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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78977 ***
+
+                   Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect
+
+
+
+
+                               SYMBOLISM
+
+                         Its Meaning and Effect
+
+                                   BY
+                         ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
+
+                       F.R.S., SC.D. (CAMBRIDGE),
+                        HON. D.SC. (MANCHESTER).
+                       HON. LL.D. (ST. ANDREWS),
+                 HON. D.SC. (UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN),
+                     HON. SC.D. (HARVARD AND YALE).
+                      FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE IN
+               THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR
+                  OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+
+                         BARBOUR-PAGE LECTURES
+                         UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
+                                  1927
+
+                                New York
+                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                                  1927
+
+                Copyright, 1927,
+                By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+                Set up and electrotyped.
+                Published November, 1927.
+
+                _Printed in the United States of America by_
+                J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                               DEDICATION
+
+
+These chapters were written before I had seen the Washington monument
+which faces the Capitol in the City of Washington, and before I had
+enjoyed the experience of crossing the borders of the State of
+Virginia—a great experience for an Englishman.
+
+Virginia, that symbol for romance throughout the world of English
+speech: Virginia, which was captured for that world in the romantic
+period of English history by Sir Walter Raleigh, its most romantic
+figure: Virginia, which has been true to its origin and has steeped its
+history in romance.
+
+Romance does not yield unbroken happiness: Sir Walter Raleigh suffered
+for his romance. Romance does not creep along the ground; like the
+memorial to Washington, it reaches upward—a silver thread uniting earth
+to the blue of heaven above.
+
+April 18, 1927.
+
+
+
+
+                                PREFACE
+
+
+In accordance with the terms of the Barbour-Page Foundation, these
+lectures are published by the University of Virginia. The author owes
+his thanks to the authorities of the university for their courtesy in
+conforming to his wishes in respect to some important details of
+publication. With the exception of a few trifling changes the lectures
+are printed as delivered.
+
+These lectures will be best understood by reference to some portions of
+Locke’s _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_. The author’s
+acknowledgments are due to _Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and Its
+Historical Relations_ by Professor James Gibson, to _Prolegomena to an
+Idealist Theory of Knowledge_ by Professor Norman Kemp Smith, and to
+_Scepticism and Animal Faith_ by George Santayana.
+
+A. N. W.
+
+Harvard University, June, 1927.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I ... 1
+
+1. KINDS OF SYMBOLISM ... 1
+
+2. SYMBOLISM AND PERCEPTION ... 2
+
+3. ON METHODOLOGY ... 5
+
+4. FALLIBILITY AND SYMBOLISM ... 6
+
+5. DEFINITION OF SYMBOLISM ... 7
+
+6. EXPERIENCE AS ACTIVITY ... 9
+
+7. LANGUAGE ... 10
+
+8. PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY ... 13
+
+9. PERCEPTIVE EXPERIENCE ... 16
+
+10. SYMBOLIC REFERENCE IN PERCEPTIVE EXPERIENCE ... 18
+
+11. MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ... 20
+
+12. RÔLES OF SENSE-DATA AND SPACE IN PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY ... 21
+
+13. OBJECTIFICATION ... 25
+
+
+CHAPTER II ... 30
+
+1. HUME ON CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 30
+
+2. KANT AND CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 37
+
+3. DIRECT PERCEPTION OF CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 39
+
+4. PRIMITIVENESS OF CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 43
+
+5. THE INTERSECTION OF THE MODES OF PERCEPTION ... 49
+
+6. LOCALIZATION ... 53
+
+7. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN ACCURATE DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE ... 56
+
+8. CONCLUSION ... 59
+
+
+CHAPTER III ... 60
+
+USES OF SYMBOLISM ... 60
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+
+                        1. _Kinds of Symbolism._
+
+
+The slightest survey of different epochs of civilization discloses great
+differences in their attitude towards symbolism. For example, during the
+medieval period in Europe symbolism seemed to dominate men’s
+imaginations. Architecture was symbolical, ceremonial was symbolical,
+heraldry was symbolical. With the Reformation a reaction set in. Men
+tried to dispense with symbols as ‘fond things, vainly invented,’ and
+concentrated on their direct apprehension of the ultimate facts.
+
+But such symbolism is on the fringe of life. It has an unessential
+element in its constitution. The very fact that it can be acquired in
+one epoch and discarded in another epoch testifies to its superficial
+nature.
+
+There are deeper types of symbolism, in a sense artificial, and yet such
+that we could not get on without them. Language, written or spoken, is
+such a symbolism. The mere sound of a word, or its shape on paper, is
+indifferent. The word is a symbol, and its meaning is constituted by the
+ideas, images, and emotions, which it raises in the mind of the hearer.
+
+There is also another sort of language, purely a written language, which
+is constituted by the mathematical symbols of the science of algebra. In
+some ways, these symbols are different to those of ordinary language,
+because the manipulation of the algebraical symbols does your reasoning
+for you, provided that you keep to the algebraic rules. This is not the
+case with ordinary language. You can never forget the meaning of
+language, and trust to mere syntax to help you out. In any case,
+language and algebra seem to exemplify more fundamental types of
+symbolism than do the Cathedrals of Medieval Europe.
+
+
+                     2. _Symbolism and Perception._
+
+
+There is still another symbolism more fundamental than any of the
+foregoing types. We look up and see a coloured shape in front of us, and
+we say,—there is a chair. But what we have seen is the mere coloured
+shape. Perhaps an artist might not have jumped to the notion of a chair.
+He might have stopped at the mere contemplation of a beautiful colour
+and a beautiful shape. But those of us who are not artists are very
+prone, especially if we are tired, to pass straight from the perception
+of the coloured shape to the enjoyment of the chair, in some way of use,
+or of emotion, or of thought. We can easily explain this passage by
+reference to a train of difficult logical inference, whereby, having
+regard to our previous experiences of various shapes and various
+colours, we draw the probable conclusion that we are in the presence of
+a chair. I am very sceptical as to the high-grade character of the
+mentality required to get from the coloured shape to the chair. One
+reason for this scepticism Is that my friend the artist, who kept
+himself to the contemplation of colour, shape and position, was a very
+highly trained man, and had acquired this facility of ignoring the chair
+at the cost of great labour. We do not require elaborate training merely
+in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference.
+Such abstinence is only too easy. Another reason for scepticism is that
+if we had been accompanied by a puppy dog, in addition to the artist,
+the dog would have acted immediately on the hypothesis of a chair and
+would have jumped onto it by way of using it as such. Again, if the dog
+had refrained from such action, it would have been because it was a
+well-trained dog. Therefore the transition from a coloured shape to the
+notion of an object which can be used for all sorts of purposes which
+have nothing to do with colour, seems to be a very natural one; and
+we—men and puppy dogs—require careful training if we are to refrain from
+acting upon it.
+
+Thus coloured shapes seem to be symbols for some other elements in our
+experience, and when we see the coloured shapes we adjust our actions
+towards those other elements. This symbolism from our senses to the
+bodies symbolized is often mistaken. A cunning adjustment of lights and
+mirrors may completely deceive us; and even when we are not deceived, we
+only save ourselves by an effort. Symbolism from sense-presentation to
+physical bodies is the most natural and widespread of all symbolic
+modes. It is not a mere tropism, or automatic turning towards, because
+both men and puppies often disregard chairs when they see them. Also a
+tulip which turns to the light has probably the very minimum of
+sense-presentation. I shall argue on the assumption that
+sense-perception is mainly a characteristic of more advanced organisms;
+whereas all organisms have experience of causal efficacy whereby their
+functioning is conditioned by their environment.
+
+
+                          3. _On Methodology._
+
+
+In fact symbolism is very largely concerned with the use of pure
+sense-perceptions in the character of symbols for more primitive
+elements in our experience. Accordingly since sense-perceptions, of any
+importance, are characteristic of high-grade organisms, I shall chiefly
+confine this study of symbolism to the influence of symbolism on human
+life. It is a general principle that low-grade characteristics are
+better studied first in connection with correspondingly low-grade
+organisms, in which those characteristics are not obscured by more
+developed types of functioning. Conversely, high-grade characters should
+be studied first in connection with those organisms in which they first
+come to full perfection.
+
+Of course, as a second approximation to elicit the full sweep of
+particular characters, we want to know the embryonic stage of the
+high-grade character, and the ways in which low-grade characters can be
+made subservient to higher types of functioning.
+
+The nineteenth century exaggerated the power of the historical method,
+and assumed as a matter of course that every character should be studied
+only in its embryonic stage. Thus, for example, ‘Love’ has been studied
+among the savages and latterly among the morons.
+
+
+                     4. _Fallibility of Symbolism._
+
+
+There is one great difference between symbolism and direct knowledge.
+Direct experience is infallible. What you have experienced, you have
+experienced. But symbolism is very fallible, in the sense that it may
+induce actions, feelings, emotions, and beliefs about things which are
+mere notions without that exemplification in the world which the
+symbolism leads us to presuppose. I shall develop the thesis that
+symbolism is an essential factor in the way we function as the result of
+our direct knowledge. Successful high-grade organisms are only possible,
+on the condition that their symbolic functionings are usually justified
+so far as important issues are concerned. But the errors of mankind
+equally spring from symbolism. It is the task of reason to understand
+and purge the symbols on which humanity depends.
+
+An adequate account of human mentality requires an explanation of (i)
+how we can know truly, (ii) how we can err, and (iii) how we can
+critically distinguish truth from error. Such an explanation requires
+that we distinguish that type of mental functioning which by its nature
+yields immediate acquaintance with fact, from that type of functioning
+which is only trustworthy by reason of its satisfaction of certain
+criteria provided by the first type of functioning.
+
+I shall maintain that the first type of functioning is properly to be
+called ‘Direct Recognition,’ and the second type ‘Symbolic Reference.’ I
+shall also endeavour to illustrate the doctrine that all human
+symbolism, however superficial it may seem, is ultimately to be reduced
+to trains of this fundamental symbolic reference, trains which finally
+connect percepts in alternative modes of direct recognition.
+
+
+                     5. _Definition of Symbolism._
+
+
+After this prefatory explanation, we must start from a formal definition
+of symbolism: The human mind is functioning symbolically when some
+components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions,
+and usages, respecting other components of its experience. The former
+set of components are the ‘symbols,’ and the latter set constitute the
+‘meaning’ of the symbols. The organic functioning whereby there is
+transition from the symbol to the meaning will be called ‘symbolic
+reference.’
+
+This symbolic reference is the active synthetic element contributed by
+the nature of the percipient. It requires a ground founded on some
+community between the natures of symbol and meaning. But such a common
+element in the two natures does not of itself necessitate symbolic
+reference, nor does it decide which shall be symbol and which shall be
+meaning, nor does it secure that the symbolic reference shall be immune
+from producing errors and disasters for the percipient. We must conceive
+perception in the light of a primary phase in the self-production of an
+occasion of actual existence.
+
+In defence of this notion of self-production arising out of some primary
+given phase, I would remind you that, apart from it, there can be no
+moral responsibility. The potter, and not the pot, is responsible for
+the shape of the pot. An actual occasion arises as the bringing together
+into one real context diverse perceptions, diverse feelings, diverse
+purposes, and other diverse activities arising out of those primary
+perceptions. Here activity is another name for self-production.
