D ED ICATED T O M Y FOR MER PU PI L S,

WH OS E PR OBL EMS AND P ERPLEX I T I ES WERE THE SO U R CE OF THE R EFLECT I ONS THAT
ARE E M BOD I ED I N TH I S BOO K ; I T M A Y B E THAT I C A N NO L O NGE R S HA R E I N THE

I NTE LLECTUA L G I V E AND TA K E OF THE C LA SS R OOM BUT I MAY R ETU R N

,

WI TH I NTER ES T THE TH O UGHTS THAT HAV E BEEN THE F R U I T OF

MANY S T R UGG L ES T O MA K E CL EA R THE R I DD L ES THAT VEX

THE UNHAPPY PATH OF M AN WHEN HE SO MUCH

NEED S THE I DEA LS WH I CH HE CANNOT
PR OVE BUT ON LY LI VE
 P R E FAC E .

IF the stateme nt be rightly qualied it may not be too much to say

that in this w o r k I have tried to reprodu ce the results of my o w n
, ,

reections on philosophic proble ms I do not mean by this that it is

.

in any sense a pioneer work , because it is quite the contrary If I .

have accomplished anything at all in the effort it is the result of con

tact with the great historical systems as all rational philosophiz ing
,

must be in modern times If I were to name the men who have i n u

.

c uc a d my thought most , according to my o w n j udg m ent they would ,

be P lato Aristotle and Epicurus among the ancients , and Kant Hamil
, ,

ton and Lotz e among the moderns Just what and h o w much is o w ing
.

them must be determined by the reader None of the debt however .

, ,

is systematic It is only for the concept ion of philosophic p roblems

. .

and general ideas which are necessary for the interpretation of the
past and development of present questions I have avoided reference .

to historical systems except to show h o w a proble m originated and

have endeavored to discuss present philosophic issues with less refer
ence to their evolution tha n to their functions and validity I adopted .

this policy because I did not wish to implicate myself too closely with
either the expositio n or the criticism of historical views This does .

not make what I have said n ew , but it does require it to be j udged

rather on its merits or demerits tha no n any avowed relation to tradi
t io na l systems .

I have also bee n convinced that it is the duty of philosophers to

discuss their problems directly and n o t merely the history and evo lu
tion of systems These latter quest ions are important and in d ispen
.
.

s able but they are not the only proper work of the man who expects to
,

make philosophy do its designated service to the age Moreover to do .

this service it must discuss the time old problems whether it succeeds
-

in providing a positive or a negative message for mankind , and hence

I have conned myself to the general problems that are as old as P lato ,

trying however , t o avail myself of all the results since his day and to
,

bring philosophic reection back to that point of view which r epr e

se nts or includes the physical scie n ces as well as the mental Idealis m .

has done so mu ch to emphasiz e introspective and a nthropocentric

methods that since Kant it is almost impossible to induce philosophers
, ,

to make any concessions to physical science and its results P hilosophy .

,
v iii P RE FA CE .

where it was not phenomenalism in disguise , has ru n o ff into the b l ue

empyrean of transcendentalism while protesting against the possibility
of it As for myself I feel convinced that it must see k the service of
.
,

phy sical science and ever revise its constru ctions on the main lines of

its problems as the pro gress of empirical knowledge requi r es it .

O n this a ccou nt I have not arrived at any dogmatic conclusions upo n

some of the main problems of refl ection , being content to outline the
method for their solution and to show h o w far we have proceeded
toward this whi le I i ndicate my sympathy with the truth on both side s
,

of disputed matters .

In t h e title to the work I have endeavored to avoid the suggest ion

that I have dealt with all the probl ems of epistemolo gy and meta
physi cs I have purposely omitted many subordinate qu
. estio n s like

personality unity of consciousness
,
the ego etc because I , , .
,

d id not regard them as in any w ay condition i ng t he co nclusions upon

larger questions I have s elected the main genera l problems in the
.

two elds and given them a connection with e ach other suf ci ent to
give the work a denite unity but not to mak e any par t of t h e syste m ,

absolutely dependent upon any othe1 The unity is synthetic and n o t .

dedu ctive w hile I do not pretend to exhaust the subj ects in their
,

minutiae .

O ne of t h e di f culties which I have always felt in the discussion of .

philosophic problems is the equivoca l character of its fundamental

terms In spite of the most careful denition many of them will give
.

rise to misu nderstanding To reduce this liability to a minimum I .

have adopted the device of putting many of the fundamental terms in

quotation m arks to indicate the recognition of this equivocal nature .

I have conned this policy to technical terms of l ong standing use .

This practice varies somewhat according to the con nection and chap
ter under consideration In some connections a term is more eq uivo.

cal than in others This I have tried to keep in vi ew B ut whe n I

. .

have used a technical term without quotation marks it is , with som e

exceptions in the sense carefully den
, ed and in none othe r F or i n .

stance as exceptions the terms perception and cosmological

, ,

may be remarked P revious to Chapter . the term pe rception

did not involve any technical questions and its equivo cal nature is not
indicated When referring to Ka nt s use of the term co s m olog ical
.

I limit it to the co n ceptio n of the world a s having a beginning in time ,

but in other cases I intend it to i mply a world of interrelated realitie s
w ithout regard to the question of their beginning When I have i n . .

d i ca t e d the equivocal use I leave to the reader t h e det er m in a t i o n of the

 P RE FA CE .
ix

sense in whic h it must be u sed to make the propositio n true or int ell ig i
bl e
. Wh en I h ave placed the word o n t o l og i ca l in quotatio n mark s I
h ave u sed it in the Kantian sense an d when the term is with out these
m ark s it i s u sed in the sen se dened in the present work. By th is policy
of direct ly call in g attention to the equivocal impo r t of fundamenta l terms
I have indicated the source of ma ny , if not a ll , the disputes between
the variou s schoo l s of philosophy where they are not due to questions
,

of mora l temperament , and in thus recognizin g the liability to mis

inter pretation I can leave to the student the discove r y of m uch that
might have ma de the work lo nger and most uninte r esting .
 T AB L E O F C O NT E NT S .

C H A P T ER I .

INT R O D U CT I O N .

T h e t wo p ro bl e m s i n h u m an tho ug ht
H o w a n d
What 1 Greek , , .

thought rst cos m olog i cal a n d then ep i stem olog i cal 2 S oph i st i c m ovem e nt a n d , .

i t s relati on t o sce p t i c i s m 3 P lato a n d h i s re lat i on t o m at e r i al i s m 4

, . S to i c , .

a n d E p i c u re an the ory o f k nowle dg e 7 Greek thought a n d it s re lat i on t o t h e , .

supers ens ible 8 C hr i st i an ity a n d i t s re lat i on t o t h e su pers e ns i ble an d t h e

, .

theory o f knowle dg e 9 D ual i s m o f C hr i st i an a n d m ed i ae val thought 1 0

.

, .
, .

C art es i an p h i loso phy a n d i de al i s m 1 1 L o ck e B erk e ley a n d H u m e a n d t he i r , .

, , ,

relat i on t o scep t i ci s m 1 2 L e i bn i t z an d Kant 1 4 S um m ary o f analy s i s 1 6

, .
, .
, .

C H A P T E R II .

GENE R A L P R O B L E M S OF S C I ENCE AN D P H I L O S O P HY .

Re lat i on between sc i ence a n d phi loso phy 1 8 Fo ur g eneral problem s o f , .

thought 1 9 C o m te s s i l class i cat i on o f t h e sci ence s 2 2 S pencer s l o g i l

, .

er a , .

ca

class i cat i on o f t h e sc i ence s 2 3 P ri nc i p le s O f clas s i cat i on ado pted i n th i s , .

wo rk 2 5, T ab le o f class i cat i on a n d ex p lan at i on 2 7

. O bj ect i ons t o t h e class i , , .

cat i o n 3 0 , Exp lanat i on Of t h e m etaphy s i cal sci ence s 3 4

. T rad i t i onal contro , .

v ers i e s a n d p ract i cal l i fe 4 0 R e lat i on betwee n m etap hy s i cal a n d p h e n o m en o

, .

lo g i cal sc ie nces 45 E xp lanat i on o f fun d am ental concep t i ons n d or ig i n O f

, . a

m etap hy s i cal d octr i ne s 46 R e lat i on o f m on i st i c a n d p lurali st i c theor i e s t o t h e

, .

not i on o f causal i ty 49 C oncept i ons o f causali ty 5 1 , .

, .

C H A P T E R III .

Y S I S O F T H E P R O B L E M O F KNO W L E D G E
A NA L .

Eq u ivocat i on o f t h e term K now le d g e

Fi e ld o f ep i st em olo gy 5 8 , 58 .
, .

In uence o f C hr i st i an contr o ers i es o n t h e conce p t i on o f K now le dg e

60 v ,
.

S um m ary o f it s concep t i ons 63 P roblem o f What a n d H o w we k n o w , .

,

E q u i vocal natur e o f q uest i on H o w d o we k now ! L i m i tat i ons o f

64 . 65 , .

scholast i c thoug ht 68 E qu ivocal m ean i ng o f term experi ence 69 T heor ies

, .
, .

Of k now led g e an d re al i ty 70 C lass i cat ion O f the or i e s o f k nowled g e a n d

, .

reali ty 7 2 C oncept i on o f i deali s m a n d real i sm 7 4 General d ivi s i ons o f men

, .
, .

t al funct i ons 7 7 C oncept i on o f M i n d

, . o S ou l 79 U se o f t erm Phe r , .

nom enon 80. A n i m p l i cat ion Of t h e term Knowledg e 80 A m bi g u i ty o f

, ,

.

terms R eal an d Real i ty 80 ,

.

C H A PT ER IV .

P R I M A R Y P R O CE S S E S A ND D ATA OF KN O W L ED GE .

D i st i nct i on between l entary a n d pr im ary 84 D e n i t i on o f S en

e em , .

sat i on , 85 . R e at il on o f concept i on o f sensat i o n t o scept i ci s m 89 O r ig i n o f , .

xi
xii TA BL E OF C ON T E N T S .

t heor ies rcept ion 90 D i f cu lty o f scept i ci s m 9 1 Mean i ng o f Me ntat i on

o f pe , . , .
,

93 . R e lat i on o f con ce p t i on o f M e ntat i on t o

K n ow le d ge 95 Nature an d ,

.

funct i on o f M em ory 9 7 A pprehens ion i t s d en i t i o n a n d funct i o n 98 Illus

, .
, , .

t r at i o n s a n d l i m i ts o f i t s funct i on 1 00 , .

C H A P T ER V .

C O ND I T I O N S OF S Y NTHET I C K N OW L ED GE .

x lanat i on o f sy nthet i c knowledge 1 07 D i i s i ons a nd explanat i on o f

E p , . v

C oncep ts 1 0 8 P ropos i t i ons 1 1 0 A pp rehens i on a n d S y nthesi s Kant s

.
, .
, ,

categ or i e s an d thei r fu nct i ons For m al L og i c a n d Kno wle d ge 1 1 3 Kant s

, , .

concept i on o f knowledge 1 1 5 R elat i on o f t h e categ ori es t o t h e meani ng o f , .

p ro pos i t i ons 1 1 7 Func t i on o f un i versali ty 1 1 9 S chop enhauer s re duct i on

, .
, .

o f t h e categ or i e s 1 2 2 C lass i cat ion a n d exp lanat i on o f j ud g m ents 1 2 3 C lass i

, .
, .

cat i o n an d ex p lanat i on o f t h e categ or i e s 1 2 6 R elat i on o f t h e categ or i es t o , .

k nowled g e 1 2 9 P ercept i on 1 3 2
, C o n per cep t i o n 1 39
. A pp erce p t i o n 1 43
, .
, .
, .

R at i oc i nat i on 1 46 Gen eral iz at i on 1 48 , O bj ect i ons a n d e xp lanat i ons 1 48

.
, .
, .

D i ffere nce bet wee n t h e atta i n m ent an d t h e com m un i cat i on o f knowle dg e 1 5 7 , .

E qu i v ocal nature o f t h e scep t i cal q uest i on 1 62 , .

C H A P TER VI .

T HE O R I E S OF K N O W L E DG E .

oncept i on
C o f Ide al i s m a n d Reali s m 1 68 T y pe s , . o f t h e t wo theor ies o f
k now le dg e 1 7 0 , . R e lat i on o f Id eal i s m t o S ol i ps i s m 1 7 4 , . S cep t i cal funct i o n o f
I de al i s m 1 7 6 , .

C H A P T E R V II .

T H E C R 1T E R 1 A OF TRU TH .

Nature cr i teri a i n reg ard t o k nowled g e o truth 1 78 Form s o f cr i teri a

o f r , .
,

1 78 H i stor i cal concep t ion o f L og i c 1 80 Kant s i n ue nce o n t h e concep t i on

.
, .

o f L og i c 1 8 1 T h e concep t i on o f Logi c ado pt ed 1 84

, . Nature o f the sy llog i s m , .

a n d i t s re lat i on t o conv i ct i on 1 84 T h e i m portance o f t h e q uant i cat i on o f , .

t e rm s 1 86 , Funct i on O f reason i n g 1 90
. S u m m ary o f t h e funct ions o f L og i c , .
,

191 .Im m ed i at e consc i o us ness 1 92 A pp rehens ion a n d i t s re lat i on t o k nowl , .

e dg e 1 9 3 , C ogn i t i on an d i t s funct i on i n k now ledg e 1 9 7

. T h e sce pt i c s q ues , .

t i On Ho w do We k now ! 200 A rg u m ents fo r o bj ect i vi ty 203 Obj ect i ons to

.
, .

t h e theory o f cog n i t i on 2 06 General iz at i on 2 1 0 Mathe m at i cal j udg me nts

, .
, .

2 15 .S ubstant i v e j ud g m ents 2 1 5 R e lat i on o f D e n i t i on t o Gen eral i zat i on

, .

217 .E xtens i ve j u dg m e nts Intens i e j u dg m ents 2 1 9 E ss ent i al q ual i t ie s

, v , .
,

2 24 .Gen eral izat i on s um m ari zed 2 2 8 S ci ent i c M e tho d 2 30 Th e p rocesse s , .

, .

o f sci ent i c m etho d 2 3 8 Acq u i s i t i on 2 3 9 E x p lanat i on 2 39

, .
H y pothes i s , .
, .
,

24 1 .Veri cat i o n 2 44 P rinc i p les o f sc i ent i c m ethod 2 46

, .
C anon o f C o i n , .

c id e n ce 247 , C anon o f Isolat i on 2 48

. R elat i o n o f sc i ent i c m ethod t o t h e , .

pro blem o f knowled g e 2 50 S u m m ary o f re s u lts 2 5 4 , .

, .

C H A PT ER VI II .

T H E P E R CE P T I O N OF S P ACE A ND O Bj Ec r l v xT Y '
.

Nat ure o f t h e p b em , ro l 258 . I n uence o f Kant upon i t , 2 60 . Ori g i n Of the

contro rsy 2 64 Ex m i a nat i on o f B erke ley s d octr i n e 2 6 Nat ure ant s

ve , .
7 , .
o f K
 TA BL E OF C O NTE NT S . xiii

th eory o f s pace 2 7 1 Cr i t i ci s m o f Kant s theory 2 73 Kant s relat i o n t o

, .

, .

Sol i ps i s m 2 80 Re lat i on o f Space p ercept i on t o s e nsat io n 2 82

, . C o ncept i ons -

, .

o f De scarte s a n d L e ibn i t z i n uen ci n g K ant 2 84 Kant s relat i on t o ep i st e m o

.
,

log i cal and ontolog ical real i s m 2 93 Kant a n d D i n ge an s i ch 2 98 Exper i , .
, .

mental facts and the i r re lat i on t o t h e problem 309 R ev i ew o f Kant s co n cep

.
,

t i on s 32 2 C onclu si o n 3 3 2

, .
, .

C H A P T ER IX .

M ETA P H YS I CA L T H E O R1 E s .

Relat i on t i m e an d S pace p ro blem t o m etaphy s i cs 3 3 4 H y lology 3 34

o f , .
, .

R el at i o n o f ep i st em olo g i cal t o m etaphy s i cal theor i e s 3 3 5 D e n i t i on a n d u se , .

o f t h e t e rm S p i r i tual i s m 3 3 6 Re lat i on bet wee n I d eal i s m a n d M ate r i al i sm 33 7

, .
, .

C o n cep t i on o f phen o m ena 340 Re l at i on between M ater ial i sm a nd S p i r i t
, .

u al i sm I n d i fferen ce Of t h e proble m t o te rm i no log y 348 R e lat i on be

'

3 45
, .
, .

tween aet i olog i cal a n d teleolog i cal p ro ble m s 3 50 I llustrat i on o f sp i ri tuali st i c , .

m etho d a n d concep t i on 3 5 4 R e lat i on o f M on i s m D ual i s m a n d P lurali s m t o

, .
, ,

t h e p ro blem 3 5 7 Exp lanatory a n d e i d ent i al i ssue s i n m etaphy s i cs 3 5 8

, . v , .

C H AP TER x .

M AT E R 1A L 1 S M .

Meanm g a n d ty pes o f Materi ali s m , 36 1 Early Greek Mater i al i s m 3 62 .

,
.

Ma e a
t r i l i s m a n d m a t er i al
caus es 364 Re lat i on o f G reek M ateri al i s m t o , .

mo der n 6
3 5 A nc i e nt m at er i al i st i c theor y o f
. t h e s oul
3 68 , .

E p i curean ad m i ss i o n o f free ag ency 3 70 M ateri al i st i c app eal t o s ens i ble facts , .

,

37 0 S trengt h O f anc ient M ateri al i s m 37 1 M odern i m p rovem ent o f t h e atom i c

.
, .

theory 3 7 4 I n uences ext en d i ng t h e ap p l i cat i on o f t h e m aterial i st i c theory 376

, .
, .

Og a nt i t at i v e and q u al i tat i ve q ue st i o ns i n th e ato m i c the ory 3 7 7 R elat i on o f t h e

.
,

d octr i ne o f i n ert i a t o t h e m ateri al i st i c theory 3 7 9 H i stor i cal stage s i n t h e d e

'

, .

v el o pm e n t O f t h e m od ern v i ew 3 84 T h e i n d e str uct i b i l i ty o f matter a n d i t s i m

, .

p o rt 3 86
, T h e pe rs i ste nce o f force i n Gre ek tho u g ht 3 90
. T h e mechani cal , .

theory o f D escarte s 3 90 D e v e lopm ent o f t h e d o ctri ne o f t h e conservat i on o f

, .

e ne rgy 39 1 , Nature o f t h e the ory o f cons erv at i on o f energy 39 3 M at er i al i st i c

. , .

appl i cat i on o f t h e theory t o consc i ousnes s 3 96 T h e theory o f paralle l i s m 3 98 , .

, .

C ontrad i ct i on i n t h e m ater ial i st i c ap pl icat ion o f t h e conse rvat i on o f e nergy 402 , .

A bstract a n d supers ens i ble concep ti on o f m atter 404 S um m ary 406 , .

, .

T y pe s o f Sp i r i t ual i sm , 409 D e struct i v e a n d construct ive funct i on o f t h e

.

t h eory , 4 10 . D e n i t i on o f S p i ri tual is m , 4 1 1 G reek a n d C hr i st i an concep ti ons ,

.

41 3 . lato a n d C hr i st ian tho u g ht 4 1 5 E lem ents o f P laton i c ph i losop hy 41 7

P , .
, .

P lato a n d t h e P r i nc ip le o f Id ent i ty 42 1 E i c ie n t a n d m ater i al cau s e s i n P l a , .

ton i c ph i losophy 4 2 4 R elat i on o f m ater i al cau ses t o t h e concept ion o f t h e

, .

trans i en t 42 6 T h e o n e an d t h e m any 42 7 T h e S pat i al an d tem po ral

, .

,
.

u n i versal 429 T endenc i e s i n P lato 43 0

, . C oncep t i ons i n P lato co nn ect i ng , .

h i m wi th C hr i st i an i ty 43 2 P lato s re lat i on t o a bnor m al m ental pheno m e na

.
, ,
 xi v TA BLE OF C ON T E NT S .

434 . O rig i n
hr i st i an d o ctri ne 43 5 M ater iali s m a n d C hr i st i an p hi losop hy
o f C , .
,

43 7 In uence Of t h e P t o le m a i c sy stem 43 8
. T h e story o f t h e resurrect i on a n d , .

i ts re lat i on t o pr evi o u s thoug ht 4 3 9 E le m ents o f C hr i st i an p h i lo o phy 44 1 , . s , .

C os m olog i cal concept i on o f C hr i st i an ity 44 2 A tomi s m a n d C hr i st i an i t y 444 , .

, .

T h e doctr i ne o f T ert ull i an 445 D ev e lop m ent o f C arte s i an i s m 44 6 D e scart es

, .
, .

a n d i d eal i s m
447 C arte s i an i s m a n d S ci ent i c M ethod 44 8
,
. C ausal re lat i on , .

between m i n d a n d m atter 4 5 1 T h e p r o ble m o f p arallel i s m 4 5 2 T h e u n i ty o f

, .
, .

s u bj ect a n d co m p lex i ty o f attr i bu tes 45 6 C ons ciousne ss and m ot ion 45 9 , .

, .

T h e cons ervat i on o f en ergy a n d S p i r i tual i s m 463 Ev i d ent i al q ue st i ons i n M a , .

t er i a li s m a n d S p i r i tual i s m 4 7 1 T h e p ro ble m o f S p i r i tual i s m 4 7 5 C ou s i s

, .
, .

t en cy o f S p i r i t uali s m w i th assu m e d obj e ct i ons 4 7 7 R e lat i on o f free causat i on , .

t o S p ir i tuali s m 47 8 T heo ry o f bra i n f unct i ons 48 1

, . Proof o f M ater i al ism , .
,

4 82 R e lat i on o f S p i r i t ual i s m t o t h e abnorm al 487

. K an t a n d S we d en borg , .
,

49 0 Ka n t a n d M en de ls s o hn 494
. M at eri ali s m a n d i deal i s m 5 02 M o d i ca , .
, .

t i o n o f t h e concept i on o f m atter 5 06 S um m ary 508 , .

, .

C H A PT ER XII .

T H E EX I S T ENCE OF GO D .

n u ence ff ect i n g t h e co ncept i on o f G o d 5 3 M o dern m od i cat i ons an d

I a , 1 .

t en d e nc i es 5 1 4 T h e Kant i an a n t i no m i e s 5 1 7
, . Kant a n d t h e o ntolog i cal , .

arg u m ent 5 2 2 T h e sy nthet i c natu re o f t h e arg ume nt 5 2 3 Kant i an pe p lexi

, .
, . r

t i es 5 2 4 D em arcat ion o f t h e p roblem 5 2 7 U n i ty o f rst cause a n d m at

, .
, .

te r , 53 0 T h e cos m olo g i cal co ncep t i on a n d i t s p lace 5 3 1
. R e lat i on o f t h e , .

d o ctr i ne o f i n ert i a t o t h p r ble m 5 33 No n phenom enal nat ure o f cau sali ty

e o , .
-

L i m i tat i ons o f e m p i r i cal causal i ty 5 36 T hreefold n at u re o f t h e arg u

535 .
,

m ent 5 3 8 E last i ci ty o f t h e co nce pt i on

, .

m atter 5 40 M ot i e s affect i ng o ,

. v

Greek a n d C hr i st ian i d eas 5 43 T h e aet i olog i cal arg um e nt 55 3 T h e conser , .

, .

v at i o n o f energy 5 5 5 A nalogy from p sy ch ology 558 T h e te leolog i cal argu

, .
, .

m ent 5 60 T h e m echan i al concep t i on o f

, nat ure a n d t h e i d ea o f Go d 5 6 1
c
, .

R e lat i on o f t h p r ble m t o hu m an art 5 63 e R e lat i on o f

o nature t o m a n 5 65 , .
, .

P i o ity o f p roblem s 5 7 0
r r C oncl us i on 5 7 2 , .
, .

C H A P T E R X III .

C O NC L U S I O N .

observat i ons 5 7 5 Id eali s m and real i sm 5 7 6 E th i ca l re lat i on o f

General , .
, .

t h e t wo theo r i e s 5 7 9 S oci al func t i on Of p h i losop hy 5 8 1

, .
Eth i cal a n d ep i s t e , .

m o lo g i ca l i d e al i s m 5 84 Funct i on o f i d eal i s m 5 85 , P h i loso phy a n d sci ence

.
, .
,

5 87 M at er i al i s m an d p ir i tual i s m 5 88 T h e be l i ef i n a fu ture l i fe
s
D i i
5 90
. , .
, .

culty o f t h e Kant i an arg um ent fo r a future li fe 5 94 M o d i cati on o f t h e moral , .

arg um ent 5 96 Gen eral i m portance o f t h e bel i ef 59 7

, .
T h e concep t i on o f Go d , .
,

5 99 .S c i ence a nd th e
proof o f t h e e xi stence o f Go d 60 2 P anthe i sm a n d , .

S p i no z a 605 S ci ence a n d re lig ion 60 7 T h e cons ervat i s m o f re l i i on 608

g
.
, , .
, ,

T h e f unct i n o f sce pt i ci s m 609 o Eth i cal s p i r i t o f sci ence 6 1 1 D eh um an izi ng

, .
, .

i n ue nces i n sci ence 62 1 Reconci l i at i on o f rel i g i on a n d science 6 2 3 R eas on

, .

, .

a n d fa i th 62 8 T h e work o f p h i losop hy 633

,
.
, .
 C H AP T E R I .

I NT R O D U C TI O N .

H I S T OR I C A L discussion s often afford us the best method of analysis

whi ch we can adopt as they represent conceptions understood and
,

agreed upon suf ciently to make de n ition less necessary or explicit .

This fact will explain w h y a fe w O bservations on some Of the main in

t el l e c t u a l movements in p hi losophy are here indulged as preliminary
to the direct dis cussion of the fundamental p roblems of epistemology
and metaphysics I shall dis cuss them rather as moments or mo
.

t iv es in the develop ment O f thought than as systems It is simply cer .

tain elementary questions which I wish to dis cuss that are not always

con sidered in the theories of knowledge and reality They may .

not require any consideration of systems at large but only certain ,

moods and assumptions lying at their basis An exhaustive treatis e .

woul d O f course involve a complete history of philosophy as it turns

, ,

about the conceptions to be discussed but I do not regard this as either

,

necessa r y or prude nt in any attempt to elucidate some of the funda

mental ideas o n whi ch epistemology and metaphysi cs live .

The t w o fundame ntal ideas out of which these s ciences grow and
which also d istinguish them are izo w we know and wiza t we know ,

with also considerable dubiety and dis cussion regarding what is meant

by knowing apart from both the pro cess and object of it While it is .

di f cult if not impossible ultimately to separate h o w from what

, ,

we kno w owing to both the nature O f the facts and to the nature of
,

the intellectual interests involved yet there are certain exigencies

,

whi ch require us to abstract them in certain denite problems for the

sake of establishing a b a sis for further dis cussio n of the questions at
issue This is apparent in the whole history of human thought which
.

has been as much i nterested in producing convi ction in others as i n

reaching a subjective solution of spe cul ative problems The conver .

sion of a critic or the instru ctio n of a student on doubted question s

may require me to establish a general premise or t ruth which does not
carry with thi s self evidently the truth of any given proposition a n d
-

it may n ever carry it with it in any other wa y But it O ften happe n s .

th a t if truth of any kind is dis c overed it must be independently of

, ,

some particular moote d matter and w e may get no farther But this
,
.
2 TH E PR OBLE M S OF P H I L O S O P 1 1 Y
.

separation of subject matter O f dis cussion does not imply the absolute
separatio n O f h o w and what process and O bject form and

, ,

content though it denes the issues on whi ch any protable de l ib

,

c ration is possible While I mean therefore to recognize an abstra ct

.
, ,

d istinction of the t w o questio ns I shall have reasons for O ften if not ,

a lways considering them together The primary questio n will turn.

,

upon what we mean by knowledge That term has been so much .

a bused and so little dened that discussions of epistemology and meta

physics are perfectly useless until w e kno w e xa ctly wha t problem we

a r e discussing .

There are three movements whi ch affect the denition of the prob
l em. The rst culminates in Plato the second in Des cartes and the ,

t hird in Kant Thi s O f course is only a way of suggesting Greek

.
, , ,

Medi ae val and Mo dern philosophy But I t h ink the nature of the .

moments entering into the problems are better expressed in the

personalities which either represented or initiated a tendency th a n in a
mere chronological distinction The rst of these movements w as not
.

so vitally connected with religious ideas as the se cond whi ch w as wholly ,

preoccupied with these Gree k thought began in cosmolo gi cal spe en

.

l a t i o n s Scholastic thought in the ological and Cartesian and Kantian

, ,

thought in epistemologi cal problems apparently es chewing an interest ,

in either of the other two questions .

Greek thought began its reection with entire condence in its

ability to solve its problems These were the origin of the world
.

and the nature of hu man knowledge Scepti cism as to human faculty .

was not known and did not arise until the Sophi sts began to apply
the principle of change to sense perception Eve r y thi nk er from .

Thales to this school accepted without question human capa city for
-

coping with the questions of the universe and knowledge The dis .

tinction between sense and reason in some of them did not indi cate
any properly sceptical spirit or method as to the fa ct of knowledge ,
but only as to the source of t r u e knowledge however it may have ,

stimulated the rise of doubt The distinction only se r ved to m ark a

.

di fference O f opinion regarding the n ature of this knowledge as deter

mined by its origin each of them being assumed to be valid for its
,

purpose There w as no question as to h o w we O btained knowl

.

edge generally and apart from cosmological problems and objects .

The ques t ion w a s whether sense or reason gave us the knowledge w e

a ctually possessed or were as sumed to possess ab ut nature This
o .

knowledge was granted It wa s only disputed between the schools

.

w hether sense or reason represented the most important source of it .

 1 1VT R OD U C T1 0N .
3

Of course there were differences of opinion regarding the nature of

cosmi c unity whether of the pluralistic or monisti c type but all agreed
, ,

that there was a uni ty of some kind so that in so far as the process , ,

o f knowledge was concerned the differences of O pinion turned on the

,

s ensory or intellectual or in modern pa r lance the materialistic and the

, ,

s piritual vie w of this know l edge the coni ct being between the com
, ,

mon and the edu cated man in regard to the world and its pheno mena ,

t hough in general they held to very much the same propositions .

It w a s with that remarkable movement which began with the

S ophists that real scepticis m took its rise These thinkers began to toy
, .

with the relativity or phenomenality of knowledge stimulated ,

t hereto no doubt by the dis covery of illusions in sense and reaso n

, ,

a n d aided by a con dence in logic which might have been incompatib l e

with their doctrine The nature of O bjectivity had not been doubted
.

before whether regarded as an object of sense or reason but u nder

, ,

s ophistic discoveries distrust of human fa culty began It did not of .

course in most of its disciples tak e the form of doubting the validity
o f what we wou l d call the states of consciousness as su ch to day but -

i t did question the vali dity of our supposed sensory knowledge of

th e world This is to say that the mind began to wonder if its
.

ideas of reality were correct or in any way represented what

,

t hey were supposed to represent The common mind had a lways

.

t rusted and the philosopher was not disposed to disagree with the com
,

m o n mind s verdict , that the physical world as presented to sensation

was in any respe c t different from its appearance The philosopher .

m ight indulge in all sorts of speculations about it s evolution or origin

a n d suppose all sorts of s upersensible

realities but he always assumed ,

t hat they were like the reality which he sa w and felt only that they ,

were too ne to be perceived by our ordinary sense perceptions .

In technical language he assumed no antithesis between what he saw

and what he did not see But the s cepti c of the s ophistic period began
.

to believe that our senses were not only not able to perceive reality

but that the ideas formed from sensation about that reality were

illusory He extended his doubt to the general principles of morality

.

and many of the intellectual convictions on other subjects S cepticism .

t hus O btained a footing from which it has not yet been dislodged for
a l l those individuals w h o have to pass through the same mental devel

o
p m ent As i n all ages and as perhaps will always be necessary the
.
, ,

problem of knowledge and the problem of things went together ,

t hough a foundation w a s laid for their distinction in some form A ll .

t h e facts were there whi ch resulted nally in such antitheses as phe

4 TH E P ] ! OB L E MS
OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

no m e na l and noumenal absolute and relative ideal and
, ,

real,
sensational and rational P revious spe culation was prop .

erly metaphysical as it was occupied with the nature of things con

, ,

d e n c e in mental faculty being assumed The subjective world w a s .

not a disputed factor in the case But the sophisti c movement O pened
.

up the eld of illusion with all its manifold puzzles which have ever
since provoked seriousness as much as they elicited mi rth It attacked .

the ve r y stronghold O f convi ction and if it did not prevent belief from
,

ultimately having its way it gave that mental instinct all the trouble it
,

could devise in the efforts to justify itself The O l d O pposition between .

sense and reason as arbiters O f k nowledge became a new O pposition

between mind and nature consciousness and object This latter form
,
.

of statement was long in developing but it was nas cent in the c o n cep ,

tions which the s ceptical movement of the Sophists initiated They .

suggested the analysis of mind a nd raised questions which tended to

dispute its capacity to know or to conceive the nature O f things
,

in any such terms as had been previously ta k en for g ranted .

Plato follows with a constructive effo rt where the Sophists h a d

been destru ctive He did not dispute the phenomenal n ature of
.

sense deliverances but endeavored to supplement their defective results

,

with the insights of higher faculties H e was thoroughly saturated .

with both the metaphysics and the psychology of previous s chools ,

and felt the force of sceptical dif culties so strongly that his whole
elaborate philosophy was written to combat them and to provide an
answer to the questions raised by them In doing this he succeeded .

in completely arresting the development of scepticism until its late r

revival when Greek civilization was on the way to the grave The .

breadth and depth Of his thought the charm of his style and the com
, ,

pass of his genius as well as those s ocial needs which defy all s cep
,

t i c is m except that of a reforming kind were too impressive to permit ,

even the witty and disputatious Greeks to waste their energies in intel
lectual para do xes and laborious t r ies Consequently P lato made an .
,

effectual and more or less successful attempt to k eep back the tide o f
s cepticism which though it suggested the modern distinction between
, ,

the subjective and objective was not strong enough to destroy the
,

fundamental assumption of a ntiquity namely t h e identity between , ,

thought and real ity
-
.

P lato s system has be e n called Idealism but there can hardly be a ,

mo re misleading conception of it than is conveyed by this term T h e .

initiated understa nd it and dened to suit the case there can be no

,

objection to this description of it But the term idealis m is s o.

