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A NIVERSE I,FC. URES AT MANCHESTER COLLEGE ON THE PHILOSOPHY WILLIAM JAMES A P LURALISTIC UNIVERSE A PLURALISTIC...

Author: William James

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A

NIVERSE I,FC. URES AT MANCHESTER COLLEGE ON THE PHILOSOPHY

WILLIAM JAMES

A

P LURALISTIC UNIVERSE

A

PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE HIBBERT LECTURES AT MANCHESTER COLLEGE ON

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN PHILOSOPHY

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MANOR Rockville, MARYLAND 2008

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CONTENTS

7

1.

THE TyPES OF P HILOSOPHIC THINKING

2.

M ONISTIC I OEALlSr..l

22

3.

H EGE L AN D H IS M ETHOD

38

4.

CONCERNING F ECHNER

56

5.

TH E COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS

74

6.

BERGSON AN D HIS CRITIQU E OF I NTELLECTUALISM 91

7.

THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE

112

8.

CoNCLUSIONS

122

APPENDIC ES 1. TH E THI NG AND ITS R ELATIONS

134

2 . THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY

14 7

3 . ON THE NOTION OF REALIn' AS CHANGING

161

INDEX

165

L ECTUR E I T HE T YPES OF P HILOSOPH IC T HINKING AS th~se lectures are meant to be publ ic, and so few, I h ave assumed

aJl very spec ial problems to be excluded, and sOme lopic of general interest required . Fortunately, our age seem s to be growi ng ph ilo sop h ica l again - st ill in the ashes live the wonted lires. Oxford, long

the seed-bed, for the english world . of the idealism inspired by Kant and H egel , h as recently become t he n ursery of a very different way of thin ki ng. Even non- philosophers have begun lO take an inter.>! in a

con t rovusy ovu what is known as pl11rali~m or humanism. It loo ks a l itt le as if the ancie nt english cmp irism , so long put o ut o f fashion h ere by nobler sound ing germanic fonnu las, might be rep luming itself and getti ng rcady for a stronger Aighl than ever. It look> a. if foundation. werc being sounded and examined afresh . lnd;v;dualit~· murum all class ification, yet we ;ns;St on classify ing evny one w e meU under some general head. As t hese heads u suall~' sugge st prejud icial associations to SOme hearer Or othe r, the life of philosophy largely consists of rese ntm ents at the classing, and complaints of being misunders tood. But there are signs of clearing up, and, on t he whole, less acrimony in d iscussion, for which bot h Oxford and H arva rd are partly to b e than ked. As I look back into the sixties, Mi ll, Bain, and H ami lton were the only official philosophers in Britain . Spencer, M arti neau, and H od~on were just begi,ming. In France, th e pupil s of Cousin were delv ing into h istory only, and Renouv ier alone had an original system. In Germany. the hegel ian impetus had spent itself, and, apart from hiHorica! scholarship, nothing but the mater;alistic controversy remained, with such men as Buechne r and Ulrici as its champions , Lotze and Fechner were the sole or iginal thinkers , and Fechner Was not a pro fessional philosoph er at all. 7

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

Th~ g~n~ral i mpr~s
was of crud~ i"ues and opposi tions, o f sma ll .ubtlety and of a widely sprea d ignorance. Amateurishness wa, rampant. Samuel H ail~y's ' l~tters 011 I h~ philosophy of the human mind: publi'hed in 1855, are one of the able't expressions of engl ish associalion ism, and a book of rca l power. Yel hear how he wriles ofKanl : 'N o one, afte r reading Ihe extracu, etc. , can be surprised to hear of a declaration by men of em inent abilities, that, after year, of study, t hey had not succeeded in gat hering One clear idea from the ,peculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if t hey had. In or about 1818, L ord G renvill e, when visi ti ng the L akes of England, ob~erved 10 Professor Wilson that , after five years' st udy of Kant 's philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, mad e the .ame confe.sion to another fr iend of my own. "I am endeavori ng," exclaims Sir James M ac kintosh, in the irritation, evide ntly, of baffled efforts , "to understand t h i, accursed german phi losophy.M, W hat Oxford th inker would dare to pr int such nnifand provincialsou nd ing citation s of authority to- dav: The torch of lea rning passes from land to land as the spirit blow et h the flame. 111< deepening of philosophic consciousness Came to us english folk from Germany, as it will probab ly pass back ere long. F.rri.r, j.H. Stirling, and, mOst of all, TH . Green:m 10 be thanked. If asked 10 tell in broad stroke s what the mai n doctrinal change has been , I shou ld ca ll it a change from the crud ity of the older english t hinking, its ultrasimplicity of mind , both when it Was re ligious and when it waS anti-re lig ious, toward a rat ionalism derived in t h e firsl instanc~ from G ermany, but re lieved from german technical ity and sh rillness, and content to suggest , an d to remain vague, and to b e, in, the english fash ion, devo ut. By the time T. H . Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to feel a, if it had fed on the choPIJed straw of psychology and of as
THErYPES Of J'Hll.05OPHlC TH II< ~I ~ of th~ .~ n.ationali.t

.ort has alway. characterized this school of thought, wh ich , on the whole, has reigned su preme at Oxford and in the Scoll ish universities unt il the presen t day. Bm now t here arc signs of its giving way to a wave of revised empiricism . I confess t hat J should be g lad to See Ihis !atesl wave prevai l: so - t he sooner I am fran k about it the better - I hope to have my voice counted in its favor as o ne of the resu lts of t his le cture- co urse . What do the term. empiricism a nd rationalism mean? R educed to the ir most pregnant d ifferen"", ~mp;ri(ijm mMm the hllbit ofn:pfllining who!" by partJ, 11"'/ rationalism mumS the hllbit ofexplaining parts by wholes. Ratio na lism thus preserves alfi niti.. with monism, since w holeness goes wit h union, while empiricism incl in." to plura listic views. N o ph ilosophy ~an ever be anyth ing but a .ummary .ketch, a picture of the world in abr idgment, a foreshortened bird's- eye view of the p,,,,,pective of events. And the first th ing to notice is this, that the only material we have at our disp osal for making a picture of t he whole world is wpplied by the various portions of that world of which w e h a"e already h ad experience. We can invent no new forms of conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested or igina lly by the parts. A 11 ph ilosophers , accordingly, have conceived of the whole world after the ana logy of some part icular featurt of it wh ich h~ s particul:l.Tly capti vated their amnt ion _'Ihus, the theists take t heir cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth . For o ne man . the world i. like a t hought Or a grammatical sent mce in which a thought is expressed . For such a philosopher, the whole m"St logically be prior to th e parrs; for lellers would never h av~ been invented w it hout syllable s to spel l. or syllables without words to uller. Another ma n , struc k by the disconnectedness and mutual accidenta lity of so many of the world's details, t akes the universe a. a whole to have been such a disconnectedness origina lly, and supposes order to have been superinduced upo n it in the seco nd instance, poss ibly by attrition and the gradual w ear ing away by internal friction of portions th at originally interfered. Another w ill conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and the universe will be for him li ke ;l V"" grab- bag wi t h bl;t~k and wh ite balls in it, of whic h w~ g uess the 'lua ntities only probably, by th~ fre 'l"ency with which we experience the ir egre~s. For another, again , there is no really inherent o rder, but it i. We who project order into the w orld by se!ect;ng objec t s and traci ng relat ions so as to gratify our intellectual interests. W e carve out order by leaving t he d isorderly parts ou t: and the world is conceived th us after the analogy

9

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

of a forest or a bloc k of marhle from wh ich parks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant Uees or chips of stone. Some t hinkers follow sugge
s.c. '94

THE rYPES Of J'Hll.05OPHlC

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subordinated in vi~w of the fact t hat, whNher we be ~ m pi ri ci >ts or rationa lists, we are, ourseke. , parts of the universe and share t he same oll e deep COllC~'" in its d~still ies .....Ve crave alik~ to ful more t ruly at home with it, and to contr ibute our mite to its ameliorat ion. It would be pil iful if small aeslhetic d iscords were to keep honest men asu llder. I shall mY$elfhave U$e fo r the diminUlive epilhets of empiricism. n ut if you look behi nd the words at t he spir it, I am sure you w ill not find it malricida l. I am as good a son ;IS any rational ist among you 10 our common mother. What troubl~s m ~ more thall t h is misapprehellsion is the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged to ta lk about , and th~ di fficu lt y of making them inte lligible at one h~ar ing. nut the", two pieces, 'zwei stu~c ke : as Kant wou ld have sa id , in eve ry philosophy - t he final outlook, belief, or attimde TO whkh it br ings us , and the ",asonings bywhich that attitude is ...,ached and m ediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to t el l us, must indeed be true, but that is the leaS! of it s requirement s. One may be true without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelat ion. \Vhat d isti nguishes a ph ilosopher's tru th is that it is r,a,on .d. Argument, not ~uppos it ion , must have put it in his pos.e%ion. Common men find them.dves inheriting their belief<, they know not how. Th ey jump into them w ith both feet, and stand t hnc.

Philosophers must do mo re; they must fi rst get reason's license fo r them; and to th~ pTOf~ssional philrnwphic m ind the op~rat ion of procur ing the license is usually a thing of much mOre pith and momen t than any particular beliefs TO which the license m'ly gi"e the rights of accesS. Suppose, for =ample, that a phi losoph~r beli" 'es in what is called f",e -will. That a common man alongside of hi m shou ld al.o share that belief, possessing it by a sort of inborn intu ition , do~s 1lot ~ndear th~ man to the ph ilo
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

The simple -minded believer in f...,e -wil l would be disregarded by either. Neit her a. ally nor a. opponent would hi, vote be counted. I" a measu..., Ih i, is douhtless as it should be, hu t lih all prof.. .ionalism it can go to abusive extreme •. The end i. after all more than Ihe way, ill mosllhings hllmall, and form$ an d methods may easily frlls trate Iheir own p"'l)Ose. ll'e abll,e of lecbnicality is seen in the infrequency wilh wh ich, in philo.ophica l literature, metaphysical <juestions arc discu •• ed direclly and on Iheir own merils. A lmost always t hey arc handled a. if through a heavy woole n curtain , t he ve il of previous philosophers' opinions. A ltnnat ives arc w rapped in proper names, as if il werc indcc.nt for a t ruth to go naked. The late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about this. 'Thought,' he says,' is not a professiona l matter, nol something for so- called philo.opher. only or for profe ..ed thin kers. The best philosopher is the man who can think most simply. I wish that people would consider that thought - and philosophy is no more than good and methodical thought - is a matter i"timat~ to them, a port ion of their real sdves that t hey w ou ld value what they think, and be intuestcd in it .... In my ow n opin ion,' he goes on, 't here is something depressing in this weighl of1earn ing, wit b noth ing t hat can come into one·s mind but one is told, Oh, that is t h e opin ion of weh and such a p~rson long ago . ... I can conceive of nothing more nox ious for students t han to get into the habit of saying to t hem.elves about their ordinary ph ilosophic t hought, Oh, .omebody must have thoughl it all before:' Yet thi s is the habit most encouraged at Our scats oflearning. You must t ie your opinion to Aristotle's or Spinoza's; you must define it by its dist ance from Kant'., you must re fute your rival's view by identifying it wit h Ptotagoras's. Thus do .. all spontane ity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed . Everything you touch is shopworn. 11'e over-technical ity and conSe<jUenl drearines s of th e younger disc iples at our american un ivers ities is appall ing. It comes from too much following of german models and manners. Let me fer vent ly upress t he hope Ihat in Ih is country you wi ll hark back 10 the more huma ne english t radit ion . American students have to regai n direct relalion. with O"r subject by pa inful individual effort in laler life. Some of us have done so. Some of the younger ones, I fear, ne,·er w ill, so strong arc the professional shop - habits already. In a .ubject like philo.ophy it i. really falal to lo.e connexion wit h the open air of human nature, an d to think in terms of shop-tradition only. I n G erman)" the forms arc .0 professionalized that anybody ) Expl,,~tio plJil.",phi,o. p.."t 1. ,$65, 1'1'. xxxv;;;. ')"

THE rYPES Of J'Hll.05OPHlC

TH II< ~I ~

who has ga ined a te ach ing chai r and written a book, however distorted and ecce ntric, has the legal right to figure forever in the his tory of t he subject like a fly in amhe r. All later comers have the duty of quoti ng him and measuring their opinions w ith h is op in ion. Such arc the r ules of Ihe profes sorial game - Ihey t h in k and w rite from each ol hn and (or each Olher and at each ot her exclusively. \V il h Ihis exclusion of Ihe open air all tru e perspect ive gets lost, ex tremes and oddities count as much a. >;'nit ies, and command the .ame al!ention ~ and if by chance anyone w rites popu larly and about result s only, with his mind d irectly focu ssed on the subject , it is reckoned oberjlo
n

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

Let me repeat once more t h at a m an's vision is the great fact about him . W ho cares for Carlyle 's reasons, or Schopenhauer's, or Spencer'.? A phi losophy is t he expre<sion of a m :m's int imale characler, and all ddi n itions of the universe arc but the deliberately adopted reactions of human characters upon it. In Ihe rece nt book from whic h I quoled Ihe word s of Professor Paulsen , a book of successive chapters by various living german phi losophers,' we pass from one idiosyncratic personal at mosphete into anN her almost as if we were lurning OVer a photograph alburn _ I f we t ake the w hole h istory of philosophy, th e systems reduce themselves to a few main Iypes Wh ich , unde r all th e t ech nical vetbiage in which the ingenious int ellect of man envelops them, arc just so many vis ions, modes of feel ing th e whole pus h, and see ing the whole drift of life, forced on one by ones total ch aracler and experience, and on the w hole pr~ftrred - the .. is no othet truthfu l word - as one's best working anirude . Cynical ch aract ers ta ke one general anirude, sympathetic characte rs an oth er. Aut no genera l att itude is poss ible tow ards the world as a w hole , until the intellect h as d eveloped consid erable ge neralizing pow er and learned to t ake ple asure in synthe t ic formu las . 111e thought of very primit ive men has ha rdly any lincture of philosophy. Natu re can have lin le unity for savages. It is a Wa lpurg is-n acht procession, :l checke red play of lig ht :l nci shaciow, a med ley of imp ish and elfish friend ly and in imical pow ers. 'C lose to n alUre' tho ugh they li" e, they arc anyth ing but W ordswor th ians. If a bi t of cosm ic emotion ev er thr ills them, it is likely to be at midn ight, when t he camp smoke rises stra ight to the wicked fu ll m oon in the zen ith , and the forest is all whispering with witchery and da nger. lhe eeriness of th e worl d, the m ischief and the ma nyness, t l,C littl eness of the forces , the magi cal surpr ises , the unaccountability of eve ry agent , these surdy arc th e characlers most im press ive al t hat stage of culture, th ese communicat e the thrills of curiosity and the earl iest intellectual slirrings. Tempcsts and confl agrations, pestilences and ea rt hq u akes, re veal supramunda n e powers , and instigate religious terror rather than ph il osophy. Nature, more d ~monic tha n d ivine, is above all th ings muftifor;ouJ. So ma ny ~rcatures that feed Or t h reate n, that help Or crush, so many bei ngs to hate or love, t o unders t and or sta rt at - w h ich is on t op and wh ich subordinate? \V ho can tell? "rhey arc co- ord inate, rather. and to adapt ou rsd'·es to them singly, 10 'squa re' t he dangerous powe rs and keep th e others frie nd ly, regardl~ss of consistency or un it y, is the chief prob lem. ~

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T."b"". '907-

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THE rYPES Of J'Hll.05OPHlC

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The symbol of nature at thi s stage, a s Paulsen w ell says, is the sphinx, unde r whose nour ishing breasts th e tearing claws arc vi.ible. But in due cour<e of time t he illiellcct awoke, with its passioll for genera lizing, simplifyillg, and subordinatillg, and then began those diverge nces of conceptioll whic h all hter experience Seem. rather to have decpelled than to h ave effaced , because objective nature h as con tribu ted to both sides impartially, and has let the t hi nkers emphas ize different pan, of her. and pile up opposi te imaginary su pple ments. Perhaps the m ost interest ing opposition is that which results from the clash between what I lat ely called the sympathet ic and the cynical tempu. Mater ial istic and spiritualist ic ph ilosophies are the rival ty pes that resu lt: the former defin ing the world so as to leave man's soul upon it as a soil of outside pa.scnger or alien , while the lat ter imi,t. that t he intimate and human mu st surround and underlie the brutal. This latte r is the spiritual wa}" of th ink ing. Now t here are two very disti nct types or stages in spi ritualistic philosophy, and my next purpose in th is lecture is to make t h eir cont rast ev ident. Bot h types attain the sought-for int imacy of view, but the o ne att ains it wmewhat less successfu lly I han , he other. Absolute idealism attains, I said , to the more intimate point of view;

bu t the statement need! some explanation. So far as theism represen ts the world as G od's w orld, and God as what M atthew Arnold called a magnifi ed non -natural man, it would .eem a. if the inner qual ity of , he world rem ained human, and as if Our relat ions with it might be int imate enough - for what is best in ourselves appears then also outside of ou rselves , and we and thc un iverse arc o f t he same spiritual spccies. So far, so good, th en; and one might conseque ntly as k, W hat more of intimacy do you require? To w h ich the answer is that to be like a thing i. not as intimate a relation as to be w bsta ntially fused into it, to form one continuous so ul and body with it; and that pantheistic id ea li sm , making us ent it3tivdy one w ith G od, all ains this higher reach of int imac}". l he t heistic conception, picturing God and h is creation as entit ies distinct from each other, st i11 leaves the human subject outside of t he deepest reality in t he uniVerse . God is from eternity complete, it says , and sufficient unto h imsel f: he t hrows off the world by a free act and a. an exTra neous subs t ance, and he throw s off man a. a third sub stance, extraneous to both the world and himself. Between them, God oays 'one ,' the world says 'two,' and man says 'thre e: - that is the orthodox theistic view. And ort hodox theism has becn so jealous of God's glory that it has ta ken pains to exaggerate eV"Tything in t he notion of

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

him that could mak~ for isolation and s e pa raun~ss . Pag~ upon pag~ in scholast ic books go to provc th~t G od is in no scnsc impl icatcd by hi. cr~ativ~ act , or involv~d in his cr~ation . '[hat hi s rdation to th~ cr~atur~s he has m ade should make ~ny d ifference ro him . c~rry any consequence, or qlulify his bcing, is repudiated~, a panlheislic slur upon h i, self-suffkingne,s. 1 said a moment ago th~t th eism treats Us and God as of the same species, but from t he orthodox po int of view th at was a slip of languagc. God and hi. CrealurcS arc toto gtnae distinct in thc scholast ic theo logy, they have absolutely nothing in co mm on: nay, it degrades God to attributc t o hi m any gencric nat urc whatcver; he Can bc classcd with not h ing. Th~re is a sense, t hen, in w h ich philosoph ic theism makes us outsiders and kups us fore ig ners i n rd ation to God, in which, at any ral e, h is connCJ< ion wilh u. appears as unilatera l and nol reciprocal. H is ac tion can aff~ct us, but he can never be affect~d by ou r reaction. Our relation . in short, is not a strictly soci~l relation . Of course in common men's religion t h~ relation is believed to b~ roe ial, hut that is o n ly one of the many differences bet ween religion ~nd theology. This essentia l d ualism of t he theistic view has all rorts of collatera l eo",equ enen. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to G od, not hi, i ntim~te parmer, a character of extern alit y invades the field. God is not

heart of Oll r heart and rea~on of ou r rea~on, but ou r magistrate, rat her: and mechanically to obey h is commands, however strange th~y may be, remains our only mora l duty. Con .. cptions of crirninallaw have in fact played a great part in defin ing Oln relations wilh him. Our relat ion. with speculative truth show the sam~ extern ality. One of our dut ies is to know truth, and ral iona list thinkers hu,'c always assumcd it 10 be ou r sov~reign duty. Ru t in sc holast ic th eism we find truth already instituted and establi shed without our help, complete apart from our know ing; and the most we can do is to ac k nowledge it passively and adh el"<: to it, altho such ad hes ion as ours ca n m ake no jot of difference to wh~t is adhered to. The situation here aga i n is radically dua listic . It is not as if the world came to k now itself, or God came to know himself, partly through us, as pantheistic idea li sts have ma intained, but t ruth exists p~r It and abso lutely, by God's grace and decree, no mailer who of
THE rYPES Of J'Hll.05OPHlC

TH II< ~I ~

rdigious p"r.ons, on the one hand, and the formal or aest het ic superiorities of monism to dualism , on the other, kept producing. Go d as intimate soul and reason of the universe has always seemed to some people a more worthy conception than G od as external creator. So conce ived, he appeared to un ify t he world mOre perfectly, he made il less fin ite and mechanica l, and in comparison w it h SUdl a God an external creator seemed more like the prod uct of a childish fancy. I have been told by Hindoos that the great obstacle to t he spread of Christian it y in their cou ntry is the puerility of our dogma of creation. It has not sweep and infinity mough to meet the requirements of eVen the illiterate nat ives oflndia. Assured ly m os t member. of t h is audie nce arc ready to side w ith H induism in this matter. Those of u s who are sexagenarians have witne,"ed in our own persons one of those gradual mutation. ofintcllc ctual climate, du e t o innumerabl e infiuenc",s, that ma ke the thought of a past generation seem as fore ign to its successor as if il were the expression of a different raCe of men. "Ihe theological machinery that spoke sO livingly to o ur ancestors, with its finite age of t he w orld, its creat ion out of noth ing, its juridical morality and eschatology, it, relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of God as an external contriver, an 'intel l igent and moral governor; sounds as o dd to most of us as if it wue !lOme

ou tlandish

~avage

religion. 'Ihe vaster vistas which scien ti fic evolution-

ism has opened, and the ris ing tide of socia l democrat ic idea ls, have changed the type of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsokte Or obsokscent. 'Ihe place of the divine in the world must be more o rganic and int imate. An external creator and hi, inst itutions may still be verbally con fessed at Chu rch in formulas th at li nge r by their mere inertia, but the life is out of t hem, we avoid dwelling on them, the sincere heart of us is elsewhere. I shalllcave cynical materia lism entirely out of our discussion as not call ing for treatment before this present audience, and 1 shall ignore old-fash ioned dualistic t heism for the same reason. Our contem porary m ind having once for all grasped the possibility of a more intimate Wdfar/$,hpllur/g, the on ly opi nions quitt worthy of arresting ou r attention wi ll fall within the ge neral scope of what may rough ly be ca lled the pantheistic field of vision, th e vision of God as t he indwelling divine rather than t he external creator, and of human life as par! and parcel of th at deep reality. A. we have found that sp iritualism in general breaks into a more intimate and a less intimate 'pec ies, so the m ore intimate species itself breaks into two su bspecies, of which the one is more monistic, t h e ot h er more plura list ic in form. I say in form, for o ur vocahu l"ry gets unman-

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

ageable if we don't distinguish bet ween form and substance here. The inner life of thi ng. must be substanti ally akin anyhow to the tende rer part s of man'. nature in any spiritual i.tic ph ilo.ophy. The word ' inti macy' probably covers the essential difference. M at erialism holds the fore ig n in Ihings to be mOre primary and lasling , il sends us to a lonely corner w il h our inl imacy. l1'e brlllal aspects overlap and out wear; refinement has the feebler and more ephemeral hold on reality. From a pragm;>tic po int of view the d ifference between living aga inst a background of foreignness and o ne of int im acy means the difference bet ween a general habit of war iness and One of trus t. One m ight call it a soc ial difference, for after all , t he common fociuf of us all is the great universe w hose children we arc. I( mat erialist ic, we m ust be suspicious of this .ocius, caut ious, t en se , on guard. I f sp iritualist ic, we may give way, embrace , and keel' no ult im ate fear. Th e cont rast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts of ot her divisions, draw n from other po ints of view th an that of foreignness and intimacy. W e have so many d ifferent businesses w ith nature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing cl asp. The phi losophic a'tem pt to define natlll"<: so that no one's businns is left out , sO that no one lies outs ide the door saying '\V here do 1 come in ?' is sure in advance to fai l. "Jhe most a philosophy can hope for is nOI to lock out any interest foreve r. No matter what doors it d oses , it must leave other doors open for t he interests which it neglects. [ h ave begun by sh utt ing ourselves up to int im;>cy ;>nd foreign ness because that makes SO generally intere sting a contrast, and because it will convenient ly introduce a farthe r contrast to which I wish this hour to lead . l he major ity of men are sympathe t ic. Comparntivdy few are cynics because they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists arc such becau se they th in k th e ev idence of facts impel s them, or becau se they find the idealist s they arc in contact with too privat e and tender-minded; so, rather than join thei r company, t hey fly to the opposite extreme. [ t herefore propose to you to disregard materialists altogeth er for the present , and to consider the sympathetic party alone. It is norma l. [ say, 10 be sympat hetic in the sen!;e in whi~h [ usc the term. Not t o demand intima te relat ions with the universe, and not to wish them satisfactory, shou ld be accounted .igns of .omel h ing wrong. Accordingly wh en minds of Ihi s type reach the philo,or h ic level , and seek som e u n ification o f the ir vision, the y find themselves compelled to correct th at aboriginal appearance of th ings by w h ich savage. arc not trou bled. l hat sphinx-li ke pr .. ence, w ith it. bre a.ts

THE rYPES Of J'Hll.05OPHlC

TH II< ~I ~

and claw" that first bald mult ifar iousness, is too discrepant an object for philosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be written down as simply coexisting. An ord .. must be made; and in th at order the higher side of things must dominat e. Th e phiIOiOp hy of the absolule agrees widl the plu ralistic phi losophy which I am going to contrast with it in th ese lectures, in that both identify human subst ance w ith the divine substance. But whereas absolu ti sm think. that the ,aid substance becomes fully divine on ly in the form of total ity, and is not its rea l sdf i n any form but the til/- form , the pluralistic view which I prefer to adopt is willing to believe that there may ultimat ely never be an all- form at all, that the subsrance of rea lity may never get tota lly collected, that some of it may rema in outside of the largest combination of it ever made, and that a dist r ibut ive form of realit y, the ~tI(h-form, is logically a. acceptable and empirically as probable as the all- form common ly acquiesced in as so obviously lhe self- evident t h ing. l he contrast between t h ese two forms of a rea lity which w e will agree to suppose substa nt ially spiritual is practically the topic of this course of lectures. You sec now w h at I mean by pant heism's two subspecies. [fwe give to the monistic slibspecies the name of philosophy of the absolute, we may give that of radical emp iricism to its plu ralist ic riva l, and it may be well to dist inguish them occMionally later bv t hese names. As a convenient way of entering into the ,tudy of their differences, [ may refer to a reCent art icle by Ptorn. or Jack, of Manchester College. Professor Jacks, in some bri ll iant pages in the 'H ibbert Jou rnal' for last Octobe r. stlidies the relation between lhe universe and the philosopher who describes and defines it for us. YOli may assume tw o cases, h. says. E ither what the philosopher tells us is extraneous to t he universe he is accolinting for, an indifferent paras itic olitgrowth, so to sp~ak; or t he fact of his philosoph izi ng is itsel f one of the things taken accou nt of in the philosophy, an d sel f-i ncluded in t he description. In t he former case the ph ilowpher means by the lIn iverse everything txapt what h is own presence br ings; in t he latter case h is philosophy is itself an int imate part of th~ univers~. and may be "PaIt momentoUs enoligh to g ive a different turn to what the other parts sign ify. It may be a supreme reaction of the un;verse lIpon itself by w h ich it r ises to self- comprehension. It may handle it.e1f differently in consequence of this event. Now both empiricism and absolutism bring t he phi losopher inside and make man intimate, but the one being plnralistic and t he ot h er mon istic, they do so in differing ways that need mlich explanation. Let

"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

me the n contrast the one wit h t he othe r way of represe nti ng the st allls oft he human t h in ker. For monism the w orld is no c(lllectio", but one great all-inclusive fact outside of wh ich is nothing - noth ing is it s only alternative. W he n Ihe monism is idea lis tic, Ihis all- enveloping fael is represen ted as an absolute mind t hat makes t he pa r lial facts by Ih in king them,just as We ma ke objec," in a dream by dream ing them, or personages in a story by imagin ing t hem . To be, on Ihis scheme, is, on the part of a finile thing, to be an objec t for the absolute; and on the part of the absolute it is to be t he thinker of th"t assemblage of objects. If We usc the word 'content' here, we see t h at t he absolute and the world have an identica l content. Th e absolute is noth ing but the knowledge of t hose objects; the objects arc nothing but wh at the absolute knows. The world and the all-t hi nker thus compenetrate and soak each ot he r up without residuum. They are but two na m es tor the same identica l mater ial, consid ered now from the subjective, and now from the objective point of view - gedanke and gedachtes, as we would say if we w ere G ermans. W e philosophers n alll rally form pari of the material, on t he monistic scheme. Th e absolute makes us by thinking us, and if We ourselves arc enlighlcned enough to be believers in the absolute, one may then say t h at our philosophizing is one of t he ways in which t h e absolute is conscious of its elf. °Jh is is t he full pantheist ic sche m e, the ;dmt;tanrph;lojoph;~, the imma nence of G od in his creation, a concept ion sublime from its tremendous un ity. And yet that unity is incomplete , as closer exam inat ion wi ll show. ll,e absolute and the w orld are one fact, I said, when m ateria lly cons idered . Our phi losophy, for example, is not nume r ica lly distinct from the absolute's ow n knowledge of itself, not a duplicate and copy of it, it is pari of that very knowledge. is nume r ically ident ical w ith as much of it as our though t cOVers. l1,e absolu te just is our philosophy, along with everyth ing else that is known, in an act of knowing w h ich (to usc the words o f my gifted absolutis t colleague R oyce) for ms in its whole ness one luminously tran sparen t conscious moment. But one as we ar~ in this m at .. ial sense with the absolute subsran "", that being only the whole of us. and We only the parts of it, yet in a formal sense some thing like a pluralism bre aks out. \Vhen we speak of t he absolute we la"~ the one un i"e"a l know n material co llect ively Or integra lly; when we speak of it. objects, of ou r finite scl"es, etc., We talu that same identica l material distr ibut ively and separately. But what is the usc of a thing'. bdng only once if it can be takm twice over, and if bei ng taken ill different ways makes d ifferent th ings t rue of it? As th e

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THII<~I~

absolute takes me, for example, I appear with everything else in its field of perfect knowledge. A. I t ake myself, I appear witbout most ot h er things in my fi eld of relative ignorana. And praetical difference s result from it s knowledge and my ig norance. Ignora nce breeds mista ke, curiosily, misfortllne, pain, for me ; I sllffer those consequenecs. 111e absolute kn ows of those things, of course, for it know s me and my suffering, but it doesn't itsd f suffer. It can't be ignorant, for simultaneous w ith it s knowledge of each que.tion goes it s k nowledge of each ansWer. h can 't be patient, for it has to wait for not hing, having everythi ng at once in its possess ion. It can't be .urpr iscd; il can't be guilty. N o al1r ibUle COnnected w it h succession ca n be applied to it, for it is all at once and wh olly wh at it is, 'with the unity of a single inst ant,' and succession is not of it but in ii , for we are continua lly lold t h at it is 'timeless: Things true of th e world in its fin ite aspects, t hen , are not t rue of it in its infinite capacity. Qua finite and plura l its accounts of itself to itself are different from what its account to it sel f 'lUI> infinite and one must be. Vo/it h this rad ical d iscrepancy between the absolute and the relative point s of view. it seems to me that almost as great a bar to intimacy between the d ivine and the human breaks out in panthei sm as that wh ich we found in monarchical theism, and hoped t hat pantheism might nol

show. Vic hu mans arc incurably rooted in the temporal point of view. Th e et ernal's ways are utterly unlike our wa~·s. 'L et us imit ate the A ll ,' said t he or igina l prospectus of that adm irable C h icago quarte rly called the '1\1onist .' A s if We could, either in thought or conduct! We arc invincibly parts, let us ta lk as we will, and must always apprehend the absolute as ifit were a foreign being. If wh at I mean by t h is is not w holly clear to you at t his point, it o ught to grow dear er as my lectures proceed

"

LEC TURE

II

MO N1SflC I DEALISM LET me reca ll to you the programme which I indicat ed to you at our last meeting. A fter agreeing n Ot 10 consid or matcr ;,ti ism in any shape, bu t to pia"" ourselves stra ightw ay upon a more spi ritualistic p latform, I po inted out t hree ki nds of spiritu a l philosophy between which w e arc ashd to choose. 'The fi rst way wa , that of the older dualistic thci~m, with ourselves represented as a secon dary order of .ub.ta""'" crealed by God. \Vc found t h at this allow ed o f a degree o f int imacy with t h e

ctf:l.rivc princ iple in fuiot To that i mplied ;n the p:l.o!hcisric belief tha! we arc substantially one with it, and t h at t h e divine is therefore the

most inl im"lc of all our posscssiom, heart of our hearl, in fact . But we saw t hat this pant heist ic bel ief could be held in t wo forms, a monistic form which I called philosophy of the absolute, and a pluralistic form which I ca lle d radical empirici sm, the former conce iving that the d ivine ex ists authentica lly only when the world is experienced all at once in it s absolute tota lity, whereas radica l empi r icism allows that the absolute sum- total of t hings may never be actua lly expcrienc~ d or realized in that shape at all, and th at a d isseminated, d istributed, or incomple tely unified appearance is t he on ly form lhat rea lity may yet have achie."ed. I mar cont rast the monistic and plu ralistic forms in question as th e 'all- form· and t he ·each-wrm.' At t he end of the las t hour I animadverted on the fact that the all-form is so radically di fferen t from the each-form, which is our human form of experiencing the world, that t h e philosophy of t he absolute, so far as insight and understand ing go, leaves us almost as much outside of the divine being a. dua listic theism docs. I believe that radica l empiricism, on t h e cont ra ry, hold ing to the each-form, and m"king of God only One of the caches , "ffords the higher degree of int imacy. The genera l the sis of these lectures I said would be a defence

22

of th~ pluralistic against th~ monistic view. Th ink of t he universe as ex isting .olely in the each-form, and you will h~"e on the whole ~ more ",asonable and satisfactory id~a of it than if you insist on the ail-form be ing necessary. The rest of my lecture. will do linle more t han make this the sis more concrete, and I hope more persuasive. It is curious how linle countenance radical pluralism has ever had from philoso phers. 'V herher m~ter ialistica11y or .pirituali.tically minded, philo.ophers have always aimed at clea ning up th e litter with wh ich the w orld appare ntl~· is fi lle d. Th~y have subst itu ted econom ical and o rderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whethe r t hese were mora lly devat~d or only inte llectually neat t hey were at any rate always aest hetically pure and defi nil~ , a nd aimed at ascribing to the world something dean and inte llect ual in t he way of inner struct ure. A s com par~d wit h all th e s~ rationa lizing pictures, the plurali stic empir ic ism wh ich I profess offers but a .orry appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of all affa ir, without a sweeping out line and with little pictor ial nobility. Th ose of you who are accustomed t o the classical const ructions of reality may be excused if your first re~etion upon it be absolu te cont empt - a shrug of the shou lders as if slich ideas werc unworthy of explicit refutation. But o ne must have lived some time with a system to

appreciate its meriu. Perhaps a little more familia rity may mitigate you r first sur prise at such a programme as I off~r. First, One word more th an what I sa id last time about the relative foreignne ss of the divine pr inciple in t he philosophy of the absolute. Th ose of you who have read the last two ch apters of Mr. Bradley's w onderful book, 'A ppea rance and reality; will remember what an elaboratdy foreign asp~ct hir absolute is fillally made to assum~. It is neithe r intelligence nor will, ne ither a sel f nor a coll ection of . elves, ne it her truthfu l, good, nor beallli flIl, as we lInderstand these terms . It is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all t hat we are per mitted to say of it being that what ever it is, it is at anv rate warth more (w orth more to it self, th at is) thall if any eulogistic adject i"es of o urs applied to it. It is liS, and all o ther appearances, but none of us 'Ii .urh, for in it we are all 'transmuted,' and its oW n as -su~hness i. of another denomination alt og ether. Spinoza was t he first great absolutist , and the impossibility ofbting intimate with hi. God is universally recognized. Quat",,,. i".ftnitu. est he is o t her than what he is 'luat~"u. humanam m."t~m cQn.tituit. Spino'~a's philosophy has been rightly sa id to be worked by the word '7"al",,,s. Conju nctions, prepositions, and adverb. play indeed the vital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idea lism the words 'as' and 'q ua' bear

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

the burd." of reconci ling metaphysical unity wit h ph."omenal diversity_ Qua absolute the world is one and perfect, gua relative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same world - in
mu !tifar iousn~ .. ,

for only in t h at world does anything really happen, only t h~re do events come to pass. In one sense thi s is a far-fetched and rat her chi ld ish obj ection, for so much of the history of the finite is as formidablv foreign to us as t he stat ic absolute can pos sibly be - in fact , hat ent ity derives it s own foreign ness largely from the bad character of t he linite which it simli itaneously is - that this sent ime nt al reason for preferring t he pluralistic view Seem S small.' I sh,tll reTurn 10 the subject in my lina l lecturc, and meanwh ile, with you r p~rmi .. ion, I will say no more about this objec tion. 'Ihe more sO as t he necessa ry foreignness of t he absolute is cancelled ~ motionally by its attribute of totality, which is univ~rsally consider~ d to carry the furth~r attribute of pn:ftttion in its trai n . 'Philosophy,' says a recent american ph ilosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality: and t here is no doubt that mosl of us find Ih al the bare notion of an absoll1l~ allone is inspi ring. '1 yielded myself to t he perfect whole: wr ites Emerson; and where can you lind a more mind- dilati ng object' A cer t ain loyalty is ca lled forth by the idea; even if not pro"ed actua l, it must be bel ieved in somehow. Only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly of it. Rationali sm st arts from the idea of such a whole and builds downward. M ovement and change are absorbed into its immutability as forms of me re appeannee. \Vhen you ~ccept t h is beat ifi c vision of what iI, in contrast with wh at gon on, you feel as if you had fulfilled an intellectual duty. ·Realit y is not in it s truest nature a proces.; Mr. M cT aggart td ls us, ·but a stable and timeless state:" 'l he true knowledge of God begins,' H~gel wrius, \vhen w e know that t h ings as they imm~diately arc have no trUlh: 7 ·'rhe consummation of t h e infinite aim: he says elsewhere, 'consist, merdy in .. moving the illusion which ma kes it seem yet unaccomplished. Good and absolute goodness is eternally accomplishi ng itself in t he world: and the result is t hat il needs not wait upon liS, but is already. accomplishe d . It is an i ll usion under which we live. In the course of its process the Idea m akes itself that illu sion , by setting an antithesi s to confront it, and its ac tion consists in getting rid oCt h e illusion which it has created." But abstract emotional appeals of any kind sound amateu rish in the business that con cerns us. Im press ionistic ph ilosophizing , l ik~ im; The difi"ere!\co i. [h.[ [he b>d parts of th;. fin;" ar< "<mal and « <e"tial for .boolu t; ... , whore •• plural;,,, may hop< th.t they wdl eventu.lly get sloughed off .nd become os ;f they had not b«n . 6 Quoted by W . W allace: Lnl"'" and E""Y', Oxford . 1898, p. 560. 7 LeXi,.!<. \Val!., •. t S7~, I' IS[ S 'hid_. 1'- 304 -

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

pressionistic watchmaking or la nd -survey ing, is intolerable to experts . Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces me, there fore, to become more technical. l h e great do;", of the ph ilosophy of the abso lute is that t h e absolute is no hypot hesis, but a presuppos it ion implicated in allihin king, and needing only" lillie effo rl of ana lysis to be secn as a logical necess ity. I will therefore take it in this more rigorou$ character and see whether it s claim is in effect so coercive. It h ;t, seemed coercive to ;tn enOrmOu, number of C01l1Cmporaneous thinkers. Professor Henry Jone s thus d escribes the range and inHuenee of it upon t he social and pol it ica l life of the present time: " For ma ny yea rs adherents of th is way of thought have deeply interested the brit ish public by their writing~. Al most m ore important than t heir wr itings is the fac t that they have occup ied philosophical chair> in almost every univeroity in the k ingdom. Even th e profe..ional crit ics of idealism arc for th e most part idea lists - after a fa shion. And when they are not , th ey are as a rule mOre occup ied w it h Ihe re fu t ati on of idealism th an with the cons t ruction of a bette r theory. It follow s from the ir posit ion of academ ic au t hor ity, w ere it from noth ing el se, t hat idealism exercises an inHuenec not easily measured upon the youlh of the nat ion - upon those , that is, who from the educat iona l opportuni-

ties they enjoy may natu rally be expected to become the leaders of the na t ion's thought and practice ... Difficult as it is t o m easure the forces it is hard ly t o be den ied th at the po wer exercised by Bentham and the utilitar ian school has . for bette r Or for wone, pa ssed into t he hand. of the ideal ists .... "The Rhine has How ed into t he Tham es~ is t he warning note ru ng out by Mr. H obhouse. Carlyle introduced it, br inging it as far as Chelsea.lllenJowett an d Thomas I-lill Cr.en, and \Villiam \Vallace and Lewis N ettlesh ip, and Arnold Toynbee and D avid E itchie - to mention on ly those teachers whose voices now an: silent - guided Ihe walers into those upper reaches known loca lly as the Isis. John and E dward Caird brought them up t he Clyde , H utch ison Stirling up the Firth of Fort h. 'TIley h ave passe d up the MeISey and up Ihe Severn and Dec and Don. Th ey pollu t e the bay of St. A ndrew s and sw ell th e wat ers of the Cam, and h ave som ehow crept overlan (l into Bir minghlm. ·Ihe st ream of ge rm an idea lism has been d iffuse d over the academica l world of G reat Britain. the disaster is universal.' Evident ly if weight of author it y were all, the truth of ab.olutism would be thus de cided. But let us first pass in review t he genual style of arg um entat ion of t hat philosophy. 9

C. nU"'p"ra,J' R,,,'...w, De«n,b<-,. '9"7, .<)1. 9'. p. 6,$.

26

As I read it, its favorite w ay of meN ing plura lism and empiricism is by a r,duaiu ad absurdum framed somewhat as follows: You contend, it says to the pluralist, that t hings, th ough in som e ,"pects connect ed , are in ot her respects independe nt, so t hat t h ey arc not members of one allinclusive ind ividua l fact. \!Vel1, you r pMition i$ absurd on either point. For admit in fact t he slightest m odicu m of independen ce, and you find (if you w i!! on ly thin k accurately) that you ha'·e to adm it more and m ore of it , until ;tt last nothing but an ;tbso lute chaos, or the proved impossibility of any connexion whatever betw een the paris of the universe, rema ins upon YOllr hands. Admit, On the Nher hand, the most incipient m inimum of relation between any two th ings, and agai n you can't stop unt il you sec that the absolute unity of all thi ngs is implied. If we take the latter reduaiu ad absurdum fir>! , we find a good example of it in L ot7-c's we ll-k nown proof of monism from th e fact of interaction between finite things. Suppose, Lone .ays in effect, and for si mpli city's sa ke I have to raraphra~e him, for h is own words are too long to quote - many disti nct beings a, D, r, etc., to exist independently of each other: ran a in that (au rvn ad on or \Vh at is it to act) Is it not to exert an influence? D oes the influence detach itsel f from a and find br I f so, it is a thi rd fact, and the problem is not how (I acts, bu t how it s ' influence· ~c t ~ on b. By ~noth er influence perhaps? And how in the end does the chain of influmces find b rather th an , unless b is somehow prefigured in them already? And wh en they have found b, how do Ihey make b respond , if b has noth ing in common wit h them? \!Vhy don't they go right t hrough o? The change in b is a rupo"u, due 10 b', capac it y for taking account of as influe nce, and that aga in seems to prove that o's nature is somehow fitte d to Il'. nat ure in advance. a and b, in short. arc not really as distinct as we at first sllpposed tbem, not separated by a void. W ere this so they wouid b~ mutually impenetrable , or at least mutually irr elevant. l hey would form two un iverses each living by it self, mak ing no d ifference to each other, tak ing no accou nt of each other, mllch as the un;ve(';e of your day dreams takes no account of mine. Th ey must therefore belong togethe r before hand, be co -implicated already, their natures must have an inborn mutua l reference each to each. L otze's ow n solution runs as follows: The multiple independent things .upposed cannOt be real in t h"t .hape, but all of them, if reciproca l action is to be poss ible between them, must be regarded as part. of a single real being, M. The pluralism with which our view began has to

27

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

g ive p lace to a monism; and the 'transeunt' interaction, being u nin telligible as such, is to be understood as an imma n ent operation." 'Ihe words 'immanent operat ion' ",em here to mean t hai th e single real be ing M, of which il a n d b are members, is t h e o nly thing that changes, and th ai whe n il changes , it changes inwardly and all oVer at once. W hen pa rt a in it changes, conseqllently, part b mllst also change, but without the whole M ch anging this would not occu r. A preuy argu ment . bul a pu rely verbal one, as r appre h end it. e lll! your il and b distinct, they can't interact ; ,alf them one, they can. For taken abst ractly and without qua li fication the words 'distinct' and 'in dependent' suggest only disconne ction. If this be the only property of your a and b (an d it is t h e o nly property your words imply), then of course, .ince you can't deduce their mutual influence from it, you can find no grou n d of it s occu r ring between them. Your bar. word 'separate; conuadicting your bare word 'joined: seems to exclude connexion. Lotze's remedy for the imposs ibil it y thu~ verba lly found is to change the first word. If, instead of calling a and b independent, we n ow call them ' interdependent ,' 'united,' or ' on e,' he says, thtl. words do not contradict any
t"

Uttaphy';<, ><,_69 If_

it utundum quid. Only when w e know what the process of inte rac tion literally and concretely conJ;sts in can we tell whether being> independent in d'.finit~ rupuls, d ist inct, for example, in or igin, separate in place, diffe rent in kind, etc. , can or can not interact. 7lu tr~tlting of tI n"'n~ tiS <"duding from th~ fla nam~d what Ih~ ntlm~'s d'.finition f";/s positiv~/y 10 ;ndud,. is 'U·htll I ",II 'vit;ous inldfutuollim. · L ater I sh all have m ore to say about th is intellectua lism , but that Lotze's argurnont is tainted by it I hardly think We ca n deny. As we ll m ig ht you contend (to usc an instance from S ig w art) that a person whom you have once called an 'equestria n' is thereby forever rnade un ab le to walk on his own feet. I almost feel as if I should apologize for criticising such subtle arguments in rapid icct ures of this kind. lbe criticisms have to be as abst ract as the arguments, and in exposi ng their un",a lity, ra h on such an unreal sound t hemselves that a hearer not nursed in t he intellect ualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse . Rut I~ V;tI ~sl v~rJt, il fout f~ bo;r~, and I must cite a couple more instances be fore I stop. Ifwe arc empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe th at bein~ may first exist and feed sO to spea k on th eir own existence, and the n secondarily become know n to one anoth er. But philosophers of the absolute t ell us t hat such indcpmdcnec of being from bei ng know n wo uld, if o nce admitted, disintegrate the un iverse beyo nd all hope of mend ing. 1he argument is one of l'ro fessor Royce's proof. that the only alternative We have is to choo.e the com plete disun ion of all things or their complete union in the absolute One. Take, for in.tance, the proverb 'a cat may look at a k ing' and adopt the realistic vi ew t hat the king'. being is independen! of the cat's w itnessing . 1h is assumpt io n, wh ich amounts to sayi ng that it need make no essentia1 difference to the roya l object whether the fd ine subject cognizes him or not , that the cat rn a)' look away from him or may eve n be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged , - this ass umpt ion, I say, is consid ered by my ingeniou s colleague to lead to the absu rd prac t ical conseguence th at the two be ings (on neve r later acgu ire any possible li nk ages Or connexions. but must remai n eternally as if in d ifferent worlds . For suppose any con ne xio n whatever to ensue, this connex ion wou ld sim ply be a third being ad dit ional to the cat and the king, which would it sdfha"e to be linked to both by additional links before it cou ld connec t them , and so on ad infinitum, the argument, you see , being the same a, Lotze's about how ,,'s influe nce docs it, influencing wh en it influences b.

