less in good standing in the realm of the +unworldly, personal individuality, though in itself not without some +honour, was valued chiefly and primarily for the different conditions, +the different relations to the things of this world, and the different +views of these things, which men succeeded in overcoming, or rather in +completely denying and eschewing. A worthy individuality was thus +secured rather through self-denial than self-expression; through the +vassal's devotion to his lord, the gallant's submission to his lady, the +courtier's humility before his king, or the saint's self-abasement +before church and heaven. Just think a moment of resting your claim to +distinct personal worth on the mere fact of what you have eschewed or +escaped being in some way different, perhaps more worldly, more +dangerous, and more powerful, from what some others have eschewed or +[p.226] escaped, and you will be able to appreciate the main ground of +the ideally significant distinction between man and man in the days +before Descartes. + +But with the advent of the doubter's view of life absolutism and its +appropriate other-worldism melted away like snow beneath a noonday sun, +and upon their going self-denial ceased to be the cardinal virtue and +the chief ground of an approving self-consciousness. Authority came to +be placed not in a visible form, but in an abstract principle. Law +became superior to laws; monarchy to monarchs; divinity to Gods; truth +to truths, and righteousness to rites and habits. The abstract +principle, too, instead of being, as many might imagine, a wholly +shadowy thing, real only to the logician, stood for something vital and +substantial, for something wholly real, for an inner spirit or life or +power in the very things of experience. Authority, henceforth refused to +any specific thing, whether person or manner of life, institution or +formal belief, became a prerogative of all things together, of all +persons or all manners of life or all creeds; and, residing in the +working together of them all, it made personal worth consist no longer +in the denial of individual characters and relations, but in honest +assertion and open use of them. As some have liked to describe the +change, the "universal individual," the individual as an authoritative +and heaven-made type, that dictated a life and a belief to others +generally, passed away, and in its stead, instead of unity as itself an +individual, instead of an incarnate type, came unity as in the relation, +or the activity maintaining the relation, of all individuals. Instead of +a single planet, for [p.227] example, as the controlling centre of the +heavenly bodies, came the unity of the solar system through the force or +the law of gravity. Instead of a monarch or a book or a city the +self-sufficient ruler of human life and human thought, came unity +through the ballot; through freedom of thought--always loyal only to a +real unity and in being thus loyal also always tolerant; and through all +sorts of like means to individuality. The "universal individual" died, +and there arose, as it were, out of his grave the living unity of +manifold individuals, each one different, yet each quite essential. + +And the change brought a transfiguration. It was as if the human soul +had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. +Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise +of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical +interest in men and things the wide world over. With its valuable +accounts of the manifold experiences of different peoples and different +times, at last seen to be real parts even of the life present and at +hand, the study of history became wonderfully absorbing and inspiring; +and not less valuable than this travel in time was the travel in space, +the real travel or the imaginary, which accompanied it. Furthermore, +such ideas as balance of power and preservation of the worth and +integrity of the individual nation, and division of labour and right of +free speech and of political and religious liberty, developed into most +powerful influences in the life and consciousness of society. And, to +return definitely to the single person, he found himself, not in spite +of, but because of his [p.228] special place and special standpoint, an +active participant in the effective life of his time. Instead of being a +mere soldier as before, he found himself a mechanic; certainly the +proper inhabitant of a mechanically productive nature. + +Doubtless the term soldier lends itself more readily to philosophical +generalization than the term mechanic. Perhaps, too, distance in time +lends enchantment to the view, for the day of the soldier was, while the +day of the mechanic is. The day of the soldier has reached the stage of +romance and reflection, while the day of the mechanic suffers from what +is commonplace and prosaic, from the associations of a particular life, +from dust and smoke and factories, from tools and utilities. Yet the +mechanic must be the romantic figure of the future. He is the typical +individual of these modern times, of these times of the free because +practical thinker, and of a nature not lifelessly mechanical but +mechanically productive. Forget the grimy hands and the noisy machinery, +the overshadowing smoke and the apparent absorption in mere utility, and +think only of the man, who in his best moments feels himself +individually responsible and capable, who believes in himself as having +at once a peculiar and a necessary part in the real life of his time, +and who expresses himself through some skilful mastery over the +resources of nature, applying to them the principles his own thinking +has uncovered, and using her machinery to the ends of his own nature, +which, as we have seen, is bounded only by the "unity of experience." + +Remember, too, the mechanic of our modern world is [p.229] not the +factory labourer alone. Wherever in social life, whether in political +activity or in industrial management, in educational methods or in +religious effort, there appears a man who appreciates the need first of +observing natural conditions and finding natural laws, and then of +acting only in accord with the suggestions of the laws discovered, just +there is the mechanic, the responsible agent of a law-free but always +lawful nature. The soldier as creature of this world was only a passive, +wholly material part of a mechanism which depended for its movement upon +some outside power or will; but the mechanic, be he humble labourer +skilful in the use of tools, or political leader supporting no law that +is not, so far as can be known, in accord with natural life, or +religious reformer loyal to life as it is, shares positively in the +activity that makes the machinery go and in whatever this activity +produces. + +And yet one thing more must be said. Just as before we had to view free +thought in the light of a divided labour, the individual sharing in it +only as he treated his own peculiar experience as hypothetical, as a +means to an end, not merely an end in itself, or as he was subject to +the restraint and correction of the different experiences of others, so +now we must recognize that effective activity, not less than true +thinking or than realistic experience, is also necessarily the labour, +never of one alone, but of many. The successful mechanic--in other +words, the fully responsible agent of a law-free nature--is never an +isolated creature with merely such a sentimental concern for his +neighbours as might spring from the recognized chance [p.230] of meeting +them in that world of the hereafter, where all are to be equal and where +love and peace are to supplant the present hate and rivalry; he is, on +the contrary, one among others, different from him, it is true, and +often very positively at variance with him, but engaged with him in a +single activity and achievement. His difference works not against, but +with their differences for thoroughly controlled, truly effective +activity. As things are real, though never final, so men, at work in the +world, are individual and individually important, but never alone. + +The facts in the case, logically and practically, appear to be somewhat +as follows: The individual's view-point, and the special machinery by +which he undertakes to realize it, can be only tentative or provisional; +they have the character, and usually he knows that they have the +character, if I may use a somewhat extravagant term, of makeshifts; and, +such being the fact, he is bound always to be in a state of constraint +or tension, in a relation of suspense towards them and towards the +environment to which they refer or belong. He feels a positive +resistance, a something disposed to counteract what he would do, and of +course the feeling means that he is really party to a growing life, not +established in a completed life. Suppose a view-point, or a machinery +that was perfectly applicable, that worked perfectly, that never did and +never could give out, that might not even very suddenly go all to +pieces, and that therefore put no strain nor uncertainty upon him who +held or employed it; could such a view-point or such machinery be of any +service to a growing life, to productive [p.231] activity? Most +certainly not. Tension, or a strained relationship, is necessary to +every individual's conduct and to every individual's ideas. But this +strain, to be real, just to accomplish its own purposes must be not +merely of a person with his own ideas or with the outer world to which +the ideas refer, but of a person with other persons; not merely of +conscious man with a mechanical nature, but of conscious and +mechanically active man with other conscious and mechanically active +men. + +It is now an old story for us, but an important one, that there must be +society. A genuine individuality requires society. Society is a medium +not by which something is added to individual life, but by which +something in individual life is kept real and manifest. By maintaining, +as it were always from without, the natural tension of individual life, +it ensures to the individual the constant growth that is his legitimate +inheritance. The doubter is a social creature. The free thinker +accepting his ideas only tentatively, though at the same time using them +hopefully, sure that they will lead somewhere, is a social creature; and +the mechanic is a social creature, being one with others for whom life +is not routine but growth, and among whom the growth in which each has +his part induces constant tension, the tension of difference, the +tension of opposition and competition, the tension of mutual correction +and compensation, the tension, finally, of reality refusing to be bound. +Not the individual's provisional standpoint, nor yet the machinery that +he employs and that sooner or later must go to pieces, not these alone, +I must therefore reiterate, make the individual effectively [p.232] +active in a growing world, make him a worthy creature doing the work of +nature or of God; these have their place and part; but constant relation +to other individuals, the objects not less of hate than of love, not +less of rivalry than of friendship, is also essential. + +In the so-called material world all things, in and by themselves unreal, +get reality, yes, get individual reality, only as through their very +differences they work together for what is real. In the world of mind, +or thought, if this can be imagined apart from the world of things, all +thoughts or ideas, in and by themselves untrue for being subjective, +relative, and partial, get truth only as also through their differences, +so tense and interactive, they work together for what is true. And, +likewise, in the world of persons, if indeed this can be imagined apart +from the world of thought, all individuals, call them now mechanics or +what you will, though in and by themselves without personal worth or +real individuality, without freedom or immortality, get genuine worth +and are assured even immortality only as shoulder against shoulder they +work together for a life that is true and real, worthy and genuine. + +But in an earlier chapter, dealing with "The Personal and the Social, +the