 I N TR OD U C T ION .
5

i nf ected with the s ubjective implications of the psychological point Of

view and modern assumptions couche d in the s ame language t h a t the
r eader is certain to obtai n a totally false conception of P lato s p hi los

o ph y so described Intellectualism as O pposed to sensationalis m

.
,

metaphysically dened , would more n early dene his doctrine , as it

insisted upon assigning to the higher functions of the mind the duty of

determining truth and the nature of reality We could just a s well .

c all his system realis m as idealism since the very conception of ,

his idea wa s that of the real , no matter wh at denitio n we give
either one of them But the essential thing to know and recognize is
.

the simple fact that th e ordinary translation O f his language will give
us no true conceptio n of his philosophy The O pposition which de .

ned the fundamental controve r sies i n the earlier metaphysics and cos

m o l o gy w a s that betwee n the one and the many , by which w as
meant the question whether the absolute was single or plural whether ,

m onis m or pluralis m was true whether mo nism or atomis m represented

,

the nature of things The O pposition , which w a s not worked out and
.
,

which de ned the position of the Sophists was that between subjective ,

a n d objective But with Plato this Opposition absorbing all others was
.
, ,

that between the transient and permanent the ephemeral and the eter ,

n al
. His psycholo gy did not affect this position As between mind .

a n d matter psychology and metaphysic s his doctrine was the same

, ,

f o r both . Plato remained true to the general monistic traditions of

Greece He never supposed that the internal and external worlds were
.

different in kind It might even be maintained that he did not distin

.

g uish in ki n d between the transient and the permanent but only in

v a l u es
. It was around the central fact of cka ng e that his whole phi
l O S O p h y turned as Lotze says all metaphysical inquiries must turn
,
.

He probably would have agreed with Lucretius that motion is eter

nal He w a s possibly not aware or only half aware of the equivoca
.
, [

tion in the Greek term xzwjo eg This generally did service for the ideas

O f m o t i o n and c a n e in modern parlance He admitted the beco m

g .

i ng,
change , progress evolution of Heraclitus but wi t h it he sa w or
, , ,

thought he saw something permanent or eternal which was thus not

,

s ubject to the l a w of change He might call it su bs tanc e

.
,

essence ,
being idea form but it was still an a ct i v i ty of
, , ,

s ome kind Hence he could well apply his term idea as w e cannot
.
,

a fter Lockia n usage to both the m ental and materia l , to the univer
,

sal Whether in consciousness or out of it The antithesis between .

s ubje ctive and objective was not recognized by him The nature of .

the sou l and of the world w a s the same It woul d make no difference .
6 TH E P ROBLE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

whether we called it matter or spirit O n e was o nl y a ner aspect o r .

kind of the other just as it was in Lucretius The tw o men appear

,
.

to have differed on the question of the immortality of the soul , but
in reality they agreed Their difference was in their denition and
.

conception of the term soul P lato no more believed in p er s o n a l

.

immortality than did Lucretius It was the substance of the soul .

that P lato thought imperishable , and so did Lu cretius It w as t h e .

form of the soul that Lucretius thought perishable and S O

,

thought Plato the meaning of form having changed its characte r

,

between the tw o philosophies Both were monistic in regard to t h e

.

questions O f matter and mind Mind wa s not regarded as immaterial

.
,

but only as supersensible Even the elemental physical universe was

.

supersensible H ence when it came to his psychology P lato ha d

.

not to reckon with an O pposition between consciousness an d reality

or an external world for they were essentially identi cal in kind He
, .

had only to discover the faculty which r evealed to us the permanent

as distinct from the transient The The ae tetus discusses whether thi s
.

faculty is sense perception memory reason or intuition and leave s

, , , ,

the question undecided except that somehow the mind actually obtain s
a k nowledge of this permanent nature of things mental and material .

In fact k nowledge becomes a term expressive of this fact rather ,

than a word for what we should call function of brain or soul It .

w a s an activity but it w a s also an activity identic a

, l in kind with the
thing known We might express it by saying that consciousness w as
.

the transmitted activity of the external world into the mind or subject ,

the moment of transition fro m the external to the internal world .

The billiard ball but re ceives the motion of the cue and retains it as
its o wn activity until imparted to another Cons ciousness with Plat o .

is thus but the transformed motion of the external world and it is
only its m ea n i ng that is permanent while its kind or its nature is t h e ,

same as tha t which produces it namely the activity of the physi cal , ,

world . Knowing and being are identical The modern a n .

tith esis , outside the H egelia n system between knowledge an d ,

reality is not known They are identical The only oppositio n
. .

recognized is between the changeable and the permanent the phe ,

n o m en a l and the noumenal and the pheno menal is not con ,

ned to the external world but applies equally to one part of the
,

internal world namely that of s ensation In fact it would be bette r

, .
,

to say that sensation and the sensible world were the same in kind ,

n amely , phenomenal while the supersensible world both physi cal
,

and mental is the same in kind The opposition is not between the .
 I NT R OD U C T ION .
7

internal and external but between t wo aspects of both The super

,
.

sensible material world is the object , as w e should say of intui ,

tive knowledge but as P lato would possibly say the reection of
, ,

the mind , a n expres sion of the same nature .

It is thus apparent that P lato opposed scepticis m not as a doctrine ,

wholly without fou ndation but as one not expressing the ultimate ,

nature of things Heraclitus and the Sophists were s imply one sided
. .

They had a half truth which P lato regarded as worse than no truth at
all He answered it by supplementing it He accepted its conception
. .

of se nsation , but he added to it a conception of reason which the logi c

O f scepticism implicitly recognized but which the s ceptic personally
,

never sa w He did not regard sense as wholly given over to illusion

.

'
.

'

It too ha d a m ea nin g fo r reality namely the source of our k no wl

, , ,

edge O f change He regarded it as il lusory only whe n taken as
.

giving the ultimate n ature of things but n o t illusory as expressi n g or ,

giving the phenomenal side O f reality

In one point he failed . .

He never adequately connected the t w o aspects of his system Mod e rn .

thought does it by making the higher functions of mind depend chrono

logically an d perhaps causally upon the sensory This we effect
, , .

'

by sa y i n g that all knowledge depends on sensation though it is not

constituted by se n sation But P lato recognized no su ch relation
. .

H ere he exhibited what is called his irresolvable dualis m The func .

tions of sense and intellect were independent of each other possessed ,

no reciprocity of action had no common obje ct and could in no intel

,

ligible way unite the phenomen a l and real that is the sensible , ,

and the supersensible worlds .

The Stoics and Epicureans supplied what P lato omitted They .

superimposed intellectual functions or reason upon the data of sense , , ,

and in this way gave some uni ty to the nature of both thought and
things Sense became the medium for all knowledge and intellect was
.

onl y the nal court O f appeal or the one determinant of it attending ,

!

sensatio n Thus sense came to stand between what it transmitte d and

.

w hat reason adjudged Thus experience in some sense Of the term

.

was the origin of knowledge the primary criterion or s ource ,

of what we know The t w o s chools were still monistic in their

.

philosophy and psychology the Epi c urea n eve n in his atomis m After
,
.

them s cepticis m trie d to revive its fortunes in the doctrines of Antis

t h e n es and Pyrrho a n d belief its fortunes i n the last and despairing
,

systems of NeO P lato n is m both of which dis credited or s ought to

-

, ,

discredit sensory experience But the more sobe r and scientic c o n

,
.

ce p t i o n of philos ophical a n d psychological problems w a s found in the

8 TH E P )! OF L E M S OF PH I L OSOPH Y
.

Stoics and Epicureans after Plato and w h a tever view they took of
,

sense perception in relation to its object they but followe d the c o r r e c

tion which was instituted by Aristotle in the P latonic psychology and ,

this was to give sense perception a primary rather than a secondary

place in the origin of knowledge All the rest remains pra ctically the
.

same as Plato s do ctrine in its essential meaning

.

When it comes to summarizing the conceptions of G reek thought

i n the doctrines of knowledge and reality it will be found that , ,

in spite of a few deviations from the general rule regarding sense per
c e t i o n or

exp erience as with the Eleatics and P lato also even
p , ,

Heraclitus the Greek mind assigned sense perception the primary

,

place in the fu nctions of knowledge
The main dis cussions cen .

t er e d about the question as to what this function decided regarding

real ty
.i It was not primarily interested in the psychological proc
ess , tha t is epistemological problems , by which a k nowledge of
things was gained but in what the nature of things consisted All its
,
.

interests in psychology were subordinated to this one end Its genius .

was essentially metaphysical In this it bega n and ended in the

.

assumption that the internal and external worlds were the s ame in kind .

Its thin k ing was governed by the principle of identity Causality as .

,

we usually conceive it had a secondary place indeed was hardly

, ,

recognized at all It O btained a slight notice in the love and ha te of

.

Empedocles in the moving cause of P lato and the prime mover

, ,

O f Aristotle a cause however whi ch once set the universe to movi n g

, , ,

and then sat outside it idle watching it go It was the sense of unity .

or identity that dominated the Greek consciousness as this was its rst ,

great discovery in the contemplation of nature which the un r e e c t iv e

mind had supposed to be more chaotic than it re a lly was It w a s .

this instinct or tendency that prevented it from becoming dualistic It .

might admit a supersensible worl d as it did but it would not admit

, ,

anything superphysical or immaterial Its very no tion of a cosmos .

was unity of kind while to us with changed points of view this ex

,

presses nothing more than order , a teleological not necessarily an ,

ontological unity Psychology and epistemolo gy were interesting only

.

as they aided in the determination of this result All its investigations .

and all its terminology had a direct or indirect a nearer o r remoter ,

relation to the question of the trans ient or eternal The abs olute .

and the relative the phenomenal and the real
, being and ,

becoming , knowledge and sensatio n when applied to Greek
conceptions of fundamental problems had no i nterest primarily if at ,

all in the antitheses between the s ubjective and O bjective but onl y in
, ,
 I NTR OD U C T I ON .
9

that betwee n the ephemeral and the eternal Its proble m s were phys .

i cal or metaphysical not psychological or cognitive , and so concerned

,

what was permanent The Epicureans thought tha t only the primary
.

elements were permanent P lato tho u ght that also certain ner a ct iv
.

ities of their compou nds were continued in the metamorphic changes of

n ature while admitting the eternity of all substance although this was ,

conceived in somewhat the same form as the modern do ctrine of the

c onservation O f energy But everywhere the issues centered in what
.

was eternal and what wa s transient .

The momentum and inuence o f this tendency w as not lost i n

C h ristianity . It su r vived in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul
a nd the transient nature of the physical order The physical universe .

w as conceived as the creation of a divine being and subje ct entirely to

his will and this ha d decreed that it should be destroyed The soul of .

man though it was c reated was made imperishable at least upon cer
, , ,

tain moral conditions But in general we have the conceptions of

.

Plato and Neo P latonists a ffecting the whole period O f Christian de

-

v e lo p m e n t
. Plato had depreciated the sensory world and the Neo

P latonists had carried this so far as to describe the real world as
the negation O f all that w a s known as sensory or mental It placed .

t h e supreme interest of man in something wholly trans cendental .

Christianity accepted this conception and concentrated all moral inter

ests in such a world beyond sense and made the individual soul imper

i s h a bl e
. A trans cendental world of reality spiritual in nature , ,

whatever that w a s or meant beyond both the sensible and s up ers en

,

sible physical worlds became n o w an obj ect of belief It w a s the

,
.

n egation of all that was supposed of the material world whether sen ,

s ible or supersensible , and so w a s calle d immaterial In the contro .

v e r sy with Greek thought at the time which was inevitable it became , ,

a question as to h o w such a world w a s known The Greek had bee n .

accustomed to ask for the reasons which justied a belief and he called ,

these reasons knowledge It was not en ough that a fact should be
.

'

asserted to exist He must have proof H e must have some certitude

. .

that the alleged fact w a s founded in experience He w a s accustomed .

to insist that whatever wa s known or believable was attested by its

phenomenal appearance in the physical world and hence by some ,

sensory experience or perhaps by some regular l aw of nature

,
He .

consistently applied this View of things to his supersensible physical

world and exacted of all assertions the same criterion Hence when .

the existence of an immaterial soul O f divine incarnation O f miracles

, , ,

O f personal existence after death of a personal God were asserted h e

,
10 TH E P ROBLE M S OF P H IL OSO PH Y .

naturally enough put them to the test of experience and reason .

Christian thought readily enough accepted the Greek conception o f

knowledge as applied to the physical worl d and originating in sen
sory experience and so p l aced its beliefs on grounds other tha n
,
knowledge It set up a n e w organon O f belief which it calle d
.

f a zt We must remember however th at at rst this faith w a s

.
, ,

not an intellectual process a faculty of knowing or perceiving or an

, ,

assent to propositions whatever it became afterward It was at rs t

,
.

a name for a certain quality O f will delity to a person or principle o f

,

action This was its original meanin g in more languages than one in
.
,

Greek Roman and especially in Hebrew

, ,
F aithfulness expresse d .

its proper meaning originally But the existence of a large number o f

.

alleged facts li k e the resurrection the incarnation life after death , , ,

miracles etc showed that ideas and convictions were as essential a

, .
,

part of Christianity as action and its social scheme of practical moral

ity It was this body of alleged facts which brought it into contro
.

v er sy with Greek modes of speculation and required it to assign som e

canon of evidence for the fundamental beliefs on which it founded it s

t ranscendental world in which it concentrated all its interests after it s ,

immediate social s cheme came to an end Having admitted that .

k nowledge was of this world it gradually substituted an

i n t el lec
tu a l meaning for the Ol d one expressed by faith and set it up as a n
organon for beliefs beyond the reach of knowledge as either a sen
sory or rational process Thus faith became a name for an assent
.
,

to truths rather than a quality of will The Christian would admit .

that his do ctrines were not an object of reason and he simply estab
li sh e d a change of venue in the controversy by insisting that there w as
another and higher cou rt of convi ction tha n human experience in the
senso ry and rational world .

There was here a sort of double dualis m like that of Plato We

s a w that P lato found the antithesis between phenomena an d
reality to hold true for both the internal and the external worlds .

The dualism O f one was parallel to that in the other though the a nt it h ,

esis w a s the same in both But in Christian thought the dualis m

.

between the material and the spiritual worlds was not always ex
pressed in the same terms as that between the two functions of the
i nte rnal worl d In one it was the dual ism between matter and spirit
.

and the other the dualism between knowledge and faith The material .

worl d was the object of knowledge the spiritual world the object ,

of faith But various inuences some of them the resul t of

.
,

natural human instincts and experience with the practical problems of

 I N TR OD U C TI ON .
1 1

life and some of them the effect Of philosophic tra ditions conspire d
, ,

to raise the question whether faith could provide the certitude which
seemed so necessary if the issues dened by religion were so serious as
the doctrine of salvation imp lied This state of matters at once
.

started a dis cussion of the relative claims of faith and reason knowl ,

edge coming to mean certitude of co nviction in regard to any obje ct

of cons ciousne ss rather than conceptions of experi ence There w a s .

latent in it the whole question of t h e relative values of the religious

and the secular life but the apparent controversy turne d about the
,

question whether reason could certify the existence of the transcendental

O bje cts of fa ith and give them the certi tude which in the se c ular life
, ,

wa s the necessary or a ccepted justication for action That is would .

,

reason adequately support the existence of God immo rtality the in , ,

carnation the re s urrection miracles the atonement and the whole

, , ,

body of religious doctrine to make them e ffective and as obligatory t o

consciousness as natural knowledge P In the process of the dispute
the very nature of the points of issue soon subordinated all the minor
questions to the two general ones regarding the existence of God a nd
the immortality of the soul The controversy waged with varying
.

fortunes for reason and faith until reason nally conquered The dis .

c ussio n betwee n nominalis m and realis m with the victory for t h e

former revived the subjective or psychological conception O f kno wl

edge so th a t with the revival of learning it prepared the way for
, , ,

the philosophy of Descartes It of course took centuries to effect this

.

result but the out come w a s simply the natural consequence of the
,

struggle bet w ee n the unsatisfactory dualism of Christian thought and

the essentially monisti c inuence of Greek spe culation which still
aff ected thought wherever it had the fortune to touch it Al l but the .

two main proble m s were gradually relegated to theology and lost an

interest for philosophy as they were contingent upon the proof of the
,

rst t w o regarding the existence of God and the soul of man .

Des cartes came at the junction of several intellectual movements .

The old astronomy ha d been shattered The Renaissance had rein

.

stated a n interest in ancient literature and philosophy Nominalis m .

had given a subjective i mpulse to ideas The W hole system of Scholas

.

t i c is m was di scredited. The Ne w World had been dis covered and

had begun to excite the imagi n ation of men Physical science h a d .

arisen and diverted human interest into things terrestrial as religiou s

thought had conned it to thin gs trans cendental The consequence .

was that Descartes took up the work of adjusting the claims between
s cepti cis m and faith He acce p ted and dened more clearly than ever
.
12 TH E PR OBL E M S OF P H I L O S OP H Y .

the metaphysical dualism of Chri stianity in regard to the n ature of

matter and mi n d , but he returned to a psychological monis m in his
conception of the ultimate functions attesting man s k nowledge He
.

took a position whi ch dened for all subsequent thought the funda
mental antithesis between the subjective and objective whatever that ,

may mean and reinstated the psychological or anthropological or

, ,

perhaps better the anthropo centric point O f view in speculation on all

,

t h e great questions of philosophy His metaphys i cal dualism owing

.
,

to certain denitions in his system and to the natural ins tinct for unity
i n the philosoph ic mind easily passed into the metaphysical monis m
,

of Spinoza But this is not the chief interest of his inuence The
. .

fundamental distrust of sense perception with which he started an d the

nal reliance on cons ciousness which both from its conception as ,

a function of the soul and as denitely exclu ded from the n ature of
e xternal reality or matter became a purely subjective fact and criterion
,

o f

knowledge gave rise to the controversy between realis m and
,

idealism where before it had been between materialis m and spiritualism

, ,

Ancient thought as we have seen a ccepted no O pposition between the

, ,

n ature of the internal and the nature of the external worlds until

Christian thought dened their relation What may be called the .

identity between thought and reality w as the fundamental postulate

of Greek speculation in its best estate The inuence of Christo .

Cartesian thought was to establish an antithesis where ancient spe cula

tion accepted an identity Mind and matter were so separated that no
.

reciprocity or interaction became possible In Greek thought the

assumed identity of knowing and being prevented all di f culties
suggested by the modern question How can the mind know exte r nal
,

reality ! But when Cartesian philosophy proposes to shut the mind
up in itself and while ma k ing cons ciousness the nal court of truth
,

a lso ma k es it a purely subjective fact it suggests or produ ces an a n

,

t it h esis between subject and O bject which reinstates all the s cepticism

of the Sophistic schools and later Academy Cons ciousness , at least of .

t h e sensory type could either not attest the existence of an extern al

,

reality or it coul d not represent its nature The mind was shut .

up to itself for knowl edge Its o wn states were all that it could
.

know , assuming still that knowledge and being were the

s ame though refusing to apply the postulate to extern al

, reality .

Lo cke Berkeley Hume an d Kant simply take up this cue and

, ,

variously follow it out to its logical consequences Locke let slip the .

remark that simple ideas which were given in sensatio n were
,
real
and that complex ideas which were the produ ct of the
,
 INTR OD U C TI ON .
1
3

understanding were ctitious Among these complex ideas

.

were those of cause God and the soul This simply opened wide
, .

the door to s cepticism which O f course was fully enough suggested

, , ,

by the subjective tendency in psycholo gy in the eld of sensation .

Still Locke believed in both mind and matter But Ber k eley taking .
,

the subjective conceptio n of sensation more seriously denied the exist

ence of matter and admitte d only that of spirit Hume with .
,

some sense of hu mor and sceptical mis chief in his nature put Loc k e ,

and Berkeley toget her and asked for the evidence for both matter and
spirit and made himself content with phenomenalism Kant started
, .

to refute H ume denied his premises and a ccepted his conclusion

, .

P hilosophy had before him embra ced all the great p roblems of human
reection but had gradually droppe d those which it was W illing to
,

leave to religion proper as either not interested in them or as con

,

tingent on more general conceptions and retained as its nal claim the ,

adjudication of belief in the existence of God im m o r t a lity a n d f reedom ,

'

Kant after indicating that philosophy had like Hecuba to mourn for , ,

the loss of her children proceeded to rob it of the last excuse for its
,

existence and though he tried to pacify religion by bringing in at the

,

back door what he had thrown out at the front door he attained noth ,

ing more denite than the phenomenalis m of Hume .

It is not necessary to trace in detail the general principles of these

three men between Descartes and Ka n t In s o far as the main prob .

lems of philosophy are concerned they show only di fferent de grees of

the same tendency They have the same starting point namely the
.
, ,

subjective character of consciousness and the limitation of k nowl

edge to its data Descartes did not seriously question the existence
.
_

O f the external worl d w hen he put the hypothetical query about the

trust w orthiness O f sensation He showed that this was only a method

.

of indicating that the nal court Of adjudi catio n was the higher r e
ect iv e cons ciousness which included reaso n and its functions In .

spite of his apparent scepticism of sense perception h e still accepts its

importance in the deri vation of knowledge
'
Lock e does the same .

B u t B e r kel ey applies the dict a of s cepticis m with full force to the

judgments O f sense but is too orthodox in theology to see the a p pl i
,

cation O f the same assumptions to spirit

Hume simply applies .

the logi cal knife to Berk eley s ide a lism and leaves to
knowledge
nothing but sensations the eeting transient phenomena of mind
,
.

Kant does the same but expresses himself in a terminology that is

,

well calculated to deceive the ordina r y philosopher a nd theologian .

H e is emphati c in his assertion of the purely phe n omenal nature of

14 TH E P R OBL E M S OF PH IL OSOPH Y
.

k n owledge , the non provable n ature of the three main problems O f

-

m etaphysics agnosticism in regard to
,
things in themsel ves and the ,

subjectivity of things in general Whatever he m ay be supposed .

t o have meant by his doctrine of time and space he effectually installed ,

s cepticism in the dis cussions of all questions affected by sense percep

tion The whole transcendental world of things i n themselves

.

represented what was entirely unknown and unknowable Its .

existence was admitted as a fact but the belief of it was left u njust i
,

ed . In his earliest conception of it he assumed that it acted causally

o n the mind but in spite O f this was still unknown Later he .

withdrew the statements in which this causal action w as admitted or

a sserted and left the existence of
things in the m selves unsupported
by any evidence in fact or reason P henomena were all that Could
.

be known F ollowing the Cartesian assumptions about
. con
s ci o us n e ss and the Leibnitzian assumption denying all recipro city or
interaction between the monads between mind and matter unless we
, ,

accept the receptivity o f sense and thus denying the possibi l ity of
,

knowing the transcendental reality Kant thus dened by indi ,

rection what he meant by knowledge namely phenomena Of co n , ,

s c i o us n es s . Knowing was Ha v i ng a fact in conscious ness or ,

simply unifying it with other similar facts That k n owi n g should .

be such a thi n g as perceiving an O bject not in cons ciousness at all ,

or a i r m i n g with certitude and unqualied right to belie ve the existence

O f any reality transcendi n g sens a tion if fact and the inalterable ,

laws of thought n ecessitated it seems not to have entered his mind at

, ,

least i n so far a s his manner of expression is concerned Knowl .

edge was simply ha ving facts of consciousness and systemizing them

and their relations in terms of the categories whose fun ctions as ,

laws of thought never availed to enable Kant to solve any of the

s ceptical problems elicited by the asserted phe n omenality O f ex e r i
p
ence Those p roblems seem to have been largely mis conceived
.
,

and the logical distinctions adopted for dis cussing them only O b
s c u r e d the issues or indicated a position in which it was impossible to

decide on which side of a question Kant really w a s There is no .

adequate denition and explanation of fundame ntal con cepts such as ,

phenomenon ( Erscheinung ) intuition ( Anschau ung ) experience

, ,

( Erfahrung ) knowledge ( E r k e nnt niss ) perception ( Wahrnehmun g)

, , ,

co n ception ( Begriff ) form and matter ( F orm and Materie ) and a host
of others He uses n o illustrations O f fact whatever except t h e one
.

famous instance of the boat sailing down stream and the bullet on the ,

pillow O n the issues of realism and idealism he is not intelligible as

.

,
 INTR OD U C TI ON . 1
5

he seems not to kno w even what they were and are O n the whole .

t h e entire movement which he initiated seems to have had no clear

l

message w li a t ev er for philosophy It had nally eliminated the last

.

three problems which were supposed to constitute the eld of meta

physics and with them the whole tra n scendental world the s up er p h y si
, ,

cal world of a ntiquity and then tried to juggle with the concept of
,

metaphysics without adjusting its elf to s cience when in fact its pro
c e d ur e had left no other legitimate eld of interest It became so .

enamored of phenomen a of cons ciousness that it coul d not devote

itself to s cience and its agnosti cism 011 God Immort a lity a n d F reedom
, ,

made it impossible to satisfy religion by any dis cussion of its philo

sophic problems The consequence is that it wanders about in a
.

maudlin int e r m un di a between s cience and religion using an orthodox

,

language with a heterodox content on every question W here intelligible

speech is a duty and a necessity .

This characterization does not deny the fact that when interpreted ,

in intelligible terms this modern idealistic tendency initiated by Kant

,

and his s chool is profoundly true in its essential conceptions B ut its .

truth needs to be expressed in the vernacular which will give it the

currency and power which philosophy is capable O f possessing and
which is due its claims as the legatee of the highest knowledge All .

that I wish to indicate by complaint and criticis m against its obscur

ities and evasions is that its equivocal position on the fundamental
problems of human thought and its indi fference to s cience and s c ien
t i c metho d deprives it of the heritage to which i t lay so persistent a
_

claim It should re cognize the extremely complicated nature of the

.

general conceptions with which it deals and endeavor to rst give them
the analysis and denitio n which are the primary requisites to a clear
understanding of its discussions and attitude on the issues which the
mental and moral problems Of the age force upon it It is not enough .

to accl a im idealis m and repu diate realism or even to reconcile them

, .

These conceptions are both of them charged with too large a histo ry
a n d represent too general abstractions to be self interpreting
-
They .

embody relations to many distinct problems each of them as equivo cal

,

and complex as the do ctrines which they are supposed to elucidate .

Hence w e ca nnot take for granted that we are making progress by

simply repeating the shibboleths of any parti cular theory without
s tudying its incide nts and relations to the pra ctical and intellectual

problems of the age A theory has value in proportio n to its ability

.

to explicate minuti ae of human life as well as describe in abstract out

lines the general movement Of thought .
16 TH E PR OBL E M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y .

Let us summarize the result of this introdu ctory analysis It ca n .

be done by briey characterizing the di fferent stages of human r e e c

tion The three stages into which we have divided the history that
.

has passed u nder review had their various problems and interests .

The ethical and religious questions were integral elements of their

speculations even though the primary impulse was purely scientic or
,

philosophical The various interests of life are so arti culated that

.

knowledge in any one department of inquiry inevitably inuences all

'

othe rs in some degree Ancient t h ought began its S peculations in cos

.

m o l o gi ca l questions
These concerne d the origi n of the visible
.

and tangible world It was not the origin of it by any process of

.

creation but its origin from elements Existence as it w a s k nown

,
.

was conceived as a compound made up of simple elements E f cient .

causes were not the prima ry O bject of inquiry but mainly material ,

causes The conclusion of the philosopher w a s that the sensible world

.

was made out of sup ersensible elements but still of matter the same in ,

kind as its compounds It affecte d the religious cons ciousness only w hen
.

it developed into the denial of the im m o r ta lity o f the s oul as in E p ic u

'

r ea n i s m w hich in this issue dened the controversy between Greek and

,

Ch ristian thought in its metaphysical aspects But o n its p sy ch o lo gi .

cal and ethical sides the controversy in Greek thought was between
s ensationalism and intellectualism betwee n the sensuous and the con
,

t e m p l a t iv e life between vulgarity and culture

, In Christian periods .

this antithesis w a s expressed in the opposition between the carnal and

the spiritual life In modern thought after having eliminated the
.
,

problems of metaphysics as understood in medi ae val thought and hav

ing concentrated interest on the psychological and epistemological issues
the controversy turns about the relative ethical values of sensory and
intellectual O bjects again Consequently we may summarily char
.

a c t er i z e the general movements of the d i e r e n t periods in the follow

ing manner Greek thought was governed by an ethi cal motive whe n
.

it was no t occupied with cosmological questions and represented the

opposition between sensationalism and intellectualism Christia n .

thought was primarily governed by the metaphysical question as a

condition of the ethical and religious and represented t h e antithesis,

between m aterialism and spiritualism Modern thought having rele .

gated m etaphysics into the limbo of the unknown represents the con
t r o v er s y between realism and idealism This does not coincide exactly
.

with either of the others i n its appearance although a dvocates of one ,

side love to make us believe that it is more or less a combination of t h e

t w o movements in one The idealist trie s to make us believe that h is
.
 I NTR OD U C TI ON 1
7

position is O ppos ed to materialism , but he assumes the coinciden ce and

identity of sensationalism and materialis m which is neither h istori cally
nor philosophically true Idealis m had its origi n in epistemological
.

considerations and so did realis m Material ism had its origin in

, .

metap h ysical questions and so did spiritualism O n e concerns the

.

problems of knowledge the other the proble ms of reality O n e
,
.

as k s h o w I k n o w reality the other what is the n a t u r e of reality
, .

Hence I must insist that , if there is any relatio n between modern and
ancient thought in the antitheses tha t I h a ve indi cated it is the appar
,

ent co nnectio n at least between the problem of realis m a nd idealism

and that between sensationalis m and intellectualism They at least
.

partly coincide But as I am not interested in dening their relation

.

in detail but only in expressing the differences between their motives

, ,

both of which were ethical rather than metaphysical while that of ,

reective Christianity was primarily metaphysical and then ethical I ,

may pass by all other questions in the comparison We see then tha t
.

each i ntellectual movement had its own distinctive way of conceiving

its problems and interests corresponding to them .
 C H A PT E R II .

GENER A L P R O B L EM S O F S C IENC E A ND P H IL O S O P H Y .
l

A N C IE NT thought made no distinction between science and philos

o ph y . They were regarded as the same a nd it is only the gradually ,

developed difference of their elds at their outer limits that h a s enabled

us to distinguish the m to day For there is a point at which they more
-
.

or less interpenetrate But as philosophy conse r vative of its traditions

.
, ,

is either mainly reective speculative and critical or receives its p ri , ,

mary impulse fro m the stu dy of mental pheno mena while s cience is ,

more generally associated with the study Of physical nature the con ,

c e p t i o n of the two inquiries is a e c t e d by these considerations But .

whether thei r differences are O f method of eld or of attitude on the , ,

various problems of human interest they a r e so arti cu lated that a com ,

prehensive View of intellectual problems is impossible without exhibit

ing their interrelations They are both of them attempts to as ce rtain the
.

rationale O f things and hence proceed on the same general lines Their .

problems may not always coincide but their principles are the same , .

Hence we may well link them together in the endeavor to elucidate

the questions that excite hu man curiosity .

The primary impulse to human inquiry is the desire to have the

explanat ion of a fact Explanation may be an equivo ca l term
.
,

as it undoubtedly is and may involve various expedients or alternative

,

ways of looking at facts in order to satisfy curiosity but in all of its ,

meanings it comprehends the conception of some other fact real or ,

supposed that enables us to a ccept the rst as a matter of course and

,

that removes our fear our wonder our confusion or our suspi cio n of
, ,

irregularity in the occurrence of events Explanation however i n its .

, ,

full extension comprehends variously the satisfa ction of the demand for
,

the l a w the cause the nature and the purpose of events

,

, , .

1 A p art o f is th cha t r
p e is ev i i o f i ar s on
an art cle publ i shed o n t h e sam e su b
ject i n t h e P l ul o so p / uca l R ev i ew , Vo l XII , I have m ad e so m e chan g es
'

p 3 86 . . . .
,

but n n th t
o e a ortant xc t n
ar e i m p e ep ca o f t h e term s wt o lo g z l a n d
i t h e se

z
'

ca

n o um n o l g z I have s i m p ly i nt erchan ed thes e t er m s us i n

g i n t h i s book

e o l ca
g
.
,

ae t i olog i cal where I h a d us ed n o um e n o l o i ca l i n t h e art i cle a n d v i e
g , c

v er s
a I h ave n o t chang ed t h e conce t i ons i n olve d but onl t h e t er m s f o r
p v
.

y ,

d enom i n at i n g them a s I t houg h t t h e p re sent usa e wa s t ruer t o h i stor i cal i d eas

,
g
a n d woul d thus r p res e nt t h e d i scu ss i on i n a cle are r l i ht
e
g .

18
 PR OBLE M S OF S C IE N C E A ND P H I L O S OP H Y I
9

There a r ises i n connection with inquiries to s atisfy these deman ds the

further questio n r egarding the gro unds or reasons for belief in any O f
these matters including the processes by which belief is effected
, .

Thi s may be ca lled the proble m of knowledge as distinct from that

of the things known or believed There are thus four general prob .

lems in science and philosophy , or human inquiry They are prompted .

by the corresponding questions regarding any event or thing What ,

c auses it P What is it P Why is it P and H o w do we know it P
I use the ter m why here to indicate the question regarding the pur
p o se of a fact It is no doubt elas tic enough to involve an inquiry for
.

the cause and the nature of facts as well as their p urpose , but for the
sake of brevity in stating the questions I limit its import for the present
to the one proble m I may classify them as follows
.

R at i o e sse n di . M ateri al cause . Co hst it ut io n . Nature .

R at o en d E i c 1e n t caus e Pro d ucer A ge nt

i
P roblem s i
. . .

.
z
R at 1 o ag en d I . Fm a l caus e . P urpos e . End .

R at i o co g n o s ce n d i . L o g i cal cause . E i d ence

v . Re ason .

All of these are various forms O f explanation But they r ep r e .

s ent di er e nt i ntellectual interests The r a t i o ess en d i indicates w h a t

.

an event or thing i s and this is usually done either by explicitly stating

,

its qualities or classifying it , which is a way of implicitly indicating

its qualities In Greek speculatio n however it would not always take
.
, ,

this form but would be an assignment of a thing s composition A

,

.

thing would be what it was made of the elements of which it w as .

composed This w a y of viewing a reality would characterize every

.

stage of thought which endeavored to determine the nature of reality

by referring to its component elements But classicatio n must rely .

u pon the qualities which dene and distinguish things and so all r e

e c t i o n that unies phenomena and things by classication must express

the material cause or nature of events or things by their qualities ,

which constitute them , not necessarily as elements after atomic ana l

o gies , but as characteristics which indicate what their nature is .

We may assume , however , that either alternative for determining the

nature of a thing is permissible composition or comparison a o
, ,

cording to the w ay in which w e wish to view phenomena and things .

We may wish to i nquire into the composition of re a lities where we

s uppose that the complex wholes are the same in e ss ential properties

as the elements or we may w ish to engage in comparison of realities

,

where nature is convertible with qualities possesse d or not pos
s essed rather tha n elements in co m position H ence the r a t i o ess en a i .