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

In Royce's own w ords, if the k ing can be without the cat k nowi n g him , then k ing and cat 'can have n o common feafUres, n o t ic. , no true relat ions; they are separated, each from the other, by ahsolutely impass ab le chasms. They can n eve r come to get either t ies or comm u nity of narure; t hey arc not in Ihe same space, n or in Ihe same l ime, nor in the same natural or spiritual order: " ll, ey form in shorl t wo unrda.led universes, - w hich is the r~d"ctio ad abiurdum requ ired . To esc"pe this p reposterous stme of thing. We must accordin gl~ revok e the orig inal hypot h esis. Th e ki ng and t he cat are not in d iffere nt to each other in t he way .upposed . Bu t if not in that way, then in no way, for connexion in that way carr ies connexion in other w ays; so that, p u rsuing the reverse l ine of reasoning, we end with t he absolute itself as the smallest fact that ca n exist. C a t and ki ng a re co -involved , they are a single fact in two n ames , t hey Clln never have been absent from each oth er, and they arc bot h equally co- implicat ed w it h a ll t h e oth er facts of whi ch the u n; verse con, ;sts. P ro fessor R oyce's proo f t h at w hoso adm it s the eat's witness ing t h e king at all must thereupon admit the integral absolute , may b e b riefly put as follow, ; fiR ST , to know the k in g, the cat m ust intend that k ing, m ust som e-

how pass ol'er and lay hold orhi m individually and specifically. 'Ihe cat', idea, in short, must transcend the car's ow n separate m in d a n d some h ow include t h e ki ng, for were the king utterly outs ide and independ ent of the cat , the cat', pu re o t her, the beas!'. m ind could touch t h e king in no w ise. This mak e, t he cat much less dist inc t from the k ing tha n we had at first na ively supposed. lhere mu", be some prior continuity be twee n them, which cont; n uity Royce interpre ts idealistically as meani n g a h igher m in d t hat ow ns t hem both as objects, a n d ow n ing them can al.o own any relat ion, '"ch a, t h e supposed w itne"ing, t h at may obtai n between them . Taken purely p luralistically, neither of them can own any part of a iutwun , because, so taken , each is supposed shut u p to itself: the fact of a b~tw((" thu, commits u, to a h igher knower. But the hig h er k now er t h at know , t he t wo beings w e st art w it h proves to be the Same knower that knows cveryt h ing else. For aSSUme any t hird be ing, the q uee n, say, and as the cat k new the k ing, so let the k ing k now his queen . and let this secon d knowledge, by the ~ame rea.oning, require a h ig h er knower as its presuppos ition . 'Ihat k n ow er of the k ing's k nowing must, it i, now contended, be t he same high .. knower that w as req uired for t h e cat', k now ing; for if you suppo,e oth"

7h, W.rld and lh, !nd;v;duaf, "01. ;,1'1' Ij' - Ij'.

~)

~rwise,

you h ave no longer the lam ~ ki"g. This may not seem immediately obv ious, but if you follow the intellectua listic logic employed in all these reasonings, [ don't se~ how you can ucape the admi<sio!l. If it be true t hat the independent or indifferent cannot be related, for t he abstract words 'independent' or ' indifferent' as such imply no rdation, the n it is just as true that the k ing known by the cat cannot be the king that knows the 'luee n , for taken merely "as such; t he abstract term 'wh at the cat knows' and the abstract term \vhat knows the queen' are logically distinct. Th e king thus logicall:v breaks into t w o kings , with nothing to connect them , until a higher knower is introduced to recogn ize them as the self-same king concerned in any previou s acts of knowledge wh ich he may have brought about . Th is he can do because he possesses all the term s as hi. own objects and can treat them as he will. Add any fourth or fift h term, and you g~t a like remlt, and so on, until at last an all-owning knower, othe rwise called the absolute, i8 reached. The coimplicated 'through-and-through' world of monism thus ,tands proved by irrefutable logic, and all pluralism appears as absurd. The ",a,oning is pleasing from its ingenuit y, and it is almost a pity that so "T"-ight a bridge from abstract logic to concrete fact should not bea r our we ight . T o have the alternative forced upon us of adm itti ng e it he r tin ite I h ings each Cll l off from :Ill ",lat ion with its environment, or else of accepting the integra l absolute w it h no environme nt and all relations packed wit h in its el f, wou ld be too delicious a sim plifi cation . But the purely verbal character of the operation is undisguised. Because the "amer of fi nite t h ings and their relat ions a", disjo ine d, it doesn't follow that t he realit ies named need a d."srx machi"" from on high to conjoin them. The same thi ngs d isjoine d in one respect apptar as conjoined in another. Naming the disjunction doesn't debar us from also nam ing the conjl1nction in a later modifying statement, for the two are ab~olute1y co- ordi nate clements in the finite tissue of exper ience. \Vhen at Athens it wa s found .df- contradictory that a boy could be bot h tall and short (tall namely in respect of a chi ld, short in respect of a man), t he absolute had not ye t been thought of, bu t it might just as wdl have been invoked by Socrates as by Lotze or Roy~e , as a relief from his pecu li ar intellectualistic d ifficulty. E,'erywhere we find rationalists us ing the same kind of reasoning. 'Ihe prim al whole which is t heir vi.ion mu,t be there not on ly as a fact but as a logical necessity. It must be the m ini mum that can exist - eith .. that absolute whole is there, or fhere is absolutely nothing. The logical proof alleged of the irrationality of supposing otherwise, is that you

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

can d."y the whole only in words that implicitly assert it. If you say 'parts,' of what arc t hey parts: If you call t hem a 'ma ny,' that very word unifies them. If you su ppose Ihem unrelaled in any part icular respect, that 'respect ' con nects them; and so on. In short you fall into hopdess conlradiction. You musl Slay either at one eXlrcme or the ot her.'" Pardy this and part ly that; partly ral ional , for instance, and partly irrational, is no admissible description of the world . If rat ionality be in it at all, it mus t be in it Ihroughout; if irrationalily be in il any where, that also mus t p .. vade it throughout. It must be wholl~' rationa l or wholly irrational, pure univer~e Or pure multivcrse Or nullive.se; and reduced to this violent altern ative , no one's choice ought long to remain doubtful. The individual absolue., with it s parts co -implicated th rough and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which any other part can remain inward ly unaffected, is the only rational supposition. Con nexions of an external .on, by which the ma ny became merely cont inuous instead of bei ng consubstantia l, would be an irrationa l su pp osition. Mr. Bradley is the pattern champion of this philosophy in ex/rimi •. as one might call it, for he show, an intolerance to pluralism so extreme that I f
A n y conjunctive relation between two phenomena l experiences a and b must, in t he intellect ualist philosophy of these authors, be itself a third ."tity: and as such, instead of hridging t he one original chasm, it can o nly create two smaller chasms, each to be fresh ly br idged. Instead of hooking a to b, it needs itself to be hooked by a fresh relation r'to tl and by another r" to b. 111ese new rdations are but two more en tities wh ich themselves require to be h itched in tur n by four still newer relations - so behold the vertiginou. rtgressu! ad infinitum in full Care er. Since a regrusu. ad infinitum is d", emed absurd, the notion that relations COme 'between" their terms mu.t be given up. N o mere external go -be twee n can logica lly con nect. What occurs must be more intimate. The hooking must be a penetrat ion, a possession. The relation must in w!v~ the term s, ea~h term must involve it, and merging thus their being in it, they must som dlOW merge their being in each other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so sepamte, we can never conceive exactly how it is that they are inward ly o ne. 111e absolute, however, mu st be supposed able to perform the unifying feat in h is own inscrutable fashion . In o ld t imes, whenever a philosopher was assailed for some pa rticularly tough absu rdity in his system, he was wont to parry the attack by t he argument from the divine omnipotence. 'Do you mean to

limit G od"~ power?" he would reply, 'do you mean to say that God could nOI, if he w ould, do Ihis or that?' Th is relort was supposed to close t he mouths of all objectors of properly decorous mind. The functiom of the br~ dlcian absolute arc in this particular identica l with those of the theistic G od . Suppos it ions treated as too absurd to pass muster in the fin ite world which we inhabit, t he absolute must be able to make good 'so mehow' in hi, ineffable w ay. First we hear Mr. Brad ley convicting thing' of absurdity; next , calli ng on the ab,olute to vouch for t hem 'luand mrmr. Invoked for no o ther duty, that duty it must and shall perform. The strangest discontinu ity of our world of appearance with the supposed world of absolute reality is asserted both by Bradley and by Royce: and both writers, the latter with great ingenuity, seek to soften the viok nee o f t he jolt. But it remains violont all the same, and is felt to be so b~· most readers. Whoever feels the violen~e strongly SeeS :o S on a diagram in just what t he peculiarity of all this philosophy of the absolute consists. First, t here is a healt hy faith that t he world must be rational and self-consistent. All s~ience, all real knowledge , all experien~e presuppooe: as Mr. Ritchie write s, 'a coherent universe.' Next, we find a loyal clinging to t he rationa list belief that sense -data and their associations arc incoherent, and t hat only ill subst itu ting a con"ptual o rder for their order can trut h be

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

found. Third, th~ Sllbstitut~ d conc~ptions a", t r~at~d int~ll~ctualisticany, that is as mut ually exclusive and di~continuous, .0 t hat t he first innocent continuity of the flow of seos~-exp"ri~nce is sh attcr~d for us w ithout allY higher conceptual continu ity tak ing its place. Finally, since t his broken stale of' bin gs is intolerable, t h~ abwlUlc d~us~x macbirM is called on to mend it in his ow n way, since we cannot mend it in ours. Any other pict ure th an this of post- kantian absolutism I am unable to f,,'me. 1 sec d,c intellectualistic crit icism destroying the immed iately g iven coh~r~nc~ of th~ phenom~nal world, but unabl~ to mak~ it s own concept ual subst it utes cohere, and I Sec t he resort to the absolute for a coher~nce of a h igh~r typ~ . Th e situation has dramat ic livdin~ss, but it is inw ardly incoh~r~nt throughout, and th ~ qu~stion inev it ably com~s up whe,her a mistake may not somewhere have crept in in the process that has brought it about. May not the ",medy lie rath~r in revising the intellectua list cr iticism than in firs t adopti ng it and then try ing to undo irs consequences by an arbitrary act of fa ith in an uninte ll igible agent. M av not t he flux of sens ible experience itself contain a rationality that h as been overlooked, so t hat t he real remedy would consist in harking back to it more intelligently, and not in advancing in t he opposite d irection away from it and even away b~yond th e intellectualist criticism t h at disint~

gntes it, to the pseUdo-rationality of the supposed absolute point of vicw. I myselfbdi~\"~ that t his is th~ real way to ke~p rationa lity in t he world, and that the trad itional rationalism has alw ay" been facing in the wrong direction. I hope in t he end to make you share , o r at any rate respect, this bel ief, but th~r~ is much to talk o f befor~ w~ g~t to t hat point. I employed t he w ord ·violent· just now in describing t he dramatic situation in wh ich ;t pl~as~s the ph ilosophy of t he absolute to make its camp. I don't sec how anyone can help being struck in absolutist writings by that curious tendency to fly to violen t ex t r<:mcs of which I have alread y said a word. The universe must be rational ; well and good ; but bow rational? in what sense of that eulog istic but ambiguous word? - this would seem to be t he nnt point to bring up. 'Il,ere arc .urely degrees in rationality that m ight b~ discrim inated and describ~d. Th ings can b~ cons istent or coherent ;n very diverse ways. But no mO re in its con~eption of rationali ty than in it s conc~ption of rdations can the m onistic mind suff~r the notion of more or less. Rationa lity is o ne an d indivisible, if not rational thus indivisibly, the universe must be completely irrational , and no "hading" or m ixtur~s or compromis~s can obtain.fl.h. M cTaggart writ~s, in di<cussing th . notion of a mixtu re: 'The two pr inciples, of rationa lity and irrationa lity, to which t he univers~ is then referr~d, will h ave 10 be absolutely scparate and

indeJ>"ndent . For if thue were any common unity to w hich t hey should be referred , it would be that unity and not it. two man ifi:stations w hich would be the ultimate explanat;on ... nnd the theory, having thus become monistic,' " would resoke itsdf into the same alternative once more: is t he single pr inciple rational through and t h rollgh or not' 'Can a plurality of real s be possible?' asks Mr. Bradley, and ans wers, 'No, impossible: For it w ou ld mean a number of being. not dependent on each oth er, and this independence their plu rality would contradict _ For to be 'm any' is to be relate d, the woro having no meaning unless t he units arc somehow taken together. alld it is impossible to t ake them in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger rea lity, and so carry the essence of the units be yond t hei r proper selves, into a whole which possesses un it y and is a larger system." Either ab.olute independence or absolute mutual dependence - this, then, is the only alternat;ve allowed by these t h in kers. Of course 'i ndependence ; if absolute , would be preposterous, so t he only conclusion allowahle ;s t hat, ;n Ritchie's words, 'every single event is ultimately related to every other, and d etermined by the whole to which it belongs.' The whole complete block-uni"erse through-and-t hrough, therdorc, or no llniversc at a\11 Professor Taylor is so naifin t h is habit of thinking only in ex t rem es Ihal he charge! the plu rll ists with cu tt ing Ihe ground from und~ r Ih ei r own feet in not consis te ntly following it themselves. What pluralists say i. that a un iverse really con nected loos ely, aft er the pattern of our daily experience , is possible, and t hat for certain reaSOnS it is t he hypot hesis to be preferred. \-Vhat Professor T aylor t hinks they natu rally must or shou ld say is that any other sort of universe is logically imposs ible, and that a tota lit y of thi ngs ;nterrelated I ;ke the w orld of the mon;st s is not an hypot hesis that ca n be seriously thought out at all. " Meanwhile no sen sible phlralist evn Aies or wants to Ay to th is dogmat;c extreme. If chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutist s interpret it to mcan t hat double .evcnS arc as li kely to be thrown out of a dice box as double sixes arc. If free-will is 'po ke n of, t hat must mean that an english ge neral is as likely to cat hi s pri.oncrs la- day as a Maori chie f w as a hundred years ago. It is as likely - I am using Mr. M cT aggart's exam ples - that a major it y of Londoners w ill burn t hem.elvc. alive to -morroW as that they w ill partake of food, a. likely that I '3 ,~

'5

Sludiu in Ihe Hegelian Dialectic, p. 184R",litJ, 1893, Pl' · ' . ' -I. , _ Cf. ElTmmt, ofM""J>hJ,ia, p_88

4pjH~'~n" ~nJ

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

shall b~ hanged for brushi ng my hair as for com m irring a mu rder, " a nd so forth , through various suppositions that no ind eterminist ever sees real reasoll to make. This habit o f th in ki ng only in th~ most violent extrem~s remin ds me ofwhal Mr. W ell. says of the currenl objections to socialism, in h is wonderful linlc book, ' New world s for old: l1'e commonest vice of the human m ind is it s disposit ion to sec eve rything as yes or no, as black o r wh it e, iu incapacit y for discriminat ion of i ntermed i ~te shade., So the cr itics agree to som~ hard and fast imposs ible ddinition of socia l ism , a n d ex t ract absurdities from it as a conju rer g ets rabbits from a hat. Socialism abolishes property, abolishes the fa m ily, and the res t. The method , Mr. Wells conti n ues, is always t he sa m e: It is to assume th at whatever th e soc ialis t postuiates as desirable i. wanted without li mit of qualification, - for soc ialis t read plura l ist a n d t h e parallel holds good, - it is to imagine that wh atever proposal is made by him is to be carr ied O\lt by uncon t ro lled monoma ni aC!;, and sO to ma ke a picture o f t h e soc ialist d rocam w h ic h ca n be presented to th e simple -m inded person in doubt - 'This is socialism' - or pluralism , as the case may be . 'Surely! - SURELY' you dOll '! want this_" H ow often h ave I b un repl ied to, whe ll expressing doubts of t h e

logical necess ity ofThe absolute, of Rying to the opposite ex treme: 'Hllt sure ly, SURELY ther~ m ust be som ~ connexion among t hi ngs!' As if I muS t necessarily be an u ncontrolled monomanic insanely deny ing any connexion what ever. 'Ihe whole qu estion revolve> in ,'ery truth about the w ord 'som e: Rad ical em pi ricism a nd pluralism st and out for th~ legit imacy of t he notion of some: each pan of t he world is in some way. connect~d , in some other ways not cOll nccted with its other parts , alld the w ays ca n be discrim inat ed, for man y o f them are obvious, a nd their d ifferences a re obvious to vicw. Absolutism , on its side, seems to ho ld that 'some' is a cat cgor~' ru inously illfected w it h sdf-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly consis tent a nd there fore pertine nt to reality a re 'a ll' and 'none: The question ru ns into the still m ore general one w it h which M r. Bradley and h t cr w ritns of t he monistic school h'l"e made us "bun dand y familiar - the quest ion, namely, whet her all t he relat ions w it h ot h er things, possible to a bei ng, are pre- included in its intrins ic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to ~Ome of these rclations, it can b~ w ithout reference to them , and , if it ever does ~ n ter into them , do 00 adventit iously and as it were by an aft er- thought . Th i. is the ,6

Mm, D'l:ma, ifRd;I:;"~, 1'_ ,S ~

gr~at

question as to whe t h~r 'ext~rna]' relations can exist. They sum to, undoubtcdly. My manuscript, for cxample, is 'on' t he desk. Thc relation of being 'on' doesn·t seem to implicate or involve in any way t he innu meaning of the manuscript or t he in ner structurc of the desk - thcse objects engagc in it on ly by their outsidcs, it secms only a temporary accident in t heir respective historie$. Moreover, the ·on' fail s to appear to our senses as one of those unintelligibk ·between,' that have to be separatdy hooked on thc lcrrn$ thcy prctcnd 10 conncct. A ll th is innoccnt sense - appearancc, however, w e are told, can not pass muster in the eyes of reaSOn. It is a tissuc of self-contrad iction which only thc completc absor ption of the desk and the manuscr ipt into the higher unit y of a more absolute reality can ovucomc. Thc rca.oning by which this condu,ion i. supportcd i. too subtle and complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you will thank mc for not inv it ing you to con,idcr it at al l. " I fcel thc morc free to pa~~ it hy now a~ I think that the cur~ory account of the ab$Olutist ic att itude which J have already given is sufficient for our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of the absolu te as 'not proven· - please observe that J go no fart her now - need not he backed by argument at every specia l point. Flank ing operations are less costly and in some w~ys more dfecliv( Ih~n fronla l a1t~cks . Possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my rem ain ing lectures that th~ alternat ive of an univcrsc absolutely rational or ab.olutely irrational is forccd and strained, and that a via mdia cx ists which >Omc of you may agree with m~ is to be pr~f~rred. Som~ rationality certa inly does character i'~c our uni'-crscj and, weigh ing onc kind with another, wc may dcem that the incomplete kinds that appea r are on the whole a. acceptab le as t h e through-a nd-through sort of rationa lit y on which the m onist ic systematizers iosist. All the said systematizers who have wr inen since Hegel have owed their in'piration largely to him. Even when they have found no use for his particular triadic dialectic, Ihcy ha'·c drawn confidencc and cou rage from his authoritative and con'lucring tone. I have ,a id nothing abou t Hcgel in Ih is \ccturc, so I mu st rcpa ir thc om ission in the ncxt.

LECTURE III H EGEL AND H IS M ETHOD DIRECTLY or in directly, th at strange and power fu l ge niu s H egel has done mOre to strengt hen idea listic pantheism in th ought ful ci rdes than all ot hu influe n ces put toge ther. I mus t talk a [itt Ie about him before drawing my fina l conclu.ion. about the cogency of the argu -

ment> for the absolll1c. In no philosop hy

i~

the fact that" philoso -

pher's vision and the technique he uscs in proof of it arc t w o d ifferent th ings more palpably evident than in Hegel. "Ihc vision in h is case wa~ t h1!

of a world in which reason holds all th ings in 801ut io,., and

accounts for all the irrationalit\' that super fi cia lly appears

h· ta king

it

up as a 'moment' into itself. "nl;' vision was So intense in Hegel, and the lone of :!uthority with wh ich he spo ke from out of the midst of it was so weighty, th at the impression he made has never been effaced . On ce dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples' sight could not co ntract t o any lesser prospect . Th e tech nique which H egel used to prove his vision Was the so -called diakcti c method, but here his fortune has been quite contrary. H ardly a recent disciple has felt his particub r applicat ions ofthe method to be satisfactory. Many have le t them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of provisional stopgap, symbolic o f wh at might some day prove possible of execution , but having no l iteral cogency or value now. Yet these verr same disciples hold t o the vision itself as a revelation that can never pass away. The case is curious and wort hy of our st udy. It is st ill more m r ious in th at these same disciples, alt ho they arc usually willing to abandon any I'a rl imlar inst ance of Ihe dia leeric mcthod to its cr it ics, arc unshakabl y sure that in some shape the dialectic method is the key to truth . W h;lt, then, is the di;lleclic method? It is itsel f a part of the hegelian vision or int uit ion, and a part t hat finds

HEGEL "1<0 H IS M ETH(J[l

th~ strong~st ~cho

in ~mpir icism and common s~ns~ . Gr~at injust ic~ is done to H egel br trcating h im as primarilr a reasoner. H e is in reality a na ively ob
39

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

which it stood for a moment as a landing-place and stepping- st one. Th is dogging of every t hing by it. negative, it. fate, its undoing, this perpe tua l mov ing on to som.rhing future whieh sh all supersede t he presenl, this i. the hegelian intuition of t he essential provisiona lity, and conse quent unrealily, of everything empirical and finile . Take any wnerete fin ite Ih ing and Iry to hold il fast. You cannot, for so held, il proves nOI to be concrele at all, but an arbitrary extract or abstract which you have m"de from the remainder of empir ical rea l ity. "lhe rest of things inwdes and overflows both it and you together, and defeats you r rash attempt. Any partia l view whatever of the world tear. Ihe pan Out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full truth about anythi ng involves more than that thing. Tn t he end nothing less than the whole of everylhing can be the truth of anylhing at alL Taken so far, and taken in t he rough, Hegel is not only h arm le.. , but accurate. There is a d ialectic movement in things, if such it please you to call iI, one th at the whole constitution of concrete life eSlablishes; but it isone that ca n be described and accounted for in terms of the pluralistic vision of things £u more natura lly than in the mon istic terms to which Hegel finally reduced it. Pluralistic cmpiricism knows that everything is in an environment, a surround ing world of ot her things, and that if you lea\'e it to work the re it will inevi t ably meet with friction and opposit ion from its ne ighbors. Tts riva ls and enem ies will desteoy it unless it can buy them off by compromis ing some P'lft of ia origina l preten.ion •. But Hegel Saw Ihis undeniable charaderistic of the world we li"e in in a non- empirical light. Let the mmlal idea of the th ing work in your thought all alone, he bncied, and justlhe .ame con.equences will follow. It will be negated by the opposite ideas that dog it, and can survive on ly by entering, along with them, into some kind of teeaty. This teeaty will be an instance of t he ,o-called 'higher synthc.is" of everyt hi ng wit h its negative; and Hegel's orig in ality lay in t ransporting t he process from the sphere of percepts to that of concepts and teeating it as the universa l method by which every kind of]i(e, logical, phy sical, or psychological, is mediated , Not to the sensib le facts as such , then, did Hegd point for the SeCtel of what keep. exi.tence going, bUI rather to the con~eptual "'''Y of treating t hem. Concepts w ere not in his eyes the static sdf- contained things that previous logicians had 6upposed, but were germinative, and passed beyond them.eh·., into each other by what he ca lled their immanent dialectic. Tn ignoring each oth er as they do, they virtually exclude and deny each other, he thought, :lnd thus in a manner introduce each

'"

HEGEL III
other. So the dialectic logic, accord ing to him, had to supusede t he 'logic of identity' in which, since Aristotle, all Europe had been brought up. This view of concepts is H~gd's revolutionary p~rforma!lc~; but so studiously vague and ambiguous arc all his expressions of it that one can hard ly tell whether it;s the CO!lccpts us such, or thc sensible ~xpericnc~s and eleme!lh conceived, that Hegel really means to work with.lhe only thing that is certain is that whatever you may say of his proccdure, ""mc One will acc .... se yo .... of misunderst",nding it. [ make no cbim to understanding it, I troat it merely impr~ssionist ically. So treating it, I regrct that hc shou ld havc called it by the name of logic. Clinging as h~ did to the vision of a really living world, and refusing to be contont with a chopp~d -up int~llectua l ist picture of it, it is a pity that he .hould have adopted the vcry word that intellectuali.m had alr~ady pre - ~mpted. Bu.t he clung fast to the old rationa list conte mpt tor thc immediately gi\'en world of sensc and all its squa lid particulars, and !lever tolerated th e !lotion t hat the form of philosophy might be empirica l on ly. His own sys tem had to be a product of eternal reason, so t hc word 'logic ," w ith its suggest ions of coercive necessity, w as t hc on ly word he cou ld find !latura!' Hc pretended therefore to be .... sing the a priori me t hod, and to be working by a scanty equip m""t of anci~nt logicllterm s - pMition, neglt ion, reflection, llnj\'e rs~ l , pa rticula r, individual, and the li ke. But what h~ really worked by was h is own empirical perceptions, wh ich exccedcd and o\'edlowed hi. miscrably insuffi cien t logical catcgorics in evcry instance of their uSe. What he did with the cat egory of n~gation w as his mo,t orig inal strokc. 'llie orthodox opi nion is t hat you can adnncc logically through th~ field of concept' only by going from th~ sarn o to th~ sa tM. Hegel felt deeply t he sterility of this law of conceptua l thought; he saw t h at in a fash ion negation also rei ate$ things: and he had the bri ll iant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by tr eat ing advance from the different to t he different as if it were also a necessity of t hough t. 'The ",,-callcd maxim of idcnt;ty; he wrote, ' is supposed to be accepted by thc consc iousness of everyone. But th~ language which such a law demands, ~a planet is a planct , rn;lgnctisrn is m"gnetism , mind i, mind,"' deservcs to be called silliness. N o mind either speaks or thinks or forms conceptions in accordancc with this law, and no existencc of any kind whatcvcr conform. to it. \¥c m"sr nC\'cr vicw idcntity as ab,trnct idcntity, to thc ~xc1u sion of all difference. That is t he touchstone for d istinguishing all bad philosophy from what alonc dcserves thc name of philosophy. If thinking we", no more than registering abstract identities, it would be

WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

a most superfluous pe rformance. lh ings and concepts a", id entica l with themselves only in.o far as at t he .ame t ime they involve disti nction:· "Ihe d ist inc t ion that Hegel has ill mi ll d he", is n aturally in the first instance disti nction from all other things or concepts , But in his hands Ihis quickly develop$ into conlradiction of them, and finally, reflected back upon itself, into sd f-cont rad iction; and t he immanenl self-contrad ictor incss of all finitc conccpts thenceforth become. the propuls ive logical force t hat mOVes the world " 'isolate a thing from all its relation.,' says D r, E dward Caird,'· expound ing H egel, 'and try t o assert it by itsel f; you find that it h as negated itself as well as it s rdat ion •. 'Ih e thing in itsel fi, nothing: Or, to quot e H egel's own words: 'When w e su ppose an ex istent A, and allother, B, B is at first defi ned as the other, But A is just as much t he other of B. Both arc oth er. in t he .ame fashion .... "Other" i. the other by itself, t herefore the other of every other, consequently t he oth er of itself, the .imply unlike it5e1 f, t he self-negator, t h c .e1f-altcrer,' etc." Hegel wr it es elsewhere : 'l he finite, as implicit ly other than what it is, is forced to surrcnder it s own imm ed iatc or n atura l being, and to turn suddenly into its oppo.ite.. Di alect ic is thc uni'"crsal and irrcsist ible power before wh ich nothing can stay .... Summum jus, summa injuria - to dr ive an abstract right to excess is to commit injus t ice.. Extreme an-

archy and extreme despotism lead to one another. Pride comes be fore a fa ll. T oo much wit outwits itself. Joy br ings tears , mdancholy a sa rdonic sm ilc:"To which on e well might add that most human inst it ut ions, by the pu rdy tech nical and professional man ner in which t h ey Corne to be administered, end by becom ing ob stacles to t he very purposes which their founders had in view. Once catch well the kn ack of t his scheme of t hought and you are lucky if you cvcr gct away from it. It is all yo u can scc. L et any onc pronounce anyth ing, and your feeling of a contradiction be ing implied becomes a habit, almost a m otor habit in some persons who symbol ize by a stereotyped gesture t hc position , sublation, and final reinstatemcnt involvcd. If you say 'two' or 'many,' you r speech bett::l}'et h }'ou, for t he very name collects t hem into one. I f you express doubt, your exp",ssion contradicn its content , for the doubt itself i. not doubted bUT affirmed _ If you say 'disorder: what is that but a certa in bad ki nd of order? if you say 'indeterm ina,8 H
HEGEL 111<0 HIS METH(J[l

tion; YOll are determiningjllst that. If you say 'noth ing but the unex!"'cted happcns; lhc uncxpcClcd bccomcs what you CX!"'Cl. If you ,ay 'alllhing' are relative,' to what is th~ all of them itsd f rdat iv~? If YOll say 'no more; you have said more already, by implying a region in which no more is fOllnd; to know a limit as such is consequently already to have got beyond it; And so forth, throughout a$ many examp\e$ as one care$ to cite. \Vhatever you posit appears thus as on~ -sided, and negates its other, which, being e'I""lly on e- sided , negates it; and . $ince this situation remai", unstabl~, t h~ two cont radictory t~rms hav~ together, according to Hege l. to engender a higher truth of which they both appcar as ind ispensable members, mlltually m~diatjng asp~cts of that highu concept of situation in thought. E\'ery higher total, however provisional and rdative, lhus reconciles th~ contradiction< which its parts, abSlract~d from it, prove impl icitly to conta in. Rat ionalism, you remember, is what I called thc way of thinking that met hodica lly su bOTd inate$ parts 10 wholes, sO Hegel here is rat iona listic through and through. Th e on ly whole by which all contradict ions are reconciled is for him the absolute whole of wholes, th~ allinclll sive reason to which Hegel himse lf gave the name of the abwilltc Idea, but wh ich I shall continue to ca ll 'the absolute' purely and simply, lS r ha"~ done hitherto . Empirical instances of the way in which higher unities reconci le cont radictions are innumerable, so here aga in Hegel's vision . laken merely imprc$.ioni$tically, agrees with countless facts. Somchow lifc do~s, out of its total resources, find ways of satisfying opposites at once . This is precisely t he paradoxical aspect wh ich much of our civilizalion pr~sents. Peace we secure by armaments, liberty by laws and constitutio",; simplicity and naturalneos arc the consummate result of artificial breeding and tra ining; health, strength, and wealth are increased only by lavish usc, ~xpcns~, and wear. Our m istrust of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit; ou r tolerance of anarch istic and revolutionary utterances is the on ly way oflcosening their danger; our charity has to say no to beggars in order not to defeat its ow n desires; th~ truc epicurean has to observe great sobr iety; the way to certainty lies through radical doubt; virru~ signifies not in noce nce but the knowledge of sin and its overcoming; by obey ing nature, we command her, etc. The cthical and the religious life are fu ll of such contrad ictions held in solution. You hate your enemy? - well, fo rgive him, and thuchy h~ap coals of fi re on his head; to rea lize yourself, renounce yourself; to sa"c your so ul, first lose it; in short, die to live.

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

From such ma., ive examples one easi ly genera li7.es He gel 's vi, ion . Roughly, his 'dialect ic' pict ure is a fa ir account of a good deal of the world . It sou nds paradoxical, h UI wlle never you once place yourself at the point of view; of any h igher synthesis, you sec exactly how it does in a fashion la ke up oppos iles into ilself. As an exam ple, consider the conflict bet w een our ca rn ivorous appetiles and hunting instinct. and the sympath~" w it h an imals wh ich ou r rcfinement is br ing ing in its trai n. \ Ve have found how to reconcile thne opposite. mo. t effectively by e.tablish ing game-laws and dose seasons and by keeping domestic h erds. 'Ih e ~reat ureS preserved thu, arc preserved for the sake of slaughter, tru ly, but if not preserved for th at reason , not one ofthem would be alive at alL Th eir will t o live and our w ill to ki ll them thus harmoniouslv com bine in t h is peculiar higher synthesis of dome.tication. Me rely as a reporter of certain empirical aspects of t he act ual, Hegel, then, is great and true. But he aimed at being some thi ng far grea ter th an an emp irical reporter, SO I must say som et hi ng about that ess en tial aspect of his thought. H egel was domi nated by t he notion of a truth t h at should prove incont rovert ible, binding on everyone, and ce rt ain, which should be tb~ truth, one, indivisib le, eternal, objective, and necessary, ro wh ich all our particu lar thinking mus t lead as to it s consummation. "Ihis is t he dogmat ic ideal, the po~t ulate, uncriticise d, undoubt ed, and unchallenged, of all rat ional izers in ph ilosophy. '[ bllv, "~r doubt"': a recent Oxford writer says, that t ruth i. universal and single and timeless, a single content Or .ignificance, One and whole and complete." Ad vance in thi nk ing, in the hegelian universe, has, in short, to proceed by t h e "pod ietie w ords must b, rat her th an by those inferior hypot h etic words mllyb" w hi ch are all t hat emp iricists can u .. . Now H egel found t h at his idea of an immanent movement through the fi eld of concepts by way of'd ialectic' negation played most beautifu ll y into the hands of t his rat ionalistic d emand for some t hi ng absolut e and inroncussum in the way of truth. It is easy t o sec how. If you affirm anyt h ing , for example that A is, and simply leave the matter thus, ~'ou leave it at t h e m ercy of anyone who may Sup~I\·"ne and say 'not ... , but B is: If he docs say so, your statement doesn't re fute him, it simply contrad icts hi m , just as h is contrad icts you. The on ly way of making your affirmat ion about A ulf-muring is by gett ing it into a form whic h w ill by impl ication negate all possible negation" in ad'·an~e. ·lhe mere absence '3 Joachim,]h, Nalw" ofT,ulh, Oxfurrl, [906, pp. », [I~ the argument in ca"" [he belief ,1","ld bc d""bl
HEGEL III
of negation is not enough; it must be present, but present wit h it s fangs drawn. \Vhat you posit as A must already h a\'e ca ncelled the alternative or made it innocuous, hy having n~gsfully solves the world- old proble m, the older way. of prov ing t he n~cessity of judgm ents cease to give us satisfaction. Hegel's w ay w e think must be the right way. "[he t rue must be essentially t he sdf-reflect ing sdf-contained recurre!lt, that w h ich secures itsdfby i!ldud ing its own other and !legat ing it; that ma kes a sp her ical system with no loose ends hanging out for fore ign ness to get a hol d upon; that is forever rou nded in and closed, not stru ng alo!lg rectili!learly a!ld open at its e!lds like that universe of simply collective or add itive form which H egel calls the world of the bad in finite, and which is all that empiricism, starr i!lg with si m ply posited single p" ru and elem ents, is ever able to attai n to. No One Can possibly deny the sublimity of t his hegel ian con~cplion , It is su rely in the grand style , if the..., b~ such a t hing as a grand style in philosophy. For us, however, it rema ins, so far, a merd y formal and diagrammatic conception; for wit h the actual coment of ab.olllte t ru th, as Hegel m ateria lly tries to set it forth , few d isciples have b~en satisfied, and I do not propose to refer at all to the concret er parts of his ph ilosophy. 1),e main thing now is to grasp I h~ ge!leraliz"d vision, and fed t h~

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

authority of the abstrac t sch~m~ of a stat~me nt sdf-secur~d by involving double negation. Absolutists who make no u.e of H egcl's own technique are ",ally working by his m~thod. You r~m~mb~r the proof, of Ih~ abso lute which I in stanced in my last lecture, Lotzes and Royce's proo fs by r~dl1{/iG ad Gbsurdl1m, to the dfeci I hat any smallest conncx;on rash Iy sup posed in Ih ings wi ll logically work out into absolute union, and any minimal disconnexion into absolute disunion, - these arc really arguments framed on the hegelian pauern _ 'Ihe truth is that which you implicitly affirm in the vcry attempt to deny it; it is that from which cvery variation refutes its d fby prov ing self-contradictory. '[his is the ,uprcmc insight of rationalism, and to - day the best mu
dude s from any reality conceived by its meanS everything not inchlded in the concept', dc finition. I call cd such intellectualism illeg itimat c as [found it used in Lot'~e's, Royce's, and Bradley'. proofs of the ab,ollllc (wh ich ab>olutc I conse'luent ly held to be non- proven by t he ir argu ment s), and I left off by asserti ng my own belief that a plu ralistic and incomple tely integrat ed universe, describable only by the free usc ofthe word 'some; is a legitimate hypothesi •. Now H egel himself, in building up his method of double negat ion, offers the viv ides\ possible example of this vice of intel k ctualisrn. Every idea of a finite thing is of course a concept of Ihal thing and not a concept of any t h ing else. But H egel t reats th is not being a concept of anyt hi ng else as if it were
HEGEL III
are notoriously hard to int~rpret - to th~ 'd ifficu lty' that habitually accompanies pro fundity. For my own part , there seems something grot~sque an d ltlUgr~nu in the pret~nsion of a nyl~ <0 disobed i~nt to the fi rst rules of sound commu n ication between minds, to be the authe nt ic mot her-tong ... e of rcason , and to keep step more accurately than any othe r style do~s wi th the ab~ol me'~ own ways of thinking. I d o not there fore t ake H egel 's technical apparatus seriously at all. I regard him rat her as One of those n .... merOUS o rigin al Seer!; wh o can neVer learn how to art iculate. His w ou ld -be coerciv~ log ic counts for noth ing in my eyes; but that does not in the least impugn the p hi losophic importance of h is conc~ption of the absol ut e, if w e ta ke it merely hypothetically as on. of th~ great t ypes of cosmic vision. Taken th .... s hypothetically, I wish to di.cu,s it br ieHy. Bu t before doing so I must call your att .ntion to an odd pecu liarity in th~ h~gelian procedure. The pecu liar ity is o ne whic h will come before us again for a fina l judgment in my sevell th lecture, ~o at presell t I oll ly note it in pass ing. H egel , you remember, considers that the immediat e fin ite data of experience are 'untrue' because they are not their own others . They are negated by what is external to them. ll'e absolute i~ true because it and it only has no externa l environment, and has attained to be ing it s

own {)I her. ("Ihese words sound qu eer enough, but those of you who know somethi ng o f H egel 's text will follow them.) Granting his premise that to be true a thing must in Some sort be its own othe r. everything hinges on whether he is right in holdi ng that the several pieces offin ite ~xperienc~ t hemse lves call1lo t be
W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

said of it is only a sort of surveyor's note of whue our present position lie. in the general framework of these lect ures. Let us turn now at last to the great quc",ion offact, DO~J tJuahJolu/t exist or no" to which all our previous discussion has been prelim inarY. I may sum up thai discussion by saying thai whelher there really be an absolute or nOI , no one make. himself absurd or self-contradictory by doubting or de nying it. The charges of self- contradiction, where they do not r<:st on purely "crbal reasoning, re", on a vicious intellectua lism. 1 will not recapitulate my critic isms. I will simply ask you to change the venue, and to d iscuss thc absolute n OW as ifit were only an open hypoth esis. As such, is it more probable or mor<: improbable? But first of all I must parenthetically ask you to distingu ish the notion of the absolute ~arefully from that of anot her object with which it i.liable to become heed lessly entangl ed. That other object is the 'God' of common people in their religion, and t he creator-God of orthodox christ ian theology. On ly thoroughgoing monists or pantheists believe in t he abrolute. Th e God of our popubr C h ristianity is but one member of a plumlistic system. H e and we stand outside of ",ach other, just as the devil, the saints, and the angels stand outs ide ofooth ofus. I can hardly conceive of anything more diffnent from t he absolute than the God, say, of D avid or of l~aiah . ]hat God i~ an e~sent ial1y finite being in the co~m01;, not wit h the cosmos in him, and indeed he has a ~ry local habitation there, and very one -si ded local and personal attachments. Ifit .hould prove probable that the "brolute docs not exist. il will not follow in thc slighte st degree thaI a God like t hat of David, Isaiah, or J.,sus may not exi,t, or may not be the most important exi.tence in the universe for us to acknowledge. I pray you, then, not to confound t he two ideas as you listen to the criticisms I shall have to proffer. I hold to the finite God, for rearons which I shall touch on in the seventh oft he,e lectures; but I hold that his rival and competitor - I feel almost tempted to say his enemy - t he absolute , is not on ly not forced on us by logic, but that it is an improbable hypothesis. 'lhe great claim made for the absolute is that by supposing it we make the world appear more rational. A ny hypothesis that does that will alway~ be acccpted as more probab ly true than an hypothe sis that makes t he world appear irration al. .Men are once for all so made that they prefer a rational world to believe in and to live in. But rationality has at least four dimensions, ime lle~tual, aesthetic ai, mora l. and practical: and to find a world rat ional to t he maximal degree in all l}xu rnpu/. simufllmtausly is no easy malter. Intellectually, the world of me ehanica I mater ia lism is the most rational, for we subject its even t s to mathem ati -

HEGEL III
cal calculation. But t h~ m~chanical world is ugly, as arithm.tic is ugly, and it is non-moral. M ora lly, t h e theistic world is rational enough, bu t full of illtdl. ctual frustrat ions. 'Ih~ prac tical world of affairs, ill it. turn, so supremely rat ional to the po lit ic ian, t he military man, or the man of COn'I"Cring bllsiness- facuhy thar he ncve r would votc to change t hc lype of it, is irrational to moral and art istic lemperaments; so t h at whatever demand ror rationality we find satisfied by a ph ilosoph ic hypothesis, We are liable to find Wme ot her de mand fo r rationality unsatisfied by the sa m e hypothesis, The rat iona l it~· we gai n in one coin w . t hus pay for in another; and t he probkm ac~ord ingly SeemS at first sight to resolve itself into t h at of g~tting a conception w h ich will yield the larg~ st ha/anu of rat ional ity ratbu than one which will yield perfect rationality of every de.~ription, In general, it may be .aid that if a man's ~oncep tion ofth~ world lets loose any action in h im that is easy, or any faculty wh i~h he is fond of exerci.ing, he w ill deem it rat ional in so far forth, be t he facul t y th at of computing, fighting, lect ur ing, clas~ifying , framing sche m atic tabulation., gett ing the better end of a bargai n , patient ly waiting and enduring, prea~hing, joke -mak ing, or what you like. Albeit lhe absolme is dcfined as being necessarily an embod iment of object ively p ~rfect r3tion ality, it i. fair to it s ~ngl ish advo~ates to say that those who have espollsed the hypothesis most concretely lnd seriously have usually avowed th~ irrationa lit y to their own minds of certain deme nts in it. Probably t he weight iest ~ont ri bution to our feeling of the rationality of th e universe which the notion of the abwhne br ing. is the aSSu ranCe that howe,'e r dist urbed the surface may be, at bottom all is well wit h the co,mo. - central peace abid ing at the hean of endk.. agitation. 'Ibis conc~ption is rationa l in many way', b~aU!ifu l aesth~t ically, b~autiful intellectually (could we on ly follow it into detail), and beauti ful morally, if the cnjoyme nt of security can be accou nted moral. Practically it is less beaut iful; for, as we .aw in our last lecture , in repre.enti ng the d eepes t rea lit y of the w orld a. st atic and without a h istory, it loosens the world's hold llpon ou r sympathiei and leaves t he sou ] of it fore ign. Nevertheless it doe. give p~au, and that kind of ration ality is so p3ramountly demanded by men that to th e end of ti m e there wi ll be abwlut ists, men who choose bel ief in a stat ic eternal, rather th an adm it that the fin ite world of change and striving, e"en \Vith a G od a, one of the snivers, is itself eterna l. For such m inds Professor Royce'. word, will always be t he tru~st: 'Th e very presen ce of ill in the t~m poral order is t he condition of the per fection of the eternal ord er .... \Ve long for the absolute onlr in so far as in u. t he absolute also longs, and se~ks th rough our v~ry

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

tempora l str iving, t he peace t h at i5 nowhere in time, but only, and yet absolutely, in eternity. W ere there no long ing in time there would be no peace in eternit y.... G od t he absolute] who here in me aims al what I now temporally miss , not on ly possesses in the eterna l w orld the goa l afler wh ich I st ri ve , b'.11 COmeS to possess il even th rough and becallse of my sorrow. l1>rough Ihis my tr ibllhtion the absolule triumph t hen is won .. In t he absolute I am fulfilled . Yet my vory fu lfi lm ent demands and t h erefore Can Iranscend t his sorrow_'" Royce is pa rticuhrly felicitous in his abil ity to cite part s of fin it e experience to w h ich he find s his picture of t h is absolute exper ience ana logous. But it is hard to portray the absolute at all without rising into what m ight be called the 'inspired' style ofhnguage - I use the word not ironica lly, but prosaically and descriptively, to designate the on ly lite rary form t hat goes with the kind of emotion that the absolute arouses. One can follow the pathway of reasoning soberly enough ." but t h e pict ure itsel f has to be effulgent. Th is admirable facu lt y of t ranscending, whilst inwardly preservi ng, every contrnr iety, is the ab solut e's characteristic form of rat iona lit y. \Ve arc bu t syllabic. in the mouth of t he L ord ; if the whole sentence is div ine, each syll abic is absolut ely what it should be , in spite of all appearances. I n mak ing up the balance for or ag ain st absolutism, this em ot ional value we ights heav ily t he credit side of the account. Th e trouble is t hat we are able t o see so littl e into the positive det ail of it, and t hat if Once admitted not to be coercively proven by the intel!cctualist argument., it remaim only a hy pothetic po.sibility. On the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and not as a mere name for ou r right occasiona lly to drop the strenuous mood and take a mora l holiday, introdUCe< all those treme ndous irrationa lities into the universe w hich a frank ly plura list ic theism escapes, but wh ich have been flung as a reproach at every form of monistic theism or pantheism. It introduces a speculati ve 'probl em of evi l' namely, and leaves us w ondering why the per fect ion of the abso lute should requi re just sllch par t icular hideous forms of life as darken the day for our human imag inat ions. If they w ere forced on it by someth ing alie n , and to 'overcome' thcm th e "bsol"le had still to keep hold oflh em , We cou ld understand its feeli ng of trium ph, though we, so far as we were ourselves among the eleme nts overcom e, could acquiesce but su llenly in the fC5u lt ant situation, and wou ld never JUSt ha"e chosen it as t h e

v. •.