Vital and the Formal in Experience," a different argument for +individuality was insisted upon. Then the person was individual because +of his independence of particular form; now he is so because a real life +demands the particular and different, with which he is assumed to be +necessarily identified. Then he was the "living, integral exponent of +the unity of experience," free with the [p.233] genius of universality, +now he is one among all the particular conflicting elements of that +unity--or at least of the reality to which that unity refers. So there +appears to be even an inconsistency in my thinking. Yet, I venture still +to think, the inconsistency is only apparent. Certainly it should be +remembered that the person's asserted genius for universality was not +for the universal in an abstract sense, in the sense of the universal as +something by itself and apart from particulars; rather it was for a +constant enriching of the universal through particulars, for the +translation of any one particular relation and experience, which had +reached a higher state of development, to all the other actual or +possible relations of life; and this can mean only that the universal, +in which the personal individual has a place, is not denying or +betraying, but always holding and lifting up to itself all particular +factors or elements in the unity of experience or of reality. Simply, +though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the +particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, +therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either +side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a +tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound +to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a +genius for universality. Not in the sense of that conventional theology, +crudely dualistic and unthinkable, but in a sense that is not to be +gainsaid and that may give some meaning even to the conventional +theology, every individual is real only in having a body and a [p.234] +soul. The soul of a man is only his genius for universality, but for a +universality that works through, not that is independent of, the +particular. + +So the difference between this chapter and the former chapter is merely +one of emphasis. The double character of the individual, however, as it +is now before us, starts an inevitable question. Is the individual as +immortal as real? If he is immortal, does the immortality belong to both +sides of his character, to his body and to his soul, or only to one? +And, admittedly, this question offers more serious difficulties than the +suspicion of inconsistency. How can it be met? + + +IV. IMMORTALITY. + +To write a useful essay on immortality has long been one of my +ambitions, and, as regards the views in that essay, my faith and my +reason alike have so far brought me to this thesis: _Whatever is real is +immortal_.[5] "A most meagre contribution to the subject," I hear some +one exclaim. But is it so very meagre after all? "A most gloomy +contribution," says another, "for evil, and above all death, are real." +But is it so gloomy? Remember, not even death can be real alone. +Possibly, too, the meagreness will seem less and the gloom will be +illuminated if the need of the real being also the ideal, is brought to +mind. That the real must be ideal, that the world must be so [p.235] +constituted that the law of whatever is good will prevail in it, has +been a faith manifested among all men and expressed through history in +countless ways. True, no particular experience ever satisfies it. Not +even the particular things we adjudge to be best are adequate to it, and +the things we think evil, the suffering and the hardships of all kinds, +the always tragic death and the too often offensive life, seem its +eternal rebuke. Yet the faith remains, and you and I and all others are +forever calling out to it. Our very doubts are its altars; our honest, +rational thoughts, as they are uttered, are prayers; perhaps the only +prayers to which we have any right. + +So the real, which must be also the ideal, is immortal; and this, quite +apart from any particular questions about the body or the soul, makes a +world to live in and to hope in, whatever happens. Of body and soul, +too, it says something. These, in just so far as they are real, are +immortal, and any real relation between them is immortal also, for the +conclusive test of immortality is just reality, reality here and now. +Whatever is real in your life or in mine, whatever reality our present +personality may possess, be it physical or spiritual, be it both or +neither of these, that and only that is immortal. That and only that, +however, let it be said again, is now or never. The most serious error, +so it seems to me, in all the controversy about immortality, is the +notion, or the superstition, that something that is real now can pass +away, or that something real in the future is not real, not freely real +now. With this error corrected, of course at the expense of certain +attempts to bind reality to [p.236] something that is visible, if not to +the natural eye, at least to the eye of the mind, man has nothing to +fear. Reality will hold him to itself, will support whatever truly +inheres in his friendships or his family ties, in his best hopes or in +his personal conceits, for ever and ever. Reality can never betray what +it has ever harboured. + +And the whole trend of thinking in this book has been to make the +reality here spoken of a most hospitable harbour. So innate to all +experience is the spirit of truth, the principle of veracity, that life +can have no absolute illusions. True, life also can have no positive +knowledge final and exact, so that all things definitely manifest are +only relatively true or real. All things definitely manifest, whether to +the consciousness that looks without or that looks within, are mixedly +true or false, real or unreal. But just this impossibility, now so +familiar to us, at once of absolute illusion and of absolute knowledge, +is, as said so often, a condition of _the_ true and _the_ real, and it +means in this place that nothing which is ever defined, which is ever +hypostasized or apotheosized, which in any way is erected into a thing +or nature quite by itself, possessing determined or determinable +qualities, can ever be said to be either mortal or immortal, since it +must be as truly one as the other. It must be significantly, but never +purely and exclusively either. Not this hand of mine nor that picture on +the wall, not this body which, so to speak, I seem to wear, nor that +soul, which you or I imagine to be in the body and more or less loosely +connected with the body, is unqualifiedly immortal. Nor yet [p.237] is +any of these unqualifiedly mortal. Still, again, there is immortality, +and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole +body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a +part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just +named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just +one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any +thing, may say, "I am immortal." No one, however--to speak now only in +words directly applicable to man--may say, "My body is immortal," nor +even, "My soul is immortal," if, so speaking, he means only what he +seems to say. Body and soul alike, if two separate things, are _both_ of +them at once living and dying. They are equally mortal or immortal, for +only so, as two things, can they belong to the real self. Can parts, be +they two or many more, ever be unmixedly what the whole is? There is +immortality, then, yet nothing, not the body nor the soul, is wholly or +selfishly immortal. Reflect, to take an illustration from the practice, +if not from the conscious thinking of men, how through the centuries of +the dualistic view of human nature, the saving, or the losing, of the +separate soul has been a keen human interest, and how the separate body, +living, has been neglected and despised, and, dead, has been cherished +and honoured. Yes, man's immortality is deeper, and it is more +hospitable, than any distinction, be this invidious on one side or on +the other or be it not, between the physical and the spiritual. Even in +the case of the spiritual, _the_ cannot be _a_. + +The soldier and the mechanic have been mentioned [p.238] as types of +personal individuality appropriate respectively to the medieval and the +modern period, to the period of the "universal individual," on the one +hand, and of unity realized, not through a type, but through the working +together of different individuals, on the other. The type was of another +world; the living unity is here and now in this. For the mechanic, then, +death is not what the soldier has found it, and immortality is different +too. But how fully to describe the difference, and how above all really +to appraise it, I do not clearly know. Perhaps there is not enough of +the poetic in my nature. The soldier, as the political historian or as +the philosopher sees him, has had his appreciative poets, but the +mechanic has been little sung. The mechanic's death, however, and the +life following it, afford a theme that some poet of the future, let me +hope, will be able to do justice to. The soldier leaves this for another +world, by his violent death only fulfilling his extreme subjection here. +The mechanic, somewhat like the tools which he employs, actually +continues with the always productive life of this world, by his death, +natural rather than violent, even contributing to, as well as sharing +in, what is produced. Not less than the soldier's is his after-life an +appropriate fulfilment of his earthly career; each gains through death +the natural reward of his life's service. But though I find myself so +unable to say what I would, to express either in prose or in poetry all +that I seem to feel, there is just one thought that I must try to +articulate, and that will certainly assist the understanding of the +difference between the two deaths or the two after-lives. + +[p.239] Soldiers are companionable, of course, but they live less in and +with each other than in and with the will which they serve or than in +and with the separate world which at any moment may suddenly take them +to itself. Their lives, accordingly, or their deaths, are aloof from +each other, and are brought together only through their common +subjection or their common destiny, through something which is without. +But the mechanic is social in his own nature, in his own right. The very +reality, too, of the world in which he works is, as in so many ways we +have seen, maintained only by a divided labour. It is, then, a reality, +or a labour, that bridges the chasm between one man's life and +another's, as well as between all separate lives and the unity of all +life. It makes the many lives "parallel" and harmonious--nay, it makes +them actively and vitally sympathetic. Not, as is certainly true, at the +expense of any one's real individuality, for each man has his place and +his part, real and immortal, and not one falls unnoticed or unguarded to +the ground; but, nevertheless, whatever all have and do, they have and +do together. They live-and-die together. There is, in a word, but one +death, as well as but one life, the life or the death, which all share, +and which accordingly is definitely and specifically nowhere and +nobody's. And in the light of this supreme unity, while any live, none +can be merely dead, or while any die, none can be merely alive or living +to themselves or their time alone. And, living and dying together, in +and with each other, all are parties to the immortality of what is real. + +So, again, there is immortality for mankind--the [p.240] immortality of +him whom I have called the mechanic. There is immortality, mine and +yours and ours. We die, but not as dies the soldier, who leaves this +life for another quite apart, securing there a companionship denied him +here; we die a death that is never death alone, and we die as we live, +in a companionship that is real now and throughout all time. +Furthermore, our death is always, or always may be, self-denial, and +self-denial, too, in its supreme moment, the moment of its greatest +achievement, but our self-denial is also very different from that of the +soldier. + +There is immortality, then, but what results has all that has now been +said for the interpretation of history, for our feelings about the life +and death of our fellows, and for the relevant doctrines of +Christianity?