20 TH E PROBLE M S OF P H I L OS OPH Y
.

of modern thought may apply to the determination of properties instea d

of elements The r a t i o e n d i is the a ctive or initiating cause of things
.

or events It represents any fa ct or thing whi ch is suppose d to initiate

.

chan ge , whether it be the movement of a simple element in space o r

time or the arrangement of ele m ents to form a composite or organi c
,

whole , a cos mos It answers the questio n demanding the k nowledge

.

of what it is that initiates or produces any complex and organic indi

vidual or any change in the action of either simple or composite in di
,

v i d ua l s . The r a t i o ag e n d i explains itself as the purpose of things o r

events the end toward which any fact or system of facts te n ds to move
,
.

The r a t i o co g n o s c en a i is a little unique in the fact that it is not wholly

distinct from the other three r a t i o n es at least in respect of the subject ,

matter with which it deals It is the term for wh a t I shall call s c i e n

.

t i c m e t izo a or the process by which conviction is established in regar d

,

to conclusions in any eld of inquiry whether it r egard the facts which ,

demand the various causes in explanation of them or the eviden c e o f ,

the causes themselves It therefore represents the ev i d e n t i a l a spect

.

of eve r y problem before spe culation and hence is specically the epis ,

t em o l o gi c a l problem It covers the eld of co n v i ct i o n and not that o f

.

exp l a n a t i o n It does n o t offer a ground for the existence of events

and things but only of kn owledge a n d belief regarding them and thei r
,

causes .

In dealing with these various prob l ems I have assu med that t h e
facts on which the de mand for expl anation is based are known or a c
c ep t e d as gi ven I have not assumed that there is any problem r e
.

garding their existence It is true however that certain facts a r e

.
, ,

as mu ch the result of inquiry as are explanations But the inquiry in .

regard to the existence of facts , by which I m ean to include ev en t s
and t h i ng s is regulated by the r a t i o co g n o s c e n d i alone This is pre
, .

liminary to asking any other question about them the answer to which ,

involves the evidential as well as the explanatory method But pass .

ing all minor questions aside prior to matters of explanation and fol ,

lowing the problem o f mere facts as unrelated O bjects of Obse r va

tion there is another problem of some impo r tance which is associated

ve ry closely with the simple occurrence of fa cts It is the l a w o f .

eve n ts or things We are not satised with the mere occurrence o f

.

events or phenomena but we seek to know the l a w of that oc currence

, .

This term la w is variously interp rete d S ometimes it refers to th e .

conditions of an event s occurrence No w conditions is a term

.

that is equivo cal It may denote either an active cause of events or t h e

.

passive and invariable concomitant of them In my own conceptio n , .

 PR OBL E M S OF S C I E NCE A ND P H I L OS OP I I Y .
21

h owever , l a w does not p r O per ly express conditions of any kind

f
,

but only regularity The ide a of causality , whether static or dy namic

.
,

h a s no right to associatio n with it It is but a na m e for the co n s t a n cy

.

o f events or regular order the u niformity of coexistence and sequence

,
.

This is a problem in s cience and philosophy quite as much as ex

p lanation . But it is not causal explanation of any kind It is sub .

o rdinate and prior to this Its place in the more complete c l ass i ca
.

t ion O f intellectual problems will be as certained in the further analysis

a n d dis cussion of the various questions involved in science and philos

o ph y. It sui ces to note at present that the uniformity of events is as

m uch a m atter of inquiry as the fact and causes O f their occurrence .

This general analysis of problems prepares us to give a more

d enite and somewhat different classication of them As the r a t i o
.

c o g n o s ce n d i problem is a general one covering the question of con

,

v i c t i o n in all others it need not se r ve as a basis of any system of

,

s ciences and consequently I shall determine the analysis of intellectual

,

problems by the objects associated with the quest for truth whether ,

i t be for events for laws , for ideals or for causes

,
Af ter this more
.

d enite delimitation of our problems we shall be prepare d to take up

d irectly the denite questions of epistemology and metaphysics .

The best way to delimit the questions which we have to consider

i s by means O f what may be indi fferently calle d a classication of the
s ciences or a classicatio n of the problems of science and philosophy .

I invoke both forms O f expression because I wish to appropriate the

i deas at the basis O f both conceptions That is , I am not classifying
.

the sciences for the sake of the classi cation only but because of the ,

d istinction of problem s which I wish to make Usually classications

.

h ave proceeded on the assumption O f territorial distinctions but I wish ,

t o include other considerations in the determination of their denition ,

a n d this distinction is t h e idea of problems as well as territory In .

f act territory will be a subor dinate matter of consideration O bjects .

t o be attained are a better criterion of the distinctions involved in sci

e nt i c and philosophical questions , though territory i s O fte n nothing

m ore than a s ubterfuge for these .

The circumstance which has prompted men generally to classify

t h e s ciences has bee n the dis covery that they are in some w ay related

t o each other . F or example logic and psychology have both to do

,

with me n tal phenomena But one O f th em logic has a much nar

.
, ,

r ower el d than the other psychology and at the same time also has
,
,

a di fferent problem before itself It has to do with the ratiocinative

.

p rocess and seeks to determine the laws of its validity , while psychol
22 TH E P R OBL E M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y
.

ogy is not ne cessarily concerned with the validity of any mental acts ,
but may content itself with the determination of their laws and causes ,
while it also investigates more tha n the ratiocinative process and s o
will include perception , emotion and volition Again sociology is in .

some w ay closely connected with histo ry economics and politics ,

.

Mechanics is often treated as a department of physi cs Geology is .

generally assumed to be a branch of the same Chemistry is some .

times treated as co o rdinate with physi cs and sometimes as a divisio n

of it Such relations suggest a hierarchy of s ciences and have give n
.

rise to their classication .

If I were concerned in the a cceptance of some classications a n d

the rejection of others it might be protable to underta k e a review o f
,

some of them but as it is possible to assign at least a relative value to

,
'

all consistent class ications it is not necessa ry to pursue an invidious

task or to study the work of the past w ith a view to repudiating it .

But I shall refer to t w o systems of classication partly for the purpose ,

of showing this relative justication and partly for appropriating t h e

general principles at the basis of both of them They are the c l assi .

cations o f Comte and Spencer .

Comte s system may be called the s e r i a l method of classifying the

sciences because it w a s not his purpose to represent them in the rela

tion of genus and species but to conceive some of them in a relation
,

of dependence upon others H e did not attempt any complete a n d

.

exhaustive consideration of the special elds of human i n quiry H e .

conned himself to the more general sciences and their relation to the
problems which mainly o ccupied his mind as a student of politics o r
sociology omitting those which had originated and sustained a phil
,

o so
p h i c interest After recognizing the t wo elds of phenomena
.
,

organic and inorganic he adopts the following as the order of relatio n

,

between the general sciences mathemati cs astronomy physics , , ,

chemistry physiolo gy and social physics ( sociology ) H e make s

, , .

also th e distinction between the abstract and concrete s ciences which

Spencer afterward adopts but he doe s not make the use of it which
,

Spencer nds appropriate It is interesting to remark however that

.
, ,

Comte for obvious reasons makes no mention of philosophy meta

, , ,

physics o r psychology He conceived these as pseudo scient i c and

, . -

would recognize nothing but what he regarded as legitimate elds o f

,

inqui r y he himself being t h e sole judge of what man should study

, .

But in thus excluding certain problems from consideration with which

men have actually occupied themselves and in not specifying problems ,

within the limits of the s ciences which he does recognize he has g ive n ,
 P R OBL E M S OF S C I E NCE .
A ND PH IL O SOP H Y
.
2
3

a very meager conception of the real interests of the human m in d ,

legitimate or illegitimate though the serial method of viewing the

'
,

relations of the s ciences is a most fruitful conception and capable of

useful application It shows both a kind of dependence of one s cience
.

upon another and an i n creme ntal result in the dependent science which
is important for attaining some idea of the progressive complexity of

nature and knowledge .

Spencer adopts what may be called the l o g i ca l method of classi

ca t i o n
. It is a division of the s cien c es into genus and species , and
applies the principle of territory in the main at l east as the ground , ,

of distin ction betwee n them His classication is carried Out with

.

reasonable clearness and consistency in detail It is far more ex .

h a u st iv e of the elds of hu m an inquiry than mo st e fforts of the kind

a n d for the purposes for which it w a s conceived is as useful as any

other system Accepting the f undamental principle of division which

.
,

is territory and the distinction between abstract concrete , and ab

, ,

stract concrete s ciences I would have no s pecial criti cis ms to ma k e

-

against the classication as I have already recognized the relati v e

.

value of any consistent system of classication as judged by the pur ,

pose for which it is made But I do not think that the funda mental
.

distinction between abstract concrete and abstra ct concrete expresses

, ,
-

the real nature of the difference between the s ciences in respect of the
problems whi ch they actually attack ; This I thin k is apparent from , ,

the place o ccupied in it by logic and mathematics Their classication .

as co o rdinate species ought to imply a closer relation in subject matter

than a ctually exists It is like classifying foods under the heads of
.

animal vegetable and animal vegetable

, ,

This is all very possible
-
.
,

but does not indicate any truly scientic principle of distinction .

Besides we could as well put ethi cs under the head of abstra ct
,

sciences as logic and mathemati cs I thin k that it will be found that .

ethics is quite as formal a s cience a s logic a n d when compared with

the practical problems which it is expected to solve will appear quite
as abstra ct Many will question Spencer s right to make so ciology
.

a subordinate division of psychology as mental states are not pri ,

marily social phenomena at all They simply happe n to include these

.

as a part of the class so that it would be more rational to make

,

sociology an incremental s cience But I do not care to be punctilious .

,

as I wish to recognize what Spe n cer rightly sees It is the fact .

which Comte s serial classication observed namely , that so ciology

,

depends o n certain psychological functions and phenomena for its

meanings But he did not observe that as actually studied it deals
.
, ,
2
4 TH E PR OBL E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

also with a wholly dis t inct set of phenomena in the el d of politics ,

history and economics If the meaning of so ciology be determined

,
.

by the principle of division adopted by Spencer a s it ought to be in ,

the system , there would be less objection to its place assigned it but ,

the term would not have the meaning whi ch students actually give it
a n d which Spencer s own discussion of it in his Synthetic P hilosophy

a ssumed Spencer s dif culty and hen ce liability to objection arose

.
, ,

o ut of his attempt to give a classication whi ch would satisfy two i n

c ompatible conditions a t the same time namely , an ideal and actual ,

c onception of the s ciences The manner in which the conception of

.

t h e various sciences has developed prevents this from being ac co m

p l is h e d .O ne or the other alternative must be adhered to The .

c lassication must be avowedly ideal or avowedly of the actual con

c e p t i o n of the s ciences and territorial and problematical considerations

m ust not be confused .

Now what I wish here to undertake is a combina tion of the objects

indicated by the systems of Comte and Spencer namely a logical and , ,

serial classication of the sciences or problems of human thought and ,

action in a manner that will recognize both territorial and relational

,

facts at the same time It will involve a complex system o f connec

.

tions and distinctions which have no doubt operated in any other way , ,

of looking at the question of classication to cause the real or apparent

confusion of conception and denition The important premisory .

remark however to be made at the outset as a precaution agains t mis

, , ,

understanding is tha t the classication is based n o t o n any denite

, ,

conception of the s ciences as actually dened in general a cceptance or

usage but on what the conceptions m u s t be as determined by the
,

principle of dev isi o n adopted I sha ll not attempt to dene the s ciences
.

or to classify them as their territory i s dened but as it o ug lzt to be ,

in an ideal system endeavoring to indicate what the problems have

been in the abstract At the same time I mean to have no quarrel
.
,

with the accepted im port of the terms as they have been histo rically
developed These may be granted their rights and uses w h ere it is
.

impossible to reg ulate the tendencies of evolution arbitrarily in the in

t er es t of a personal theory We may dene our problems c l early and
.

then allow human interests to carry on the discussion of the m in their

own way according to the actual complications of phenomena He n ce .

the classication so far as mere terms are concerned may be treated

, ,

as false when measured by the a ctual con ception of the s ciences or

,
,

we may assu me that actual denitions are wrong according to the ideal
c lassication I do not care which of these is done if only the system
.
,
 PR OBLE M S O F S C I E N CE A ND P H IL O S OPH Y .
25

s uccee ds in throwing light upon the p roblems of human intellect ,

e ither by suggesting their variation from the ideal of thought or by

O pening up a w a
y to reconcile the controversies that have spent more
time on denition than the philosophical and practical interests of men
j ustify .

I think w e may reduce the elds of human ree ctive and active in
t e r est to three in the wide st a cceptance of the terms
,
I shall call them .

the world of ev en t s , the world of w o r t ns and the world of c a u s es , .

This is in expressio n at least a slight modi cation of the division of

, ,

Lotze which was the worl d of f a ct s the world of l a ws and the

, , ,

w o r l d o f w o r ms
'

The world of events which I have adopted for the

.

rst class of problems is coincident with L o tz e s world of facts

,

and I discard the term facts not because I have any objection to its
,

L o t z i a n use but be cause I wish to regard the world of

,
laws as in
cluded in that of fa cts and to be subject to the same exp lanation as
isolated facts or events The very conception of law which .

was tak en above indicates that it does not express anything but regu
l a r ity of events and belongs to the same category of problems as um
systematized incidents All three worlds as I conceive them are to be
.

equally treate d as fa cts in the wider sense of the term and di ffer ,

only in respect of the method of determining them or in respect to the

tenacity of belief regarding t h em The worlds of worths and .

causes explain themselves .

In the rst of the elds thus circumscribed we wish merely to

ascertain what the events or occurrences are which we have to
observe and systematize I shall des cribe this eld as the P ne n o m en o
.

l o g i c a l p roblem Explanation may be excluded from it in fact must

.
, ,

be as its obje ct is only to determine the facts of existence I shall

,
.

s ubdivide this phenomenological eld into two classes of subordinate

problems which I shall call the E r g o l o g i ca l and the IVo m o l o g i ca l I

,
.

have bee n obliged to coin the word e r g o l o g i ca l for the purpose

of distinguishing the question of the l a ws of events from the bare fact
of their occurrence and unsystematic apprehension I might have .

adopted the term p r a gm at o l o gi cal but on the whole seeing that ,

, ,

the Greek term r d epr a w as used to express facts things done or doing , ,

I decided for the former It is intended to express the nature of the

.

rs t problem of human interest namely the mere knowledge of the , ,

events whi ch sugge st when known the subsequent problems still to

, ,

be considered The nomol ogical problem represents the demand for

.

the l a ws of events the systematic order of their occurrence the deter

, ,

minatio n of the coexistences and sequences of phenomena as distinct ,

26 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH IL O S OPH Y .

from their causes S upe r cia lly phenomena may seem to occur with
.
,

out order and hence that order has to be a quest whenever it i s

,

not apparent at rst E r g o l o gi c al and n omological problems there

.
,

fore represent t w o distinct elds of inquiry which can be further con

,

si dere d in the serial relation of the s ciences occupied with the m .

I shall des cribe the world of w o r t ns as representing the i d eo l o g i ca l

problem By this I mean the general el d of i d ea l s The origin of
. .

the term and this conception of it are apparent without further com
ment That such a eld or problem exists is admitte d without ques
.

tion But I shall subdivide it into t w o subordinate types of problems

.

which I s h a ll call the Or t o l o g i ca l and the Tel eo l o g i ca l O n e refers .

to the ideals of truth and the other to those of action By the ortho .

logical problems I mean the questions of n o r m s or criteria of value s

in every eld of human interest By the teleological problems I mean .

t h e questions of m ea n s to ends which may be either ideally or actually

adopted for action In general they represent the eld of the arts as
.

distinct from the s ciences Perhaps it woul d be more correct to de

.

scribe them as referring to b o th ends and means , as these are corre

lated conceptions .

The world of c a us es I shall des cribe as the No n m en o l o g i ca l prob

lem I use the term to comprehend both e c i en t and m a t er i a l causes
.
,

and accordingly divide its subordinate problems into the E t i o l o g i ca l

and the On t o l o g i ca l The term is borrowed from the usage of Kant
.
,

as is apparent but has not exactly the same import and implications
, .

The special meaning of the term and the reason for the use of it are
found in the fact that we need some expression for the mind s habit of

seeking something that trans cends the phenomenon to be explained ,

something that is not gi v en i n it though implied oy it and that may ,

be of a different kind from that whose explanation or ground of o ccur

rence is to be determined Besides it is intended to express so m ething
.

more than l a w This will be apparent in the sequel of this work
.
.

It is not necessary in this last class of problems the n o u m en o l o gi ,

cal to assume that the eld is a legitimate one So far as the cl assi
, .

cation and general questions are conce rned w e may admit with Comte
that metaphysics or inquiri es transcending events and their laws is not
a legitimate subject of human curiosity But it is a fact that men have .

indulged speculation and inquiries which they have chosen to den o m i

nate as the world of causes or facts and realities other tha n mere phe
,

n o m en a All that the classication requires to recognize is that men

.

have been curious to ascerta in the existence of certain realities which

they have supposed to be supported by the evidence and meaning o f
 P RO B LE M S OF S C IE NCE A ND P H I L O S OP I I Y . 2
7

phenomena With this proviso as to the interpretation ad m issible

.

regarding the third class of problems I may proceed to the tabular

representation of the problems of s cience a n d philosophy .

C L A S S I F I CAT I O N OF THE S C I ENCE S , OR P R O B L EM S OF S C I ENCE AND

P HI LO S O PH Y .

Ph e n o m e n o l o gi cal . I d eo l o gi c al .

E r g o l o g ic a l . No m o l o i cal g . r
O th o l o gi
c al . T el e o l o gi ca l .

A nthrop lo gy o

T heology

Before entering into any exposition of this classication and in

order to prevent mis understanding at the very outset I must premise
the statement that no name in this table can have any other meaning
tha n that which its place in the syste m and the principle of division
predetermine for it The classication I repeat is not an attempt to
.
, ,

assign the actual meanin gs of the terms in any or all cases but the ,

meaning which they must or ought to have i n an i deal system This .

meaning may or may not co nform to a ccepte d usage in breadth and

depth All the concession that I have made to conceptions in existence
.

is fou nd in the place assigned to a name In this I have taken that .

meaning which is nearest the import that the term obtains from the
principle of division and as near a ctual usage as possible where that
,

is permissible with one or two exceptions as noti ceable in B i o l o gy

, ,

and P o l i t i cs Were it not for this proviso I should have to face the
.

preliminary O bjection that many of the s cien ces involved are not con
c e iv e d in their acceptable or accepted import which a classication is ,

usually suppose d to re cognize Generally we classify a ccording to a .

denition already adopted but here I have adopte d certain principles

,

that predetermine the problem s of human reection and with them the
conceptions of the s ciences in the system Hence I am in a measure .

endeavoring to determine what the denition of the sciences should be

in a rational system of thought without in any w ay prejudi cing the ,

interests that have developed denitions adjusted to practical considera

tions With this explanation the reader will understand that I intend
,
28 TH E P ROBLE M S OF PH IL OSOPH Y .

to admit tha t actual u sage does not always if ever entirely coincide , , ,

a n d may not need to coincide with the ideal conception of the prob ,

l ems which I am trying to dene I can but approximate the ideal .

w hen accepted usage is the measure and there will be a correspo n din g ,

variation when the ideal is the standard I shall consider objections .

l ater some of which arise from the omissi on of sciences which the
,

r eader might thin k ought to be spe cically i nclu ded in the system .

As has already been remarke d above the c lassication is partly ,

t erritorial and partly p roblematic The divisions represented by the .

phenomenological ideological and n o u m en o l o gical problems are also

, ,

t erritorial this being the same for all of them and are l o g i ca l in prin
, ,

c ip l e . That is the classication under them is a logical an d n o t a serial

, , _

o n e e xcept as the latter m a

, y be made to articulate with it It is the .

s ame with the subdivisions of each of these general cl a sses They .

a r e mainly problematic distinctions coinciding with a common territory

in general though marked by slight variations The parallel lines of

, .

C lassication represented by the letters from A to I i n d i ca t e an identity

o f te r ritory with a distinction of problems That is the scien ces in .

,

volved deal with the sa me phenomena but with a different object in

v iew . The vertical lines of classication , indicated by the letters from
J to N represent the s er i a l classication and involved a distinction of
,

t erritory with identity of problems a nd at the same time a co n n e c t i o n ,

O f both territory and problems To illustrate in both cases In the . .

parallel lines Anthropolo gy Psycholo gy Epistemology Pedagogy

, , , , ,

and P neumatology deal with the same general territory namely human , ,

p henomena varying in content slightly at least but representing totally

, ,

different problems In the vertical lines P hysics Chemistry P hysi

.
, , ,

olo gy etc represent different territory but the same problems for i n
,
.
,

qui r y The dotted lines indicate that there is no ac cepted name for
.

the eld or problem corresponding to it The hyphenate d line under .

Hylolo gy indi cates that this term may be or should be used to cover , ,

the eld occupied by Chemistry as well as P hysi cs I have omitted .

Phytolo gy or Botany between Chemistry and P hysiolo gy rep resenta

, ,

tive of the vegetable world because there are no equivalents of it in,

a ny of the other corresponding positions u nless we accept H o rt i cul ,

ture under the teleological If desired this desideratum c a n be sup

.

plied by the student .

I have omitted certain s ciences from the tab l e be cause they may be
considered as subdivisions of the general s ciences mentioned F or .

example it will be remarked that I have not inc l uded astro nomy in the
,

l ist The reason for this omission is the fa ct that we may treat this
.
 PR OBL E M S OF S C IE NC E A ND PH I L OSOP H Y
.
2
9

scie n ce either as a combination of mathematics and physics or as a

subdivisio n of physi cs in the wider sense whi ch latter it really is , ,

mathem ati cs entering into both We may thus subordinate , as is .

usual mechanics hydrostatics t h er m i c s optics acoustics etc to

, , , , , ,
.
,

physics , thus extending the logical divisions i nto the sciences clas sie d
generally in a serial form Similarly w e may deal with history .
,

economics and politics in the usual sense as subdivisions of Sociology

, , ,

as here conceived Sociology is often dened and discussed as if it

.

were a s cience coordinate with these but this grows more out of the ,

co o rdination of the men working in the subjects than it does out of the
actual p h en om en a which determine d the s cience Hi st or y econ om ics .
, ,

and politics are undoubtedly social sciences , or s ciences having to deal

with social phenomena , and hence the right to have a general science
comprehending them as departments of it I think the conceptio n .

which this table assigns to So ciology a ccomplishes this desired result ,

s o that the sciences seemingly excluded are tacitly admitted to the

system By enlarging the table and S pe cifying the subdivisions or de
.

p a rt m e n ts of the general sciences in each case w e could indicate more

denitely the place and relation of omitted s cien ces The same remarks .

apply to the omission of logic and ethics except that the latter i s ,

actually a dmitted in the three s eparate s ciences which usuall y repre sent
the content of one Ethics is often divide d into theoretical and p r a c
.

tical and Mill suggested the title of etho l o gy as preferable H e did

,
.

this because of the inuence of the positivistic view of things and w as

less inclined than the ordinary moralist to place as much stress on the
ideal istic view which sought to modify rather than to accept the exist
ing status of custom Mill was right ho w ever in desiring to have a
.
, ,

pla ce for ethology if only he had admitted the equal right to impera
,

t i v es or what I here call deontological functions in the direction of

,

conduct But all these considerations including the current divisions

.
,

of ethics into theoretical and practical make it feasible to recognize ,

three problems which are respectively called ethology or the o bser

, ,

vation and systematiz ation of human customs or actual conduct posi ,

tive morality ; deontology , or the s cience of the ideal or duty the ulti ,

m ate and imperative end of conduct and hence theoretical ethics , a nd ,

p ra tt o l o gy o r s cie n c e of the conduct or actions which are necessary

, ,

as means to attai n the ideal and hence pra cti cal ethics Logi c has been .

omitted because it may be a n d according to the conception taken in

,

this work of epistemology shoul d be treated as a branch of this

,

s cience I conceive epistemology to be the s cience of the validity of

.

knowledge including perceptual conceptual judicial and r at io ci n

, , , ,
3 0 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y
.

ative processes Lo gic is specically the science of ratio cination , the

.

l ast of the pro cesses named but deals with none of the others as a
,

part of its pro ble m Consequently logic is tacitly recognized in the

.

manner indicated .

The objections which will suggest themse l ves to the use of terms
in this classication are founded on the differences of conception
which various men have had rega r ding the de ni tion s of the s ciences .

F or instance , it mi ght fairly be objected by some that jur isprudenc e

i s not an orthological s cience at all , a science of wh a t ought ideally
to prevail in th e socia l an d legal relations betwee n men , but a s cience
of positive l aw It is true th a t the deniti on of thi s s cience h as
.

varied from the time of an tiquity to the present and h as been

affected by the exigencies of thought i n each a ge , as ha ve nearly
all the s ci ences Ulpian regarded it as the science of the just and
.

the unjust , tak ing p r acti cally the view here imp li ed in the c l as si
cat io n given
. Later wr iters like H olland re gard it as the s cience
of positive l aw , but are careful to say that it is n o t app l ied to
a ctual systems of l aw or to current system s of l aw , or to sugges
,

t ions fdr its amendment

but is abstracted from positive l aw
,
This .

modication of the general conception of it as the s cience of positive

l a w brings the idea so near to that of Ul p ian and so near to that whi ch
is implied by its position under orthological problems that even Ho l
land might be qu o ted as sustaining the general idea indi cated by the
present cl assication But even if it does not , I am not concerned
.

with the adjustment of the ter m to tha t conception which h as bee n

inuenced by the doctrine of evolution and indu ctive and empi r i ca l
methods as opposed to the apriori since I a m endeavorin g to indi ca te
,

a problem which li es more closely to the historical meanin g of the

term than the ideas of those w h o dis cuss a nothe r question under the
name of jurisprudence which they conceive as a sort of mixture of
legal histo ry and political questions which are bran ches of sociolo gy as
here conceived B ut l et me once denominate the problem involved by
.

t h e term in a tr adi tional meaning and the name may a fterward be

dropped in so far as investiga tion and dis cussion are conce r ned I .

n eed not question the existence of the problem involved in the s cie nc e

of positive la w, as I in fact recogn ize it as a part of so ciol o gy , but I

a l so recognize an idea l problem in law whi ch has to be the measure
of social effort towards justice and have chosen the term juris pru de nce
,

as suited to na me it when taken in one of its historica l meanin gs I

, .

may treat the term politics in the same way I have already indicated
.

that , in the accepte d usa ge of the term it represents a branch of so ci

,
 PR OBLE M S OF S C IE NCE A ND P H I L OS OPH Y
.
31

o l o gy , a n d hence I a m not here employing the term as s cientic ,

students use it to denomin a te their s cience Readers will re cognize

.

that , in practical life and usage politics is a term that has come to
denote the system of actions and instrumental activities w hi ch are
o ccupied with the enactment and administration of laws I ha ve pro .

visiona lly give n the term that import in the classication i n order to ,

get a particular problem recognized and then am quite willing to drop

,

the term from further consideration I think also that it is nearer to

.

the usage of the same term by scientic students than some of them
may be willing to admit s ince politi cal s cience is a n i n vestigation
,

of the practical instru m e nts a nd means to the very ends whi ch I have
dened in the matter .

The most radical objection that would naturally be ta ken to any

term is that of biology which has been classed with the metaphys
ical sciences ! I have recognized this in the question mark after it .

Biolo gy in general , I might almost say in universal usage is a sort of ,

comparative physiology and phytology combined and as it is studied

belongs to the e mpiri cal or nomolo gi cal sciences T h at is its .

proper import a n d I do not mean to displace it But I have availed .

myself of its etymological meaning and the present tendency to a dmit

that its investigations result in the assumption of an u nknown force
which is called life as distinct from physi co chemical forces on the
-

one hand and from psychical agencies on the other to indicate a meta ,

physi cal eld co ming again into recognition after it had been conned
to the physico chemical agencies for a long time This is all that I
-
.

would accomplish by the employment of the term in the classication

.
.

Though biology has pursued its studies hitherto in the nomological

eld it bids fair to land with a conclusio n in the metaphysical as it ,

certainly will if it de cides for a vital force of some kin d that is

neither physical nor psychical This places it above pneu matolo gy
.

and below hylology in so far as it has a metaphysical problem to

,

solve In the meantime it suffi ces to re cognize that current denitions

.

and conceptions of it are not dis credited by this provisional assumptio n

O f its etymological import to denominate a nal problem when the

term cannot have a simple place in the scheme on its o w n natural

denition as a comparative s cience combining t w o othe rs O bjections .

to other terms woul d be dealt with in the same w ay as the purpose ,

here is to assume ideal meanings for the terms and to leave cu rrent
'

u sage alone without invidious insinuations regarding them .

Consi dering then that I mean only to apply my terminology pro

, ,

visionally and for the purpose of dening t h e various problems of

32 TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH IL OSOPH Y
.

k nowledge and as predetermined by the principles of division indi

cat e d
,
I may well es cape the duty to express adverse opi n ions respect
ing prevailing ideas of what the sciences actually do in connectio n
with the various human interests t h a t have determined them In .

actual usage and investigations the conception of a s cience is largely

inuenced by the mental and moral interests of the inquirer Fo r .

example if a man is not interested in metaphysics and theolo gy but is

,

interested in the study of mental phenomena , he is likely to insist that

psycholo gy is an empirical science and excludes the problems of
the former elds from it and whether psychology ever co mes t o
,

have that na rrower meaning or not will depend wholly upon the extent
to which investigators into mental phenomena a ctually adopt that
limitation of their inquiries and lose interest in the other proble ms If .

he is interested in other matters than the mere determination of menta l

phenomena and their laws a nd if it is necessa ry to use these phenomena
for determining his conclusions he will introduce other problems tha n
the merely phenomenological into his considerations and naturally de
ne his s cience accordingly It is precisely the same with any othe r
.

science Nomologi cal orthological teleologi cal and no um en o l o gic al

.
, , ,

interests inevitably become intermingled in the treatment of phenomena

because human interests are stronger than the restrai n ts of abstract
and logical denition A man studying the properties of radium is
.

inevitably led into discussions of the theories of matter and so involve s

himself in metaphysical questions without troubling himself about t h e
denition of his s cience and would als o claim that it was no trans
gr ess i o n of his science to do so though he might not interest himself
,

in the metaphysics of mind at the same time A man studying t h e

.

re lations between mental and physical phenomena can hardly es c ape

the consideration of problems which woul d not logically belong t o
physical science as usually dened Consequently what we nd in
.

a ctual life where the territory of facts is the same and the problems
,

different is that the limits of any science are not exactly determined
,

except in ter m s of the interest of the inv e stigator V arious proble ms

.

are asso ciated and articulated with the same facts and only as a m an
deliberately excludes certain of them from the consid e ration of others

though it may be a reason for limiting a particular s cie n ce by its ex

e lusion does not eliminate the problem from existen ce or legitimate
,
 OF S C IE NC E A ND OP H Y
'

OBLE M S J
P H I L OS
'

PR 33
! .

consideration Hence I have endeavor ed in my classication to pre

.

sent the distinct problems o f human interest with as close approximation

to custo mary denition as the circumstances would allow while not ,

desiring to prejudice a ny actual denition of the s ciences that complex

speculative interests might wish to incorporate into the conception of
a subject Such a procedure minimizes the importance of denition
.

and controversies about the limits of a science while it accomplishes ,

in the recognition of the problems concerned , all t h a t both sides of

opposing s chools wish to ma intain .

These answers to obj ections explain the purpose of the cla ssi ca
tion to bring out and make clear the distinction of p r oblems even
though it is not possible in actual reection to keep the denition and
conception of the sciences as distinct as are the issues involved in in
v e s t i ga t i o n.But there are other objects served by the tabular review
adopted I wish to call attentio n to the circumstance that the table
.

repr esents from left to right the logical and properly chronologi cal
succession of problems Iir st we have the simple and unsyste matized
.

facts to catalogue In this , the er go lo gi cal question , we do no t pri

.

marily take account of anything but the fa ct of oc currence This .

must always be the rst act of s cience and none other is possible or
rational The next proper problem is to ascertain the la w which
.

governs phenomena obtained by experience Here we begin the prob .

le m of syste matization But at the same time the opportunity occurs

.

for the mind to inquire for values or causes before this process of de
t er m in in g laws has been undertaken and we have an illustration of the,

way in which unsystemati c ree ction arises and may originate c o nfu
sion in results But when indicating that the proper order of proced
.

ure is the determination of laws after as certaining the facts or phenom

ena I mean to describe s c i en t ic method not the a ctual order of eve r y ,

one s reection But the nomological problem shoul d follow and

.
,

s cientical ly does follow the er go l o gi c al and deter m ine s some sort of

, ,

order and unity in phenomena We may disregard all metaphysica l

.

questions of causes if we desire in so far as those of mere coexistence

, ,

and sequence of phenomena are con cerned since m any of the p r a c ,

tical matters of l ife may not be ne cessarily concerned with any othe r
result H o w far this is either possible or useful will be the subject of
.

later consideration But it is important to obse r ve that in this n omo

.

logical p roblem no process o f selection of phenomena which takes ,

place to the exclusion of others on the basis of values , can ever be

justied The classication of events is based upon that of distinction
.

in kind without regard to value while value will be the criterion in

,
34 TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH IL OSOPH Y .

ideological questions In the nomologica l problem we mus t treat all

.

facts alike as we are see k ing the uniformities of their oc currence and
,

not their distinctions of value alone Good and bad , normal and ab .

n ormal beautiful and ugly are not the rst qualities concerned in their
, ,

c lassication , and are explained or their laws determine d ,

without ,

r eference to ideal considerations But in the orthological prob l em we

.

h ave to deal with criteria of values Vali dity is here the fun damental
.

i ssue that is the choice of facts or phenomena to be estimated a bove

, ,

o r below others in practical conduct and adjustment Here utility .

,

n o t truth is the standard of i nterest and the line of demarcation be

,

tween phenomena will not coincide with that which determines the
nomological problem Then nally comes the teleologi cal questio n
.

of m ea n s to the ends o r t h o l o gi ca l ly determined The last p roblem is .

thus the realization of our ideals by a determination of the necessary

means to their accomplishment .