1}" W• .-Idand I'" Individual. yol. ii, pp. 385,386. 40<) . 110...." uni".p;""[ ~'Zu"'.~, (.g .;" , lOt ;.-.:m;""I') ",hOc" 1 know;. "".. i" M;" M .w. C~lk in", excell.", bo<,k, 1/" Pmi""" P""'{,,,,,
'5

~)

HEGEL III
most rational o ne con ceivable. But rh~ absolute is represented as a b~ ing without environment. upon which not hi ng alien can be forced, and wh ich has spon taneously chos~ n from wit h in to give itself t he sp~ctacle of all that ev il rather than a spectacle with less evil in it." Its perfection is represented as the SOUrCe of things , and yet the first effect of th at perfection is the tremendous impe rfe ction of all finite experience. In wh atever sense the word 'rationa lity' m ay be t aken, it is vain to contend that the imprcs.ion made on our finite mind . by such a w"y of represent ing things is alt ogether rational. Th eolog ians h ave felt its irrat io nality acutely, and t he 'fall: the pr~dest i nation, and the election w hich t he situat ion involv~s have g iven t hem m ore trouble t h an anythi ng else in th~ ir attempt to pantheize Christian ity. Th e w hole bus iness rema ins a punk, both intelkct ually and morally. Grant that the .pectacle or world- romance offered to it . el fby the absolute is in the absolute's eyes perfect. \Vh}" would not the world be more perfect by having t he affair remain in just t hose terms, and by not havi ng any finit e spectators to come in and add to w hat was perfect already their in numerable imperfect manners of seeing the sam e spectacle? Suppose the entire universe to consist of o ne superb copy of a book, fil for t he ide al reader. Is t hat univcrs~ improv~d or deter iorated by having myriads of

ga rbled and misprinted separate ielVi:S lnd

chapt~"

llso

cre~tcd,

giving

false impressions of the book to whoe\"u looks at t hem? T o say the least, thc balancc of r~tional ity is nO! obviously in f~vor of such ad dcd mutilations. So th is ' luestion becomes urgent: \V hy, thc ab>olutc's own total vision of things being so rationa l, w as it necessary to comminute it into a11t he.e coexisting inferior fragmentary visions:> Leibnitz in hi. t h~odicy "'pres~nts God as limited by an ant~ce dent reason in t hings w hich makcs certa in combinations logically incompatible, c~rtain good. impo<sib1e. H e survey. in advance all the universes he might create, and b~· an act of what L eibnirz calls his antecedent will he chooses our actua l world as the one in wh ich thc evil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its min imum . It i. t he be st of all the worlds that arc possible, t her~fo .. , bu t by no means t he m ost ~b.tractl~· desirable world. H av ing mad e thi. mental ~hoi~e . God next procceds to what Lcibnitz calls his act of consequent or decr~tory will: he says 'Fiat' and t he w orld selected spr ings into objecti,·c bc ing, with all the finite crcatures in il to suffer from it. imperfections without sha ring in its crcator'. atoning vision. ,6 ,he

Cf. Dr. F"I I" •• x""II .." ,,,' id'; E'h;c~l mo" i.n, ~"d , h. pmhle ,,' of ovi1; i" vol. i. No. '. April. '90$.

H~_rdJ.~'n,,1 ojll""I.gy.

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

L otz e has made some penetrat ing remarks on this conception of Leibnitz's , and t hey exact ly fa ll in with what I say of the absolutist conception. The world projected ou t of the creative mind hy t he fial, and existing in de t achment from its au t hor, is a sphere of being where t he parts rea lize t hemselves on ly singly. rf Ihe divine value of Ihem is evid ent only when t hey are co llectively looked ai, t hen, L otze r ightly says , the world surely becomes poorer and not r icher for G od 's utterance ofthefial. He might much betlcr have remained conte nted w it h his merely an te cedent choice of the sc heme, without following it up by a creative decre e. The scheme IlS such was admirable; it cou ld only lose by being tran~lated into reality. " Why, I similarly ask , should the absolute ever have lapsed from th e per fect ion of its own integra l experience of th ings, and refracted itself into all ou r finite experiences? It is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them have confessed the imperfect rationa lity of the absolute from this point of view. Mr. McTaggar t, for example, w rites: 'Does not our very fai lure ro perceive the per fection of the un iverse des t roy it? ... In so ('u as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not per fect ours elves. A nd as We are parts of the universe, that cannot be perfect:" And Mr. Joachim find s just t he same difficulty. Calling the hy-

pothesis of the absolute by the narne of the 'coherence th eory of truth; he calls the problem of understandi ng how the complete coherence of all t h ings in the absolute should invoh'e as a necessary moment in its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds , a self-assertion which in it s extreme form is er ror, - he calls t his problem , I say, an insoluble puule. If truth be the universaljons ~I origo, how docs error slip in? 'The coherence t heory of truth; he concludes, 'may thus be
'9 30

Slwdi" i~ 1M IhXnia" Dia/"ti,. o
52

HEGEL "1<0 H IS M ETH(J[l

I can imagin~ a believer in the absolute ...,torting at this point t h at he at any rate is not dealing with me~e probab ilities, bu t that the nature of thing' logically requires the multit ud inous erroneous copies, and t h at there fore t he universe cannot be the absolute's book alone. For, he will ask, i5 not the abwlute defined as the tota l consciousness of everything Ihat is' Mu st not its field of vie w consist of parts~ And what can Ihe pa rt s of a total consciousness be unless they be fractiona l consciousnesses, Our finit e minds mllSitherefo..., coexist with the absolute mind. We Ue its constituents, and it cannot live without us. - But if anyone of you feels tempted to relOn in this wise, let me remind you I h~t you a..., frankly employing pluralistic weapons, and thereby giv ing up t he absolutist cause . The notion that th~ absolute is made of constituents on w hich it s being depends is t he rankest empiricism. The ab.olute "u~h ha. obju/s, not constituents, and if the obj . cts de"dop sdfhoods upon their own severol account • . t hose selfh ood. mu.t be set down as facts add itional to t he ab~olute consciousness, and not as elements im plicated in its defin it ion. The absolute is a rat ionalist conception. R at iona lism goes from wholos to parts, and alway s assumes wholes to b e sd f- sufficing." My conclusion, so far, the n, is thi s, thai altho the hypothesi$ of t he absolute , in yielding a c.rmin kind of religious peace, performs a most

a.

important rationalizing function, it

n~verthel~ss,

from

th~ intelJ~ctull

point of view, remains d~cided ly irrational. Th~ id~affy perfect whol. is cer tainly that whole of which t he part s also art ptrflct - if we Can depend o n logic for anyt h ing, We Can depend on it for th at defin it ion. lhe absolute is defi ned as t he id.a lly perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, a[e adm itt edl}" imperfect. Evident ly the concept ion lacks internal consisteney, and yi dds us a problem rat h. r th an a solution. It er~ate, a spec ulative puzzle, the so-ca lled mystery of evil and of error, from which a pluralistic metaphys ic is ~ntirely free . In any pluralistic metaphysic, t h e problems that evi l presents are pract ical, not speculative. Not why evil should exist at all, but how we can lnsen t he actual amount of it, is the sok ' Iucstion We need t here cOnsider. 'G od: in the religious lifo of ordinary men, is t he name not of t he whole of t hin~, heaven forbid, b" t only of the ideal ten dmq in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co -operote in his purposes, and who furthers oll rs if they are wort hy. He works in an external covjroprncpl has limits , and has enem ies. When John 1\1 ill said that t he JI 'Ihe p.ychological arullogy , hat ccrtain fini te tmcts of comc;oo,nc.. are t be: "",d by aboolu' i'" " proof that ,uch pa,,, ",.. «..,,,,ial dements of all oon",;",,, n.... Oth •• Ii,,;,. field, of con",;"u.,,,,.. ..,em ;n po;"t off""t .wt ' 0 1>< ,;m;l~rly ",,,,h ,,bl< ;"'0 i..,lahl<

1'""'.

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

notion of Cod's omnipotence must be given up, if Cod is to be kept as a re ligious object, he was surely accurately right; yet so prevalent is the lazy mall ism thai idly haunt. the region of Cod's name, that.o simple and trut hful a saying was generally treated as a paradox: Cod, it was said, (Ou/dnot be nn ite. r believe thai Ih", only Cod worthy of the namc must be finile, and I shall return to t hi s poinl in a laler lecture. If t he absolute exist in addition - and the hypothesis must, in spite of it s irrational features, sti ll be left open - then the abwlute is only the w ider cosmic wholt of which our Cod is but t he most ideal portion, and which in the more usual hu man Sense i. hardly to be termed a relig ious hypothesis at all. 'Cosmic emotion' is the better name for the reaction it mav awaken. Observe that all the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute give. ri.e to, and from whi~h the finite Cod remains free, arc due to the fact that the absolute has not hi ng, absolutely nothing, outside of itself. The finite Cod whom I contrast with it may conceivably have afm.sl no thing outside of hi mse!f; he may alr<:ady have triumphed over alld absorbed all but the minutost fraction of the universe; but that fraction, however small, r<:due<:s him to the status of a relative being, and in principle the universe is saved from all , he irrationalities incidental to absolutism.lhe on ly irrationa lity left would be the irrationality of w hich pluralism as such is ~ccused, and of t h is I hope t o say a word more ilter. I have tired you with so many subtlet ies in th is lecture that I wi ll add on ly two other count. to my illdictment. Fir>t, then, let me remind you that th~ abs.fut. is usdus for ddurn..,. purposn It gives us absolute safety if you wi ll, but it is compat ible with e"ery relat ive danger. You cannot enter the phenomenal world with t he notion of it in your grasp, and name beforehand any detail w hi ch you arc likely to meet there. Whatever t he details of expcriene<: may prove to be, after the pm afthem the absolute wi ll adopt them . II is an hypothesis that functions retrospect ively on l~" not prospect ivel~·. Ihlll, whatever it may be , will have been in point of 6.cl the sort of world w hich the absolute WaS pkased to offcr to itself as a sp ect acle. Again, the absolute is always represented idea listically, as the allknower. 'lh in king this view wnsistently OUt leads on e to frame an alm ost ridiculous cone<:ption of the absolute mind, owing to the enormous mass of unprofitable informat ion wh ich it wou ld t hen seem obliged 10 carry. One of t he many ",duelion.s ad absurdum of pluralism by whi~h idealism thinks it proves the absolute One is as follows: Let t here be many facts; but since on idealist principles facts exist only by being known, t he many facts will t herefore mean many knowers. But t hat there arc so many know-

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Slfl aNY 13:)".jH

LECTURE IV CONCERN ING F ECHNER lEE p re stige of the ab solute h as rather cru m b led in our hands . The logica l proofs of it miss fire; the por traiu which it. best court-painters show o f it arc featureless and foggy in the extreme; and, apar! from the cold com fort of as.uring u. that with it all is well, a n d thai 10 sec that all i. well with u~ aho we need only risc 10 its eternal point of view, it yiel ds liS no rel ief whatever. It introduces, on the co ntrary, into ph ilosophy and theology cer ta in poisonous d iffi cultie. of which but for

its intrusion W~ never ~hould have heard. But if we drop the absolute out oflhc w orld, must w e then conclu d e thaI the world contains noth ing better in the way of consciousness th an our coosc iOll,ne,,? h our whole inst inctive belief in higher pre~e nce., our persistent inner turning towards d ivine companionship, to cou nt for noth ing' Is it but th e pathetic illusion of beings w it h incorrigibly socia l and im ag inative mind s? Such a negat ive conclusion would, I believe, be desperately h asty, a sort of pouring out of t he child with the bath . Logically it is possible to believe in superhuman beings wit hout identi fying them wit h the absolute at all. The treat\' of offensive and defensive alliance which certain groups of the Christian clergy have recently made with our transce ndentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a we ll-meaning but ba lefu l mista ke. Neith .. the Jehovah of the old t esta,m"t nor the heavenly fath er of t he new h as anything in common w ith the absolute except that they arc all three greater than man; and if you say t hat the notion of the absolute i. what t he gods of Abraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each othe r, were inevitably destined to develop into in mOrc reAec tive and modern mi nds, I reply that alt hough in certain specifica lly ph ilosoph ical minds this may have been the case,

in m inds more prop ..ly to be termed religious the developm mt has followed quite another path. Th e whole history of eva ngelical Christianity is there to prove it. I propose in th ..e lectures to plead for that other line of development. To set the doc t rine of the absolute in it s proper framework, ~o that it ~hall not till the whole welk in and exclude all alternative pOhib i l itie ~ of h igher thought - a~ it seem~ to d o for many students who approach it with a limited previous acquaintance with ph ilosophy - I will cont rast it w ith a sys tem which , abstractly considered, Seems at first to have much in com m on with absolutis m , but which, when taken concretely and temperamenta lly, really stands at the opposite pole. I refer to the ph ilosophy of Gustav Th eodor Fechner, a wriur but little know n as yetto English readers, but destined, I am persuaded, to wield more and mOre inA"ence as time goes on. lt is t he intense conc"" tene .. of Fe chn.., hi s fert ility of detai l, which fi ll s m e with an admirat ion which I should like to make t his aud ience sh are. Among t he philos oph ic cranks of my acqua intance in the paS! was a lady all the tenets of w hose system I ha"e forgotten except one. Had she been born in the Ionian Archipelago some three t housand years ago , t hat One doctrine would probably have made her name sure of a place in every un iversit y curriculu m and examination paper. The world, she Said, is composed of only tWO elements, the " hick, name ly, and the Th in. N o one can deny th e truth of this ana lys is, as far as it goes (though in the light of Our contempora ry knowledge of nat ure it has itself a rat hn 'thin' sound), and it i. now here t ruer than in that paT! of the world called philosophy. I am sure , for example , that many of you, listening to w hat poor account I have been able to give of transcendental idealism, have received an impre .. ioll of its arguments bei ng strangely thin, and of the terms it lea"es us wit h being shiveringl}' thin w rappings for sO thick and burly a world as th is. Some of you of course will charge the thinness to m~' exposition; but t h in as that has bee n , I bel ieve t he doctrines reported on to have been thinner. From G reen to Haldane t he absolute proposed to us to st raighten out t he confu sion. of t he thicket of experience in which our life is passed rema ins a pure abst raction which hud ly anyone tries to make a whit c()n~retcr. Jf we open Green , We get nOlhi ng but t he tra nsce ndental ego of apperception (Kant 's name for the fact th at to be counted in experience a t h ing has to be witnessed), blown up in to a so rt of ti m el ess soap- bubble large enough to mirror the whole universe. Nature, Green kee p. insisting, consists only in relations, and these im ply the an ion of a mind that is eternal; a self-dist ingu ishing con.ciousness which itself escap es from the re lat io"s by w hich it

57

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

determines other things. Prese nt to whatever is in succes
he ulls of him amounts to little mort: th an th is, that 'the

catcgorie~

in

which the mind arranges its expe r iences, and gives m eani ng to them, the universals in which the part icu lars arc grasped in the ind ividua l, ace a log ica l chain, in which the first presu pposes t he last, and the last i. it. presu pposition and its truth: He hardly tries at all to t h ic ken t h is thi n logical scheme. H e sars indeed that absolute m ind in itself, and absolute mi nd in its hetere ity or otheme.. , under the disti nct ion w bich it sets up of itself from itself, h ave as their rea l prius absolute mind in synthes is; and, this being absolute mind 's true nature, its di alect ic character must show itsd fi n suc h concrete forms as Goethe's and W ordsworth 's poe t ry, as well as in rel igious forms. 'Th e nature of God, the nature of absolute mi nd , is to ex h ibit the tr iple move me nt of di alect ic, and SO the nature of G od as presented in relig ion must be a tr iplicit y, a tri nity: But be~'o nd th'IS namin g Goethe ;lnd \V" rdsworth and e>t;lblish ing the trinity, M r. H aldane's H egelianis m carr ies us ha rdly an inch into the concrete deta il of t he world we act ually inhabit. Equally thin is M r. T aylor, both in his princ iples and in their results. Following Mr. Bradley, he starts by assuring u. t hat reality cannot be . cl fcontradictory, but to be related to anrl hing rea lly our, ide of one's self is to be self-contradictory, w the ultimate rea lity must be a single all-indusive

systematic whole. Yet all he can say of thi, whole at the end of his excellently wrinen book is t hat the notion of it 'can make no addition to our information and can of itself supply no motive. for pract ical endeavor: Mr. [\'k Taggart treats us to almost as thin a fure. 'Th e main pract ica l interest of H ege l's phil osophy; he says , 'is to be found in the abstract certainty which the logic gives uS th at all reality is rational and righteous, even when we can not see in t he least how it is so .... N ot that it sho ws Us how the facts around us are good, not that it shows us how We can make them better, but that it proves that they, like other reality, are sub sped. tta"ifafis. perfectly good, and sub specie femporis, destined to become perfectly good.' Here again, no detai l whatevu, on ly the abstract certa inty that whate"er the detail may prove to be, it will be good. Common non- dialect ical men h ave alre ady this certainty as a result of t he generous vit al ent h usiasm about t he un iverse with which t h ey arc born . The peculiarity of transcendental phi losophy is its sovereign conte mpt for merely vita l functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to t urn our simple and im mediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically mediated certainties, to question which wou ld be absurd. Hut the whole basi. on which Mr. McTaggart's own certainty so solidly rests, settles down into t he

one nutshel l of an ass ertion into which he

I'll! . H ege r~

gospel, namely,

that in every b it of expe rience and thought , however finite, the whole of rea lity (t he absolute idea, as Hegel calls it) is 'implicit ly present.' '[h is indeed is Hegel's visio" , and H egel thought that the detai ls of his dialectic proved its truth. But disc iples who t reat the details of the proof as unsat isfacto ry and yet cling to the vision, arc surely, in spite of their preten
WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

says, 'that universal and timeless truth is a single content or sign ifi cance, one and whole and complete: and he candidly confesses the fa ilure of rati onalistic attem pt s 'to raise Ihi s imme diate certainty' to Ihe level of reHective know ledge, There is, in shorr , no mediation for him be tween Ihe Trinh in capita l letlen and al l Ihe lillie 'lower-case' Irulh s - and errors - whi ch life presen t s. The psychologica l (act that he never has 'doubt ed ' is enough , 'Ihe whole mon istic pyram id, resting on points as t h in as dl ese, seems 10 me to be a ma,hl'prud), a product of will far more than one of reasOn. Unity is good, therefore thi ngs shall cohere; they shall be one; there jhat! be categoric, to mah them one , no matte r w hat empirical d isju nct ions may appear, I n Hegel's ow n writings , t he jhat!-h t emper is "bi'l" itous and tower ing; it overrides verba l and logica l resistances ali ke. Hegel's error, as Professor R oyce so well says, 'lay not in introduci ng logic into passion: as some people cha rge, 'but in conceiving the logic. of passion as Ih e only logic.. He is [t hUS] su gge stive,' Royce says, 'b ut never fi nal. H is system as a system has cru mbled , but his vira l comprehens ion of our li fe remains forever,-" 'Ihat vit al com prehension we ha"e already seen, It is that t here is a sense in which real things are not merely their ow n bare selves , bu t may "aglldy be t reated as also t heir own ot hers, and t h at ordinary logi c, since it de nies this, mu st be overcome, Ordinary logic denies this be ca"se it subst itutes concep ts for real t h in g., and concepts au their ow n bare selve s and nothing else, \V hat Royce calls H egel's 'system' wa . Hegel's atte mpt to mah us believe that he was w orki ng by co ncepts and grinding out a higher style ofl ogic. when in real ity sensible experie nces, hypotheses, and passion furn ished him with all hi s remits. \V hat [ myself may mean by things being their own others, w e sha ll sec in a later le cture. It is now t im e to t ake our loo k at Fechner, whose thic kness is a refresh ing contrast to the thi n, ahstract, ind igent, and threadbare appearance , the starvi ng, sc hool -room a'pect , which the speculal i on~ of most of our absolut ist philosophers present. The re is something reallyw~ird and uncan ny in the cont ras t between the "bs1ract pretensions of rationa l i.m and what rationalistic methods concretely can do, If t he ' log ical prius' of our mind w ere rea lly t he 'implicit presence' of th e whol e 'concret e universal,' the whole of reason, or reality, Or spirit , Or t he absolute id ea , Or whatever it rna}' be ca lled, in all our fin ite thinking, and ifth i, reason worked (for example) by t he d ialectica l met hod, d oesn't it see m odd that in t he great est insta nce of 11

7h, SpiritojM.J,rn Phil,sophy, 1" "7-

'"

rational ization mankind has known , in 'science,' nam ely, the dialectical me t hod should never once h ave been t ried? Not a solitary instance of the usc of it in sc ience occurs to my m ind. H ypotheses , and deducti ons from these, controlled by sense-observations and analogies w ith w h at We know elsewhere, arc to be thanked for all of sc ience's results . Fechner used no methods bu t these latter ones in arguing for h is me t aphysical condusions about realit y - but le t me first rehearse a few of the facti; about h is life. Born in ISm, the son of a poor country pastor in Saxony, he li,'ed from 18'7 to [S87, when he died, seventy years therefore, at Le ip'~ig , a typical g~/~hrtu of the old-fashioned german stripe . His means were always scanty, so his only extravagances could be in the way of thought, but these were gorgeou, on ... He p"s.ed hi. medica l examinations at Leipzig University at the age of twenty-one, but decided, instead of be com ing a doctor, to devote himself to phys ical science. It was ten years before he was made profe ..or of physics, although he soon was aUlhor ized to lectu re. i\I eanwh ile, he had to make both ends mee t , and t h is he did by voluminous literar), labors. H e tra nslated , for example, t he four volumes of Riot's trealise on physics, and the six of "[henard's work on chemistry, and took care of their enla rged editions later. He edited reperto ries of chemistry and physics. a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight volumes, of which he wrot e about one th ird. H e published physica l treat i.es and expe rimenta l investigations of his own, especially in ele ctr icity. Electrical measurement s, as you know, are t he basis of electrical sc ience, and Fech ner's m easurements in galvanism, per formed wit h the simplest self-mack apparatus, arc classic to t h is day. During Ibis time be also published a number of h alf-l'hi lo
"

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fa"" to face w ith in".r desperation, made a great crisis in h is life. 'Had I not then clung to the faith,' he writes, 'that clinging 10 faith would somehow or Olher work it< reward, fO htu/Ie ;rhj"'~ z;dt ni
62

OONC ffiI< lNG FOCHNEF

The original sin, according to Fe chner, of both our popular and our sc ientific thinking, i. our inveterate hab it of regard ing the spir it ual no t as t he rule but as an exception ill t he midst of n alU re. In< tead ofhelieving ou r li fe to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, ou r individuality to be ,uSla;Iled by Ihe greater individ ualily, wh ich musl necessari ly have more consciousness and more indepelldence than all that il brin gs forth, we habitua lly treat whatever lies outside of our life as so much slag and a,hes oflife only; Or if We believe in a D ivine Spiri t, We fancy him on th e one side as bodiless, and nature as sou lless on the oth ... What comfort, or peace, Fechner a~k" can cOme from such a doctr ine? 'Jh e flowers wither at its b .. ath , the stars turn into stone; ou r own body g rows unworthy of our spir it and si nk s to a te nement for carnal senses onl~·. The book of nature turn. into a "olume on mechanics , in which whatever has life is t reated as a sort o f anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawn s be tween us and all that i. higher than ou"dves; and God become. a thin nest of abstract ions . Fechner's great instrum ent for vivifying the daylight " iew is analogv ; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in all his many pages - only reasonings like those which men continually use in practica l li fe. For example: My house is built by rom e one, the w orld too is bu ilt by rome one. "Jhe world is greater t h an my house, it must be a greale r some one who built the world. My body moves by the influence of my feeling and will; t he sun, moon , sea, and wind, being t hem.dves more powerful, move by the influence of .orne more powerf ul feding and w il l. I live now, and change from one day to another; J shall l iv~ hereafter, and change st ill more, etc. S ain defines gen ius as the power of s~ei ng analogies. Th~ numbu that Fech ner could percei,'c was prod igious; but hc insisted on the d ifferences as well. Neglect to ma ke a llowance for th ese, he sa id, is t he common falbcy in an alogical reasoni ng..M ost of us, for example, reasoni ng justly that, since all the minds we know arc connected with bodies, th erdore G od 's mind should be con nec ted with a body, proceed to suppos~ that that body must be ju st an anima l body over again , and paint an altogether human picture of God. But all that t he analogy comports is a body - the particula r fcatu"'s of our body are adaptation s to a h ab itat.o different from God's that if G od have a physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ourS in structure. 'lhroughom h is writi ngs Fechner ma h s d ifference an d analogy wa lk ah .. ast, and by his extraord inary power of not icing both, he convert. what would ordina rily pass for ohjections to his conclusions into factors of their support.

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Th~

vaster orders of mind go wit h the vaster orders of body. The entire earth on which we live musr have, according to Fechner, its ow n collect ive consciousn~ ... So must each sun, moon, and plan~t : so must the whole sola r system have its ow n wider consciousness, in which t h e consciousness of our earth plays one parI. So has Ihe enlire sta rry sys tem as sud, it~ consciousness; and if that starry system be not Ihe sum o f all that is, materially considered, t hen that whole system, along with whatever else may be, is the body of th at absolutely tota lited conscio ..... ness of the universe to w h ich m~ n gi,'~ the name of G od. Speculatively Fechner is thus a moni.t in his t heology; but the re is room in h is universe for every grade of spiritu al being b~ t w~cn man and the final all-i nclus ive G od; and in sugg~sti ng what t he positjv~ content of all this super-human ity may be, he hardly letS h is imag ination fly beyond simple spir it s of the plan~tary order. lh e earth- soul he passionately believes in: he treats the earth as our special human gua rdian angel: we can pray to t he ear t h as men pray to their saints; but [ t h ink th at in his system , as in so many of the actual historic t heologies, the supreme God marks onlv a sort of limit of endosure of the w orlds above man. H e is kft t hin and abstract in his majesty, men preferring to carryon their personal transactions with the many less remote and abstract m essen-

gers and med iators whom the di vine order provides. I shall ask later whether t he abstract lv monistic turn which Fe chner's speculations took was necessitated by log ic. I believe it not to have been required. Meanwhile let me lead you a little mOre into t he deta il of his thought. Inevitab ly one does hi m miserable injust ice by summarizing and abridg ing h im . For altho the type of reasoning he employs i. almost chi ld lih for simpl icity, and his bare conclusion s can be written on a single page, the power of the m an is d ue altoge t her to the profuseness of his concrete imag ination, t o the mult itu de of the points whid, he considers successively, to the cumulative effec t of his lea rni ng, of his t horoughness, and of the ingenuity of his det ail, to h is admirab ly homely .lyle, to the sincerity with wh ich his page s glow, and fina lly to the impression he gives of a man who doesn't live at ..cond-hand, bu t who su s. who in (ad speaks as one having authority, an d not as if he were one of the common herd of professorial philosoph ic scr ibes. Ab,tractly set dow n, h is most important conclusion for my purpo.e in thne lecTtlre, is that the constitution of t he world is identica l throughout. ln ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes, tactile consciousness with our sk in. B ut altho neit her ski n nor eve knows aught of the semations of the o ther, they come together and figu re in

som~

sort of rdat ion and comb inat ion in t he more inclus ive consciousness wh ich each of us nam e. h is "if. Quite similarly, then , saY' F ech ner, we must sup pose t hat my consciousness of myself and yo urs of yo urself, altho in their imm ediacy t hey keep separate and know nothing of each o ther, are yet known and used together in a h igher consciou$ne%, t hat of the human race, say, illto whic h they enter as constituen t par t s. S imilarly, t he w hole hu m an and ani m al king doms come together as condition s of a consciousness of still wid er scop e. lhis comb ines in the wul of t he earth w it h the consciousness of t h e vegot able kingdom, w hich in tu rn cont ributes iu share of experience to that of the wh ole sola r system , and so on from 'ynt hesi, to ,ynthesi, and height to height , t ill an absolutely universal consc io usness is reached . A vast ana log ical.eries , in which t he basis of the analogy consists of facts directly o bservable in ourselves . The suppo.ition of an eart h-consciousness meet> a otrong inst inctive preju d ice which Fech ner ingen ious ly tr ies to overcome. Man's mind is the h ighest consciou sness upon the earth, we th ink - t he earth itsel f be ing in all w ays man's in ferior. H o w should its consciou sness, if it have o ne, be $uperior to h is' \V hat are th e ma rks of sup er iorit y w hich we arc tempted to use hu e: [f we look more ca refully into them , Fech nn poi nts Olll thal lhe earth possesses eac h and all of them m ore pe rfectly t han we . He considers in deta il the points of ditferen~e between us , and show, th em all to make for the eart h ', higher rank . I will touch on on ly a few of the&e point&. One of t hem of course is i ndependenc~ of other externa l bei ngs . E xtern al to the eart h arc on ly the other hea "enly bod ies . All t he t h ings o n which we externa lly dep end for li fe - air, water, plant and ani mal food, fellow men, etc. - are induded in her as her constit uent pa rt s. She is self-sufficing in a m illion respects in which we are nor so. W e depend o n her for almost everythi ng , she on us for but a sm all portion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from w int er to summer and re volves us from d ay into night and from nig h t into day. Com plex it y in u nit y is ano ther ' ign of sup~rior ity. Th e tota l earth's complexi t y far exceeds th at of ;lny organ ism , for she includes all our orga n ism s in hersel f, along w ith an in fin it e numbe r of t hi ngs tha t our organisms fail to incl ud e. Yet ho w s imple and m ass ive arc t he ph ases of her Own proper life! As the total bea ri ng of any animal is seciate and tranquil compared wit h the agitatioll of its blood corpuscles, so is the ea rth a seda t e and tranquil being compared w ith the animals whom she su ppor,".

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To d~velop from within , instead of b~ing fashioned from without, is also counted as somet h ing superior in men's eres. An egg is a h igher style of being tha n a piece of clay which an external modeler mah s into the image ofa bird. VVd l, the eanh's histor~' develops from w ithin. It is like Ihat of a wonderful egg which Ihe sun's heat, like Ihat of a mOl herhen, has stimu lated to its cycles of evolUlionary change. Ind ividuality of Iype, and differe nce from other beings of its type, is another mark of rank. 'DIe earth d i ffers from every other phtnet, and as a class planetary beings are ~xtraordinarily distinct from ol hu beings. Long ago the earth was called an an imal; but a planet is a higher class of being than either man or an imal; nol on ly quantitatively greater, like a vaster and more awkw ard w h ale or elephant , but a be ing whose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. Our animal organization comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to and fro, of sm:tching our limbs and bending our bod ies, shows only our de fect. Whal are our legs bUi crutches, by means of wh ich , with restless efforts, we go hu nt ing after the things we h ave not inside of oursdves. But the eanh is no such cripple; whr should she who already possesses within herself the things we sO painfully pursue, have limbs analogous to ours? Sha ll she m im ic a small part of herself? What need has she of arms, wit h nothing to reach for' of a mck. with no head to cury? of eye~ or nose wh en she finds her way through space without either, and has t he millions of eyes of all her an imals to guide their movements on her surface, and all their nOSeS to sme ll the Howers that grow? For, as We arc oursdvc> a part of the earth, so our organs are her organs. She is, as it were, ere and car over her whole extent - all that we sec and hear in separation she sees and h ea ... at once. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon her surface, and t heir mu ltitudinous conscious relations w ith eac h ot her she takes up into her h igher and mOre general conscious life. 1\10st of us, consideri ng t he t heory that the whole terrestria l mass is animated as our bodies are, ma ke the mistake of w orking the analogy too literally, and allowing for no differencn. If the eart h be a sentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? \Vhat corresponds to her heart and lungs? In other words, We expe~l functions wh;~h she llready per forms through us, to be perfor m ed outside of us again , and in just the samc way. Bm we Sec pcrfectly well how the earth pcrforms Somc of thesc fun~tions in a way un likc Our way. If you spcak of circulation. what need has she of a heart when the sun keeps all the show~rs of rain that fall upon her and all the springs and brooks and ri"cr, that irrigate her,

going? What ,,"cd has she of interna l lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in living commerce w ith the atmosphere t h at clings to it? The organ t hat giv.. u. most trouhle is the bra in. All the consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains. - Can there be consciousness, We ask, where there is no brai n ) But our brain, which primarily serVC$ to corrdate our muscu lar reaction. with the e"ternal o bjects on wh ich w e depend, performs a func tion wh ich the earth permrms in an entirely different way. She has no proper mU$cles or li mbs of her own, and the only objects enernal to her arc the o t her stars. T o these h er whole maSS reacts by most e"'luisite alterations in its tota l gait, and by sti ll more exquisite vibratory re sponses in its substance. H er ocean reflects the light s ofhe"ve n as in a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monStrous lens , the do ud s and snow -field. comb ine them into white, the wood. and f1owe .. disperse t hem into colors. Polari7.ation . interference, absorption, awa ken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to take any note. For these cosmic rclations of her s, the n , she no m ore needs a special brain than , he needs eyes or ears. Our brains do indeed unify and corrd ate innumerable fu nctions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our ears nothi ng of light, but, hav ing brains , we can feel sound and light toget her, and compa re t hem. We aCC()U nt for this by t he fib re. wh ich in the brain con nec t t he optica l wit h the acoustic ce ntre , but just how the.. e fibres br ing together not only the ",nsations, but t he cen t res, we fa il to sec . But if fibres arc indeed all that is needed to do th at tr ick, has not the earth pathways , by which you and I are phys ically continuous, m ore than enough to do for ou r t wo minds what the brain- fibres do for t he so unds and .ights in a single m ind? Must every higher means of un incation between things be a lit era l brain-fibre, and go by that name: Cannot the ea rth- m ind know ot herwise t he contents of ou r m ind. toget her' Fechner s im agination, insisting on the differences as well as on the resemblances, t hus tr ies to make o ur picture of the whole eart h 's life mOre co ncrete. He revels in the thought of its perfect ions. To carry her precious freight through t he hou," and seasons what form could be mOre excellent th an hers - being as it is horse, wheel s, and wagon all in o ne. Th ink of her beauty - a shi ning ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over o ne half, the other bathed in st arry night, rdl.ccting the hea'·ens from all her waters, my riad$ of light> and shadows in the fold. of her mounta ins and wind ings of her va!!ey., she would be a spectacle of rainbow glory, could one on ly sec her from afar as we see parrs of her from h er own mou nt ain-tops. Every quality of landscape that has a name would then

WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

be visible in her at once - all that is delicate or gracdul, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or cheerfu l , or luxu riant, or fresh. That landscape is her face - a peopled l andscape, too, for men'. eyes wou ld appear in it like diamonds among t h e dew-d rops. Green would be the dominant color, but , he blue aunasphere and t he clouds wou ld enfold her as a bride is shrouded in her vei l - a vei l the vapory tran sparent folds of which the earth , through her mini.ters the wind., never tires of laying and folding about herself aneW. Every element has its own livi n g denizen •. Can the celestial ocea n of ether, whose waveS arc light, in which the eart h herself Hoars, not have hers , h igher by as much as t heir element is higher, swimmi ng without fins , flying wit hout w ings, moving, immense and tranquil, as by a half- spiritual force through the h alf- spiritual sea which they inhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one anoth er, following the sl ightest pull of one another'. attranion . and harboring, each of t hem, an inexhaust ible inward wealth? Men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, needing no earth ly food or drink , messe ngers between ourselves and God. Here arc actua ll y exis tent bei n~, dwelling in Ihe light and moving through the sky, needing neit her food nor drink , intermediaries bet ween God and us , obey ing his J;ommands. So, if the heavens really arc t he home of angels, the heavenl~· bodies must be t hose very angel., for othe r creatureS Ib~u arc none. Yes! t he eart h is our great J;ommon guardian angel, who watches oVer all our intere sts combined. I n a striking page Fech ner relates one of his moments of direct vision of this truth. 'On a certa in spring morning I went out to walk. 1he field. were green, the birds .ang, t he dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here and there a man appeared; a light as of tran s figural ion lay on all things. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment of her ex istence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it seemed to me not on ly so beaul ifu l an idea. but sO Irue and cka ra fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich an d fresh and Hower- like, and yet goi ng her round in the skie s sO fi rm ly and so at one wit h herself, turning her whole living fa"" to H eaven, and carrying me al ong with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how the op inions of men could ,,·c r ha'·e so spun thcm selves away from life .0 far a5 to deem the earth on ly a dry dod, and to seek for angels above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky, - only to find them nowhere .... But such an exper ience a. this passe. ror famastic.