+
+
+                      6. _Experience as Activity._
+
+
+In this way we assign to the percipient an activity in the production of
+its own experience, although that moment of experience, in its character
+of being that one occasion, is nothing else than the percipient itself.
+Thus, for the percipient at least, the perception is an internal
+relationship between itself and the things perceived.
+
+In analysis the total activity involved in perception of the symbolic
+reference must be referred to the percipient. Such symbolic reference
+requires something in common between symbol and meaning which can be
+expressed without reference to the perfected percipient; but it also
+requires some activity of the percipient which can be considered without
+recourse either to the particular symbol or its particular meaning.
+Considered by themselves the symbol and its meaning do not require
+_either_ that there shall be a symbolic reference between the two, _or_
+that the symbolic reference between the members of the couple should be
+one way on rather than the other way on. The nature of their
+relationship does not in itself determine which is symbol and which is
+meaning. There are no components of experience which are only symbols or
+only meanings. The more usual symbolic reference is from the less
+primitive component as symbol to the more primitive as meaning.
+
+This statement is the foundation of a thoroughgoing realism. It does
+away with any mysterious element in our experience which is merely
+meant, and thereby behind the veil of direct perception. It proclaims
+the principle that symbolic reference holds between two components in a
+complex experience, each intrinsically capable of direct recognition.
+Any lack of such conscious analytical recognition is the fault of the
+defect in mentality on the part of a comparatively low-grade percipient.
+
+
+                             7. _Language._
+
+
+To exemplify the inversion of symbol and meaning, consider language and
+the things meant by language. A word is a symbol. But a word can be
+either written or spoken. Now on occasions a written word may suggest
+the corresponding spoken word, and that sound may suggest a meaning.
+
+In such an instance, the written word is a symbol and its meaning is the
+spoken word, and the spoken word is a symbol and its meaning is the
+dictionary meaning of the word, spoken or written.
+
+But often the written word effects its purpose without the intervention
+of the spoken word. Accordingly, then, the written word directly
+symbolizes the dictionary meaning. But so fluctuating and complex is
+human experience that in general neither of these cases is exemplified
+in the clear-cut way which is set out here. Often the written word
+suggests both the spoken word and also the meaning, and the symbolic
+reference is made clearer and more definite by the additional reference
+of the spoken word to the same meaning. Analogously we can start from
+the spoken word which may elicit a visual perception of the written
+word.
+
+Further, why do we say that the word ‘tree’—spoken or written—is a
+symbol to us for trees? Both the word itself and trees themselves enter
+into our experience on equal terms; and it would be just as sensible,
+viewing the question abstractedly, for trees to symbolize the word
+‘tree’ as for the word to symbolize the trees.
+
+This is certainly true, and human nature sometimes works that way. For
+example, if you are a poet and wish to write a lyric on trees, you will
+walk into the forest in order that the trees may suggest the appropriate
+words. Thus for the poet in his ecstasy—or perhaps, agony—of composition
+the trees are the symbols and the words are the meaning. He concentrates
+on the trees in order to get at the words.
+
+But most of us are not poets, though we read their lyrics with proper
+respect. For us, the words are the symbols which enable us to capture
+the rapture of the poet in the forest. The poet is a person for whom
+visual sights and sounds and emotional experiences refer symbolically to
+words. The poet’s readers are people for whom his words refer
+symbolically to the visual sights and sounds and emotions he wants to
+evoke. Thus in the use of language there is a double symbolic
+reference:—from things to words on the part of the speaker, and from
+words back to things on the part of the listener.
+
+When in an act of human experience there is a symbolic reference, there
+are in the first place two sets of components with some objective
+relationship between them, and this relationship will vary greatly in
+different instances. In the second place the total constitution of the
+percipient has to effect the symbolic reference from one set of
+components, the symbols, to the other set of components, the meaning. In
+the third place, the question, as to which set of components form the
+symbols and which set the meaning, also depends on the peculiar
+constitution of that act of experience.
+
+
+                     8. _Presentational Immediacy._
+
+
+The most fundamental exemplification of symbolism has already been
+alluded to in the discussion of the poet and the circumstances which
+elicit his poetry. We have here a particular instance of the reference
+of words to things. But this general relation of words to things is only
+a particular instance of a yet more general fact. Our perception of the
+external world is divided into two types of content: one type is the
+familiar immediate presentation of the contemporary world, by means of
+our projection of our immediate sensations, determining for us
+characteristics of contemporary physical entities. This type is the
+experience of the immediate world around us, a world decorated by
+sense-data dependent on the immediate states of relevant parts of our
+own bodies. Physiology establishes this latter fact conclusively; but
+the physiological details are irrelevant to the present philosophical
+discussion, and only confuse the issue. ‘Sense-datum’ is a modern term:
+Hume uses the word ‘impression.’
+
+For human beings, this type of experience is vivid, and is especially
+distinct in its exhibition of the spatial regions and relationships
+within the contemporary world.
+
+The familiar language which I have used in speaking of the ‘projection
+of our sensations’ is very misleading. There are no bare sensations
+which are first experienced and then ‘projected’ into our feet as their
+feelings, or onto the opposite wall as its colour. The projection is an
+integral part of the situation, quite as original as the sense-data. It
+would be just as accurate, and equally misleading, to speak of a
+projection on the wall which is then characterized as such-and-such a
+colour. The use of the term ‘wall’ is equally misleading by its
+suggestion of information derived symbolically from another mode of
+perception. This so-called ‘wall,’ disclosed in the pure mode of
+presentational immediacy, contributes itself to our experience only
+under the guise of spatial extension, combined with spatial perspective,
+and combined with sense-data which in this example reduce to colour
+alone.
+
+I say that the wall contributes _itself_ under this guise, in preference
+to saying that it contributes these universal characters in combination.
+For the characters are combined by their exposition of one thing in a
+common world including ourselves, that one thing which I call the
+‘wall.’ Our perception is not confined to universal characters; we do
+not perceive disembodied colour or disembodied extensiveness: we
+perceive _the wall’s_ colour and extensiveness. The experienced fact is
+‘colour away on the wall for us.’ Thus the colour and the spatial
+perspective are abstract elements, characterizing the concrete way in
+which the wall enters into our experience. They are therefore relational
+elements between the ‘percipient at that moment,’ and that other equally
+actual entity, or set of entities, which we call the ‘wall at that
+moment.’ But the mere colour and the mere spatial perspective are very
+abstract entities, because they are only arrived at by discarding the
+concrete relationship between the wall-at-that-moment and the
+percipient-at-that-moment. This concrete relationship is a physical fact
+which may be very unessential to the wall and very essential to the
+percipient. The spatial relationship is equally essential both to wall
+and percipient: but the colour side of the relationship is at that
+moment indifferent to the wall, though it is part of the make-up of the
+percipient. In this sense, and subject to their spatial relationship,
+contemporary events happen independently. I call this type of experience
+‘presentational immediacy.’ It expresses how contemporary events are
+relevant to each other, and yet preserve a mutual independence. This
+relevance amid independence is the peculiar character of
+contemporaneousness. This presentational immediacy is only of importance
+in high-grade organisms, and is a physical fact which may, or may not,
+enter into consciousness. Such entry will depend on attention and on the
+activity of conceptual functioning, whereby physical experience and
+conceptual imagination are fused into knowledge.
+
+
+                      9. _Perceptive Experience._
+
+
+The word ‘experience’ is one of the most deceitful in philosophy. Its
+adequate discussion would be the topic for a treatise. I can only
+indicate those elements in my analysis of it which are relevant to the
+present train of thought.
+
+Our experience, so far as it is primarily concerned with our direct
+recognition of a solid world of other things which are actual in the
+same sense that we are actual, has three main independent modes each
+contributing its share of components to our individual rise into one
+concrete moment of human experience. Two of these modes of experience I
+will call perceptive, and the third I will call the mode of conceptual
+analysis. In respect to pure perception, I call one of the two types
+concerned the mode of ‘presentational immediacy,’ and the other the mode
+of ‘causal efficacy.’ Both ‘presentational immediacy’ and ‘causal
+efficacy’ introduce into human experience components which are again
+analysable into actual things of the actual world and into abstract
+attributes, qualities, and relations, which express how those other
+actual things contribute themselves as components to our individual
+experience. These abstractions express how other actualities are
+component objects for us. I will therefore say that they ‘objectify’ for
+us the actual things in our ‘environment.’ Our most immediate
+environment is constituted by the various organs of our own bodies, our
+more remote environment is the physical world in the neighbourhood. But
+the word ‘environment’ means those other actual things, which are
+‘objectified’ in some important way so as to form component elements in
+our individual experience.
+
+
+           10. _Symbolic Reference in Perceptive Experience._
+
+
+Of the two distinct perceptive modes, one mode ‘objectifies’ actual
+things under the guise of presentational immediacy, and the other mode,
+which I have not yet discussed, ‘objectifies’ them under the guise of
+causal efficacy. The synthetic activity whereby these two modes are
+fused into one perception is what I have called ‘symbolic reference.’ By
+symbolic reference the various actualities disclosed respectively by the
+two modes are either identified, or are at least correlated together as
+interrelated elements in our environment. Thus the result of symbolic
+reference is what the actual world is for us, as that datum in our
+experience productive of feelings, emotions, satisfactions, actions, and
+finally as the topic for conscious recognition when our mentality
+intervenes with its conceptual analysis. ‘Direct recognition’ is
+conscious recognition of a percept in a pure mode, devoid of symbolic
+reference.
+
+Symbolic reference may be, in many respects, erroneous. By this I mean
+that some ‘direct recognition’ disagrees, in its report of the actual
+world, with the conscious recognition of the fused product resulting
+from symbolic reference. Thus error is primarily the product of symbolic
+reference, and not of conceptual analysis. Also symbolic reference
+itself is not primarily the outcome of conceptual analysis, though it is
+greatly promoted by it. For symbolic reference is still dominant in
+experience when such mental analysis is at a low ebb. We all know
+Aesop’s fable of the dog who dropped a piece of meat to grasp at its
+reflection in the water. We must not, however, judge too severely of
+error. In the initial stages of mental progress, error in symbolic
+reference is the discipline which promotes imaginative freedom. Aesop’s
+dog lost his meat, but he gained a step on the road towards a free
+imagination.
+
+Thus symbolic reference must be explained antecedently to conceptual
+analysis, although there is a strong interplay between the two whereby
+they promote each other.
+
+
+                       11. _Mental and Physical._
+
+
+By way of being as intelligible as possible we might tacitly assign
+symbolic reference to mental activity, and thereby avoid some detailed
+explanation. It is a matter of pure convention as to which of our
+experiential activities we term mental and which physical. Personally I
+prefer to restrict mentality to those experiential activities which
+include concepts in addition to percepts. But much of our perception is
+due to the enhanced subtlety arising from a concurrent conceptual
+analysis. Thus in fact there is no proper line to be drawn between the
+physical and the mental constitution of experience. But there is no
+conscious knowledge apart from the intervention of mentality in the form
+of conceptual analysis.