The p ositivist or phenomenalist would stop at this point and admit

no other subjects of investigation into his system F or certai n pur .

poses I a m willing to admit that it may not be necessary to go further

or inquire into anything else Of this again But the human mind
. .

has insisted on speculatin g about other real or imaginary problems , and

I have chose n to denominate them the n o um en o lo gi c a l as seeking other ,

facts than mere phenomena to satisfy its curiosity and s o I make the ,

conception convertible with the term metaphysics I repudiate Ka nt s .

use of the term meta physics as wholly mistak ing the problems which
had presented themselves to the huma n mind and as an endeavor or a ,

tendency if not an endeavor to confuse sane people by repres enting as

,

legitimate what the main thesis of his system had denied In the con .

c ep t io n of this cl a ssication I mean to use the term metaphysics and

causal or n o u m en o l o g ica l as convertible and as denoting the m eta p h e

nome mal or the transphenomenal There may be no such thing as a .

metaphenomenal reality but I have nothing to do with a fa ct of this

,

s ort w h en trying to describe the problems with which the human mind

h as actually occupied itself We may deny that the p roblem is l egit i

.

mate o r soluble but we can neither deny that it has existed nor use its
,

phraseology for legitimate conceptions after dis cre diting the ideas
for which it has always stood I shall therefore use the term meta
.

physics to dene a real or imaginary problem without implying its

legitimacy or illegitimacy , but a proble m of something more tha n mere
phenomena .

The special sciences or disciplines under this head are metrolo gy ,

hylolo gy pneumatology and theology I shoul d have to include
, , . .
 P R OBL E M S OF S C I E NCE A ND P H I L OS OPH Y
.
35

biology with the qualications already stated They represent the .

p roblem of the existence and nature of realities other than mere events ,

or phenomena as represented or r ep r esen t ible in sen s ory experience .

By metrology I mean the metaphysics of space and time such as their ,

n ature dimens ional quality a nd relation to other realities and as prin

, ,

c i l es of continuity and individuation determining all the applications

p ,

o f mathematics F ollowing this on the serial principle of Comte is

.

hylology representing the problem of the existence and nature of

,

matter and so including all such speculations as the atomic theo ry the ,

vortex atom theory the theory of ether the ancient the Cartesian a n d
, , ,

o ther theories of a p l en u m and the modern speculation base d upon

,

e lectrons and ions P neumatology represents the problem concerni n g

.

the existence and nature of the soul of a reality other than the brain
,

or organism to account for the facts of consciousness Theology seeks .

t o determine the existence and nature of God or an Absolute assumed ,

t o underlie and cont rol the whole universe of phenomenal or other

d ependent reality .

These speculative inquiries or sciences if we may call them such , ,

a r e given in the order of their dependence and certitude Space and .

t ime represent the rst data whose certitude seems not to be open to

q uestion of any kind , though their nature may be subject to discussion .

T hey represent the static universe as they involve no change or phe

,

n o m ena l modes In the next stage we have matter whose conception

.

i s the reex of the mind s consciousness of certain phenomena which

a r e supposed to have thi s center of reference as a subject of the world

o f change a substantive background which we agree to call matter

, .

T hese phenomena which suggest such a background are comprehended

i n certain changes or activities which require us to suppose something
o ther than space or time as their ground If there were n o phenomenal
.

c hanges whateve r we should have a universe altogether static which w e

could not distinguish from space and time But the existence of certain
.

f acts which cannot be ascribed to the stati c realities of spa ce and time ,

but which are yet conditioned by them at least in certain manifesta

,

t ions creates the necessity for s upposing a reality which we conceive

,

as of the substantive sort in addition to space and time Now t h e .

most important thing to obse r ve at this point is the limitation which

r ational and s cientic method places upon ree ction at every stage of

i ts procedure After we have accepted the existence of matter to ex

.

p lain a given kind of phenomenal change the l a w of parsimony

r equires us not to admit the existen ce o f any other type of reality just
,
,

a s space and ti m e permit none oth er unless dynami c facts demand it .

36 TH E PR OBL E M S OF PH IL O S OPH Y .

O ur proper s cientic duty is to explain all asso ciated phenomena by

the same cause unless there are suf cient reasons for assuming other
realities That is to say unless adequ ate reasons arise we must ex
.
, ,

plain the phenomena o f consciousness as functions of the brain or

organism just as w e do digestion and circulation be cause they are as
, ,

so c i at e d with it in the same way Hence pneu matology whatever.

,

place it may have in a classication of theories and problems will ,

ha ve no real place of a legitimate sort in the system of speculative

thought u nless we have evidence either th at c on s cious n ess is so different
from physi ca l events that it cannot be explained by the same cause or
that it exists independe n tly of the material organis m P neumatology .

is conditioned upon the existence of facts that require us to suppose

somethi ng besides matter to account for them But as long as con .

s c i o usn ess is associated with a physiological organis m both the ev i

dential and the explanatory problem will create the s a me relation be

tween hylology and pneumatology as that between physiology and
psychology The relation between pneumatology and theology will
.

be analogous The existence and nature of any other higher i nt elli

.

gence than man in the univers e espe cially according to the results of
,

evolution will depend r st , on the discovery of phenomena for which

, ,

matter cann ot supply an explanation and secondly upon the dis , , ,

co ver
y of a mental reality in man other than the brain to account for
his consciousness and as an indication that matter is not the only
,

reality in existence Both the immaterial and the spiritual mus t be

.

decided i n man as a condition of getting the spiritual beyond him ,

that is as a condition of proving the existence of God Whether any

, .

such result can be achieved it is not my purpose to assume or assert i n

a classication of problems I am only dening the issues as they must
.

be conceived in a s cientic system It places theolo gy as the last .

science in both its nature and certitude the last proble m whi ch man ,

has to solve if it be legitimate or soluble at all

,
.

It wi ll be noticed also that there is but one vertical column of

sciences under the division of ae tiological and ontological problems .

The reason for this is that I should have been forced otherwise to coin
terms for all instances except theolo gy and pneu matology The ter m .

pneumato l o gy exists but has no general current use for a spe cial prob
lem and even when it was used in s cholastic philosophy it did not
,

always if ever have exactl y the meaning which I as cribe to it here

, , ,

except in a general way Consequently I have been content with

.

single terms for t w o sets of problems which can be ideally dis t in

guish e d , as in all the other subdivisions namely the evidential and , ,
 P R OBLE M S OF S C IE NC E A ND P H I L OS OPH Y .
37

exp l an ato r y problem of the existen ce a n d the unifying problem of the

nature of certain realities Actual custo m h as embodied all dis cussion
.

o f the no u m en o l o gi ca l p r oblems both ae tiological an d o n tological as

,

den ed here u n der the gen eral hea d of philosophy or metaphysics

, ,

a nd no e ffort has been m a de to specially distinguish one p r oblem from

t h e other In fact , it mi ght even be s a id that the n o um en o l o gica l

.

problem is not con sciously admitted to be a n object of le gitimate or

possible quest especially among those w h o are devout worshippers of
,

Kant All that ca n be clai m ed i n so far as conscious theoretical r e

.
,

ect i o n is concerned , is that the n o um e no l o gi ca l problem is tacitly

assumed in many of the co n ceptions and speculations of human thought .

The main thi ng contended for is that the inquiry regarding the exist
ence and n ature of any re a lities or facts other tha n phenomena shall be
kept distin ct from the objects of the p h en o m e n o l o gi C a l and ideological
sciences I shall denominate this problem as that of metaphysics and
.

s h a ll intend by it to include all the questions involved in the separate

dis ciplines under the no u m en o lo gi cal division , assuming that ae t i o l o gi
C a l and ontological questions are as e cts of the general problem or
p ,

c oncern both the existence and the n ature of transpheno m enal reality .

These must be further explained .

The term noumenon or n o um en o lo gi cal is an unfo r tunate one
, , .

It suggest s a l l the di f culties , confusion obs c urities and dubious ,

problems of Kant s Ding an sich whi ch was

unknow n and

unknowable though it was s trangely asserte d to exist I do n o t
, .

mean here to import into the problem whi c h I have indicated the con
c ep ti o n s which dene d the term for Kant If I had to do this I should
.

r epudiate the term altogether as only calculate d to produce intellectua l

a narchy . But I do wish to recognize that Kant s distinctio n be

tween noumena and phenomena , if rightly dened and qualied and ,

when cleared of the co nfu sion cr eated by so much irresponsible an d

d ogmatic talk about t h e unkn owable h a s a n import ant function for
,

h uman reection Hence I use the term noumeno n here to denote
.

indifferently the cause and the ground o r s ubject of an event or phenom

e non . I might even rely upon one side of Kant s o w n system to sup

port this r eco gn iz e d use of the ter m , as his conception of the action of
-

s omething upon the subject in s ense durch K r aft e and not the
, ,

s ensation itself a s well as his whole doctrine of s ubstance

,
distinctly ,

a ssumes the idea here adva n ced and it represents a transphenomenal

,

fact I mean that the distinctio n between ae tiological and ontological

.

s hall be convertible with that between s u i c i e nt reaso n or e f cient

c aus e and that represe nte d b

y the principle of identity and difference
38 TH E PR OBL E M S OF PH IL OS OP H Y .

which if we like we may denominate the material cause C o n

, ,
.

sequently I shall mean by n oumenon or reality any fact whatso eve r

which trans cends events or phenomena that may be the subject of in
v es t i g at i o n a n d hence explanation by a center of reference commonly ex

pressed in a term for a substance or subject of attributes Wheneve r .

we recognize an event a ctivity , change or phenomenon , which we

, ,

may conceive as a function of s omething or if you like as an att r i , , ,

bute of a sta tic or dynami c s omething w e adopt some term to indicat e

,

the existence of that center of reference whi ch we make in som e ,

sense of the te r m to be other than the fact so referred F or example

,
.
,

if we dis cover certain events in conne ction with the beha vior of t h e
nitrogen ob t ained from the air and d ifferent from the qualities of nitro
gen obtained from organic compounds we suspect the existen ce of a
n ew substance and investigation shows that this n e w subject exists .

The name a r g o n is adopted to express it This is n o t conceived as a .

mere phenomenon because if it were there woul d be no reas on f o r

, , ,

detaching it from n itrogen But the fact that certain phenomena de

.

mand a subject or substance to which they belong determines in th i s ,

isolation of the n ew phenomena , that we shall admit the existence of a

n ew substance . It is the same with ab solutely eve r y substa ntive con
cept we have They are all centers of reference for various phenom
.

ena or attributes which do not exist alone This is the process by .

which the very conception of matter has been formed We obse r ve .

certain events and uniformities of activity , or attributes static o r ,

dynamic and refer the m to a subject or substance which we choose t o

,

call matter . It is n o t the phenomenon o r phenomena but t h e ,

ground of it or of them Whether we have the right to suppose any

.

s uch thing is n o t t h e question , but whether we actually do it or not .

I am simply indicating the facts which give rise to certai n modes o f

thought and spe culation and showing that they apply equa l ly in what

is called physical s cience as in what passes for metaphysics I .

regard it as a metaphysi cal proce du re wherever it occurs Hence by .

n o u m en o l o g i ca l inquiries I mean s imply the problem of ascertainin

g
whether there is anything beyond the event or phenomenon which we
observe in experience , and this reality other than the event will be
assumed or accepted o n every o ccasion on which the eviden ce goes t o
show either that the fact does not explain i ts elf o r that existin g
assumed realities will not expl ain it , as i n the cases of argon , radium ,

etc Such realities are simply the permanent cente rs of reference

.

subjects or substances whi ch hav e these events or a ctivities as thei r

modes of behavior functions attributes prope rties etc The n o u
, , , , .
 PR OBLE M S OF S C IE NCE A ND PH I L O S OPH Y .
39

the only question of deter mining

m en o l o gi cal problem , therefore , is
evi de ntially whether any such thing or things exist besides the events
to be a ccounted for Besides all substantive realities of a specic sort
.
,

we have in speculative philosophy v arious representatives of this proc

ess in the general term matter and the more specic terms ether , ,
soul God The recent do ctrine of
energy as a substa n ce
,
.

shows the same inevitable tendency .

After the mind determines upon the fact that there is something
besides the mere events or phenomena of observation if there be more ,

than one reality supposed it seeks to ascertain their n ature in terms

,

of comparison with each other This is what I have called the onto .

'

logical problem using that term in one of its s cholastic meanings to

,

denote what may be called a material cause of things as distinct
from the ef cient active or creative cause If there be but one kind
, .

of noumena] reality , that is if absolute monis m be the accepted do c

,

trine the onto l ogical and aetiological problems will p ractically coincide
, .

In that case the only criterion of what a thing is or what its ,

nature is would be what it d o es that is its modes of action or

, , ,

properties In the last analysis as I mean to show later the nature

.
, ,

of anything and everything must be determined in this w a y But in a .

worl d of multiplicity whether phenomenal or noumenal comparison

, ,

of realities is possible while in a purely monisti c system this cannot

,

be institut ed for determining an ontological unity and diversity not

already assumed in the primary reality But if pluralism be assumed .

the q uestion o f identities and differences arises and the ontologi cal
problem will be to nd such unity as is possible by redu cing the
number of differential realities as far as p ossible All classication by .

genus and species e ffects this In the physical s ciences at present

.
, ,

this process has redu ce d the nu mber of compoun d or complex realities

to a more or less denite nu mber and the number of elements to ,

seventy or more so far as k nown The mt i o l o gi ca l p roblem may not

'

.
,

take us beyond a chaos inasmu ch as it requires only the postulation

,

of a cause for each event and unless there is some way of unifying the
system by the principle of identity in some form the world will remain ,

a chaos O ntological comparison reducing the number of kinds to

.
,

the s mallest possible gives us in a pluralisti c system the greatest pos

, ,

sible unity with the least possible diversity In the last stage of .

inquiry w e may nd tha t even the elements or atoms are but one in
kind as a recent doctrine of the atoms maintains but even with this
, ,

pluralis m of some kind prevails and only monis m of the most abso ,

lute type can escape making the princip le of identity and difference
40 TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH IL OSOPH Y .

coordinate with tha t of causality But until that condition of fa ct is

.

reached the ontological and mt i o l o gi ca l problems will remain separate ,

and it will always be required of us that we rst prove the existence

of noumenal reality and then investigate its nature in relation to
other noumenal realities Whether it is legitimate to hunt for or assert
.

the existence of anything but phenomena and their laws I am not main
taining but only classifying t h e r eectiv e ways of thinking in all elds
,

of investigation whatsoever They are not peculiar to what is styled

.
,

often with contempt , metaphysics but are equally C haracteri stic of ,

absolutely all physical s ciences when they speak and think of atomic
or ot her realiti es which th ey assume t o be t h e proximate or ultimate
,

cente r of r eference for phenomena functions attributes or prop , , ,

e t ties etc If this procedure is legitimate in the physical s ciences

,
.

it is also legitimate in w h a t are called the metaphysical sciences and if ,

it is not so in the latter it will not be so in the former F a l s us i n u n o .

f a l s a s i n o m n i bu s Contemptuous banishment of it in one eld must

.

lead to it in the other , and its admission in one qualies it for r ec o gni
tion in the other .

The importance of this classication of problems lies less in the

mere delimitation of problems as su ch than it does in the manner in
which it prepares the way for pacifying the animosities of certain tra
dit i o n al con troversies The con ict between
. metaphysics and
science in modern times has ha rdly been less heated than the old
one between theology and s cien ce Both have been encouraged by the
.

limitation of knowledge to phenomena O ne school has in .

sisted that the most important truths are associated with the det e r m i
n ation o f ultimate realities and the other refused to recognize the value
,

of any such truths because it maintained that such realities could not
be k nown if they existed But even if they were in any way know
.

able the positive or phenomenal s chool viewing the discus s ions of ,

scholasticism as interminable and fruitless found no way to keep clear of ,

such controversies but to dis credit them and to emphasize the value of
studying facts T h e assumed or declared supremacy of the inductive
.

method as against the deductive which w a s supposed to pre v ail in the

,

barren disputes of s cholasticism encouraged suspense of judgment ,

in regard to the nature of things until their actu a l behavio r was
known and this method required at least the provisional s usp en
,

sion of metaphysical reection Contentment with the study of .

phenomena alone inevitably led to the neglect of all the meta

physi cal speculations of the period against which the new movement
was a protest The co n sequence was that men more and more became
.
 P R OBL E M S OF S C I E NC E A ND P H I L OS OPH Y

sa tised with the investigatio n of phenomenological and ideo l ogical

problems and the no um en o lo gic a l or metaphysical were relegated
to the li m bo of fancy and drea m s It w as found that so m e sort of .

progress w as possible by aba n doning inter m inable discussions about

the nature of things and theological quiddities and devoting e ffort ,

to the patient study of facts Knowledge was thereby increase d and

.

the conditions of life improved The human mind naturally inclined .

toward the methods th at actually achieve d some conquest over nature

and mystery Hence the whole tendency has been toward the pri
.

mary i m p o rtance o f kn owing what phenomena are a n d their la ws w hi le

all other alleged problems were discarded No w it is a fact that many .

of the a ffai rs of life are not affected by metaphysical conclusions

one w a y or the other The interests of agriculture of industrial man
.
,

ufa ct ur e of trade of architecture are not affe cted by the questio n

, , ,

whether Berkeley or Lucretius is right about the existence or nature

of matter Whe n I have to so w my crops for bread what do I care
.

whether matter shall be resolved into the manifestations of spirit or

not The relation betwee n my foo d and the s ustenance of life is the
.

same on any conceptio n of matter whether it be resolvable or not ,

into vortex atoms of ether None of the speculations of philosophers

.

in any w ay a ffect the economic or material affairs of huma n life as

conditions of its support The discovery of this fact and the necessity
.

of respecting it for the various needs of civilization after the brea k up ,

of scholasti cism forced mankind to pay attentio n to the actual facts

,

and laws of thi ngs to meet the practical wants of the age The decline .

of metaphysics w a s inevitable as it could lay claim to no value but ,

a spiritual whate ver that meant and the progress of s cience wa s a c

, ,

companied by su ch a tendency toward materialis m that a spiritual

Vie w of the world has become well nigh impossible except to those -

who like to fool themselves by quibbles about matter and vague

misty speech about spirit in the impenetrable and foggy wilderness of
Kanto H egelianism In so far as the phenomenalist had the ordina r y
-
.

pra ctical affairs of life in mind the adjustment of human events to ,

actual facts he has bee n right Al l our relations to the external world ,
,
.

our objective morality or the attainment of the interests which are de

termi ned by adjustment to natural forces are realized by conform ,

ity to facts and not to theories about these facts It matters not what .

gravitation is whether it is a pushing or a pulling inuence , a material

,

or an i m m aterial force my behavior toward the conditions supposed

,

to be affected by it must be the same assuming that I mean to pre ,

s erve m y life at all I must have a regard to the seasons and thei r
.
42 TH E PR OBL E M S OF P H I L O S O P II Y
.

order if I am to protect myself against the risks of their changes , and

this without regard to the question whether the cos mic order is eithe r
proximately or ultimately a spiritual one The actual phenomena of .

experience and their laws the uniformities or variations of their coex

,

ist e n c e and sequence are the rst considerations which man has t o
,

respe ct in the strugg l e for existence and philosophi c theories have

,

either to assume a position of minor importance or be disregarded

altogether If m a n had a more universal tendency to suicide cosmi c
.
,

and other theories supposed to determine the value of life and t h e

duty to preserve it might have more importance as well as power t o
a ffect conduct But the instinct of self prese r vation is so stron g

.
-

usually that the problem is not to supply adequate motives for self
protection and ob e dience to natural appetites but to so regulate thes e ,

instincts and their exercise that the end of self preservation is not sur -

r e t i t i o u sl
p y defeated A k nowledge of facts is the main thing wante d
.

in the regulation of this condition of affairs It is not theories of a .

transcendental world that are necessary for the sustenance of t h e

life and conduct which are supposedly necessary to make philosophi c
belief possible and correct but it is a knowledge of the actual beha vior
,

of the physical world and the relation of this behavior to my welfare

as a physical being I shall not deny a place in the totality of huma n
.

development to p h il O S Op h i c reection and metaphysical theories but ,

they are not the primary considerations in the regulation of life an d

conduct Certain conditions have rst to be satised in order to make
.

such theories possible and e ect iv e and these conditions are a knowl
,

edge o f actual facts of phenomena and their laws i n order to deter

, ,

mine the situation to which my actions must be adjusted that is in , ,

order that from the uniformities of coexistence and sequence I may see
, ,

before and after and thread the labyrinthian path of natu re without
risk of being swallowed up in its abysses or of coni ct with surround
ing forces in the narrow course which I have to follo w So far t h e .

positivist and phenomenalist are right The primary duty of man is t e

.

spect for facts nearest him and those fa cts whose certitude is easiest o f
establishment H e begins his knowledge with experience of facts or phe
.

n o m e n a and he cannot rationally philosophize u ntil he o bse r ves these .

Much of his conduct must be decide d upo n both before he is able to p hil
o s0 h iz e and without regard to it Besides whatever philosophy h e
p .

adopts it will depend upon his previous knowledge of wh a t the phe

momena and laws of nature are as all rational philosophy or meta
,

physics must be an explanation of facts or be justly accused of bein g ,

sheer invention .
 P R OBLE M S OF S C IE NCE A ND P H IL O S OPH Y
.
43

What positivis m or phenomenalism has stood for , whatever t h e

mistakes and errors that may be attributable to it , is primary respect
for facts a nd sympathy with the intellectual movement initiated by in
du ct iv e and scient ic method The genius of this tendency was soon
.

realized and its antagonism to s cholastic spe culation was so apparent

that as in all revolutionary i m pulses , the a ctual work of previou s
,

periods wa s neglected in favor of the prophetic promises of a n ew

world of i nterest and hope Consequently in e radicating the false
.

method of speculative philosophy the a p r i o r i assu mptions and

,

reasoning of scholasti c thought from which even Kant did not wholly
,

free hims elf , the human mind t ook the empiri cal tack toward an
excl usive r ega r d f o r p h en o m en a whi c h seemed to be its only hope of
'

liberation from the shackles of dogmatism The n ew movement .

,

however , simply es co n ce d itself comfortably i n another dogmatis m

about the limitations of knowledge to phenomena and in its talk ,

about experience ma de no provision for the elasticity and ever ex -

tending area of these boundaries While it might be true enough that

.

certain truths were not demonstrable by known facts or phenomena ,

there is nothing in the conception of facts or phenomena or the ,

idea and limits of experience to prevent the dis covery of data that
,

may prove wh a t one age or stage of reection had no rational grounds

to believe Hence the s cholastic dogma of unlimited knowledge was
.

simply met by another dogma about its limits and these limits involve d,

the assumption that no one could know anything more than the indi
v idua l s who were so condent about pheno menalism But there are .

interests and instincts in human nature which extend far beyond the
mere needs of adjustment to facts or self preservation Intellectual-
.

curiosity as to the explanation of phenomena is an instinct quite as

strong as any desire to live at least in some individuals We need not
, .

go farther than the atomic theory or the vortex atom theory of matter
to see this and if we are to indulge our intellectual appetencies at all
, ,

we are not likely to limit them to the narrow connes to whi ch Comte
and his school if logically consistent must reduce them O ur intel
, , .

lects interest themselves in other pursuits than those of making bread

or es caping death in the struggle for existence and t h e phe nomenalist ,

may as well re cognize this What he ought to have seen was n o t

.
,

that all metaphysics was wrong but that the p revailing systems were
,

wrong in their method and then to have based the value of his own
,

point of view on its inductive method rather than on the limitation of

knowledge to phenomena a term quite as equivo cal as any other
,

in philosophy and which can be used as well as any other to call back
44 TH E P R OBLE M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y
.

into being the very philosophies w hi ch it had been used to dispe l It .

was a reform of meth od that was neede d as much as t h a t of materia l

results , and it would have conduced to l ess error and more progress
away from co ntroversy if that tack had been taken i ns tead of inviting
su ch a fruit l ess dis cussion as has followed in the wake of the Kantian
movement , a kind of phenome na lis m that ca rries o n a sort of hypo
critical irtation with every imaginable for m of dogmatis m I hope , .

therefore , that the above classication of probl ems has e nab l ed me to

take a just vie w of both phenomenalis m an d tr ansp h eno m ena lism , if I
may s o cal l the study of metaphysics , admitti n g l egitima te c lai ms to
both while I assign to phenomenolo gi c a l prob l ems the primar y im
portan ce as conditions of sane metaphysi cs an d as evi dence tha t
scienti c method is the only one which I sha ll r e c ogniz e as qua l i
e d to determine t r uth of any kind .Method of investigation is the
rs t reform needed in p hi los ophy and it would have o cca sio ned as much
advance in tha t eld as in s cien ce if it h a d been dema n ded i nstea d o f
,
'

r idi cu ling all metaphysi cal reecti on .

T w o thin gs wi l l n o w be apparent in regard to the results of this

classication of the problems of s cience and phi l osophy The rst is.

tha t it recognizes all that the empiricist and pheno m ena l ist can
right ly claim in the nature of k nowledge and method of inqui r y The .

se cond is that the classication denes the conceptio ns of epistem ol ogy

a n d metaphysi cs i n the way that this work means to treat them .

Epistemolo gy is conceived as a science of vali dity in the processes of

knowledge and not a system of philosophy nor a prop aedeutic of
,

phil o sophy or metaphysics any more than it is of physiolo gy , psy

c h o lo
gy , socio l ogy , physics or chemistry It is usual l y treated as if
.

a metaphysics were not possible u ntil one ha d formed a theory of

knowledge , but so far from the theory of knowledge bein g an
absolutely necessar y condition of a metaphysics I sha ll treat it onl y as
,

a cl arifying help in such a result important to complete , not t o condi

,

tion all philosophy We cannot refuse some conditioning inuence on

.

other thou ght to the investigations which aim to determine the criteria
of truth in the processes which have to be assumed and used i n a ll l n
quiry , but wha t I mainta in is that it does not specia l ly condition meta
physics more than it does all other forms of investigation and reection .

It is in fact not the condition of any of the dis cipl ines , bein g itsel f
conditio ned by the same general as s umptions and principl es that go v
ern all the s ciences Modern philosophers however , since Ka nt have
.
,

a habit of conditionin g everything on the results of episte mo l o gy a nd

hence of demandin g that every system of metaphysics predetermi nes its
 PR OBLE MS OF S C I E NCE A ND P H I L O S OP H Y .
45

rights by the inquiries which are instituted to ascertain the nature and

limits of kno wledge begging the question all the while in their
,

confusio n of the object with the process of investigation It starts .

with scepticis m i n regard to systems of philosophy and either forgets

to apply this m ethod to epistemology or fails to see that unles s it
abandons this method it can obtain no results in its o w n eld If the .

mind is not competent to investigate metaphysical problems until it h as

obtained a theory of knowledge it is not competent to form a theory
of knowledg e , while trust in its faculties in episte m ology only jus
t i es the employment of the same powers in metaphysics or any other

science without regard to the conditioning relations of the theory of

knowledge We cannot distrust the mind in its metaphysical func
.

tions and implicitly accept its judgments in epistemology The same .

functions are involve d in both , a fact indubitably proved by the uni

versal tendency since Kant to ma k e episte m olo gy more or less conver
tible with metaphysics or when not this , to regard it as p r e det e r
,

mining the view whic h we take of things But if w e are competent .

to investigate knowledge we are also competent to investigate

metaphysics and whatever limits are assigned to knowledge in the
,

latter must be admitte d in the former and if we start with scepticis m

,

we must end with it Consequently the real condition of philosophy

.

is the same in both elds It is not the dependence of metaphysi cs

.

upon the determination of the limitations of knowledge but the ,

application of scientic and critical methods to both It is s cientic .

method not the theo ry of knowledge that conditions truth about

,

things I therefore regard epistemology as simply one of the s c ie nces

.

co o rdinate with the others and metaphysics if allowable at all as

, , ,

simply the most fundamental of all investigations of phenomena .

But n o w a most importa nt fact comes to view which I have pur

p o se ly avoided thus far It is the relation bet ween the metaphysica l

.

sciences and the phenomenological The tabular representation indi

.

cates by implication at least that they are the last in time in the proc
, ,

ess of inquiry This is not necessarily the case The chief reas on
. .

for placing them in the last column , as if all other problems had rst
to be solved was consideration for positivism and the doubts that might
,

be entertained as to the value or even possibility of metaphysics of any

kind But the fact is that conclusions in metaphysics are so closely
.

a ssociated with n omo l ogical results that temporally we may not be

able to distinguish causes from laws The same conditions and
.

c riteria that determine one often deter m ine the other at the same time .

B esides we have often assumed the n ature of the reality at the basis of
46 TH E P R OB L E IP
IS O F P II I L OS OP H Y .

phenomena before we investigate their laws The application of the .

principle of causality is so natural and inevitable from the earliest

period of conscious reection that its results are often anterior to the
question of laws Hence we often have a system always I might say
. , ,

before we begin the nomological study of phenomena Then , a s I .

have just said when this investigation has begun the close connection
,

between the t w o problems in respect to the method of determining

r esults is such that the same conditions often decide o n e of the prob

l ems that decide the other That is , in determining the laws of phe
.

momena we at the same time determine their causes The uniformity .

o f coexistence and sequence is in fact a criterion of what the cause

, ,

i s when the assumption of any reality other than phenomena is once

made so that only where we suspend judgment as to the causal agent
,

a n d investigate the uniformity of events in the abstract do we distin

guish evidentially or otherwise between the nomological and the a tio

logical problem This is in the critical and systematic procedure of
.

investigation where the cause is less evident than the fa ct and law of
phenomena But quite as often the evidential solution of the one is
.

or indicates the solutio n of the other H ence in actual method the

.

phenomenological and the n o um en o l o gica l problems may go togeth er ,

though this is not necessarily and in all instances the case It depends .

wholly upon the particular metaphysical problem concerned O ne .

s tage of it may be assumed before the nomological investigation be g ins

and another may be consequent upon its solution or coexistent with it .

It may be necessary to dene and explain a little more clearly cer

tain aspects of the n o um en o lo gic al problem which I have not men
t io n e d and which will serve to justify the recognition of it as an object
,

of rational interest It will be observed that I have divided it into the

.

ae tiological and ontological questions or those of ef cient and material

,

causation the term no u m e n o lo gi ca l standing for ca u s e in general

, .

This implies that I here use the term cause as a genus for two types
of explanatory reality the ae t io genet ic and the ontogenetic the origina
, ,

tive and constitutive The signicance o f this will appear when we

.

remark the way in which all metaphysical beliefs arise .

F acts or phenomena suggest something to whi ch they are

related It might be better to say that they necessitate it but it
.
,

will serve all purposes not to state it any more strongly than sug

gestion .Moreover i n so far as our problem is concerned I do not
, ,

care h OW this process comes about or whether it is le gi timate or n o t .

The preliminary step to the consideration of validity is the fact that

we do it We inva ri ably refer
.
phenomena to their causes o r
 PR OBL E M S OF S C I E N CE A ND P H I L OS OP H Y
.
47

grounds and t h e a ct i nvolves certain consequences The rst a n c . .

simplest reference which we give to any phenomeno n is to its

cause in some sense of that term The most primary conception .

o f this cause is that of a t /zi ng and the phenomenon is its prop

ert
y
. This is a conception of cause whi ch has prior value and
p robably has prior existence to that of antecedent in a series of events .

We nally name the thing a subject or substance and the properties ,

its attributes the ter m s property
,
quality and attribute being
, ,

interconvertible The reason for supposing a subject or substance of

.

any kind is simply the fact that we nd ourselves forced in some way
to account for phenomena or events , as n o t unsupported altogether
or as facts spontaneously originating In the later development of .

intellige n ce we nd them existing in a double relation The rst is in .

r elation to a ground or subject of which they are the action or function ,

property attribute etc , and the se cond is in relation to an antecedent

, ,
.

or originative or ei c ien t cause whi ch makes them o ccur without

necessarily determining their nature this latter fact being determined
,

by the subject i n which they occur But the rst reference which the
.

causal judgment makes is to a ground or subject Events are not sup .

posed to be groundless or in cidents havi n g no reality of whi ch they

can be modes o f a ction F or this reason good or bad we insist that
.
, ,

they ba ng upon something or attach to something of which t hey are

,

fu nctions To illustrate take a ball in motion The motion is a mode

.
,
.

of a ction and cannot occur apart from the thing which we call the
subject even though we may say that it is transmissible from subject
,

to s ubject It is a condition of the ball that is an alternative to another

.

condition called rest the ball being the thing that is capable of being
,

in either condition The motion or rest is a relative fact that has no

.

meaning or possibility apart from the thing to which it is rel ated or of

which it is a condition Neither the motion nor the rest can exist
.

unless it is a condition of something in motion or rest The necessity .

of this w ay of thinking is apparent in the hypothesis of the existence

of ether The ether was posited to ac count for the trans mission of light
. .

If motion ca n subsist apart from a subject , there is no reason for sup

posing the existence o f an ethereal medium for the trans mission of
light from the sun to the earth If it coul d possibly be subjectless it
.

would trans mit itself from point to point without a medium The .

philosopher therefore who would insist upon the independent exist

, ,

ence of motion would remove the basis of all physical s cience as ,

concerned with realities other than phenomenal c oexistences and
sequences It will be the same with all the properties of reality which
.
 TH E PR OBL E M S OF P H IL O S OPH Y .

are treated as modes o f motion in physi cal science and whi ch are ,

spo k en of as trans missible It is all the more true of the int r a ns m is

.

sible properties or functions of reality T hey are also fa cts that imply
.

a reality other than themselves , and so far as va lidity is concerned it

matters not whether we call the process of referen ce involved em

p i r i ca l or a priori No man es capes the problem of validity by
.

pretension of empiricism nor does the bare fa ct of n ativity establish

this validity though it does imply inexpugnability and the necessity of
,

conformity to its demands If that is tantamount to validity the fact

.

will have to be accepted But I am at present concerned with the fact

.

that the process is a universal one in the exercise of human intelligence

and on that account requires adjustment to it .

Let me put the process again in another way Facts events .

, ,

actions properties
,
phenomena belong to s omething a n d thi s
, ,

reference is the n o um en o l o gi ca l process in its r st stage T h e phe .

n o m en o n is trans cended in nding that t o w hich it belongs as a func

tion or attribute the subject being what I may call the reex of the
,

conception that what we exp erience is

phenomenal and so

relative That is
.
,
noumena and phenomena are relative or
correlative terms .Neither is legitimate without the other To .

know
one is to know the other We cannot conceive any fact .

as a phenomenon without implying the existence of the no u m e

non . We may go o n and ask what this noumenon i s and we ,

may nd that it is either another phenomenon or we may nd tha t

it is not phenomen a l at all It is once and always the implicate of
.

our dis covery that the given is not self explicable O n any meaning -
.

of the term this is the case whether it is conceived as an event or
,

as an appearance An event is a fact begi n ni ng in time and imp li es

.

an antecedent of some sort unless both scien ce and m etaphysi cs ar e to

,

be rejected An appearance is the presentation of some reality
.
,

unless it is an illusion and even thi s has no meaning u nless a r e al ity

,

is granted for determining its nature as an illusion But this aside .