The eart h is a globular body, and wh u more she may be , one can find in m ineralogical cabinet.:" "Vhe,e there i. no vi.ion the people peri.h . Few professorial philosophers have any visio n. Fech ner had vision , and that is why one can read hi m OVer and over again, and each time bring away a fresh SenSe of reality. Hi s earlie.t book w as a visio n of what the inner life of plant s may be li ke . He called it 'Nanna ." In the ,kvelopment of an i rna Is the nervous s~·stem is the cent ral fac l. Plant s develop ce nt r ifuga lly, spre ad their organs abroad. For that reaSOn people suppose that they can have no consciousness, for they lac k the un ity w h ic h the centra l nervous sys t em provide,. But the plant's conscious ness may be of another type, being connected w ith other .tructures. Violins and p iano. give oUl sounds because they have string •. D oes it follow that nothing but str ings can give out so und? H ow th en about flutes and organ-pipe.? Of course the ir sounds are of a different q uality, and sO may the consc iousness of plants be of a qualit y correlat ed exclus ively with the ki nd of organization t h at I they possess. Nutrit io n, respirati on, propagation take place in them w ithout nerves. In us tbese functions are conscious only in unusual state" normally their consciousness is eclipsed by that

which goes wi th th e brain. No such eclipse occu rs in pia nt s, and thei r lower consc iousness may t herefore be all the more lively. With nothing to do but to drink the light and a ir wit h their leaves, to le t their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw the sap, is it conce ivable that they should not consc iously suffer if water, light , and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the flowe ri ng and ferti lizat ion which are the cu lmination of their life take place, they should not feci their o wn existence more intensely and enjoy some th ing like w h at we call pleasure in oune I-·cs' Does the water-lily, rocking in her trip le bath of water, air, and light, rdish in no w ise her ow n beauty: When the plant in our room turns to the light, doses her blossoms in the dark, responds to our wateri ng or pruning by increase of size or change of sh ape and bloom , who has the r ig ht t o say she docs not feel, or that , he plays a purely passive part? Tnlly plants Ca n foresee nothing, neither the scrthe ofthe m ower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neithe r run away nor cry ou t. But th is on ly proves how di fferent their mode. of feeling life must be from those of anima!. that live by eyes and ears and locomot ive organs, it does no t prove that they have no mode of feeling life at all. H

red",." u,P.rJ;, S"ltni"'I:'. IU,. p. '7"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

How ocanty and scatte,..,d would sensation be on ou r globe , if th e feding-life of plants w ere blotted from existence. Sol itary would conscious"es. move Ihrough t he woods in t he .hape of some dee r or other q uadruped, o r fly about the flow ers in that of some insect , but ca n we really suppose t hai the N ature Ihrough whi ch God's breath blows is such a barren wilderness as t his' I have probably by this time said enough to acq uaint those of you who have n"·er seen t hese metaphys ical w ri tings of Fechner with t heir more general characteristics, and I hope that some of you may now feel like reading them yoursdves." ·Ihe specia l thought of Fechner's with which in these lecture. I have mos t practica l conce rn, is his belief t hat the more indusive forms of conscious"ess are in part ron,!ilul,,1 by the more lim ited forms. Not t hat they arc the mere sum of the mOre lim ited forms. As our mi"d is "ot t he bare sum of our sight s plus our so u"ds plus our pa ins, but in adding theoe terms together also finds rdations among them and weaves t hem into schemes and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate knows anything, so the earth- sou l traces rel ations between the cont ent s of m .,· mind and the contents of yours of which neither of our separate minds is conscious. It ha$ schemes, forms, and objects proportionate to its w ider field, which our mental fields arc fa r 100 nUfOW to cognin. By oll rse!\·es we are simply ou t of rebt ion with each othe r, for it we are both of us there, and d!!prml from each other, wh ich is a positi ,·e rdat ion. W hat we are w ithout knowing, it knows that we are . \~e are dosed against its world, but that world is not closed against us . It is as if the total universe of inner life had a sort of gra in or d irect ion, a sort of valvular structure , permitting k nowle dge to Aow in o ne w ay only,.o that the w ider might always have the narrower under observation, but n,,·cr the n arrower the w ider . Fechner'. great analogy here i. t he relation of the senses to our ind ividual m inds. \ Vhen our eyes are open t heir sensations en ter into our genera l mental life, wh ich grow s incessa ntly by the add ition of what they see. Close t he eyes, however, and the visua l additions stop, nothing but t houghts and memories of the past visual experiences remain - in combination of COUrse w ith the enOrmOUS sto~k of other t hOllghts and mem ories, and with the data coming in from the senses not ye t closed. Our cye -sensations of thems elves k now nothi ng of this enOrmouS life joto wh jch the y fa ll. Fechner thinks, as any COmmon man would t h ink . Jl F«hnc" laIC" .ummarizing orhi. view., Die T ag«an.ich t gcgcnucb« de< Nachtansicht , Leipzig, ,g7'), i. r>OW, I undeutand, in proce .. of translat;"n. Hi. Little B"" k of Ufo aflC' D •• , h ""is" al«",Iy in tWO A ",.,ic"n v."ion., 0"" puhli'hed by U"le. B,,,wn & Co .• BOOlon . n' hcr by rhe Open Cou,., Cn .. Ch"'agn.

'h.

that they are taken into it directly when they occur, and for m par! of it ju,t as they are, Th ey don't stay ours ide and get represe nted inside by the ir copies. [t is only the memories alld cancel''' of them t hat are copies; t he sensible percept io ns themsd ves arc taken in or w alled our in their own proper per sons according as the eyes are o pen or shut. Fechner li ken s our individ ual penon. on t he earth unto so many sense - organs of t he earth's soul. W e add to it s percep tive life so long as Our own life lasts. It "bso rbs our p erceptions , just as they occur, into it s larger sphere of knowledge , and com bines them with the o ther d ata the re. W hen one of us d ie>, it is as ifa n eye of t h e world were do.ed , for all p,rupliv, contr ibutions from that part icular quarte r cease . But t he memories and conceptual relations that have spun themse lves round t he perceptions of t hat person remain in the la rger earth -life as disti nct as ever, and form new .. lat ions and grow and develo p th roughout all t he future, in the same w ay in which ou r o w n distinct o bjects of thought, once stored in memory, form new relations and develop t h roughout our whole finite life . Th is is Fechners theory of immorta lit y, fi rst published in the little 'Buechlein des lebens naeh dem rod e; in r836, and re-ed ited in greatly improved shape in t he last volume of his 'Zend-avena: \ Ve rise upon the earth as w avelets rise upon t he ocean. W e grow ou t of her wil as leaves grow from a tree. 'Ihe wavel ets eatch the su nbeams separat ely, the leaves stir whe n t he branches do not m ove. They rea lize t heir Ow n event' apart, just as in Ou r own con.dou""e •• , when anything becomes emphatic, t h e background fade> from observat ion. Yet the event w orks back upon the b ackgroun d, as the wa,·clet works upon t he waves, or as t he !eaf's mo" ement, work upon the sap inside the branch. Th e whole sea and the w hole t",e are regist ers of what has happened , and are different for the w ave's and t he leafs act ion ha,·ing occurred. A grafted t w ig may mod ify its stock to the roots: - so o ur ou tl ived private experiences , impressed on the whole earth-m ind as memories, lead t h e immortal life of ideas t here , and become parts of t he great system, fully d ist ingu ished from one another. just as We ourselves wh en alive w ere distinct, rea lizing th emselves no longer isolatedl y, but along with One anot h er as so many pa r tia l sys tems, enter ing thus into new combin ations , be ing affected by t he percept ive exper iences of t ho"" living then, and affecting the living in their turn - altho they are so .eldom recogn ized by living men to do so. !fyou imagine that this ent rance afte r the death of the bod y into a common life of higher t ype means a merging and loss of our distinct persona lity, Fechner asks you whe ther a visual sensation of our own

"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

ex ists in any sense I~n for itulfor I,n distil"t/y, when it enters into o ur high er rebtiona l consciousness and is there d istingu ished and de fi ned. - Rut here I must stop my repor t ing and send you to hi s volumes . Th us i. t he universe alive, accord ing to this ph ilosopher! I thi nk you will admil t hai he makes il more thiddy al ive , han do the other philosophers who, follow ing rationalistic methods .olely, gain t he same results, bm on ly in t he t hinnest outl ine • . Both Fechner and P rofessor R oyce , for example, believe ult imately in One ;t ll- indusi"e m ind . BNh b el ieve that we, jus t a. we stand h ere, are const itue nt parts of th at mind. No oth .. contmt h as it t h an us . wit h all t he other creatu res li ke Or unlike us , and the relations which it fi nds between us. Ou r caches, collect ed into one, arc substantivdy ident ical with its ali, tho the all is pe rfect while no each is perfect, sO that we have to admit t hat new qua lit ies as w ell as un perceived relat ions accrue from the collective form . It is thus sup erior to the d i.tributive form . But having reached this re.u lt , Royce (tho hi. !reatm enl of the subjec t on its moral side Seems to me infi nitely rich er and thic ker than t h at of an~' ot her contemporary idealistic philosopher) leaves u. very m uch to ou r own de,·ices. Fechne r, o n the cont ra ry, tr ies to trace Ihe superiorities due to the more collective form in as much detail a. he can. H e marks t h e various intermed iary stages and halting

plaee! of collectivit y, - a! we are to our separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system to t he earth, et c., - and if, in order to escape an infi nitely long summation, he posits a complete G od as the all-conta iner and le ave> him about as indefinite in featu re as t he ideal ists lea"e their absolute, he yet provides us wit h a very de fi nite gate of approach to h im in the sh ape of the eanh- oou l, thr ough wh ich in the nature of things we must firs t make con nexion w ith all the more envelop ing superhuma n rea lms , and with which ou r more im mediat e rel igious commerce at any rat e has to be carried on . Ord in ary monist ic idealism le ave. everything intermediary out. It recognizes only t he extremes , as if, after the fi rs t rude face of t he phe nomena l world in all its part icular ity, not h in g bu.t the .u prcme in all it> per fection could be fou nd. F irst, you and I, just as w e arc in this room ; and the momen t We get b elo w t hat su rface , the unutterable absolu t e itse 1f1. D oesn't this show a
72

phy'p~r;mus jruly (ompo"nd a"d "p"raN thrmsduu, the same assumption by which absolutism cxplains the relation of ou r mind. 10 the et ernal mind, and the same by wh ich empiricism explains t he composit ion of the human mind out of subordinate menrnl dements, is not one which we ought to let pa"" without scrut iny. I shall scrutinize it in the next kcturc.

J6

M,. Bradley ought to be to some dcgr<e

laO! 1' ");<'. Co",p"", <01'
c~empt
from my attack in t he",

"'Y. of ,..,,\-hum an cono<;,,","'" ;" h;< Ap -

LEC TU RE

V

T H E COMPOUNDING OF C ONSCIOUSNESS IN my last lecture I gave" m iserab ly scanty ou tl ine o f the w ay of

th ink ing of" philosopher rcmarbblc for the almost unexampled richness of hi, imaginat io n o f deta ils. J owe to Fechner's shade an apology for present ing h im in a manner ~o unfair to the mo.t e,scmial qua lity of hi, geniu.; bUl1hc t ime allotted is 100 short 10 say morc aboul1hc particular. of hi. work , so J proceed to the programme I suggcst.d at the end of OUtlast hour.I w ish to discu .. the assumption th at statc. of conscjousn~ss,

so-c:l.lIcd, ca.n sepHate and combine the mseh'es fruly,

and keep their ow n identity unchanged while forming parts of simul -

taneous fields of experience of wider scope. Let me first explain just what [ mean by this. W h ile you listen to my voice, for example, you arc perhaps inattentive to some bodi ly .ensaI ion due to your clOI h ing or your pos!U re. Yel th al sensat ion wou ld Seem probab ly ro be there, for in an instant, by a change of attention, you can h a\'e ;t ;n One field of consc iou sne~s with the voice. It SeemS as if it ex isted first in a "para," form , a n d t he n as if, witholll itself chang ing, it combined with vour other co -existent sensat ion •. It i. after th is a n alogy t hat pant h e;", ;c idealism thinks that we ex ;", in the absolute. lhe ah.olllle, it thi n k s, makes the world by knowing the whole of it at once in one u n d ivided e te rn al act Y To 'be,' ~ea/fy to be, is to be as il knows us to he, along with everything else, namely, and clothed with the fU [Ile.s of our meaning . .Meanwhile we a~e a t the same time not on lv rea lly a lld as it k now s us, but also apparently, for to our separate single selves we appear witbout most other Ihillg. and ullable to declare w ith any fulness what ou r OW ll meaning i•. Now t he classic doctrine o f pantheistic idea li sm, from the Upan ish;lds down to Josiah Royce, is Ihat Ihe fin ite 17 Royce, 1h. SpiritojM.J,rn Phil...phy, p_ 179-

THE COM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
knowu',;n .p ;t~ ofthe;r 3pp3r~nt ;gnoranc~, are on~ with t he knowu of t he all. In the most limited moment, of our pri"ate exper ience . t he absolute idea, as Dr. McTaggart lold us, i. implicitly conta ined. lhe moment., as Royce sa)", exiSI on ly in relation 10 il. Th ey arc true or erroneous on ly through its overshad ow ing presence. Of the larger self thaI alone eterna ll y is, they are the organic pariS. 11,ey art, only inasmuch as they are implicated in its being. lher. i, thus in reality but Ihi, One ,elf, conseiou,ly indu,;ve of all the lesser sdves, /agOi, problem- solve r, and all-knower: and R oyce ingeniously compares the ignorance that in Ou r per>ons breaks Out in the m idst of it s complet e knowledge and isolate, me from you and both ofu, from it, to the in atte ntion into which our finite mind, are liab le to fa ll with respect to such implicitly pre.ent detail, a. tho.e corporeal ,ensations to which I made allusion just now. Those sensations sland to our t otal private mind. in the same relation in which our private m inds stand to the absolute m ind. Privacy means ignorance - I ,t il] 'luote Royce - and ignorance means inattent ion. We are fin ite because our wi ll " as such, arc only fragments of the absolu te will; becau,e will meanS interest, and an incomplete w ill means an incomplete interest: and because incomple teness of interest means inattention to much t hat

a fuller inte rest wou ld bring us to pe rceive)' In this account Royce makes by far the man1iest of the post-hegelian attempu to read Some emp irically appre hensible content into t he notion of Ou r relaTion 10 The absolute mind. I have to adm it, now that I propose 10 you to scrutin ize this assumption rather closely, th ai trepidation sei'~e, me. The subject i. a .ubtle and abstruse one. It is o ne t hing to delve into subtleties by one's self with pen in hand, or 10 study out abstruse points in books, but 'luite another thing to make a poplilar lecture Ollt of them. Nevertheles s I must not flinch from my task here, for I think that this particular point form, perhap, the viral knot of the present ph ilosoph ic situation, and I imagine th at the times arc ripe, or almost ripe, for a serious attempt to be made at its untying. It may p<:rhap. help to lessen The arduousness of t he subje~t iff pllt the first part of what I have to say in t he form of a direct personal confession. In the year ,890 I published a work on psychology ;n which it beCame my duty to discu," the va lue of a certa in explanation of our higher mental states that had come into favor amo ng the more biologically incl ined psychologists. Suggested partly by the association of idea" and 38

1h' Jlodd and ,'" rnd;,,;d."I, v"l . i i, pp_;8- 6._

75

WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

partly by the analogy of chemical compounds, this opinion was that complex mental states are resu lt ants of the self-compounding of simpler onu. "[he Mill s had spoken of memal chemislry; \Vu ndt of a 'psychic synthes is," which might develop properties not conta ined in the de ments; and such wrilers as Spencer, Taine, Fiske, Barratt, and Cl ifford had propounded a great evolutionary Iheory in which, in the absence of souis, sdves , or other pri nciples of unity, primordia l units of mind-stuff o r mind- dust were represented as summ ing themselve s together in successive st ages of com pound ing and re - compounding, and thus engendering Our higher and m Ore complex states of mind. 'Ihe elementary feeling of A, let u. say, and t he elementary feeling OfB , when they occur in certain cond itions, combine, accord ing t o this doctri ne, into a feeli ng of A- plus- B, and t h is in turn combines with a similarly generated feeling of c -pIUS -ll, lIntil at last the whole alphab et may appear together in one field of awareness, without any otner witnessing principle or principle. beyon d t he feelings of the se"eral lellers themse lves, being supposed to ex ist. What each of them w itnesses separately, 'all' of them are supposed to witness in conju nction. Bu t their distr ibuti.·c k nowledge doesn't givr r;u to their collect ive knowledge by any act, it ;s their colle ctive knowledge. The lower forms of consciousne.. 'take n together' arr the higher. It , 'taken apa rt; eonsists of no t hing and iT nothing but them. "Ihis, at least, is t he most obv ious way of understanding the doctr ine, and is the way I understood it in the chapter in my psychology. Superficially looked at, this seems just like the comb ination of H.1 and 0 ;nta water, hut faakrd at mare dauly, thr analagy halt, hadly. When a chrmist trlls us that twa atams 0/ hydrogm and anr 0/ axygm camhin . thrm ,,1'Vtf of their own Iluord into th. 'uw compound luhrtanu 'waur,' hr knows (ifhe beli""" in the mechanical 'View 0/ natur.) that this i, only an dfiptical S/{IUmtnf for u mort compln flct . 7hat foCI ;s that when H2 and 0, instead of kceping £u apart, get into doser quarters, say into the position H- O-H , they affut ju~rounding bodi" dijprently: they now wet ou r skin, dissolve sugar, pllt Ollt fir<:, etc., which t hey didn't in t bei r former po sitiom. 'Water' is but our nllm~ for what acts thus pecu liarly. But if the skin, sugar, and fire were absent, no wi tness would speak of Water at all. He wou ld sr ill talk of the I! and 0 distr ibutively, mere ly noti ng that t he y acted now in t he new POSilion H- O- H. In the older psychologie s the soul or self took the place of the su gar, fire, or ski n. The lower feelings produced 1fUtl on iI, and t heir apparent compou nds were on ly its reactions. As you tickle a man's £"lce with a feather, and he laughs, so whm you t ickle his intcllectua l pr inciple with

THE CoM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
a retinal feding, ,ay, and a mu,cular fe e!ing al once , il laugh, responsive!)" by it , category of'space,' but il would be fal.e 10 treat t he 'pace a, 'i mply made of t ho.e simpler fedi ngs. It i. rat her a new and unique p'ychic creation which their combined action on the m ind is able to evoke. I found my~clf obliged, in d iscussing the mind - dust theory, to urge this last alternat ive vicw. l1'e so-called menIa l compound s are simple psyc hic react ions ofa h igher type . Th e form it,el f of them, I said, is somet hing new. \ Ve can't say that awarene .S of t he alphabet as such is nOlhi ng more than twen ty- ,ix awarenesse" each of a ,eparate letter; for those arc twenty- ~ ix d istinct awarene,se" of single leuers without others, while the ir so -called sum i, one awareness, of every letter with it , comrades. There is thus something new in t he collect ive consciousnesS. It knows the Same lener., indeed, but it know. them in this novel way. It is ,afer, I ,a id (for I fought 'hy of adm itting a ,elf or soul or other agent of combination), to treat t he consciousness of the alph abe t a, a t wenty- ~eventh fact, t he subst itute and not the sum of t he twenty- six simple r consciou,nesse" and to say that wh ile under certa in physiologica l conditions t hey alone ar<: produced , other more complex physiologica l conditions resuh in its production instead. Do not talk, therefore , I said, of t h e higher states ronsis/ing of the 'impler, or h~ing the urne with them; talk rath er of their knMlJing tht Jamt things. '[hey are d iffere nt me nt al fact', but they app rehend, each in it s own peculiar way, t he Same object ive A, s, c, and D. 'lhe theory of combination , I waS furced to conclude, is t hu, untenable, be ing both logically nonsens ical and prac tically unne"" ..ary. Say what you will. twelve thoughts, each of a single word , arc not t he selF-same mental thing as one thought of the whole ,."tence. The higher thoughts, I insisted, arc psych ic units, not co m pounds; but for all that, they may know togeth er as a collective multitude the vcry same objects wh ich under ot her conditions are known separately by as many simple t houghts. For many years I held rigorously to this vicw," and t he rcasons for doing so se emed to me dllring all those ~'ears to appl~' al.o to the opi n ion that the absolute mind stand , to our mind, in t he rebtion of a whole to it, pa r IS . If untenable in finite psychology, that opin ion ought to be untenab le in m etaphysics also. Th e great transcendenta lis t metaphor has 39 I hold ' 0 i, .,ill a. the be., d .."rip'ion of a" enormM. "umboor of our high« field . of con"';"U5fle ... l he}" demon" ,.,bly do not con.ain .h. lower ""• • 'hot know the >arne obj« ... Of o,her field., howO"er .hi. i. not.., tr ue, 110, in .he I"y"hologioral Review for 1895, "01 . ii, p. 105 (><... p«ially pp . "9-1>0), I fran kl)' withdrew, in pri n6pk, ,n}" formcr objcc';"" to .~lk; "g of fidd, "f """",;"u , n<.. be;"g ", ,,,Ie of ' ;"'plOT '1'"''': l<"";"g . 11< f;>eu ' o ,Icc;d< .h, ' lUC";O";" '''''h 'pec;al ca,•.

77

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

alway" been , as I lately remi nded you, a grammatica l sentence . Phy"ically such a se ntence is of course composed of clauses, t hese of words, the words of syllables, and the syllabi .. of leller<. We may take each word in, yet not underst and the sentence; but if suddenly the meaning of Ihe whole senlence /lashes, t he sense of each word is taken up in to that whole meaning. Just so, accord ing to our transcendentalist teac hers, the absolute mind thinks the w hole sentence , while w e, according to o ur rank as t h inkers, thi nk a c1au.e, a word, a syllable, Or a letter. M ost of us are , as I said, m ere syllab les in t he mouth of A llah. And as A llah comes first in the order of being. sO ComeS first the ent ire sentence, t he logo. that forms the eternal absolute thought. Students of language te ll us that speech began with men's effons to make l!l1t~mm!•. The rude synthetic ,·oca l utteranceS first used for t his effect slowly got ste reotyped . and then much later got decomposed into grammatical parts. It is no t as if men had first invented letters and m ade syllables of t h em, thcn made words of the syllable s and sentences of the words; - t hey actually followed the reverse order. So, t h e transcendentalists affirm, the complete abso lute thought is t he pre - con dition of our thoughts, and w e fin it e creatu res art' on ly in so far a, it owns us as its verhal fragments. Th e mel3phor is so beau t iful , and applies , moreover, so literally to such a mult itude of the mino r wholes of ex per ience, that by me rely hea ring it most of us are conv inced t hat it must apply universa lly. We sec that nO smallest ra indrop can come into being without a whole show er, no ,ingle feather without a whole bird, neck and crop, hea k and tail , coming into being simu lt aneously: so we un hesitatingly lay down the law that no part of any th ing can bc except so far as the whole also is. And then , since every thing whatever is part of the whole universe, and since (i f w e arc idea lists) nothing , w h ether par! or whole, exists excep t for a w it ne ss, we proceed to the conclus ion th at the unmit igated absolute as wit ness of the whole is the one sole ground of being of every partial fact, the fact of our ow n existence included . W e th ink of ourselve s as heing on ly a few of the feathers, so to spea k , which h el p to constitute t h at ah rolute bird . Extend ing the analogy of ~e rtain wholes. of which We hlve fam iliar exp eri ence, 10 th e whole of wholes, we easily become absolute idealis t s. Bu t if, instea d ofyidding to t h e seduct ions of Ou r metaphor, be it sentencc • • hower, Or bird, We analY'~e mOre ca refully the notion suggested by it that we arc cons tituent parts of the absolute 's eurna l field o f consciousness , we find gra '·c difficulties arising. First, the difficulty I found with t he m ind-du st theory. lfthe absolut e makes u. by knowi ng

THE COM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
us, how can we exist ot herwise than Ql it knows us? But it knows each of us ind ivisibly from every thi ng else. Yet if to exist means nothing but to be experienced , as idealism affirms, we surely exist o therwise , for we experience oursdvu ignorantly and in d ivision. \Ve indeed differ from t he absolute not on ly by defect, but by eKCess. Our ignorances, for example, bring curiosities and doubts by which it cannot be troubled, for it ow ns eternally t he solu t ion of every problem. Our impotence entails pains, our imperfection sins, whic h its perfection keeps at a distance . Wh at I said of the alph abet-form and the letters hold s good of the absolute experience and Ou r experiences. 'Iheir r elation, whatever it may be , seemS not to be that of identity. It is impossib le to reconcile the p eculiarities of our ex perience with OUt being only the absolute's menta l objects. A God, as distinguished from the absolute , creates things by proj ect ing t hem beyond h im sel f as so many substances, cach endowcd w it h p~rJeity, as the scholastic. call it. Aut o bj ects of t hought are not t h inp pa $(. 11,ey are there o nly for their thinker, and on ly aJ he thin ks t hem. H ow, then, can they become severally alive on their ow n accounts and t hin k themselves quite otherwise than as he thinks them) It i. as if the characters in a novel were 10 get up from the pages, and walk away a nd transact business of their own

outside of the allt hor's story. A third difficulty is t h is: The bi rd-met aphor is physical, but we see on reHection t h at in the pbysical wo rld there is no real compounding. 'W holes' are not rea lit ies there, pallS only arc realities. 'Bird' is only our "am~ for t he physica l fact of a certain grouping of o rgans, just as ·Cha rle's \Vain' is our name for a certa in grouping of stars. Th e 'whole: be it bird or constellation, is nothing but our vi, ion, not hing but an effect o n our sensor ium when a lot of things act on it together. It is not realized by any organ or any star, or experienced apart from the consciousness of an o nlooker.'" In th e physical world taken hy it se1fthue;s thus no 'all: there arc o nly the 'eaches' - at least that is the 'scientific' view. In the menta l world, on the cont ra ry, wholes do in point offact rea lize themselves pn u. The me aning of the whole sentence is just as much a real experience as t he fecling of each word il;; the absolute's expe rience is for itself, as much as yours is for yourself or mine for myself. So t he feath er-a nd-bird an alogy w on't work un less you make the absolute into a d istinct sO rt of mental agent w ith a vision produced in it by Our several m inds analogous to t he 'bird'-vision whic h the feathers, beak, etc. , pro40 1 ~b"r.. C! (.ani ,h. ociou,,,... b. ,he,.. .

co ~ sc""' . "e ..

79

""""h«l '0 ,h. whol. ;,..M, ;( .uch oon -

WtLl1 ... ~t

lA ~tES

duce in those same m inds . lh e 'whole: which is itJ experience, wou ld then be it , unify ing react ion on our experiences, and not t hose very ex· per ience. sd f- combined. Such a view as this wou ld go with t heism , for the theistic G od i, a separate being; but it would not go wit h pantheistic idcal ism, the vny cssenCe of which is to ins ist that We are literally parts of God, and he only ourselves in ou r totality - t h e word 'ourselves' here sta nding of course for all the un iverse', finite facts. I am dragging you into dept h, unsuitable, I fear, for a "'pid \ecture. Such d iffi cu ltie s as t hese have to be teased out w it h a needle, so to 'peak , and icct urer, shou ld take on ly bird's-eye views. '[he practical up,hot of the malle r, however, so far as I am concerned, is thi s, that if! had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ago, I should un hes it ati ngly have urged thc.e d ifficultic. , and developed them at still greater lengt h, to show that the hypothesis of the absoll11e was not only non- coercive from the log ical point of view, but ,df-contrad ictory as wdl, it, not ion that parts and whole are only two nameS for th e Same th ing not beari ng critical scru t iny. If you st ick to purely physical terms like stars , there is no whole. If vou ca ll the whole m ental. then the so-called whole, instead of being one fact with the parts, appears .-at her as thc int egral reaction on those parts of an independent higher witness, such as the

theistic God is supp<»ed to he. So long as this was the state o f my ow n m ind, J could accept t h e notion of . df-compounding in t he superna l spheres of experience no mOre ea sily than in th at chapter on mind- dust I had accepted it in t he lowe r spheres. I found m)"'e1f com p elled , therefore, to call t he abrolute impossible ; and the untrammdlcd freedom with which pantheistic or moni stic idealis t, stepped over t he log ical barri e" whic h Lotze and oth ers had set dow n long before I h ad - I had done lillie more than quot e these previous cr it ic. in my chapter - surprised me not a little, and made me , I have to confess , both re,entful and env ious. E nvious because in the bOllom of my heart I wanted t he sam e freedom myself, for motives which I ,hall develop later; and resentfu l because my "b,oluti,t friend, s~emed to me to be stea ling the privilege of blowing both h ot and cold. To establish thei r ;tbsolute th ey ",cd an intel!ectualist type of logic which they disregarded when employed against it. It seemed to me t hat they ought at least to h ave ment ioned t he objections t h at had stopped me SO completely. [ had yielded to them against my 'will to bdieve; out of pure log ical scrupulos it y. They, pro fessing to loathe the will to b.li~ve and to follow pure' t rationality, had ,imply ignored them. The method was easy, but hardly to be called candid. Fechner indeed was candid &l

THE COM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
~nough,

for he had never thought of the obj ections, but lat~r writers, like Royce, who should presumably have heard them, had passed them by in silence. I felt as if thue ph ilosophers were granting their will to belicve in monism too easy a license. My ow n conscience would perm it me no suc h license. So much for the penona l confession by whic h you have allowed me to inttoduce t he subjec!. Let us now consider it more objectively. lhe fundamenta l difflcuhv I have found is t he number of con t rad ictions which idealistic monists sum to d isregard. In the first place t hey attribute to all existence a mental Or experientia l char~ct er, bu t I find their simultaneous belief that the h igher and the lower in the universe arc entitatively identical, incompatible with this charact er. Incompatible in consequence of the generally accepted doctrine that, whether Berkeley were right or not in saying of material existe nce that it. ~ru is un/iri, it is undoubted ly right to say of mm!al ex istence t hat its we is sentiri or upo-;ri. If I fed pain, it is just pain that I feel, however I may have come by the feeling. N o one pretends that pain as such on ly appears like pain , but in it self is different . for to be as a mental experience iJ only to appear to some one. The idea li sts in question ought then to do one of two things, but t hey do mit h er. "Ihey ough t eit her to refute the no tion t hat as mental States appear, so they are; or, still keep ing that notion, they ought to adm it a distinct agent of unificat ion t o do the work of the all- knower, just as our re spective soul. or selves in popular philosophy do t he work of partial knowers. Ot hcrwis~ it is like a joint-stoc k company all shareholders and no treasurer or director. If our finite minds formed a bill ion facts, then its mind, knowing our billion, would ma ke a universe composed of a billion and one facts. But transcendenta l idealism is quite as un friendly to aClive principles called souls as physiological psychology is, Kanl having, as it thi nks, definitively demolished them. And altho some disc iples speak of the transcendental ego of apperception (which they celebrate as Kant's most precious legacy to posterity) as ifit were a combining agent, the drift of monist ic author ity is certainly in the direction of treating it as only an all-witness, whose field of vision We finite witne s.es do not cause, but const itute rat her. We are the letters, it is th~ alphabet; w e are the features, it is t he face; not indeed as if eit her alphabet or fOlee were something add itional to the letters or the features, but rat her as if it we", only anot her n ame for the vcry letters or features themselves. The all-form assured ly diffe rs from the each -form, but the matter is the same in bot h, and the each form only an unaccounlabl~ appearance .

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But t his , as you su, contradicts t he o t her idealist principle, of a menta l fact being juS! what it appea rs to be. If thei r forms of appeannce are 0;0 differenl, t he all and t he caches cannnt be ident ical. The way out (un less, indeed, we arc w ill ing to discard the logic of idenlity ahogelher) would seem 10 be frankly to write down Ihe aH and the eachn as two distinct orders of wil1'es$, each minor wilness being aw are of its own 'content' soldy, wh ile the greater witness knows the minor witnesses, knows their whole content pooled together, know. their ,.., btions to one another, and know s of just how muc h each one of them is ignorant. The t w o types of witnessing [Ire here pa!pably non-idmt icaL We get a pluralism, not a monism , out o f them. In my psychology-chapter I had resorted openly 10 ouch plura lism, treating each lOul field of consciousne .. as a distinct entity, and maintaini ng t h at the higher field. merely supersede t he lower functionally by knowi ng more about t he same object •. The monists themselves writhe like w orms on the hook to escape pluralistic or at least dua li stic language, but t hey cannot escape it. They spea k of the eternal and the temporal 'poinls of view': of the universe in its infin ite 'aspect' or in in finit e 'capacity': t h ey say that 'qua absolute' it i~ one thing, ''lUI? rebt ive' ~nothe r: they contrast its 'tru th' with it s appearances: they dist inguish the tota l from t he partia l way of'ta king' it, etc.: bU I they forget that, On idealistic principles, 10 make such distinctions is tantamount to ma k ing different beings, Or at ;lny r~te lhat varying points of view, aspects , appearances, way. of taking , and t h e like, are mean ingless phrases unless we suppose outside of the unchanging content of "ality a diversity ofwitne ..e. w ho experience or take it variously, the absolute mind being just the witness that ta kes it most completely. For consider the matter one moment longer, if you can. Ask wh at this notion implies, of appear ing d ifferently from different points of view_ If there be no outoidc wit nus, a thing can appear only to itself, the caches or parts to their severa l selves temporally, the all or w hole to it self elern"Hy. Different 'sdvn' thus break oUt inside of what the a!,soluti.t insist s to be int ri nsically one fact. But how can what is actually one be effectiw:ly so many? Pm your w imc..es anywhere, whcther outside or inside of what i. wimessed, in the last resort your witnesscs must on idealistic principles be distinc t , for what is witnessed is different , I kar that I am expressing mY5clf wit h terrible obscurity - some of you, I know, are groan ing over t he logic-chopping. Be a plura list or be a

THE CoM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
monist, you say, for h eaven's sake, no matter which, so long as you stop arguing. It rem inds one of Chesterton'. epigram that t he only thing that ever drives human heings imane is logic. Bu t whether I be sane or insane, you cannot fail, even t ho you be transcendentalists yourselves , to recognize to SOme degree by my trouble .he difficult ies that beset monist ic ideal ism. \Vhat boots it 10 call the parIs and the whole the same body of experience, when in the same breath you have to say that the all 'as such' means One sort of experience and each part 'as such ' meam anN her' Difficult ies, the n, so far, but no stable solu tion as yet, for I have been ta lk ing on ly critica lly. You w ill probably be rel ieved 10 hea r, then, th at having rounded this corner, I sha ll begin to consider what may be t he poss ibi lit ies of gelli ng farther. To clear the path, I beg you fir~t to note one point. What has so troubled my logica l conscience is not so much t he absolute hy il
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

the 'G od' of t heism . We should also have t o deny Fech ner's 'earth-soul' and all other superhuman collect ion, of experience of every grade, so far al least as these are held to be compounded of ou r simpler souls in Ih e way wh ich Fec h ner bel ieved in ; an d we sho uld have to m ake all these denials in th e name of Ihe incorruptihle logic of self- idemity, teachi ng us that to call a thing and its other th e same is to comm it the cr ime of sel f-comradic tion. But if We realize the whole ph ilosophic .itll"tion t hu s produced, we see that it is almost intolerable. L oya l to the logical kind of rationa lity, it is d isloyal to every other kind. It makes the un iverse discon ti nuous. Th ese fi elds of experience that rep lace each oth .. so pu nctually, each knowing the same matter, but in ever-wide ning contexts, from simplest feding up to ab.olute knowledge , can t hey have nO bdng in common when their cogn iti"" func tion is so manifestly common? 11,e regular succession of them i, on such term s an unintelligible miracle. I f you reply that t heir common objul is of itse lf enough to m
nality is rellly intolerable. I said awhile ago that I was envious of Fech ner and the o ther pantheist. because I my.elfwanted t h e .ame freedom that I saw them unscrupulously enjoying , of lett ing mental field . compound them.elve. and so make t he unive rse more continuous, but t hat my conscience held me pr isoner. In my heart of heans, however, I knew that my sit uat ion was
THE COM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
consciousne .. es be at the sam. t ime one consciousne .. ? How can one and the same identical fact experience itsel f so d i" ersel)"? The struggle was vain; I found myself in an ;mpiJ"~. I saw that I must eitl,. r forswear that 'psychology withou t a so u l' to which my whole ps)"cholog ical and k ant ian education h ad committed me, - 1must, in short , br ing back distinct spir itua l agents to know the mental st ates, now si ngly and now in combination, in a word b ring back scholast icism and common senSe - Or else 1 must sq uarely confe.s the solution of the problem im poss ibl e, an d then eit her give up m y int ellectua listic logic, the logic of ident ity, and adopt Some h igher (o r low er) form of rationa l ity, or, finally, face the fact t h at life is log ically irrational. Sincer.,)y, this is the actua l t rilemma that con fronts eve ryone of us. Those of you w ho arc scholastic- m inded, or simply common- sense m inded, wi ll smile al the el aborate groans of my partur ient mountain resulting in not h ing but t h is mouse. Accept t he spiritual agents, for heaven's sake, you w ill say, and leave off your ridiculous pedantry. Let but our 'souls' combine our sensat ions by their intellect ua l facu lt ies , and let but 'G od' replace the pantheist ic w orld- sou l, and your wheels w ill go round again - you w ill enjoy both life and log ic together. This solution is obvious and I know t hat many of you will adopt it. It i~ comfortable, and ~ll ou r habits of speech wpport it _Vet it is not for idle or fantastical reasons that t he notion of the substantial soul, so freely used by common men and t he more popular philOll oph ies , has fallen upon .ueh evil days, and ha s nO prest ige in t he eyes of crit ical t h inkers. It only , h are, the fate of ot her unreprescntable ,ub,ta nces and principle,. They arc without exception all so barren t h at to sincere inqu irers t hey ap pear as little more than names masquerading - W o di~ begriffe fehlen da slcl lt ein wort zu r reehlen zeit ,ich ein. You sec no deeper into t he fact th at a hundred sensations get compounded or know n together by thinking t hat a ',oui' does the compounding than you see into a man's living eighty years by thinking of h im a, an octogen arian . or into our having five fingers by calling us pentadactyl<. Sou l. have worn out both the m selves and their welcome, that is the plain trut h. Philosophy onght to gel the ma ni fold. of experience unified on principles less cmpty. Like the word 'cause; the word 'soul' i, but a t heore tic st op- gap - it ma rks a place and cla ims it for a future explanation to occupy. 'Ihis being Our post-humian and post-kamian state of mind . I will ask your perm ission to leave the soul wholly out oflh. pre,ent discu,sion and t o consider only the res idua l dilemma. Some day, indeed , sou ls may get their i,ming' aga in in ph ilosophy - 1 am quite ready to admit

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

that possibil ity - t hey form a category of t hought too natural to th e human mind to exp ire withou l prolonged resistance. Bu t if t he belie f in the soul ever does come to li fe after the ma"y fu neral -d iscourses whic h humian and kantian cr itic ism have preached over it , I am sure it wi ll be on ly when some one has found in I\' e lerm a rragmal;c significance Ihat has hil h erto eluded observation. \ V hen that champion speaks, as h e wel l may speak some day, it w ill be time to consider souls m ore seriously. Let us leave out the soul , t hen, and confront what 1 just called t h e residua l dilem ma. Can we, on the one hand, give up the logic of identity? - can we, on the ot h er, bel ieve hu man exper ience to be fu ndamen tally ir rationa l? Neither is easy, yet it would seem t hat we m ust do on e or t he other. Few ph ilosophers have had the frankness fa irly to ad m it the necessity of choosing between the 'horns' offer ed. Reality m ust be rationa l, they have said, and since t h e ordinary intellect ualist log ic is the on ly usual l est of rationality, real ity and log ic must agn:e 'somehow.' Hegel was the first non- mystical w r iter to flce t he di k mma " luardy and t hrow away t he Of"" dinary logic, saving a pseudo-rationality for the universe by inventing the higher logic of the 'dialectic process ." Bradley hold s to the intellectualist logic, and by d int of it convicts t he h uma" univorse of being irrational ity incarnate. Bu t wh at mUlt be and Clln be, is, he says; the re must ~n d can be rdief from that irrationalit y; and the absolute must already have got the relicfin secret ways of its own, impo~s iblc for us to guess at. II ... of cOurse get nO rel ief, SO Bradley's is a rather ascetic doctr ine. Royce and Taylor accept simila r solutions, on ly they emphasiu t he irrat ional ity of our fi nite universe le ss t h an Bradley docs; and Royce in particular, be ing unus ually 'thick ' for an idea list, !ri.. to bring the absolut ' s secret forms of rel ie f more sympat hetically home to ou r imagination. W ell , what must we do in t h is trag ic pred icament> For my own part, I have finally found mysel f compelled to give up the logic, fairly, squarely, and irre vocably. It has an imperishable usc in h uma n life, bu t that usc i. no t to make us theoretically acquainted w ith the essentia l natu re of reality - just what it is I can pe rhaps sugg~st to you" little later. Rea lil y, life, experience, ~oncret <:nn • • immedi acy, usc whal word you will , eXceeds our logic, over llows and surrounds it . I f you like to employ wo rds eulogistica lly, as most men do, and .0 encourage confusion. you may say that reality obeys a higher logic, or enjoys a higher rat ionality. Bllt I think that even eulogistic words should be used rat her to d is ti nguish tha n to commingle meanings, so ] prefer blu ntly to call real ity if not irration al t hen at least non - raliona l in its constitution , - and by reality

THE COM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
here I mean realit y whe,.., th ings happnt , all temporal reality without exception. I my,clffind no good warrant for even su'pecting t he existence of any rea lit y of a higher denomination than that di
to take its rightfu l and respectable place in the world of simple hu man practice , if! had not been influmced by a comparatively young and very o rigina l french writer, Professor H enr i Bergson. Reading his works is what has made me bold. If I had not read Bergson, I shou ld probably still be blackening endless pages of paper privately, in the hope of making ends meet t h at were never meant to meet , and t rying to discover some mode of conceiving the behavior of realily w h ich should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted laws of the log ic of identity. It is certain , at any rate, that without the confidence wh ich being able to lean o n Bergson's aut hority gives me I should nevcr have venturcd ro urge t hese particular views of mine upon this ultra- crit ical audic nce. I mu st t herefore, in order to make my OWn views mOre intelligible, give some prelim inary account of t he bergson ian philosophy. But here, as in Fechner's case. I mllst confi ne myself on ly to t he features that arc essential to the pre sent purpose, and not entangle you in collateral de ta ils, however interesting otherwise. For our present purpose, t hen, t he e",ential ~ont rjbut ion of Bergson to philosophy i. his ~r iticism of intellectualism. In my opinion he has killed intellectualism defi nitively and without hope of recover}". I don't sec how it can ever r"'ive again in it , anc ient platonizing role of chiming to he the most aut hentic, in tim ate,

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and ""hau.tiv~ defi n.r of t he nature of realitv. Others, as Kant for example , h ave denied intellectua lism"s pretensions to define reality a~ sifh or in its absolute capac ity: but Kanl still leave. it lay ing down law s - and laws from w h ich there is no appeal - 10 all our human experience; wh ile what lkrgson denies is that ils methods g ive any adequate account of t his human ex perience in it s very finiteness . JllSt how Bergson accomplishes all this I must try 10 tell in my im perfect way in the next lecture; bu t since [ have already used . he words 'logic; 'Iogic of identity, intellectualislic logic ,' and 'intellectualism' so often, and sometimes used t hem as ift hey requ ired no particular explanation , it will be wi~e at .his point to say at greater length than heretofore in what sense I tah these term s when I cla im that Bergson has refur.d their prete nsion to decide what rea lity can or cannOt be. Just what I mean by intellectualism is therefore what I shall try to give a fuller idea of during t h", re ma inder ofl his present hour. In recent controversies some participants have shown resentme nt at bei ng classed as inteilectllalislS. I mean to USc the word disparag ingly, but shall be sorry if it w orks offence. Intellectualism h as its so urce in the facu lty which gives us our ch ief superiority to the brutes, our power, namely, of Iranslating the cru de flu x of ou r merely feding- experience into a conceptual ord er. A n immediate ex perience, as yet unn amed or classe d, is a me re that Ihal we undergo, :tlhing Ihat ask!, '/Vh"t am p' W hen we name and class it, w e say for the first ti me what it is, and all t hese whau arc abstract names or concepts. Each concept me ans a part icular kind of thing, and as things Seem Once for all to h" "e been created in ki nds, a far more efficient hand li ng of a give n bit of expe r ience begins as soOn as we have classed the "arious parts of it. Once classed, a thing can be treated by the law of its cla.. , and t he advantages arc endless . Bot h theoretica lly and pract ically t h is power of framing abstract concept s is one of the sublimest of ou r h llman prerogatives. We come back into the concrete from our journey into these abstrac tions, with an increase bot h of vision and of power. It is no w onder that earlier thin kers , forgell ing that concept s arc on ly man -mad e ex t racts from the tempora l flux, shou ld have ended b~· treat ing t hem as a superior type of bei ng. bright , ~han gcle ss, true , divine, and Uttorly oppo.ed in nat ure to the turbid, restless low er world. The latter then appea rs as but the ir corruption and falsification . Intellectuali.m in the vicious SenSe began when Socrate. and P lato taught that what a thi ng ,..,ally is, is told us by its dpni/ion . Ever since Socrates we h ave been t aught t h at reality consists of essences, not of ap· pearances, and that Ihe e",ences of things are known whenever we kn ow

THE COM POUNDING Of CONSCiOUSl
th~ir

dd'initiom. So first w~ identi(1' the thing with a conc~pt and t he n we id entify the concepl with a defin ition, and only Ihen, inasmuch as Ih~ t h ing ;$ whatev~r t he definition expresses, arc we sur~ of apprehending the rea l essence ofil or the full truth about it. So far no harm is done. 111e misuse of concepts begins wi. h t he hab it of employing t hem privatively as well as pos iti vely, using them not merely to assign properties to things, but to deny t he very properties with which the things sensibly present thcmse!ve •. L ogic can extract all it s possible conseq uences from any defi nition, and the logician who is un.rbittlich consequent is often templed , when he CannOt ext ract a certain property from a defi nition, to deny t h at t he concrete object to which t he defin it ion applies can possibly possess t hat property. The defi nition th at fail. to yield it mu.t exclude or negate it. Th is is H eger . regular me t hod of e,tablishing hi, 'ystem . It is but the old , rory, of a use fu l practice first becoming a method, then a habit, and finally a tyran ny that defeat s the en d it was used for . Concepts, first employed to m ake th ings int elligible, arc clu ng to even when they make them unintelligible . Th us it comes that whcn once yOli have conce ived thing s as 'independe nt ; you must proceed to deny the possibilit y of any con nexion whatever among them, because the not ion of con nexion is not co nt ained in the definition ofindtpendtnet. For a like reason you mu st de ny any possible forms or modes of un ity among th ings w h ich you h ave begu n by defin ing a. a 'many.' \Ve have ca.t a glance al H egel's and Bradley's use ofthi, SOrt of reasoni ng, and you will remember Sigw art's epigram that according to it a horsema n can never in h is l ife go on foot, or a photographer eve r do anyth ing but photograph. The cl ass ic extreme in this direction is the denial of t h e possibility of changc, and the consequcnt br and ing of the world of change as unreal, by certain philosophers. Th e definition of A is ch angeless, so is thc defin it ion of B. The one de finition cannot change into the ot her, so the notion that a concrete t b ing A sh ould cb ange into another concrete thing B is made O ut to be contrary to reason. In .Mr. Brad ley's difficulty in secing how sugar can be ~WeC1 i ntelle~tuali,m outstr ips itself and becomes open ly a sort of verbal ism. Sugar is just sugar and sweet is ju,t , weel; neither is the othe r; nor can the word ' is ever be understood t o join any subject to its predicate rat ionally. Nothing 'between' t h ings can con nect them, for 'between' is just t hat t h ird t h ing, 'between,' and would need itself to be connected to t he first and second things by two st ill finer b~tween', and so on ad infinitum.