[6] + +We commonly think of history as the passing of persons, nations, and +civilizations. Men come and go, but history goes on for ever. To be +sure, history accumulates, as if its gifts from humanity, innumerable +treasures, books, relics, institutions, buildings, machinery and the +like, but the donors, as we are wont to think, are lost to it, remaining +as ideal influences perhaps, but not as vitally active in the life they +once assisted. This common view, however, must now seem wrong. The past +must ever persist in the present, and not as an aside in some other +world, nor yet as merely so much ideal influence, but vitally as a party +to the present. Those that were must also live now. Have we their +literature? Yes, and their consciousness [p.241] too. Their +institutions? And also their life. Their achievements? And their power +and will. Altogether too fanciful, some one thinks; but give it meaning +from what has been said here especially about individuality. In the real +world there can be but one life and one death, and we individuals, +whatever our century, divide the labour of them both. Even our present +life and consciousness and our will must be said to belong, in return, +to those who have gone before; for it is wrong, it must be wrong, to +think of the life of the past and the life of the present as two lives, +as independent and perhaps even different in kind. Not those that are +now gone once lived and we live, but they and we are living, they in us, +and we with them; they in the world of our life, not in a world yonder +and apart. They live in us, to suggest a simple analogy, that is perhaps +more than a mere analogy, very much as our own past selves, our infancy +and our youth, are alive with us and in us to-day. If a physical +scientist can see the same force in the military weapons and engines of +ancient times that he sees in those of our own time, if a sociologist +can find the same social phenomena then and now, may not the historian +regard the older life in general and the newer life as not less +intimate? Did different winds blow in 1492 from those that blow to-day? +Was it a different sun that shone in 500 B.C.: from that which shone in +A.D. 500, or which shines, or tries to shine, to-day? We do not deny +that the animal nature is still alive in us as well as around us, +although at the same time we suppose it to belong to a very early period +in our development. Why, then, should we exclude what is [p.242] so much +more recent? Because it is too distinctly human to be so robbed of its +temporal independence, of its own date and place? That is certainly a +strange reason in view of the fact that men have insisted on erecting, +in their minds, for the human nature that has passed away, a place which +is altogether timeless and eternal. Why not dignify human nature, then, +by making it, and all that it bears, eternal in its own natural life, +not in a sphere that is unnatural? It is sheer materialism, in letter or +in spirit, either to entomb the historic past, as some would, in books +and monuments of all sorts, or, as others would, to lay it aside in a +so-called immaterial world. Who does either of these things forgets how +the books are written and how the monuments are erected, and how in +general the things of the past come to be. The future is always a party +to whatever is done. The men who have ever achieved anything have always +been, in their character and in their work, as if made by the future, +"ahead of their times." An uncanny phrase, unless one can think of the +deeds and men of any time as in a vital unity with the deeds and men of +all times. A man is great only as he identifies himself with some social +force, with some actual movement of his day, fulfilling it out of a long +past, bringing it to focus and so making it definite and manifest, and +as the life around him which gave him birth, adopts his will and repeats +his achievement. History has many cases of human societies repeating in +their lives as a whole the careers of great men. Only it is not +repetition exactly; it is resurrection and continuation. Great men make +history, but they make it only because they [p.243] are alive in it +before their birth and survive in it, in its doing and in its thinking, +after they die.[7] Would history be even thinkable without such +continuity? Could we honestly call it history? What good American to-day +is not, convinced that he has a share in what Washington and Lincoln +accomplished years ago, and also--and this one may, or may not, +regret--in the doings of Benedict Arnold and Booth? And, to put a very +practical question, would it not be well if in the popular consciousness +great men, good and bad, were really identified with history instead of +being treated as fixtures outside of it? Make them separate fixtures and +you make them oracles, the spirits of quite another world, with which +the demagogue, as if a medium, can excite the people; but identify them +in a vital way with history and they must grow with it, speaking quite +as much out of the present conditions as out of the past. Hero-worship +is too often idolatry, and for my part the literalism of it is only +"spiritualism" trying to be respectable. Every extravagance, of course, +has to have its lawful or conventionally respectable expression. + +But what, now, of friendship and family ties? Can we view these in the +same light? I think we would; I think we can; I think we must. True, it +is easier to speak in this large, "philosophical" way of history and of +the men who have had part in it, inventing and effectively using the +machinery that has enabled its progress, than of such matters as +friendship and [p.244] family. In these latter matters the heart more +than the mind is addressed. Still, the relations of friendship and +kinship are not themselves born, nor do they die and all friends abroad +and kin at home live and move and have their being only in these. Does +it destroy or even weaken the meaning or the reality of friendship to +have it said that the relation is as universal as particular or local, +and as eternal as temporal? Is a relationship worth less than any one of +its manifestations? Why, the universality of the relationship gives +meaning or reality to any manifestation. Friendship, then, or kinship, +for this person or that, cannot be separated from the experience in +general. Separate it, and one's friends or kin surely do die, remaining +after death, like the characters of the older history, as only ideal +"influences," or as unearthly spirits that sometimes idly chatter. But +in reality, friendship, or kinship, is one, not merely many, all of its +members labouring together for, and forever surviving in, what it truly +is. The friends, then, or the kin that lived, live still. In others +about us? Yes; and in ourselves too; or rather in the relation of man to +man or in the unity of all that lives. Not literally in others, then, +although the meaning intended was a genuine one, nor yet literally in +ourselves, for nothing crudely like transmigration of souls is in my +mind, but--to repeat--in the living relationship of friends or kin. +There is indeed a truth in transmigration, as also in other related +notions; witness all the facts of inheritance, of historical succession +or continuity, of social growth and personal character, of evolution; +but it is the truth, or is near to [p.245] the truth, of a reality that +is conserved even in its changing. The soldier of the past, let me say, +at his death was "translated," but the mechanic of to-day is transmuted. +The latter word may be stranger and harsher in sound than the former, +but there is truly less violence and more honour in its meaning. So, +again, friends and kin that ever lived, live still. Friendship and +fatherhood and motherhood and all the relations of kin, nay, all the +relations of life, that make our individuality real, that make it +personal, that make it social, that make, it natural, have been from the +beginning, live now, and must survive forever, and by their survival +hold for the present and the future life all who have ever been. Where +would faith go, and where worth and responsibility, if birth really +created and death destroyed, or if birth were a coming from no one knows +where, from a realm unlike and apart, and death the return? Birth cannot +create or introduce; it can only express, revealing and realizing. Death +cannot destroy or "translate"; it can be only fulfilment at a crisis. + +The mere wordiness of a philosopher! Possibly. And yet Christianity has +very nearly implied, if indeed it has not actually said, and said or +implied again and again, exactly the same thing. To science, I know, we +are peculiarly indebted for the conception of the organism, or the +organic, which enables us to bring together the universal and the +individual, the eternal and the temporal, the omnipresent and the local, +without losing the worth or the reality of either, and of course--for so +they would not be together--without erecting separate quarters, or +worlds, for their [p.246] occupation; but, when all is said, science has +only applied at large the very special and personal doctrines of +Christianity, and has therein helped Christianity to a better +consciousness of itself. The Resurrection, the Immaculate Conception, +the Divinity, the Immediacy of the Kingdom, the Sacrifice, and the +Brotherhood of Man are doctrines which one and all testify quite +directly that our real individuality, our real being, lies not in a +separate existence of any sort, here or hereafter, but in the abiding +relations of the actual life now. In these the Christ resides, the +always living Christ. What else can the following mean? "In as much as +ye have done it unto one of these, my brethren, even these least ye have +done it unto me." And again: "For whosoever shall do the will of my +father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and +mother." The living Christ, one of the dogmas of our day, is more than a +fancy and more than a dogma, and for no one so truly as the scientist, +the evolutionist. Christ was too great, too deep-lying, too far-reaching +in human history not to be more. The letter of Christianity, we are +often told, has got to go, but it is quite as true that the real letter +of Christianity has got to stay, has yet to come: the real letter, I +say, not the parody of a mere physical appearance and reappearance +nearly two thousand years ago. If Christ was really not born as men are +born, if he did not really die, if truly he still lives in and with our +lives to-day, if Christianity honestly means the brotherhood of humanity +and the divinity of man, then simply the Christ was more than a pagan's +messenger from another world, and [p.247] more than the creature of a +single moment in history or a single place; also he reveals to us more +in ourselves than any of these things, and instead of resorting to such +notions as parthenogenesis and trance to explain the birth and the +resurrection, we must rather recognize in him, and in ourselves, an +individuality that has, not in spite of, but because of, birth and +death, a share in, a place and a part in the immortality of what is +real. Now I am not a good preacher, plainly, nor am I exactly a +sympathetic theologian, and also I know too well the defects of argument +through scriptural quotation; but I have to hope, as personally I +believe, that in the foregoing paragraph, given in conclusion to the +discussion of immortality in the doubter's world, I have suggested what +at least is not an unchristian appreciation of Christianity. + + * * * * * + +Our journey in the doubter's world here comes to an end. All things are +real, yet none final. The spiritual and the material in life are +sympathetic even to the point of being vitally at one with each other, +thought being free and practical, and