,

the appearance is the presentation of something , whether it is of the

nature apparent or not and we do not escape metaphysical implica
,

tions by calling any thing a mere phenomenon If it were not a .

relative term the case might be otherwise But it denotes either a .

related or an unrelated fact If it denotes a related fact it implies a

.
,

noumenon if it denotes an unrelated fact it is itself the n o u m e ,

non so that we must either draw no distinction between the terms
,

or w e must g ant that nou menon is just as legiti m ate a term as
r

phenomenon , and that one is just as much known as the
 P R OBLE M S OF S C IE NCE A ND P H IL O S OPH Y
.
49

othe r What is absurd in the case is to say that one is

. nu

k n ow n a n d then to limit this known by that which is nothing for

kno wledge and to exclude the correlate from that which is avow
e d ly relative

Accepting , then as both necessary and as the rst stage of r eec

,

tion that a noumenon or subject is required by w h a t we regard as

phenomena functions , properties etc no matter whether it is
, ,
.
,

more than the subject of con s ciousness or not , w e have satised t h e

demand for a cause of some kind At the outset we do not require .

to distinguish in the case but only to see that the admission of phe
,

n o m en a involves a subje ct o r gr oun d No w if t her e is only o n e

cause subject substance or noumenon in the universe , as with
, , ,

the E leatics an d Spinoza all multiplicity is phenomena l or moda l
,
.

We should have to explain every event in that case precisely as Spin

oza did namely as a mode of action by the Abso lute The ef cient
, ,
.

cause would be t h e absolute and there would either be no o ccasion for

assuming a material cause or such a cause would be pra ctically co n
vertible with the ef cient and express the nature of the action without
implying either identity or diff eren ce of any kind as compared with
the s ubject though investigation might nd the modes one or the other
,

in a greater or less degree In this monistic view we would always

.

have to use the term cause to denote a subject in action and not as
an ante cedent e ve nt n o r an antecedent of any kind except as we nd
, ,

the s ubje ct to antecede certain of its acts or functions There might .

even be no change or progress in suc h a reality The universe .

might be either dead and inactive in a stati c condition pure and sim
,

ple or in a cours e of actions that involved no change of direction or

,

form from the origi nal state In this case the subject would be the
.

l o g i ca l prius of its attributes or states But this reality might be the .

center of in cessant or even only occasional change and evolution the

, , ,

agent of events , functions and actions that are free from both a static
,

and a dynamic inertia if we may use this phrase In this case the
, .

subject woul d have to be regarded as the t emp o r a l prius of all changes

or variations from any given static or dynamic condition In this way .
,

cause wou ld acqui r e a te mpor al signi cance as implying in some

sense an ante cedent to that which it explained .

But for various reasons the existence of m ultiplicity of any kind

g ives rise to the conviction that there is a corres ponding multiplicity
of centers of reference , of subjects noumena substances whether we
, , ,

choose to regard them as ultimate or not The main fact of difference .

i n t h e modes of the real is the cause of this tenden c y though reection ,

50 TH E P R O B L E /V
IS OF PH IL OSOPH Y .

may show that difference of moda l action or qualities is quite com

patible with unity or singleness of subject But various needs of .

thought and action lead us to suppose a multiplicity of realities for the

phenomena which w e observe instead of remaining content with ,

the uno monistic point of view which the Eleatic and Spinozistic sys
-

tems adopt The simple reason for this is that no proposition so ab

.

stract as that which describes the nature of things monistically can

easily if ever be applied to the multitudinous details of existence with
, ,

any more intelligibility than that of spe cial P rovidence As a cou se .

que nc e w e have various kinds of substance which we treat as either

simple or co mpl ex If w e go to the physical sciences w e have the
.

atoms and elements for our illustration of simple substan ces They .

represent a pluralistic point of view even if inquiry proves them modi ,

ca t i o n s of some single ultimate reality The terms matte r and ether .

are al so more general names for substances that represent a plurality

of some kind In the eld of complex subjects we have the many

substantive terms whi ch classify the manifold in di viduals of the inor

gamic the vegetable and the animal kingdoms
, ,
Men trees .
, ,
stones water etc are illustrations and each individual under
, .
, ,

these classes will represent the same conception carried out to the
i n m a sp e c i es I am not maintaining that each center of reference
.

or subject is an absolute of any sort So far as the p resent problem is .

concerned they may or may not be this It is merely a fact of ex .

p er i en ce that complex realities are phenomenal transient or dis , ,

soluble into elements more permanent than themselves , and not a

necessity of complexity as the doctrine of inertia sho ws We may
, .

require from the facts of change to reduce all complex substances to

simple forms and these in turn to one ultimate reality which we choose
to call the o n e absolute but I am not concerned with the question
,

whether this shall or shall not be done All that I require to recog .

nize is the invariable fact that men have admitted the existence of cer
tain m ultiple centers of reference or subjects for phenomena and , ,

we may or may not regard them according as fa cts determine as more

, ,

than relatively permanent centers of reference to appropriate a c o n ,

c e p t i o n of Lotze as descriptive of them Whether they are or are not .

'

more t h an r el a t iv e ly permanent is a problem subsequent to the question

of their existe n ce and of the fact that we uniformly conceive them .

I am quite willing to grant that there may be circumstan ces under

which it may be a duty to reduce all multiplicity of centers of refer
ence to one ultimate and absolute source but if so it will be for the , ,

reason that other facts require it than the simple rules which induce
 PR OBLE M S OF S C I E IVC E A ND P H I L O S OPH Y
.
51

us to set up the relatively perma n en t ce nte rs whi c h are most clo sely -

c onne cted with common experience .

But it is this fa ct that we postulate or accept the existence of mul

t iple subjects of pheno m ena whether permanent or transie nt that
, ,

g ive s rise to a n ew problem in causality and whether we choose to ,

t reat these multiple subjects as simple o r complex as individual atoms ,

o r as a combination of them into collective wholes What s uch a .

multiplicity of centers of reference implies is not merely the existence

o f subjects of attributes evolving changes in themselves by various

m odes of metamorphosis of a spontaneous sort but a system of rela ,

t ions between each other If these relations consist of nothing but

.

t ime and space we should have nothing but a universe or better a ,

multiverse of chaos in so far as t h e a ct i o ns of these centers of refer

, ,

e nce were related to each other But if there exist between these
.

c ente r s of reference simple or complex any sort of interaction reci

, , ,

procity of activity commerciu m or inuence on each other it woul d

, , ,

d epend on the nature of this action to determine whether some sort of

o rder could not be gotten into the multiverse of realities making it a

u nive rs e of some kind that is giving it at least an ae tiological unity

, , ,

i f its ontolo gical unity had to be held in abeyance It is uniformly .

a ccepted that some s uch interaction exists and this relation has been ,

e xpressed by the term cause so that the notion has come to indi
,

c ate both the subject which initiates or supports modal changes in i t

s elf and the subject which initi a tes modal ch a nges in a n o t h o r subject

by an i n uence from without In both we have the idea of e c i e n t

.

cause that of instigating the occurrence of a n event In one it is that

,
.

o f initiating an event in the subject itself and in the other it is that of ,

i nitiating an event in another subject In both the primary conception

.

o f cause is that of a subje c t acting .

B ut just at this point another compli cation in the conception

o f causality arises . The evidence for the existence of any subject ,

s ubsta n ce atom
,
rea l ity , or noumenon is the o ccurrence of an event
, ,

its action or functio n If the actio n originates in the subje ct itself

.

t h e evidence can be realized only by direct knowledge O f the fact

or by t h e knowledge of circumstances that prevent the reference of it
t o an e xternal subject If there be any reason to seek the center of
.

r eference for the initiation of the fact realized in the subject e xp e r i e n c

i ng it the causal a ction will be so attributed and if there be reason to ,

s eek it in a n external subject the judgment will so act But in both .

c ases functional action or pheno mena of some kind must be the
e vidence of the parti cular center of reference adopted In the process .
52 TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y .

of intellectual development our intern al sta tes come to be the evidence

of subjective reference an d certain coexistences a nd sequenc es of an other
sort present the evide nce of objective reference I am not concerned .

at present with the validity O f this distinction but with the fact These .

coexistences and seq uences , phenomena , modes of a ctivity , func
tions , etc , are quite ana l o gous in their suggestion of causal imputation
. .

to any that require the supposition of the subject knowing them They .

have their meaning determine d by an objective imputability , implying

a subject object , an d we have the t w o fold type of cause indicated
- -

previously in the ideas of a s ubject and object or t wo objects or t wo

subjects related to each other in commercium But as the determination
.

of these coexistences and sequences for evi dence is the r st problem of

all investigation , and as the coexistences and sequences coincide evi
de nt ia lly with their subjects as fact s and involve the s a me relations in
S pace and time as their subjects there has bee n the tendency to identi f
y

the antecedent phenomeno n with the ca use , abstr a cting from th e
subject , because we abstract from the subject i n whi ch the e ffect take s
place and which is the consequent Thus we come to think of events
.

as causes and effect in abstra ction of their subjects which in rea l ity ar e
,

the true causes while the effect may be either moda l or substa ntive .

What in rea l ity takes place is that one subject is supposed to act on
another , not that one event produces another , though the formul a for
expressing it involves the representation of the relation in terms of th e
coexi stences and sequences as events which are the evidence of noumenal
realities , the tendency to this repres enta tio n being caused by the fact
tha t events in A produced by an external cause B are conceived in ah
st ra ct i o n of A in so far as their occurrence is concerne d and so
ar e

thought of only as initiated facts independentl y of their nature as ,

a ffected by their being constitutively acts of Hence the habit o f
A .

abstr acting A in ou r concepti o n of the effect as a n event rel ated to an

antecedent leads to the abstra ction of B in the cause and in so fa r ,
as the e vidential prob l em the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i is conce rned this is
,
,

correct But the r a t i o en a i requires us to take account of B as t h e

.

r a t i o ess endi requires us to take a ccount of

A , the one expressin g t h e
initiating , the other the qualitative cause But the evidential co nc e
.
p
tion of the case l eads to what h as been called empirica l causation ,
the uniformity of coexistence and sequence But this is in fa ct not
.

causation of any kind It expresses nothing but the fa ct of temporal

.

relation , whether re gular or irregular and never represe nts o r incl udes
,
the ide a either of ei ciency , that is , produ ctiveness or of transmission
,
from subject to subject This is clear from the pers istent state ment o f
.
 P R OBLE M S OF SC I E NC E A ND PH I L OSOPH Y
.
53

K ant and others and clearly admitte d by H ume tha t causality

, ,

e xpresses n e c ess a r
y connection , something more than f a c t u a l relation
w hich is all t h a t
empirical causality can denote Kant s funda .

m ental do c trine that we know only phenomena prevented him n .

f rom having anything else but empirical causation , in spite Of his

d enition of causality as implying more than mere factual relation
f o r it is pe r fe ctly clear from his own statement a nd tha t of Hume as ,

w ell as the reective condu ct of all men , tha t n ecessa r y conn ection is
more than factual and that it tra nscends the phenomena to which
,

i t supplies the reason for their nexus It is itself quite as noumenal

.

i n that sense as substance or the idea of a subject Kant therefore .

h a d no right to the conceptio n as a n ecessa r y datu m of his system and

, ,

i t is just as apparent that i n his ungu a rded moments he conceived the

matter as coexistence and sequence and nothing more simply using , ,

t h e term s necessary and cause where a more cons istent thinke r
would have used the term uniform without the implication of
i nevitableness Hume s doctrine was of course rendered abs urd by

.
, ,

h i s o wn condu ct After telling us sceptically that the idea of cause

.

was an illegitimate o ne o n t h e basis of the premises of Locke a n d

,

B erkeley he ad m its that we have it in the form of necessary con

,

n e c t i o n , whi c h e xperience does not contain Then in the face of his .

l imitation of
knowledge or valid ideas to experience and the

e xcl usion of causality from le gi timate recognition while admitting that

w e have it as a fact he proceeds to exp l a i n the origin of the idea from

,

a ssociation If he had said that it was n othing more than associatio n

a n d denied tha t we really had any conception of necessary as distinct

f rom factual conne ction , there woul d have been less ground to criticize
h im . B ut h e cannot be defended o n the grou n d that this was what he
m eant because he explicitly indicates that the necessary connection is
,

s omething not given in experience and while it is a pseud idea it

,
-

i s ca u s ed by asso ciation p r o d u ce d by it H ume wa s too much of a

, .

philosopher to remai n in the po sition of s cepti cism and had to use the
i dea of causality to explain its existence in cons cious ness while he
d enied its l egitimacy In this he clearly transcends association by the
c onception of production which implies more than coexistence and

s equence as he is a ccounting for a fact by so m ething that does n o t

,

contain it while insisting that it sha l l contain this if it is to be

,

l egitimate .

However we choose to denominate this cause , or nece ss ar y con

'

n e ct i o n whether as e f cient o ccasional , or material

, , a n inuence or ,

a n zn
ux us y s i c us it is some sort of power to initiate in another
,
54 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

subject the event that demands an explanation or even to initiate it in th e ,

subject of it It distinguishes the d issolvable from t h e indissolvable

.

associations and so represents someth ing which transcends mere phe

nome n a . I do not ca re h o w we get it , or whether we call it a n

intuition a priori conception category or fun ctional mode of con
, , ,

s c i o u sness or other name indicating an inexpugnable datum of though t

,
.

It is there as an ineradicable fact quite as compuls ory in its c o nv ic

,

t i o n al power as our apprehensions when they o ccur though not having ,

the same communicable nature as they and is als o liable to inferential '

complications when the cause is to be made denite . But its inc o m m u

n i ca bl e character is the important point to remark All sensory con .

c e t i o ns have that chara cter whi ch enables us to point to them whe n

p
they produce their own evidence in the experience of other persons ,

but unless others can s ee the fact of a causal n exus in any instance it
is not demonstrable or commun i cable This is strictly true of all facts
.

of experience as we shall see later but it is more especially true
, ,

of causality and substance than it is of the phenomena which ev i

dence them inas m uch as their trans cendency involves that ki n d o f a
, .

m ental act for the perception of them that is required to see a r a t io ci

native conclusion i n geometry when the Euclidean gures are merely
apprehensions It is easy to show what we mean by a triangle and
.

we may make this clear to cons ciousness and fail utterl y to secure the
perception of the mathemati cal truth s that it embodies These ca n .

only be seen not communi cated or pointed out i n apprehension T h e

, .

most important point to remark however is the fact that the cause
, ,

is a noumenal fact in its nature and is implied by the circumstance

that the m ind refuses to permit the occurrence of an event to explain
itself and in one form or another seeks the explanation in something
, ,

else whether an event or thing though in the l ast analysis it is always

,

a thing that is implied if only as the ground of the fact which is

,

treated as the empirical cause .

But where the conception of cause was not conceived as material ,

that is as the trans mission of motion from subject to subject the re

, ,

lation between antecedent and consequent was conceived as e f cient

and after the analo gy of a subject causing its own actions without
passing over into them and hence the notion of ef cient cause came
,

to denote the inuence or power of production between events as well

as between subjects and their functions the subject of the antecede nt ,

being abstracted from in the process The ae tiological conception .

thus takes three distinct forms , diff erent from the ontological a ccord ,
s

ing to the concrete representation of the source from whi ch the ef

 PR OBLE M S OF S CI E NCE A ND PH IL O S OP H Y .
55

c ien cy issues or the relation expressed

, The rst is that of the .

subject in the production of its o w n actions , whether free or not It .

is illustrated in supposed free agents , and the internal forces of

chemistry , though the occasion for both may be externally determined .

The second is that of an external subject exercising the power to

initiate or o ccasion the o ccurrence of events in another subject This .

is illustrated i n all interaction between substances or externally related

centers of reference as a sound produced by impa ct sensation of
, ,

color by impres s ions on the retina o r any mechani cal effect of momen
,

tum The third is that o f necessary connection between events upon

.
,

which we have commented This is t h e usual form of representing

.

causality because it is through the evidential phenomena of coex

,

i st en c es and sequences that all obje ctive causal relations are established
and made clear The existence and meaning of the last t w o con
.

cep t i o n s are determined by the existence real or supposed o f a , ,

plurality of centers of reference and hence involve some kind of inter

,

action , however this is conceived as a condition of any such aet io l o g

,

ical and teleological unity as may be possible in a system of plural

substances But the point to be most distinctly noted is the con
.

c ep t i o n of the ae tiological problem which is involve d and which

represents ef cient causality in different concrete situations though the ,

relation between cause and effect is always the same in general and
implies s ome sort of antithesis or distinction either that between sub ,

stance and mode or subject and object reciprocally affected , or cause

,
i

and e ffect between events In discussing aetiological ef ciency it
.

will always be important to keep these three concrete forms of it in view .

The ontological problem or that of material cause is just as com

, ,

plicated The rst is that of a compound formed from elements or ,

stuff constituting a whole This whole may be a collective or

,
.

organic compou nd constituted of units the organic of units of a dif , ,

ferea t kind and the colle ctive of units of the same kind The ap
, , .

pe a r a n ce of properties in the compound n o t present in the elements

offers a problem for subjective ef cient causation while t hose carrie d ,

into the complex whole from the elements offer that conception of ma
t er ia l causation which is expressed i n identity of some kind betwee n

antece dent and cons equent or element and compound This is called
, .

material cause for the reason that it expresses the nature of the result
in terms of the antecedent reality while the process of transition or
,

change whether from a simple to a complex condition or from a state

, ,

not containing to one containing certain n ew prope r ties , is e xp l ained

by the ef cient or formative cause .
56 TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

The same distinction is also necessary in the interpretation of the

c omplicated phenomena associated with the interaction or com
m er c i um of various centers of reference where composition is not the
,

c onception expressing their relation but where it is mechani cal
,

i ntercommunication . H ere w e suppose that one subject or center of

r eference inuences another and its a ction This inuence is con
.

c eiv e d in two ways . The rst is the transmissio n of motion or energy

f rom one subject to another and the retention of its identity in at least
a ll essential characteristics This is the do ctri ne of i n u xu s pny s i c us ,
.

o r the mechanical transmission of the ante cedent conditio n of A to
B in which it is simply taken over as B s condition This implies

.

that it is the same in kind a nd the conse r vation of energy maintains

th a t its quantity remains identical or the same The s econd compli .

cates mechanical or trans m issive causation with a modication of
the effe cts in the subject in which they o ccur In chemist r y for in .
,

stance there is not always a denitive qua n titative relation between

,

the qualitative changes in the subject and the mechanical antecedents
involved in effe cting the proper juxtaposition of the elements for excit
i n g a i n it a t iv e or other action The same general disparity is o bser v
.

able also i n certain mecha n ical phenomena where apparen tly
the process is only the transmission of ene rgy That is there are cer .
,

tain qualitative events in the effect n o t found in the cause or antecede nt .

In both these cases the variation s are not reducible to the mate r ial
cause alone assumed in the a ntecedent and in addition to thi s the
,

notion of the inception of an event or condition in B which B did not

spontaneously originate but whi ch w as i ns ti gated by A together with
, ,

the neces s ity of ac counting for all qualitative changes by the actio n of
B suggests a causality which is more than material in its
, mechan
ical sense while this latter is admitted to be a fact also whether i m
, ,

manent with the ef cient cause or not Hen ce whether dealing with
.
,

substances or modes we seem to require the use of both an aetiolo gi cal

,

or ef cient and an ontological or material cause The former accounts .

for change and the latter for constancy in that change and so is sub
ordinate to the aetiological .

If n o w there be but one subject or substance the ontologi ca l p r in

c i l e will apply to the exercise of its functions or a ctivities All
p .

changes I do not say all motions but all cha n ges , comprehendi ng
, ,

a l terations of direction in motion which in the abstract might be

,

eternal , and qualitative changes or metamorphi c phenomena , in

s uch a single subject would have to be explained ae tiologically and o u

t o l o gic a l causes would either have to be made convert ible with the
 PR OBLE M S OF S C IE N CE A ND P H IL O S O P H Y .
57

e tiological or be applicable only to the similarities and differences in

v olved in the

phenomenal modes of the absolute But if the centers
.

o f reference for events are plural as in the atomic doctrine and in the
,

a ctual existence of independent complex organisms , the complications

a rise whic h I have just dis cussed , showing that e tiological or e f cient

c auses initiative of events may apply either to the inuence of the sub

c et i n producing its o w n modes or to the inuence of the object in

j
p rodu cing or initiating the modes of another subject while the onto ,

l ogical o r material cause s may apply to the constitutive qualities by

w hic h we explain the similarity and constancy of kind either in the

p lurality of subjects , or in the transitions of substance from the simple
t o the complex forms and the transmissions of energy from subject to
s ubject .

It is thus apparent tha t in the n o um e n o lo gi ca l problem w e have

,

t h e general conceptio n of cause at its basis with this dividing itself

,

i nto two more distinct types and their ramications The rst may be
.

c alle d that of s t a t i c cause or substance and the se cond that of d n a m i c

, y
c ause or property . The terms may not be as accurate as is desirable ,

b ut they are useful to conne ct the fundamental assumptions of physics

w ith metaphysics and to distinguish between cause as ground and
c ause as activity initiating or constituting other effects But it is the
.

e xistence of other facts than mere temporally and spatially related

e vents that represents the metaphysical problem and I hav e chosen to

d enominate them in terms of cause differentiating it to suit the

v arious forms in which ca usality expresses itself and concentrating all

o f them nally in the one center of reference which can be known as

s ubstance all else being modes of activity either o riginated or trans

,

m itte d or both
, . The importance of thus subordinating the o nt o l o g
ical to the e tiological conception wil l be apparent when we come to
d is cuss the theologi cal proble m . All that n o um eno l o gi ca l questions
r equire at this stage of the dis cussion is the acceptance of t r a ns h e
p
n ome mal facts as completing the process with which human thought

b egins its cur i o sity i n rega r d to the world .

 C H AP T E R III .

A NA L Y S I S O F T H E P R O B L E M O F K NO WL E D G E .

E P I S T E M O L O GY has always been regarded as convertible with the

theory of knowledge But there has also always been t wo eq uivocal
.

characteristics about it The rst concerns the conceptio n of k nowl

.

edge and the se cond concerns the function of its theory In regard
,
.

to the second of these it has not always been made clear whether it
was the function of epistemology to explain h o w w e a cqu i r ed

knowledge the m o d us o p e r a n d i of obtaining what we know as a
,

fact or whether it sought to determi ne valid as distinguished from in

,

valid mental processes F ro m the classicatio n o f the various prob

.

lems of s cience and philosophy in the previo us c hapter it is clear that

it is there d ened as an orthologi cal science , namely a s cience of ,

validity in the intellectual activities of the mind This will not inter .

fere with the simultaneous study of the processes as modes of a cq uisi q

tion though it assumes that thi s is wholly subordinate to the purpose

,

of distinguishing between the sources of truth and error But I mean .

to treat it as primarily o ccupied with the determination of criteria for

the rational acceptability of certain judgments as facts That is to say .

I sh a ll treat it as the determinant of the conditions of rational belief and

certitude I thus make it as comprehensive as the do ctrine of per
.

ce t io n in ordinary parlance extending to the inclusion of Lo gic
p , , ,

or the doctrine of Ratiocination and Scientic Method This makes

, .

it the s cience of the conditions of conviction

But it is the conception of knowledge that has given the most
dif culty in determining the scope and function of the science It is .

astonishing to nd how infrequently w e obse r ve any attempts to dene

the eld which is universally assumed to represent that of epistemology .

H a ving indicated that knowledge was the peculiar territory of

epistemology we should naturally expect some careful and clear de ni

tion of what knowledge meant or what it comprehended But , .

this most indispens able of all preliminary considerations seems to have

generally been neglected Kant for instance gives us his theory of
.
, ,

knowledge without any denition of what it was that he was doing .

He now and then speaks as if Wissenschaft and E r k e nnt n iss , were

the same but it is apparent that they do n o t always if they ever coi n
, ,
~

cide. Wissenschaft is properly the body of doctrines which is
58
 A NA L YS I S OF TH E P R OBLE M OF K NO WLE D GE .
59

comprehe n ded in s cience as distinguished from S pe cul ative ph il o so

phy . Erkenntnis is properly something more denitely limited to
psychologica l processes and produ cts that may not extend so far as the

knowledge of the s cienti c mind It is quite compatible with a n .

ignorance with which Wissens chaft is not compatible It may be .

apparent enough what Kant means by it in isolated cases , but what it

meant in his gen eral theory of k nowledge is not indicated In the .

discussion of methodology he distinguishes betw een Wissen
,

Meinen and Glaube n in a w ay to s ugg est an approximate de

nit i o n of
knowledge but in fact he makes no attempt to connect
,

the disti n ctions whi ch he there adopts with the earlier discussion ;
!

H ence we are never sure whether he i nten ds knowledge to be con

vertible with science which includes the me thods and results of
,

Induction as well as Deduction or to limit it to those convi ctions

,

which are charact erized by certitude The questions implied by this .

distinction are different from each other though one may include the ,

other What w e need to know is whether in the proble m of

.
,

knowl edge we are in se a rch for a criterion of certitude a method

, ,

of assured convi ctions or a method of systematization of e xperience

,
.

Certit ude is connected with the modality of propositions and is
.

only one of the degrees o r kinds of modality _ systematization or

t h e unication of expe r ience is conne cted with the principles involved
in the relations of phenomena and may in c lude any kind and degree
of modality whatever in judgment Kant never remark s this fact . .

H e is entirely oblivious to the circumsta nce th at s ceptici sm is primarily

a question as to certitude regardin g certa i n denite issues and not at ,

all a question as to systematizatio n H e ought to have recognized ex

.

p l ic itly what he see m s not even to have known that Cartesian thought ,

conceived knowledge in opposition to doubt or s cepticism and so

represented it as concerned with that of whi ch we are primarily cer
tain Kant s whole treatment of the pro blems of God Im m orality
.

, ,

and F reedom showed that he had acted under this assumption but it ,

doe s not appear anywhere else in his system The problem of s eep .

t i c is m is one thing and the problem of understanding or intelligibility

,

is another , but Kant did not distinguish them as he should have

done .

A similarly misleading conceptio n of knowledge is apparent i n

such works as tha t of Hobhouse I do not say that it is wrong beca use
.
,

a man has a right to use his terms as he desires provided that he dene s ,

them Also it is apparent that Hobhouse in his Th eory of Knowl

edge is not so m uch occupied with a refutation of doubt as he is with
60 TH E P R OB L E M S OF P H I L OSO PH Y .

the fundamental p sychologica l p rinciples of s cience Hence I am .

n o t concerned with implied criticism in t h e reference to his work but ,

with an illustration It is apparent from his discussion throughout

.

t hat he has in mind s cientic method and not an answer to s eep
t i ci s m
. He comprehends i n the work the whole subject of Indu ction
a n d probability , w h ich ca n not in any sense be made convertible with

the certitude which the term knowledge so ofte n implies Hence .

we cannot go to his treatise for any such limitation of the problem as

was found i n the system of Des ca rtes .

It w as the co ntroversy between Greek a nd Christian thought tha t

r esulted in clearly distinguishi ng between knowledge as certitude

a nd knowledge as intelligibility It w a s latent in the dispute between
.

P lato and t h e Sophists , but was suppressed in the superior interest of

Plato and the Greek mind in the nature of reality rather t h a n the theory
o f k nowledge in terms of its certitude But the issue was easily .

precipitated by the exigencies of Christian thought which proposed a

number of beliefs invol ving a transcendental world whose assumed
existence w as a direct challenge to reason The real or apparent con .

t r a dic t i o n to nature and experience in many of its doctrina l

demands naturally evoked scepticis m and tended to limit the co n cep
,

tion of knowledge to the sensible world especially as the distinction ,

between the supersensible physical world an d the superphysi ca l or im

m aterial world o f faith w a s not an easy one to sustain Consequently .

a s time passed and doubt more and more made its incursions upon the

o bjects of fa i th the number of things which came within the pu r view

,

of assured conviction decreased a n d the conception of knowledge

,

became strongly associated with the immediate processes that gave

certitude This is clearly illustrated i n the procedure of Des car tes
. .

H e tries to doubt everything but nds that h e cannot doubt the immediate
,

deliverances of co ns ciousness without intellectual suicide Kn owl .

edge thus becomes convertible i n its initial stages with the imme
, ,

diate deliverances of cons ciousness whatever they are and this is

, ,

f oll owed by a ratiocinati o n equally valid when fou nded on principles ,

attested by some intuitive function But certitude is the characteristic

.

which denes the object of the Cartesian suit and certain objects are ,

a ssumed , if not admitted to have less assurance for their reality than
,

o thers. The conception suggests a graduated system of beliefs asso

c ia t e d with various degrees of tenacity with which they shall be held .

But the t h ought was not worked out by the Cartesia ns and seems not
to ha ve occurred to the mind of Kant Y et it is chiey this idea of .

c ertitude , an d not i ntelligibility that cha r acterizes the term whe n dis
,
 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OBLE M OF K NO WL E D GE .
61

cussing the problems of s cepticism It is true that intelligibility is

.

closely related to the criterion of certitude and probability but it is not ,

the primary attestation of truth It only expresses conformity t o

.

accepted fact or truth and does not supply either the primary or the
ultimate evidence of conviction .

As a further illustration of its equivo cal import it should be r e

marked that knowledge has been opposed to ignorance to doubt , ,

to opinion to faith and sometimes to belief Ignorance is t h e

, ,
.

mere absence Of ideas and convictions Doubt is something in addi .

tion to this It represents a more positive state of cons ciousness It

. .

s hows a co ns io us ne ss of ideas a b o ut a subject thou gh it do e s n o t i n

c

volve belief of any afrmative kind on a given issue regarding it It .

has both a positive and a negative implication It is the absence of .

conviction af rmatively and a tendency to disbelief or at least a sym ,

pathy with disbelief Doubt thus involves intelligence ignorance does

.
,

not Doubt at least involves a knowledge of ignorance ignorance

.
,

does not involve this so distinctly , though self consciousness of ign o -

rance is possible and often a fact But doubt usually involves beside s
.

this cons ciousne ss of ignorance also the feeling that evidence is so

wanting in favor of a given assertion that the defect amounts to a posi
tive presumption against it Hence k nowledge and doubt are often so
.

related to ea ch other that they may be conceived as represe nting t w o

opposed O pinions on the same subject doubt being the negative expres
,

sion for one of the opinions and assumes incertitu de where knowledge
,

implies this condence in belief .

In regard to the other terms n o t mu ch needs to be said The com .

parison between knowledge and O pinion is largely due to the

translation of Greek phrases O pinion in Plato seems to have done
.

se r vice for faith or belief on authority and for conjecture and in

du ct iv e probabilities of a l o w grade of assurance Faith is a term .

with a mixed history at rst meaning only a quality of will toward a

,

person or principle such as delity or faithfulness and afterward

, ,

assent to propositions on authority or by mental actions distinct from

ratiocination and direct experience of the facts believed It was thus .

O pposed to knowledge as the acceptance of autho rit y is O pposed

to the certitude of perso nal i nsight and experience Belief is a ter m .

for any form of assent to truth and may be indifferently convertible

with knowledge and assent with doubt or with the sense of prob ,

ability only But in all these contrasts knowledge is more or less

.

associated with implications of assurance and certitude in regard to the

fact or proposition alleged to represent truth .
62 TH E PROBL E M S OF P H IL OSO PH Y .

There is also another meaning of the term k nowledge associ ated

with this predicate of certitude It is the immediacy of the perceptio n
.

of truth in certain cases implying that any given truth whatever as

, ,

s urance we may obtain for subordinate truths is an immediate object ,

of cons ciousness possibly of experie n ce and possibly of intui
,

tion .

This conception is also asso ciated with the philosophy of ,

Descartes What he realize d was the possibility of doubting certain

.

a ssertions or existing beliefs and as a consequence he asked in the true

spirit of the sceptic what belief is acceptable or can O ffer satisfactory

,

credentials in its favor What he sa w w a s that neither a bsolute knowl

.

e dge nor absolute scepticis m was possible that is tha t w e do not

, ,

k now everything and that we cannot doubt eve ry thing The i m p o ssi .

bility of universal scepticism is apparent in the S ingle statement that

the denial of all k nowledge involves the truth of this denial the ,

k nowledge and certit ude tha t this denial is tr ue Hence some .
,

w here between these two extremes lay both what w e know and wha t
we do not know and may doubt In the e o rt to solve his problems
.

Des cartes postulated doubt and illusion about the existence of God the ,

s oul and the objects of our senses and nally found that he could not
,

doubt the testimony of cons ciousness As indicative o f what its limi

.

t a t io n s were in the second Meditation he asserts that the mind is more

easily apprehended than body It is apparent i n t h is position that
.
,

little or no distinction can be drawn between being a state of conscious

n ess and knowing it and nothing else That is the natural out
.
,

come o f the doubt about any other objects than cons ciousness its elf as
absolutely certain and the evident directness or immedia cy of this was

that knowledge wa s more or less convertible with immediate or
intuitive perception with the implication that this perception did not
,

extend to the direct consciousness of external reality Thus .

knowledge implied not only certitude but also intuition or imme

d iate perception and all other objects were only mediately or indi
,

r ec t l
known or C ertie d O ne school however extended this
y .
, ,

i ntuition to the perception of external reality a nd another limited

it to the states of cons ciousness as such assuming that externa l real
,

ity was hypothetical or inferential But both agreed that knowl

.

edge in its ultimate elements was immediate and intuitive and so ,

t ended to give that connotation to the term Now as the predicate of

.

certitude had previously been associated with ratiocinative knowl

edge it w as apparent from the distinction between intuitive and
,

ratiocinative truth that immedia cy and certitude did not necessarily

,

c oincide so that an equivocation arose between these t w o

, applications
 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OBLE M OP K NU WL E D GE . 63

of the term This ambiguity is still further incre a sed by the more
.

general import of the term in which it denotes intelli gibility or under

standing while a fourth me aning is given it by its comprehensio n of
,

all that is implied by science which include s inductive ideas with
out the certitude so co m monly asso ciated with the ter m knowledge .

As a consequence w e have four distinct meanings for the term

knowledge in the parlan ce of s cience a n d philosophy
( 1 ) Im .

mediacy or i ntuitive cons ciousness ; ( 2 ) Certitude or absolute as

, ,

surance in conviction whether intuitive or ratiocinative ; ( 3 ) Legit

,

i m a cy or acceptability in belief whether certain or merely probab l e ;

,

and ( 4 ) Intelligibility or systematization by any pro cess direct or

,

indirect deductive or indu ctive whether belief takes the form of a

, ,

working hypothesis or a proved fact .

These four different meanings of the term knowledge represent

as many different problems or as many different solutions of the same
,

problem It is one thing and a comparatively simple thing to indi

.
, ,

cate the limits of immediate knowledge if w e dene imme ,

diate as identical with having a state of cons ciousness and it is a ,

very different and much more complex thing to explain the various

processes involved in both immediate and mediate knowledge It .

is one thing to indicate the rst stage of certitude and it is another to

S how all the processes with which certitude is connected It is one

thing to show what is absolutely ass ured and it is another to show

what is rational when it is not prove d It is one thing to have a .

rational convi ction and it is another to realize that an assertion is

intelligible whether believable or not All these are questions that .

must be answered and kept distinct in the theory of knowledge
.