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The part icular intellectualistic difficu lty that had held my ow n thought so long in a vise was, as '..Ve have seen at such tedious length, the imposke the world of our m ost accomplished philosopher.. N either as they usc it nor as We usc it does it do anyth ing bu t ma ke nat ure look irrati on al and see m impossible. In my next lecture, using Bergson as my principa l topic, I sha ll enter into more concrete detail. and try, by g iving up intellectualism frank ly, to ma ke, if not the world , at ieast my ow n general th"is, I... unint ell ig ible.

~)

LECTUR E

VI

B ERGSON AND HIS C RIT IQUE OF I NTELLECTUALISM I gave you a ve ry st i ff lecture la st t ime, and I fear that this on e can

be link

ks ~ 50,

'Ihe best w;lY of enteri ng into it will be to begi n im -

med iately with B ergson's ph il osophy, sin ce I told yo u that th at was what h ad led me pefsona lly 10 renounce t he imdkct u"l iSl ic method and the cur rent notion that logic iii an adcqualC meas u re of what can or can n o t b e . P rof•• "", H e n ri Bergson is a young man , comparat ively, as in fluen ria l philosophus go, having bun bc.rn at Paris in 1859. H is car~u has been the perfectly rout ine one of a successfu l french profrssor. E ntering

the ecok norm:l1e super icllre at th e age of twenty-two, he spent the next st'-enreen years teaching at /year, provi ncial or parisian, until h is for t iet h year, when he was mad e professor at the said ecok norm alc. Since J900 he has been professor at t he Coll ege de France , and member of t he In stitu te since '9°°. So far as the ou tward facts go , Bergson's career has the n been commonplace to t he utmost . Neither One ofTaine 's famous principles of explanat ion of great men, th~ rat~, the environment, or th~ moment, no , nor all th ree together, w ill expla in t hat peculiar way of look ing at things that constitute. his menta l ind i" idua lity. O r iginality in men dates from not hi ng previous, other th ings date from it , rather. I have to confess that Bergson's orig ina lit y is so profu se that many of his ideas baffle me ent irely. I doubt w hether anyone understand s him all o\'er, so to spea k; and I am sure t hat he w ould hims d f be t he first to sec that this must be, and to confess th at t h ingo wh ieh he h imsdfhas not yet t hOlight out d early, had yet to b e ment io ned and have a tentative place assigned them in h is ph ilosoph)·. M any of us arc profu sely or iginal, in t hat no man can "ndeTsta nd us - violently pecu l iar ways oflook ing at t hi ngs are no great rar it y. The rarity is whe n great pecul iar it y of "i-

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sion is a l1 i~d with g,""at lucidity and unusual com m and of all t he classic expos itory apparatus. Bergson's resou rces in t he way of erud it ion arc remarkahl~, and in t he way of exp,""ssion t h~y arc simply phenomenal. Th is is why in France , where l"art denim dirt cou nts for so much and is sO su re of appreciation, he has immedialely taken SO em inent a place in public esteem. Old- fashioned professors, whom his ideas 'I" ite (ail to satis fy, nevertheless spea k of his t alent almost with bated breath, while the YOllngsters flock to hi m as to a m;lster. I f any thi ng can make hard thi ngs easy to (ollow, it is a st yle like Bergson·s. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lat ely called it; fai ling to see that such stra ight forw ardne .. means a flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought wit hout a c,""as~ or wrin kle, as elast ic silk underclothing follows t he mo'·ement. of one 's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of pUll ing things is what all reader. are first st ruc k hy. It seduces you and br ibes you in advance to become h is disc iple. It is a miracle, and he a rea l magician. M . Bergson , if] am r ightly in formed, came into ph ilosophy through the gateway of mat hematics . Th e old antinomies of the infin ite were, I imagi ne, the irri tant t hat fi rst woke his facu lties from their dogmat ic slumb er. You all rem em ber Ze no's famous paradox, o r sophi sm, as many of our logic book! Sl ill eall iI, of Achille! and Ihe tortoise. Gi ve that reptile ever so small an advance and the sw ift ru nner Achi lles can never o vertake h im, much less get ahead of hi m; for if space and time arc infi nitely d ivisible (as Our intellects tdlus t hey must be) , by t h e time A chilles reach~ s t h e tortoise's starting-point, t he tortoise has already got ahead of that start ing- point. and sO on ad infinitum, the interval bet ween the pursuer and the pursued growing endl~",ly minuter, but never becom ing wholly obliterated. Th e common war of showi ng up the sophism here is by point ing out t he ambiguity of t he expression 'never can overta ke.' \Vhat the word
in sisted that he can't be overtaken at a lL Leave Ach illes and the tortoise out of the account altogether, he wou ld have sa id - they complicate the case un necessarily. Ta ke any single process of change whatever, ta ke the twenty ,econd s themselves dapsing. Jft ime be infi nitdy divisible, and it must be so on intellectualist principles, they , imply can not clapse, th eir end cannot be reached; for no matter how much of them has already elapsed , before the rema inder, however minute, can have wholly dapsed, the earlier ha lf of it must fim ha"e elapsed. And this n'er fe - arising need of maki ng t h e earlier ha lf elapse fir,t leaves time with always som ething to do b~fou t he last thing is done. sO that t he last thi ng never gelS done. Expressed in bare numbers, it is li ke the convergent ser ies ,I, plu. Ill, plus ,/8 ... , of which t h e limit is one. But this limit, simply because it is a limit . • tand. outside the serie., t he \'allle of which approaches it indefi nitely but never t ouches it. Ifin the natura l world t here were no ot he r way of gett ing t h ings save by .uch successive add ition of their log ically involved fract ions, no compl ete unit~ or whole things wOllld ever come into be ing, for the fract ions' sum would alw ays leave a rema inder. But in point of fan nature doesn't make egg-' by making first half an egg , then a q"artef, then an eigh t h, etc., and adding them toget her. She eit her makes a whole egg at once or none at all , and so of all her other units. It is only in the sphere of change. t hen, whe re one phMe of a thi ng mllSt needs come int o bei ng before another phase can come that Z eno', paradox gives t rouble. And it g ive, trouble then only if the ,uccession of steps of change be infinitely divisible. If a bott le had to be emptied by an infinite numbe r of successive decrements, it is mat hematically impo,"ible that t he emptying should ever posit ively terminate. In point of fact, however, bottles and coffee- pots empty themselves by a finite number of decremenu, each of definite amount. Either a whole drop emerges or nothing emerges from the 'pout. Ifall cha nge w ent thu s drop -wise, so to spea k, if rea lt ime sprou ted or grew by units of durat ion of determinate amount, jllSl as our perceptiom of it grow by pu lses, the re would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian anti nomies to trouble us. All our sensible experiences, as We get t hem immediately, d o thus ch ange by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying 'more, more , more ," or 'l ess, less, less,' as t he definite increments or diminutions make them.elves felt. lhe di.creteness i •• t ill mOre obviou. when, instead of old thing. changing, t he y cease, or w hen altogether new things come. Fechn er's term of t he
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in the change of all our .. nsib le experi ences. Th ey come to us in dro ps. T ime itsel f comes in d rops . Our ideal decompositio" of the drops w h ich a", all t h at we feci i"to still finer fraction s is but an incident in that great tra nsfor mation of the perceplual order into a conceplual order of which I $poke in my last lecture. II is made in Ihe int erest of our rationa li zi ng inlellect so1cly.ll,e times d irectly pIt in the experiences of living subject s h ave originally no common measure . Le t a lump of sugar melt in a gllss, to usc one o f M . Bergson's instances . W e fed the t im e to be long whi le waiti ng for t he process to end , but who knows how long or how short it feels to t he sugar? A ll ftlt t imes coex ist and overlap or com pene trate each oth er t hus vaguely, but t he artifice of plott ing them on a common sca le helps us to reduce their aborigina l con fus ion, and it helps us still mOre to plot, aga inst t he same sca le, t he successive possible steps into which nature 's var iou, changes may be resolved , either sensibly or conceivably. We thus stra ighten ou t t he aboriginal pr ivacy and vagueness, and can date t h ings publicly, as it were, and by each other. Th e notion of one objective and 'evenly flow ing' time, cut into numbe red instants, applies itself as a common measure 10 all ,h e neps and phases, no matter how many, into which w e cu t t he processes of natu re. They arc now definitely contem porary, or late r or ea rlier one than anoth er, an d We can handl e them m ath emat ically, as we say, and far bettu, pract ically as we ll as theorctkally, for having thus correlated them one to one with each othcr on the commOn schemat ic Or conceptua l time-scale. M otion, to ta ke a good exam ple, is orig ina lly a tu rbid sensation, of which the native shapc is perh aps best preserved in the phenomcnon of ve rtigo. In vert igo we ful that movement ir, and is more or les< violent or rapid, m ore or less in this direct ion or t hat, more or Icss ala rm ing or sickening. Hut a man subject to vert igo may gradua lly k arn to co-ordinate h is felt m ot ion w ith his real pos it ion and t h at of other things, and intellectua lize it enough to succeed at last in w al king w it hout staggeri ng. "n 'e mat hematical mind simi la rly organi zes mot ion in its wa~·. putti ng it int o a logical defi nit ion: motion is now conceived as 't he occupancy of serially ."censi"e points of sp",ee at serially so~cessive instant. of time.' With such a de fin it ion we escape wholly from t he turbid privacy ohense. Hu t do we not al,o escape from .cme- rea lit y alt ogether? \Vh ate"er motion really may be, it .urel y i. not st at ic; but thc defin ition wc have gained is of the absolutely static. 11 gives a set of one -Co- on e re lations between 'pace -points and time -points. which relations them. elves are a. fixed a. the points arc. It gives porihonr assign able ad infi nitu m ,

but how the body ge t s from one pos it ion to another it om its to mention. The body gets there b}" moving, of CQurse; but the conceived positions, howevu numerously multiplied, cQnt ain no element of movement, .0 Zeno, using nothing bu t them in his discussion, has no alternative b u t to say that o ur intellect repudiates motion as a non-real ity. Intellect ua lism here doe s what I said it doe. - it makes experience less instead of more intelligible. We of course need a .t"ble scheme of concepts, stably related with o ne another, to la}" hold of our experiences and to co-ordinate them withal. When an experience COmeS with suffi~ient sa lienq to .tand OUl, we keep the thought of it for future use, and sto.. it in our conceptual system. 'A'hat does not of itself stand out , we learn to fut out; so t he system grow. complete r. and new rea lit y, as it comes, get . named after and conceptua lly strung upon t hi s or t h at den,.nt of it which we have already established. The immutability o f such an abstract system is in great practical merit; the same identical terms and relation s in it can always be recovered and re ferred to - change itself is just such an unalterable concept . But all these abstract concepts arc but as flowers gathered, they are onl}" m om ent . dipped out from th e stream of time, .nap-shot. ta ken, as by a kinetoscopic camera, at a life that in its origi nal coming is con tinuous . Useful as the}" aTe as sample. o f the gard en, o r to re- en te r the stream wit h, or to insen in our revolving lantern , they have no value but t h ..e pract ical va lues. You cannot explain by them what makes any single phenomenon be or go - you merely dot Out the path of appearances which it traverses. For you can not make continuous being out of discontinuities, and your concepts ;ore discont inuous. the stage s into wh ich you analp.e a change are
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sus on ly Ih~ i r ~xlr~mitie s . He fix~s only a f~w r~su lts, h~ dOls a curv~ and then interpolates, he substit ute. a tracing for a realitr. 'Ihis b~ing so und~n iably th~ cas~, th~ history of the way in whic h philosophr has dealt with it is curious. Th e ruling tradition in philoso phy has always been the platonic (l nd aristotelia n bel ief Ihat fix it y is a nobler and worl h ier thing than change . Realily must be one and unalterable . Concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with this fi xed nature of Irulh, iO dlat for "ny knowledge of OUrS to be quite true it must be knowl~dgc by univ~rsal concepts rathu than by part icular exper iences, for t hese notoriously arc mutable and corruptible. 'Ih is is the trad it ion known as ration alism in ph ilosophy, and what I ha,'~ called i nt~lIectua l i,m is only th~ ~xtr~mc applicat ion of it. In spit~ of sc~ptics and empir icists , in spite of Protagoras, Hllme, and James Mill, rationalism has nev~r h~~n s~riously qu~, tioned, for its sha rpest crit ics hav~ always had a tender place in their hearts for it , and have obeyed some of its ma ndates . lhey have not been consistent: they have play~d fast and loose with the enemy; and Bergson alon e has been rad ical. T o show what I mean by t h is , let me contrast hi. procedur<: w it h that of some of the transcendentalist philosophcl"$ whom J have lately ment ioned. Com ing after Kant, these pique thems elves on being 'critiCal: on bui lding in f~ct upon K ~nt-s 'critique' of pure reason . W hat that critiqu~ prof~.ssed to ~st ab lish was this, that conc~pts do not appreh~ nd reality, but only such appearances 'os our senses fced out to them. They give immutable inte llectual forms to these appear~ nces , it is true, bu t th~ r~al it y an l; sha ll be ascertainable. 'Il, ese mi nor pulses"W~ can indeed go on 10 ascert ain or to com pille indefinitely if We have p"ti<:n~e; bllt it would cont radict t he definition of an infin it e nu mber to .uppos~ t he ~ ndless se ries of them to have aClllally cou nted tb.mufws oUl piecemeal. Zeno mad e this manifest; SO the infinity which Ollr intellect requires of the sense - datum is thus a future and potentia l rath~r than a past and aClllal infinity of stfllC!lIr~. Th~ datu m aft~r it has made it.elf must be decompo, abl. ad infinilum by ou r concept ion, but of the steps by which th at struc t ure actually got compo .. d we know

noth ing. Our intd lect casts, in short. no ray of lig ht on the processes by wh ich ex periences get made. Kan t's monistic successors have in general fou nd the data of immediate experience even more self- contradictory, w hen int el lectually treate d , than Kant d id. Not only the character of in finity involved in Ihe relation of various empirical data to their 'conditions,' but the very notion that empir ical t h ings should b e related to one anot her at all , has seemed to t hem . when the in tell ectua l istic fit W;lS upon them, full of paradox and contradiction. We saw in a former lecture numerous inStances of this from H egel , Bradley, Royce, and others. V>'c saw also where the solution of such an intolerab le state of things was sought for by these authors. \V hcreas Kant had placed it outside of and hifor~ our experience, in t he ding' an sich which arc the causes of the latter, h is monistic succeosors all look for it either aflerexpuie nce, as its absolute complet ion, or else consider it to be even now implicit within experience as its ideal sig ni fication. Kant and h is successors look, in shor t, in di ame t rica lly opposite direct io ns. Do not be misled by Kant's admission of theism into his system . Hi s G od is t he ord inary dualistic G od of Chr islianity, to whom hi, philosophy simply opens Ihe door; he has nothing wh atsoever in common wit h the 'absolute spirit' set up by h is successors.

So far as thi~ absolute spirit is logicall y derived from Kant, it i~ not from his G od , but from entirely different clem ents of his philosophy. First from his notion that an uncondit ioned totality of the condition s of any experience must be assignable; and t h en from hi s other notion that the presence of some witne .., or ego of appercept ion, is t he most universal of all t he cond it ions in question. 'Ihe post-kanti ans make of lhe wilnesscondit ion what is called a concrete un iversal , an individualized all-witness or world-self, which shall imply in it s rational const it ut ion each and all of t he ot hcr cond it ions put t ogether, and therefore necess it ate eac h and all of the cond it ioned experiences. Abridgments li ke thi s of other men's o pinion. arc very unsatisfactory, they always work inju.stice; but in this case those of you who arc familiar wit h the literature will see im m ed iately what I hav" in mind; and to the o thers, if the re be any here, it will suffice to say that what I am trying so J"'dantica lly to poi nt out is only t he fact that monis tic idea lists 3fte r Kant have invariab ly sought rdieffrom the supposed contradict ions of o ur world of Sen.e by looking forwa~d toward an enS ~aliunis concei"ed as it s integration o r logical com pletion , while he looked backward toward non-rational ding~ an sich conceived as its cause. P lura list ic empiricists , on the o t her halld , have rem3ined in the world of sense, .it l,. r

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

naively and because they ove rlooked t he intell ectualistic cont radict ions, or because, not able to ignore them . they t hought they could rcfme them by a superior use of the same intellectualistic logic. 11ms it is Ihat Joh n Mi ll pre tends to refute t h e Achilles-tortoise fa ll ac}'. '[lIe importan t point to notice here is the in tellectua list logic . Bot h sides t reat it as authoritative. but they do So capriciously, the absolutists smashing the w orld of sense by its means, t he em piricists sm ashing t he ahsolule - for die absolute, t hey .ay, is the 'lu intessence of all logical contradictions. Neith er side attains co nsistency. Th e Hegel ians have to in"oke a highe r logic to supersede t he purd y destructi "e effor t s of their first log ic. Th e empiricists use their logic against the absolute, but refuse to use it aga inst finite experience . Each party uses it or drops it to su it the vision it has fait h in. hut ne it h er impugns in principle its gene ral theo retic authority. Bergson alone challenges its t heoretic aut hority in principle. H e alone denies th at mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible or possible in t he world of be ing or fact; and he does so for reasons which at the same time th at t h ey rule log ic out from lordship over the whole ofl ife. establi.h a vast and defin ite sphere ofinRuence where its sovereignty is indisputab le. Bergson's ow n tex t, felicitous as it is , is too intricate for quot at ion, so J must use my own infe r ior word ~ in expla ining what I mean by saying th is . In t h e first place , logic, g ivi ng primari ly t he rel at ions bet ween concepti as such. and th e rdations bet ween natural facts on ly secondarily or so far as the fact s have been al ready identified w it h concepts and de fined by them , must of course stand or £~11 with the conceptua l met hod. Rut the conceptua l m et hod is a transformation whic h the flu x of life undergoes at our ha nds in the interests of prac tice essentia lly and only subord inat ely in t he interests of th eory. \ Ve live for ward, we underst::l!1d backward, sa id a danish writer; and to understand life by concepts is to arres t its m oveme nt, cutting it up into b its as if w it h scissors, and im mobi li zing Ihese in ou r logical herbarium wh ere, comparing them a. drie d specim ens, we can ascert ain w hich of them stat ically includes or excludes whi~h ot her. 'Ihis treatment '''p poses life to have already aCcomplished itself, for the concepts, bei ng so m any views t ake n a fler t h e fact , are retrospect ive and pOSt mortem . N evert heless we can draw conclllsions from them and project t hem in to the future . W e cannOI learn from t hem how life made itsel f go, or how it will m ake it.. lf go; but, on the supposit ion th at its ways of mak ing itself go arc unchanging, we ca n calculate what position. of imagined arrest it w ill exhibit h ereafter und er

given condition s. We can compute, for instance, at what point Ach ille. will be, and where the IOIIoise will be, at the end of the twentieth minute. Achi lle. may t hen he at a point far ahead; but t he full detail of how he will have managed practica lly to get there our logic n ever gives I.1S - We have seen, indeed, thai it finds tha, its results contrad icT lhe facts of nature. 111e computations w hich t h e other
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

animal, living in it ~xdus ivdy as he do~s, is abl~ to compass. T o get from on~ point in it to anothe r we have to plough or wade through the whole intolerable i!lT~rva l. No detai l i< spa",d us : it is as bad as the barh~d-wire complicat ions at Port Art h ur, and w e grow old and die in t he process. I:IU! wilh our facuhy of abs t raCling and fix ing concepts we are there in a second, almOSI as if we controlled a fourlh dimension, skipping the intermed iaries as by a divine w inged power, a nd getting at the e xact point we require Wil houl entanglemem with any context. \Vhat We do in faci is 10 harM" up r~alily in o ur conceptua l systems in order to drive itlhe better. 'Ih is process is ptact i,,,l because all t he term in i to wh ich We dr i"" arc partirufartermini, even wh en they arc facts of the menta l order. But !h~ scienc~s in which the conceptua l method chi~fly celebrales its triumphs arc those of .pace and matter, where the tran.formations of external things are dea lt with. To deal w ith moral facts conceptually, we have first to trans form t hem, su b.titute brain-diagrams or phyoica l metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests as m ec han ical forces, our conscious 'selves as 'streams,' and the like. Paradox ical effect! as Bergson we ll remarks, if our intdlcctual life were not practical but dest ined to reveal the inner nat ures. One would then ,uppose that it would find itsel f most at home in th~ doma in of its own intellectual r~al it ies. But it i~

precisely there that it find s itself at the end of its teth er. We know the

i n n~r

movements o f our spirit on ly puceptua lly. We ful them live in us, but can give no distinct accOunt o f their dements, nOr defi nitely predict their future; while things that lie along the world ofspace , things of the sort that we litera lly handl., arc what ou r intellects cope w it h most successfully. Do c. not this confirm us in the view t h at the original and . t ill surv ivi ng function o f our intellectual life is to guide us in th~ practical adapt ation of our expectancies a nd activitics~ One can easily gel into a verba l meSS at Ih is point , and my own experience w ith p ragmatism' makes me shr in k from the da ngers t hat lie in thc word 'prac tical,' a nd far rather than sm nd out against you for that word, I am 'lu ite willing to part com pa ny with P rofessor Bergson, and to ascribe a primari ly theore tical fu nction to our intellect , provided you on your pUt then ag ree to dis~ri minate 'th eoretic' Or s ~ie ntific knowledge from the deeper 'specu lative' knowledge aspired to by most philosophe rs, and concede t hat t heorctic knowledge, which is k nowledge about thing., as distingui she d from living Or .ympat hetic ac<[uaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of reality. Th e surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense covers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot t he whole diameter of space and t ime w il h its con "Xl

cepcua l c,"at ions; but it do .. not penetrat e a mi lli m eter into the solid dimens ion . That in ner dimension of rea lity is occupied by t he aaiviliu that keep it goi ng, hut the intellect , sp"a kin g th rough Hume, Kant & Co" find. it.elf obliged to deny, and persists in deny ing, that act ivit ies have any in te ll igible existence. What exist s for thought, we are told, is at most the re sults th at We ill usorily ascribe to such act ivit ies , strung along the surface. of space and time by r'gc/n da "'trknuep/"ng, law s of nature which state only coe xist ence s "nd successions." 4'

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c,it i< •. I . ubjoin be" • f<w "m"b d,,, in,d di",,,m ..,m, I"""ib[, "it i<. of P",f,ooo< R"l>"'n, who, 'n dcft. B'rg"," might .. em'" be e.,ily ,of"table out ofh;, own mouth. H •• ph.lotophr pr<,n ""ion.Ii,,'" phi Iooophi<' give.~, wh .. i, i' in iudfi f 00'. eon",ptu.1 '~"'m' Doe, ita •• , ho! not re.oon b~ "m,,,p" «d" ,iv.ly i" hi, ""y "",mp' '0 ihow ,hcy can giv< no in'i~ I "? T" thi> ~,ic ulu obiwOon, or .ny "'t<, i, i. "'y '0 "ply. I" "";ng roo,,,?,, of h .. own '" dio<"d~ ,ho ,""""i.< d,im , of """,,cP" 1I"",,,1l.', B,'li"'" diet, bu, on ,hc roo'''''y .mplut..... llv ill."M.. hi! own , .... c( !Ilei. p".> i. ,bu. ooly. n<w puc,i<.1 .. , i, ..Jc. H, bu, "''''''''s. og';n~ ,he ,,10<. of intellec, ... li" philcooph~. ""' n"'"""ly rood ..1 "],,.,,'" w~b "'0" ..1< "'p«"n".nd common "n",. Th ;, ,""v",";' "."1:- on l~ pr.... ,;...I; bu, i, ". " 'v;". b- whOcb w< hc .10"''' immc ..u<>bly gr.ucf.l. To "uil 00' "'""''' '1,Ol-'" w~h. good philooophic ootlOC.,occ ! - wOO CVct ronk or< ",.I;t i<.o£. T><W ordc" wi,h pm ".,,' ",la'io", be,,,,,," thcm . The", «",ion. or< jult .. m",h d'''''''l:< r<,,,,i=l, w!.:n "" ,,'mpo'" ou, """'"' """"'P'~ tl>:o di",,'l« be,,,,,,," two > " Ihc.,,,,,",,,h""'ntcot, indclhing h"l'P'n, '" ,he ",alm d oon«p,,> «;'tLon. ,her<.« '",,,,,,I' oolv. The , t>romi.< g.in &ilo !O fu" ,hI>" .,1 .nd d.vnam" ",luion ~ of "",,,, itr.rd hi~. To goi" inoight;"to.1I ,1m """';ng lifo. 1Io0p0n i, 'igh' in ,urning.' '''''y frum ncop" ",i,h r<""'p". we con dr.", '""r' of ,ho di"ribu,,,,,, of ",ho, p",eop" in di""", '1'''''' ond tim<. To know 'hio di .. ,,,,,,,;,,,, .. of"""" • ,hcotClOc ""hi<"'m<m, "'" ,he ""h",,~mcn' io cxtr'mcl. lim~, d, it «Inoot bc ,If,,,,,d withoot l"tc'p's. ond cvcn then who, it ,icld. i,onl ....." tlight," k'nd of truth ""'.t i" but. bp-m,king h,. 'he e,.,.".,." p"",,;"'1i'fil""''''''. 00 whioo "" ,ightly in .~'~

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WILl1"'~ I IA~IES

Thought deals thus sole ly wit h , 11><.' boei"gn,,.. ",Iu," into lif,. In lI",i, "'.pping fun"i.on ,I>< ""'" "h,,,,, in ",b",h ":gh' u.J I",.,ing ."nd to tou<w "'ng<' of ",,1<>< .00 of moIiv""" '0 00' lif<, ]" ""'I" 00< only . of 1"""".•"blim~y. ond .dmir.."" .'" ..""..d. Ab",""""", 1'' ' .. ",om, to h..., , ta-och of id.,l itr- '0""" '~ I 'y to lor"lt y' i, '" "cd"'"t ""mp"'. "C,,,,,,: .. "",i-.L."",y, "'mocrxy. likrty. ,te, dwiooi< wI-,.,,, ""I;',d i" ,I-,.,i, oonlid 1"'''''ul> ... 11>< ",,;,obit 'usn-v.. lui .,(,"" .«~\S to c", ..~ to ~ only in ,I-,., abo""", "." . , Tro,h., wg<, .. Rorr. "",.",oos, ;,-, hi< Philo"",h. ofLwakv. "PI'''''' .oo<1i<"" ], ',.,,>«00.;'-' valo, all ,1->00< '<xp<Ji< ",r.p': mm ·".mbling , ..,''''''',." (Op. 1he '1'.... "" ... nOt< OD<, f,"",!tho • ~"Iu, ;.;,-, ""'..,.,."." ot:;«,iv< qualdy I"""il-'«l, II", e •••",,,, of dut q "", l~y ;. it> ,I-,., ,..ill. >00 run';". in ~. bting • dy"""""S'o", 'I"" mak.s ,oo dill',,,,,,. So £" •• ,I-,.,ir val",""",,,i,,,. fu"",oo po. it wookl dllt o itpp<1I ,Iut «:nC:
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thcmoe/Yt, nlOfe with "". acti", 'lun with "". tllwr.,ic lif" it) " '. . ,goifllkfg\lOfl·' rormulo.tioo ...... • ool:;wiooabi<. Pmom who 1..", ctttn di!li:"",I., ], <10<",', nro: ... rily k>Ilow 'ho:! orKirnt.oo Of""r,,;,,1 cofttn mon: ifl'i~l>-, AS'"i" i, m,y I>< said ,h.... '"" combi", old cone,p" i".o now """. co"",iving .h", .."h ,.. Ii. i.... ,h, "hu. God. ",u l" 0' ,..h.... not, .of ,..h"'h 0"' ",",;/,", lif, ,Ion, wo uld I..Y< u, .1'0g<'ho. ignor,"' , 1),i, ,u " ly i, '" i"""." of 0'" knowl,dg'. ,"d m.y ,..,11 ho .. Ikd , .I-,.,o",ic.1 ..,hioIJ good , Much as oonc or, co"" gu,n>ly I:><:ginni"g mo" .nd mo" to '''''il>< • ookly in",.m.n,.1 v. lo< con""p" of ,I-,.,m . E,he, ond mokc" leo m.y b. lik, coomin.", ond .. "'g'~ only"" m'ny "",,he. b~ t he help of whi<: fu"",,,,n of ,onc,p" ;, ,h..,,,,,,,,1 o'l.-"",icai n",' grow in", . logm"IIharp 00', 1h< tok ,hi"g i, «,,,in in 'he mid" of~.11 i. 'h" Bo'S"", i •• bool u"ly 'igh' in cootend;,-,g 'h" ,ho whok lift of "",ivitvooo ,lung< i. inw.rdly imp- to ormp"I-,."", .ppr<: h,nd. of immediot, .,di"g, All.1-,., ""'''~. wdl ...1>< ,h.. .. of ,.,.Iily. ",h,io.. l .. ,.,11 .. ""m i",I•• '" in ,h< ,nd CO""'"" of imm< "",,,,,,, ""p'IT,ivoo« '0 loy ,I>< .mpl"''';o: b., B< in,i .. , th .. am,ngemen' i, , I-,., m,,, oki" '00 . k in of ,he whoI, of ",h" '"" ""gh' '0 ' now.

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'0 Q"'

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102

in imagination by sympathetically d ivining some one else's inner life. But what we t hus immediately experience o r concretely divine is very limited in duratio n, wherea~ abstrac tly w e are able to conce ive etemitie, . Cou ld we feel a million ),cars concretdv as we now feci a passing minut e, We shou ld have very little empl oyment for our conceptua l facuhy. Vic should know the whole period fll lly at every moment of its passage, wh ereas we m ust now construct it bboriously by means of concepts wh ich we project . Direc t acqu"intan ce and conceptua l knowledge arc thus complementary of eac h othe r; each remedies the o t her's defects. If wh at we Ca re mOSt about be the synopt ic treatment of phenomena, t he vision of the far and t he gathering of the scatter.d like, we must follow the concept ual me t hod. But if, as m etaphysicians, we a..., more cur ious about the inner nature of reality or about what really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts altogether, and bury o urselves in t he t h ickness of those passing moments over the .u rface of wh ich they fiy, and on particular poi !liS of wh ich they occasionally rest and perch. P rofessor Bergson t h us inverts t he trad itional platonic doctrine absolutely. In stead of intellectual knowledge being . he profounder, he call s it the more superficial. Instead of be ing t he only adequate knowledge,

it is grossly inadequate, and its only su periority is the prac ti cal one of enabling us to make short cuts through expuie nce and thereby to sa,"e time. The o ne thing it cannot do is to re'·eal the nature of t hings - which last remark, if nOt dear already, will become dearer as I proceed. D ive back i!llo the flux itself, then, Bergson tells us , if you wish to kmxv realit y, that flux which Platonism , in it s strange bel ief that o nly t he immutable is excellent, has always spurned; turn your face toward sensat ion, that Aeshbound thing which rationalism h as always loaded with abuse. - Th is, you see, is exact ly the opposite remedy from t hat of look ing forward into the absolute, which ou r idealistic contemporaries prescribe. It violates our mental habits, being a kind of passi'·o and receptive listoning qu ite contrary to that dfort to react noisily and verbally o n everything, which is our usual intollectual pose. Wh a. , then. arc the pe~uJi"r features in .he perceptual flux wh i~h th~ conceptual trans lation so fat ally leaves ont? The essence of life is its continuously changing character; but ou r concept s arc all discont inuous and fixed, and the only mode of making them coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of arrest therein. W ith such arrests ou r concepts may be made congruent. But these concepts are not parlJ of reality, not .. al po
w,

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

,upposilion, rath er, notes ta ken by ou rselves, and you can no more dip up the substance of rea lity with them than you can dip up w ater with a net , however fine ly meshe d. \V hen w e conceptu alize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything blll what we have fixed. A concept means a Ihal-and-no- olh,,_Conceptu aliy, lime excludes space; motion alld rest c:
ception of the first half of the interval bet wee n Achi ll es and the tor toise excludes that of t he last half, and the mathematical necessity of traversing it sepa rately before t he last half is traversed stand s pe rm anently in the way of the last ha lf eVer being t raversed. Meanwhile the living A chilles (who, for the pu rposes of this discussion, is only the abstra ct name of one phenomeno n of impetus, jus t as t he fOr toise is of another) asks no leave of logic. ll,e veloc it y of his acts is an indivisib le nature in them like the expansi"e tension in a spr ing com pressed , \Ve define it conceptually as ['/1 ), but t he s and I are only art ificial cuts made after the fa ct , and indeed most artifi cial wh en w e treat them in bo t h runners as the same tracts of 'object ive' space and time, for the experienced spaces and ti mes in wh ich t he tortoi.e inwardly live. arc probably as differe nt as his vdoc it y from t he same things in Achilles, Th e impetus of A chilles is o ne ~onerete fact, ;lnd carries space, ti me, ;lnd conquest OVer l he inferior creatu re's mot ion ind ivisibly in it, He pe rceives not hing, whi le running , of the mathematician', nomogeneous time and space, of t he infi nitely numerous sucension of ~uts in bOlh, Or of their order. End and beg inning come for h im in the one onrush, and all that he actually experiences is that , in the m idst of a certain intense effort of his own , the rival is in point of fact outstripped,

""

vVe are so inveterately wedded 10 the conc eptua l decompositio n of life that I know that this w ill .eem 10 you like putt ing muddie.t confusion in place of cl eares t t hought, an d relap.ing into a m olluscoid .tate of mind. Yet I ask you whether t h e absolute superiority of o ur high er thought is so very clea r, if all that il can fin d is impossib ility ill tasks wh ich sen se-el
life is due to life's violation of OUT logical ax ioms. Take its

conti n uity~.

an example. Terms like A and c appear to be con nected by int erm ediaries, by Jj for example. Imelleetuali.m call. this absurd, for 'Jj -connectedwith-A' is. 'all such,' a different term from "Jj- connected -w ith- c.' But real life laughs at logic's veto. Im agi ne a heavy log wh ich takes two men to carry it. First A and B take it. 1hen c t ake. hold and A drops off; then D takes hold and H drops off, so that c an d 1> now bear it; and <0 on. 1he log meanwhile never drops, and keeps its sam eness t hroughout the journey. Eve n SO it is w ith all our experiences . llle ir change. are not comple te annihilat ions follow ed by complete c",ar ions of someth ing absolutely novel. There is partia l decay and partial growth, and all the w hile a nucleus of re lat ive constancy from wh ich what de cays drop~ off, and which t ake> into it sel f w hatever is gra fted o n , until at length somet h ing wholly d ifferent h,l< taken itll pla~e. In such" procell. We"", 'l> su re, in sp ite of inte llectualist log ic w ith it. 'as suches,' that it i, the .ame nucleus which is able nOw to make con nexion with what goes and again with what comes , as We are Sure that the Same point ca n lie On diverse lines that inter.ect there . Without being one throughout, such a un iverse is conti nuous . It s members interdig itate with their next ne ighbors in ma nifold d irections, and the re arc no clean cuts between them anywhere.

"'5

WtLl1 ... ~t Th~

lA ~tES

great clash of intell~ctualist logic with sensible =p~ri~nce is where the experience i, that of influence exerted. Intellectualism denie. (as we saw in l~cture ii) th at finite t hings can act on one anot her, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up to t h emselves. To act on anything meam to get into it somehow; but that would mean to get out of one's self and he one's other, which is self-contradictory, etc. M eanwhile each of us actually is h is ow n other to that ex tent, Jivingly knowing how to perform 1he trick which logic tdls us can·t he done. My thoughts animat~ and actuat~ this vory body which you s~~ and h~ar, and thereby influence you r thoughts. ·[he dynamic current somehow docs get from m e to you, how~ver n umerous t he intermediary conductors may have to be. D i
"V hen you h av~ broken th~ r~al ity into conc~pts you n~vu can re construct it in its wholeness. Out of no amount of discre teness can you manufactur~ the concret~. Rut place yourse lf at a bound , or d'~mblu, as M. Bergson says, inside of t h e living, moving, act ive thickness of the rea i, and all the abstraction s an d distinctions are given into your hand : you can now make the inteliecfUa ]i.t substitutions to your heart's conte nt . Install yourself in phenomena l movement, for example, and velocit y, .ucce"ion, dales, positions, and innumerable other things are give n you in the bargain. But wit h o nly an abstract succession of dates and pos itions you can never patch up movement itsdf. It sl ips through th~ir intervals and is lost . So it is w ith every concrete t h ing , however complicated. Our intellectua l hand ling of it i. a retrospect i" e pat chwork, a post-mortem d i.section , and can follow any order we find most expedient. "Ve can make the thing seem sel f-cont rad ictory wh.enever we wi.h to. But place youtsel f at the point of view of the thi ng's interior daing, and all these backlook ing and conflict ing concept ions l ie harmoniously in your h and. G el at the expanding cent re of a human charac ter, the dan vita/ of a man, as Bergson calls it, by living sympat hy, and at a strokc you see how it makes those who see it from without intOTpret it in such diverse ways. It is ~omething that brnks into bot h honesty and di shones ty, counge and coward ice, stupidity and insight, at the touch of varyi ng circumsta nces, and you fed exactly why and how it docs this, and never seek to identify it stably with any of !hese single abs t ractions. Only you r inte llectualist do~s that, - and you now also feel wh y h~ mu st do it to t he end. Place yoursel f similarly at the centre of a man's philosophic vision and you understand at once all the d ifferent t h ings it makes hi m wr ite or say. But keep outside, usc your post-mortem met hod, try to build the philosophy up out of t he si ngle phra.es, t aking first one and thcn another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fa il. You crawl over t he thing like a myopic an! over a building, tumbl ing into every micro.copic crack or fissure, fi nding nothing but incomi>!encie s, and never suspecti ng that a centre exists. I hope that some of the philosophers in this ;ludience may occasionally have had som ething d ifferent rrom th is intellectualist t ype of cr it icism appljed to their own works! W hat really ~xists is not things made but things in t he making. Once made, they are dead . and an infinite number of alternative conceptual decompositions can be used in defining th~m . But put yourself in th~ mak.ing by a .troke of intuitive .ym pathy with the t h ing and, t he whole range of pO<s ible decompositions comi ng at once into your po",e",;on,

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

you a,.., no long~r troubl~d with the question which of them is the more absolutely true. Reality foils in passing into concepwal ana lysis; it mounts in living its own undivid~d l if~ - it buds and bo urg~ons, changes and creat es. O nce adopt t he movement of this life in any give n instance and you kn ow what Ikrgson calls the d/!v~nir rnlby which Ihe Ihing evolves and grows. Philosophy shou ld seek this kind of living understanding of the moveme nt of rea lity, no t follow sc ience in va i nl~' patch ing together fragments of it . dead results. Thus much of M. Betgson's ph ilosophy is sufficient for my purpose in these lect ures, so here I wi ll stop, leaving unnoticed all its o t her con stituent features, origina l and interesting t ho they be. You may say, and doubtless some of you now arc saying inwardly, that his remanding us to sensation in this wise is on ly a regress, a return to that ultra-crude empiricism wh ich your own ideali~ts since G,..,en have buried ten times over. I confess that it is indeed a ret urn to empiric.ism, but I th ink that the n:turn in such accomplished shape on ly proves the latter's immortal truth. W h at won't stay bur ied must h ave some genuine life. Am an/ang war die tat; fact is a first; to whic h all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second, neVer its fu ll equivalent. \Vhen I read recent transcendenta list literature - I must partly except my colleague Royce! - [ get nothing bllt a so rt of mark.ing of t ime, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground, and reselt ling into t he same altitude, like a weary horse in a stall w ith an empty manger. [t is but t urning over the same few threadbare categor ie s, bringing the same o bjections, and urging the same answers and solutions, w it h never a new fact or a new horizon co ming into sight . But open Bergson, and new hori'wns loom on every page you read. It is li ke th~ breath of t he morning and the song of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterat ing what dusty-minded profe ssors have written about what other previous professors have thought . Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at .~cond hand. That he gives us no clos~d-in system will of course b~ fat al to him in intellectua list eyes. He only e,"okes and invites; but he first annul. the intd lectualist ,"cto, so that wc now join step wit h reality with a philosoph ical cons<;ience never quite .et rree before. A . 'l french disciple of his well exp,.., .. e. it: 'Bergson cl aims of us first of all a cenain in ner catastrophe, and nOt everyone is capable of such a logical revolut ion. But those who have once found themselves flex ible enough for the eXecution of such a psychological change of front, discover somehow that they can never return again to the ir anc.ient att itude of mind. They arc now Bergso"ia"s ... and po..e .. the pr incipal t houghts of the master all

'"'

at onc~. They have understood in th., fash ion in w hich one lo,"es, t hey have caught t he who!c melody and can t hereafter adm ire at the ir !cisure the originality, the fecundity, and t he imaginative genius with wh ich it s author develops, transpo,es, and varies in a t housand ways by t he orche strat ion of hi s sty!c and dialectic, t he orig inal theme.·.. This, scant as it is, is all I have to say ab o ut Bergson on th is occasion - I hope it may send some of you to h is orig inal text. I must now turn back to th e point where I fo"nd it advi sable to "ppeal to hi. idea •• You re m ember my ow n intellectualis t difficulties in the last lecture, about how a lot of separate comcioumesses can at t he Same t ime be one co llective thing. H ow, I asked, can o ne and the same identical conte nt of experience, of which on idealist pr inciples the , .., is to be felt, be felt >0 diversely if itself be the on ly feeler? lhe usua l way of ~ ..,ape by 'quatenu' o r 'as s"c h' won't h .!p us here if we are radical inte llectualists, I sa id, for appearance -together is as such not appearance - apart, the world qua many is not the world "un one, as absolu ti sm claims. If we ho ld to Hum e's max im, which lat er imellectua lism uses so well, that whatever things arc distinguished arc as separate as if there were no manner of connexion be t ween them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty ,ave by stepping outside of exper ience altoge t he r and invoking d iffe rent spir itu al agen t S. sdvn o r souls , to realize th e d iversity required. Bur this rescue by 'scholastic entit ies' I was "nwilling to accept any more than pantheistic idealists accept it. YeT, to quote Fech ner's phrase again, 'nicht. wirkliches kann unmoegl ich sein ,' the actual cannot be impossible, and what ;, actual at every moment of our lives i. t he sort of Thing which I now proceed 10 "'mind you of. You can hear the vibr ation of an dectric contact-m ake r, smell the ozone , sec the sparks, and feel t he th rill, co-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. [l l1l you can also isolate anyone of these sensations hy shutt ing out the re,t. If you c1o$e your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get the ,ensmion of sound alone, but it seems still the Same sensat ion that it was; and if you re>lore the act ion of t he other organs, t he sou nd coalesces with t he feeling, the sight . and The smell sensations aga in. Now the nat ural way of talking of all this') is to say that certai n sensat ions a", experienced , now singly, and now toget her w ith other sensations, in a common conscious field . Fluctuations ofattcntion give analogous resu it ." \Ve let a .emation in or keep 4' Ga"on Rageot, Rl. lxiv. p. gj Uuly, [907)' 4J I hove my>
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

it out by changing our anention ; a nd similarly w e let an item of memorr in or drop it out. [P lease don't raise t he question here of how t hese changes (Om~ 10 pass. t h e immediate condition is probably cerebral in every instance, but it would be ir relevant now to consider it , for now w e arc thinking only of results, and I repeal Ihat , he nal ... ral way of Ihin king of t hem is Ihat which intell ecmalist criticism finds so absurd .] Th e absurdity charged is that t he sel f- same shou ld function so d if(erendy, now w it h and now w i, hO(lI wrnedli ng elie, But , h i, it sensibly seems to do. This very desk which I strike with my hand st rikes in turn your eyes. It functions at Once as a physkal object in the outer world and as a m ental o bject in ou r sundry m ental worlds. Th e very bod y of mi ne t hat my thought actuates is t he body whose gestures are your visual object and to w h ich you give my name. 'Ihe very log which John helped to carry is the log now borne by Junes. The very girl you love is simultaneously enta ngled elsewhere. Th e very place beh ind me is in front of yo .... Look where you will, you gat her o n ly examples of the same am id the di fferent, and of d ifferent relations exist ing as it were in solution in the same t h ing. Qua this an experience is not the sa m e as it is qua that, truly eno ... g h: but t he quas are conce ptua l shots of OUTS at its post- mortem rema in s, and in its sensationa l immediacy everything is all at once

whatever di fferent things it is at once at alL [t is before c and

~ft er A,

far from :-'ou and near to me, without this assoc iate and with that one, act ive and passive, physical and ment al, a whole of parts and part of a high er whole , all simu lt aneo ... sly and without interference o r need of doubling-up its being, so long as we ke ep to what I call the 'im m ed iate' po int of "iew, t he point of vie w in which we follow our sensat ional life', cont inuity, and to which all l iving language conforms. It is on ly when you try - to continue using the hegelian vocabula ry - to 'mediate' the immediate, or to substitute concepts for se nsat ional life, t hat intellectualism celebrates its t rium ph and the immanent- sel f- contradictoriness of all this smooth-running finite experience gets proved . Of the odd ity of inven ti ng as a remedy for th e inconveniences re sult ing from t h is situatio n a supernumerary conceptual object ca lled an absolute, into which YOll pack the self- same contrld ictions unreduced, I will say someth ing in the next lecture. The absolute is said to p .. form its feats by taking up its other in to itself. But that is exactly what is done when eve ry ind ividual morsel of the >ensation al Stream t akes up the adjacent morsels by coa lesc ing with t hem. This is just what we mean by the stream's sensible continuity. No element (h", cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts cut themselves from concepts. No par t

no

ther' is so small as not to b~ a place of conflux. No part there is n ot really "txt its neighbors; which means that t h ere is litera lly noth ing between; wh ich means again t hat no part goe~ exactly so far and n o fart he r; th at no part absolutely excludes another, but t hat they compen etrat e a n d arc cohesive ; that if you tear out o ne, its roo ts bring ou t more with thcm : that whatever is real is telescoped and di ffused into ot h cr rcals; that, in sh ort, every m inu test t hi ng is a lready its hegelian 'own oth er,' in t h e follnt sense of the term _ Of course this ,aund, self- contradictory, but as the immediat e fac t s don't sound at all, but simply Ilrt, until we conceptualize and namc them vocally, the contradiction results on ly from the conceptua l or discursive fo rm bein g subst ituted for the rea l form. But if, as Bergson shows, th at form is s"pcrimposed for practica l ends only, in order to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it: and if it can n ot even pretend to reveal an}'thing of what life's inner nat ufe is Of o ught to be ; why the n we carl turn a deaf ear to its accusations. l1'e resolve to turn th e d eaf ear is the in n er cris is or 'catastrophe' o f which M. Bergson's disc ip le wh om I latdy quoted spoke. \Ve arc so subject to the philosophic t radition which treau/agoJ or discursive thought generally as the sole avenUe to tru t h, that to fall back on raw unvcrbalized lifc as more of a rcvealcr,

and to think of concepts as the merely pract ical things which Bergson calls t he m, come.s very hard. It is pu ni ng o ff our proud maturity of mind and becoming again as foolish l ittle ",hildren in the eyes of reaSon. But difficult as such a rC\'olution is, t her", is no other way, I belie\'e, to t h e possession of reality, and I permit mys. lf to hope that some of you may sh are my opinion after you have heard my next lecture.