+
+It will be necessary later on to make some slight reference to
+conceptual analysis; but at present I must assume consciousness and its
+partial analysis of experience, and return to the two modes of pure
+perception. The point that I want to make here is, that the reason why
+low-grade purely physical organisms cannot make mistakes is not
+primarily their absence of thought, but their absence of presentational
+immediacy. Aesop’s dog, who was a poor thinker, made a mistake by reason
+of an erroneous symbolic reference from presentational immediacy to
+causal efficacy. In short, truth and error dwell in the world by reason
+of synthesis: every actual thing is synthetic: and symbolic reference is
+one primitive form of synthetic activity whereby what is actual arises
+from its given phases.
+
+
+    12. _Rôles of Sense-data and Space in Presentational Immediacy._
+
+
+By ‘presentational immediacy’ I mean what is usually termed
+‘sense-perception.’ But I am using the former term under limitations and
+extensions which are foreign to the common use of the latter term.
+
+Presentational immediacy is our immediate perception of the contemporary
+external world, appearing as an element constitutive of our own
+experience. In this appearance the world discloses itself to be a
+community of actual things, which are actual in the same sense as we
+are.
+
+This appearance is effected by the mediation of qualities, such as
+colours, sounds, tastes, etc., which can with equal truth be described
+as our sensations or as the qualities of the actual things which we
+perceive. These qualities are thus relational between the perceiving
+subject and the perceived things. They can be thus isolated only by
+abstracting them from their implication in the scheme of spatial
+relatedness of the perceived things to each other and to the perceiving
+subject. This relatedness of spatial extension is a complete scheme,
+impartial between the observer and the perceived things. It is the
+scheme of the morphology of the complex organisms forming the community
+of the contemporary world. The way in which each actual physical
+organism enters into the make-up of its contemporaries has to conform to
+this scheme. Thus the sense-data, such as colours, etc., or bodily
+feelings, introduce the extended physical entities into our experience
+under perspectives provided by this spatial scheme. The spatial
+relations by themselves are generic abstractions, and the sense-data are
+generic abstractions. But the perspectives of the sense-data provided by
+the spatial relations are the specific relations whereby the external
+contemporary things are to this extent part of our experience. These
+contemporary organisms, thus introduced as ‘objects’ into experience,
+include the various organs of our body, and the sense-data are then
+called bodily feelings. The bodily organs, and those other external
+things which make important contributions to this mode of our
+perception, together form the contemporary environment of the percipient
+organism. The main facts about presentational immediacy are: (i) that
+the sense-data involved depend on the percipient organism and its
+spatial relations to the perceived organisms; (ii) that the contemporary
+world is exhibited as extended and as a plenum of organisms; (iii) that
+presentational immediacy is an important factor in the experience of
+only a few high-grade organisms, and that for the others it is embryonic
+or entirely negligible.
+
+Thus the disclosure of a contemporary world by presentational immediacy
+is bound up with the disclosure of the solidarity of actual things by
+reason of their participation in an impartial system of spatial
+extension. Beyond this, the knowledge provided by pure presentational
+immediacy is vivid, precise, and barren. It is also to a large extent
+controllable at will. I mean that one moment of experience can
+predetermine to a considerable extent, by inhibitions, or by
+intensifications, or by other modifications, the characteristics of the
+presentational immediacy in succeeding moments of experience. This mode
+of perception, taken purely by itself, is barren, because we may not
+directly connect the qualitative presentations of other things with any
+intrinsic characters of those things. We see the image of a coloured
+chair, presenting to us the space behind a mirror; yet we thereby gain
+no knowledge concerning any intrinsic characters of spaces behind the
+mirror. But the image thus seen in a good mirror is just as much an
+immediate presentation of colour qualifying the world at a distance
+behind the mirror, as is our direct vision of the chair when we turn
+round and look at it. Pure presentational immediacy refuses to be
+divided into delusions and not-delusions. It is either all of it, or
+none of it, an immediate presentation of an external contemporary world
+as in its own right spatial. The sense-data involved in presentational
+immediacy have a wider relationship in the world than these contemporary
+things can express. In abstraction from this wider relationship, there
+is no means of determining the importance of the apparent qualification
+of contemporary objects by sense-data. For this reason the phrase ‘mere
+appearance’ carries the suggestion of barrenness. This wider
+relationship of the sense-data can only be understood by examining the
+alternative mode of perception, the mode of causal efficacy. But in so
+far as contemporary things are bound together by mere presentational
+immediacy, they happen in complete independence except for their spatial
+relations at the moment. Also for most events, we presume that their
+intrinsic experience of presentational immediacy is so embryonic as to
+be negligible. This perceptive mode is important only for a small
+minority of elaborate organisms.
+
+
+                         13. _Objectification._
+
+
+In this explanation of Presentational Immediacy, I am conforming to the
+distinction according to which actual things are _objectively_ in our
+experience and _formally_ existing in their own completeness. I maintain
+that presentational immediacy is that peculiar way in which contemporary
+things are ‘objectively’ in our experience, and that among the abstract
+entities which constitute factors in the mode of introduction are those
+abstractions usually called sense-data:—for example, colours, sounds,
+tastes, touches, and bodily feelings.
+
+Thus ‘objectification’ itself is abstraction; since no actual thing is
+‘objectified’ in its ‘formal’ completeness. Abstraction expresses
+nature’s mode of interaction and is not merely mental. When it
+abstracts, thought is merely conforming to nature—or rather, it is
+exhibiting itself as an element in nature. Synthesis and analysis
+require each other. Such a conception is paradoxical if you will persist
+in thinking of the actual world as a collection of passive actual
+substances with their private characters or qualities. In that case, it
+must be nonsense to ask, how one such substance can form a component in
+the make-up of another such substance. So long as this conception is
+retained, the difficulty is not relieved by calling each actual
+substance an event, or a pattern, or an occasion. The difficulty, which
+arises for such a conception, is to explain how the substances can be
+actually together in a sense derivative from that in which each
+individual substance is actual. But the conception of the world here
+adopted is that of functional activity. By this I mean that every actual
+thing is something by reason of its activity; whereby its nature
+consists in its relevance to other things, and its individuality
+consists in its synthesis of other things so far as they are relevant to
+it. In enquiring about any one individual we must ask how other
+individuals enter ‘objectively’ into the unity of its own experience.
+This unity of its own experience is that individual existing _formally_.
+We must also enquire how it enters into the ‘formal’ existence of other
+things; and this entrance is that individual existing _objectively_,
+that is to say—existing abstractly, exemplifying only some elements in
+its formal content.
+
+With this conception of the world, in speaking of any actual individual,
+such as a human being, we must mean that man in one occasion of his
+experience. Such an occasion, or act, is complex and therefore capable
+of analysis into phases and other components. It is the most concrete
+actual entity, and the life of man from birth to death is a historic
+route of such occasions. These concrete moments are bound together into
+one society by a partial identity of form, and by the peculiarly full
+summation of its predecessors which each moment of the life-history
+gathers into itself. The man-at-one-moment concentrates in himself the
+colour of his own past, and he is the issue of it. The ‘man in his whole
+life history’ is an abstraction compared to the ‘man in one such
+moment.’ There are therefore three different meanings for the notion of
+a particular man,—Julius Cæsar, for example. The word ‘Cæsar’ may mean
+‘Cæsar in some one occasion of his existence’: this is the most concrete
+of all the meanings. The word ‘Cæsar’ may mean ‘the historic route of
+Cæsar’s life from his Cæsarian birth to his Cæsarian assassination.’ The
+word ‘Cæsar’ may mean ‘the common form, or pattern, repeated in each
+occasion of Cæsar’s life.’ You may legitimately choose any one of these
+meanings; but when you have made your choice, you must in that context
+stick to it.
+
+This doctrine of the nature of the life-history of an enduring organism
+holds for all types of organisms, which have attained to unity of
+experience, for electrons as well as for men. But mankind has gained a
+richness of experiential content denied to electrons. Whenever the ‘all
+or none’ principle holds, we are in some way dealing with one actual
+entity, and not with a society of such entities, nor with the analysis
+of components contributory to one such entity.
+
+This lecture has maintained the doctrine of a direct experience of an
+external world. It is impossible fully to argue this thesis without
+getting too far away from my topic. I need only refer you to the first
+portion of Santayana’s recent book, _Scepticism and Animal Faith_, for a
+conclusive proof of the futile ‘solipsism of the present moment’—or, in
+other words, utter scepticism—which results from a denial of this
+assumption. My second thesis, for which I cannot claim Santayana’s
+authority, is that, if you consistently maintain such direct individual
+experience, you will be driven in your philosophical construction to a
+conception of the world as an interplay of functional activity whereby
+each concrete individual thing arises from its determinate relativity to
+the settled world of other concrete individuals, at least so far as the
+world is past and settled.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+
+                     1. _Hume on Causal Efficacy._
+
+
+It is the thesis of this work that human symbolism has its origin in the
+symbolic interplay between two distinct modes of direct perception of
+the external world. There are, in this way, two sources of information
+about the external world, closely connected but distinct. These modes do
+not repeat each other; and there is a real diversity of information.
+Where one is vague, the other is precise: where one is important, the
+other is trivial. But the two schemes of presentation have structural
+elements in common, which identify them as schemes of presentation of
+the same world. There are however gaps in the determination of the
+correspondence between the two morphologies. The schemes only partially
+intersect, and their true fusion is left indeterminate. The symbolic
+reference leads to a transference of emotion, purpose, and belief, which
+cannot be justified by an intellectual comparison of the direct
+information derived from the two schemes and their elements of
+intersection. The justification, such as it is, must be sought in a
+pragmatic appeal to the future. In this way intellectual criticism
+founded on subsequent experience can enlarge and purify the primitive
+naïve symbolic transference.
+
+I have termed one perceptive mode ‘Presentational Immediacy,’ and the
+other mode ‘Causal Efficacy.’ In the previous lecture the mode of
+presentational immediacy was discussed at length. The present lecture
+must commence with the discussion of ‘Causal Efficacy.’ It will be
+evident to you that I am here controverting the most cherished tradition
+of modern philosophy, shared alike by the school of empiricists which
+derives from Hume, and the school of transcendental idealists which
+derives from Kant. It is unnecessary to enter upon any prolonged
+justification of this summary account of the tradition of modern
+philosophy. But some quotations will summarize neatly what is shared in
+common by the two types of thought from which I am diverging. Hume[1]
+writes:—“When both the objects are present to the senses along with the
+relation, we call _this_ perception rather than reasoning; nor is there
+in this case any exercise of the thought, or any action, properly
+speaking, but a mere passive admission of the impressions through the
+organs of sensation. According to this way of thinking, we ought not to
+receive as reasoning any of the observations we may make concerning
+_identity_ and the _relation_ of _time_ and _place_; since in none of
+them can the mind go beyond what is immediately present to the senses,
+either to discover the real existence or the relations of objects.”
+
+The whole force of this passage depends upon the tacit presupposition of
+the ‘mind’ as a passively receptive substance and of its ‘impression’ as
+forming its private world of accidents. There then remains nothing
+except the immediacy of these private attributes with their private
+relations which are also attributes of the mind. Hume explicitly
+repudiates this substantial view of mind.