material nature being lawful but +law-free, and mechanical but productively so, and being in her +productiveness definite opportunity, not blind necessity, to human life. +And, the "universal individual" being dead, having returned to the other +world from which he came, all particular individuals have real and +personal shares in the life that is, in the work that is ever to be +done. Living or dying, the individual, as we have found him, is the +mechanic of to-day, not the soldier of yesterday. + + +[1] The last few sentences seem like a paragraph from some psychologist +of the day. My colleague, Professor W.B. Pillsbury, for example, has +just published a book on the attention, in which appears the following +statement: "It seems that the problem of voluntary activity is largely, +if not entirely, a problem of the attention ... . The processes which +are effective in the control of a man's ideas are _ipso facto_ in the +control of his movements," and this, besides being the current +psychology, is quite in accord with our doubter's vision: "Well thought +is well done." (See _Attention_, chapter ix. London, 1907.) + +[2] Chap. VIII., pp. 177 seq. + +[3] Chaps. III., IV., V., and VI. + +[4] See also an earlier discussion in this book, chap. III., pp. 49 seq. + +[5] Two preliminary efforts have already been put in print. See the +Appendix, "A Study of Immortality in Outline," to a book: _Dynamic +Idealism: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Psychology_ (McClurg, +1898). See, secondly, an article: "_Evolution and Immortality_," in the +_Monist_, April, 1900. + +[6] Except for a few changes, the next few paragraphs are taken from my +article, "Evolution and Immortality," in the _Monist_, April, 1900. + +[7] In a small book, _Citizenship and Salvation, or Greek and Jew_, +published some years ago, I have tried to show this of Socrates and +Christ. + + + +[p.248] + +X. + +DOUBT AND BELIEF. + + + There was once a brook that ran, at times slowly, at times more + rapidly, through fields and woods, under trees and over rocks. At + every chance, whatever the obstacles in its course, it fell, much + or little, as it could; but impatience and uncertainty filled its + life as the minutes and the hours passed. Had life nothing more in + store for its troubled waters? Was this groping downward all? Were + the memory and the accompanying hope, which haunted every thwarted + move, of no avail? Would true fulness of life never be attained? + + But a great moment for the brook came, rewarding it at last, + bringing assurance in place of threatened despair. A precipice + intervened, and the waters fell hundreds of feet; a glorious fall + --spray, sunlight, colour, eloquence. + + "Now," spoke the brook from the deep, smooth pool below, "now I + have lived; now I know that my life was real and that my life was + good, for I have found myself, I have found my world; and I have + found them where I thought them not. And, speaking so, the brook + flowed on contented. + +The confession of doubt, which we set out to make with all possible +candour, is now nearly concluded even to the harvesting of the promised +fruit. The confession began, as will be remembered, with recognition of +certain general and easily demonstrated facts, of [p.249] which there +were five, as follows: (1) We are all universal doubters. (2) Doubt is +essential to all consciousness. (3) Even habit, though confidence be the +horse, has doubt sitting up behind. (4) Like pain or ignorance, doubt is +a condition of real life. (5) And the sense of dependence, so general to +human nature, gives rise to doubt, although also, like misery, it always +seeks company--the company of nature, of man, of God. Then, after this +beginning, which left us by no means so hopeless as might have been +expected, we proceeded to try the doubter, nay, to try ourselves, first +before the court of ordinary life with its ordinary views of things, and +secondly, before the court of science, and, in both trials, we found the +doubting justified. Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in +science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found +what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and +almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of +contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and +the very heart of our human experience. This spirit of violence, too, as +the evidence of its presence accumulated, bade fair to dispel whatever +hope our confession had left us. Yet out of the evidence there gradually +did appear a reason for deepest assurance, and in the end our fear, not +our hope, was dispelled. Contradiction was seen in its very nature to +possess positive value. It was seen to protect experience, even while +experience was specific and concrete, definite and individual, against +any fatal digression or partiality of view. It was deeply conservative, +corrective, and [p.250] compensative in its effect, but it was all this +without ever being merely negative or destructive towards anything, +since its own efficiency required persistent individual differences. To +experience it gave movement, constant unity or wholeness, realistic +value and poise, practicality, and, lastly, social expression. And we +were able, accordingly, to conclude, in so many words, that both +ordinary life and science, so given to duplicity in their standpoint and +in their ideas, were really building well, far better, indeed, than they +seemed or than they clearly knew. Contradiction, in short, as we came to +see it, meant unity, but not an empty, abstract unity; it meant unity +rich and real with an infinity of differences; and so what had at first +appeared an uncompromising reason for doubt turned, right before our +doubter's eyes, into an unassailable ground of belief, making the very +world which we had been so uncertain about a world for an inviolable +faith. But truth, we saw at once, could no longer be identified with a +formal idea, known or unknown or unknowable; reality could no longer +have the character of a fixedly constituted thing, whether such a thing +were present in experience or not; and perfection, even the perfection +of God, could no longer be a mere status, a passive possession of +certain characters, attributes, or prerogatives. Truth became, as was +said, in want of a better word, a spirit; reality was a life; perfection +was a power. And thereupon, with the new view thus afforded us, coupled +as it was especially with the sense in which personally a man could +claim reality for himself and yet be party to the factional life of +society, we were able to turn to [p.251] Descartes, an early modern +doubter, a father confessor of many doubters, and, overlooking some of +his shortcomings in thought and character, to appreciate both the use +that he made of doubt, the intimacy that he, too, found between doubt +and faith, and the world of reality, of most vital sympathy between the +material and the spiritual, of genuine, personal individuality, and of +immortality, through which he led us, doubter, universal doubter though +he was. That great Frenchman, as we were enabled to understand him, got +back the world, the self and the God which he seemed to have lost, but +he got them all back transfigured. He got them back, not by denying and +excluding what appeared negative and treacherous in their nature, but by +facing this and using it, by accepting it and turning it even against +itself. The very Paris to which he returned as believer was the same +Paris, the Paris of doubt and of evil in all its forms, that earlier, +hopeless and despairing, he had put behind him. And, once more, his +experience was ours, and so helped us to interpret and deepen ours, +quickening the value of our own previous discovery that within the very +sources of doubt lay the real bases of belief. Our own doubted world of +what was relative and artificial, and above all contradictory, had +already turned, without loss of anything that was in it, into a world of +reality and belief. + +And so, for this concluding chapter, as but a sort of focussing of what +almost from the beginning has been borne in upon us, but especially at +the close has been rich in reality and meaning, we have a sixth general +fact, which may now be added to the original five. [p.252] _We believe +through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very +things we doubt_. To this fact really inclusive of all the others, or if +not to this fact at least to this conviction which we have achieved +here, we shall now turn, and in our concluding chapter we may even +forget, or retain only as the appropriate background, many of those more +special or more technical details that from time to time have occupied +us. After so much, that to some, if not to all, who have followed me to +this place, may have appeared open to the charge of being mere theory, +certain simple, very practical considerations, appealing quite as much +to the emotions as to the reason, can hardly be out of place. Those who +are already satisfied, who foresee only repetition, who are themselves +without emotion, or who consider anything like the drawing of a moral to +be as useless as it is inartistic, need read no further. + + +I. + +We believe in the very things we doubt. Doubt, this is to say, can +destroy nothing. It only calls for closer scrutiny, for wider and deeper +view, for greater achievement. Its effect is only to make over, renew, +or fulfil what has already been and must ever remain an object of faith, +and so doing it keeps the old faith alive. It questions all things, but +properly, consistently it raises, not questions of mere existence or +reality, but questions of meaning and worth, and whatever it truly +questions it always quickens. Have [p.253] we not found that with its +inborn and insatiable passion for truth doubt must believe in +everything, and that to satisfy this passion, since all things must work +together for what is real and true, it must reject nothing but seek even +the universe in everything? All things, from the momentary sensation in +your little finger, or the tree yonder on the lawn, to the personality +of God or the divinity of Christ as an idea in the consciousness of +millions of people, all things are; they are in experience; they are +unassailable realities of experience; but--and just this is as far as +the truth-loving doubter, the doubter who is honest with his own +self-consciousness, can go--what really are they? _What are they?_ is +such an honest question. In this question, too, there is more reality +for the things inquired about even than in any man's assertion that they +are this or that they are that. But the question _Are they?