III

LECTUR E

VII

T HE C ONT INUITY OF E XPERI ENCE I fear that few of you w ill have been able to obey Bergson', call upon

you to look 10W;l,d. the scm;lt;onal life for the fuJier know le dge of real ity, or to sympath ize with hi. attempt to limit the divine right of concep'" to ruk OUI mind absolutely. It is 100 much like look ing down-

ward and not up. Philosophy, you wi ll say, doesn't lie flat

On

it. belly

in the m iddle of experience, in the very thick of it. sand and gravel, as this Bcrgsoni.m doc s, never getting a peep at anything from above.

Ph ilosophy is es~erlfially the vision of rhillgs from abDVe. It doesn't simply feci t he detai l of things, it compre hends their intelligible plan, secs their forms and principles, their categories and rules, their order and necessity. It take i the iuperior point of view of the architect. Ii; it conceivable that it should eve r forsake that point of view and abandon itself (0 a slovenly life of immedi;lte feding' To say nothing of your tradit ional Oxford devotion to Aristotle and Plato, the leaven OfT.H. Green probably works &till100 strong ly here for his ami- sensational ism to be outgrow n quic kly. Gre en more than anyone rea lized that knowledge "bout things was knowledge of their relatiollS; but nothing could persuade h im that our &en~ationa l life could contain any rela tional element. He follow ed the strict inte ll ectualist method with «nsations. What they were not expressly de fi ned as including, they must exclude. Sensations are not defined as relations, SO in th e end Green thought that they could ge t relat ed together on l~' by the action on them from above of a 'self-dist inguishing' absolute and eterna l mind, pre,ent to th at which is relat ed, but not related itself. 'A relation: he said, 'is no! cont ingent with the com ingency of feeling. It is perma nent with the perm anence of the combining and comparing thought which

alon~

constitut. s it : "I" oth~r words, rd ations ar~ purely conc~ptu al object s, a nd the sen.at ionallife as such cannot rdate itsdf together. S~nsat ion in itself, Gr~en wrot~, i. fleeting, m omentary, unname abl~ (because, while w e name it, it has becom e a no th er), and for the same reason u n k nowable, the very negat ion of k nowabil ity. W ere there no permane n t objects o f concept ion for ou r se nsati ons to be 'referred to; there w ould be no significant names, bu t on ly noises, and a consistent sensational ism must be speech le ss." Green's inte ll ectuali.m WaS so earnes t that it p roduced a na tu ral and a n inevitable effect. But the atomistic a nd unrelated sensations w hich he h ad in mind were purdy fictit ious produc t s of his rationa list fancy. Th e psychology of o ur own day disavows them u tt erly," a nd Gre en's laborious belaboring o f poor old L ocke for not having first seen that his ideas of sensation were j u.t that impract icable sort o f th ing, an d then fled to transcendenta l idea lism as a remedy, - h is belabo ring o f poor old Locke for this, I say, is pat h etic. Every examiner of the sensible l ife in (on,rna must see that relat ions of every sort, o f time, space, d ifference, l ikeness, change, rate, cause, or w h at not, are j ust as integral members of the sensat iona l flux as Inm. are, and that conjunctive rdations arc just as true members of the fl ux a. d isjunctive relations are." This is what in som e recent

wri tings of mim I have called the 'radically empir icist" doct rine (in dist inction from the doctr ine of menta l a toms wh ich the nam~ em pirici.m so often suggests). Intellect ual istic critics of sensation in.i.1 that sensations a re diljaind only. Radica l empirici.m insists that cOnjunction s between them are just as i mmediately given as disju nction s are, and that rdation s, whe th er disjunctive or conj unctive, arc in their o riginal sensibl~ g ivenn~ .. j ust as flee ting and momentary (i n Green's words), and just as 'particu la r: as terms arc. L ater. both terms and relations get universalized by be ing conceptuali zed and named." Hut all the thickness, con cretene ss, and individua l ity of e xperience exists in the immediat e and relat ively unnamed stages of it, to t h e richness of I"I",d"(lio~ 10 II~"" . jS74.

p. '5" Ibid.. pp. ,6. >I. ) 6, ation. hy «minding u, of their 'dumbne,,: in thot 'hey do not come al read)' namd, a. co<>«P" may be ",id to do, only .how. how in«l l
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

which, and to the standing inadequacy o f our conce ptions to match it, Profe>sor Bergso n .o emphat ically ca ll. our attention. And now I am happy to say th at we can beg in to gather toge th ..
for reality's true shape, a way is open

10

us, as I tried in my last lectu re

to show. Not o nly the absolute is it s own other, but the simplest b its of immed iate experience a rc their ow n others, if that hegel ian phrase be once for all allowed. 'Ihe cOnCrete pulse s of experience appear pent in by no s uch definit e li mits as Oll r concept ual substitut es for them arc confi ned by. '[hey run into one another continuously and seem to interpenetrate. \Vh al in them is rcl ation and what is matter related is hard to d iscern. You feel n o one o f them as inwardly simple, and n o two as wholly without conAuence where they touch . lher. is no datum so small as not to show this mystery, if mystery it be . The tinie st feel ing that we can possibly have comes with an earlier and a later part and w ith a sense of their co nl; nllous proces.ion. Mr. Shad worth Hodgson showed long ago that there is literally no such object as the present moment except as an unre"l postulate of abstra~t thou ght." 'Jh e 'passing' moment is, as I already h ave reminded you , t h e minimal fa ct, with the 'apparition of difference' inside o f it as wdl as outs ide. I f we do n ot fed both past and prc>ent in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all. \Ve have the same many- in -one in t h e matter that fi ll s th~ pass ing time. The rush of our thought forward through its fringes i. the everiasting peculiarity of -19

Phi/mph, ojRifI"ti.~. i,

,~8

If.

'"

its lif~. W~ realize t h is life as .omething alway. off it. balance, .omething in transition, something that shoot. out of a da rkness through a daw" into a hrightn~ •• that we ful to be the dawn fulfi ll~d. In t he very m idst of the cont inuity our experience comes a. an alterat ion. 'Yes,' we say at the full brightness, 'Ihis is what I just meant: 'No: we feel at t be dawning, 'this is not yet the full meaning, t here is more to come: In every crescendo of sensat ion, in every effort to recall, in every progress toward. the ."tisfaction of de.ire, t h is . uccession of an emptiness and fulness that have reference to each other and are o ne flesh is the essence of the phenomenon. [ n every hindra nce of des ire the SenSe of an ideal presence which is absent in fac t , of an absent, in a word, which the o nly function o f the present is to m~an, is even more notoriously t here. And in the moveme nt of pure thought we have the same phenomenon. When I say Sorraln if morlal, the m om~nt Sorraln is incomplete; it fa ll s torwa rd th rough the is which is pure movement, into t he mortal which is indeed bare mortal on the tongue, hut for t he mi"d is tbat mortal, t he morlal Sorrolu, at last satisflctorily d isposed of and told off.'" H ere, t hen, inside of t he minimal pulses of exper ience , is realized that very inner complexity wh ich the tran~cendentalislS say only t he absolme can genu inely possess. The gist of the matler is always the same - somet h ing ever goes indis~olltbl y wit h ~omet h ing else. YOII can not separ.lte the same ftom its other, except by abandoning the real altoget her and tak ing to t he conceptllal system. W hat i. immediately given in t he single and part icular instance is al ways >omething pooled "nd mut"al, somet hing wit h no dark spot, no point of ignoranc~. No one elementary bit of reality is eclipsed from t he next bit 's poi nt of view. if on ly w e take rea lit y • ."sib!y and in sma U enough pul<~s - and by us il bas to he t ake n pulse-wise, for our span of consciousness is too short to grasp the larger collectivity of things except nominally and abstraClly. N o mOre of rea lity coneCled toge t her at onCe is extan t anywhere, perhaps, th an in my experience of reading this page, or in yours ofEs tening; re t within those bilS of experience as they COme to pass we get a fulne .. of content tb at no conceptual descript ion can equa l. S ensationa l exper iences art! their 'ow n o t hers; then, bot h interna lly and ex te rnally. Inwa rdly they arc o ne w ith their parts, and outward ly t hey pass conti n uously into their nex t neighbors, so that events separated by years of t ime in a man's life bang lQ lfet hq unbroken ly by the intermediary events. 'Iheir "amtS, to be su re,

,0

Moot of Ihi. pamgmph i. extracted from an addfC" of mine t>cf= 'he A morican l'.ychologK.l A.sociation, printed in 'he P'ychokx ,(al R",'f"W. vol. i i , p. I 1'1< . ,"", in .h< faC! .ha••Ire",!y i" ,895 I w" • .., far • .1,•.,,,, • .1 '0 .... ,,10 n\y 1""",nt b<'Koon ;"" 1",.i.;"n.

10,.

,.ke

"5

cut them into separat e conceptual entities, but no cuts ex isted in the cont inuum in which the}" originally came. If, with all thi s in our mind, we turn to our own particular predicament , we sec that our old objectio n to the sel f- compounding of states of consciou sneiS, our accus:>tion that it w:>s impo$sible for purely logical reasons, is un found ed in princ iple. 'Every sm:>llest $t:>te of consciousne$S, concretdy taken , overflows irs own definition . Only concepts arc selfidentical ; only 'reason' deals with dosed equations; nat lire is but a name for nee ..; every point in her opens out and runs into t h e more; and the on ly question, with reference to any point we may be consider ing , is how far into the rest of na!llre we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond irs overflow. In the pulse of inner li fe immediately present now in each of us is a little pa"" a l ittle future, a little awareness of our own body, of each other's persons, of these sublimities we arc t rying to talk about, of the earth 's geography an d the direction of history, of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how muc h more? Feeling, however diml~' and subconscioush', all these things , vour pu lse of inner life is cont inuous with them, belongs to them and t he), to it. You can't ident ify it with either one of them rather th:>n with the others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those direct ions , what it de,-dops into wiJllook bac k on it and say, "Jh at Was t he original ge rm of mt ." In prindp", then, the real units of our immediately-fdt life are unlike the unirs that intel lectualist logic ho ld s to and make. irs calculations with. lhe}" are not sepante from their oWn others. and you ha"e to take them at w idely separated dates to find any tw o of them t hat seem unblent. lhen indeed they do appear .epa rate even as th eir con cepts are separate; a chasm yawns between the m; but the ch asm itself is but an intellectuali,t fict ion, got by abstracting from the conti nuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was filled. It is like the log carried first by \Villiam and H enry, then by William, H enr)" and John, then by H enry and John, then by John and Peter, and so on . All real un its of exper ience owrlap. Let a row of eqllidistant dot s on a sheet of pape r symbol i ze th e concepts by w hich we intellectua l ize the world. Let a ruler long enough to CoVer at least three do t s stand for our se nsible exper ience. Then the concei,-ed ch anges of the sen.ib le expe rience can be syrnboli'~ed by sliding the ruler along the line of dots. One concept after another will apply to it, one after anot her drop away, but it will alw ays cover at leas t two of them, and no do ts less than t hree will e\'er adequately cover i/. You falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots.

" 6

"V hat is true here of successive states must also be true of simu ltaneous characters, They also overlap each other with their being, My present field of consciousne.. i, a ce ntre surrounded by a fringe th at sh ades insensibly into a subconscious more. I usc t hree sepamte terms here to de scribe, this fact ; but] might as well .... e th ree hundred, for th e fact is all shades and no bo ... ndaries. Which part of it properly is in my consciousness , whic h out~ If I name what is o ut, it already has come in. The cent re works in One way while the margins work in anN her, and presently overpower t he centre and are central themse lves. \Vhat we conce ptually ident ify ourselves with and say We arc t h inking of at any ti me is the ce nt re; but o ur full self is t he whole field, w ith all those indefi nitely rad iating subconscious poss ibil it ie s of increase that we can o nly feel without conceiving , and can hardly begin 10 analy"~e. Th e collect ive and the distributive ways of being coexist here, for each part functions d istinctly, makes connex ion with it s own peculiar region in the sti ll wider rest of experience and lends to draw Us into t hat li ne, and yet the w hole is somehow fdt as one pulse of our life, - not conceived so , but fdt so. ]n principle, then, as ] sa id, in tellectua lism's edge is broken; it can o nly approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our in ner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its irnpo~sibi lities . Every bit of lt8 at every m om ent is part and parcel of a wider sel f, it quivers along various radii like the wind-ro~e on a compass, and t he actual in it is continuously o ne w ith possibles not yet in Our present sight'" And JUSt as we arc coconscious w ith o ur own momentary marg in, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more rea lly central self in things which is co- consciou. with the w hole of us? May not you and I be conA ... ent in a h igh er consciousness, and conAuently active there, t ho w e now know it not? I am tiring mysel f and you, ! know, by va inly seek ing to describe by concepts and words what I ~ay at the same lime exceeds either conceptua lization or verbalizatio n. As long as one continues lalking, intellectualism remains in und isturbed possession of the fiel d. '! h e return to 5'

lhe conKio". ""If of 'he mom en' . 'he

~
",If. i. prob"bly ckt
'0 ,hi. pri'ileg f"n«io n.] <e Berg",n', Mati«e in Muen"crb«g', Grundzuegc der P.ychologie, chap, xv; , ho .. in my own Principle, of P.)"Cholog)·, ,·oJ . ii. p p. ""d rh<»< in W. MoDou!;"ll". Physiological r.)·
,g'-,9';

117

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

lif~

can't come about by t alk ing. It is an art; to m ake you return to life, I must set an example for your imitation , I must deafen you to ta lk, or to the importance of ta lk, by showing you, as Bergson does, that Ihe concepts w e talk w ith arc made for purposes of p~a
"8

lie< with Fechner and his method , rath er t han w ith Hegel, Royce, or Bradley. Fechner t reats the superhuman consciousness he .0 fervently bdieve. in a. an hypot hesi. only, which he then recommend. by all t he resources of induction and persuasion. It is trUe that Fechner himself is an absolutist in his books, not actively but passively, if I may say so. He talks not only of the earth-soul and of the star-souls , but of an integrated .oul of all things in t h e cosmos Wi(]lOut exception, and this he calls God just as other. call ;t the absolute. Neverthe less he think, only of t he subordinate superhuman so uls, and content with hav ing made hi. obeisance Once for all to t he august tota l soul of the cosmos, he leaves it in its lonely sub limity with no attempt to ddine its n ature. L ike the absolute , it is 'out of range: and not an object for di.tincter vision. P~ychologica lly, it seemS to me that Fech ner's G od is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of h is system posit ively thought out. As we envelop ou r sight and hear ing, so t he earth -wul envelops us, and the star- so ul the eart h-sou l, until - what? Envelopment can't go on forever; it must have an abJ(h/uss, a tota l envelope must terminate the series, so God is t he name that Fechner gives to this ]a,t all- envdopcr. !.lut if nothing escapes t h is all- enveloper, he is respon.ible for everythi ng, including evil, and all the paradoxes and difficult ies wh ich J found in the absolute at t he end of our th ird lecture recur und im inished . Fech ner t ries sincere ly to grapple w it h t he probkm of evil, but he alwap so lve. it in the leibni!zian fash ion by making his God non -absoh,te , placing h im under conditions of 'metaphysical necessity' which even hi. omnipotence cannot violate. His will has to struggle with condit ions nOt imposed on that wi ll by itsdf. He tolerat .. provisiona lly what he has not created, and th en with end le.. patience t ries to overcome it and live it dow n . H e has, in short, a h istory. \¥hcne"cr Fechner tries to repre sent him clearly, h is G od bccomes the ordinary G od of theism, and ceases to be the absolu tely totalized ail- enveloper." In this shape, he represents the ideal eleme nt in things sole ly, and i. our champion and our helper and we his helpers, against the bad parts of the universe. Fechner WaS in fact toO little of" mctaphy.;c;an to c;lre for perfect formal consistency in these abstract regions. He believed in God in t he pluralistic manner, but partly from convention and partly from w hat I .hould call intdlectual l a'~inc>", iflazinco. of any k ind could be imputed to a Fechner, he let t he usual monistic talk about him pass unchallenged. ,. C""'l'a", Z'nd- tf"",~ . •,1 <,I;,,,,,,. '·oj. i. pp. ,6, If.. ,g" '06. T"!:,,Qn$;
n9

,~ ~

If..
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

I propose to you that we should discu .. the qu estion of God wit hout entangling o ursdves in advance in the monistic assumption . Is it probable thai t here is any superhuman con,ciou,ne .. at all, in t he fir
lieVe it? Quite otherwise. for that being shows it on an infinitely greater scale , and flau nts it in its very de fi nition. The fact of its no t being relate d to any out ward environment, the fact t h at all relation, a re inside ofit.elf, doem't ,ave it , for M r. Bradley's great argument ag".linst t he fin ite i, that in any given b it o f it (a b it of sugar, for insrance) the presence o f a plurality of ch aracters (w hiteness and sweetness, for example) is self-contradictory; so that in the fina l end all that the absolute's nam e appears to sta nd for is t h e persistent cla im of o utraged h um an nature that rea lit y shall not be call ed ahsurd. Somt'Wh(r~ th ere must be an aspect of it guiltless of sd f-contradiction. All w e can see o f the absolute, meanwhile, is gui lty in the same way in w h ich the fi nit e is. Intellectua lism sees what it calls the gui lt, when comminuted in the fin it e objec t; b u t i~ too ncar- sigh ted to see it in the m ore enormous object. Yet t he absolu te's constitut ion, if imagined at all , ha, to be imag ined after the analogy of some bit of fin ite experience. Take any rea/bit , su ppress its environ me nt and the n magnify it to monstro.ity, and you get identically the ty pe of structure of the ab.olute. It is obvious that all ,'our difficulties here rema in and go with you. If t he relative exp .. ie"ce was inward ly absurd , t he absolute experience is infi nitely more so. Intellectualism, in short , stra ins off t h e gnat, bu t swallows the whole camel. Bu t t h is polemic against the abso -

120

lut~

is as od ious to me as it is to you, so I w ill say no more about t hat b~ ing. It is only one of t hose will, of the wisp, t hose lights that do m islead th~ mom, that hav~ so oft en imp~ded the dear progre .. of philosophy, so I w ill turn t o the m ore genera l posit ive 'luest ion of wheth er sup~rhu man unities of consciousness should be considered as mOre probable or more improbable. In a former lecture I went over some of the fechner ian reasons for thei r plausibility, Or reasOns that at least replied to our mOre obvious grou nds of doubt concerning them . The num erous facts of divided or spl it human per>onality wh ich the g en ius of certain medical men, as Jane t , Freud, Prince, Sid i" and o thers, have unearthed w~ re unk nown in Fech ner's ti me, and neither th~ ph enom~na of automatic w r it ing and speech, nor of med ium,hip and 'po~,ession' generally, had been recognized or stud ied a, we now study th~ m, so F echner', stoc k of ana logies is scant compared w it h our present one. H e d id t he best with wh at he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal or super normal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior co-consciousness being possible. I d oubt whether we shall ever understand some of them wit hout using the very Jetter of Fec h ner', con ception of a great reser voir in which t h e m emor ies of earth's inhabitants

arc pooled and prese n 'cd, and from which, when the Threshold lowers o r t he va lve opens, in format ion ordinarily shut o ut leaks into the mind of exceptional individ uals among us . But t hose regions of in'luiry arc perhaps too spook-haunted to in terest an academic aud ience , and t he o nly ev idence I feci it now decorous to bring to the support of Fechner is drawn from ordinary rel ig ious experience. [ t h ink it may be asserted that there ar~ religious exper ienees of a specific nature, not d~ducible by analogy or psychological reasoning from our other sorts of experie nce. I think that t hey point with rea,onablc probab ility to t he conti nuity of o ur consciousness w ith a wider spiritual environme nt from whic h t he o rdinary pr ud ential man (who is the only man t h at scient ific psychology, sO called. takes cognizance of) is shut off. I shall begin my final lecture by referri ng to th~m aga in bridly.

12 1

LECTURE

VIII

C ONCLUSIONS AT the close of my last lecture I referred to lh. existence of religious

exper iences of a sp ecific ""lUre _ ! must nOW cxphin ju.t what I mcan by such a claim. Bridly, the facts ] have in mind may all be described as experienccs of an ""expected life succeeding upon death. By this I

don't mean immortality,

Or

the death of the body. I mean the death -

lik e termi n ation of cerlain menta l proce .... within the ind iv idual's exper ience, proce ..es that run 10 fai lure, and in some individua ls, at I~as! , ~Vfntllar~

in d.~pair. Ju st as tomarlf ic love ~e.mS a comparatively

recent litera ry in "cnrion, so these experiences o f a life th at s upervenes

upon despa ir scem to have played no great part in official theology till Luther'. t ime; and possibly the best way to ind icate their characte r will

be to point to a certain contrast betwee n t he inner life of o urselve s and of d)e ancient Greeks and Romans. Mr. Chesterton , , think, sa~·s somewhere, that the Greeks and Romans, in all that conce rn ed their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn set of folks. The Athenians thought th at the very gods must admire the rectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves were apparen tly of much the same opinion. Cato's vera<.ity w as so impeccabl e that the extremest incredul ity a Roman cou ld express of anythi ng was to say, ., w ould not believe it even if Cato h ad told me.' G ood was good, and bad was bad , for th ese \",ople. Hypoc risy, which church -Christianitv brought in, hardly ex isted; the naturalist;c system held firm ; its va lue. showed no hollowness and broo ked no irony. 11,. ind ividua l, if virlUOu, enough, could meet all po.sible requirement • . Th e pagan pr ide had never crumbled . Lut her was the first moralist who bro ke with any effectiveness t hrough the crust of all this naturalistic sdf- sufficiency, thinking (and possibly he was right) that Saint P au l had

122

CONCLUSIONS

done it already. Religious expuience of the lutheran type bring' all our nat uralistic standard. to bankruptcy. You arc .trong only by being weak, it .how •. You cannot l ive on pride or ,elf-,ufficingne ... ll,ere i, a light in which all the natura lly founded and curre ntly accepted dist inctions, excdlences, and safeguards of our characters appear as utter ch ildishness. Sincerely to give up one's conceit or hope of being good in one', own r ight is t he only door to the universe's deeper reache •. lhe.e deeper reache, are familiar to evangdical Christianity and to what i. nowada~" becom ing known as 'mind - cure' religion or 'new thought.' 'Ihe ph enomenon i~ that of neW ranges of life ,ucceeding on our most despairing moments. There are re.ources in u. that naturali.m w ith its literal and legal virtues nevu recks of, possibilities t hat take our breat h away, of another kind of happiness and power, based On giving up our own w ill and lett ing ,omet hi ng higher work for us, and these .eem to . how a world wider than either physics or philistine et h ics can imagine. H ere is a world in whic h all i, well , in spiu of certain forms of d eath, indeed bUlluu of certain form . of death - death of hope, death of strength, death of re'ponsibility, of fear and w orry, competency and desert, death of everyt hi ng that paganism, namralism, and legalism pin their fa ith on and t ie their trust to.

Reason, operating on our other experiences, eVen our psychological experiences, would never have inferr.,d these specifically religious experiences in advance of their actual com ing. She could not ,u.pect t he;r exi,tence, for they arc d iscontinuous wilh the 'natura ]" experience, they succeed upon and invert thei r va lues. But as they actually come and are given, creation widen. to the view of their recipient •. lhey suggest th at our n atural c"pcricnce, our str ictly moral istic and prudential e"perience, may be only a fragment of real hum an experience. Th ey sofren natures out li nes and open out t he strangest possibi l ities and perspectives. This is why it scems to me that the logica l understandi ng, w orking in abstraction from such speci fi cally religious e"periences, w ill alway. omi t someth ing, and fai l to reach comple tely adequate conclusions. Death and failure, it will always say. ar~ death and failure simp ly, and can neVermOre be One with life; so religiou, e"per ience , pe~ulia rly so called, needs , in my op inion , to be c" refully considered and interpreted by everyone who a.pires to reason out a more complete ph ilosophy. 'Ihe son of belief that religious experience of this type narurally engenders in those w ho have it is fully in accord with Fechner's t heorie,. To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer finds that t he tenderer parts of hi, personal life are cOlltinuous w ith a mort of the same

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

qua lit y which is op~rat ive in the universe outs ide of h im and which he ca n keep in w orki ng touch with, and in a 6shion get on board of and save hi mself, when all hi s lower bei ng has gone to pi eces in t he wreck. I n a w ord, the bel iever is conti nuous, to h is ow n consc iousness, at any rate, with a wider sclffrom wh ich saving experiences Aow in . "[hose who have such experiences dist inct ly en ough an d often en ough to li "e in Ihe light of them remain quite unmoved by cr iticism, from whatever quarter it m;l~ come, be it acad" mic or scient ific, or be it merely the "o ice oflogical com mon sense. They have had their vision and t h ey know - that is enough - that We inh abit an inv isible spir it ual C1lvironment ftom which help com es, ou r sou l being m yster iously one with a large r sou l whose inst ru me nt s we are. One may therefore plead, I think . that Fechner'. ideas are nOt without direct empirical verification. "Iher. is at any rate one side of life which would be eas ily explicable if those ideas were true, bu t of which there appears no clear expla nation so long as we assume either w it h naturalism that human consc iousness is the highest consciousness t here is, or wit h dualis tic t heism that there is a highe r mind in t he cosmos, blll that it is discont inuous w ith our own. It has always been a ma!ler of surprise w ith me that philosophers of the absolute should have show n so little interest in t h i~ d epar t m~n t of life, an d so seldom pUt its phenomena in ev idence , even when it seem ed obvious t hat personal experience of some kind mll", have made the ir con fi dence in t heir ow n vi.ion so strong. 'Ihe logician's bias has always been tOO much with them. 'Ihey have preferred the t hin ner to the t hicke r me t hod, d ialectica l abst raction being so much more d ig nified and academic than the confused and unwholesome facts of personal biography. In spite of rationa lism's d isdai n for the particular, the persona l, and the unwholesome , the drift of all the e" idence We have seems to me to sweep us very sttongly towards t he belie f in some form of superhuma n life with which we may, unknow n to ourselves, be co - conscious. \Ve may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in OUr l ibrari es, seeing t he boo ks and hear ing the convusation, but having no in kling of the meaning of ;t ,,11. 'lhe ;ntdlcchtalist objections 10 , h is f,tll 'tway when the author it y of int ellectua lis t logic is unde rmined by cr iticism, and the n the positi"e emp ir ical evidence remains. Th e analogies with ordinary psychology and with the fac t. of p athology, w ith those of psych ical researc h , so ca lled, and with thos~ of religious exper ience, establish, whe n taken toget her, a decid edly formidable probability in favor of a genera l view of the w orld alm ost identical with F~ch"er's . "lhe out linu of th e

CONCLUSIONS

superhuman consciousness thus made probahle must remain, however, very vague, and the number of funct iona lly distinct "sdve' it com pons and carries has to be left entirdy prob lematic. It may he polytheist ically or it may he monotheis tically conceived of. Fechner, with his distinc t earrh -$Oul f ... nctioning as our guardian angel, SeemS to me dearly polytheistic; but the word "polyt heism' usua lly gives offence, so perhaps it is better not to usc it. Only one thing is cenain, and that is the result of our criticism of the ahol "te, the only way to escape from the paradoxe. and perplexit ies that a consistently t hought- out monistic universe suffers from as from a species of auto -intoxication - the mystery of the 'fall' namely, of reality lapsing into appe:uance, truth into error, perfection into imperfection; of evil, in short; t he mystery of univusal determinism , of the block- universe eternal and without a history, etc.; - the only way of escape, I,ay, from all this is to be fron kly plura l istic and assume that the superhuman consc.iousneos, however vast it may be, has itself an external environment, and consequ ent ly is finite. Pr..ent day monism carefully repudiates complicity with spinozistic monism. In that, it explains, the ma ny get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas in the improved idea listic form they get preserved in all their manyne.. as the one's ete rnal object. Th e ab",lut e itsel f is thus represented by absolutis t s as having a pl .... ralistic object. Iillt if e\'en t he aholute has to h:l\'e a pluralistic vision , why should we ourselves he sitate to he plura lists on our own sole account? Why should we envelop ou r many with the 'one' that brings sO much poi"'n in its train? The line of least resistance, t hen , as it seems to me, both in theology and in philo$Ophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman oonsciousne<s, the notion that it i, not all-embracing, the notion, in other words, that there is a God, but that he is finit e, either in power or in knowledge, or in both at once. lhese, I need hard ly tell you, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their active commerce with God; and the moni stic perfections t hat make the notion of him so paradoxical practically and mora ll y arc the colder addition of remote prof..sorial minds operating in distan, upon conceptual substitutes for him a10ne. Why cannol 'experience' and "reason' meet on this commOn ground? \Vhy cannot t hey compromise? fl.hy not the godlessness usually but needlessly associated with the ph ilo.ophy of immediate experience give way to a theism now Seen to follow directly from that experience mOre widely taken? and may not rationalism, satisfied w ith see ing her a priori proo fs of G od so effectively tcplaced by empirical evidence, abate something of her ahsolutist claims? Let G od but have the least infinit es imal

-,-

"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

olh~~

of any kind bes ide him, and empir icism and rat ionalism might str ike hand, in a lasting \reaty of peace. Both might then Ieavc abstract t hi nne .. behind t hem, and seek togel her, as scie ntific men seek , by "s ing all the analogics and data with in rcach, to build up t he most probab le approx imat e idea of what Ihe divine consciousne" concrelely may be li ke. I venture to beg Ih e younger Oxford ideali,!> to consid er seriously this alternative. Few men arc as qualified by their intellectual gifts to reap t he harvest, that Seem certain to anyone who, like Fechner and Bergson, will leave t he t hinner for the th icker pat h . Compromise and mediation are inseparable from the plurali.tic philosophy. Only monistic dogmatism can say of any of its hypotheses , 'It is either that or nothing; t ake it or leave it just as it st ands ,' Th e t ype of monism prevalent at Oxford has kept this steep and brittle attitude, part ly through the proverbial acad .. mic preference for thin and elegant logical solutions, part ly from a mis t aken not ion that the only sol idly grou n ded basis for rel igion was along t hose lines. I f Oxford men cou ld be ignorant o f anyth ing, it might a lmost seem that they had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement rowards a plura listic panpsychic view of t he un iverse, into which our own generation has been draw n, and whic h threatens to short- circuit the ir methods entirely and

become th eir religious rival un less they are willing to make themselves its all ie... Yet, wedded as they seem to be to the logica l machinery and technical apparat". of absolutism, 1 cannot but believe that their fidelity to the rel igious ideal in general i. deeper st ill. Espec ially do I find it hard to believe that t he more cl .. r ical ad h erent' of t he school w ou ld hold so fast t o its part icula r mach inery jf only they could be made to think that rel igion could be secured in some ot her w ay. Let emp iricism once become associat ed with religion, as hitherto, through some st range misunderstanding, it has bee n asrociated with irreligion, and I bel ieve that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ...,ady to beg in. That great aw aken ing of a new popula r intcrest in ph ilosophy, whic h is sO striking a phenomenon at (he prcsen( day in all co ... ntr ics, is ... ndoubted ly due in part to relig ious demands. As the authorit~· of past t radition tcnds mOre and mOre to crumble, mcn naturally lOrn a wistful ca r (0 t h e author it y of reason or to the evidence of present fac t. They wi ll assuredly not be d isappointed if t hcy opcn their mind. to wh at the thicker and mOre radical empiricism has to . ay. I fu lly believe that such an empiricism is a more natural ally than dialectics ever we..." or can be, of the religious life. it is true that .uperstitions and wild-growing over-bel ief. of all sorts wi ll undouhtedly begi n to abou nd if the not ion of higher

'"

CONCLUSIONS

consciousn~ .. es ~,welopi ng

ours, of fechn~rian eart h- sou ls and the like, grows orthodox and fashionable; still more will they superabound if sci.nce ev~r puts h~r approving stamp on the phen omena of wh ich Frederic il1ycrs so carncsth' advocatcd the scientific recognit ion, the phenomen a of psychic research w - called - and I mysclffirmly bel ieve that most of lhe se phen omena are rooted in reality. But ought one seriou sly to all ow such a timid consider3tion as t h at to deter one from following t he evident padl of greatest religious promise? Since when, in this mixed world, was 3ny good thi ng given us in purest outl ine 3nd isolat ion? One of the chid characteristics oflife is lifc's redundancy. '[he sok cond il ion of Our having anyt h ing, no matter what, is t h3t we should hav. so much of it, that we are fortunale if we do not grow sick of t he sight and sound of it altogethcr. Everything i•• mothe rcd in thc littcr lh at i. faled 10 accom pany it . Without too much you cann ot have ~nough, of anything. Lots ofinfcrior books , lot. of bad statues, lOIS of dull .peeches, of tenth-rate men and women, as a co"d it ion of the few precious specimens in eit h er kind being realized! The gold- dust comes to birth with the 'luartz-sand all around it, and t his is as much a condition of religion as of any other excellent possession. '[here mu st be extrication ; there mu st be competit ion for surv ival; but the d3y matrix and the noble gem must first

come inlo being llnsiflCd. Once ex tricated, the gem can be examined separately, conceptua lized, defined, 3nd in su late d. Bu t t hi s process of cxtrication cannot be shor t- circuiled - or if il is, you gct the t h in inferior ab~lr"ctions which we h ave seen, eilher thc hollow unreal god of scholast ic t heology, or the unintelligible p antheistic monst er, inst ead of t he more living divine reality wilh which it appcars certain that empirical me t hods tend to connect men in imagination. Arrived at t h is point, [ ask you to go back 10 my first lecturc and remember, if you C:ln , what I '!u0\ed there from your own Profe ssor Jacks - whal he sa id about the ph ilosopher himscl f being taken up into the universe which he is accounting for. Th is i. t he fechnerian as w ell as the hegelian view, and t hu s our end rejoins harmoniou sly our beginning. Phi losophies 3re intim ate parts of the un iverse, they expre .. someth ing of it s own thought of itself. A philosophy may indecd be a most mOmentous react ion of the universe upon itsd f. It may, as [ said, poss~ .. and handle itself d ifferently in consc,!uence of uS philosophers, wilh Our theories, being here; il may trust itself or mi.uust iuelf the morc , and, by doing the one or th~ other, de<erv~ more th . trust or the mistrust. \Vh at mist ru sts itself de.ervcs mistru.t.

127

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

This is the phi losophy of humanism in t he w ides t sense. O ur philos oph ies swel l the current of be ing, add their ch aracter t o it . They arc pan of all t hat w e have met, of all ihat m akes us be. As a Frenc h ph ilosoph er says, ' Nous sommes d u recl dans lc reel : O ur thoughts de termine o ur ac ts, anJ our acts redetermine the ])revious nature of Ihe world . l hus does foreign ness get banis hed from our world, and far more $0 when we ta ke the system of it pluralist ically than when we T3ke it monistically. W e arc indeed int ern al pa r ts of Cod and not external creations, on any possible read ing of the panpsych ic system. Yet because C od is nOt the absolute , but is h imself a part when t he system is conceived plural istically, his funct ions can be ta ken as not wholly dissimilar to those of t he other sma ller parts , - as similar to our func t ions consequently. H aving an environment, being in t ime, and work ing out a history just li ke ourselves, he escapes from the foreig n ness from all t hat is hu man, of the static t imeless perfect absolu t e. R emember that o ne of our troubles wit h that was its essential foreign ness and m onstrosity - t here really is no o ther word for it t h an that . It s having t he all-inclusive form gave to it an essentially heterogeneous nil/uri from ourselves. And this great difference be t ween absolutism and pluralism demand s no difference in t he universe's mat er ia l content - it follows from a di ffe rence in th e form alone. 'lhe all-form or monistic form makes the foreign ness result , the each-form or pluralis tic form leaves the intimacy undist urb ed . No matter wh at t he content of the un iverse may be, if you only allow that it is many everywhere and alw ays, t h at nothing real escapes from having an environment; so far from de feating its rationality, as the ab so lm ists so unan imously pretend , you leave it in possession of the maxi m um am ount of rationality practi cally atta inable bl' our minds . Yo ur relations with it , intellectua l, emotional, and act ive, remain fluent and congruous with yo ur ow n nature's ch ief demands . It would be a pity if t he word 'rationality" w ere allowed to give us trouble here . It is One of t hose eulog istic words thai both sid es cla im - fo r almost no one is w illing to advertise his philosophy as a system of irration al ity. But like most of the words which people used eulog istica lly, the word 'rational' carries too many meanings . The most objective one is t hat of the o lder logic - the con nex ion between t wO things is rat ional when you can infe r one from l he othe r, mona l from Socrat es , t .g.; and you can do that only when t he y ha,'e a qua lit y in common. But this k ind of rat iona lity is just that logic of ident it y w hich all disciples of H egel nnd insuffici ent . 111ey superse de it by the higher rationality of negat ion

""

CONCLUSIONS

and contradiction and make the n o tion vagu e aga in. Then you get t h e aest hetic or teleologic kind. of ration ality, saying that whatever fits in any way, whatevu is beautiful or good, whatever is purposive or grat ifies desire, is rationa l in so far fort h. Th en aga in, according to H egel, whatever is 'rear is rariona!. 1 myse1fsaid awh ile ago t hat whatever let . loose any act ion which we are fond of ex<:ort ing seems rational. It wou ld be better to give up the word 'rationa l" a ltogether than to get into a me rely verba l figh t about who has the best ri ght to keep it Perhaps the w ords ' foreignness' and 'intimacy,' w h ich I put forwa rd in my first lectu re, express the COntrast I insist On better than the words 'rationality' a n d 'irrationality' - le t us stick to t h em, t h en. I now say that the notion o f the 'one' breeds foreign ness a n d that of the 'many' intimacy, for reaSOnS which [ have u rged at only toO great length, and with which, wh ethu the y convince you or not, I may suppose t hat you arc n ow well acqua inted . But what at bottom is m eant by calling the universe many or byea lling it one? Pragmatically interpreted , plura l ism or the doctrine that it is many means on ly that the sundry parts of r eality may he txtnna/ly rdated. Everything you can th in k of, however vast or indusive, has on the plura listic view a genu inely 'external" environment of some sort or amount.