+
+But then, what is the force of the last clause of the last sentence,
+“since ... objects?” The only reason for dismissing ‘impressions’ from
+having any demonstrative force in respect to ‘the _real_ existence or
+the relations of objects,’ is the implicit notion that such impressions
+are mere private attributes of the mind. Santayana’s book, _Scepticism
+and Animal Faith_, to which I have already referred, is in its earlier
+chapters a vigorous and thorough insistence, by every manner of
+beautiful illustration, that with Hume’s premises there is no manner of
+escape from this dismissal of identity, time, and place from having any
+reference to a real world. There remains only what Santayana calls
+‘Solipsism of the Present Moment.’ Even memory goes: for a
+memory-impression is not an impression of memory. It is only another
+immediate private impression.
+
+It is unnecessary to cite Hume on Causation; for the preceding quotation
+carries with it his whole sceptical position. But a quotation[2] on
+substance is necessary to explain the ground of his explicit—as distinct
+from sporadic implicit presuppositions—doctrine on this point:—“I would
+fain ask those philosophers, who found so much of their reasonings on
+the distinction of substance and accident, and imagine we have clear
+ideas of each, whether the idea of substance be derived from the
+impressions of sensation or reflection? If it be conveyed to us by our
+senses, I ask, which of them, and after what manner? If it be perceived
+by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the
+palate, a taste; and so of the other senses. But I believe none will
+assert that substance is either a colour, or sound, or a taste. The idea
+of substance must, therefore, be derived from an impression of
+reflection, if it really exist. But the impressions of reflection
+resolve themselves into our passions and emotions; none of which can
+possibly represent a substance. We have, therefore, no idea of
+substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities,
+nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning
+it.”
+
+This passage is concerned with a notion of ‘substance,’ which I do not
+entertain. Thus it only indirectly controverts my position. I quote it
+because it is the plainest example of Hume’s initial assumptions that
+(i) presentational immediacy, and relations between presentationally
+immediate entities, constitute the only type of perceptive experience,
+and that (ii) presentational immediacy includes no demonstrative factors
+disclosing a contemporary world of extended actual things.
+
+He discusses this question later in his ‘Treatise’ under the heading of
+the notion of ‘Bodies’; and arrives at analogous sceptical conclusions.
+These conclusions rest upon an extraordinary naïve assumption of time as
+pure succession. The assumption is naïve, because it is the natural
+thing to say; it is natural because it leaves out that characteristic of
+time which is so intimately interwoven that it is natural to omit it.
+
+Time is known to us as the succession of our acts of experience, and
+thence derivatively as the succession of events objectively perceived in
+those acts. But this succession is not pure succession: it is the
+derivation of state from state, with the later state exhibiting
+conformity to the antecedent. Time in the concrete is the conformation
+of state to state, the later to the earlier; and the pure succession is
+an abstraction from the irreversible relationship of settled past to
+derivative present. The notion of pure succession is analogous to the
+notion of colour. There is no mere colour, but always some particular
+colour such as red or blue: analogously there is no pure succession, but
+always some particular relational ground in respect to which the terms
+succeed each other. The integers succeed each other in one way, and
+events succeed each other in another way; and, when we abstract from
+these ways of succession, we find that pure succession is an abstraction
+of the second order, a generic abstraction omitting the temporal
+character of time and the numerical relation of integers. The past
+consists of the community of settled acts which, through their
+objectifications in the present act, establish the conditions to which
+that act must conform.
+
+Aristotle conceived ‘matter’—ὑλγ—as being pure potentiality awaiting the
+incoming of form in order to become actual. Hence employing Aristotelian
+notions, we may say that the limitation of pure potentiality,
+established by ‘objectifications’ of the settled past, expresses that
+‘natural potentiality’—or, potentiality in nature—which is ‘matter’ with
+that basis of initial, realized form presupposed as the first phase in
+the self-creation of the present occasion. The notion of ‘pure
+potentiality’ here takes the place of Aristotle’s ‘matter,’ and ‘natural
+potentiality’ is ‘matter’ with that given imposition of form from which
+each actual thing arises. All components which are _given_ for
+experience are to be found in the analysis of natural potentiality. Thus
+the immediate present has to conform to what the past is for it, and the
+mere lapse of time is an abstraction from the more concrete relatedness
+of ‘conformation.’ The ‘substantial’ character of actual things is not
+primarily concerned with the predication of qualities. It expresses the
+stubborn fact that whatever is settled and actual must in due measure be
+conformed to by the self-creative activity. The phrase ‘stubborn fact’
+exactly expresses the popular apprehension of this characteristic. Its
+primary phase, from which each actual thing arises, is the stubborn fact
+which underlies its existence. According to Hume there are no stubborn
+facts. Hume’s doctrine may be good philosophy, but it is certainly not
+common sense. In other words, it fails before the final test of obvious
+verification.
+
+
+                     2. _Kant and Causal Efficacy._
+
+
+The school of transcendental idealists, derived from Kant, admit that
+causal efficacy is a factor in the phenomenal world; but hold that it
+does not belong to the sheer data presupposed in perception. It belongs
+to our ways of thought about the data. Our consciousness of the
+perceived world yields us an objective system, which is a fusion of mere
+data and modes of thought about those data.
+
+The general Kantian reason for this position is that direct perception
+acquaints us with particular fact. Now particular fact is what simply
+occurs as particular datum. But we believe universal principles about
+all particular facts. Such universal knowledge cannot be derived from
+any selection of particular facts, each of which has just simply
+occurred. Thus our ineradicable belief is only explicable by reason of
+the doctrine that particular facts, as consciously apprehended, are the
+fusion of mere particular data with thought functioning according to
+categories which import their own universality in the modified data.
+Thus the phenomenal world, as in consciousness, is a complex of coherent
+judgments, framed according to fixed categories of thought, and with a
+content constituted by given data organized according to fixed forms of
+intuition.
+
+This Kantian doctrine accepts Hume’s naïve presupposition of ‘simple
+occurrence’ for the mere data. I have elsewhere called it the assumption
+of ‘simple location,’ by way of applying it to space as well as to time.
+
+I directly deny this doctrine of ‘simple occurrence.’ There is nothing
+which ‘simply happens.’ Such a belief is the baseless doctrine of time
+as ‘pure succession.’ The alternative doctrine, that the pure succession
+of time is merely an abstract from the fundamental relationship of
+conformation, sweeps away the whole basis for the intervention of
+constitutive thought, or constitutive intuition, in the formation of the
+directly apprehended world. Universality of truth arises from the
+universality of relativity, whereby every particular actual thing lays
+upon the universe the obligation of conforming to it. Thus in the
+analysis of particular fact universal truths are discoverable, those
+truths expressing this obligation. The given-ness of experience—that is
+to say, all its data alike, whether general truths or particular sensa
+or presupposed forms of synthesis—expresses the specific character of
+the temporal relation of that act of experience to the settled actuality
+of the universe which is the source of all conditions. The fallacy of
+‘misplaced concreteness’ abstracts from time this specific character,
+and leaves time with the mere generic character of pure succession.
+
+
+               3. _Direct Perception of Causal Efficacy._
+
+
+The followers of Hume and the followers of Kant have thus their diverse,
+but allied, objections to the notion of any direct perception of causal
+efficacy, in the sense in which direct perception is antecedent to
+thought about it. Both schools find ‘causal efficacy’ to be the
+importation, into the data, of a way of thinking or judging about those
+data. One school calls it a habit of thought; the other school calls it
+a category of thought. Also for them the mere data are the pure
+sense-data.
+
+If either Hume or Kant gives a proper account of the status of causal
+efficacy, we should find that our conscious apprehension of causal
+efficacy should depend to some extent on the vividness of the thought or
+of the pure intuitive discrimination of sense-data at the moment in
+question. For an apprehension which is the product of thought should
+sink in importance when thought is in the background. Also, according to
+this Humian-Kantian account, the thought in question is thought about
+the immediate sense-data. Accordingly a certain vividness of sense-data
+in immediate presentation should be favourable to apprehension of causal
+efficacy. For according to these accounts, causal efficacy is nothing
+else than a way of thinking about sense-data, given in presentational
+immediacy. Thus the inhibition of thought and the vagueness of
+sense-data should be extremely unfavourable to the prominence of causal
+efficacy as an element in experience.
+
+The logical difficulties attending the direct perception of causal
+efficacy have been shown to depend on the sheer assumption that time is
+merely the generic notion of pure succession. This is an instance of the
+fallacy of ‘misplaced concreteness.’ Thus the way is now open to enquire
+empirically whether in fact our apprehension of causal efficacy does
+depend either on the vividness of sense-data or on the activity of
+thought.
+
+According to both schools, the importance of causal efficacy, and of
+action exemplifying its presupposition, should be mainly characteristic
+of high-grade organisms in their best moments. Now if we confine
+attention to long-range identification of cause and effect, depending on
+complex reasoning, undoubtedly such high-grade mentality and such
+precise determination of sense-data are required. But each step in such
+reasoning depends on the primary presupposition of the immediate present
+moment conforming itself to the settled environment of the immediate
+past. We must not direct attention to the inferences from yesterday to
+today, or even from five minutes ago to the immediate present. We must
+consider the immediate present in its relationship to the immediate
+past. The overwhelming conformation of fact, in present action, to
+antecedent settled fact is to be found here.
+
+My point is that this conformation of present fact to immediate past is
+more prominent both in apparent behaviour and in consciousness, when the
+organism is low grade. A flower turns to the light with much greater
+certainty than does a human being, and a stone conforms to the
+conditions set by its external environment with much greater certainty
+than does a flower. A dog anticipates the conformation of the immediate
+future to his present activity with the same certainty as a human being.
+When it comes to calculations and remote inferences, the dog fails. But
+the dog never acts as though the immediate future were irrelevant to the
+present. Irresolution in action arises from consciousness of a somewhat
+distant relevant future, combined with inability to evaluate its precise
+type. If we were not conscious of relevance, why is there irresolution
+in a sudden crisis?
+
+Again a vivid enjoyment of immediate sense-data notoriously inhibits
+apprehension of the relevance of the future. The present moment is then
+all in all. In our consciousness it approximates to ‘simple occurrence.’
+
+Certain emotions, such as anger and terror, are apt to inhibit the
+apprehension of sense-data; but they wholly depend upon a vivid
+apprehension of the relevance of immediate past to the present, and of
+the present to the future. Again an inhibition of familiar sense-data
+provokes the terrifying sense of vague presences, effective for good or
+evil over our fate. Most living creatures, of daytime habits, are more
+nervous in the dark, in the absence of the familiar visual sense-data.
+But according to Hume, it is the very familiarity of the sense-data
+which is required for causal inference. Thus the sense of unseen
+effective presences in the dark is the opposite of what should happen.