They require separate answers even though some of them involve i n

,

part the answers of the other Thus the question of certitude may
.

include the problems of both intuitive and ratiocinative knowledge

while im mediacy involves but one of the t w o functions All this .

becomes much more complicated whe n we have to distinguish between

simple and complex knowledge which involves the systematization ,

and articulation of ma ny experiences into an organic whole F or in .

stance take th e idea represented by Copernican astronomy , or Darwin

ian evolution This involves more complicated mental processes than
.

the apprehension of a color , and consequently requires a more elab

orate analysis of cons ciousness tha n the dis cussion of sensation only .

It is ap parent then that we have to analyze and dene what we are

trying to determine in the theory of knowledge
That analysis .

begins with the limitation of the term k nowledge or a denition of

.
64.
TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

its various me a nings in order to learn just wh a t the problem is , or wh at

the problems are , with whi ch we ha ve to be occupied O ur solutio n .

will be S imple or complex , according to the simple or complex n atu re

of the thing we are inves tigating If kn owledge is limited to t h e
.

elementa ry data of consciousness we must present the functio ns that

give these data an d invent some other te rm for the l ater acquisitions o f
belief and assured conviction If it is any fact of which we are certain
.
,

we may require to study the reasoning pro cesse s as wel l as the simple r
functions of sens ation and apprehension If it i s mere intelligibility
.

we may be satised with the explanation of conformity to past e xpe

r i en c e whether w e have any belief in reality o r n o t If it expresses .

any fact or truth that is rationally believable , or a l egitimat e obje ct o f

belief we shall ha ve to include the whole probl em of induction in o ur
,

exposition We thus see that our answers to s cepticis m wil l depend

.

on the various forms of knowledge that we ha ve to consider .

There are also two questions in the de nition an d ana lysis of t h e

problem of knowledge which are ve ry closely connected an d y et
require to be distin guished from each other They are : W a t do .

we know and H o w do we know i

The rst question asks

for the thing supposed to be k nown and the second for either t h e
,

proce ss or the evidence of the thing known It is no t always clea r

.

whether it is the process or evidence that is meant , in the latter ques

tion though the process is the only evidence available in some form o f
,

k nowledge Let us exami ne both of these questions

. .

Assuming any of the four me anings of the term knowledge ,

th ere are still a number of di st inct problems i nv olved i n w/i a t we m ay

kn ow The object of course in as certain ing ro bo t we know
.
, ,

is to determine the facts or rational beliefs whi ch affect ou r a ct i ons .

All be liefs have a relation to conduct whether they are followed o r

not and the desire to determine wha t is rational or n ecessary to believe
,

is based on the relation of these supposed obje cts of belief to conduct .

There is also another motive in the desire It is to have a basis fo r.

the deduction or support of beliefs that may be under dispute B ut in .

any case , historical ly the things that we were supposed to know

represented in the early perio d of Greek thought a l most any super

sensible reality P hilosophy redu ce d this to the physical world
.

and when scepticism had advanced far e nough it reduced the know
able to sensations , as we have observed in the Sophists B ut a s uper .

sensible physical world was too fascinating an object of s pe cula tion t o

be surrendered to such limitations and it su r vi ved It was fo l lowed .
,

as we have seen , by the superphysi cal or spiritual world of Christianity .

 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PROBLE M OF K NO WLE D GE .
65

When scepticism began again to limit knowledge and belief it rst ,

dissolved the subordinate doctrine s of theology and nally thre w out

those of God Immortality and F reedom All this w as as much as
, ,
.

to say that we could not know these objects , that they could not
supply the proper credentials for rational acceptance F inally scep .

t i cism after assuming the possibility only for provisional purposes ,

,

dis cussed more seriously the limitatio n of knowledge to states of

consciousness and assumed that we have no direct knowledge of
the external world That is , one stage of reection or theory says
.
, ,

that w e cannot know God , etc Another that we cannot kn ow the .

soul that w e kno w nothing but matter Another denies that we .

can know matter Another denies that we can
.
k

now the ex

ternal reality whether it be matter or anything else Al l these
, .

represent metaphysical problems of different s chools and cause a vari

ation of the epistemological question according to the special object of

knowledge comi ng under di scussion The perplexities involved .

in them when we simultaneously recognize the equivocal import of the

term knowledge are still more obvious .

The problem of wiza t we know h a s been briey sketched his

t o r i c a lly all uding to the chief points of view in different periods to
show how it had changed It h a s at the same time been attacked in
.

different ways Sometimes the question of what we know is a p

.

p r o a c h e d with a View to showing the chronological order in which

certain ideas originate This proceeds on the supposition that ce rtai n
.

knowledge comes later than another It is usual also to assume or .

indicate that it is our simple knowledge which comes rst in order

and our complex knowledge which comes later F or instance our .
,

sensatio ns are more primitive than our idea of God Then again w e
.
.

may examine the simplicity and the complexity of our knowledge

with reference to the comparative certitude of the t w o aspects of it ,

discussing the processes concerned without placing the stress upon its
-

evolution No w it is quite evident in either one of these modes of pro

.

c e d ur e that the validity of what we know will vary with this sim
p l i city and complexity of it ac cording to the nature of the processe s
,

and conditions connected with its derivation Consequently we have .

complications of the content of our knowledge with the prior

question of its simplicity or complexity .

The second question H o w do we

,
is an equivocal
one I have inti m ated this in the allusion to its demanding either the
.

evidence or the explanation of an allege d phenomenon We must ex .

amine this equivo cation more carefully T h e question arises always .

66 TH E PROBLE M S OF PH I L OSOPH Y .

in a situation which involves or implies an argument or a desire for in

formation F or instance if I ma k e the assertion tha t matter as we
.
,

k now it is composed of small indivisible atoms I may be asked How , ,

d o you know If I assert the existence of God I may be asked , ,

H o w do you know If I assert that m a n has a n i mmortal soul ,

I may be as k ed the same question If I sa y that we have an i mmediate

.

perception of external reality I may be asked H o w do you ,

know
If I say that Mr Smith is a fraud I may be asked the
.
,

q uestion . If I say that politics are corrupt I may be asked the ques
t ion. In some of these cases it is evi dence of the assertion that is
w anted and in others it is the explanation of a fact Hence we are .

n o t sure from the form of the question which it is that is desired .

H ence I shall divide the question into t w o a n d s hall call the m the

s cientic and the scepti cal questions By the scientic question I shall
.

mean a demand for the explanation of a fact admitted to exist By .

the s ceptical question I shall m ean the demand for evidence that the
allegation is a fact with the impli cation that inability to supply this is
,

convertible with the falsity or incredibility of the a ssertion The rst .

question admits the second disputes the alleged fact Consequently

, .

when a man is asked H o w do you k now he is at a loss to de

,

termine what is wanted of him If he answers it by a statement of

.

the m o d u s o p er a n d i or process of acquiring his knowledge he

, ,

does not satisfy the s ceptic s desire If he gives the evidence for his

.

allegation he does not explain the alleged fa ct If he says that he does .

n o t k now how he
k nows the fact he is liable to the retort of the
sceptic th at he believes without evidence Fo r the s ceptic is in the .

convenient position of sheltering himself behind an equivocal question ,

one that seems to be asking for information in regard to an admitted

fact and yet may in reality h e intende d to dispute it Whenever the .

sceptic puts this question we should insist on knowing what it means ,

whether he is asking to have an admitted fact explained to know the ,

process by which knowledge as a valid fact is obtained or whether ,

he means to doubt the alleged fact If he means the latter h is question

.

may contain a virtual assertion and in so far as it does contain this the
,

o n u s p r o ba n d i rests on him When his doubt is dogmatic that is

.
,

deni al of the al leged assertion he is subject to the rules of evidence

,

also If however he wants evidence as to the a l leged fa ct he is en

.
, ,

titled to this satisfaction , or he must be allowed to maintain his sus

pense of judgment O n the other hand if he means to ask for the
.
,

explanation of an admitted fact we have alternative replies without

implying an impeachment of the facts We may offer an explanation .
 A NA L Y S I S OF TH E PR OBLE M OF K NO WL E D GE . 67

in some process by w hich the knowledge has been gained O r we .

may say that we do not know h o w we know and do not care and ,

that we are satised with the admitted fact which is all that is n eces ,

s ary for the regulation of c onduct It may be i nteresting and in

know
s tructive to know how we but it does not determine its ,

validity to be able to assign the cause or explanation O f the admitted

fact It only enlarges the range of our knowledge or the ratio nale
.

of facts not the truth of them The primary question , of course is

,
.
,

the evidential one and here the sceptic has his rights But he is not .

entitled to a conf usion of the issue He must be made to indicate .

whether he wants an explanation of admitted facts or the evidence for

a lleged facts Two iss ues that of fact and that of explanation are
.
, ,

concealed in this equivocal question and they must be distinguished

from each other If we are asking the sceptical question we must
.

ma ke that fa ct clear If we are asking for an explanation of an a d

.

m it t e d fact we must make that clear

,
We cannot be permitted to .

evade responsibility by reposing in equivocations or insinuating that a ,

failure to explain dis credits a fact .

The sceptical question however when it does not involve any dog
, ,

mati c i m plications o f denial has an aspect of some importance in the

'

,

problem of knowledge It is the difference between p r o of and
.

i n s ig nt in the matter of knowledge and the relation between the

doubter and believer in regard to the kind of evidence necessary to
make their convictions the same When the sceptic asks his question
.

he is s e e k ing some sort of proof for the alleged fact He desires .

grounds for conviction No w proof may mean any process what

.

ever by which we obtain our knowledge or convi ctions wheth er it ,

be experience insight or dedu ctive and inductive argument It
, , .

always stands for some method of creating assurance or rationality for

belief If we suppose that experience or insight is the ultimate
.

assurance of fact , and if the s ceptic continues his query for eve r y asser
tion that we make as a premise to the desired conclusion thus imply ,

ing either that all knowledge is impossible or that experience

is its attestation w e must leave him to his own resources as universal
, ,

s cepticism puts him beyond the pale of rational cons ideration and the
a ssumption that experience is the nal source of truth releases the
believer from the O bligations of argument But if it is arg umentative .

proof that is expected , we may employ either or both deduction

and indu ction in answering the question In both w e may have noth .

ing more than an a d lzo m i n e m instrument Whether we appeal to .

s ome general trut h which the interrogator a c cepts or to facts whi ch

68 TH E PROBLE M S OF PH IL OSOPH Y
.

we expect him to accept we use an existing conviction in his mind t o

,

enforce the assertion at issue If he admits the premises and the con
.

e lusion follows assuming that formal and material rules of reasoning

,

have been complied with he must either contradict himself in further

,

questioning the assertion or m aintain that his admission is merely

,

p r o f o r m a an d then demand proof for the premises and so start

, ,

the regressive doubts which ultimately land him either in universal

scepticis m or the appeal to experience In this situation as indi .
,

c at e d above the believer has no responsibilities

,
and if responsibility ,

exist anywhere the sceptic must work out his own salvation .

It will thus be seen that even when we have agreed upon the ,

meani n g of our terms the problem of ,

knowledge has a t w o fold -

aspect that of acquisition and that of communication the method o f

, ,

the subject s obtaining it and the metho d of establishing a similar con

v i ct i o n in our neighbor This is important because it will be disco v

.

ered in the last analysis that no man can escape personal responsibility
for the acceptance of truth The functions of ratio cinative p roof
.

are purely social It is only an a d no m i n em instru ment for det er m in

.

ing the extent of the agreement between the members of the social
organis m .

In this connection it will be interesting to remark the reason fo r

the limitations of s cholastic thought It was throughout a defense o f .

Christianity This system dened clearly the antithesis between

.

'
knowledge and faith The objects of the latte r were not acces
.

sible to either sensory experience or syllogisti c proof in the
,

early stages of its intellectual development But the in certitude .

which inevitably arose from su ch a position the importan ce of t h e ,

issues involved and the natural habitual practice of employing ratio

,

ci nat i v e methods in se cular affairs soon instigated attempts to prove

the dogm as of the Church The study of nature which could be
.
,

prosecuted only by the inductive method having been abandoned , ,

there was left nothing but the Aristotelian logi c for a resource a n d ,

besides as certitude was the demand nothing ratiocinative would

, ,

supply this but the deductive syllogism Then as the system h a d .

started with the assumption of faith , or authority as the source of
religious dogmas , its primary problem was the co m m u n i ca t i o n of
truth not the acquisition of it by ordinary experience which in ,

volved senso ry processes The syllogism was the only instrument at

.

command for this communi cation and consequently became the one

scholasti c organon for knowledge It w as the revival of physical
.

s cience and of empiricism in psychology that substituted induction

 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OBL E M OF K NO WLE D GE .
69

a nd personal experience for authority and dogmatism in the deter

mination of truth .

But as we have come to extol experie n ce in the acquisition of

knowledge it will be important to remark the equivocation in that
term If we limited its meaning to sensation We might have at least
.

the appearance of a clear and unambiguous co n ception But the term .

does not uniformly obtai n so denite and limited an import It is .

O ften used in the Aristotelian sense to include the functions of memory .

Sometimes it denotes any individual impression , sensation or state of

c onsciousness , and sometimes it denotes a group of connected and r e

l ated states . Sometimes it is equivalent to perceptio n and some

t imes it is perceptio n with memory Sometimes it is a single
.

r ealization i n consciousness , and so metimes it is a series of su ch reali

z at io ns with an increment at the end associated with memory and per

haps due to inferential functions This latter may in clu de all the
.

mental processes beyond sensatio n an d so attempt to solve the prob

lem of knowledge by repeating a word which had a narrower
import in the s chool which started to use it In some of its uses it is
.

h a rdly distinguishab l e fro m i ntuition

. It is exposed to this sus
p ic i o n in all cases whe r e it means an immediate apprehensio n or reali
z at io n of a fact other than merely having a sensation That is to say
.
,

it does duty for either sensation or the combination of sensatio n and

perception of the immediate or intuitive sort The equivocations
.

in these various usages require to be eliminated before an y clear

progress can be made in solving the proble m s of epistemolo gy In fact .

all the phrases supposed to characterize empiricism have their c o n

t r o v er si a l importance determined wholly by the limitations assumed to
belong to the fact of experience If this fact either by denition
.
,

o r implication , involves other functions than sensatio n pure and simple

i t opens wide the door to the doctrines which empiricis m is supposed
to dispute and prevents all a ccurate characterization of the doctrines
,

from which that theory derived it s n ame It seems that the prevail
.

ing philosophical speculatio n can never dene in wha t specic sense

it employs the term and the consequence is that its position , especially
since Kant wh o never told us what Erfahrung w as has no denite ,

relation to the prob l ems of scepticism It appears only as a con

.

veni e nt expression to escape the maledictions of those who take

o ffense at any term which assu mes other than sensational functions in

the process of knowledge . Intuitive and a priori have bee n
so dis credited or misunderstood that it is not reputable to use them a nd

one can save his character and evade unnecessa ry controversy if only he
70 TH E PR OBLE M S OF PH IL OS OP H Y .

employs the terms of his traditional advers a ry while he conceals in them

the meaning which this adversary is not acute enough to re cognize .

What the philosopher ought to remark is that it is not merely the de

n it i o n of experience that is the primary source of the controversy ,
but the still more ambiguous implications in the phrase derivatio n
from experience when embodying empiri cism in it or dening ,

that doct r ine by it We can make the term experience denite
.

and clear by limiting it to sensation or to those states of cons ciousness

which are co n ceived as occurrences and which are not interpreting
acts and even then have an equivocal and dubious phrase in tha t which
,

speaks of the derivation of k nowledge from experie n ce The real .

cru x of the problem lies in the uncertain meaning of this las t p h ras e .

The concept experience has no valu e in the dis cussion unless it rep
resents a comparatively simple element in a larger complex whole If .

it stands for a complex totality which includes all that is at issue the
statement that k nowledge is derived from experience only begs the
question as a denition may do Hence the only useful conception of
.

the term is that which treats it as a prima ry element in the total prod
u ct of conscious reection Hence it will help to a useful analysis of
.

the issue if we limit experience to the meaning indi ca ted above ,
where it was suggested that it might be dened as any state of con
s c i o u sn ess viewed as an occurrence an effect and not as an interpret
, ,

ing act Then t h e question of derivation or origin of knowl

.

edge fr om this will be determined by various considerations ( I )
whether knowledge is a sensationa l or intellectual process ( 2 )

whether knowledge is limited to a sensational content or extends ,

to a supersensible content or impli ca tion : ( 3 ) whether sensation is

representative or merely indicative of an external reality ( 4)
whether knowledge extends to the nature of reality other tha n
m enta l states or is limited to the mere fact of it
,
The complications .

with which epistemolo gy thus has to deal appear quite numerous .

They cannot be unravelled however without an analysis and c l assi

, ,

cation o f h
t e various theories of k nowl edge and reality This .

is the next step in the present dis cussion .

The mere enumeration of the various theo ri es of epistemolo gy and

metaphysics will show what the complications are with which w e have
to deal They are sensationalism intellectualism rationalism scepti
.
, , ,

c is m , phenomenalism positivism empiricis m experientialism intu

, , , ,

i ti o ni s m apriori sm nativism idealism realism psycholo i ca l

, , , ( g ) sol
, ,

ip s is m nominalism conceptualis m realism ( metaphysica l

, , ) monism ,
, ,

dualism pluralism , atomism monadism materialism immaterialis m

, , , ,
 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OBL E M OF K NO WLE D GE .
71

spiritualism pantheism theism deism , agnosticis m trans cendentalism

, , , ,

and perhaps some others .

A little observation will reveal the fact that these various theorie s
can be somewhat systematized Besides they are not so distinct fro m
.

each other in many cases as the diff erence in name might suggest .

F or exa mple sensationalism an d phenome nalis m are O ften identie d

,
.

Intellectualism an d rationalis m at least partly coincide Scepticis m .

and agnosticis m are identical or almost so Empiricis m and ex p er i .

ent i a lis m are quite identical P luralism atomis m and monadism coin
.
, ,

cide in their nu merica l conception of the reality which they name .

Apriorism , intuit i o ni sm and nativism are clo sely ai l iate d if not iden
, ,

tical On the other hand idealis m is often oppose d to materialism

.
,

and to realis m without implying that the latter two are identical It .

is also at times associated with intellectualism .

It is this peculiarly equivocal conception of idealis m in modern

philosophy th a t suggests the radical distinction which I mean to adopt
between epistemological and metaphysical theories This distinction .

S hould be apparent fro m the discu ssion of the t w o questions Wna t ,

do we know P and H o w do w e know

I there indicated that
the one referred to the nature of the O bject of knowledge and the
other to the proces s or the evidence of it Conseque n tly I shall main .

tain that it woul d be much more condu cive to clear thinking if we

should distinguish between epistemological and metaphysical doctrine
in our conception and d enition of their theories In pursuance of .

this consideration I shall conne idealis m and realism to the eld of

epistemolo gy The reasons for this limitation will appear later The
. .

following is a tabular representation of the various theories of k n owl

edge and reality .

In this outline of the theories of knowledge and reality the

logical method of division woul d imply that they represent distinct
species and to that extent differ in subject matter But the fact is
, .

that no su ch principle can be carried out as is implied by the mode

of classi cation I can only assign a given theo r y an approximate
.

position in the system and I have been governed partly by existing con
ce t i o n s of it and part l y by the necessity of prese r ving the distinction
p
between epistemological and metaphysical theories If I could impose .

upon each term the meaning whi ch the principle of divisio n and classi
ca ti o n requires their relation to each other would be clear and I ,

intend that in their ideal conception this shall be the case But I am
, , .

obliged to re cognize that the current uses of the terms do not prevent
many of them from coinciding i n at least a part of their territo r y .
72 TH E P R OB L E IV
IS OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

Thus empiricism and sensationalism ha ve usually gone together and

have represented the same general philosophic tendencies They seem .

to differ only in the terms by which they express the s a me point of

view though as a matter of fact we may dis cover other S light differ
, , ,

en c es Again there is a close relation between Lu cretian and modern

.

Em p i r i c i sm , Ex p e i en t i a l is m r .

Hi sto r ical .

gn I n t ui t i o n s m i . Apr i o ri s m , N at i v is m .

Or i i .
S e n sa t i o n a l i s m .

Fun ct i o nal .
K no wl ed g e. I n t el l ect ua l i sm , Rat i o n a h s m .

S ubjec t i v e .

I d ea l ism .

O bject i v e
Co m pass .
I n t ui t i v e ,
.

Nat ur a l .

Rea l i s m .

Hy p o t h et i c al .

( In c m o n i s t i c
-
. S p in o z a
M o n i st ic A t o mi s m
j
. L ucr e t i a n .

P 1ur o m o n i s ti c
-
.

Quan t i ta t i v e .

L ei bn i tz ia n M o n a di sm .

D ua l i s m D esca r t es
. .

P l ur a l ist i c .

Reali t y . Mo d ern Ato m ism .

P an -

m a t e r ia l is m .

M a t er i a l is m
P s y ebo i o g i ca 1 M a t en a 1Ism
.
'

Qual i ta ti ve .
P a n S p irit ua l i s m
-
Mo n is ti c . .

S p ir i t ua l ism . T h eo l o gi c a l .

D ual ist i c P h i l o so h ic
. .

S ci en t i c .

Atomism Al so the quantitative theories of reality are ve ry closely

.

related to the qualitative theories The Dualism of Des ca rtes is iden .

tical with The o logical Spiritualism The Uno monistic theory of .

-

Spinoz a is sometimes regarded as identical with P an materialism and -

sometimes with Pan spiritualism The only difference between the

-
.

quantitative and qualitative theories is that the former does not speci
ca lly characterise reality as such but only its numeri cal aspect , ,

while the latter denominates by its terms the nature of it The exact .

meaning and relations of these will be dis cusse d later .

But the most important question for examination at present is the

relation between epistemological and metaphysical theories which I
wish to regard as distinct from each othe r though connected with each ,

both historically and to a certain extent lo gi cally I refer to Idealism .

and Realism on the one hand and to Materialism and Spiritualism on ,

the other The classication above places Idealism and Realism in

.

the epistemological series and does not re gard them as ontological
theories at all It is a fa ct however that Idealism h as no such denite
.
, ,

conception as is thus implied It is in the conception of many of its a d

.

v o c a tes as mu ch of an ontological as it is an epistemolo gical theor y .

This is proved by the uniform antithesis to Materialism which it is

supposed to represent Many of our philosophers speak of Material
.

ism and Idealism as if they were mutually incompatible It is regarded .

 ANA L YS I S OF TH E PR OB LE M OF s o WL E D GE .
73

as a suf cient refutatio n of Materialism to advo cate Ideal is m If a .

man wishes to so dene it , there can be no objecti on B ut t wo thi ngs .

ar e noticeable whi ch show tha t we cannot thus regard it and at the

same time as sume that we are dealing with the same conception in r e
lation to other theories They are ( I ) tha t Idealis m has generally
.

bee n opposed to Realis m , and ( a ) that its adherents have not displayed
any desire to identify it with Spiritualism of any kind , unless it be Pan
s piritualism . No w Realis m is not and has not been a metaphysical
theory Its a dvocates have no t identied it with Materia l ism , but have
.

as often if not more frequently been Spiritualists of the dualistic sort

,
.

Realism has been the doctrine which maintained that the mind can

trans cend i ts sta tes in its knowledge tha t it can know some
,

thing else tha n its o wn states , that it ca n perceive or posit an ex

tern al reality as the cause of its sensations It is not necessarily
.

involved in any assertion of the n ature of tha t reality Tha t issue .

may remain for decision after the fact of externa l existen ce h a s been
'

as serted It is true that usually the r ea l zs t s have also pronounced for

.

the materia l nature of their re ality and possibly all materialists have
been realists , but it has not bee n t h e primary motive of the realisti c
philosophy to identify the judgment M a t an external real ity is
known with the judgment as to wk a z that reality is The main

.

object of the doctrine w as to justify the belief in something else than

t h e subje ct s own menta l states It was primarily interested in r efut

.

ing Solipsis m . Consequently Realis m has never properly been an

ontologica l theo ry , however closely it may have been associated
w ith ontologica l views . Now if Idealism is to be conceived as opposed
to this con ception it must represent a denia l of the possibility of
knowing any reality beyond the subject s o wn states It must
.

l imit know l ed ge to subjective phenomena an d deny the possibility

of tr anscending these This conception of it does not involve a n ex
.

planatio n of phenomena , but a mere cognition of them The ma .

t e r i al ist ic theory is one that explains or attempts to explain phenom

ena as modes or functions of matter To oppose that theory we
.

must assume that there are phenomena which it does not explain .

Hence to oppose both Realis m and Materialis m by the doctrine of

Idealis m we must assume both a c ognitive and an exp l anatory function
for the ideal istic theo r y at the same ti me , thou gh thi s would not be so
objectionable if Rea l ism and Materialis m were identica l Consequently .

I must insist on a clear l imitation of the part to be played by a theory

of Idea l is m w hen it is or should be apparent that a theo r y of knowl
edge and a theory of reality are n o t necessari l y convertible .
74 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

The history of the term shows clearly h o w it became ambiguous .

It was rst applied to the philosophy of P lato in which the Greek

word idea w a s employe d to characterize the form of reality
that was permanent and so did not characterize phenomena at all .

In modern times many of our idealists limit k nowledge to phe

n o m en a and on that ground proclaim their Idealism The point o f .

View and the assumptions determining present philosophi c tendencies

have completely changed since Plato His ideas in fa ct could not .

be distinguished from Epicurean atoms in some of their characteristics .

They were eternal and they were supersensible The difference was
th at t h e atoms were substances and the i deas were characteristics ,

though permanent modes of things The term w a s not asso ciated .

with consciousness as in modern thought Its only approximation t o .

anything li k e modern conceptio ns was in the fact that i deas were

ascertained by mental processes above the senses and the internal an d ,

external worlds subject and object consciousness and physical
, ,

motion were the same in kind so that the phrase

, ,
thought and ,

reality are identical coul d well be use d to represent the point of Vie w
,

of P lato while the e ffect of Nominalis m and the non representative

,
-

nature of consciousness in modern psycholo gy w ith its antithesis ,

between s ubject and object has been to limit ideas to states o r
,

conceptions of cons ciousness and not to extend the application of the

term to the universal and permanent qualities of any reality what
ever Consequently there is little more than an etymological lineage
.

between Platonic and modern Idealism .

Again ever since Berkeley and Collier the term Idealis m has assumed
a meaning determined by the special exigencies of the system which
proclaimed its elf as su ch Berk eley s system is called subjective
.

Idealism Kant s trans cendental Idealism Fi ch t e s subjective
, ,

again though not identical with Berkeley s Schelling s objective

,

,

Idealism and Hegel s absolute Idealism with the tendency of late r
, ,

writers to conceive Hegel s system as objective Idealis m without
wholly conceiving it as the same as S chelling s In this variety o f
.

different or contradictory meanings it is impossible to obtain any useful

conception of a general sort for the term in philosophical problems .

The general import of it is too abstract to deal with the real questions
at issue between separate schools When it denotes equally positions
.

that assume an antithesis a n d positions that assume an identity between

thought and reality it is certainly not clear and concrete enough
,

to suggest any fruitful implications This is especially evident in the

.

disposition of many idealists to insist when confronted with the dii ,

 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OB LE M O F K NO WLE D GE .
75

c ul t i es of denying what the realists have contended for to maintai n

that Idealism and Realism are not oppo sed to each other but quite
reconcilable If this be the case there is no special importance attach
.

ing to the ze a lous defen ce of Idealis m as under su ch an assumptio n

,

it can have n o power to settle any problem whatever as affected by

the very evident issues conne cted with sense perception The only .

hope of clear thinking is to dene Idealism and Realism in suffi ciently

denite terms to indicate what this issue is This has been done f o r .

us historically by various men one class of whom has contended that

,

know an external world and the other that we can

indire ctly or not at all There is a point however.
, ,

where in spite of this oppos ition the t w o s chools practically agree

, .

The hypothetical realist admits that we do not intuitively perceive

external reality and contends that we can know it only i nf er
,

This position would coincide with what I have called

en t za l l
y .

objective Idealism in the tabular classication so that a Clear ,

opposition is found only between subjective Idealism or Solip s ism , ,

and intuitive Realism where the issue between the limitation o f

,
knowledge to the subject s own states and its extension to an ex

ternal or objective reality is dened with appare n t clearness the ,

question as to the nature of either or both of them being left open

for metaphysics to fu r ther determine Without thi s distinction I .

would maintain that there is no reason for the assumption of a differ

ence between the t wo schools in their epistemolo gy but only in their
ontology which depends on other assumptions than those necessary
,

to test the compass or limits of knowledge In deciding the r a ng e .

of my knowledge I either assume the nature of the thing pre

s u m t i v el known or I leave that entirely in suspense Whether
p y .

knowledge does or does not extend beyond the states of the subject
to the perception of the object is one problem and whether it at the
same time cognizes and posits the n ature material or spiritual of , ,

either su bject or object is another problem As for myself the assertio n .

of wka a thing is is distinct from the asse rtion M a t it is I may have .

reason to af rm or believe that knowledge is either limited to phe

nomena o r extends to reality other tha n phenom ena and y et ,

be ignorant as to h o w I should characterize in any other terms t h e , ,

th ing involved in my knowledge .

The consequence of all this analysis is that I shall assume that

the epistemological and the n o um eno l o gica l problems are distinct
from e a ch other even if we a dmit as I do that the epistemological
, , ,

question comes rst and prepares the w a y for clearer dis cussion of
76 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L 0 5 OP H y .

the n o um e no l o gi ca l I merely insist that the doctrine is no t pre

.

determined by the epistemological I shall i n all discussions of the

.

issues of philosophy use the terms Idealism and Realis m as opposed

points of View in one of their meanings at least and Materialis m and
, ,

Spiritualis m as opposed doctrines in Metaphysics So far as the con .

c e p t i o n of these terms is concerned I shall assume th at an idealist may

,

be either a materialist or a S piritualist and the same with the realist .

Likewise I shall assume that a materialist may be either an idealist or

a realist and the same with the S piritualist I merely use the term
,
.

Spiritualis m to mean the doctrine that maintai n s the existence of

something immaterial in the world I am simply following the example
.

and usage of Sully in his recent work I m ean therefore to divide the .

eld of epistemological investigation between idealisti c and realistic

claims for the sa k e of studying the facts in the light of one or the other
point of View and for the same purpose to divide the n o um e n o l o gi c al
,

or metaphysical eld into the materialistic and spiritualistic claims .

I shall not however at this stage of the dis cussion enter into the
, ,

m erits of any of these doctrines I have been concerned only with so

.

much of the history a nd analysis of fundamental conceptions as would

indicate h o w the complexities of these various problems should be ap
pr o a ch e d By thus indicating the order and nature of the problems
.

to be discussed we are prepared to do one thing at a time in the investi

ga t io n before us This whole subject has its preliminaries and th ese
.

are the clear denition of the issue to be decided It is not enough to .

thresh over the old straw in terms that either beg all questions or that
s how no intelligent conception of the real perplexities which the phil

o so
ph i ca l s tudent has to face in the controversies conne cted with the
doctrines suggested in the classi cations in this and the previous c hap
ter These perplexities involve a series of conne cted questions in
.

which the answers to the rst do not ne cessarily carry with them the
answers to the succeeding ones Knowledge both in respect of its
.
,

pro cess and content is a complex affair and it is necessary to deter

,

mine the elements o f that growth and the order of their manifestation .

In t his order I shall consider the epistemological as rst a n d inde

pendent o f the no um eno l o gic al and as not determinative of the result
in the n o um eno l o gi cal It is possible also to dis cuss the process of
.

knowing without deciding any choice between Idealism and Real

ism but merely as certaining how tha t whi ch is at least called knowl
,

edge is acquired and regarded as valid This last course as a matter .

,

o f fact is the one that will be adopted and this purpose demands that
, ,

I should at least briey indicate h o w this can be done .

 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OB LE M OF K NO WL E D GE .
77

The rst step in the accomplishme nt of this en d, after indi cating

the theoretical problems involved in the na l re sults of dis cussion , is
the presentation of the psychological s cheme upon which further in
vest i gat i o n will be based In all discussions of epistemolo gi cal systems
.

we suppose certai n primary factors in the problem Sensation is the .

rst This is usually followed by perception , memory , association ,
.

conception , judgment , reasoning intuition etc Apprehension often

, , .

does duty for perception In English psycho l o gy all these a cts of
.

the mind , said to be act s of corres pondi ng facultie s are supposed

to be distinguishable from each other in k ind That is , they are as .

sumed to represent distinct funct io n s of the mind an d so to be treated

as separate elements in the synthetic whole of knowledge But I .

think tha t this representation of psycholo gi cal fa culty can be

greatly simplied , an d consequentl y improved to the same extent .

If we adopt a Kanti a n conception and divide the general functi ons

of the mind into re ceptive a n d active , receivin g and interpr e tin g f unc
tions , we shall have all the cognitive capacities reduced to t wo genera l
types Kant of cours e had three fundamental functions , name l y S en
.
,

sibili t , Understandi n g and Reason The last two should be reduced

y .

to judgment , as I propose to do here We should then have sensibility

.

and judgment as the two general functions implicated in knowledge

But Ka nt s conception of sensibility included Locke s reection , or
se lf cons ciousness , the cons ciousness of o ur o wn mental states other
-

than sensations , while the term sensibility i n En gl ish philosophy

and psycholo gy generally is either l imite d to external experience ,
that is , sensation , or applies also to certai n emot ions , and does not
connote the in ternal mental s t ates Beside s neither sensibility .

nor sens ation su ggests the perceivin g or apprehending act whi ch

is so necess a ry to the conception of knowledge , but only a re l atio n
to both the subject and the object Hence I think it better to adopt
.

some ter m whi ch shall comprehend the intuitive functions as cribed to

or associated with both sensation an d the cons ciousness of our o wn
mental states I sha l l adopt for thi s the term Apprehension or Int ui
.

ti on , meani ng thereby the im mediate act of cons ciousness which pres ents
.

facts of experience A fuller account of it w il l be given i n l ater

.

discussion But I shal l divide it into t w o forms in so far as its object

.

matter is either sensatio n or the consciousness of me nta l acts other

than sensation F or purposes of classication and brevity of expres
.

sion I shal l use the word m en t a t zo n to denote the menta l states other

than sensory Sen sation and mentation therefore , will represent the
.
,

t wo phenomena or states of consciousness whi ch are dire ct presen

78 TH E P ] ! OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

t at i o n s ,that is present as acts and as objects of consciousness To

, .

these I shall add a third which will represent a present state but a past
obje ct This is Memory or perhaps more correctly Recogn ition
.
, , .

T hese three may be treated as subdivisions of Apprehension or Intui

tion , or at least as different types of phenomena with whi ch A p
p rehension is as s ociated as the simplest function of knowledge .