"Jh in g. are \vith' one anothe r in many ways, bu t nothing inci lldes eve rything, or dom in ates over everything. The w ord 'an d ' trails along aft er every Sentence. Somet h ing a lway. escapes. 'Ever not q u ite' has to be sa id of t he best attempts made any where in the universe at attainin g all- indus;vene". The p lnralist ic world is thus more like a federa l re public t h an like an emp ire or a k ingdom. H ow e"e r much may be collecte d, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or ac t ion, somet h ing else is self-governed a n d absent and unreduced to unity . .M onism , on t h e oth er hand, insists that wh en you come down to rea lity as such, to the rea lity o f realities, everything is present to tv~ry !hing el se in On e vast instantaneou s co- impl icated comple teness - not h ing can in any sense, fu nction al or substant ial, be really abse nt from anything else , all thin g s interpenetrate and telescope toget h er in the great tot al con flu x. For plurali.m, a ll that we a rc requ ired to admit as t h e constitut ion of real it y is what We ourselves find empirically realized in every minimnm of fini te life . Briefly it is th is, that nothing rea l is absolutely simple, that eve ry .mallest bit o f ex periencc i~ a ",uft,,", in parf.)o p lura lly rda ted, that each rdation is one aspect, character, or function, way of it . be ing

"9

WtLl1 ... ~t

lA ~tES

taken , or way of its ta k ing somethi n g else; and that a bit of rea l ity whe n act ively engaged in one of these rel ations is not by thai vnyfoct engaged in all the other rdat ions .imultaneou.ly. 'Ihe rclations are not alfwhat the Fre nch ca ll ,o/ida;~,. w ith one another. Without losing its identity a thi ng can either t ake up or drop anot her t h ing , like the log I spo ke of, wh ich by tak ing up new carriers and drop pi ng old ones can travel anyw here w ith a light escort . For monism , on the contrary, everyt h ing , whet her We realize it or not , drag. the whole universe along wit h itsel f and drops nothing. The log star ts and ar rives with all its ca rriers support ing it. If a thing were once disconnecud , it could nev", be con nect ed again, according to monism . The pragmatic d ifference be t ween the two systems is thus a defi nite one. It i. ju.t thus, t hat if a is once out of .ight of b or out of touch wit h it, or, m ore briefly, 'out' of it at all , then, according to monism , it mus t alw ays re m ain so, they can n ever get together; whereas pluralism admits that on anoth er occasion they may work together, or in some way be connecud agai n. [\'I onism allows for no suc h t hings as 'other occasions' in reality - in real or absolut e realit y, t hat is. 'Ihc difference I t ry to d escribe amounts , you see, 10 noth ing more tha n the differmce between what I form erly called t he each- form and the all- form of reality. Pl u ra l i~m lets t hings really exist in t he each - form or distr ibutively. M on ism t h inks that the all-for m or collect ive- unit form i. the only form t hat i. rational. The all- form allow. of no ta king up and dropping of connexions, for in the all t h e part. arc essentially and eternally co -implicat ed. In the each- form, on the contrary, a thi ng may be connected by intermed iary t h inS', w ith a th ing wit h which it has no immediate or essentia l con n exion. It is thus at all ti mes in many possible connexions whic h arc not necessarily actualized at t he moment . 11,ey depend on wh ich actual path of intermed iation it may funcl ionally str ike into: t he word 'or' names a genuine reality. Th us , as I speak here, I may loo k ahead or to t h e r ight or to the left, and in either case the in te r vening space and air and et her enable me to sec t he faces of a d iff~rent portion of this aud ience. :M y be ing here is indepe ndent of any {lne Set of these faccs. If the eac h-form be t h e etern al form of reality no less than it i. t h e form of temporal appearance, w e st ill have a coherent world , and not an incarnate in~ohere nce, as i. charged by SO ma ny absolUlists. Our 'multiverse' still make. a 'u niverse '; for every part , tho it may nol be in actual or immediate connexion , is nevert heless in .ome poss ible or med iated connexior" with every ot her part however remote, through the fact Ihat

no

CONCLUSIONS

~ ach

part hangs together with its very next neighhors in inextricab le int erfus ion. The type of union, it is rrue, is different here from t he monistic type of illf-~;"h~il. It is not a uni"usal co-implication, or integration of all things dur
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

moves and incl ines. The only t hi ng I emphatically insist upon is that it is a fully co-ordinate hypothe.is with monism. This wodd may, in t h e last resor t , be a block-un iver<e; hut on the oth .. hand it may be a universe only stru ng-along, not rounded in and dosed. Reality may exist distribulively just as it sensib ly SeemS to, after all. On thai possibil ity I do insist. Onc's gcnera l vision of the probable usua lly decides such alternat ives. They illu.trate what I Once wrote of as the 'will to believe: In some of my lectures at Harvard I have spoken of what I call the 'faith-ladder; as something 'luite different from the Joriln of the logic- books , yet seeming to have an ana logo,," form. I think you will quickly ,""cognize in yourselves, as I describe it , the mental process to w h ich I give this name. A conception of the world ari.es in you >omehow, nO matler how. h it true or not? you ask. It might be true somewhere, you say, tor it is not self-contradictory. It may be true, you conli n ue, even here and now. It is fit to be true, it wou ld be "W~II ifi/11.,~,.,. trut, it ought to be true, you presently feel. It must be true, something penua.ive in you whispers next; and then - as a fina l result It shall be hddfortnu. you decide; it shalf b~ as if tnte, for yau. And your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making it securely true in the end. Not one step in this process is logica l, yet it is the way in which mo nists and plu ralists alike espouse and hold fast to their visions. It i.life exceeding logic, it is the practica l reason for which the theoretic [cason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there. In just this way do some of us hold to the unfinished pluralis tic uni"erse; in just this way do other. hold to the timdess universe eternally complete. Meanwhi le the incompleteness of the plural istic universe, thus as sumed and held ro as the most probable hypothesis , is also represented by the plura listic philosophy as being se lf-reparative through us, as getting its disconnections remed ied in part by ou r behavior. 'We usc what We arc and have, to know; and what we know, to be and have still more: " Thus do philosophy and ,"ality, theory and action, w ork in the .ame circle inddinitclv. I have nOw finished these poor lectures, and as you look back on them, t hey doubtless seem rambli n g and inconclusive enough. My only hope is l hat the)" may possibly have proved suggestive; and if indeed II

J'"ge jjO.

Bkmdd, A"nal" J, Phil.,ophi, Ch"rimn.. Jon". '9<'6. p.

,~,

CONCLUSIONS

they have bee n suggestive of one point of method , I am almost willing to let all other suggestions go. Th at point is that it is high timefor the hasiJ o/diJ(l,wion in Ih~u 'fun/ionJ /0 h~ hroadmd find /hidund up, Ir is for th at that I have brought in Fechner and Bergson, and descr ipt ive psyc hology and religiou s experiences, and have ventured even to hint al psychical research and ol her w ild beasts of t he p h ilosophic deser t, Owing possibly to t he £~ct that Plato and Aristotle, with their intellectualism, arc t he basis of ph ilowph ic study here, the Oxford brand of t",nscendentalism see m s to me to have confi ned itself too exclus ively to thin logical consid erations, th at wou ld hold good in a ll conceivable worlds , worlds of an em pi rica l constitution entirely d ifferent from ours. It is as if the actual pecul iar ities of the w orld that is wue entirely irreleyant to the content of truth . BUT they cannoT be irrelevant; and t he philo.ophy of the future must im itate the sc iences in taki ng them m ore and more elabo"'Iely into account. I urge some of t he you nger members of this learned aud ience to lay this hi nt to hear!. If you can do so effectively, mak ing 'I ill more concrete advances upon the path w h ich Fech ner and Bergson have so ent icingly ope ned up, if you can gather ph ilosophic conclusions of any k ind , monistic or plura l istic, from t he partiwlars a/lift, I will
APPENDICES A PPEN D IX A T HE TH ING AN D ITS R ELATIONSS-i

EXPERI ENCE in it.

imm~diacy s~ ~ms

perfectly fluent. The aCI ;ve sense of liv ing w h ich we all enj oy, be fore reflection shatt ers our in stinctive w orld for us , i •• elf-Ium inous and suggests no paradoxe •. Its diffi cult ies arc disappoinlmC Il I$ and ull ,,<,rra inr ics. 1 h ey are nol intellectual contradict ions .

W hen tbe rdkctive int ell ect gcts at work , however, ;1 discovers in compr..hcn,;b ilit ics in the flow ing process. D ist inguishing its elements and p"rts, it g ivn them separate names , ;,nd what ;t rh" . d isjoins it ~annOI eas ily pu t together. Pyrrhonism "eccprs l h" irrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. O ther philosophics try_ some by ignoring, some by ",sisting, and SOme by turning the dialectic pro~edure aga inst itself, negating its first negat ions, to restore t he Auent s"nse of life again, and let redempt ion take the p1a~ ofinnocencc. Th e perfe~tion w ith which any philosophy mar do this is the measu re of its human succ".. and of it. importance in philosoph ic history. In an art icle ent itled 'A world of pure experien","," I t r;" d my own hand sketchily at t he problem, resisting crrta in fim steps of dialectics by insist ing in a general way t hat t he im mediately experienced conjunctive relations al"<: as I"<:al as anything clse . I f my sketch is not to appear too na~!f. I must come doser 10 details, and in the present essay I propose to do so.

' P nre ex perience' is the nam e w h ich I gave to the im mediat e Anx of life which furnis hes the material to Our later reAection w ith its concep 54 Reprinted from the Journal of P hilolOOphy, P'ychology, and Scientific Mcth",h. vol ii. New York. t9"5. with .light v"rhal , •• i.i",,_ ~5 lou m ,] ofPh iloooph)'>r,),d",I.-;Kv, ",wi $.:.,,,,ific Metl..,Jo, .,,1. i, N", '''. p-;66.

APPENDICES

mal cat~ gories. O nly new-born babe~ , or men in semi- coma from sleep, drug., illnesses, or blows, may be a.. umed to have an experience pure in the literal s~n se ofa that wh ich is not yet any deli,,;te 'whal, tho ready to be all .ort. of what.; full bot h of oneness and of manyne .. , but in respecls that do,, 't appear ; changing throughout, yet so confusedly Ihat its ph ases i!llerpcnetrate and no points, either of diSlinction or ofidenlity, can be caught . P ure exper ience in this state i. but another name for feeling or semation . Hutlhe flux of it no SOoner COme. th"n illend . to fi ll itself with emphase. , and these sa lient part s become identi fied and fixed and ab~1ra ctcd; sO th at experience nOw flows as if shot t hrough wit h adjecli"es and nouns and preposit ions and conjunc t ions. Its pu rity is only a relative term, meani ng t he proportiona l amount of unverba li'~ed sensat ion which it still embodies. Far back as we go, th~ flux, bot h as a whole and in its parts, is th at of th ings conjunct and separated. The great conti nua of t ime, space, and the self envelop everyt hi ng , be t wixt them, and flow together without interfering. The things t h at they envclop come as separate in some ways and as cont inuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with some ideas, and o thers are irreconcilable. Q,ialitin comp"netrate on e space, or eXclude each other from it . They cling together persis tently in groups that

move as un its, or else they separate. "Iheir change! are "bIllpt or di~con tinuous; and their ki nds resemble or diffe r; and , as they do so, t he y fall into either e,'en or irregular ser ies. In all thi!! the continuities and the d iscontinu ities arc absolutely coordinate mallers of immediate fee ling. Th e conju nctions are as pr imordial dements of '(..cl" a, arc the distinctions and d isjunction,. In the same act by w hich I fed t hat t his passing m;nut~ i. a new pulse of my life , I f~d that t he o ld life continu es into it, and the feel ing of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling of a novelty. They, 100, compene!rat" harmon iously. P repositions, copulas, and conjunctions , ' is," 'isn't," 'then,' 'before: 'in; 'on,' 'beside,' 'between,' 'n ext," 'l ike: 'unlike ," 'as," 'bm," flow er oUI of the stream of pu re experience, t he >lream of concretes or the semational stream, as naturally as nou ns and adject ives do, and they mdt into it ag-.. in ;Is fl.uidly when We apply them to a neW portion of the slream.

"

If now we ask why w e must tra nslate ~xpe rience from a mor e concre t e or pure into a more intellectu a li zed form, fi lling it with ever

133

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

mor. abound ing conceptual distinct ion., rationa li sm a nd naturalism gi"e differe nt replie • . "lhe rationalislic answ er i. that the theoretic life is ab.oh1le and its interests imperative; that to understand is sim ply the duty of man ; a nd Ihat who quest ions t h is need not be argued wilh, for by the fact of a rgu ing he givn away hi~ case . Th e nat urali st a nsw er is th at th e env ironment kills as well as sus tains us, and that die tendency of raW ex pe ri ence to extinguish the expcricn t himsdf is lessened just i n the d egree in wh ich the clements in it th at have a p ractical bearing upon l ife arc analyzed out of the continuum and verba lly fixed and coupled t ogether, so th at we may k now what is in th e wind for us [",d get ready to react in t ime . Had pure exper ience , the naturalist says , been always perfectly hea lthy, there wou ld ne ver have arisen t he ne cessity of isolating or ve rbalizing a n y of its t erms . \Ve should just have experienced inartic.ulat dy and un intellectua lly enjoye d. l h is leaning on 'reaction' in the naturalist accou nt im pl ies tha t , w hene ver we intel lect ualize a relat ively pure ex perience , we ough t to do so for the sa ke o f red esc ending to the purer or more concre te level again ; and t hat if an intellect st ays aloft among its abstract t erm s and g e nua lizcd relations, and does not reinsert it-

self with its conclusions inlo some par t icula r poin t of th e immediate stream ofli fe , it fails to finis h out its func t ion and leaves it s normal race u nrun . Most rationa lists no wadays will agree that natura lism give!! a true enough account of the w ay in w hich our intell ect arose at first, but t hey will deny these latter implications. The case , they wi ll say, resemble. that of sexual love . Originating in t he animal need of getti ng anoth .. generation born, t h is passion has developed secondarily such imper ious spiri t ual need s th at, if you ask wh y anot her ge nerat ion ough t to be born at all , the a nswer i" 'Chiefly that love may go on.' Just so with our intellect: it or iginated as a practical means of se rving life ; but it has developed incidentally the function of understanding absohlle t r ut h; and life itsel f now se em s to be g iven chiefly as a means by which that funct ion m:ly be pro se~uted . But truth and t he ,mders!:m d ing ofi! lie among the abstracts and unive rsa ls, so the intellect now carries on its higher busineSS wholly in this region, without any need of redescending into pure cxpeflence agam. I f the contrasted tendenc ies which I thus desig nate as naturalistic and rationalist ic arc not recogni'L ed by the reader, perhaps an example will ma ke t hem m ore concrete. Mr. Brad ley, for instance, is all ult ra-ra-

APPENDICES

tiona list , He admits that our intellect is primar ily practica l, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need i s simply T rut h ." Truth, moreover, must be a"umed 'consistent.' Immediate expuicnce has to be brokcn into subjeclS and 'lualit ics, term, and rdations, to be understood as t ru th at all. Yet when sO broken it is les, consi,t ent than eVer. Taken raw, it is all und istinguished. Intell ect ualized, it is all dist inction w it hout one ness. 'Such an arrangement may "Wor-t, but t h e theoretic proble m is not solved' (p . z)). lh. 'Juestion is, 'How t he diversity can ex ist in harmon~' w it h the o neness' (p. u8). To go back to pure experimce is unavailing. ' Mere feding gives nO answer to Our ridd le' (p. 104). Even if your intu ition is a fact, it is not an u"d~r
'"

In Section the 6 t h of my article, 'A world of pure experience: I adopted in a genera l way the common - sense belief that one and the same world i. cognized by our different mind.; but I left undi.cu .sed t he dialec t ical arguments which maintain that this is log ically absurd , The usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assume, one object (to 56

Al'l'u"'n<~ and R< al ;,)', PI'

'l' -'H·

137

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

wit, the world) to st and in two relat ions at o nce; to my m ind , namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second relation cannot logically he Ih e
two plirll,n; and th is suggesro th at the argument may be merdy verba l. Can it be that the whole d ialectic achievement consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a co nst itut ion sim ilar to that of the language in which we descr ibe it: Must we assert the obj ective doubleness of the m merely becau se we have to name it twice over when We name it. two relation.~ Candidly, I can th ink of no other reason than this for the dialectic conclu sion! '7 for, if We th ink, nOI of our word" but of any simple concre t e matter w h ic h they may be hdd t o s ignif~', the experience irodf belies the parad ox asserted. We uSc indeed twO separate concepts in ana lyzi ng our object, but we know them all the whi le to be but sub st itutiona l, and th at the m in f - m and the m in m - n mean (i.e., are capable of leading 10 and te r minat i ng in) one .elf- same piece, m, of sens ible experience. This persiste nt identity of certain units, or emph ases, or points, or objects, or members - can them what you wi ll - of t he experience - conti nuum, i. just one of those conjunct ive feature s of it, on which] am obliged to insist so emphat ically. For samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible stru cture. W hen I hear a bell-stroke and, a. life flows on, it. after- image die s away, I still hark back To it as 'that same ben- stroke." N he n I sec a thing m, w ith f t o the left of it and n to Ihe right of it, I see it III one III; and ifyolt t ell me I have had to 't ake' it t wice, I reply th at if I 'took' it a thousand tim es, I should st ill ,u it as a unit.~· Its unity is abor ig inal, just as the multipl icity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It cOmes unbroken as thllt m, as a singular which I encount .. : t hey come broken, as (lill" ta ki ngs, as my plura lity of operations. 'Ihe unity and the separateness arc strictly co- ord inate. I do not easi ly fat hom why my oppo n ent' should find the ,eparate ne,s so much more easily understandable th at they must needs in fect the whole of fin ite experience with iI, and relegate the un it y (now taken as a bare postulate and no longer as a thi ng positively perce ivable) to the region of the absolute's myster ies.] do not easi ly fathom this, I say, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibb l ing; yet all that I can catch in th eir talk is the subst itution of what is true of ce rt ain words for what i, trUe of wh"T they signify. "Ihey ,lay w ith the words, - not ,7 of ,he

Technically, i, ",,,m da,,,,hl. ,. • 'fallacy of oomf'O"i'"",_' A duali'y, p",dicahk

'wo whol.., I - on and on - n, i. f<>r,hwi, h predicated of 0""' of'h
noy pen an,l "" .h. ,ahl. whil. I wri." - rh. 'ct.i",' rhar i, i, 'wo ,h«" """",, ro h.a-. . n_ y., I ",,,,
.1..

"9

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

r~turning

to the stream of life whence all the meaning of them came, and wh ich is always ready to reabsorb th em.

IV For aught this argument proves, t hen, we may continue to believe that one thing can be known by many k now ers. But the denial of one thing in many ",btions is but One appl ic;ttion of a still profoundcr dialectic difficulty. !'Ibn can't be good , said t he sophis ts, for man is man and good is good; and Hegel and Hcrbart in the ir day, mOre recemly H. Spir, and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, inform us that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit , and that not one of the conjunct ive relations between things, which experience seems to yield, is rationally po .. ible. Of course, if true, this cu t s off radical emp ir ici,m without even a shilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at Iheir facevalue, ho lding them to be as reaL as th e terms united by t h em. The world it represents as a collec t ion, some parts of which arc conju nct ively and others disjunctively related . Two parts, themselves disjoine d, may nevertheless hang togothcr by imumediarics with whic h they

are severally connec te d, and the whole world eventually may hang together similarly, inasmuch as $om~ path of conjunctive transition by which to pass from One of its parts to another may a lways be discernible. Such determinatcly various hanging- together may be called tontalen"'~d union, to distinguish it from the 'th rough- and-through' type of un ion, 'each in all and all in each' (union of lolal co".ftux, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain when things arc t aken in th eir absolu t e real ity. In a concatenated world a part ial COnflllX often is experienced. Ollr concepts and our '<nsations are conflllent : successive states of the same ego, and feelings oft be same bod)' arc conflu ent. \oYhere the experience is not of conflux, it may be of conterm;nOllsnes' (things with but one t h ing between): or of contiguousness (noth ing be tw een); or o f likeness; or of nearness; or of simultaneou sness: Or of in - ness; or of on- ness; or of for- ness; or of simple with-ness; or even of mere and - ness, which last relat io n would make of bow ever disjointed a world o t herwise, at any rate for that occasion a univer.e 'of discourse.' Now Mr. Bradle)' tells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience th~m, can possibly be rea l." .19 H<", ");"';" Ih..."d.c ""u., be",,,,,, of ,1;PP;"g fTI)'" log;cal ;" '0 ph."""".,,"1 oo",;
,"0

APPENDICES

My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue radical em piricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortu n ately, as it seem. to me, h is general comention, that the very not ion of relation is Um hi nkabk dearly, h as been successfully met by many crit ics ...... It is a burden to the Aesh, and a n inju st ice bo th to readen and to lhe previ ous writers, to repeat good arguments already prin ted. So, in not icing M r. Bradley, I will con fi ne myself to the imeresrs of radical empiric ism solely.

v The first duty of rad ical empir icism , ta king g i~n conju nctions at their face -vahle, is to class sOme of them as mOre intimate and some as more external. When two terms are similar, their very natures enter into the relat ion. Being what they are, no matter where or w hen, t h e likeness never can be de nied, if asoerte d. It cont inun pred icable as long as t he terms cont inue. O t her rdations, t he where and the when, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper rna\" be 'off" or 'on' t he table, for example; and in eit h er Case the relation involves only the outside of it s terms. Hav ing an outside, bo t h of th em , the:· contribute by it to the rela-

tion. [t is ex ternal, the term's inne r natu re is irre1ev:mt to it. Any boo k, any table, may fa ll into t he relation, which is created pro hac vice, not by their existence, but by t heir casual situatio n. It is just because so many of t he conjunction s of experience Seem sO external that a phil osophy of circu m",ncc. of the C'''', being complex, h,ve deceived u,. At • milw,y ""ion we m,y rake our own " ,in, ,nd not the one thot fill. our window, to be mo,·ing. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, hut in i" original place the motion i, a p.rt of ",.li'Y· W hat Mr. Sr.dlcy ,,""," i, nod,ing lik< , hi,. bu, mth .. ,hat .ueh ,hin);, ,.. mo,ion arc nowher< ","I. "Old • ha. , rticuLuly.., by Aoo,."w Seth Pringl<-httison, in hi, .\10" aoo the Covnoo: by L.T. HobI-.ouo<, in chapte, xii (the ValidityofJ"",,gmrnt) of hi, Throry ofKnowlcd~. and by F.C.S. Sehilb, in hi, Humaniwn, E'""l' Xl. Othe, fatal t'Cview, (in my opinion) arc Hodder',. in the l',)~hologic~ R""iew, vol i, J07' Stoot,. in the l'roe«Jings of the Ari..-li.1n Society. ',,<>1"0>, p. ' ; ,,00 .\.1",Lenn""·,, in the JO<:. if 'he table"" w
'"

W I Ll1 "' ~ I IA ~IES

pure exper ie nce must tend to pluralism in its ontology. So far as things have 'pace-relations, for example, we arc free to imagine them with different or igin. even. If they could get to he, and get into space at all, then they rna)' h ave done so separately. Once there, however, they arc addilives to Olle anN her, and, wilh no prejudice 10 their nature" all so rts of space-relations may su pervene between Ihem. The question of how things cou ld come to be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their rdations. o nce the being accomplished, may comi,l in . Mr. Brad ley now affirms t hat such external relations as t he space-re lmions which we here talk of must hold of entirely different subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might a moment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not o n ly is t he lilualiol! different w hen the book is on the table, but the boo/;: itsefjis different as a book, from what it was when it was off the table. 1-1", admits Ihat 'such external relmions seem possible and even exis t ing ... Th at you do not alt er what you compare or rearrange in space seems t o common sense quite obvio us, and that on the other side there arc as obvious difficu lties does not occur to common sense at all. And I will b egin by pointing out these difficulties ... '[here is a rclatiOll in the resuli, and Ihis rdation, we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so , to w hat docs it make a difference? [don,, 't it makt a d!fflrmu to liS onlookers, at Itasfrj and what is the mean ing and sense of qua li f~'ing t he terms by it? [Su .... ry Ih. mMI!ing i, to 1<11 the truth ubout thdr u/an",. position." ] If, in short, it is external to t he terms , how can ;t possibly be true a/t hem? [Is it tht 'intimacy" suggt sttd by Ilu lilr!~ word 'of.' here, whith I have undemord, thaI i, the roof 0/ Mr. Bradlty"s troubl.r].. If the terms fmm t he ir inner nature do not enter into the relation, Ihen, so far as they are conc erned, they seem related for no reason at alL .. Things arc spatially related, first in one way, and then become related ;n anot her w"y, and yel in no way them selves are altered; for th e rdations, it is said, are but external. Rut I reply that, if so, I cannot unJerltand the leaving by the terms of o ne set of rdations and their adoplion of anN her fre sh set. 'lhe process and ;ts re .... lt to t he terms, if they contribute nothi ng to it [lUrtry thq (onlribu/~ to if all Ih~r~ is'o/ it.'] se em irr:ltion"l throughout. [If'irrational" hert mtanJ Simply 'non - ralional,' or non -dedudble from Ihe nunu 0/ ~ilher term singry, il is no ....proath; ifil m,an, 'rontradi(fing' suth nun", Mr. Bradlq should show whaein a"d how.] But, if they ~ontr;bute anything, they must surely be affected internally. [Why '0, if Ih,y tOl!trihuu onry their sur/au' In m(h 6. Bu, ';,,1><,.. ""Y ..,~..,:.,x. M,- Br... il" S""'I)' sud, ~ 'I""";"~ may he Ief, n""n,wernl.

'"

APPENDICES r~/alionl

al 'on,' 'a fOOl away,' 'be/'tt'~m,' 'nnl,' ~I'" only lurflun art! in qunlion.] If the term, contr ibute anything whate"er, then the terms arc affected [inwardly afurl'd' ] by the arrangement .... lhat for w orki ng pu rposes w e treat , and do wel l to t reat, som e relations as externa l m erely, 1 do nOI deny, and Ihat of course is nOI the ql1estio n at issue here. "Illal que stion is ... whether in the end and in principle a mcre exte rnal rclat ion [i .•. , a r~/alion which can cbang' w ilhout forcing ii, ttrm, to chang~ fb,ir n(llurt simult.""ously] is poss ible and forced on uS by the facts: " Ivl r. Brad ley next reverts 10 the antinomies of space, w h ich, according to him, prove it to be unteal, although it appears as !;o prolific a medium of external "lat ions; and he then concludes t hat 'I rrationality and ex ternality cannot be the last t ruth about th ings . Somewhere there must be a reaSOn why this and that appear together . And this rea.on and reality must reside in the whole from which terms and rel ations arc abstractions, a whole in which thei r internal connexion must lie, and ou t of wh ich from the background appea r th ose fresh re sults which never could h ave come from t he premises' (p. 577). A nd he adds that 'W here the w hole is d ifferent, the terms t h at <J uali fr and contribute to it must so far be different .... 111ey arc altered so far only [haw far' fortha thun ,,,,t~rna/ly, yef nol through and through'], but still t h ey arc altered .... I mus t i nsi~t that in each case the term! are qual ifi ed by th eir whole [qualified haw' - do th~jr , ,,,terna/ rr/afioni, iituation<, daft<, rfc., chang~d iii Ihrir arr in fh~ ntw whalt,foil tv qualifY fh~m for' waugh'], and that in the . econd caSe there is " whole which differs bot h logica lly and psycholog ically from the first whole; and 1 urge that in contribu ti ng to th e change t he terms 00 far arc altered' (po 579). Not mere ly the relations, t hen, but the te rms arc altered: und zwar',o far .' But just how far is the w hole problem; and 'throu gh-a ndthrough ' would seem (i n sp ite of Mr. Bradley's somewhat undecided utterance." ) to be Ihe fu ll hradleyan answu. lhe 'whole' which he

_nd.

6J Appe,,,,,,,,,, and Real ity, ,d edition, pp. '75-,76 . 64 I "'y "undecided; becau"" "f'1" &orn the '", fu-; which tcftic the,i>. R""d. (0< ""ample, what he "'y>. on p. 578. o( • billiard 00.11keeping- i.. '"hornet."." u",hl an ab>1r:>et quality A, B. or C, i" • ,hing, 'may th roughou, """"in unchanged' al,hough ,he ,h ing be .1,l in =:I-hairedne ... both .. aolalyzed 00' of a man and when gi,."" wilh the re .. ofhim. ,he", "l>yh< ',..,change" (p. l&o~ Whyoo.. he immtd)' add th'" he the plurnliot to plc.d the """-mu"t",, of ,och aWnC1ion, woold be on ignor"'ioelonchi: It i. impoos.iblo to .dmit ~ to be ",ch. The ent;'" eknrhu. and is just"' to whe.her par" which yon con ab..mct from <x;>ting whob con al", contribute to ,"I",. whok. wid"",. ch.nging .hei. inner ""'Un: . If .I",y """ ,hu. "",ukl " ..... u, whole. into new ge".lt-qu"I;',,< clem"n" "'" Iogi<:ally ","e ."is<

IDq''''''

'0

'"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

here treats as primary and de terminat iv e of e ach part's m an ner of'contributing,' simply ",usI, when it alte r s, a lt er in its ent irety. There mu,l be to t al con flux of ito parts, each into and t h rough each other. Th e 'm ust' appears here as a Ala,hl,p~u,h , as an ipu dixil of M r. Bradley's abwlu t istically lempcred 'u nd erstand ing; for he candidly confesses Ihat how t he parts do d iffer as they cont ribu t e to d iffereol wholes, is un known to h im (p. 578). A lth ough I have every wish to compre hend die au thority by which Mr. Bradley's und erstanding speaks, h is words leave m e wholly unconverted. 'Externa l relations' stand with t h eir withers all unwrung, and rema in , for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, but also perfectly intell ig ible factors of reality.

VI M r. Rradley's underst and ing shows t he most extraord inary powe r of perceiving sepa rations and the most ex t raordi nary impotence in com pre hending conj unctions. O ne wou ld natura lly say 'neither or bot h ; but not w Mr. Bradley. W hen a com m on man analyzes certain whals from out t he stream of experience, he u nderstand s t h eir dist inctness as Ihus iso/atd. BUT This does not prn 't nt him from equally wtllu nde rst:tndi ng their combination w it h each o ther as originally ""p~r;",ud in Ih~ (on of conj unction. M r. Bradley understand, the isolat ion of the abstracts, but to understand th e com b in ation is to h im impossiblc." 'To understand a com plex "'B ; he says, i" dilfe",n, "'hoh [whe, her I'hpi<"11y .ble """,IJ ""pend "" .Jdit'.on.,l h)"I"-"I>.",.J. 'h'" I"rtial chmgco "'" ' hinbbk, and ,hrough- and·, hroogh clunge not a di:JJ<eti< r>e,,,,,,ity; ' hat monism i. Orially « . p ",." It in ,h i. h<x>k being livingl)' on ,hi, ,.ble? \ Vhy i,n' the ,,,ble on the book? 0 , why ,Joe'n't 'he 'on' <'On"",,' it>m .. hing ,h.. i, no< • ,,,bk' M m'n', """,erhing in each of 'he 'hree .k m0, in wha, mn the iural exi,,,,nce con,i", if"'" in a .pirituai miniature of the ",hok be,', com,i,u, ion ac,uating; every partial f"",o< as its purpoo;:, in I"'''''' S"me ""he", we muSt 1<""" "lfwi'h • • "" .. i,",,,,,, behi,,,] which ,he", is "",hi"g.

,heoc.

'"

APPENDICES

'1 must begin w ith a or h. A nd beginning, say with a, if 1 then merdy find b, I ha'·e either lost a, or I have got beside a, [fh~ "Word 'onid,· JumJ hm' vital, aT meaning a ,onjun,lion ·",,"rnal' and thuifor. unin"mgibl,J something else, and in neither case have I understood." For my intellec t cannot simply unite a d ivers it y. nor has it in itself any form or way of toget he rness, and you ga in nothing if, beside" and b, you offer me the ir conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more th an anoth er oxtern",l element . And ~facts," Once for all . arc for my intelleci notlrue unless they satisf" it.. The intellect has in its nalUre no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. 570, 57'). Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'inte llect' as the power by which we pucei"e separations but not unions - provided he give due notice 10 the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and ampu tated power must reign supreme in ph ilosophy, and accuse on its behoof the whole empirical world of irrationa lity, It is true that he elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intelleCT a proprius motus of transition, but ny. that wh en he looks for fh"t transitions in the det ail of living experience, he 'is un able to verify such a solution· (p. 569). Yet he never explains what t he intdlect uaJtransitions would be like in case we had them. He only defines them negative ly - t hey are not spatial, temporal, predieative, or causal: or qualimively or otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naively trace relations, for relations ~pilrat' terms, and need themselves to be hooked on ad inji"itum. 1he nearest approach he make> to dCl;cribing a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of a and h as being u nited, each from its own nature, in a whole which i, the nature of both alikc· (p. 570). Bur this (which . pau Mr. Bradley, seems exquisitely analogous to ·tak inga conger ies in a lump,' if no! to 'swamping') suggests nothing bur t hat [onflux which pure cxper ience 80 abundantly offers, as when 'space,' ·white,' and 'sweet· arc confluent ;n a 'Jump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and optica l sensations confluent in 'my hand.' ·J All that I can verify in t he transitions which Mr. Bradle,,'s intellect desiderates as it'; proprius mOlu$ is a reminiscence of t hese and other sensible conjunctions (especially space -conju nct ions), but a reminiscence so vague that its originals arc not recognized. Bradley, in short. repeats the f"ble of the dog, t he bone, and its image in the water. \Vi!h a world of particulars, given in loveliest union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously de fin ite, 66 Appl)· ,hi. to 'he caK of·OOok-on- tabk·! w.J.

D,

How meaningle .. i. the conten,;on thot in ,uch whob (or in ·book-on-table: ·watch-in- pockct." etc.) 'he rela,ion i. an add itional en'i'y bet wccn the 'erm., nceding it,el f to ho «bred again '" c""lot 30th 3.;>
Roycc (The World and ,ho l"Jivid"al. i, , ' S) I,,'·ingly '"poa, ,hi'j,icc<: of profundity.

'"

WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see t he fact of them," for there i, no how except the constitution of the fact as gi'"Cn; with all t hi, gi""n him , I say, in pu,," experience, he asks for so me ineffable union in the abstract instead , which , ifhe gained it, wou ld only be a duplicate of what he has already in hi s fu ll possession. Surdy he abuses t he privilege wh ich society grants to all of Us philosophers, of being puzzle-head ed. Polemic w r iti ng like t h is is od ious; but with abso lut ism in posses sion in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against its best known champion wou ld count as either super fi cia lity or inabil ity_ I have to conclude that it s dialectic has not inva lidated in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as cxpuienced, hangs so variously together. In particu lar it leaves an empirical t he ory of knowledge intact, and let. u, continue to believe with common .enSe that one object m"y be known, if we have any ground for thinking Ihat it is known, to many knowers.

6S

-Iho 'wh)'" and the 'whonce· are e ntirclyothcf que"io,,", not u"dcrdiKu .. ion,

a, l "nden,an,l ~h. 8 •.(110)"- Nm huw <>
'"

<"" 1,.

APPENDIX B

T HE E XPERIENCE OF ACT1 VITyffl •.• ~m. BRADLEY calls the question of activity a scandal to philosophy, ;lnd if Om tUrns to the current litcr;llu rc of the su bject - hi. OW n writ ings included - one easily gat he rs wha t he means. The opponents cannot even und ersTand one another. .M r. Bradley says to .Mr. Ward: 'j do not care what you r orade is, and your preposterous psychology may here be gospd if you plcase; ... but ifth. rc"dation doc, conta in a meaning, I will commit mpdfro this: eith er the orade is 00 confused

IhM irs

signifi~rion

is not

di~ov~ro.hl e,

or, u)Xl" the othe r hand, jf it

~n

be pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be fulse.' 7<'

Mr. Ward in turn says orr.'l r.

IIr~dley'

'I cannot even imagine the

. 1:lIe

of mind 10 which h i. description appl ies .. II n:ad s like an uni ntent ional travesty of H erb art ian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it wit hoUI being althe pa ins 10 master il.' Muensterberg excludes a view op posed 10 h is own by saying t hat w ith anyone who holds it a 'WNlamdig"ng with him is gr""dsa~tuicb a"sgtscblo~n:' ;lnd R oyce, in" review OfStou1,7' hauls him over the coals at great length for defend ing 'e fficacy' in a w ay which T, for one, never gath.red from read ing him , and which I have heard StOut himself say waS qu ite foreign 10 the intention of hi. text. In th ese di,cussion< distinct quc
'[he ... is a psyehologica l question, Have we p","ceptions of oclivity? and if 00, whal an: t hey like, and when and where do we have them)

69 Pre,ident', Addre .. bdo.-c the American Psychologicol Associat ion. De«mbcr, '904. Reprinted from the P')"
7[

Mi"J. N. S.,V l ,l79'

'"

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

,. There is a ",,,,aphysical question: Is there a jiu/ of activily? and if so, what idea must We frame of it? \V hat is it like? and what does it do, if il docs anylhing? And finally Ihe re is a logical q Ueslion: 3. Whence do we knfYW activity? By our ow n fedings of il soldy? or by some other source of in formation' Throughout page after page of the litcrnlu rc One knows not which of Ihese q ucotions is before one, and mere description of the surface -show of experience is proffered as if it implicitly answered e"ery one of them. No one of the disputants, mureover, Iries 10 show wh •• pragm,'ic consequences his own view would carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's experience if would make if his adversary's were .riu mphan •.

It seems to me that if rad ical empiricism be good for anythi ng, it ough t . w ith its pragmatic method and its p rinciple o f pure experience, to be able to avoid such t angles, or:lI least to simplify them somewhal. Th e pragm atic method st arts from the postulate that thue is no d ifference of tnl1 h th at doesn't make a difference of fact somewh ere; and it seeks to determine t h e mean ing of a ll diffe rences of opinion b y ma k ing the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some pract ical or panicu lar issue.lhe pr inciple o f pu re exper ience is ;llso a methodical post u late. Not hi ng sh 31l be admin ed as f3c t , it says , exccpt what can be expe rienced at some d efinire ti me by sOme e x perie m; and for e"ery feature of fact ever so exper ienced, a defi nite p lace must be found somewhere in the final sys tem of re3lity. In other words: Evuyt hi n g real must b e experienceablc somewhere, and eve ry kind of thing experienced must somewhere be r(31. Armed with these ru les o f me t hod, let us sec what face the problems of activ;t~· p resem to us. By the principle o f pure exper ience , eit her the word 'activ ity' m ust have n o meani n g at all, or else the orig in al t~'pe and model of what it means must lie in $Orne COncrete k in d of experience th at can be d efinitely pointed out . W hatev .. ulterior judgme nt s w e may eve nt ua lly come to make regarding activity, that Jort o f thing will be what the judgments arc about. Th e first step to take, then, is to as k where in the stream of experience we seem !o find what we speak of as a ct iv ity. Wh at we are to think of t he act ivity thus found will be a later quest ion. Now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity w herever we find any t h ing going on. T ake n in the broades! sense, a n y apprehension of somet h ing doing, is an experience of activity. \Vere our world describab le o nly by t h e words <nothing happening,' 'nothing ch ang ing,' 'noth-

'"

APPENDICES

ing doing,' w~ shou ld unqu~stionably call it an ' inactive' world. Bare act ivity, then, as we may call it, means the bare fa e! of event or change. 'Change taking pJac~' is a unique COllt~ Ilt of experiellce, olle of those 'conjunct ive ' objects w hich radical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate ,,,,d preserve. "nl~ setlSe of activity is thu s in the broades t and vaguest way synonymous with t he sense of 'life.' \Ve shou ld feel our own subjective life at least, evell in Ilot ic illg and proclaiming all otherwise in active world _ O"'r own reaction on its monotony wo ... ld be the One thing exper ie nced there ill the form o f something comillg t o pa... lhi, seemS to be what certain writers have in mind when t hey insist that for an experient to be at all is to be active . It seems to justify, or at allY rate to explain, 1\-1r. Ward', expre ..ioll that we ar~ only as we are active ," for we are only as experients; and it rules out 1\-1,. Bradley'. contention that 'there is no origillal expuience of anythi ng li ke act ivity.' What we ought to say about activities thus simply given, whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect anything at a11 - t hese arc Imer 'luestions, to be answered onl~" when the field of experience is enlarged. Bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite direction, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a w ild idunjiu(ht, o r rhapiodir der 'Wahrnehmungm, as Kant would say, would const itu te:ln ac ti t'e as distinguiShed from an in active world. But in this actua l world of ours, as it i, given, a par! at least of the act ivity comes with defin ite d irection; it comes with d"i,e ami sense of goal; it COmes complicated with res istances which it oVerCOmeS Or succumbs to , and with the efforts which the feeling of resistance so ofte n pro\'okes; and it is in complex experien~s like these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivit y as opposed to activit y arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes to bin h. Perhaps the most elaborate work eVer done in descript ive psychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more complex activity-situations. In their descript ions, exquis itely subtle some of them," the acrivity appears as the gut(>!t-qUQ/it«f! or the jundirtt inhu!! (or as wh atever else you may please to call the conju nct ive form) which the content fall s into when We experience it in the ways which l he describers set forth. "[hose ("cto .. in t hose re lations are what we m~(>n by activit y- situations; and to the possible enumeration and accumu lat ion of their circumstances and 7' N"urnJi.m and Agnoot;ci.m, yolo ii, p. '45. One think. na'u rally of the peripatetic a.:tu. primus and ac'u. ,",,
d
W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

ing re dients there wou ld seem to be no natural bound . Every hour of human life cou ld contr ibute to the picture gallery; and th is is the on ly fault Ihat one can find wit h such descriptive indu.try - where is il goi ng to stop? O ught w e to listen forever to verba l pictu res of what we have alrea dy in concrete form in our own breasts' I< 'l1ley nevn take us off the superficial plane. W e knew the facts all"<'ady - k ss spread ou t and separated , to be sure - bu t we k new them st ill. \Ve always fel t our ow n ac tivity, for example, as 'th e expansion oCan idea w it h which our Self is ident ified , against an obstacle '; and the following out of such a definition through a mult itude of cases elaboratu t h e obvious SO as to be litt k more t han an exercise in synonym ic speec h . A ll the d esc ript ions have to trace fa m iliar outlines, and to usc familiar t erms. 'The activ ity is , for exampk , attr ibuted either to a phy"i~al or to a menta l agent, and i. eit her ai m le.. or directed. If directed , it sh ows tend ency. The te nden~y mayor may not be resisted. If not, we call t he activit y immanen t, as when a body moves in empty space by its moment um, or our thought s w ander at their ow n sweet w ill. I f re sist ance is met , its agent complicates t he situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its appearanC<', and along wit h effort, strain or squeeze. \V ill, in the narrow er sense of the word , then comes upon The scene , wh eneve r, along with The tendency, the strain and squeeze are sus tained . But the resis t ance may be great enough to ~heck the tendency, Or even to re verse its path. In t h at case, We (if'we' were the or igina l agents or subjects of t he tendmcy) arc overpowe red . Th e phenomenon turns into one of t ens ion sim ply, or of nece",it y succumbed - To, according as the opposing power is only equal, or is superior to our<ek es. \V hosoever describes an experience in such terms as these, descr ibes an experience ifactivi ty. If the wor d h ave any meaning , it must denot e what there is found . Ih~re is complete act ivity in its origi nal and first intention . \V hat it is
I ought ",pdf.o ~'}" peccavi, h av;"g b«o • vol.",;oous , ;00" ;0 .oY"'''o

eI'"P1<' 00 ,1.< w;1 1.

APPENDICES

th~s~

tha t we must suppos~ th~m, or els~ giv~ them some oth er name; for the word 'activity' h as no imagi n able content whatever save these experiences of process, obstruction, &triving, slrain , or rd~ase, ull im al~ 'luaNa as Ihey arc of the life given us to be known. \Vere Ih is Ihe end of the matter, one migh t th in k Ihal whe n ever We had successfully lived Ihrough an ac tivilY-$itualion We shou ld h ave 10 be permitted, with out provoking contradiction, to say that w e had been rea lly "ct ive, Ihal We h ad met real re,istance and had really prev"ilcd. Lotze som~wh~re says that to b~ a n entity all that is necessary is to g,flen as an entity, 10 operate, or be felt, experienced, recognized, or in any way rea l iz~d, as suc h. In our activity-=periences the act ivity assuredly fu lfils L otze's demand. It makes itsel f gellen. It is witnessed at it s w ork. No matter what activities there may really be in this extraordinary uni"erse of ours , it is impos
cu rt:;in is the pictu re. [f then:: is :;nything hiding in th e h:;ckground, it ought not to be called ac tiv ity, but sh ould get itself another name. Th is Seems 00 obviously true th at one might well exper ience astonishment at finding so many of the ablest writers on t he s"bject Had y denying t h at th e act ivity we live t hrough in t hese situations is real. Merdy to fed active is not to be act ive, in their sight. the agent. that appear in t h~ experience are not rea l agents, the res istances do n ot rea lly r.sist, the effects that appear arc not rea lly effect. at all." It is evident from

);"""''11,.