+
+
+                 4. _Primitiveness of Causal Efficacy._
+
+
+The perception of conformation to realities in the environment is the
+primitive element in our external experience. We conform to our bodily
+organs and to the vague world which lies beyond them. Our primitive
+perception is that of ‘conformation’ vaguely, and of the yet vaguer
+relata ‘oneself’ and ‘another’ in the undiscriminated background. Of
+course if relationships are unperceivable, such a doctrine must be ruled
+out on theoretic grounds. But if we admit such perception, then the
+perception of conformation has every mark of a primitive element. One
+part of our experience is handy, and definite in our consciousness; also
+it is easy to reproduce at will. The other type of experience, however
+insistent, is vague, haunting, unmanageable. The former type, for all
+its decorative sense-experience, is barren. It displays a world
+concealed under an adventitious show, a show of our own bodily
+production. The latter type is heavy with the contact of the things gone
+by, which lay their grip on our immediate selves. This latter type, the
+mode of causal efficacy, is the experience dominating the primitive
+living organisms, which have a sense for the fate from which they have
+emerged, and for the fate towards which they go—the organisms which
+advance and retreat but hardly differentiate any immediate display. It
+is a heavy, primitive experience. The former type, the presentational
+immediacy, is the superficial product of complexity, of subtlety; it
+halts at the present, and indulges in a manageable self-enjoyment
+derived from the immediacy of the show of things. Those periods in our
+lives—when the perception of the pressure from a world of things with
+characters in their own right, characters mysteriously moulding our own
+natures, become strongest—those periods are the product of a reversion
+to some primitive state. Such a reversion occurs when either some
+primitive functioning of the human organism is unusually heightened, or
+some considerable part of our habitual sense-perception is unusually
+enfeebled.
+
+Anger, hatred, fear, terror, attraction, love, hunger, eagerness,
+massive enjoyment, are feelings and emotions closely entwined with the
+primitive functioning of ‘retreat from’ and of ‘expansion towards.’ They
+arise in the higher organism as states due to a vivid apprehension that
+some such primitive mode of functioning is dominating the organism. But
+‘retreat from’ and ‘expansion towards,’ divested of any detailed spatial
+discrimination, are merely reactions to the way externality is
+impressing on us its own character. You cannot retreat from mere
+subjectivity; for subjectivity is what we carry with us. Normally, we
+have almost negligible sense-presentations of the interior organs of our
+own bodies.
+
+These primitive emotions are accompanied by the clearest recognition of
+other actual things reacting upon ourselves. The vulgar obviousness of
+such recognition is equal to the vulgar obviousness produced by the
+functioning of any one of our five senses. When we hate, it is a man
+that we hate and not a collection of sense-data—a causal, efficacious
+man. This primitive obviousness of the perception of ‘conformation’ is
+illustrated by the emphasis on the pragmatic aspect of occurrences,
+which is so prominent in modern philosophical thought. There can be no
+useful aspect of anything unless we admit the principle of conformation,
+whereby what is already made becomes a determinant of what is in the
+making. The obviousness of the pragmatic aspect is simply the
+obviousness of the perception of the fact of conformation.
+
+In practice we never doubt the fact of the conformation of the present
+to the immediate past. It belongs to the ultimate texture of experience,
+with the same evidence as does presentational immediacy. The present
+fact is luminously the outcome from its predecessors, one quarter of a
+second ago. Unsuspected factors may have intervened; dynamite may have
+exploded. But, however that may be, the present event issues subject to
+the limitations laid upon it by the actual nature of the immediate past.
+If dynamite explodes, then present fact is that issue from the past
+which is consistent with dynamite exploding. Further, we unhesitatingly
+argue backwards to the inference, that the complete analysis of the past
+must disclose in it those factors which provide the conditions for the
+present. If dynamite be now exploding, then in the immediate past there
+was a charge of dynamite unexploded.
+
+The fact that our consciousness is confined to an analysis of experience
+in the present is no difficulty. For the theory of the universal
+relativity of actual individual things leads to the distinction between
+the present moment of experience, which is the sole datum for conscious
+analysis, and perception of the contemporary world, which is the only
+one factor in this datum.
+
+The contrast between the comparative emptiness of Presentational
+Immediacy and the deep significance disclosed by Causal Efficacy is at
+the root of the pathos which haunts the world.
+
+                          ‘Pereunt et imputantur’
+
+is the inscription on old sundials in ‘religious’ houses:
+
+                ‘The hours perish and are laid to account.’
+
+Here ‘Pereunt’ refers to the world disclosed in immediate presentation,
+gay with a thousand tints, passing, and intrinsically meaningless.
+‘Imputantur’ refers to the world disclosed in its causal efficacy, where
+each event infects the ages to come, for good or for evil, with its own
+individuality. Almost all pathos includes a reference to lapse of time.
+
+The final stanza of Keats’ _Eve of St. Agnes_ commences with the
+haunting lines:—
+
+                  ‘And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
+                  Those lovers fled away into the storm.’
+
+There the pathos of the lapse of time arises from the imagined fusion of
+the two perceptive modes by one intensity of emotion. Shakespeare, in
+the springtime of the modern world, fuses the two elements by exhibiting
+the infectiousness of gay immediacy:—
+
+                              ‘... daffodils,
+                That come before the swallow dares, and take
+                The winds of March with beauty; ...’
+
+                (_The Winter’s Tale_, IV, iv, 118-120.)
+
+But sometimes men are overstrained by their undivided attention to the
+causal elements in the nature of things. Then in some tired moment there
+comes a sudden relaxation, and the mere presentational side of the world
+overwhelms with the sense of its emptiness. As William Pitt, the Prime
+Minister of England through the darkest period of the French
+Revolutionary wars, lay on his death-bed at England’s worst moment in
+that struggle, he was heard to murmur,
+
+               ‘What shades we are, what shadows we pursue!’
+
+His mind had suddenly lost the sense of causal efficacy, and was
+illuminated by the remembrance of the intensity of emotion, which had
+enveloped his life, in its comparison with the barren emptiness of the
+world passing in sense-presentation.
+
+The world, given in sense-presentation, is not the aboriginal experience
+of the lower organisms, later to be sophisticated by the inference to
+causal efficacy. The contrary is the case. First the causal side of
+experience is dominating, then the sense-presentation gains in subtlety.
+Their mutual symbolic reference is finally purged by consciousness and
+the critical reason with the aid of a pragmatic appeal to consequences.
+
+
+           5. _The Intersection of the Modes of Perception._
+
+
+There cannot be symbolic reference between percepts derived from one
+mode and percepts from the other mode, unless in some way these percepts
+intersect. By this ‘intersection’ I mean that a pair of such percepts
+must have elements of structure in common, whereby they are marked out
+for the action of symbolic reference.
+
+There are two elements of common structure, which can be shared in
+common by a percept derived from presentational immediacy and by another
+derived from causal efficacy. These elements are (1) sense-data, and (2)
+locality.
+
+The sense-data are ‘given’ for presentational immediacy. This given-ness
+of the sense-data, as the basis of this perceptive mode, is the great
+doctrine common to Hume and Kant. But what is already given for
+experience can only be derived from that natural potentiality which
+shapes a particular experience in the guise of causal efficacy. Causal
+efficacy is the hand of the settled past in the formation of the
+present. The sense-data must therefore play a double rôle in perception.
+In the mode of presentational immediacy they are projected to exhibit
+the contemporary world in its spatial relations. In the mode of causal
+efficacy they exhibit the almost instantaneously precedent bodily organs
+as imposing their characters on the experience in question. We see the
+picture, and we see it with our eyes; we touch the wood, and we touch it
+with our hands; we smell the rose, and we smell it with our nose; we
+hear the bell, and we hear it with our ears; we taste the sugar, and we
+taste it with our palate. In the case of bodily feelings the two
+locations are identical. The foot is both giving pain and is the seat of
+the pain. Hume himself tacitly asserts this double reference in the
+second of the quotations previously made. He writes: “If it be perceived
+by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the
+palate, a taste; and so of the other senses.” Thus in asserting the lack
+of perception of causality, he implicitly presupposes it. For what is
+the meaning of ‘_by_’ in ‘_by_ the eyes,’ ‘_by_ the ears,’ ‘_by_ the
+palate’? His argument presupposes that sense-data, functioning in
+presentational immediacy, are ‘given’ by reason of ‘eyes,’ ‘ears,’
+‘palates’ functioning in causal efficacy. Otherwise his argument is
+involved in a vicious regress. For it must begin again over eyes, ears,
+palates; also it must explain the meaning of ‘by’ and ‘must’ in a sense
+which does not destroy his argument.
+
+This double reference is the basis of the whole physiological doctrine
+of perception. The details of this doctrine are, in this discussion,
+philosophically irrelevant. Hume with the clarity of genius states the
+fundamental point, that sense-data functioning in an act of experience
+demonstrate that they are given _by_ the causal efficacy of actual
+bodily organs. He refers to this causal efficacy as a component in
+direct perception. Hume’s argument first tacitly presupposes the two
+modes of perception, and then tacitly assumes that presentational
+immediacy is the only mode. Also Hume’s followers in developing his
+doctrine presuppose that presentational immediacy is primitive, and that
+causal efficacy is the sophisticated derivative. This is a complete
+inversion of the evidence. So far as Hume’s own teaching is concerned,
+there is, of course, another alternative: it is that Hume’s disciples
+have misinterpreted Hume’s final position. On this hypothesis, his final
+appeal to ‘practice’ is an appeal against the adequacy of the then
+current metaphysical categories as interpretive of obvious experience.
+This theory about Hume’s own beliefs is in my opinion improbable: but,
+apart from Hume’s own estimate of his philosophical achievement, it is
+in this sense that we must reverence him as one of the greatest of
+philosophers.
+
+The conclusion of this argument is that the intervention of any
+sense-datum in the actual world cannot be expressed in any simple way,
+such as mere qualification of a region of space, or alternatively as the
+mere qualification of a state of mind. The sense-data, required for
+immediate sense-perception, enter into experience in virtue of the
+efficacy of the environment. This environment includes the bodily
+organs. For example, in the case of hearing sound the physical waves
+have entered the ears, and the agitations of the nerves have excited the
+brain. The sound is then heard as coming from a certain region in the
+external world. Thus perception in the mode of causal efficacy discloses
+that the data in the mode of sense-perception are provided by it. This
+is the reason why there are such given elements. Every such datum
+constitutes a link between the two perceptive modes. Each such link, or
+datum, has a complex ingression into experience, requiring a reference
+to the two perceptive modes. These sense-data can be conceived as
+constituting the character of a many-termed relationship between the
+organisms of the past environment and those of the contemporary world.
+
+
+                           6. _Localization._
+
+
+The partial community of structure, whereby the two perceptive modes
+yield immediate demonstration of a common world, arises from their
+reference of sense-data, common to both, to localizations, diverse or
+identical, in a spatio-temporal system common to both. For example,
+colour is referred to an external space and to the eyes as organs of
+vision. In so far as we are dealing with one or other of these pure
+perceptive modes, such reference is direct demonstration; and, as
+isolated in conscious analysis, is ultimate fact against which there is
+no appeal. Such isolation, or at least some approach to it, is fairly
+easy in the case of presentational immediacy, but is very difficult in
+the case of causal efficacy. Complete ideal purity of perceptive
+experience, devoid of any symbolic reference, is in practice
+unobtainable for either perceptive mode.