_ would be +downright treachery. We doubters, then, believe, but would ever know +what we believe; we have, yet would realize every possibility that what +we have affords. + +Doubt, I repeat, destroys nothing. From time to time certain doubting +people have called their prophets impostors, and have imagined +themselves able to put the impostors out of the way, but, as history has +always shown, only with the result of reviving among themselves and +often of awakening in the minds and hearts of others the sense and +conviction of just that for which the offensive impostors may have +suffered violent death. Even history's petty impostors, too, as well as +those who have proved heroes and great leaders, have always had their +justification. An [p.254] absolute impostor has never been. Again, +certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or +moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to +make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual +dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is +valid and real. Nothing can be, or ever has been, unreal. And, in +general, doubt of a thing or a person or a God only needs its own +conscious assertion to turn actually into an appeal from its particular +object to the ideal or spirit or principle for which the object had +stood, and upon this appeal even the object that has been for a moment +condemned is justified and glorified. Thus, doubt may deny or depose or +put to death, but as it is honest it also realizes or restores or +revives. Through doubt the sensuous, which is the particular and +visible, is ever becoming spiritualized; even this corruptible puts on +incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. Or, in these words, if +we doubt we may reject the object, the letter, but we cannot reject the +letter without accepting and asserting the spirit, and we cannot assert +the spirit without recalling and exalting and even worshipping the +letter. The rejection makes for universality by casting down the +barriers of the particular experience of time or place, of person or +nation, of the Greek perhaps, if again I may look to history, or of the +Jew or of the Christian, while the recall and the worship make for +definiteness. Without the previous rejection the worship could be only +idolatry. So, as Descartes will be remembered virtually to have said, +doubt is innately loyal to reality in [p.255] everything, and just +through this loyalty the world it spurns, the world of God and man and +nature, is for ever called back, a real world once more, because a +realized, a spiritually realized world. Why forget, as so many seem to, +that reality is an achievement; achieved it may be, as with the brook, +even by a great fall? + +But have you ever climbed a mountain up and up and up, through thick +woods, over rough, almost impassable trails, into clouds dense and +chilling, stormy and angry, over treacherous snows and frightful cliffs, +and come out at last on the very top to see both earth and heaven, +yourself between, the clouds dispersed, the hardships and dangers all +forgotten, the whole world real and yours? Well, that is doubt become +achievement. Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a +problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all +the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to +you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when +failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and +the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? +That, too, is doubt rewarded. Have you ever visited, perhaps more +curiously than reverently, some great Catholic cathedral, or, better +still, some temple of the far Orient, and watching the worshippers +there, suddenly had a vision of religion as greater and deeper than any +Protestantism or even than Christianity? That, again, is doubt's +achievement. Have you ever suffered a great heartrending disappointment, +let me say a great personal loss, and [p.256] found it seemingly +impossible to return to the routine of your former life, but +nevertheless, almost imperceptibly, come into a sense of presence and +gain from the very thing that seemed taken from you? That, once more, is +doubt without its sting, robbed of its victory. Doubt means sacrifice, +often enormous sacrifice, but always a more than equal gain. The light +that casts the shadows of doubt, when one can face it, and really does +face it, as, for another example, in this book we have been trying to +face it, is so splendid and so uplifting. + +So, a third time, doubt destroys nothing; it only makes reality forever +an achievement and belief a constantly active life. The fact, now no +stranger to us, that doubt is social, also shows this. Doubt is social, +as has been said, since by its isolation it makes the longing for +company, and by its greater freedom the larger opportunity for company; +and since also the very contradictions or controversies which arouse it +are never merely individual, being always social also, and social +relationship means effort and sacrifice, and is accordingly a peculiarly +interesting witness to the losses that doubt must suffer for its greater +gains. Doubt, in short, shows belief, working not merely for the reality +of all things, but also for the love of all men. As social, then, as +working for the love of all men, doubt involves sympathy. Yet not an +easy, passive sympathy. A restless, labouring, always growing sympathy +is the sympathy of the doubter; a sympathy that makes all it covers +labour and grow also. Does it hurt your business to doubt it +sufficiently to make you able to sympathize with the interests of +[p.257] another? To this question Adam Smith gave a timely answer when +at a critical moment in industrial history he found in sympathy a +condition of successful competition. Does it hurt your politics, if you +can lose enough of the partisan's conceit or the jingo's bombast to +sympathize with the other parties or the other nations? The value of +real independence in politics is one answer, and the idea of federation +among competing states, or of international polity as a basis of +successful national life, is another. Does it hurt your understanding to +outgrow your own profoundest ideas and see some validity in the +doctrines and formulae of others? Does it hurt your Christianity to make +concessions to another's Christianity or to the worship of any land or +any time? The reading of the last great book, or the visit to the pagan +temple, is an answer. Simply the doubter the world over, social being +that he is by nature, imbued as he is with a living sympathy, must +recognize, and must labour to maintain or achieve, the unity of +humanity. For him just this is God, or truth, and it is worth far more +than anybody's religion or than anybody's rational formulae. It must +stand, too, both as the universal authority which both religion and +reason have over the lives of men and as the motive or living principle, +or spirit, by which particular religions and particular formulae, however +serviceable, are forever unstable. + +But doubt, which is thus social and imbued with a living sympathy, and +which though requiring sacrifice does not destroy belief, but only makes +belief active and reality an achievement, may be viewed here in still +another way. It shows mankind using or spending [p.258] instead of +either hoarding or throwing away any of the resources of knowledge and +faith, of developed habit and personal association, which life +accumulates. Some doubters, as men say in the business world, invest +what they have; some speculate. Some are conservative, even timorous; +some are very rash. Yet doubt as expenditure is necessary to all who +would enjoy the proper, natural increase of their possessions, and while +the rash, be they transgressors or reformers, sensualists or +materialists, or equally impractical idealists, at a throw may win or +lose great riches of mind or spirit, the timorous and +ultra-conservative, the "practical" and conventional, are not less +dependent on chance. There are the new rich, too, and the aristocratic +poor, and both remind us strongly that the real use of what we have is +not only a duty, but also a very sober duty. To hoard blindly or spend +rashly is to risk unwisely, perhaps to lose all, or, if to win, to win +idly; while to use well, to doubt clearly and honestly, to doubt even in +one's belief, to doubt only for fuller meaning, for broader and deeper +life, for richer companionship, is personally to earn lasting spiritual +treasure. + +Modern science, whose knowledge comprises merely working hypotheses, the +means to truth, not truth itself, or if truth, then only a living, +growing truth, affords one of the best examples of this. Modern science +is a great faith, a great belief, but only because it is a life, not a +status or possession, only because it is a constant spending, a constant +using of knowledge, that earns interest, even compound interest, as +regularly as the years go by. And experience in [p.259] general, as well +as science, is also a great belief, and also only because always +doubting and so always using and always earning. + +Doubt, in a word, is more than a necessity of experience; it is +distinctly a duty. Experience itself is but another name for that hard +master who says to every unprofitable servant: "Thou wicked and slothful +servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I +did not scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the +bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with +interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him and give it unto +him that hath the ten talents." + + +II. + +That doubt is only the expenditure of the treasures of life for future +gain human history bears witness in a striking way. Times of a general +scepticism among any people have always been also times of +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards all things great and small. +To employ again a word used before, this means that life has come to +regard its establishments of all sorts as only "instrumental," not +final. Of course, conventionalism and utilitarianism are commonly +decried, just as the accompanying attitude of doubt is commonly decried; +but the fears, though not altogether idle, are usually short-sighted, +for there is gain ahead. In a certain community, for example, +patriotism, morality, and piety, long identified with specific forms and +customs and doctrines, have come at last to seem quite unsubstantial. A +rising cosmopolitanism perhaps has undone the first, sensationalism +[p.260] or naturalism the second, and mingled ritualism and secularism +the third. But however unsubstantial all three may appear in +consequence, they are nevertheless retained as still useful, as means to +some end, being at least good things to wear or to assume in any way, +and from the change, though it appear so like decline, the community in +the end is most decidedly enriched. + +How can this be? In answer, let us beard the very king of the race of +the conventionalists and utilitarians in his forbidding den. +Machiavelli, with his teaching that the end always justifies the means, +and his open advice to the leader who would be successful, to make a +point of at least seeming loyal and good and pious, shows a typical +mingling of the sceptic and the utilitarian in sacred things. Moreover, +what Machiavelli taught was also common practice in his time, and soon +became a principle of brilliant statesmanship all over Europe. And to +add meaning to his case by associating it with others, conspicuously in +Descartes' time, as we have observed, and also in Athens at the time of +the Sophists, and in Jerusalem when the Pharisees flourished, the same +standpoint was much in vogue; while in our own times we do not need to +look far to find it. Education, social life, politics, religion abound +in it, for the tribe of the Machiavellists is no more a lost tribe than +it is one that began with him whose name it bears. If the name is too +offensive to some by reason of its connection with a particular +character and a particular period in Italian history, for Machiavellism +they may substitute institutionalism, certainly a more innocent term at +first sight; but the offensiveness, though hidden, [p.261] or +half-hidden, still remains a part of the fact with which we have to +deal. The meaning of institutionalism is just that of some asserted end +justifying any available means, and so under cover of its peculiar +conceits sanctioning violence. Watch any institution and see how one or +another of life's objects of devotion is become, or fast becoming, a +mere utility. The institution makes life mechanical, and doing this it +is as treacherous as it seems loyal to the treasured things of life, the +developed ideas and established customs; it is even as sceptical towards +them as it seems faithful; and in the spirit, if not in the letter, of +Machiavellism it shows them no longer implicitly worshipped, but in use, +which is to say, "put to the bankers," and so robbed of their character +of sacred treasures. And as for Machiavelli himself, it may be worth +while to remember that with all his offensiveness he has undoubtedly +been very much maligned, and that to any student of history he seems +only a very apt though an unpleasantly outspoken pupil of the most +powerful institution of his time--the Roman Church--for which things +moral and religious had certainly become effective instruments of very +worldly ambitions. So in Machiavellism or in institutionalism, the name +now being indifferent to us, we see worship passing into use; we see +sacred things become secular, or things supposed final becoming only +instrumental; and we see, therefore, what appears like loss or +decline.