I shall then embrace all other intellectual functions in the term

Cognition o r Judgment in the widest acceptation of the term I dis
,
.

miss Conception as only a form of judgment and not as a process in

an
y particular unique Cognition shall represent all the higher acts
.

o f the mind in the synthesis of knowledge It differs from A pp r e .

h e ns i o n or Intuition in this fact of synthesis which involves the con

s c i o u s ness of relation as I do not intend Apprehension to imply
,
I shall .

subdivide Cognition or Judgment into Perception C o np e r c ep t i o n A p , ,

perception Infero apperception and Genero perception The te chnical

,
- -
.

meaning of these terms will be considered in the p roper pla ce But I .

may remark here that it is possible to treat Infero apperception which -

I conceive as convertible with Ratiocination as a subdivision of A p ,

p erception I might divide Apperception into simple and complex

.

apperception the former being equivalent to Ju dg me n t in the ordinary

,

logical sense and the latter equivalent to ratiocination both partaking ,

of the nature of apperception The scheme of mental function there .

,

f ore to be considered in the theory of knowledge

,
may be sum
m a r i z e d in the following manner treating them all as forms of intel ,

lection .

S ry S ti e n so . e n sa o n
Appr h M t l M t ti
.

n In tu t e en si o o r i io n . en a . en a o n.
M m i M m ry R g i ti ne o n c . e o o r eco n o n .

P er ce p t i o
,
n
I n t e ll ect i o n
.

C o n p er cep t i o n
.

Co gnit io n o r J ud g m e n t . A p p e r ce p t i o n .

I n rer a a -
pperce p tio n . Ra t i o ci n a t i o n
G ene r o -
p erce pt i o n . Gen e r a li z a t i o n

The only rese r vations and cautions to be mentioned at prese n t in

regard to this s cheme pertain to the use of the word sensation .

According to the principle implied in its classicatio n it expresses a

s pecies of apprehension B ut I have purposely des cribed the types of
.

apprehension in adjectival terms to indicate that I do not wish to

identify sensations wl wlly with what I mean to express by a pp r eh en
f

sion or intuition We shall nd on more careful examinatio n that the

term sensation is often used in a way to distinguish it from the

properly knowing act assumed to accompany it as one as pect of
the total cons ciousness occurring at the time But I include the term .

i n the analysis for the purpose of recognizing its fu ndamental place in

 A NA L YS I S OF TH E PR OB LE M O F K NO WL E D GE .
79

the theory of knowledge The main purpose is to secure as simple

.

an outline as possible of the primary functions which I mean to dis

cuss in the investigatio ns of epistemology .

The most of these terms I shall dene and explain techni ca lly when
I come to dis cuss the problems involved but there are some important ,

conceptions whose import must be u nderstood in any exami nation of

primary questio ns They are not terms which express the functions
.

involved but which affect the interpretation of the facts co nnected

,

with these functions and he n ce their import s hould be understood at

,

the outset .

When I use the terms mind or soul I shall mean a subject of

cons ciousness other than the brain This , however is only a denition .
,

of the terms I shall not intend to imp l y by them that there is in

.

reality any su ch thing The existence of su ch a subject must be

.

treated as a quae situm n o t a datum But I shall use them to denote a

,

subject rather than a phenomenon of that subject because we have ,

the term consciousness to denote the functional pheno mena of that

subject and hence I prefer to remain by the historical uses of those
,

terms instead of violently distorting them as the phenomenalist does ,

when he nds that he cannot admit them into the sphere either of
known things or of realities other than the brain He ought .

to see that it is possible to accept their traditional meaning and to

deny their existence as supposed just as men do in the case of ghosts , ,

or hobgoblins or devils I could make them convertible with the term

.

subject except for the fa ct that I shall use this term for the basis of
any kind of attributes material or mental In psychology and ep ist e .

m o l o gy of course subject will always be synonymous with

, ,
mind

or soul if the existe n ce of this be assumed but synonymous with
, ,

brain or organism if mind be not assumed That is subject will

, .

be a term indifferent to the theories of materialism and spiritualis m

in n o um en o l o gy and merely denote that cons ciousness has a ground ,

substratum or
reality of some kind of which it is a function
, ,

quality or attribute It therefore does not exclude the supposition

, .

that the organism m ight turn out to be this as the result of inquiry .

But mind or soul means to exclude the brain or organis m by
denition but I shall l eave the fa ct of this ope n to i nvestigation in my
,

use of the terms .

The term object is equivocal In strict consistency with the .

more limited import of the term subje ct it should denote only the

non ego or external reality
-

, But as a matter of fact it may include

.

along with this also any mental fact as an object of cons ciousness ,
.
80 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

that is a fact with which cons cious ne ss may be occupied o r whi ch

,

may be the subject matter of its perceptions and ree ctions These .

additional facts as objects may be either the subject of con

sc io us n ess itself the subject object of Hamilton or the states of con -

, ,

sc i o us n e ss themselves The content meaning of the term may thus be

.

threefold as des cribed Which of them is intended in any specic

,
.

case can be determined by the context .

The term phenomenon is one that may give a good deal of
trouble It has not always preserved an identical mea n ing amid the
.

vicissitudes of philosophic speculation It h a s formed the basal con .

ce t i o n of various systems without being as carefully dene d as it

p
should have been and plays a very equivocal part in present thought .

But it will not be necessary to unravel the perplexities incident to its

general usage as I shall not employ the ter m in the earlier discus
,

sions of this work to denote anything more than a fact whi ch requires
to be explained as opposed to such as may not require this I shall .

not limit its import to either the subjective or to the idea of ap ,

pearance o r to that of change
,
So far as epistemologica l investi
.

ga t io ns are concerned it may be any one or all of them I shall use it .

,

until further dis cussed to denote any fact within the purview of con
,

s c i o usn ess whether subjective or objective which requires to be ex

, ,

plained in some way it may be as an e ffe ct as an attribute as an

, , ,

appearance as change or a n event whether subje ctive or objective
, ,
.

There is an implication associated with the term k nowledge

which it is important to notice It is the supposition that to be .

known a fact or thing must be in consciousness or even must be ,

consciousness
The expression that k nowledge is limited to our
.

own mental states has a tende ncy to create a denition for the term
knowledge which makes it convertible with the limits of cons cious
ness as a function of mind This is to imply that to know is to .

Ha v e a s t a t e of co n s c i o u s n ess as distinct from having an O O j ec t of

consciousness other than the state itself If knowing is having .

a state of consciousness that which is other than this state or t r a nss ub

, ,

je ct iv e transphenomenal or objective as external is not known as a
, , , ,

matter of course though absolute certitude characterize our convictions

,

regarding it We shall have to dis cuss this equivo cation m uch more
.

in detail when dealing with concrete problems It s ui ces here to .

remark it as a part of the prelimina ry analysis of epistemolo gica l con

ce
pti o ns .

The term reality isanother which should have the same pre
liminary consideration . This term has three different meanings which
 A NA L YS I S OF
'
TH E PR OB L E M OF K NO WL E D GE . 81

affect the problem of knowledge The rst of these is that which .

is implied in the a ntithesi s between the real a n d the unreal which

is the meaning in or dinary parlance and of which a great deal is made
by T H Green in his discussion of Hume and the problem of Ethics
. . .

It is the conception which many of our philosophi c students pick up

without examining its historical import in the eld of philosophy and
then use for the interpretation of systems which did not employ it in

that sense at all In this common conception of the real the mean
.

ing is that of fa ct the actual or the existential as opposed to that

, ,

which is non existent or not a fa ct of

-
actual experience
Some .

times this is exp ressed by the d ist inc tion between the actual and the
- !

imaginary in which the imaginary denotes what is not a fact of ex

,

ternal existence but only a product of fancy

,
.

Somewhat closely allied to this commo n meaning is that in whi ch

the term real denotes one aspect of the antithesis between the real

and the ideal This is the oppositio n between the s ubjective and o b
.

je ct ive between the internal and the external This may or may not
,
.

coincide with that between the actual and the imaginary Both the in .

ternal and the extern al the subjective and the objective may be actual
, , ,

o r both imaginary But the internal and the external the subjective
.
,

and the objective are not the sa m e even when w e suppose them the same ,

in kind Hence in the theory of perception ever since the contro

.
,

ver s
y with Nominalism the term real has stood for an obje ctive
,

or external fact or thing as O pposed to what w a s merely mental though

actual The more general meaning of common parlance was simply
.

disregarded not denied It was the exigencies of certain p h il o so p h i

,
.

cal problems that imposed a technical import upon the term .

This se cond meaning of the word had grown out of a relation to

the preexisting conceptions of the P latonic do ctrine The fortunes of .

this should be briey characterized In the rst place the problem of .

,

Plato was to dene the limits of the permanent and the transient the ,

eternal and the ephemeral He expressed the pe r manent by the term .

idea or
form and the term
matter was identied with the
,

transient or phenomenal The ideal of P latonic parlance thus
.

became identical with the real of modern parlance wherever real ,

denoted the permanent or the universal But in spite of the fact that
,
.

Plato made his ideal the permanent he still conceived it as a c har ,

a ct er i s t i c a property quality function activity or mo d al aspect of a

, ,
, , ,

supersensible existence This supersensib l e existence he woul d not

.

call matter because he chose to limit this term to the p h en o m e

na l aspect of things the changeable or transient characteristic But
, .
82 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y .

the philosophy of Lucretius completely reversed the conceptions of the

P latonic matter and form and the adoption of the atomic theory
,

in mo dern thought perpetuated his conceptions of the case while those

of P lato did not survive outside the history of philosophy Lucretius .

made matter eternal and form ephemeral In h i s conception .

forms ideas aspects , modes were the transient res ultants of com
, ,

position o r the compounding of atoms whi l e the atoms which were

, ,

material were permanent Hence assuming th a t menta l phenomena

.

were the activities , characteristi cs modes etc , of the composition of

, ,
.

atoms representing the organism the L u cretian philosophy eas ily de

cided its attitude on the question of perso na l surviva l after death .

Ideas being activities of a compound subject were phenomenal and
,

transient No w when nominalism established itse l f ideas being

.

,

mental modes became purely subjective and the real became con
,

vertible with matter which was the objective or external fact the ,

transsubjective The ideal and the real which were identical in

.

Pl ato became exclusive of each other in modern thought and as the ,

real in the materialistic theory be came conve rtible with matter

whi ch was eternal it suggested the antithesis to describe in modern ,

parlance the do ctrine of P lato as turning o n the opposition between

,

th e real and the phenomenal or the constant and the changeable
, .

Hence the term real is often taken to denote the permanent as o p

posed to the transient without regard to the questio n of the subjective
and objective Consequent ly it is only by adopting the conception of
.

real as just dened and the Platoni c concep tion of ideal tha t we
can ascribe the P latonic philosophy as identifying the real and the
ideal
. In Lucretian an d nominalistic thou ght this identity would
be denied but onl y because the mea n ing an d impli catio ns of the terms
,

h a d partly or whol l y cha nged In nomin al istic psycho l o gy where the

.

question related to the distinction between the subjective a n d objective

the ideal and the real woul d express the oppositio n between inter
nal and external , the menta l and the material , as things different at
least numerical ly if not in kind In metaphysics , espe cially of the
.

materialisti c type where the material and the menta l represented the
antithesis between the permanent and the tra ns ient , and the real,

was tak en for the material , the antithesis whi ch represented the third

import of the term rea l is e xpressed in the terms real and phe
no m e na l It is apparent , therefore , from a ll this a nalys is tha t we
.

have in the Word reality the suggestio n of a va r iety of problems

which must be distinguished from each other In epistemology this .

problem regards the ideal and real in modern parlance the sub ,
 A J VA L YS I S OF T HE PR OB LE M OF K NO WLE D GE . 83

ec t iv e
j and objective or i nterna l and external in the theory of percep
, ,

tion That is , the problem is to determine whether an d h o w the mind

.

can know anything trans cending its o w n states that is something , ,

a t least numerically if not qualitatively di fferent from itself The con .

cept i o n s expressed in the antitheses between the actual and the non

e xistent the ,
real and the unreal on the one hand and between the
, ,

p ermanent and the transient , or the real and the phenomenal on the ,

o ther hand , have no interest or importance in the theory of k nowl

edge as so dened They may have an interest in n o um eno l o gi cal
.

p roblems But whatever this may be and whatever further discussion

.

may be ne cessary will be taken up later All that is necessary at pres

.

e nt is to recogn ize the equivocations of the term real and to dene
t h e epistemological p roblem which must be the subject of immediate

c onsideration This is the limits of knowledge
. .

But the limits of knowledge is also an ambiguous expression .

What I have indicated as a conception of certitude asso ciated with it

also becomes connected with the proble m of its co mpass Usually of .
,

c ourse ,
limits refers to its compass or range But the demand for .

what is certainly known as opposed to scepti cis m and incertitude

h as created the conception that knowledge implies certitude , while
the controversy about its compass its inclusio n or exclusion of external
,

reality has created the conception that it implies a denite content
,

to which it is conned Both ass umptions become confused in the

.

general problem which may be dened as consisting , on the one hand ,

o f a question regarding the limits of certitude and on the other r e , ,

garding the limits of compass or content Hence in the epistemologi

.

c a l problem I shall ha ve to discuss both these aspects of it .

 CHA P TER IV .

P RIM A RY P R O C E S S E S A ND D A TA O F KNO WL E D GE .

I HA V E avoided the use of the term elementary in the caption

of this chapter because I do not wish to imply that the processes of
which I shall treat in it are elements of a complex totality They may .

be this and are undoubtedly this in some conceptio n s of the ter m

,

k nowledge But in others where that term den otes so simple and
.

unanalyzable a process as intuition , elementary would not correctly

describe it except we mean unanalyzable instead of a part of a whole
by it But whether the processes and da ta which I a m to co ns ider at
.

present are elements or not they are ce rtai n ly primary that is , prior
, ,

to the complex conceptions which are denominated as representative

of knowledge Whether we consider them eleme nts entering int o
.

these co m plex products they are facts whi ch have to be examine d

either as the conditions of these products or as processes and da ta in
volved H ence it is best to avoid debatable suggestions and to call
.

them primary .

In calling the processes whi ch this cha pter is to dis cuss ,

,
pri
mary I shall remai n indifferent to the question whether they ar e
elementa r y or complex The habit of one s chool when speaking of
.
,

them as elementa r y h a s been to regard them as simple and unan

a ly z abl e and another as highly complex
, I am willing to regard them
.

as either simple or comple x according to the relation in whi ch they

,

are viewed F or the problem of knowledge which studies mainly

.

the validity of mental processes fo r truth we regard them a s pri

ma r y because we start with them as s ui c ie nt ly well known without
,

that peculiar analysis whi ch experimenta l psycholo gy gi ves them t o ,

deal with the main problems of reality .

The psychological analysis in the previous chapter represents the

funda mental processes of knowledge as being intuition and cogu i
tion or apprehensio n and judgment with sensation mentation and
, , ,

r ecognitio n or memory as subdivisions or species of the rs t of these .

I ha ve already remarked that I did not mean to consider them as tech

n i ca lly such subdivisions but as facts in connection with which
, a pp re
h ensi o n occurred and the adjectival mode of qualifying the species o f
apprehension was the bett er indication of my real intention Gonse .

84
 PR I M A R y PR O CE S S E S . 85

quently I sha ll separate here the dis cussio n of these various processes
and data as if they were independent problems Apprehens ion is a .

concomitant function of all the others while they have to be considered

for the purpose of making clear factors in the ge n eral proble m of
knowledge that are not always analyzed or dened with s ui ci ent
care and refere n ce to funda mental issues I begin with sensation
. .

S EN S A T I O N .

P hilosophers and psychologists are practically agreed as to the

chronological place of sensation in the problem of knowledge and
as to its primary importance The dispute when there is any turns
.
, ,

about its content and signicance If we had any evidence that some
.

other state of cons ciousness initiated knowledge we could depreciate

the importance of sensation But it appears according to general agree
.
,

ment , that sensation must be prior to the exercise of all other functions
o f mind and whether this be strictly true or not it is certainly pos
, ,

sessed of an origin that suggests this and must be dis cussed accordingly .

Assuming that it is the priu s of all intuitive and c ognit i ve knowl

edge there are tw o questions r egarding it to be considered n amely
, , ,

( 1 ) its denition and ( 2 ) its i nterpretation , or its relation to the gen

,

eral content of knowledge .

It may be doubtf u l whether there has been any uniform conception

of the nature of sensation It is a phenomenon s o related to othe r s
.

in temporal juxtapositio n with it that confusio n could easily occur

,

r egarding it This sometimes ta k es place when the question arises

.

whether sensation s h all be treated as a state of cons ciousness In some .

systems of philosophy cons ciousness is so conceived as to imply
that sensation is n o t such a state and it tends to become identied with
the supposed neural processes antecedent to and conditioning con
s ci o usn ess .But I suspe ct that this con c eption of it grows out of the
desire and necessity of distinguishing it from what is called percep
tion on the one hand and that conception of consciousness on
,

,

,

the other hand which more or less identies consciousness with self
cons ciousness But if we simply conceive or dene consciousness
.

to be that concomitant mental act which is itself or is aware of any or ,

all facts of experience or as Hamilton calls it the compleme nt
, ,

of the cognitive ener gies we shall have reaso n to regard sensatio n as

,

one of the facts accompanied by consciousness or as a state of it , .

I shall so regard it inasmuch as I conceive cons cious ness to be
,

the most general and esse n tial functional a ctivity of the subject and
representing that a wa r e n es s of facts , not merely awareness of self ,
86 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

which distinguishes it fro m what is regarded as uncons cious and

physical .

I mean therefore to con ceive sensation as a state of cons cious

ness But our difculties begin when we attempt to distinguish thi s
.

state fro m others in the same group When we dene a n object fact.
, ,

or phenomenon we are expected to name its c o n fer ent i a and differentia ,

its essential characteristics both common and distinctive T h us I may

,
.

dene a stable as a building qualied for the housing of animals

water as a liquid com osed of hydro gen and oxygen a newspaper
p
as a medium for the publication of daily events a horse as a verte
brate animal etc These may not be technically accurate but they
,
.
,

illustrate suf ciently the principle which I wish to e mphasize a n d

which is re cognized universally as ne cessary to proper denition ,

namely that it m ust distinguish the thing dened from the others by
,

specifying the qualities whi ch are common to it and certain others and

more particularly those which are not common but differential This , .

condition is exemplied in the illustrations give n The qualities de .

ning and distinguishing them inhere in the object dened They do .

not express relations to something else that may be variable but prop ,

e r t i es of the thing dened Now it must be sai d of sensation that it

.

is impossible to dene it in this wa y We can name its general char .

a c t e r is t i c,that is cons ciousness but we cannot name its differentia as

, ,

a quality of the phenomenon dened and hen ce there is a sense i n ,

which we have to say that sensation cannot be de ne d But we can .

di sting uish it su i c ie nt ly from other m ental states by in di cating one

of its di fferential r el a t i o n s and then leave to the individual s intro
,

sp e c t i o n the recognition of what is meant With this explana tion I

.

shall dene sensation as t /za t s t a t e of c o n s c i o u s n es s w lzi clt i s p r o d u ced

O y t k e a c t i o n of a n ext e r n a l s t i m u l u s up o n t ne s q e c t of i t This .

denition if such it can be called sufciently distinguishes what we

, ,

are talking about from such facts as perception memory emotion , ,

association self consciousness etc We have a xed relation to st im u

,
-

, .

lus as the determinating factor of its distinction from other mental acts .

But however acceptable this denition may be it is not self exp l an -

at o r y and it does not remove all dii c ul t ies in the determination of it s

full meaning We require to examine more explicitly the peculiaritie s

.

of the phenomenon so dened The fact is that sensation , whether

.

we dene it as I have done or in any oth e r way is an exceedingly ab ,

stract term It is a double abstraction as dened The stimulus is no t

.
.

an integral part of the phenomenon but an independent and related ,

fact so that sensation thus dened is simply a n element or term in a

,
 PR I M A R Y PR O CE S S E S .
87

series of facts Apparently at le a st it cannot be conceived apart from

.
,

this environment But this aspect of its abstract nature gives very
.

little dii c ul ty when compared with the second whi ch represents it as ,

a g en er a l concept not a concrete member of a series a view of it

, ,

which might be regarde d as very clear in spite of its abstract ch a rac

ter But it is a general concept which comprises in its extension such
.

different phenomena that when we seek for a common character

ist i c we can nd none but this relation to an external stimulus and ,

t /zi s is n o t a c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of t k e p nen o m en o n a t a ll It is

simply a uniform and necessary concomitant and condition of its occur

rence Hence it is extremely dii c ult to give any clear idea of the
.

term s meaning except by illustration and this is to appeal to more

specic and concrete facts of experience and so to name the phe ,

n o m e n al reactions of the special senses in each case We should have .

to name sensations of color sound , touch etc , , .

When it comes to spe cifying illustrations of what is meant by the

term sensation the origin of the word and its associations in common
experience prompt the habit of indicating tactual feelings as
the proper represe n tatives of it Whatever we may think of the in
adequacy o f su ch phenomena to express all that we mean by the
term the natural tendency is to illustrate the case by an appeal to
,

touch and any illustration tends to leave th e impression of c o nv er tibil

ity in those terms as this is all the denition that common dis cussion
,

employs But when we come to strict psychological and epistemolog

.

ical dis cussion it is apparent that such a device will not avail much .

We have to include other sensory experiences in our conception of

the term It applies according to the denition adopte d above to
.
, ,

visual and auditory phenomena as well as to tactual sap ient and o lfa c , ,

tory No w it is characteristic of our t actual sensations that they are

.

denitely localized on the periphery of the organis m while those of

vision are not so localized and perhaps those of hearing are not so
,

localized V ision as Hamilton remarked , is usually conceived as a

.
,

percipient sense rather than as a sensational organ or sense We do .

not directly distinguish between the sensation and the thing per
ceived In fa ct we are apparently n o t aware immediately of the
.

sensation as dened but only of the s o called object of perception

,
-
.

In touch whether we are any differently qualied to pronounce upon

,

the situation or not we generally at least , try to distinguish between

,

the sensation and the object or stimulus c ausing it It may be with .

t h e help of vision and visual

experience s in the past that we are
able to so represent the matter to the mind but whatever the origin ,
88 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

of the habit it is certainly one tha t is very common n amely , to localize ,

the tactual sensation on the orga nism and the cause or sti mulus as
e xternal to this so that from the sta ndpoint of touch we have a con
,

c ep ti o n of the distinction between sensation and its cause which we

a pparently do not have in vision In fact we might say of vision that

.

w e never are aware of the sensation at all but only of the object or ,

s timulus at le a,
st as common sense usually conceives the case The .

t endency to test one of the senses by the other the reliance we ha ve ,

o n vision for all anticipations of tactual experience , and the

a ssumed objectivity of cause s to effects lead to such an association
,

o f touch and vision that in our commonly accepted conception of the

m atter the tactual object is a vi sual percept and t h e sensation an a ffec

tion of the sensorium while in vision the object is a visual percept and
no feeling of a localized sort appears in consciousness at leas t in ,

any wa y analogous to tactual sensation or suggesting tha t idea of sen

sation But whe n we are r educed to each individual sense for the
.

determi na tion of the object we nd that in touch w e either cannot

, ,

distinguish between the sensation affection of the senso rium and the
, ,

object or we h a ve to deny the resemblance betwee n sensation and object

, ,

making the latter unknowable in terms of the former In hearing .

there is no denite localization of the sensatio n and only an associative

or infere ntial conception of the object interpreting conception in the
,

representative sense of resemblance in kind In vision we ha ve seen .

tha t there is n o distinction between sensation and object , but onl y be

cause there is no sensation in the sense whi ch that term bears in
touch The other senses exhibit in various de grees the same phe
.

no m eno n The consequence is that whe n we come to examine the

.

common quality which shall dene the term sensation in all sen

sory experience we nd that the only conferential or common fact

is a relation to stimulus and t /zi s i s n o t a qu a l i ty of t il e s en s a t i o n a t
,

a ll. This relation indicates the object havin g a constant reference to

the sensation and this constant reference may be used as evidence of the
fact about which w e wish to reect whe n discussing sensory exp er i

ence . That is to say nothing will make clear or intelli g ible what we
,

mean by the sensation but an illustration or a personal experience ,

since we cannot mention the associated syntheti c characteristic of it

which will identi fy it , but only the associated synthetic cause wh ich is
n o part of its constitution The conception of sensation is thus the most
.

i
a bstract poss ble the so called common quality being nothing but a
,
-

common relation to stimulus But two facts still more h ighly rene
.

t his abstraction F irstly the stimuli do n o t appear to be and ce r tainly

.
, ,
 PR I M A R Y PR O CE S S E S .
89

are not co nceived to be the same i n kind Secondly when the phe
, ,

n o m en a of sensational experience are carefully examined we

analyze or reduce the localizatio n i nto a reference to the sensorium
which we do not lo calize at all but leave it indeterminate bet ween the
,

periphery and the center of the neural system The consequence is .

tha t when we have eliminate d the adj uncts of sensation which are no
,

constitutional qualities of it we have left nothing in Conception but a

subjective phenomeno n The assumed representative cha racter
.

of the sensation is lost and if once the principle of causality is dis

,

p ute d the necessity of supposing an external object is eradi cated .

This situation is the paradise of s cepticism It has only to take .

the denition of sensation advanced by common sense to show that

the external object assumed by that point of view is not contained in
the thing dened and when it appeals to the phenomena of illusion in
,

sense perception it easily discredits the convictions or knowledge

associated with and assumed to trans cend sensation What we seemed .

so certain of before this criti cal i nvestigation dissolves into the nature
of an hypothesis of inference by supposition , and an hypothe sis or i n
,

ference is always assumed to have some measure of uncertainty about

it a likelihood of being false Whether this be the correc t conception
, .

of the case I do not at present need to inquire as I am concerned only

,

with the fact that this interpretation of the situation has existed as a
fact , and it was made as the logical consequence presumptively of , ,

the denition of the natural realist It is this peculiarly confusing

.

condition of things which give s rise to the epistemological proble m

r egarding the existence of external reality At rst and before any
.

special analysis of the primary data of knowledge had been made

the existence of an external reality was taken as a n immediate
datum of the same state Of cons ciousness as the sensation but the ,

gradual generalization of the meaning of sensation and the exclu

sion of the obje ct from its true content left the inquirer without the
right to deduce his object from the dened natu re of his sensation and
.

scepticis m won the victory .

But the situation created a tendency and s cepticism made an admis

sion which requires some notice The analysis at least seems to show
.

the elimination of the object from direct knowledge The s ceptic .

admitted the knowledge of sensations and by this knowledge
,

he meant the certainty of this fact at least But to both classes of

.

thinkers the s ceptic and the natural realist there w as necessarily

,

a peculiar incident about this k nowledge There wa s some sort

.

of identity between the act and its object the mental state and the
,
90 TH E P R OB L E J V
IS OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

thing known . Before s ceptical analysis had been applied there

was a difference assumed between them The object or cause of the .

sensation presumptively existed outsi de the se n sation that is out , ,

side the organism o r sensorium Externality to the sensation , aus

.

einander was the conception used to interpret the meani n g of the fact
,

of experience .But this antithesis could no longer be assumed
when the object was eliminated from the datum immediately known
and in its stead there came the assumption that the knowing and

the k nown were the same thing at least in respect of time and , ,

also of space if that could enter into the conception of the matter and ,

it does enter into it when the conscious l ocalization of the sensation in

the periphery is admitted into the account .

It is out of this situation that the various theories of perception

have originated The ineradicable believer in a real world other
.

than sensations and external to the subject resorts to perceptio n ,

apprehension ,
intuition i ns t i nc t o r other fun ctions to give w ha t
, ,

he is forced to admit is not given in sensation No w it is not my pur .

pose at this s ta ge o f the dis cussion to examine the nature or the validity
'

of such suppositions but only to indicate that they are inventions to

supplement the supposed defects or imperfect capacities of sensation ,

and that the device gives rise to the general supposition of higher
functions for the assertion of knowledge than sense deliverances .

The examination of them will be made further on in this wo r k At .

present I am engage d in as certaining what conception must be taken

of sensation as a preliminary process or datum of knowledge and ,

having seen that the anti s cepti c tends to sup p lement the nature of
-

sensation by other functions for the purpose I merely wish to remark ,

that he tends to change the very conceptio n of knowledge to the

same extent by including in it not only the object whi ch has to be ex
,

cluded from the content of sensation whether he regards it as r ep r e

,

se n t at iv e or non representative but also a non s e n sory activit But

y
- -

, .

the sceptic still has a consideration of some importance in the solution

of the problem Though h e admits or seems to admit t h e denition
!
.

of the realist he does so either for a a l wm i n em purposes or for the

,

purpose of insisting that the discovery of such a n object or cause o f

sensation is a later adjunct of consciousness and not an original datum
of that which is so dened This is to say that the denition r ep r e
.
,

sents the conception of the adult mind and lays too mu ch emphasis
upon the relation to stimu lus as the criterion of wha t the se n sation is
or when it occurs distinct from other mental states Now just in pro .

portion a s the sceptic dis credits these adjun ctive functions as de l iverers
 PR I M A R Y PR O CE S S E S .
9x

of knowledge or certainty as to the fact and nature Of its obje ct ,

just in the same proportion does he limit knowledge to sensation

and indicates that the problem is to legitimate the assertion of external
objects and not to assume that legitimacy and invent non sensory proc -

esses or terms to explain the knowledge of the m H e tends or .

appears to co nne certain and valid knowledge to sensation and
mentation ma k ing the former quite as subje ctive as the latter
,
.

Knowing and being or knowing and Ha v i ng mental states
,

appear to be the same in this conception of the terms and to be subject

to the limitations of what is meant by the term subje ctive That is .
,

the sceptic applies the p redicate of incertitude and of liability to illu

sion to the objective or even questions its validity altogether
,
.

I shall not at present underta k e the criticis m of this position as I ,

am rather interested in stating what the problem is But there are a .

few things in the way of qualication that are necessa r y to remark in

.

order to understand the limitations of the sceptic s doctrine and its

relation to the t heory which it is supposed to dispute In the rst .

place the s ceptic must accept some other fun ction than sensation as a
,

condition of interpreting even in an a a no m i n em way the denition of

the natural realist He must trust the certitude of the process by
.

which he conclu des from the accepted denition of sensation that its
limitations are what he assumes If not he cannot impeach the .
,
knowledge of external o jects
b His very s cepticism is based for
.

its value and cogency upon the trustworthiness of intelle ctual functions
other than sensation when he interprets the limitations of sensation
according to the denition to say nothing of his theory to account for
,

ideas by association whose existence he admits but whose validity he

wishes to impair He can effect his object only by accepting the
.

validity of reasoning and the logical processes generally This is

.
.

accepting a conception of knowledge as certitude which is distinct

from sensation In the second place the scepti c has to assume that
.
,

the act of knowing the sensation itself is not the same as the sen
sation It may be numerically identical ( n u m er o ea a em ) that is it
.

, ,

occurs in connection with it and is so associated with it as to be insep

arable from it in time but it is not qualitatively identical ( a r t e ea cl em )
,

with it but fu nctionally different in kind The functional dis crim

, .

inat io n between sensation and other mental states that are not sensation
is an act which ca n not be identied with the sensation so that even if ,

we are supposed to have the limits of knowledge determined by

the limits of sensation excluding the presentation of external objects ,

the act of k nowing is different in kind from the sens ory reaction
92 TH E P R O B L E A/I S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

a gainst stimulus and is not to be confused with I t though it is a simul

t a neo us act . H ence k nowing and being are not the same
f unctional facts though they coincide temporally and the sceptic has ,

to accept a process of cons ciousness for knowledge which he cannot

limit to sensation even when he excludes external objects from the
content of sensory experience and the assumed certitude belonging

to this experience . This consciousness is an apprehensive act
which is far more fundamental to knowledge tha n the sensation ,

even though it depends for its occurrence upon the sa me conditions

which give rise to sensation In both the ratiocinative and apprehensive
.

processes which the sceptic thus ad m its he coincides with the natural
realist in the assumption of functions that are not convertible with the
s e nsory in nature when he conceives knowledge both as certitude
and as a function .

This position assumes that sensation is a term of deeper abstract

import than appears on the su rface It is not only abstract as being
.

the generi c term for phenomena that have no common cha racteristic ,

but only a common relation to assumed stimuli of an externa l kind ; but

i t is also abstra ct in the further sense that it does not express the whole

p ro cess which takes place at the moment , but only a part of it the ,

complement being the apprehensive act which represents the really

knowing part of the whole .

F urther discussion of this question will be taken up when the theory

o f external reality is considered All that I am at present conce r ned
.

to remark is the fact that the sceptic virtually admits that there are

o ther mental states implicated in the act of kn owledge The .

validity of such processes will come under consideration again The .

point at present is to determine the limits of the meaning of sensation

as a te rm denoting a datum in the theory of k nowledge This limit .

is expressed in the fact that it is not o nly a subjective event no t ,

including a representative idea of the reality supposed to occasion

i t but also a
, feeling or state that is not conceived as a dis criminating
cons ciousness but as a reaction of some kind however closely related ,

it may be in fact and conception to the apprehensive act whi ch is aware

o f it or temporally identied with it That conclusion regarding it
.

enab l es us to recognize that we have not determined all problems by

merely concentrating attention upon a n event assumed to be simple and
a chronological prius of other acts but which is simple only by
,

abstraction and a prius only of certain complex processes still to be

considered The troubl e has been that various thinkers of both the
.

sceptical and dogmatic schools have treated the question as if it were a

 PR I M A R y PR O CE S S E S .
93

problem of origi n of chronological genesis , and im plied thereby

,

that the chronological prius wa s the best known and that the latter
was dubious or less certain Th at is to say they assumed or admitted
.

that the acts superimposed temporally upon sens ation whether a s ,

inferences or perceptions were less certain and more exposed t o

,

invalidity than the rst experien ce The problem of certitude and
.

validity was made convertible with histori cal genesis an assumption ,

which present psychology will not admit for a moment .

General psychophysical considerations in regard to the simplicity

or complexity of sensatio n I do not consid er as important I a m .

here concerne d with the meaning and content of the phenomenon fo r

the problem of knowledge as related to objects other than the sen
sation and not with the question of its sensory nature simplicity o r ,

complexity a matter affecting only its elements and variations of content

,

as a phenomenon and not its general relation to cognition eve n
, ,

though these facts have a bearing upon w a t we know in metaphys

ical problems The primary and fundamental problem is to determine
.

the meaning and limits of all sensations simple or comp l ex thei r , ,

relation to the general probl em of knowledge concerned with

reality
. This meaning and limit I conceive to be its nature as a
primary event in the analysis of that whole which is usually com e

prehended in the term knowledge as a larger totality than mere

sensation .