+
+Our judgments on causal efficacy are almost inextricably warped by the
+acceptance of the symbolic reference between the two modes as the
+completion of our direct knowledge. This acceptance is not merely in
+thought, but also in action, emotion, and purpose, all precedent to
+thought. This symbolic reference is a datum for thought in its analysis
+of experience. By trusting this datum, our conceptual scheme of the
+universe is in general logically coherent with itself, and is
+correspondent to the ultimate facts of the pure perceptive modes. But
+occasionally, either the coherence or the verification fails. We then
+revise our conceptual scheme so as to preserve the general trust in the
+symbolic reference, while relegating definite details of that reference
+to the category of errors. Such errors are termed ‘delusive
+appearances.’ This error arises from the extreme vagueness of the
+spatial and temporal perspectives in the case of perception in the pure
+mode of causal efficacy. There is no adequate definition of
+localization, so far as what emerges into analytic consciousness. The
+principle of relativity leads us to hold that, with adequate conscious
+analysis, such local relationships leave their faint impress in
+experience. But in general such detailed analysis is far beyond the
+capacity of human consciousness.
+
+So far as concerns the causal efficacy of the world external to the
+human body, there is the most insistent perception of a circumambient
+efficacious world of beings. But exact discrimination of thing from
+thing, and of position from position, is extremely vague, almost
+negligible. The definite discrimination, which in fact we do make,
+arises almost wholly by reason of symbolic reference from presentational
+immediacy. The case is different in respect to the human body. There is
+still vagueness in comparison with the accurate definition of immediate
+presentation; although the locality of various bodily organs which are
+efficacious in the regulation of the sense-data, and of the feelings,
+are fairly well-defined in the pure perceptive mode of causal efficacy.
+The symbolic transference of course intensifies the definition. But,
+apart from such transference, there is some adequacy of definite
+demarcation.
+
+Thus in the intersection of the two modes, the spatial and temporal
+relationships of the human body, as causally apprehended, to the
+external contemporary world, as immediately presented, afford a fairly
+definite scheme of spatial and temporal reference whereby we test the
+symbolic use of sense-projection for the determination of the positions
+of bodies controlling the course of nature. Ultimately all observation,
+scientific or popular, consists in the determination of the spatial
+relation of the bodily organs of the observer to the location of
+‘projected’ sense-data.
+
+
+     7. _The Contrast Between Accurate Definition and Importance._
+
+
+The reason why the projected sense-data are in general used as symbol,
+is that they are handy, definite, and manageable. We can see, or not
+see, as we like: we can hear, or not hear. There are limits to this
+handiness of the sense-data: but they are emphatically the manageable
+elements in our perceptions of the world. The sense of controlling
+presences has the contrary character: it is unmanageable, vague, and
+ill-defined.
+
+But for all their vagueness, for all their lack of definition, these
+controlling presences, these sources of power, these things with an
+inner life, with their own richness of content, these beings, with the
+destiny of the world hidden in their natures, are what we want to know
+about. As we cross a road busy with traffic, we see the colour of the
+cars, their shapes, the gay colours of their occupants; but at the
+moment we are absorbed in using this immediate show as a symbol for the
+forces determining the immediate future.
+
+We enjoy the symbol, but we also penetrate to the meaning. The symbols
+do not create their meaning: the meaning, in the form of actual
+effective beings reacting upon us, exists for us in its own right. But
+the symbols discover this meaning for us. They discover it because, in
+the long course of adaptation of living organisms to their environment,
+nature[3] taught their use. It developed us so that our projected
+sensations indicate in general those regions which are the seat of
+important organisms.
+
+Our relationships to these bodies are precisely our reactions to them.
+The projection of our sensations is nothing else than the illustration
+of the world in partial accordance with the systematic scheme, in space
+and in time, to which these reactions conform.
+
+The bonds of causal efficacy arise from without us. They disclose the
+character of the world from which we issue, an inescapable condition
+round which we shape ourselves. The bonds of presentational immediacy
+arise from within us, and are subject to intensifications and
+inhibitions and diversions according as we accept their challenge or
+reject it. The sense-data are not properly to be termed ‘mere
+impressions’—except so far as any technical term will do. They also
+represent the conditions arising out of the active perceptive
+functioning as conditioned by our own natures. But our natures must
+conform to the causal efficacy. Thus the causal efficacy _from_ the past
+is at least one factor giving our presentational immediacy in the
+present. The _how_ of our present experience must conform to the _what_
+of the past in us.
+
+Our experience arises out of the past: it enriches with emotion and
+purpose its presentation of the contemporary world: and it bequeaths its
+character to the future, in the guise of an effective element forever
+adding to, or subtracting from, the richness of the world. For good or
+for evil,
+
+                          ‘Pereunt et Imputantur.’
+
+
+                            8. _Conclusion._
+
+
+In this chapter, and in the former chapter, the general character of
+symbolism has been discussed. It plays a dominant part in the way in
+which all higher organisms conduct their lives. It is the cause of
+progress, and the cause of error. The higher animals have gained a
+faculty of great power, by means of which they can define with some
+accuracy those distant features in the immediate world by which their
+future lives are to be determined. But this faculty is not infallible;
+and the risks are commensurate with its importance. It is the purpose of
+the next chapter to illustrate this doctrine by an analysis of the part
+played by this habit of symbolism in promoting the cohesion, the
+progress, and the dissolution of human societies.
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  ‘Treatise’, Part III, Section II.
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+  Cf. Hume’s ‘Treatise’, Part I, Section VI.
+
+Footnote 3:
+
+  Cf. _Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of Knowledge_, by Norman Kemp
+  Smith, Macmillan and Co., London, 1924.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+
+                          _Uses of Symbolism_
+
+
+The attitude of mankind towards symbolism exhibits an unstable mixture
+of attraction and repulsion. The practical intelligence, the theoretical
+desire to pierce to ultimate fact, and ironic critical impulses have
+contributed the chief motives towards the repulsion from symbolism.
+Hard-headed men want facts and not symbols. A clear theoretic intellect,
+with its generous enthusiasm for the exact truth at all costs and
+hazards, pushes aside symbols as being mere make-believes, veiling and
+distorting that inner sanctuary of simple truth which reason claims as
+its own. The ironic critics of the follies of humanity have performed
+notable service in clearing away the lumber of useless ceremony
+symbolizing the degrading fancies of a savage past. The repulsion from
+symbolism stands out as a well-marked element in the cultural history of
+civilized people. There can be no reasonable doubt but that this
+continuous criticism has performed a necessary service in the promotion
+of a wholesome civilization, both on the side of the practical
+efficiency of organized society, and on the side of a robust direction
+of thought.
+
+No account of the uses of symbolism is complete without this recognition
+that the symbolic elements in life have a tendency to run wild, like the
+vegetation in a tropical forest. The life of humanity can easily be
+overwhelmed by its symbolic accessories. A continuous process of
+pruning, and of adaptation to a future ever requiring new forms of
+expression, is a necessary function in every society. The successful
+adaptation of old symbols to changes of social structure is the final
+mark of wisdom in sociological statesmanship. Also an occasional
+revolution in symbolism is required.
+
+There is, however, a Latin proverb upon which, in our youth, some of us
+have been set to write themes. In English it reads thus:—Nature,
+expelled with a pitchfork, ever returns. This proverb is exemplified by
+the history of symbolism. However you may endeavour to expel it, it ever
+returns. Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is
+inherent in the very texture of human life. Language itself is a
+symbolism. And, as another example, however you reduce the functions of
+your government to their utmost simplicity, yet symbolism remains. It
+may be a healthier, manlier ceremonial, suggesting finer notions. But
+still it is symbolism. You abolish the etiquette of a royal court, with
+its suggestion of personal subordination, but at official receptions you
+ceremonially shake the hand of the Governor of your State. Just as the
+feudal doctrine of a subordination of classes, reaching up to the
+ultimate overlord, requires its symbolism; so does the doctrine of human
+equality obtain its symbolism. Mankind, it seems, has to find a symbol
+in order to express itself. Indeed ‘expression’ is ‘symbolism.’
+
+When the public ceremonial of the State has been reduced to the barest
+simplicity, private clubs and associations at once commence to
+reconstitute symbolic actions. It seems as though mankind must always be
+masquerading. This imperative impulse suggests that the notion of an
+idle masquerade is the wrong way of thought about the symbolic elements
+in life. The function of these elements is to be definite, manageable,
+reproducible, and also to be charged with their own emotional
+efficacity: symbolic transference invests their correlative meanings
+with some or all of these attributes of the symbols, and thereby lifts
+the meanings into an intensity of definite effectiveness—as elements in
+knowledge, emotion, and purpose,—an effectiveness which the meanings
+may, or may not, deserve on their own account. The object of symbolism
+is the enhancement of the importance of what is symbolized.
+
+In a discussion of instances of symbolism, our first difficulty is to
+discover exactly what is being symbolized. The symbols are specific
+enough, but it is often extremely difficult to analyse what lies beyond
+them, even though there is evidently some strong appeal beyond the mere
+ceremonial acts.
+
+It seems probable that in any ceremonial which has lasted through many
+epochs, the symbolic interpretation, so far as we can obtain it, varies
+much more rapidly than does the actual ceremonial. Also in its flux a
+symbol will have different meanings for different people. At any epoch
+some people have the dominant mentality of the past, some of the
+present, others of the future, and others of the many problematic
+futures which will never dawn. For these various groups an old symbolism
+will have different shades of vague meaning.
+
+In order to appreciate the necessary function of symbolism in the life
+of any society of human beings we must form some estimate of the binding
+and disruptive forces at work. There are many varieties of human
+society, each requiring its own particular investigation so far as
+details are concerned. We will fix attention on nations, occupying
+definite countries. Thus geographical unity is at once presupposed.
+Communities with geographical unity constitute the primary type of
+communities which we find in the world. Indeed the lower we go in the
+scale of being, the more necessary is geographical unity for that close
+interaction of individuals which constitutes society. Societies of the
+higher animals, of insects, of molecules, all possess geographical
+unity. A rock is nothing else than a society of molecules, indulging in
+every species of activity open to molecules. I draw attention to this
+lowly form of society in order to dispel the notion that social life is
+a peculiarity of the higher organisms. The contrary is the case. So far
+as survival value is concerned, a piece of rock, with its past history
+of some eight hundred millions of years, far outstrips the short span
+attained by any nation. The emergence of life is better conceived as a
+bid for freedom on the part of organisms, a bid for a certain
+independence of individuality with self-interests and activities not to
+be construed purely in terms of environmental obligations. The immediate
+effect of this emergence of sensitive individuality has been to reduce
+the term of life for societies from hundreds of millions of years to
+hundreds of years, or even to scores of years.
+
+The emergence of living beings cannot be ascribed to the superior
+survival value either of the individuals, or of their societies.