[1] + +[p.262] But can there be anything besides loss or decline? This again is +our question, and the answer now comes quick and decisive, whether we +are thinking of Machiavelli or the Sophists, of the old-time Pharisees, +or of those in our own life. Decline and even fall never tell the whole +story of anything, and just because they mean use, even secular use. +That men must worship is surely true, but also men must and do use, and +the use, in spite of the strain of the offence and resistance which it +is sure to arouse, brings profit always. Use, secular use, may imply +sacrifice of the letter or the established form, but it always leads to +liberation of the spirit. In scepticism, therefore, and the coincident +conventionalism and utilitarianism towards sacred things, in the +institutionalism which harbours all these, though often darkly and +secretly, we may always read, what in truth history has again and again +exemplified, the throes of birth, the birth of the spirit. Must it not +be that any visible institution, be it ecclesiastical or industrial or +political or educational or ceremonial, just because an institution +designed in some way to serve an active, growing life, is always an +outgrown, falling institution? As in the case of the Roman Church in the +days of Machiavelli, an institution upon its establishment actually +justifies its enemies by its own practices, while the enemies, so +justified, do but lay it bare, exposing its hidden thoughts and ways, +forcing reform upon it, and perhaps in the end themselves "remaining to +pray." + +So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of +society what a wonderful triumvirate, working [p.263] for the real +growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by +the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and +utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. Even +Machiavelli in his most offensive pronouncements must have felt +something between his lines which expressed would have transfigured +their meaning, not to say also his reputation, greatly, and, consciously +or unconsciously, he was certainly a party to the development of what is +best in modern life. As for the Sophists, whether we see them as +sceptics or conventionalists, did they not have Socrates among them? +Between them and him, when all is said, the difference was only that +between talent and genius, between great formal ingenuity, which always +means opportunism, and really vital insight, which, shattering +opportunism with its own weapons, means loyalty, not to existing forms, +but to the spirit dwelling in the forms. Much in the same way, too, the +Jewish Pharisees had Jesus, a contemporary, who did but recognize and +earnestly teach what they were really practising, namely, the utility of +the law, or the law for man, not man for the law. Only what for them was +merely a selfish opportunity, absorbed as they were in the vested +interests of their time and generation, was manifest to him--who was a +genius and who used for real gain the talent which they hoarded--as a +great spiritual fact, as a universal truth, bringing opportunity and +freedom to all men under all law, not to some men under one law. Thus +they were institutionalists; he, by merely turning their narrowness into +a principle of all life, became a reformer, and, indebted to them as he +was, he could [p.264] forgive them even when they opposed him. Genius +always forgives; the spirit always recalls and cherishes the letter that +has given it birth. + +So the institution as an historical fact, whether we see it with the +eyes of Machiavelli or with those of a pope, with the eyes of Protagoras +or with those of Socrates, with the eyes of the Pharisees or with those +of Christ, may show worship turning into use, the sacred becoming +secular, but it shows also the life of society becoming enriched; it +shows investment for future gain; it shows doubt, not destroying +anything, but achieving only what is real; it shows the life of the +spirit. + + +III. + +No period of man's earlier doubting can be more interesting than that of +the centuries just prior to the Christian era, when the peoples of the +Mediterranean contributed so much, directly and indirectly, to the +preparation for Christianity and to the discovery, or revelation, which +finally came and in due time changed the ancient to our modern world. +What the preparation was has already been indicated, at least partially, +in the references that have been made to the Sophists and to the +Pharisees. Christianity has been only the interest, the earned +increment, or rather should I not say the compounded principal, of the +scepticism, of the formalism and the utilitarianism which beset the +Greeks and the Hebrews, to mention no others, as their peculiar +civilizations were merging into the larger and deeper life of a great +empire. In their several lives the demand came, and came, too, from +within, not merely from without, as in all life [p.265] it must come, +for use of their gathered treasures, whether spiritual or material, and +the rise of Rome was but the result of that demand satisfied, of the use +realized. As for the scepticism, this with all its incidents made the +use possible, made it possible for the peoples to give or relinquish +what they had to the larger life to which they all belonged, while the +religion of Christianity spiritualized for them all the resulting +empire. + +Those wonderful races of the Mediterranean, who achieved--at least some +of them--such great things in all that counts for civilization, became +at the last most extravagant sceptics, not only formulating, but also +very generally living up to, the conviction of ignorance and +forgetfulness of reality. Everything which their long past had gathered +for them they resigned--or let me say crucified--and themselves they +threw, as if with an investor's recklessness, upon a world of chance or +fate, upon a world seemingly of empty forms in all human relations, a +world of disguises for license and of mere conceits of moral power and +religious piety. Sensuous mysticism and pantheism, formalism of all +kinds, Stoicism, Epicureanism, legalism, and cosmopolitanism were +crosses upon which one people and another, one class and another, nailed +their long-cherished devotions, their love of God and man and nature, of +temple and family and country. A great doubting, then, was truly theirs. +A great sacrificial offering was their preparation for Christianity. In +a way, with a completeness that seems to have no parallel in history, +they put their talents to the bankers--despairing, of course, but hoping +also, [p.266] if only their doubting, when it came, may be supposed as +genuine as their earlier believing. From the North and from the East and +from the South their good men came, and their rich and their wise, and +laid what they had at the feet of the life that was new born. + +People read their histories so differently. The pagan doubt, the +Christian revelation and belief, the conversion of the pagan world to +Christianity, the Renaissance, in which the conversion was in a sense +reversed, and the Reformation mean such different things to different +people. Some must still have it that paganism, or pre-Christianism, +ended in absolutely blind despair, in the avowal of complete failure--as +if such despair or failure could ever find words for its own utterance; +that Christianity came into a hopelessly pagan world wholly from +without, came into a world of nothing but unmixed doubt, and brought +with it nothing but unmixed belief; that the conversion was a sort of +conquest, by a power all its own capturing the pagans, so wholly +unnerved as to be quite incapable even of a futile resistance; that the +Renaissance, restoration as it was of the pagan life and thought, was at +best a great condescension on the part of Christendom and at worst an +unfortunate return to the pagan idols; and that in the Reformation the +Christian Religion Militant did but retreat upon the Bible as its +impregnable fortress. But such history can hardly be our history here. +For us the rise and the progress of Christianity have had quite a +different character. To strike at the foundation of that whole structure +the pagan doubting was too articulate. It was, also, too earnest. It was +too genuine. The races did indeed resign, as with [p.267] an investor's +recklessness, all that they had, but their recklessness was not unmixed. +Their doubting had hope in it as well as despair. It still loved the +spirit of what had been even when it betrayed the letter. It had its +martyrs, too, as well as its suicides; its sense of life as well as its +enervating fear of death. Say what you will, then, a great, warm, +yearning belief dwelt within it. And so, just because the pagan doubting +was too earnest and too genuine and too articulate, because it was, in +truth, a great sacrificial offering, the crucifixion on Calvary was also +too true to life at Athens and Alexandria, as well as to life at +Jerusalem, and the resurrection of the spirit was too true to life at +Rome; they were too true to mean anything but fulfilment and +achievement. Everywhere, in every place and in every department of life, +the letter had been rejected; but everywhere also--and this, nothing +else, was the true conversion to Christianity--the spirit was accepted. +Acceptance of the spirit, too, meant that in good time the letter would +be restored, as indeed at the Renaissance it surely was. + +Christianity, therefore, came when the times were ripe for it. It came +not from without, but deeply from within the pagan life of the +Mediterranean. Moreover, if in this way, not in that other way, we must +read the rise of Christianity, then we must read both the Renaissance +and the Reformation under the same light. The Renaissance, as was just +said, brought a restoration of the letter; but, necessarily, of the +letter under the light of the spirit, of the letter transfigured. The +Renaissance, so dramatically manifested in the Crusades, was only +Christendom returning to its [p.268] birthplace. With its crusades to +Jerusalem, to all the old capitals, to the pagan ideas and institutions, +to the ancient languages and literatures, Christianity rediscovered +itself in the past, winning back in this way some of its childhood, +curing a homesickness that a worldly church had made it feel, securing +for itself such a deep experience as comes to a man who, after years of +wandering and forgetting, has returned to the home of his infancy. And +as for the Reformation--if indeed this was a retreat, shall we say, of a +defeated religion upon the Bible, its supposed impregnable fortress--we +need only to remember the pagan origin, the Hebrew and the Greek +inspiration, and the Roman atmosphere of that sacred book. + +And of the relation of Christianity to paganism, just one thing more. +The Christian revelation, so wonderfully portrayed and enacted in the +life and character of Jesus, was only an idealization, a spiritual +interpretation, of the very present, the thoroughly actual life of the +time, of the life that the pagans, doubting but believing, despairing +but also trusting, resigning all but hoping for more, had already +brought upon themselves; a life of self-denial, of common, universal +humanity, all men being "members one of another," and of perfect faith. +Perhaps the self-denial was bravely concealed in an accepted subjection, +but it was not less real. Perhaps the common humanity was military and +imperial, yet it also was real. Perhaps, too, the faith was blind and +fatalistic, but it was nevertheless faith. Can faith go farther or do +more than fatalism? The pagans, then, had become Christians in fact or +status, and Christianity came, breathing [p.269] life into the bare +fact, into the self-denial, and the broad humanity and the faith, and +made these not the mere phases of bare fact or condition, but motives +and ideals, manifesting them heroically in a single human life, and so +in the form and with the power of a personal discovery of self. + +Where genuine doubt is the God is always