75 VerlxM-"", feeling uf ""Iivil}" is not ~bl<, 'lu. f.di ng, '" 1<11 "' onything about activity' (Loveday: Mind, N.S., X., ~03); ~\ ",n."ion '" 1i:ding '" om.., of ac' tivily .. . i. not, Icchd at in anolhe, way, a f: i. 0.- i. not "to, on "chamcto' e."'ntial to <>.I, p"''''ption .nd 01" ide> of >Ctivity, it, a. it rome. fi,st. i. not in it",lf on eXp"'",n«: of "",ivity ,,' "II. It, a. it come. fi .... i. only"" fu.ex'mnU. n:.",,", and only,., fu.- on ouuide ob""vo:r (B",dlo)', App"o"'n<>: and Ro.lity, ,d .dilko" p. 60j): 'In de", '''Iigl:.ei''gef""hle leigl a>l oich nkh' d« ~'ingsto h<wei. fue< d"" ,"O,h,nden«in einc:, p'y"hi",he" "' of v;'w in most r1f 'hue auth",'. di""u"ion. (not in Muen,,,,ro.'g·') make i, impo"ibk di .. ntangle """,,'ly what they moan. I .m .ure in .ny c.", 10 be accu",d o f mi''''p«>pin:""" , he ... 1<, ~ willi",. An,1 "1'''']><'' "f

'0

'0

<:<"'''''.

15 1

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

this that m ere d ..cript ive analysis o f anyone of ou r activity-experiences is not the whole story, that there is something .till to te!! about them that has led su~h ahle wr iters to conce ive of a S;mon -pur~ ac tivity, of an ac tivity an sich, that docs, and doesn't m erdy appear to us to do, and compared wil h whose real doing all th is phe nome nal activily is blll a speciolls sham, mi.u t.:kntand ing<, I may odd to thi. not< acompl";nt otl my own aerou nt. Prott •..,r Stout, in thr excdl
to

to'" lOr identifying 'piri,u.] activi,y with c«tain mUK'G la, kding>, and give. qoota, >on.

be", hi m out, lhey""" from «rtain parngraph. on ',he Self; in which m)' .ttempt w" to.how what the «n,ral nuck", "fthe acti"it;.,. th" we caU i., J fuund it in c«tain i,,,,,,,,,,,,,hilic movemco m)' p'per 'Doc. 00<1",;00",,, . . <xi,,?, in the Jourrul of PhiLo.oph)" vol, i, p, ~77)' ThCft arc, in be" thr« di"ingu iohablc '""ivitie' in the field of di",u.uo..: the rkm"ntary activity invoh'Cd in the mc« that of experience, in tho bet th .. """'<" I ci", un,;.:';1>< ~ . ," I'ar< ,he «,,(, n>< of treating it a. a oon of <xrc,n:tl append,ge it"lf (pp, 16' 016]), a. if I '''''par,«d tho octivity from the proc",. which is octive: Bu, all . he procc.",. in que>tion are octiyc , a",d their ""''''ity i. inocp""blc from ' hrir being. My book rai in thi. ",.. til' pcno",,1 ><me , lh",: i. a wide, ><me in whKh tl.., wl",le 'cooi' ofhe""n a,,,j furnitu,e of [he earth: a"d [heir ,",'iv~;" . , are ours, fOf 'hry ,'" OUr But 'we' are he", "" I}' ",,,,,the,. ,,""" f(". th" 'Olal proce« of eXI"";""", ,nothe, n3me fOf all ,)"" i., i" fact : and 1 w"",, dealing with d .. ]",,,,,n,1 and ;"diviJ u,li,,,J .df "xclu,i,,,ly in the f''''''g'' wi,h which I'rol<"", Stout find. f,ult. "lho indi,'iJualizrd .df, which 1 belie,'co to be , he only thing properll'cillod ",If, i. a part of ' hr OO' ,,' n be ""''''' , thei, "",i.itl' termin"t<. in 'he "",ivity of the body, and only through fi"" ~rou.ing its "",i.i,;". can , hey begin to ch,'ngc ,ho.. of ,he «ot of ' he world, lhe bodr i. the ,torm centre, the <.>rigin of co-oroin"t:pctiviti<. a. unique and oppo< '",y' "f th<", i, ,1.< ''''I')."i" ,he k
'ou,'

,w"

a,

'0

'oo;ect.'

l 52

>C<:""'.

APPENDICES

The metaphys ical question ope". here ; and I t h ink t h at the state of m ind of one possessed by it is often someth ing like this:
153

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

G enerally spea k ing, t he onlook er, wit h his wider field o f vision, regards the ultimate outcome of ~ n ~ct iv ity a. what it is more really doing; and th~ most prNJioUJ "gmt ascerta inab le, being the fi«1 source of act io n , he regards a. t he most real agent in t he field. Th e oth ers but tra n.mit Ihat agen!". impulse : on him we p .... t responsibilily; We name h im whe n one asks us, '\Vho's to blame" Bu t the most previous agents ~scerta i nablc , ins tead of be ing of longer sr "n, arc often of much shoner span t ha n t h e "ct ivity in view. Bra in- cells arc our best example. ~1y bra in- ce ll s are bel ieved to exc it e e~ch other from next to neXt (by contiguous tr~nsmission of katabolic alt eration , let us say), a nd to have been doing so long before t his p rese nt stretch of lecturing- activity o n my part began. I f a n yone ce ll- group stop. its activity, the lect ur ing w ill cease or show d isorder of form. CesJant~ rausa, unal" 1[utus - docs not this loo k as if the short- span brai n anivities w ere t he more real activit ie. , and the lectur ing activities o n my part only their effects? Moreover, as Hume sO clearly poi n ted out, in my mental act ivity-situat ion the w ords phys ically to be uttered arc rep rese nt ed as t he activ it y's immed iate goal. These w ords, howeve r, cannot be uttered w it hout intermediate phys ical processes in the bu lb an d vag i nerves , which processes neverthd ess fail to figure in the me ntal activity-

series Mall. 'Ihat series, the refore, since it leaves OUt vitally real StepS of ac tion, cannot represent the real activit ies. It is somethi ng purely subjective; the facts of activit y a rc elsewhere . They arc something far mOre interst itial, so to speak, than what my feelings record . ll,e "alfacts of activity that have in poi nt offact been systemat ically pleaded for by phi losophers have, so far as my informat ion goes , been of thre e pr incipal types. The first type ta kes a conscio u sness of w ider time -span than ours to be the vehicle of the more real ac tivity. Its will is the agent, and its p ur pose is the action done. Th e second t ype assumes that ' ideas' st ruggling with one another are the agents, and that the prevalence of one set of t hem is t he action. The t hi rd type believes t hat ner ve- cells arc the agents , a nd that re..dtam motor d ischarge s arc the acts achi eved. Now if we mus t de -realize our imm ediately felt act ivity- situat ions for the benefit of eit her o f these types of subst itute , we ought to know what the subst itution practically involves. What pra"ha! diffnmu ought it to mak~ if. inst ead of saying naively that 'I' am ac tive now in delivui ng this address , I say that a wider thinkn iJ affi'W, or t hat <ertain ideaJ are at/ive, or t h at urlain n~rv~-ul!t are a,/iv" in producing the resu lt ?

APPENDICES

This would b~ the pragmatic meaning of the thru hypoth~s~s. L~t us t ake t hem in succession in seeking a reply. If we a .. ume a wider thinhr, it is evident that his purposes envclop m ine. I am rea ll)' lecturingfo~ h im; and altho I cannot surely know to what end , yet if I take him re ligiously, I Can tru st it to be a good end, and willingly conn ive. I can be happy in thinking that my activity tran smits h is impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. So long as I take him religiously, in short, he docs not de - re,tlize my activities. He tends rat her to corroborate the reality of them, so long as I bel ie ve both them and hi m to be good. When now w~ turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas arc supposed by the a.. ociation psychology to influe nce each othu only from next to next. "[he 'span' of an idea, or pair of ideas, i. a.sumed to be much smaller instead ofb~ing larger than that of my tota l conscious field. The same results may gel worked out in bot h cases , for this address is being given anyhow. RUI the ideas supposed to 'really' work it out had no prev ision of t he whole of it; and if I was lecluring for an absolule thinker in the former case, so, by similar reasoning, are my ideas now lecturing for me, that is, accompli si'; ng unwittingly a result which I approve and adopt. But, when this passing lecture is over, Ihere is nothing in t he bare notion t hat ideas have betn it s ~genU t haI wou ld seem to guarantee that my present purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. I may have ulterior d,,'c!opments in view; but there is no certainty th at my ideas as such will wish to, or be able to, work them Out. The like is true if nerve-ce11s b~ the agents. Th e activity of a nervcccl l must be conce ived of as a tendency of exceed ingly short reach, an 'impulse' barely spanning the w ay to the next cell - for surely th at amount of actua l 'process must be 'experienced' by the ce ll s if what happens beIwe~n them i, 10 deserve the name of activity at all . Hut here aga in the gross resultant, as I perceive it, is indifferent to the agents, and ne it h er wished or willed or fureseen. Their be ing agents now congruous with my will give. me no guarantee that like resu lts will recur again from the ir activity. In point of fact, a11 sorts of ot her resu lt s do occur. My mistakes, impotencies, perversions, menta l obstructions, and fru strations generail y, ar~ also result, of the activity of cells. Altho these are letting me lecture now, on other occasions they make me do things that I would willingly not do. The question rvha.f~ i, th~ ~taf ac/i'IJity~ is thus tantamou nt to t he question IVhaf 'Wifl lu the actual ~uuft5~ Its interest is dramatic; how will things work out? If the agents are of one sort, o ne way; if of anot her sort,

135

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

they m ay work out very different ly. The pragmatic mea ning of the various alternatives, in short. is great. It makes more than a merely verba l d ifference which op inion we take up. You sec it is the old dispute come back! M aterialism and t deology; elementary short-span aCl ions summ ing themselves 'blind ly; or far foreseen ideals coming wi d, effort into act . Naively we believe, and hum anly and dramatically w e like to be lie ve, that acti vit ie, both of w idn ",nd of narrower spa n arc "'t work in li fe together, t hat both are real, and t hat the long-span tendoncies yoke the others in the ir service, encourag ing them in the right direction, and dam pi ng them w hen t hey ten d in othe r w ays. But how to "" prese nt dea rly the modus op~ra"di of such ste ering of small tendenc ie s by large ones is a problem which metaphysical thinkers wi ll have to rum inate upon for many years to com e. Even if such control should eventually grow dearly pictu rable, the question how far it is successfu lly exerted in thi s actua l world can be answered only by investigati ng the deta ils of fact . No phi losophic know ledge of the genera l nature and constitut ion of tendencies, or of the relation of large r to sma ller ones, can help us to predict wh ich of all the various competing te ndencies that interest us in this universe are likeliest to prevail. W e know as an emp ir ical fact that fat- seeing tendencie~ oft en carry ou t t hei r purpose, but we know also that they are often defeated by the failure of some contempt ibly sm all process on which success de pends , A linle thrombus in a statesman's men ingeal artery will throw an empire OUl of gea r. lhercforc I cannot even h int 011 any solution of the pragmat ic i"ue. I h ave only wished to show you that that issue is what gives the rea l im erest to all inqu iries into what kinds of act ivity may be real. Are t he forces t h at really act in the world more foreseeing or more blind? A s between 'our' activities as 'we' experience them, and those of our ideas, or of our brai n- cells, t he issue is w ell defined. I sai d aw hile back (p. 381) th at I should retu rn to the 'metaphys ica l' question before ending; so, w ith a few words about that, I wi ll now close my "marks. I n whatever form W e hear this question propounded, I t h in k t hat it always arises from Iwo thi ngs , a belief that (Ilu,,"ify m ust be =erted in activity, and a wonder as to how c"mal ity is made . If w e take an act ivo ity- situation at its face -valu e, it seems a. if we caught in J1llgranf~ ddicfo the very power t hat makes facts come and be. 1 now am eagerly striving, for example , to get this truth which I .eem half to perceive, into word. which sha ll make it show more clearly. If the word , come, it will seem

APPENDICES

as if t he striving itself had drawn or pulled them into actua lit y out from the state of merely poss ible being in w h ich they were. H ow is this feat performed? H ow d oes t he pulliog puJir H ow do I get my hold 00 wor ds not yet existent, and when they come, by what means ha"e I made them come' Really it is the problem of creation; for in the end the question is: How do I make t hem btr Real activit ies are those that really make things be, without which the things arc not, and with which they are there _Act ivity,.o far a. We merely feel it, on the ot her h"nd, is only an impression of ours, it m ay be mainta ined ; and an impress ion is, for all this way of thinking, o nly a shadow of another fact. Arrived at t his point, I can do litt le more than indicate t he pr inciples on which , as it seems to me, a radically empirical ph ilosophy is o bliged to relr in handling such a dispute. If there be real creative ac tivities in being, rad ica l empiricism mu st say, somewhere they must be immediatdy lived. Somew here the that of efficacious caus ing and t he 'U'hat of it must he experienced in one, just as t h e what and the t hat of·cold' arc experienced in one whenever a man h as the sensation of cold here and now. It boots not to say t h at our sensation , arc fallib le. 111ey arc indee d; but to See t he thermomet er contradict us when we say ·il is cold' does nol abolish cold as a specific

natll re from th e lln iverse. Cold is in the arctic circle if not here. Even so , to fu lthat our train is mov ing when Ihe train beside our window mO"es , to Sec the mOOn th rou gh a telescope cOme tw ice as ncar, o r to sec two pictures as one ",lid when we look through a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, near ness, and solidity still in being - if not here, yet each in its proper scat dsewhere. And whe re"er the scat of real causality is, as ultimatdy known 'for true' (in nerv"-proceoses, if you will, that cause o ur feeli ngs of act iv ity as w ell as Ihe m ove ments which these seem to prompt), a phi losophy of pure experience can conside r the real callsation as no other naturt of thing than thaI which even in our most erroneous experiences appears to be al w ork. E xactly wh at appears there is wh at We mtt'" by working, tho We may later come to lear n t hat working WaS not exactly thtrt. Susta ining, persevering, striving, pa~'ing with d f ort as We go, hanging on , and finally "ch ieving our intention - thi s is "ct ion, this is effectuation in the on ly shape in which , by a pure experiencephilosophy, t he whereab ou t s of it anywhere can be d iscussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here i~ causality at work." T o treat th is offhand a< the bare illusory 76 L' ;" the J",,"'al ofPh;}o'''l'hy fo.- Sep,e",blly p,ge

W I Ll1 "' ~I IA ~IES

surfac~

ofa world whos~ .. al causalit y is an u nimag inable ontologica l principle hidden in t he cub ic deeps , is, for the more empir ical way of thinking, on ly an imism in anot hu shape. You explain yo ur g ive " fact by your 'pr inciple: but the principle itself, when you look clearly at it, t urns OUt to he no. h ing hut a previous little spiritual copy of Ihe fact. Away from t hai on e and only k ind of fac t yo ur mind , considering causa lity, can nevel gct .'l I conclude, dlen , t hat real effect"" ] causation as an ultimate natuI~, as a 'category; if yo u li ke, of re ality, isju,t what w~ ft~f it ta b~, just that kind of conju nct ion which Our own activil y-~el ies re"eaL W e have t he whole butt and be ing of it in OUI hands; and t he healthy thi ng for philosophy is to leave off grubbi ng und erg round for what effect s effectuation, OI what makes act ion act, and 10 try to soh'e the concrete questions of where effectuation in this w orld is located, of which thi ngs are th e true causal age nts thele, and of w hat t he mOle Ie m ote effects consist. 489), in which il waS .. i< "'m< ""''''''', 'h< ",,' u,,, wo,k '<norg",;';ally· "" e""h 0' hor i" 'he ,hi"g' (fir< burn., w'''or we", eh othor. they oheek , ,mt:J.in, and intwdLICe, They do so when the acti.ity i, mn< from their relation of h~,mony 0.- orpugn"ncy to thi ... lhe intcrpl.), of 'hue K<X>Ild",y '''''''0 (~mong which 'intore"; 'difficulty.' and '~ffort' figu«) ,un, ,he drnma in [he me""l ser"''' In wh, t we term the phy>ko.l dro.ma the« '!u,l,ti« phy ahsolutely " " p"rt . lhe ,uhjeet need . carefu l working ou,: bu, I can oee .." inoo.\S;st"",y, 77 I h.tv< fc>u,.d "'ysU' ",n", . Si"gle cl"".<. in my w, iting, ot' .. n«neo. ,.,,<1 oul of ,hei, Ci)1\,,<~ion, may poo.ibly h.tv< been comp"tibic wi,h a. tranorhenCirl< of energy: bu , I defy any OIle to .how a ungl< Kntene< wh ich, token with ito cOlltnt, should be naturally hold to admcate that . icw. Thc mi.inte'rretation prob,bly arooc at lim from my having dekndcd (~fte, Rouvic:r) ' ho ; ndct~rmini,m of OU TeiTort>, 'Freo wi ll ' "'''' "'pf'O>in hi,ro,y, tho onl), ' fr« will' I h~,.< ~ve, though, of J"fonding i. ' ho ,h",.. of "",'el,y in f"" h ~"i"ity-,i'u", ion. , If." activity-rroce .. i. the form of. wholo 'field of ron"'"'u .......; ... d if each field of """",",u.ne .. ;, "ot only in ito totali,y unique (a. i, ,,,,w commonly admitted), but h.t. ito .km, Activitr>itu~';on. come, in short, each with ~n origin~l touch, A ·pcincirk' offrce will, ifther< were one , would doubdeso manifw i,.en,,,, 1>< f""h .• nd, or why it '''''c ,10",,1,1 be in.ok.d_

,«

'''""1'[

158

APPENDICES

From th is point ofvi~w t h~ great~r sublimity traditionally attr ibuted to the metaphysical inqu iry, t h e grubbing inquiry, entirely disappears. If we could k now what causat ion r~al ly and transcend~n t a lly is in itself, the only use of the know ledge would be to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and sO to track the future course of operations more intelligently out. l1'e mere ab stract inquiry into causation·s hidden nature is not more sublime th an any other in'Juiry equally ahstract. Causation inhahits no mOre suhlime 1evclthan anythi ng dse. !tlives, apparently, in th e dirt ofth~ world as well as in the absolute , or in man's unconquerable mind. ·!h e worth and interut ofth. w orld consists not in its d~ments, b~ th ... el.m~nts th ings, or b~ t h~y the conjunctions of th ings; it exists rath.r in th~ dramatic outcome of the whole process, and in the meaning of the succession stages which th~ clem~n t s work out. My coll eague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of Stout·s Analyt;t Psych%g), in Mindfor ,897, has some fine words on this point wit h w h ich I cordially agree. ! cannot agree with h is separat ing the notion of efficacy from t h at of activit y altogether (this ! understand to be one contention of h is), for activit ies are efficacious whenever they arc real activities at all. But t he inner nature bot h of efficacy and of ac-

tivity ~ re superficial problems, I under~tand Royce to say: and the only point for us in solvi ng them would be their possible us~ in helping us to solve the far deeper problem of the COUTOe and meaning of the world of life. Life, says Our colleague. is fu ll of significance, of meaning , of succ~ss and of def~at, of hoping and of striv ing, of long ing, of desir~, and of inner value. It is a total presence that embodies worth. To live our own li ves bctrer in this presence i. the tru~ .. ason w hy we wish to know the element' of things; .0 even we psychologists must end on th is pragmatic note. The urge nt ptoblems of activit y arc thus more concrete. Th ey alJ arc problems of the Irue relat ion of longer-span to , horter-'pan act ivities. \"'hen, (or example, a numher of'ideas' (to usc the name traditional in psyc hology) grow confluent in a larger field of consciousn~ss, do t he smaller act ivities still coexist with the wider act ivities then experienced by t he conscious subj~ct? And, if so, do the wide activities accompany the narrow One. inertly, or do they exert control? Or do they perhaps ullerly ",pplant and replace them and short- circu it their dfeets? Again, wh en a Ill~ntal activity-process and a brain-cdl s~ri~s of activities both terminat e in the .ame musc.ular movement, docs the mental process slcer the neura l proc~ss~s or not ? Or, Oil th~ ot h~r halld, docs it ill>59

WILl1"'~ I IA~ IES

dependently short- circuit their effects? Such are th e questi ons t hat we mus t begin with. But so far am I from .ugge>ting any definitive answer to suc h que>Tions , thai [hard ly yet can put them dearly. They lead, however, into that region of pa npsychic and ontologie specu lation of which Professors Bergson and Strong have latdy enlarged th e literature ill W able and interest ing a way. lhe resull s of these authors seem ill marlY respects d issimilar, and I undcrsmnd them as ye t but imper fectly; but I cannot help suspect ing t hat the direction of their work is very prom ising, and that they h a,·e the hunter's instinct for the fruitful t rails.

'60

A PPENDIX C

O N TH E N OTION OF R EA LITY AS C HANGING IN my Principfn of P'yrh%gy (vol. i i, p. 646) I gave the nam~ of the 'axiom of . k ippcd im ermcci i"r;cs and nansforred rehttioos' to a ser ial pri nciple of w h ic h the fo undat ion of logic, the dictum d. omni d nulla (or, as I expressed it, th e ru le that what is of a kind is of that ki nd's kind), is the most familiar instance. M ore than the m Orc is more th an the less, equals of eq uals a re equ al , sames of the sa m e are the sam e, the cause of a cause is fhe cause of il~ effects, arc other examples o f th is

su iallaw. A ltho it

appli~ s

in fallihly and without

r~srric l jOtl

Through-

o u t certain ab stract scrics, where the ',arne.: 'cause,: etc ., spoken of, are 'pure,' and have n o proper t ies s"ve their samcnns, causal ity, et c., it cannot be appl ied offhand to co ncrete objects w ith numerous propertie. an d relat ion., for it is h ard t o tmce a straigh t line of .a m eness, cau sation , or wh;lte\'e r it may be, throu gh a ser ie s of such o bj ects without .worving into som e 're.pect ' where t he relation, as pursued or ig inally, no longer holds: t he obj ects have so many 'a. pect s' that we arc cOnstantly deflected from our or iginal direction, and fi nd, we k now not why, that we are following someth ing differe nt from what we .tarted with. 1hus a cat is in a .ense the ,a rn e as a mouse - t rap, and a mou se trap the same as a b ird -cag e; but in no valuable or ea.ily inte ll igible se nse is a cat the same as a bird - cage. Commodore Perry was in a sense the cau se of the new regime in Japa n , and the new reg ime was the ca u.e of the ru ssian D ouma; but it w o uld h ardly pro fit u. to insist o n ho lding to P erry a. the cause of t he D o um a : the t erm. have grown too remote 10 have any real or practical relat io n 10 each ot he r. I n every ser ies of rea l terms , not only do the terms th emselves and their aswci;ltn and env ironment<; c hange , but W e cha nge, and their m~tI";"g for u s change., .0 t hat new ki nds of .a m eness and types of

'"

WtLl1 ... ~t

lA ~tES

causation cont inually come into view and appea l to our in te rest. O ur earl ier lin es , h av ing grow n irrcle"a nt , arc then dropped. The old t erms can no longer h e subst ituted nor the .. lat ions 'tramferred ; because of so m any n ew d imensions int o which expe r ie n ce has opened . Instead of a straight line, it now follows a zigzag; and t o keep it stra ig ht , o n e must do violence to its spontaneous developm enl. N ot that one might not possibly, by careful seeking (tho I doubt it),ji"d some lin e in na ture along wh ich t erms li t erally the same, or Ca"'Ses causal in the s~me way, might be serially st ru n g withou t limit , if one's int erest lay in such finding. 'W ithin such lines Our axioms might hold , CauSes might CauSe the ir effec t's effect s, HC.; but such lines themsel ves would, if found, only be partia l members of a vast natu ra l ne t work, w ith in the o th er lines of which yo ... cou ld not say, in any seme that a w ise man or a sane ma n wou ld eve r th ink of, in any se nse th at would n o t be concret ely ,iffJ', th at th e pr inciple of skipt intermediaries st ill hcld good. In the pra{/i
reel,' ought, if [ rightly unde rstand him,

po~iti\'ely

to deny that in the

actual wo rld the log ical axioms hold good witho ut qual ification. Not on ly, according to him, do terms ch ange, so that after a certa in time the very clements of thing s a rc no longer what they were , but relation. a lso change , so as no longer to obta in in t h e same ident ical w ay betwee n the new things t hat have succeeded upon the old ones. I f t h is w ere rea lly so, th ." however in definitely sames might still be substituted for sames in the logical world of not h ing but pure same n ess, in the world of re,,1 operations every line of sameness act ... ally started and followed up woul d eventu" ll:-· give out, and cease to be traceable any farther. Sam es of t h e same, in such a world, w ill not alw ays (or rat h er, in a strict sense will never) b e the same as one anot h er, for in such a world there is no literal or ideal sameness among n umerical differe nt s. Nor in su ch a world will it be true that the CaUSe of th e CaUSe is onrc>er"edly lhe CaUse of the effect ; for if we follow lin es of rea l causation, instead of contenti n g oursel ves w ith H ume's and Kant's eviscerated schematism, we find t h aI remoter effect. are seldom aimed at by causa l intentions," that no one

'"

APPENDICES

kind of causal act ivity cont inu~s ind~finitdy, and that th~ princ ipl~ of skipt intermedia ries ca n be ta lked of on ly in abstractfJ. 7t Volumes i, ii, and iii of the ,WfJnisl (1890-1893) contain a numh~r of articles by l\h. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which has apparent ly prevented their mak ing an immed iate impression, but wh ich, if I m istake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for t hink ers of the coming generation. Mr. Peirce's views, tho reached so differently, are altogether congn.lous with Berg ron·s. Both philosopher. believe that the app~aranc~ of novdt y in things is genu in~ . To an observer stand ing outsid e of its generating causes, novelty can appear on ly as so mu~h 'chance'; to on~ who stands insid~ it is th~ express ion of 'fre~ c...,ativ~ activity.' Pcirc~'s 'tych ism' is thm practica lly synonymous with B~rgson's 'dev~nir reel.' 'Ihe common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly in, tX ni/;i/o, th~ y sh atl~r the world's rationa l continuity. Peirce meets this objection by combining his tychism with an express doctrine of'synech ism' or continuity, the two doctrines mergi ng into t he highe r synthesis on which he bestow s the name of 'agapasticism (foe. cil., iii, ,88), which means exactly the same thing as Bergson's 'evolution creatrice .' Novelty, as empirically found, doesn 't arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibl:-', for adjace nt s in experience are always interfused , t he small est re al datum being both ~ coming and a going, and even numerica l dist inctn~ss bei ng r~alized dfectivcly onl~' after a concrete int erval has passcd. Th e interva ls also deflect us from the orig inal paths of direction, and all the old idemiti" at last give out , for t he fatally cont inuous infiltration of ot h~r ness warps t hingo out of ev~ry orig ina l rut. Just 00, in a curve , the same direction is nnNr followed , and the conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by su pp os ing it to do 80 for how~," .. short a time . Peirce speaks of an 'in finites imal' tendency to diversification.ll,e mathematical noti on of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox o f t he same and yet t h e nascent ot her, of an ident ity th at won't kur except 00 far as it keeps failing, that won't Iran>.ftr, any more than the se ria l rclation. in que stion transfer, when you apply them to rea l it ~· inst~ad of applying them to concepts alone . A fr iend of mine has ,l1} idea , wh ich illustrates on s ,,~h " magn ified scale th~ impo ..ibi lity of t racing t he same line through r~ality, t hat I will mention it here. H e thinks that not h ing mOre is needed to make history '.dentific' than 10 get the cOntent of any twO epochs (say t he ~nd of the thirteenth and the end ofth~ nin~te~nt h century) accurately defined , t hen accurately to define tne direction of the change th at led 79

Co.opa", A l'I'endix R, •• '0 wh o, T me"" heT< by '",ar ..... uo] ac, ivi, y_

'"

""

'J~'1doSOl!'ld '{~U~lJ ~'!l

)0 ~SOl!l 'I'!"\ W;"P ~J.,dwo~ 01 uos:b~HJO S)U"?")' ll" "'!"P" i]ls~un'~ 11"'1 ';>IOU "'ll 0 1 ,.,;oJ'! S,"~l1"d '.IWJO luno::>," ''''pIn) OU ","~ m,,, I 'A'!]"::>J JO lu;owdol::>"::>P "'P)O ';>.l1I1,,!d 'pn!juJ,u,lI AU"" '.Il'w!xOJddu)o P"'ISU! 'ItJ" "", Annl" I!1 '" 'M.\! 01 pU,I:>Jd

-])'1)1;)'

)0

lOlIUI "'P 1'1"0'1' ""UJP' lllO oJ sno!(("pJ A(I',nb, ,AOJd P("0M 'I" ldw! , U~h" ' lu,wdoph.P)O UOU'UIOU::>'1d A.'''' 'SlS!X, All"" ''''1M :''1 'U! '''''!I''I r pUC 'uos.li" n ' .J.I!'d sn ru,! ["J!lld '! l'!lP:'UAS U 'pns J! l llq "!41 51' /'O)'!'I.)O u o p d:."um c 'pn,)o Al! I"'JU n I~ !lu:>ss" J
." ' '''!U! 'P "'1 " U!l "'II llu!iiU010Jd OS "lnlnJ . Ijl OIU! UO!)"J!P In'PJO , un "'ll ll'uO[OJd 01 Allc u 9 p u c 'J~'110 ~'jI OIU! 'pod~ ~UO ~'l.1 mOJ]

"'I'

s:l1~Vl I W m l'"

INDEX TO THE LECTU RES

abSQlute, t he 19, ~ ~ 22, 23. 24 , 25. ~ ~ ~ 3Q, 3!, 33, 34 , 3!!, 3L 38. 43, ~ ~ 4.!!. ;19, 5Q, 51, 52, 53, 54 ,55,56, 51, 59, §Q, 24, Z5.. 'IL 18, 19, §Q, §.;, §3.. 86, .9 8. 103. 105, 114., 115, 118,!!9, 120,124. 125. 128, ill, 132". 138 . !.4Q, .!59. abSQlutism !'l.~ 34 , 5Q, 5 4 . 5'L 7.3, .!Q<1, 12.6. l28. !.42. Achilles ~ '13, 2§., 9.9..!QA all·form , the 19, 22, 23. 114. !3Q analogy 2.. ill, 53. 55. §3, 25.!ili, ZQ, 7.3. z.L 26. 18. 19. 120,

m angels 8 , ~ 68. antinomies 92,93,143 Aristides 122 Bailey, S. 8 BergSQn 5, ~ §l. ~ 2Q, 'l!. ~ 2;L .9 5, ~ 2§., 9.9 . 100. 101, 102, 1Q3• .!QS. 106. !Q'L \08 • .!Q<1, !!!. ll2. 114. !!Z: 118, 126, 133. 160, 162, 163,

lful block· unil'el'se 35. 125, !3!, 132Bradle~' 23. 3b 33. 35, 36. 31, ;I§, 5[, 73 • .!ili,!!2.. %" 29~ !!!l. 12 0 ,!3Z H2o H.1, 14 2 . 143. 144. H5, H§, HZ !.4'l, 15 1 Brain £§.,!!Z §2, tOO , 154, !52,

152 Caird, E. 26. 42 Cato 122 Cau sation !5Z.!5§.,!52.. 161, 162 Change 8 . 25, ~ 28 . ;I:!!, ~ §:h §&, §2, 7.;\ .. 1i9. 2J, 94 . 95.

9&. 102, 108, 113, liB, 143, 144 , !42, 152. 161, 162, ~ Chesterton §3.. 122 Concep!s ~;I.1. 4 2. 44. ~ §Q, 1.1. !!3, l!l!.!!2.. 95, .9 6, 91!. 'l2. laO, 101, 102, 1Q3, t06, !92, 110,!!!, 112.113, 114., !!§.,!!Z, 118, 139.. !.4Q.!§3 conceptual method 98., 100,!Q3 Concrete reality 99 Confluence 114, 13!.!3Z l44 Conflux .!Q5, i l l 129, H Q, 144,

""

Consciousness Superhuman !!2.. 120,125

Continuity 3Q, 34 , !Q5, 110, 113, 115. !!Z !!9-, 121, I:l!, 163 Creat ion 15. 16,!Z ~ 72, 25~ 123, i l l Deat h 45 , Z!,122 . 123 Degrees 32.34 Dialectic lnethod 3!!. Diffe rence 9, .!Q,!!!., 25, ~ ~ ;i!.. 58. §3, ~~ 101 , 113, 114. 128. !3Q. 131, 142, 148, 154, 15 6 Diminutive epithets ill, I I Double 35, 42 'Each·form ; the !'l. 22, 23, !!!. 128, 13 0 'Ex ternal' .!Z 32, 33, 31. ;11. 53, §.S, ~ Q1, 100,125. 128, ~!.4!. ~ M3, L45. 152 Earth , the, 6 4 , ~~§Z,68, ZQ. 11, :;'2, 116,!!2. 15 2 Earth -soul 64 , ZQ.:;'2. 83, 84, !!2..125 Elan "i ta l !Q7

'65

INDEX TO THE LECTURES

Empiricism 8, _9 , l!,!9., :!:!, :!3, ~ ~ 39, iQ, ~5., 53, 13, \08, U3, 1:!6,!3!. J3!i.!4Q, !:l!., 14-4. ~ ~!fit!5Z ~ndoslllosis lOS ~pilhcts !Q, 11 Experienoo. religious 1:!1, 123.

' ''4 Exlremes 12. 13,34.35. 3£, 72'Failh-ladder' 132 Fall !7, 32, 42, 5.h 52, 66, ZQ, 75. 98 , !!!, 124, 125, 135, 142 Fechner 5, Z 52. 51. QQ, §l, ~ §.1, 64, 65, §1. !ili., !!9., ZQ.. Z!, n . 73, 2.4 , J!Q, lh. 8.4. ~ 2.1. !Q2, !!9-, 121, 123, 12-4,125, 1:!6, 133 Ferrier, Jas 8 , 1J Fini le experience 4l. 5Q, 51, !&, 110. 1:!0. !3l. 138 • .!:lQ Fini leness 88 ~'oreignn"ss ili...!2.. :!3. :!4. 25. 45. 1:!8. I:!9 Genna II 8. 12. 13. 14 . ~ §!, 62 God 15.!£. 11, 20, 22.:!3, 25, 33, 3'2. >I§, >12, SQ, 51, 52, 53, 54,58, 23, .6 4 , §J!, ZQ, 7.2, §Q. 84, 85, on, \o2,!!'l, 120 , 125, 128 Green 8, 26 , 5Z 6.8, 108, 112, lI3 Haldane SZ 58 Hegel 5, 1. ill, 2,5, 3Z.,38, 32.. iQ, !!. >I~ 4.3. 4_4 , _4 5, 4.2. >11, 58 , 5'l. QQ, 13, 84, ~ l!2., 2l. 99, .!!.2, 1:!0, 128, 1:!9,

m.

'4" Hodgson , S.ll. Z 114 Horse §z. loB

Hume 13, ~ 99. 101, lQ2, 113. !3l!, !39-, 154 , lfi:! 'i ts o"n Olher' 4.5-, 4l.!!:I IdealislIl Z 15.:!3. 25. ~ ~ :2.9. 31.,33,35, 3Z 54.• 51. ;12 , Z;h 7$, §Q. §!.lh. lI 3 Idenlity 3 2. >I.!. 58, 7_4. Z'!. 82, 83. 84. 85, 8§,!!:z, ill!, 128, !3Q, 135, !3§. 132, 163 Immortalit y Z!,.122 Independent ~ 28, £9., 3Q, 3-" 35, >11. 80, ~ 102, 130 Indeterminism 158 Infinity !1. 2§.. 91 Influenoo 2fi. 28, 29. 32. 5Z §,3,2§, !&, 2'l. 106, 155 Intellect 14, 15. 94 , 95, 96, 2l. _9-9, 100. 101, 106.134, l3§., !3l. 145. M.§. Intellectlla lislll , yiciollS, 2-9 , 42..

az

48 Inl"llectllaliSll~ic

§.§., _9 8. !Q5-, \06 , 116, 124 Inielleelualistlllelhod 112, 118 Interaction ~Z 28 , 29 Intimacy 15. !Q,!§.!2.. 21, 22. 128. g9.., 142 Irrationality 3!, 32, 34, 3!L 49., 51, 52, 54, 55, 8_4, .!ili. 128, 129 , 134, 145 Jacks, L.P. !2.. 12"Z Joachim 44 , 52,55,59 ,Jones, I:L 26 Kant Z §,!2, 12, 13, 5Z §!. ill!, 2§.. 2l. _9 _9 , 101,!!I2. 16:! Leibnit l 51.52 Life Z !Q, 12, 13. 14 , !7,!§. 24 , ~ 39 , .iQ, 43.. 5Q, 53, 5Z QQ,§!,~§.1,§s.,§&..§z.

INDEX TO THE LECTURES

§!!.. 6_9, 12., Z!, 84 , 85, ~ §.2, _9 5, 2§., 'l2, 100, 101,

Nega tion 32,:th 44 . 15~ ~!!,1,

uS

102 , !23->!2:I->.!Q5, 106, 108, 110,!!b ll2. , 113. 114, 115, 116.!1Z 118 • .1 22 , 1:1;3. U4-. 126. gz, 129 , l32. 133. 134. l35. 13§, 139, 14Q, 14,9., 15Q, ! 51, ! 5§, 159 Log 105, 110, !.!§. 130 Logic 3!, 39...4.!,;l1, 48 , 53. 55. S'l, §Q, 64, 73. !!Q, 8 2. §3, 8 4 , 8s, ~!!z 88. 'l!. ~ 9J!., 'l2, 101, 1O,t,!Q5, 106, !!§,!1Z 118, 124 . 128,-132,

Newton 10.6 Odor
Lotze Z, g], 2l!, ~ 3.!, 32, ~§., 52, §Q. 151 Lut her 32, 122 Manyness ill oneness 131 McTaggart 2,5.34,35. 52. S'l, 15 Mental chemistry :;6 Il",,,tal states zs, z§.,!h. Mill 1, 53. 96. 'l!!. 106 Mind, the eterna l 73 Mind-dust theor~' u.. 78 Monism 8 . -9. !Z aQ, a§. 3!, sb 54. §!, ~ 125. 126, !3Q.,!3b !3g, 144 Monomaniacs 3 6 Motion 9.4~ 95, 'l§. 101~ ,Hb 157 Myers, F.W.H. 127 Nature 12., 14, 15, !§..!!!. 24, 25, g], 2.8, 3Q, 36., 32, 13, 53. 5Z. 58, §.1, :<2, 16, ~ llli, 'lQ, 23. 94, !&.. _ 9 9, 101, !Q;l,!Q;Ii 111, 116,.!!9., 120, 121, 122, 123. 128, Hb!:lJ, 144. M5, 152. ~!5Z 158 , !52, 162

Phocion 122 Plant ~~ §.9 Pluralism 7.~ 23. ~ 31,32, 3§., 54. ~ 1.28. 129. !3Q, .!3!, 142. ~ Polyt heisnl 125 Practical reason l32 Psychical research 124 , 133 Ps),chicsynthesis 76 'Qua,' ~, 2 4. 110 'Quatenus; 23 Rationalism §., 9-, 34 . ;J§, fu!, 2§, !Q3, 1.24 ,125. 126,!3!!' 137 Rationality 3 2,34, 31, 48. 49--, 5Q, sb 52, !!Q, 8 4, !!,s, §§, 128, 129,131 Rea lity 15, !Z ~ 19, 2.2. 23, 24, 32 .33.35. 32, 31. 39.. £ 4,!!, 1Z, ~ 52, 55, 58, S'l, ~ §!, 6.9, 72. ZSi ~ 8 4. .!!§, §z. 88, _94 , _9 5. 9 6. 9.9.. 100. 101, 102,!Q;l,!Q:L!Ql, 108, 111, 112, !!:L 115. !!Z 118. 120. 125. 127. 129, !3Q,

,"

' 34

as

az

INDEX TO T HE LECTURES 13~,.!:I.Q, H.!. 143, 144, !:@, 155, !5§., ~ ~ Reason !Q., 11.!§.,!Z. 24, 25, 3§., 37. 3 8, 39..t~!, 43, 44, iZ. 5 t , s!!, fu!.!!9~ 13, 1!9~ _9.6 , _9-9, 101,!!!, 113, 116, 12;3, 125, 1 ~6, l32, 138, 139., 14 ~ , 143, 159 Relating 8 Relations 9--, 12, 15. !Q,!1!, 3Q, 3!. 3 2,33,34. 3Q, 3Z 39.. ,12. 4 ~ , 51. s!!, ~ §z, ZQ.. Z!. 7~ , ~ 94 , 95, 9J!, 101, 106, 110, .ll~, 113, !!Z. I~O, 128, 132, 134, 132. !32, 138., !39, .14Q, .14.1. 14 ~ , 143, 144, .14.5..!:l9--, 161. 162. 163 Religious experiences 121. 12.2 , 123,133 Rit chie 33,3S Royce ~ ~9, 3Q, 3!t 32, 33, ~ :l9.. 5Q, 2Q, 12. Z:1, Z5,!!!, 84 . I!§., -'.!1. 108.!19~ I~O. !:l§., HZ.. !59. 'Some,' 7., B.. 9• .!Q, 12.13.15. 1Z 18. 12. 23. 24 . 28, 3Q, 33. 3Q, 3Z 31!. ,12. 11, ~ ~ 11.:l9.. 52. 55. 51. 59, §Q.. 6~. §S,~, ~ ZQ, 73. 14,15, l!!, 8~ . §3, 85, I!§., .!!z.. ru!, 9&. '11. 29.. 101,!Q3, !Q4,!Q7, 108,.!Q9:, Q!, .ll3, 114, !!Z 118, 120, 12.1, 12.2, l24. 1~6, 1~9, 13Q, 132, 133,134, 135. !3§..!3Z 138 , !:lQ, !4.1. 143, .!:l§., .14.1!, H9.. .!5!t. 153, 156, !52, 161,

a:z.

,6,

Same 1!.!Q,!!, 13, 15. !§.,!Z ~ 24. ~ 3Q, 3L 3~ 33, 35. 36,38 , iQ, ~B, 4~ . ~ iZ. ;l9~ 51, 52, 51!, (&, Z!. 12. 73. 24, 75. TZ,1!Q,.!!!, 1tL §:h 84, fui--, 2Q, 94. -95. ~ 10~. 104, 105, 106. 108, 109., 110. 113. 114.• 115. !.!z, 118, 120.122.123. 132. 135. !3.1!,!39.,!.4Q, ~4.!. 14 4. ~45, 155. !5§., 159, !fu., 162, .63 Savage !1 Science 13,33. §!, Qg, ;22. 108, gz.~

Sensations 6 4. §z, ZQ, Z:1, 15,!'!s, !Q'b 112. 113. 13.!, 135 • .14Q, .145. 157 Socialism 36. Socrates 3 1, §1!. 115, 118, 128 Soul 15, .!Z i3.,.'l9.. 64, 65. ZQ, 1-1. 7~. ~ . U, §:h 84. 15--, §§., !19~ 124 . 125. 153 Sphinx 15. 18 Spinoza 12. 23 Spiritualistic philosophy 15. 18 Sugar 7!S. 1!9--, 9_4, 120,!.45 Srnthesis, psychic. :z!i Taylor, A E.• !A! Theism 15. !§.,!Z 21. 2~ . 5Q, 1!Q, 84. 9:1.!.!9.. 124, 125 Thick, the, 52 Thick ness §Q, 13, 102,!Q3, .!QZ ll3 Thin. th e, ~ 121Time !h 15. 23, 24, ~6. 3Q, 4~ , ;lZ:1.9.. 5Q, 55, 5Z 58 , 2Q, §!, ~6.9, ZQ.. 24 .. !!s.. §§., 88, 2Q, 2.1. 9~ , 2:L _9 4. 25,

""

INDEX TO THE LECTURES

2!L 100. 101.!Q,1, lQ!, 108. 1Q9..

113.114.115, 116,!!Z

1:;!1, J22 , 1:;!8, 133. 135. !3§.. 148 . !5Q, 154 . 1/) :;!.!!b Transcendentalism :13 • .1 33 'Will to belim·e; !!Q..§!, 132 Wells 36 Witnesses 81, 8:;!, 84 Wundt. T. , .6 :;!, .76 Zeno ~ 23, 9.5 .. q§., 9-9

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