+National life has to face the disruptive elements introduced by these
+extreme claims for individual idiosyncrasies. We require both the
+advantages of social preservation, and the contrary stimulus of the
+heterogeneity derived from freedom. The society is to run smoothly
+amidst the divergencies of its individuals. There is a revolt from the
+mere causal obligations laid upon individuals by the social character of
+the environment. This revolt first takes the form of blind emotional
+impulse; and later, in civilized societies, these impulses are
+criticized and deflected by reason. In any case, there are individual
+springs of action which escape from the obligations of social
+conformity. In order to replace this decay of secure instinctive
+response, various intricate forms of symbolic expression of the various
+purposes of social life have been introduced. The response to the symbol
+is almost automatic but not quite; the reference to the meaning is
+there, either for additional emotional support, or for criticism. But
+the reference is not so clear as to be imperative. The imperative
+instinctive conformation to the influence of the environment has been
+modified. Something has replaced it, which by its superficial character
+invites criticism, and by its habitual use generally escapes it. Such
+symbolism makes connected thought possible by expressing it, while at
+the same time it automatically directs action. In the place of the force
+of instinct which suppresses individuality, society has gained the
+efficacy of symbols, at once preservative of the commonweal and of the
+individual standpoint.
+
+Among the particular kinds of symbolism which serve this purpose, we
+must place first Language. I do not mean language in its function of a
+bare indication of abstract ideas, or of particular actual things, but
+language clothed with its complete influence for the nation in question.
+In addition to its bare indication of meaning, words and phrases carry
+with them an enveloping suggestiveness and an emotional efficacy. This
+function of language depends on the way it has been used, on the
+proportionate familiarity of particular phrases, and on the emotional
+history associated with their meanings and thence derivatively
+transferred to the phrases themselves. If two nations speak the same
+language, this emotional efficacy of words and phrases will in general
+differ for the two. What is familiar for one nation will be strange for
+the other nation; what is charged with intimate associations for the one
+is comparatively empty for the other. For example, if the two nations
+are somewhat widely sundered, with a different fauna and flora, the
+nature-poetry of one nation will lack its complete directness of appeal
+to the other nation—compare Walt Whitman’s phrase,
+
+                 ‘The wide unconscious scenery of my land’
+
+for an American, with Shakespeare’s
+
+                            ‘... this little world,
+                This precious stone set in the silver sea,’
+
+for an Englishman. Of course anyone, American or English, with the
+slightest sense for history and kinship, or with the slightest
+sympathetic imagination, can penetrate to the feelings conveyed by both
+phrases. But the direct first-hand intuition, derived from earliest
+childhood memories, is for the one nation that of continental width, and
+for the other nation that of the little island world. Now the love of
+the sheer geographical aspects of one’s country, of its hills, its
+mountains, and its plains, of its trees, its flowers, its birds, and its
+whole nature-life, is no small element in that binding force which makes
+a nation. It is the function of language, working through literature and
+through the habitual phrases of early life, to foster this diffused
+feeling of the common possession of a treasure infinitely precious.
+
+I must not be misunderstood to mean that this example has any unique
+importance. It is only one example of what can be illustrated in a
+hundred ways. Also language is not the only symbolism effective for this
+purpose. But in an especial manner, language binds a nation together by
+the common emotions which it elicits, and is yet the instrument whereby
+freedom of thought and of individual criticism finds its expression.
+
+My main thesis is that a social system is kept together by the blind
+force of instinctive actions, and of instinctive emotions clustered
+around habits and prejudices. It is therefore not true that any advance
+in the scale of culture inevitably tends to the preservation of society.
+On the whole, the contrary is more often the case, and any survey of
+nature confirms this conclusion. A new element in life renders in many
+ways the operation of the old instincts unsuitable. But unexpressed
+instincts are unanalysed and blindly felt. Disruptive forces, introduced
+by a higher level of existence, are then warring in the dark against an
+invisible enemy. There is no foothold for the intervention of ‘rational
+consideration’—to use Henry Osborn Taylor’s admirable phrase. The
+symbolic expression of instinctive forces drags them out into the open:
+it differentiates them and delineates them. There is then opportunity
+for reason to effect, with comparative speed, what otherwise must be
+left to the slow operation of the centuries amid ruin and
+reconstruction. Mankind misses its opportunities, and its failures are a
+fair target for ironic criticism. But the fact that reason too often
+fails does not give fair ground for the hysterical conclusion that it
+never succeeds. Reason can be compared to the force of gravitation, the
+weakest of all natural forces, but in the end the creator of suns and of
+stellar systems:—those great societies of the Universe. Symbolic
+expression first preserves society by adding emotion to instinct, and
+secondly it affords a foothold for reason by its delineation of the
+particular instinct which it expresses. This doctrine of the disruptive
+tendency due to novelties, even those involving a rise to finer levels,
+is illustrated by the effect of Christianity on the stability of the
+Roman Empire. It is also illustrated by the three revolutions which
+secured liberty and equality for the world—namely the English
+revolutionary period of the seventeenth century, the American
+Revolution, and the French Revolution. England barely escaped a
+disruption of its social system; America was never in any such danger;
+France, where the entrance of novelty was most intense, did for a time
+experience this collapse. Edmund Burke, the Whig statesman of the
+eighteenth century, was the philosopher who was the approving prophet of
+the two earlier revolutions, and the denunciatory prophet of the French
+Revolution. A man of genius and a statesman, who has immediately
+observed two revolutions, and has meditated deeply on a third, deserves
+to be heard when he speaks on the forces which bind and disrupt
+societies. Unfortunately statesmen are swayed by the passions of the
+moment, and Burke shared this defect to the full, so as to be carried
+away by the reactionary passions aroused by the French Revolution. Thus
+the wisdom of his general conception of social forces is smothered by
+the wild unbalanced conclusions which he drew from them: his greatness
+is best shown by his attitude towards the American Revolution. His more
+general reflections are contained first, in his youthful work _A
+Vindication of Natural Society_, and secondly, in his _Reflections on
+the French Revolution_. The earlier work was meant ironically; but, as
+is often the case with genius, he prophesied unknowingly. This essay is
+practically written round the thesis that advances in the art of
+civilization are apt to be destructive of the social system. Burke
+conceived this conclusion to be a _reductio ad absurdum_. But it is the
+truth. The second work—a work which in its immediate effect was perhaps
+the most harmful ever written—directs attention to the importance of
+‘prejudice’ as a binding social force. There again I hold that he was
+right in his premises and wrong in his conclusions.
+
+Burke surveys the standing miracle of the existence of an organised
+society, culminating in the smooth unified action of the state. Such a
+society may consist of millions of individuals, each with its individual
+character, its individual aims, and its individual selfishness. He asks
+what is the force which leads this throng of separate units to coöperate
+in the maintenance of an organised state, in which each individual has
+his part to play—political, economic, and Æsthetic. He contrasts the
+complexity of the functionings of a civilised society with the sheer
+diversities of its individual citizens considered as a mere group or
+crowd. His answer to the riddle is that the magnetic force is
+‘prejudice,’ or in other words, ‘use and wont.’ Here he anticipates the
+whole modern theory of ‘herd psychology,’ and at the same time deserts
+the fundamental doctrine of the Whig party, as formed in the seventeenth
+century and sanctioned by Locke. This conventional Whig doctrine was
+that the state derived its origin from an ‘original contract’ whereby
+the mere crowd voluntarily organised itself into a society. Such a
+doctrine seeks the origin of the state in a baseless historical fiction.
+Burke was well ahead of his time in drawing attention to the importance
+of precedence as a political force. Unfortunately, in the excitement of
+the moment, Burke construed the importance of precedence as implying the
+negation of progressive reform.
+
+Now, when we examine how a society bends its individual members to
+function in conformity with its needs, we discover that one important
+operative agency is our vast system of inherited symbolism. There is an
+intricate expressed symbolism of language and of act, which is spread
+throughout the community, and which evokes fluctuating apprehension of
+the basis of common purposes. The particular direction of individual
+action is directly correlated to the particular sharply defined symbols
+presented to him at the moment. The response of action to symbol may be
+so direct as to cut out any effective reference to the ultimate thing
+symbolized. This elimination of meaning is termed reflex action.
+Sometimes there does intervene some effective reference to the meaning
+of the symbol. But this meaning is not recalled with the particularity
+and definiteness which would yield any rational enlightenment as to the
+specific action required to secure the final end. The meaning is vague
+but insistent. Its insistence plays the part of hypnotizing the
+individual to complete the specific action associated with the symbol.
+In the whole transaction, the elements which are clear-cut and definite
+are the specific symbols and the actions which should issue from the
+symbols. But in themselves the symbols are barren facts whose direct
+associative force would be insufficient to procure automatic conformity.
+There is not sufficient repetition, or sufficient similarity of diverse
+occasions, to secure mere automatic obedience. But in fact the symbol
+evokes loyalties to vaguely conceived notions, fundamental for our
+spiritual natures. The result is that our natures are stirred to suspend
+all antagonistic impulses, so that the symbol procures its required
+response in action. Thus the social symbolism has a double meaning. It
+means pragmatically the direction of individuals to specific actions;
+and it also means theoretically the vague ultimate reasons with their
+emotional accompaniments, whereby the symbols acquire their power to
+organize the miscellaneous crowd into a smoothly running community.
+
+The contrast between a state and an army illustrates this principle. A
+state deals with a greater complexity of situation than does its army.
+In this sense it is a looser organization, and in regard to the greater
+part of its population the communal symbolism cannot rely for its
+effectiveness on the frequent recurrence of almost identical situations.
+But a disciplined regiment is trained to act as a unit in a definite set
+of situations. The bulk of human life escapes from the reach of this
+military discipline. The regiment is drilled for one species of job. The
+result is that there is more reliance on automatism, and less reliance
+on the appeal to ultimate reasons. The trained soldier acts
+automatically on receiving the word of command. He responds to the sound
+and cuts out the idea; this is reflex action. But the appeal to the
+deeper side is still important in an army; although it is provided for
+in another set of symbols, such as the flag, and the memorials of the
+honourable service of the regiment, and other symbolic appeals to
+patriotism. Thus in an army there is one set of symbols to produce
+automatic obedience in a limited set of circumstances, and there is
+another set of symbols to produce a general sense of the importance of
+the duties performed. This second set prevents random reflection from
+sapping automatic response to the former set.
+
+For the greater number of citizens of a state there is in practice no
+reliable automatic obedience to any symbol such as the word of command
+for soldiers, except in a few instances such as the response to the
+signals of the traffic police. Thus the state depends in a very
+particular way upon the prevalence of symbols which combine direction to
+some well-known course of action with some deeper reference to the
+purpose of the state. The self-organisation of society depends on
+commonly diffused symbols evoking commonly diffused ideas, and at the
+same time indicating commonly understood actions. Usual forms of verbal
+expression are the most important example of such symbolism. Also the
+heroic aspect of the history of the country is the symbol for its
+immediate worth.
+
+When a revolution has sufficiently destroyed this common symbolism
+leading to common actions for usual purposes, society can only save
+itself from dissolution by means of a reign of terror. Those revolutions
+which escape a reign of terror have left intact the fundamental
+efficient symbolism of society. For example, the English revolutions of
+the seventeenth century and the American revolution of the eighteenth
+century left the ordinary life of their respective communities nearly
+unchanged. When George Washington had replaced George III, and Congress
+had replaced the English Parliament, Americans were still carrying on a
+well-understood system so far as the general structure of their social
+life was concerned. Life in Virginia must have assumed no very different
+aspect from that which it had exhibited before the revolution. In
+Burke’s phraseology, the prejudices on which Virginian society depended
+were unbroken. The ordinary signs still beckoned people to their
+ordinary actions, and suggested the ordinary common-sense justification.