born. + + +IV. + +To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, +for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising +questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality +and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous +as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often +become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage +casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the +English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics +have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, +given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for +example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in +the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and +intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an +unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail +to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the +formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English +history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. +Frenchmen, though [p.270] so neighbourly to England, have been +conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and +problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more +vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, +throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and +consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear +or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. +Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more +effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not +revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. +Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this--witness +their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises--or only +other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this--witness the +testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic +example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English +people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in +religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their +past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the +forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in +Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it +now to give it point. + +Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may +be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude +doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is +peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own +dangers. To be candid, in the [p.271] sense of the word here intended, +is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, +and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and +fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or +reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the +possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, +and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the +reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full +due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the +same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his +philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was +taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid +English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to +anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or +subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable--in a word, to +nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, +again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a +positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been +a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great +enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal--if not unideal--substitute for the +present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and +government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present +responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or +almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost +never, something that lives in and [p.272] through God and government +and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and +Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare +and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or +Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature +has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest +English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand +English deism; the _laissez faire_ economics; the peculiar nature and +growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; +the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and +bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English +people's progressive conservatism? + +The most radical doubt must eventually appeal to nature and, what is +more, must sooner or later bring man to live with nature practically and +responsibly, intimately and sympathetically; but candour, like the +candour of the English, that never doubts without at the same time +believing, lives ever with her. Perhaps the English people need to have +what they seem never to have had--though the Armada threatened something +of the kind, and the loss of the thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war +was, not without its value--a great, overpowering disaster, a deep +all-searching despair; yet, be this as it may, their part in the +struggle of a life that must always doubt in order to grow is always +instructive and is often inspiring. + + +[p.273] + +V. + +The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful +triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we +must return to that characterization. The other members of the +triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great +spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of +the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the +others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there +are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and +the believer face each other squarely and honestly. _Both_ are parties +to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the +contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional +conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always +belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can +there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental +sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the +differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized +society, without betraying them? + +At once opponents and companions--this is the truth about the doubter +and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite +justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for +that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to +you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him +who hides his doubts in an outward show that [p.274] almost deceives him +as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of +intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or +individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a +camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or +has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life +everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, +law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or +treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to +stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, +have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, +and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The +doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; +the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which +each has and must feel his social role, but, at most and worst, they are +only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to +quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part +of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just +one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"--instead of off +at some tangent. + +Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have +him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold +to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he +turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he +could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place, +that his decision [p.275] not only must be made, and made strongly, one +way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third +place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement. +Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing +finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the +contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know +they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent +harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them +really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home, +making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to +my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with +yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with +his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So +fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions. + + +VI. + +Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those +well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring +injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to +be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and +seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all +the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of +these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat +old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,[2] [p.276] +once published a book entitled, _Poetry, Comedy and Duty_. Exactly what +his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of +life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly +and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in +substance if not in form, can not be very far from his. + +Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where +extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of +such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also +in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics +cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for +comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no +residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may +utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily +confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is +bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no +understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest +sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are +companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment--at +least among the gods. + +But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly +comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but +also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is +the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its +conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct +[p.277] way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem, +can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they +insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be +dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the +metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never +can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant +always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never +prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience, +it is always a _tertium quid_, can such a reality ever be present to any +other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face; +it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and +informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge; +for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation +and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man +thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity +of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the +analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily +partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its +parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy--that is, by +projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its +natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both +insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the +grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the +crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life, +is poetry. For [p.278] him who is lacking in both insight and humour, +who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality +accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose +is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly +bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it +presents--that is, in its subject-matter--it is always, not adequate and +inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in +short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, +to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is +above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license +poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever +prefers reality to prosaic peace. + +So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and +inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular +in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all +well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and +complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is +quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too +precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when +not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any +way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's +notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even +profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a +word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such +questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, +[p.279] though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that +the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, +only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry +always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry +of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring +relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme +or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he +continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a +responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal +precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not +if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? +Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real +duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as +they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly +feel their living obligation. + +For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is +both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than +just the principle, deeply true: _Whatever is, is right_. Men have +laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect +mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic +fact? But truth it is; _the_ truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal +comedy--the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem. + + +[1] As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth and +sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great change +of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or economics, +of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual life, were +becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting monarchy, +Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc. + +[2] The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University. + + + + +INDEX + + A + + Abstraction, of science, 58, 107; and duplicity, 61 + Agnosticism, 75, 106; special dangers of, 111, 117; dogmatic and + instrumental, 120; as call for action, 125; as passion for real + life, 128 + Analogy, among the sciences, 97; of individual self to environment, 155; + of universal to particular, 33, 220 + Anaxagoras, 94 + Anaximander, 34, 94, 147 + Anti-vitalism, 147 + Aristotle, 155, 156 + Atomism, 97, 102 + + B + + Babylonians, 106 + Bacon, 176 + Baldwin, 15 + Belief, as unquestioning, 8, 194; and doubt, 53, 105, 107, 130, 133, + 192, 248 + Biology, 88, 90, 104, 110 + Boehme, 177 + Body, and soul, 227, 237; immortality of, 141, 234 + Bradley, 153 n. + Burns, 94 + + C + + Candour, of the English, 270 + Carlyle, 126 + Catholicism, 175 + Causation, 39, 82, 83, 109, 205 + Change, and habit, 15; as motive, 17; of purpose, 11 + Charron, 177, 180 + Chemistry, 34, 36, 88, 90, 91, 110 + Christ, 51, 246, 263 + Christianity, and immortality, 240; preparation for, 266; different + views of history of, 266 + Christian Science, 2, 32 n. + Class, the social, 62, 126, 162; relation of, to doubt and belief, 171 + Comedy, 275 + Companionship, with nature, 21, 71; with man, 24; with God, 26 + Contradiction, in ordinary views, 30; in idea of reality, 30; + of unity, 33; of space and time, 38; of causation, 39; of + knowledge, 41; of morality, 44; of law, 49; as of value in + experience, 4, 37, 131; and dualism, 101; as corrective of + narrowness, 100, 116, 143; as meaning action, 136; as realizing + unity, 137; as securing reality and practicality, 145; as + requiring society, 147; as not to be cultivated for its own + sake, 151; as related to person and class, 170 + Conventionalism, 66, 260 + Creationalism, 82, 202 + Crusades, 267 + + D + + Death, 141, 151, 239 + Deduction, 97 + Democritus, 65 + Development, special, transferable, 165 + Descartes, 6, 172, 196, 251, 254 + Dichotomy, 101 + Dogmatism, and fear, 9; and belief, 194 + Doubt, as widespread, 1, 7; actual, if possible, 6; as essential to + consciousness, 9; and habit, 14; as making life real, 18; and + feeling of dependence, 21; as Basking company, 21, 255; as mediator + between old and now, 25; and atheism, 27; and belief, 55, 105, 130, + 133, 192, 248, 273; as investment for gain, 259; and candour, 270 + Dualism, 64, 101, 147, 209 + Duplicity, of science, 61; of life, 118 + Duty, 47, 278 + + E + + Education, and interest, 18 n. + Emerson, 144 + Energism, 147 + England, peculiar scepticism in, 269 + Environment, as source of conduct, 46; social environment and personal + individual, 169, 231 + Epicureanism, 116, 265 + Epistemology, 92 + Evil, and good, 45, 133, 150, 276 + Evolution, 78, 202, 246 + Experience, unity of, 160 + Experimentalism, 68 + + F + + Fatalism, 49 + Fear, and dogmatism, 9 + France, peculiar scepticism in, 271 + Freedom, of will, 47; of thought, 211, 227 + + G + + Galilei, 177 + Genius, 168, 196, 263 + God, Descartes' proof of, 181; fallacy in D.'s proof of, 189; + D.'s idea of, 186, 190; sceptic's idea of, 26, 187, 190, 203; + death of, 237; birth of, 269 + + H + + Habit, and doubt, 14 + Hebrews, 25, 264 + Hedonism, 64, 147, 265 + Hegel, 20, 147 + Heraclitus, 147, 152 + Hering, 147 + Hero-worship, 243 + History, standpoint of, 79; of Christianity, different views of, 266 + Hope, even in doubt, 13, 19, 37, 48, 53, 105 + Horace, 21 + Hypotheses, working, 89, 93, 258 + + I + + Idealism, 65, 147 + Illusions, 2, 23 n., 254 + Immortality, 141, 234 + Impostor, the, 253 + Individualism, 72, 116 + Individuality, 155, 165, 224 + Induction, 72, 97 + Industrialism, 222 + Infinity, 52, 102, 142 + Institutions and institutionalism, 16, 59, 260 + Interest theory, in education, 18 n. + + J + + Jesuits, 172 + Jesus, 51, 246, 263 + Jews, 25, 264 + Jurisprudence, standpoint of, 13, 47 + + K + + Kant, 110, 147 + Knowledge, contradictory views of, 41; of law, and freedom, 51, 212; + and the unknowable, 106 + + L + + Labour, division of, in special relation of person and class, 163; + division of, in experience, 232 + Law, standpoint of, 13; courts of, 47; contradiction in idea of, 49; + and nature, 51, 218 + Lawlessness, 51, 141, 261 + Leadership, 168, 196, 263 + Leibnitz, 133, 154, 210 + Lessing, 19 + Louis XIV, 172 + Luther, 174 + + M + + Macaulay, 270 + Machiavelli, 66, 261, 263 + Malebranche, 198 + Materialism, 65, 147, 175 + Mathematics, 88, 91, 96, 133, 177, 215 + Mechanic, the, as social type, 228; peculiar death of, 238 + Mechanicalism, 82, 218 + Method, Socratic, 71; historical, 95; experimental, 84, 95; + mathematical, 96 + Miracles, 53, 246 + Monism, 147 + Montaigne, 172, 176, 184 + Muensterberg, 109 n., 112, 119 + Mysticism, 176 + + N + + Nast, 97 + Nativism, 196 + Nature, return to, 22; relation of science to, 23, 56, 74; and + God, 26, 203, 271; sympathy of, 23, 203; and law, 51, 220; + as mechanical, 217; English and French views of, 271; + knowledge of law of, and freedom, 49, 212 + Necessity, in conduct, 47; superstition of, 49, 212 + Negativity, 3, 20, 37, 83, 85, 94, 101, 125, 133, 147 + Newton, 97 + + O + + Oratory of Jesus, 176 + + P + + Paradoxes, in ordinary consciousness, 30; in science, 75, 98; in + religion, 103 + Parallelism, 204 + Paris, 172, 192, 251 + Parmenides, 94 + Pascal, 180 + Person, nature of, 155, 165; relation to reality, 170, 184; + relation to doubt and belief, 171; part in society, 169, 231 + Pharisees, 262 + Physics, 87, 90; epistemological, 94 + Pillsbury, 212 n. + Plato, 65, 155, 156 + Poetry, 276 + Positivism, 73, 106, 122 + Practice, and theory, 113 + Principle, and programme, 183, 191, 194 + Programme, and principle, 183, 191, 194 + Protagoras, 264 + Protestants and Protestantism, 174, 268 + Psychology, 10, 87, 91, 210, 212 n.; physical, 92 + Purpose, 11, 83, 84 + + Q + + Question of fact, in science, 83 + + R + + Radicalism, 66 + Realism, of doubter, 193; of believer, 193; in contradiction, 143 + Reality, double views of, 30 + Reformation, 173, 266, 267 + Relative, the, 10, 136, 199, 200 + Relativity, law of, 10, 136 + Religion, and scepticism, 27, 184, 189, 268; as paradoxical, 103 + Renaissance, 173, 268, 267 + Rome, 267 + Rousseau, 23, 271 + + S + + Scepticism, 176, 265, 269 + Science, as a return to nature, 23; like ordinary consciousness, 57; + as confessing to limitations, 56; defined, 58; as abstract, 58; + as a "looking before leaping," 58; and duplicity, 61, 129; method + of, and environment, 71; specialism of, 71, 84; as inductive, 72; + objectivism of, 75; technique of, 76; and real life, 80, 125, 128; + as conservative, 81; and question of fact, 83; as negative and + destructive, 83; specialism of, 71, 86; "mergers" in, 91; + physical, as self-consciousness, 94; as paradoxical, 75, 98; + agnosticism of, 106; aloofness of, in ideas of space and time and + causation, 108, 109; application of, 114; scepticism of, 23, 258 + Sin, original, 131 + Skill, special, as transferable, 165 + Smith, Adam, 257 + Socialism, 116 + Society, as sought by sceptic, 21; as related to individual, 42, 165, + 171, 231; and science, 23, 60; division of experience in, 60; + as real to lower organisms, 84; as medium of conflict, 147 + Society of Jesus, 174 + Sociology, 88 + Socrates, 20, 70, 147, 263 + Soldier, the, 228, 238 + Sophists, 66, 262 + Soul, contradiction in idea of, 35; and body, 227, 237; immortality + of, 141, 234 + Space, 37, 38, 108 + Specialism, blindness of, 87; in social organization, 71; of science, + 71, 86; dreams of, 87; artificiality of, 87, 97; contradictions + due to, 63, 98; passing of, 128 + Spinoza, 24, 147, 179, 198 + Spirit, reality, or truth, as a, 152; of veracity, 105, 133, 170, 214 + Stoicism, 116, 265 + Supernaturalism, 32, 52, 147 + Superstition, 49, 218 + + T + + Technique, 76, 119; special, as transferable, 165 + Tennyson, 89 + Thales, 34 + Theology, 26, 131 + Time, 37, 38, 108 + Training, special, as transferable, 165 + Truth, spirit of, 105, 133, 170, 214 + + U + + Unity, contradiction in idea of, 31; as expressed through + contradiction, 137; of experience, 160 + Universality, of doubt, 1, 7; of human characters in general, 161 + Utilitarianism, 66, 261, 263 + + V + + Validity, spirit of, 105, 133, 153, 214 + Vanini, 176, 180 + Vitalism, 147 + + W + + Will, nature of, 11; freedom of, 47; to believe, 193; in relation + to agnosticism, 121, 125 + + Z + + Zeno, 109, 147 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Will to Doubt, by Alfred H. 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