+
+One difficulty of explaining my meaning is that the intimate effective
+symbolism consists of the various types of expression which permeate
+society and evoke a sense of common purpose. No one detail is of much
+importance. The whole range of symbolic expression is required. A
+national hero, such as George Washington or Jefferson, is a symbol of
+the common purpose which animates American life. This symbolic function
+of great men is one of the difficulties in obtaining a balanced
+historical judgment. There is the hysteria of depreciation, and there is
+the opposite hysteria which dehumanises in order to exalt. It is very
+difficult to exhibit the greatness without losing the human being. Yet
+we know that at least _we_ are human beings; and half the inspiration of
+our heroes is lost when we forget that _they_ were human beings.
+
+I mention great Americans, because I am speaking in America. But exactly
+the same truth holds for the great men of all countries and ages.
+
+The doctrine of symbolism developed in these lectures enables us to
+distinguish between pure instinctive action, reflex action, and
+symbolically conditioned action. Pure instinctive action is that
+functioning of an organism which is wholly analysable in terms of those
+conditions laid upon its development by the settled facts of its
+external environment, conditions describable without any reference to
+its perceptive mode of presentational immediacy. This pure instinct is
+the response of an organism to pure causal efficacy.
+
+According to this definition, pure instinct is the most primitive type
+of response which is yielded by organisms to the stimulus of their
+environment. All physical response on the part of inorganic matter to
+its environment is thus properly to be termed instinct. In the case of
+organic matter, its primary difference from inorganic nature is its
+greater delicacy of internal mutual adjustment of minute parts and, in
+some cases, its emotional enhancement. Thus instinct, or this immediate
+adjustment to immediate environment, becomes more prominent in its
+function of directing action for the purposes of the living organism.
+The world is a community of organisms; these organisms in the mass
+determine the environmental influence on any one of them; there can only
+be a persistent community of persistent organisms when the environmental
+influence in the shape of instinct is favourable to the survival of the
+individuals. Thus the community as an environment is responsible for the
+survival of the separate individuals which compose it; and these
+separate individuals are responsible for their contributions to the
+environment. Electrons and molecules survive because they satisfy this
+primary law for a stable order of nature in connection with given
+societies of organisms.
+
+Reflex action is a relapse towards a more complex type of instinct on
+the part of organisms which enjoy, or have enjoyed, symbolically
+conditioned action. Thus its discussion must be postponed. Symbolically
+conditioned action arises in the higher organisms which enjoy the
+perceptive mode of presentational immediacy, that is to say,
+sense-presentation of the contemporary world. This sense-presentation
+symbolically promotes an analysis of the massive perception of causal
+efficacy. The causal efficacy is thereby perceived as analysed into
+components with the locations in space primarily belonging to the
+sense-presentations. In the case of perceived organisms external to the
+human body, the spatial discrimination involved in the human perception
+of their pure causal efficacy is so feeble, that practically there is no
+check on this symbolic transference, apart from the indirect check of
+pragmatic consequences,—in other words, either survival-value, or
+self-satisfaction, logical and Æsthetic.
+
+Symbolically conditioned action is action which is thus conditioned by
+the analysis of the perceptive mode of causal efficacy effected by
+symbolic transference from the perceptive mode of presentational
+immediacy. This analysis may be right or wrong, according as it does, or
+does not, conform to the actual distribution of the efficacious bodies.
+In so far as it is sufficiently correct under normal circumstances, it
+enables an organism to conform its actions to long-ranged analysis of
+the particular circumstances of its environment. So far as this type of
+action prevails, pure instinct is superseded. This type of action is
+greatly promoted by thought, which uses the symbols as referent to their
+meanings. There is no sense in which pure instinct can be wrong. But
+symbolically conditioned action can be wrong, in the sense that it may
+arise from a false symbolic analysis of causal efficacy.
+
+Reflex action is that organic functioning which is wholly dependent on
+sense-presentation, unaccompanied by any analysis of causal efficacy via
+symbolic reference. The conscious analysis of perception is primarily
+concerned with the analysis of the symbolic relationship between the two
+perceptive modes. Thus reflex action is hindered by thought, which
+inevitably promotes the prominence of symbolic reference.
+
+Reflex action arises when by the operation of symbolism the organism has
+acquired the habit of action in response to immediate sense-perception,
+and has discarded the symbolic enhancement of causal efficacy. It thus
+represents the relapse from the high-grade activity of symbolic
+reference. This relapse is practically inevitable in the absence of
+conscious attention. Reflex action cannot in any sense be said to be
+wrong, though it may be unfortunate.
+
+Thus the important binding factor in a community of insects probably
+falls under the notion of pure instinct, as here defined. For each
+individual insect is probably such an organism that the causal
+conditions which it inherits from the immediate past are adequate to
+determine its social actions. But reflex action plays its subordinate
+part. For the sense-perceptions of the insects have in certain fields of
+action assumed an automatic determination of the insects’ activities.
+Still more feebly, symbolically conditioned action intervenes for such
+situations when the sense-presentation provides a symbolically defined
+specification of the causal situation. But only active thought can save
+symbolically conditioned action from quickly relapsing into reflex
+action. The most successful examples of community life exist when pure
+instinct reigns supreme. These examples occur only in the inorganic
+world; among societies of active molecules forming rocks, planets, solar
+systems, star clusters.
+
+The more developed type of living communities requires the successful
+emergence of sense-perception to delineate successfully causal efficacy
+in the external environment; and it also requires its relapse into a
+reflex suitable to the community. We thus obtain the more flexible
+communities of low-grade minds, or even living cells, which possess some
+power of adaptation to the chance details of remote environment.
+
+Finally mankind also uses a more artificial symbolism, obtained chiefly
+by concentrating on a certain selection of sense-perceptions, such as
+words for example. In this case, there is a chain of derivations of
+symbol from symbol whereby finally the local relations, between the
+final symbol and the ultimate meaning, are entirely lost. Thus these
+derivative symbols, obtained as it were by arbitrary association, are
+really the results of reflex action suppressing the intermediate
+portions of the chain. We may use the word ‘association’ when there is
+this suppression of intermediate links.
+
+This derivative symbolism, employed by mankind, is not in general mere
+indication of meaning, in which every common feature shared by symbol
+and meaning has been lost. In every effective symbolism there are
+certain Æsthetic features shared in common. The meaning acquires emotion
+and feeling directly excited by the symbol. This is the whole basis of
+the art of literature, namely that emotions and feelings directly
+excited by the words should fitly intensify our emotions and feelings
+arising from contemplation of the meaning. Further in language there is
+a certain vagueness of symbolism. A word has a symbolic association with
+its own history, its other meanings, and with its general status in
+current literature. Thus a word gathers emotional signification from its
+emotional history in the past; and this is transferred symbolically to
+its meaning in present use.
+
+The same principle holds for all the more artificial sorts of human
+symbolism:—for example, in religious art. Music is particularly adapted
+for this symbolic transfer of emotions, by reason of the strong emotions
+which it generates on its own account. These strong emotions at once
+overpower any sense that its own local relations are of any importance.
+The only importance of the local arrangement of an orchestra is to
+enable us to hear the music. We do not listen to the music in order to
+gain a just appreciation of how the orchestra is situated. When we hear
+the hoot of a motor car, exactly the converse situation arises. Our only
+interest in the hoot is to determine a definite locality as the seat of
+causal efficacy determining the future.
+
+This consideration of the symbolic transference of emotion raises
+another question. In the case of sense-perception, we may ask whether
+the Æsthetic emotion associated with it is derivative from it or merely
+concurrent with it. For example, the sound waves by their causal
+efficacy may produce in the body a state of pleasurable Æsthetic
+emotion, which is then symbolically transferred to the sense-perception
+of the sounds. In the case of music, having regard to the fact that deaf
+people do not enjoy music, it seems that the emotion is almost entirely
+the product of the musical sounds. But the human body is causally
+affected by the ultra-violet rays of the solar spectrum in ways which do
+not issue in any sensation of colour. Nevertheless such rays produce a
+decided emotional effect. Also even sounds, just below or just above the
+limit of audibility, seem to add an emotional tinge to a volume of
+audible sound. This whole question of the symbolic transfer of emotion
+lies at the base of any theory of the Æsthetics of art. For example, it
+gives the reason for the importance of a rigid suppression of irrelevant
+detail. For emotions inhibit each other, or intensify each other.
+Harmonious emotion means a complex of emotions mutually intensifying;
+whereas the irrelevant details supply emotions which, because of their
+irrelevance, inhibit the main effect. Each little emotion directly
+arising out of some subordinate detail refuses to accept its status as a
+detached fact in our consciousness. It insists on its symbolic transfer
+to the unity of the main effect.
+
+Thus symbolism, including the symbolic transference by which it is
+effected, is merely one exemplification of the fact that a unity of
+experience arises out of the confluence of many components. This unity
+of experience is complex, so as to be capable of analysis. The
+components of experience are not a structureless collection
+indiscriminately brought together. Each component by its very nature
+stands in a certain potential scheme of relationships to the other
+components. It is the transformation of this potentiality into real
+unity which constitutes that actual concrete fact which is an act of
+experience. But in transformation from potentiality to actual fact
+inhibitions, intensifications, directions of attention toward,
+directions of attention away from, emotional outcomes, purposes, and
+other elements of experience may arise. Such elements are also true
+components of the act of experience; but they are not necessarily
+determined by the primitive phases of experience from which the final
+product arises. An act of experience is what a complex organism comes
+to, in its character of being one thing. Also its various parts, its
+molecules, and its living cells, as they pass on to new occasions of
+their existence, take a new colour from the fact that in their immediate
+past they have been contributory elements to this dominant unity of
+experience, which in its turn reacts upon them.
+
+Thus mankind by means of its elaborate system of symbolic transference
+can achieve miracles of sensitiveness to a distant environment, and to a
+problematic future. But it pays the penalty, by reason of the dangerous
+fact that each symbolic transference may involve an arbitrary imputation
+of unsuitable characters. It is not true, that the mere workings of
+nature in any particular organism are in all respects favorable either
+to the existence of that organism, or to its happiness, or to the
+progress of the society in which the organism finds itself. The
+melancholy experience of men makes this warning a platitude. No
+elaborate community of elaborate organisms could exist unless its
+systems of symbolism were in general successful. Codes, rules of
+behaviour, canons of art, are attempts to impose systematic action which
+on the whole will promote favourable symbolic interconnections. As a
+community changes, all such rules and canons require revision in the
+light of reason. The object to be obtained has two aspects; one is the
+subordination of the community to the individuals composing it, and the
+other is the subordination of the individuals to the community. Free men
+obey the rules which they themselves have made. Such rules will be found
+in general to impose on society behaviour in reference to a symbolism
+which is taken to refer to the ultimate purposes for which the society
+exists.
+
+It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major
+advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies
+in which they occur:—like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art
+of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code;
+and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves
+those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies
+which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of
+revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow
+atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.
+
+
+
+
+ ● Transcriber’s Notes:
+    ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+    ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
+      referenced.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78977 ***