We may concede to the s ceptic the right to dema nd that it is the

validity of perception that is in debate when considering the ques
tion of an external reality and that this cannot be assumed to be
representatively give n in the sensation whatever we may say or think,

about its certitu de as indirectly ascertained or believed V arious facts .

point to the rationality of the supp o sition that the conception of external
reality is an adjunct to the sensation whi ch cannot be clearly dened
without mentioning its relation to such a fact and if the sceptic be a d , ,
d

m it te d right in the matter is an a dve n titious adjunct with less certainty

,

attached to our convictions regardi n g it than to our mental state s

including sensation .

M EN T A T I O N .

I shall employ the term mentation to denote those mental states

which are not se n sations but which m ay be objects of apprehension
,

or self consciousness nevertheless I refer to such acts as are name d

-
.

perception imagination reasoning asso ciation etc conceived
, , , ,
.
,

merely as events happening and not as functionally involved in inter

,

p r et a t i o n
. The phenomena that I have i n mind can all be compre
94 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

hended in the one term self cons ciousness and are simply what we are
-

aware of as going on when we turn cons ciousness upon itself Locke .

used the ter m reection for these simple i deas They do no t .

require any elaborate deni tion and analysis or criticism as in the case ,

of sensation because there is no such issue as that involved in the

,

nature and meaning of sensation They are never dened with refer
.

ence to an object external to them All parties agree that they are
.

purely subjective acts and may not indicate a ny relation to an external

cause at all They are admittedly known immediately or intui
.

t iv ely and are in no w a y amenable to the fu nctions of inference or

functions li k e it in the determination of the facts They are univers .

ally accorded the nature o f knowledge , at least in respect of certi

tude They do not exhibit that variety of form which characterizes
.

the various sensations The concrete i nstances of them may be far

.

more n umerous but I refer to their form There are at least six dis
,
.

tinct senses including the thermal of recent dis covery and the unequal
, ,

relation of these senses to r eality and the in uence of association
on the conceptions which w e form of their individual and collective

functions in the complex of knowledge ma k es sensation a compli ,

ca t e d phenomenon in its meaning and relations But the internal .

states i n spite of their innumerable concrete instances are all of one

, ,

kind simple acts of introspection into the states of the subject whether
,

they be sensations or other facts of cons ciousness There is no ques .

tion of their n o n complication with problems of the external world at

-

least directly There are incidents that separate them indubitably fr om

.

that kind of connection with external reality which would raise the
query regarding it as in sensation They are such as the inuence o f
.

attention and association upon the events that are so introspected The .

s tream of purely mental states in imagination in subje ctive reection , ,

in dreams in recalling the past is so a ffe cted by the subject s own

,

power over its course either dire ctly or indirectly , that we do not sus
,

p ect and cannot be made to believe , that it is produced in precisely

,

the same way that sensations are produced There is a constancy of .

causal nexus betw een given sensations and their stimulus along with ,

the independence of sensation from the arbitrary control of the sub

ject s will at l east directly and also a gu a l e in the consciousness itself

, , ,

that quite distinguish the internal experience very clearly from

the externally produced phenomenon while the unity of the internal ,

states is so conspi cuous that there seems to be but one denite type of
eve n t which is easily dened as the consciousness of the s ubject s own

s tates both internally and externally occasioned and also as distinct

 PR IMAR Y PR O CE S S E S .
95

fro m e ac h other i n this respect In so far as they are intuited as

.

events to be referred to so m ething as their ground or cause they are

precisely like sensations They are phenomena even if t h ey are ,

also acts of knowing to be described as cognitive judgments and

reasoning In so far as they are conceived as mere facts of observa
.

tion they are data for knowledge of a more complex kind and are
not that knowledge itself This is the conception which I wish at
.

present to take of them What their meani n g is what the interpreta

.
,

tion and explanation may be it is not necessary even to suggest at this

stage of our inquiries , but only the fact tha t they ha ve to be distin
g uish e d from sensations in ve ry important characteristics which sug
gest that we must either a dmit a very great elasticity in the term

knowledge as compared with the tenden cy of the sensatio n alist to
,

limit it or nd some other te rm with equal impli cation as to certitude

,

and compass and invo lving processes quite as valid tran sp a rently as
sensation .

It is this last circumstance whi ch it is most important to notice .

The admission of self k nowledge of i ntrospective state s other tha n

-

sensation and other than of sensatio n is the admission of functions in

volving knowledge The sensationalist from the important place
.
,

occupied by sensation in the early stages of mental development , ten ds

to identify knowledge with sens ation if he is a sceptic because , ,

he does not stop to reect what it is even in sens ation that can properly

be called knowledge namely the consciousness part of it as a n
, ,

active function of apprehension rather than th at aspect of it considere d

as a reex of stimulus It is the sensation as a content as an obje ct
.
, ,

an ultimate fact of experience that he h a s in mind and so is thin k
, ,

ing of the d a t u m rather than the p r o cess of the things k nown ,

rather than the act knowing But in dealing with the purely sub
.
-t

ject ive states of reection not necessarily instigated by exte r nal stimuli ,

h e has only the function of consciousness to thi n k of and in this situa

tion it is inevitable that knowledge should partake of a meaning
quite different from sensation as an effect It suggests the existence .

of other , perhaps higher functions than those implicated in sensation

,

alone and exclusive of the intuitive act of apprehending a fact as a fact

of consciousness The admission of such functions O pens the door
.

wide t o the extensio n of the conception of

knowledge both as r e ,

gards its assurance and its content beyond the limits assigned to it by
,

the exclusion of an external world from the content of sensation We .

may adopt the language indicating the limitation of knowledge to

phenomena but when we have admitted other mental functions than
,
90 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

sensation in the action of consciousness unless we can give the same

,

k ind of evidence for its subjective limitations tha t we have in the case
of sensation there is nothing to prevent the belief that they have t h e
,

capacity to supply what sensation does not supply and this h as ,

actually been the course taken by philosopher s A c o nviction so

.

ineradicable as the existence of a n external reality has to be ex
plained whether it be illusory or not and if it happe n to be rm and
, ,

tenacious as the condence in our o w n mental states its validity is ,

likely to be accepted as a foregone conclusion and cons ciousness a n

a l z e d in a way to present the process qualied to justify the convi e
y
tio n when sensa tion is shown or supposed to be disqualied for it
, .

The existence of other functions of knowledge than se n sation is at

least presumpti ve evidence that such capacities exist There is no .

reason for limiting the capa city of consciousness to know except
the assumptions which have arisen from the illusions associated with
the synthesis of sensory data but as similar perplexities do not betray
,

themselves in normal internal states there is nothing against supposing

that it is the very nature of consciousness as intuitive apprehensive o r
, ,

cognitive to kn ow more than itself that is to have a meaning
, ,

extending to the assertion of a reality beyond the area of its own

phenomenal na ture Whether this supposition is justiable is not
.

here the question but only the stren gt h of mental temptation and the
,

pardonable menta l interest in a belief so cohesive and rm as that in

the existence of external reality . If there were no mental states but
the sensory whose limitations seem to be so thoroughly demonstrated ,
s cepticism would have had everything its own way but a di f culty ,

like the denial of an external worl d is only the motive for the analysis
of consciousness in a way to admit the vali dity of its judgments both as
regards the existence of illusion and the conviction that sensation can
be trans cended in some way An y other alternative means for most
.

minds the distrust of all convictions whatsoever H ence if the Opp o r

.

t un ity offers in the admitted existence of a ctive powers of conscious

ness to suppose that it is these which are instrumental in the per

ce t i o n of external reality and not the sensation scepticism can
p
vindicate its o wn distrust only by proving the same lim itations in t hese
powers that it assumes in sensation It may be a ble to do this I am
. .

not at present interested in disputing the fact but only in calling

,

attention to a circumstance which suggests that knowledge may be

either more originally complex than is usually assumed or its later
complexity is not an evolution out of the simple but a synthesis o f
functions whose i ndividual elements do not develop in parallel lines .
 PR I M A R Y PR O CE S S E S .
97

However this may be , it is clear tha t the admissio n of mental sta tes
other than sensatio n into the domain of knowle dge so widens the
import of that term that no apriori presumptions against trans sub -

ec t ive processes can be prove d by the li m itations of sense

j .

ME M O R Y .

Me mory is a so mewhat uncertai n term It does duty for the proces s

.

of recognizing a past event and also for all those real or supposed facts
which succeed the original impression and pre cede its re cognition ,

and these fa cts are usually called Retention and Reproduction or As

sociation As both of these facts retention and repro ductio n r ep r e
.
, ,

sent subcons cious conditio ns they have no place in the primary data

of knowledge .

What I wish to deal with here is memory as a
mental state involving the cons ciousness of the past , a process or phe
n o m e n o n quite different in some respects from sensatio n and other

forms of mentation This difference may be nothing more than the

.

element of past time while in the other insta n ces it is present time
only but it is an important difference even if it is nothing more tha n
,

the admission of the element of past instead of present time But .

what I wish to note in the conception of memory is its immediacy its ,

directness and freedom from ratiocinative character Its simplicity as .

an act may be subject to doubt if we take the mnemonic cons ciousness

,

in its adult form , where the act is often very closely associate d with
the exercise of other functions whi ch are to be considered later But
,
.

it is not the complex state of comparison with the past that I am n o w

considering but the simple act of recognizing the past even though it
, ,

be an abstraction to conceive it so This recognition is an irreducible

.

act and i n that respect is an ultimate fact of cons ciousness and it is this
characteristic which I am dening and whi ch I wish to treat as a funda
mental element in the more complex functions of knowledge .

In the looser application of the term Memory is complex since it

, ,

is taken to comprehend all the pro cesses and conditions conne cted with
it They are Retention Redintegration Representation or Imagina
.
, ,

tion and Recognition but the only element of any importan ce to t h e

,

epistemological problem is the re cognitive function which supplies

that factor in knowledge involving the past as a datum We have .

in this recognition or cons ciousness that an element in the present

,

state is a reproduction of the past a phenomenon that is as ultimate

,

as sensation and any other elementary fact of mentation It is not r e .

solvable into a co m plex of simpler and non recognitive acts It is the

-
.

primary condition of all knowl edge which affects to determine the

7
98 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

unity of phenomena in time I am not concerned with the problem

.

o f the validity of recognition as that must be a subject of considera

,

tion in dealing with the general question respecting the criterion of

truth I have in mind here o n ly the mnemonic function as datum
.

in the exercise of other activities in the production of complex

knowledge .

A P P RE H E N S I O N .

As I have hesitated rega rding the consideration of sensation , men

t a t i o n and recognition under the head of Apprehension owing to the ,

possible misunderstanding of their nature and relation to the questions

involved I must examine the subject of Apprehension very fully and
perhaps in a way that will suggest an actual revision of what has been
said about the previous processes o r functions This warning to the
f
.

reader is necessary because of t wo facts F irstly the prevailing habit

.
,

of psychologists and philosophers outside the movement started by

Kant has been to dene and dis cuss sensatio n and mentation or in
,

ternal sense as chronologically prior to and conditional of ap p reh en
sion That is to say they have at least permitted the impression t o
.
,

arise that apprehension was a distinct function of mind which m ight

be later in its manifestation if not its origin than sensation as well as
, ,

representing a function capable of having an object of perception

which the others did not have Secondly the mann er of treatment
.
,

which I have given them rather suggests the same conception as I ,

purposely put myself in the attitude of this s chool to study the phe
n o m e na so considered in as much isolation as was possible just as if
,

these functions coul d be conceived as distinct in time and meaning .

In saying this however I do not intend to imply that I adopt the other
, ,

position at present because I am not going to dene the issues in any

,

way to beg questions between the t w o s chools I wish only to reserve .

my judgment in the dis cussion so as to study the facts as independently

as possible of the technical controversies that have gone on between
the t w o schools I s hall therefore proceed to dene and illustrate the
.

function of Apprehension as I intend to use the term as if it were a ,

distinct function from those already considere d which it m ay or may ,

no t be so far as I am at present concerned .

I think different schools have give n Apprehension di fferent ranges

of capacity some including in it the perception of external reality
, ,

others limiting it to the cons ciousness of phenomena according to ,

their philosophic view generally This circumstan ce makes it dii c ult

.

to present a denition without becoming complicated in suggestions

and associations predetermined by the controversies and conceptions
 PR I M A R y PR O CE S S E S .
99

of these v a riou s schools I intend , however to avoid identication

.
,

with either of the t w o generally O pposing disputa nts in any denition

that I adopt , eve n if it be e mbodied in the language of one or the
other.

It is probable that the mental interest wh ich tried to es cape fro m

certain doctrines of sceptic i s m has given rise to the various ways of r e
garding apprehension O n the one hand it was not possi ble to escape
.

the admission of error in various complex mental acts like j udgment and
reasoning and on the other the limitations of sensation could not be
, , ,

d isputed. Hence the real or apparent necessity for distinguishing a

function for obtaining the actual certitude w hich we have in many of
our conceptions and whic h we are not disposed to surrender This .

situation has seemed to make it convenient to apply some term like I n

tuition o r Apprehension to a process lying between sensation and the
various complex processes usually denominated as j udgment a pp er ,

cep t io n and reasoning and w hich would be devoid of the obj ections to

all of them as sources of certainty Something was wanted for the

, .

expression of directness or immediacy and certainty at the same time

and it was assumed that apprehensio n or intuition supplied this want
simply by giving it that denition The di f culties , therefore which
.
,

I have to approach in the denition of the ter m arise out of the danger
of being involved in co n ceptions and associations which I wish to ex
c lud e from the term and which may be comprehended in the following
,

three facts ( a ) the difference of opinion in regard to the nature and

range of the fu n ction so denominated ; ( 6) the equ ivocal import of
the term in both common and psychological usage ; ( c ) the element
ary and fundamental character of the act as oft en or usually conceived .

To dene it in one wa y would be to beg the question of philosophy

with one s chool and to dene it in another way would be to beg the
,

question with the opposite school Th u s to make it the act by which

.

we immediately know an external reality as such might offend the

sceptic or transcendental idealist w h o may not care to ad m it the direct
knowledge of an e xternal world To dene it as a combining
.

process merely would offend the realist and conict with the nature of
the various synthetic ideational pro cesses invol v ed in the higher intel
lectual acts Again if it be a simple and ultimate act of mind i m
.
,

mediate and irredu cible some will tell us it is not denable at all but
, ,

that it is like any absolute which is not subj ect to analysis and deni
tion of the ordinary kind But in spite of these real or supposed dii
.

culti es and variations of view there is one co mmon chara cteristic by

which every conception of the ter m m ay be denoted and which does ,

1 00 THE PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

not require us to take sides with any special school of philosophy r e

garding any supposed implications This meaning of the term will .

comprehend the elementary chara cteristics of every mental act in

which a fact of any k ind gets recognition or a place in cons ciousness .

Apprehension therefo re , as I shall dene it and as I shall use the

,

term , is that a ct of t be s u bj ec t by wbi cli i t beco m es a w a r e of a f a ct a s

d i s t i n c t f r o m i t s o cc u r r e n ce a n d o u r i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of i t a s a n o ccu r
r en ce .This denition of it clearly distinguishes the act from reex a c
tions which ta k e place in the same organism but are not conscious o r
accompanied by co nsciousness and also from that conceptio n of sen ,

sa t io n s which describes them as passi v e responses to stimulus A p pr e .

h e n si o n is supposed to be a p o s i t i ng a c t sensation a condition , But .

whether we can distinguish the t wo or not from each other A p pr e

h en si o n is here dened as the consciousness of a fact rather than the
mere occurrence of it Where it becomes intuition of one s own
.

states it gets the name of self consciousness It is the act of per -

.

c ei v i n g in connection with any state of consciousness recognized as

a fact or experience .

Let me illustrate The consciousness of a color of a sound of a

.
, ,

taste of a tactual feeling of an act of memory of an act of attention

, , ,

is an apprehension I do not say that the consciousness of a tree o f

.
,

a horse of a mountain etc is an apprehension as such examples will

, ,
.
, ,

come up again under another process I conne my conception o f .

the intuitive act to the simplest possible Obj ect of consciousness I .

may name it an individual simple quality as given in sensation o r ,

mentation I would distinguish apprehension as I dene it from t h e

. .

, ,

mental act perceiving t /za t any of these simple qualities were such .

H ence I mean to call attention to the circu mstance that we may and
perhap s must distinguish between the consciousness of a color sound , ,

etc and the consciousness t ba t these percepts are color or sound

.
, .

The conscious ness that a color is a color either involves the d iscr im i
nation o f this obj ect from others or is so closely allied to the co n cep ,

tion of such dis crimination that I must at least allow for that possible
,

interpretation of it and make clear that I mean to exclude from the

apprehensive act all dis crimination from it and assimilation of other
objects to it If there is no distinction bet w een the consciousness of a
.

color and the cons ciousness i na t the color is su ch then I am willing to ,

identify the t wo forms of statement but only on that condition What , .

I w ant clear is the distinction bet ween the mere consciousness of a

fact and the consciousness that this fact is discriminated from or com
pared with another and to limit the proper meaning of apprehensio n
,
l
 PR I MA R Y PR O CE S S E S . [o r

to the former act I exclude from its obj ects all su ch complex wholes
.

as tree horse ,
man ,
world
govern m ent ,
religion
, ,

etc , though t h e co n cep t of any of the m as a represented image or as

.
,

some conceived quality representing them may be an obj ect of a p p r e,

h ensio n and so indicate such an act But the full meaning of the
.

concept as a name for a group of qualities and relations w ill not

properly be an obj ect of apprehension , u nless simultaneously r e pr e

s ented in consciousness which may be impossible
, However r e n e .
,

ments aside the clear conception of the limits of the process is found
,

in the simplest possible Object of the a ct and this will be the simple
qualities of sensation and mentation .

Before we go any farther in this matter it will be important to ex

a mine the relation o f this process as dened to sensation I have i n .

dicated that any particular sensation in the conscious n ess of the fact is
a n apprehension , and it is necessary to a sk h o w I would distinguish

between sensation and apprehension Is there any difference at all !

.

Are we not simply using different words for th e same thing !

In reply to these questions it must be said that w e have at least to
illustrate the t w o terms by precisely the same facts Sensatio n is a .

name for the same temporal state of consciousness as an apprehension ,

when illustrated by the phenomena which we call sensations No w .

as this latter term has come to exclu de the external stimulus from its
meaning that is as w e cannot consider that the stimulus is any part of
, ,

the thing denoted by sensation or included in it a s a phenomenon ,

we have to conceive it as a state of consciousness as in the denition ,

.

As a state of consciousness therefore sensation cannot be distingu ished

from apprehension since consciousness is itself a na m e for awareness
, .

If the terms sensation and apprehension have any differences of im

, ,

port they seem to be slight and to be found in their associated i m pli

cations rather than i n the facts or phenomena which are their essential
meaning No doubt some asso ciated implication of an external world
.

is connected with the term sensatio n its relation to the external its
, ,

conception as an effect of stimulus but these are no part of the phe

,

n o m en o n conceived as a state of consciousness a l one Whether it is .

possible to conceive sensations as unrelated to an external object is a n

other question But we certainly do not suppose or conceive them as
.

either representative of su ch objects or as constituted by them but as .

,

constituted by the state of consciousness whi ch is so named for the pur

pose o f distinguishing it from states which have n o such apparent
cause Within the limits of se n sations therefore apprehension denotes
.

the same facts a nd if it has any di fference of import at all it lies in its
direct implication of reference to an obj ect no t necessarily externa l ,
,

but simply an obj ect of consciousness if only t h e mental state itself .

That is it expresses awareness , perception

,
the immediate con ,

sc io usn ess of the fact which the term sensation names and when we ,

come to examine carefully what we mean by se nsation as a certain type

of cons c iousness we nd our conception so implicated with this aware
ness that but for certain historical asso ciations in philosophical theories
,

we could not distinguish between sensation and sensory apprehension

in any respect At the same time there is a difference between the two
.

terms but it is not a difference of qualitative import It is a difference

,
.

of range or extension Apprehension comprehends the perceptiv e

.

consciousness applied to other states besides sensation All the acts .

of mind or subject directly aware of themselves are apprehensions .

That is , all our mental states may become obj ects of the particular
process which we call apprehension or intuition as facts of exp er i

ence. H ence the term has specic reference to the simple act of

knowing without regard to content known the act which directly ,

in presentation is aware of a particular fact or facts as experience

at least The range of this goes beyond sensations and takes in any
.

state of mentation whatever so that apprehension di ffers from sensa

,

tion only in the range of its application It is the common factor o f

.

sensation and mentation and the one that gives sensation its meaning
,

as a state of consciousness .

The consequence is that I shall make no such distinction between

s ensation and apprehension as is custom a ry with thos e who regard

them as distinct functions of mind Neither shall I de nitely iden

.

t ify them as functions I do not consider that the problem of k nowl

.

edge requires either their distinction o r their identication as func

tions assuming as some do that they may occur independently of each
,

other Even supposing them different functions they are so a rt icu

.

lated that so far as the problem of knowledge is concerned they

,
3
,

may be tre a ted as the same fact in the eld of sensation In that eld .

they are certainly the same numerically and thus indistinguishable ,

whatever else we may suppose them to be We often n d sensation so .

described and d ened that it a ppears as something antecedent to a ppr e

h en s io n and consciousness and wherever this meaning prevails there
,

is the tendency when forced to explain to conceive the fact as id enti

, ,

cal with the neural a ction which is neither constituted by the con
s c io u sne ss we know nor accompanied by it as reaction time indicates
, .

But the moment that we are interrogated we adopt the conception that
sensation is a state of consciousness and w e arrive at the position which
 PR I M A R Y PR O CE S S E S . r0
3

compels us to identify the fact of sensation with apprehension in time

at least if not as a functio n The only reason for ever implying a
, .

di fference bet ween the terms is in the fact that we generally conceive
sensation as an object of apprehension without ever conceiving sensa
tion as having an obj ect , while we always speak and think of objects
as di fferent from the a cts of co nsciousness which refer to the m That .

is , act and obj ect of reference are supposed to be different fro m each
other while sensa tion is only a state conceived without special refer
,

ence to an obj ect even though we conceive it in reference to a subj ect

,

as it s ground But I think that this subj ect i n conscious nes s is an o b

.

j cet of reference so that again the sensatio n becomes ident ical with a n
,

apprehension Consequently I shall not treat the m so far as ep ist e

.

m o l o gy is interested as qualitatively di fferent but only in range of a p

,

plication the essential characteristic of apprehension being the same as

,

that which makes even sens a tion interesting and important i n knowl
edge and o n ly its application to states not uniformly asso ciated with

external reality a ffects its range of meaning not its n ature It will , .

be seen therefore why I have spoken of sensory mental and m ne

, , , ,

monic apprehension in the analysis of the problem .

What has been wanted in the dis cussion of the problems of epis
t em o l o gy is a term to distinguish a certai n process from other pro c

esses having a more complex content or implications and one that ,

could be synonymous with a degree of rmness in conviction that is

not al ways associated with certain other mental acts Apprehension .

has consequently denoted a process to be clearly distinguished fro m

all the synthetic pro cesses of intelligence su ch as perception co uper ,

cep t io n
,
apperception and ratiocination H o w it is so distinguished
.

will appear whe n these are dis cussed But I may make its meaning
.

clear by distinguishing it from association and inference , assuming

that these are su f ciently clear at present not to require denition ,
except that I must refer to that ambiguity of the ter m association
which makes it n o w equivalent to conscious synthesis or simultaneous ,

holding of more than a single obj ect of consciousness and no w to mere ,

reproduction of the pa st which is unconscious and not synthetic at all ,

so far as present objects in consciousness are concerned The rst of .

these meanings is a form of apperception as I shall dene it The .

second is si m ply the act all unconscious which calls up a past fact
, ,

some way or other related to the one present in cons ciousness Thus .

to illustrate both reproductio n and inference I have a present sensation

,

of yellow color of a certain specic ch aracter Association or repro .

duction simply calls up in consciousness the past experience or
10
4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

sensation appropriately related to the present one It does not com .

pare them and it doe s not interpret them The past experience .

may have been connected with an orange The recall of this past a nd
.

its relation to a subj ect is not the necessary interpretation of the pres
ent sens a tion But if we i nf e r that the prese n t sensation is caused
.

by the same object or by the same kind of object as the past we are
, , ,

performing an act quite distinct fro m the association or reproduction ,

even though this latter is an essential condition O f the o ccurrence of

the inference We may also i nf er the possibility of other sensations
.

connected with the same obj ect and in t h at way anticipate e xp er i

ence or sensation say of taste or resi stance The apprehension is o f
,
.

the present quality experienced It is a presentation or the act
.

aware of the presentation while the inference is only of its possibility

,

or probability u nder the appropriate conditions .

This comparison of apprehensio n with reprodu ction and inference

indicates t w o things which are not u nited in either of the t wo latter .

It indicates that we mean to denominate by a pprehension a present act

of consciousness in which the object is also present while reproduction ,

has no object present until after it has acted when the state becomes ,

some other act of knowledge and inference has no present object

for its referee but only for its datum or p o i n t cl e r ep e r e A pp r eh e n .

sion has an object for both its referee and its datu m It is therefore a .

name for a present rather than an expected or past event in con

s c io u sn e ss .

T his
object of apprehension must be noticed It is the direct and .

immediate fact of which consciousness takes cogniz ance or is aware as

present I may represent it as of three general ki n ds This is to say
. .

that there are three general classes of obj ects of which apprehension
may be cogn izant There are ( a ) space ( 6) time and ( c ) events
.
, ,
.

Space is that characteristic which we notice especially in visual sensa

tions as a concomitant or indistinguishable quality in connection with
color the expansion extension or reciprocal exclusion ( auseinander )
, ,

of the points constituting the expanded mass of color A similar sense .

of expansion or extension is noticeable in tactual and muscular ex p er i

c h e es But in making this an obj ect of a pprehension I do not m ean
.

to imply that the process is aware of it necessarily as space or a distinct

quality from t h e sensory datum as a whole w ith which it is found but ,

that it is simply aware of a fact that m ay on further analysis and

investigation d eserve the name of space as distinguishable from
other incidents of experience It i s simply a qual e in the tota lity
.

called visual sensation in a l l ordina ry perception
We m ay ca ll .
 PR I M AR Y PR O CE S S E S . 10 5

this obj e ct the form of external intuition after the man ner of Kant
if we l ike , but I prefer to avoid that expression , partly because it is no t
s elf interpretin g and partly because I do not wish to identify the co n
-
,

c eptio n of it take n here with Kantian philosophica l imp l ic ations based

upon the vie w represented by that expression eve n though they h appen ,

to be correct in fact which is a dis puted point But it is at least the

, .

characteristic o f all sensations wit h which it is asso ciated at all a nd

invol ves no variatio n of k ind as in the color or tactual e l ement of the
,

sensations These vary in k ind or degree in a way not associated with

.

the space element and so we get a co mmon conception of the space

,

quale which enabl es u s to spea k of it as generi c and more essential , as

it were , to such experience Whether it is subjective or has a
.

meaning for an external reality of the thing thus apprehended I do

not care Tha t is a question for later consideration All that I require
. .

of it as an object of apprehension is that it sha l l be an immediate

percept o f the subject al ong with wh at is called sensati on whateve r
.
,

its na ture or meaning Time is a similar quale in both sensation and

.

mentation In Kantian phrase it is the form of both internal and

.
,

external experience It is expressed by durat ion , su ccession ( nach
.

einander ) As an object of apprehension it is like a ll other objects of

.

it , an ultimate datu m of consciousness By events as objects of

.

apprehension I mean what generally passes for phenomena I avoid .

this ter m , however , because I do not wish to complicate present matters

with the equivocatio ns of the term pheno menon which now denotes

,
appearances and again
changes which may not be appear

ances at all , except in the P latonic sense Moreover a l so I do not.

wish to express the ide a of things as subst an ces , as externa l real

ities , but only facts of experience however we may come to co n
,

sider them later I mean to apply th e term to both externa l and internal
.

events facts which represent th e occurrences supposed to be in an
,

external worl d an d those supposed to represent an internal wor l d I do .

not mean to imply that apprehension necessarily distin g uishes between an

interna l and externa l reality but onl y that th e facts or events which
,

may be its obj ects directl y are those which we come to distin guish in
th at way , if not at rst , certai n ly when know l edge has advanced to
a complex stage N or would I say that apprehension even distinguishes
.

them a s events This may require a comparison with something no t

.

a n event. Al l that I mean is that there are facts of cons ciousness

whose nature comes to be known as events at least and that they
seem to be the pri m ary data for the reective functions of intelligence .

These are to be considered the given data for systematic ideation .
I 06 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

The purpose of supposing or asserting su ch a process as a p p r eh en

sion is to have a na m e for that simple act which gives us a certainty as
to the most elementary facts of k nowledge or the facts of which ,

we are most certain in our convictions Sensation h a ving been sup

.

posed to be a subjective fact i n relation to stimulus does not express the

idea of decisiveness which 1 s associated w ith the idea of apprehension .

Moreover sensation does not express the notion of being an act which
is like attention in its directive or referential meaning , as a ppr eh en
sion does But however this may be the exigencies of philosophi c
.
,

thought gave rise to the term which would com bine all the assertivenes s
.

of ju dgment and all the immediacy of sensation whi l e it excluded the ,

synthetic nature of judgment in connection with which illusion and error

were found at least in some of its manifestations It is noticeable there
,
.
,

fore that apprehension as a process of knowledge represents an act
, , ,

that gives a certain quantum of certitude at least and has associated with
its import the positiveness positing or decision that a ffects the notion o f
, ,

judgment wholly apart from the question whether it is synthetic o r

not Apprehension therefore expresses a simple a ct of consciousnes s
.
, ,

with an object of which we can be certain and without regard to any ,

question affecting its complexity as an obj ect though that O bj ect may ,

be only simple as a matter of fact Apprehension therefore shall be

.
, ,

treated as the simplest function of consciousness in the determination

O f certitude as an element of
knowledge
In this however I do .
, ,

not mean to say that a pprehension is either the rst temporally or t h e

only condition of certitude as to facts or knowledge but that either ,

the process or its object is the simplest with which an analysis and
m
discussion of co plex knowledge must begin A more complete .

statement of its place and function in the general question will appear
in the summariz ed account of the problem At present I am co ntent .

with the denition of the act a nd of its relation to sensation and

mentation .
 CHAP TER V .

C OND IT I O NS O F S Y NT H ET IC KNOWL E D GE .

I N a previous chapter I showed that the term knowledge some

times expressed certitude of conviction and sometimes the unication

of experience This wa s ind i cated for the purpose of calling atten
.

tion to t wo distinct problems which passed under that single ter m I .

also pointed out the fact that in solving the problem in any form we
had to distinguish between the pro cess by which either result was o b
t a in ed and the produ ct or result itself That is to say
. kno w ledge ,

is a name for a pro cess as well as a product the process being named ,

as the means evidence or explanation of the way in which the prod

, ,

uc t is obtained .Thus we are in the habit of saying that sensation is

the process by which we obtain a knowledge of the external world .

Where we treat this purely as an a ffection of the organism , a pp r e h en

sion
perception intuition are named as the processes d et er m in
, ,

ing a conviction of external reality Judgment and reasoning come
.

in as names for pro cesses giving more complex conceptions in knowl

edge . But in S pite of the fact that analysis of knowledge brings
us to the consideration of processes the chief matter of interest is t h e
,

product after all as this is the subject of scepticis m rather than mental
,

activities This is apparent in the v ery heading of this chapter where

.

I have spoken of synthetic knowledge

The illustrations of what
.

this is will make the fact still more clear F or i nstance su ch c o n c ep

.
,

tions as universe , evolution Copernican astronomy ,
,
machin
ery are not the product of any single function of intelligence nor of ,

several functions at any one time H o w do we obtain these and the

.

truths for which they stand !

In the analysis of the functions covering the whole eld of knowl

edge the reader will recall that I recognized but t wo functions of
consciousness as required for the explanation and origin of all o ur .

knowledge . Thes e wer e Apprehension or Intuition and Cognition

or Judg ment I have shown what apprehension supplies and it r e
.

mains to study cognition and the principles by which it effects it s

work Apprehension was concerned with the simple objects of ex
.

per ien ce unsystematized and unrelated as in the individual states of

,

sensation and mentation with the facts representing their objects But .

1 07
10 8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

we come n o w to those complex ideas if I may u se that expression or , ,

synthetic conceptions and judgments which have always excited inter ,

est both for the pro cess of their acquisition and for the test of their
validity It is in this eld of cognition or synthetic conceptions that
.

illusion error and fallacy most e as ily arise We dis cover tha t c o n
, ,
.

v i ct i o n s to which we had tenaciously held as self evident or supposedly

,
-

irrefutable are exposed to doubt and even become obsolet e O thers

,
.

w e still cling to as necessary for the regulation of conduct , and co n se

,

quently we seek for some criterion to distin guish between the true and
the false and so to certify our h esitating beliefs Thi s certication
,
.

varies between the assignment of the process by which the belief is

f ormed and the cohesiveness of the produ ct formed F or example .
,

we have the conceptions of external re lity su bstance , causality
a ,

s oul God , immortality , etc , and in the course of time the belief in the
,
.

existence of all of them is brought into question When this has been .

d one various devices ha ve been employed to defend the va lidity of

s ome or all of them Intuition i ntuitive principles a priori
, ,

t ruths categories are terms that have been used or coined for the
,

purpose of certifying certain of these conceptions , su ch as substance ,

causality external reality , etc
O ntological cosmological a nd
,
.
, ,

teleological proofs have been the means of fortify ing the belief in the
existence of God , and various resources employed to fortify the belief
in a soul and its survival aft er death Al l these comprehensive con .

cep t i o n s are preceded by simp l er complex ideas in the life of the indi

v idu a l which are traceable to the same general process es It will be .

n ecessar
y therefore , to determi n e the area o f comp l ex conceptions
,

over which the discussion is to extend .

There are tw o general divisions of conceptions whi ch I shal l ha ve

to note in the determination of this area They are rst the division .

into Singu l ar and G eneral concepts and second that into Concrete and ,

Abstract A singu l ar term or concept is represented by a group of

.

facts attributes or properties which are not repeated as such in any

,

other individual That is the name for t h e group applies to no other

.
,

group or no other individual This class of concepts is illustrated by

, .

proper names We might also consider in the same way every indi
.

vidual group of fa cts or properties in the presentations of apprehension ,

i n case such groups are possible This class represents the pu rest .

form of concrete conceptions Singular concepts a r e only concret e . .

A general concept is one which represents a number of individual s of

the same kind to which the ter m is equally appli cable Thus tree , .

animal vertebrate a r e examples of this class These terms may
,

.
 C O ND I T I ONS OF S YN T H E TI C K N O WLE D GE . 10
9

stand for a group of qualities as s ingular terms do but if so this group ,

must be of a like kind The general ter m takes no account of quali

.

ties that are not common to all the individuals composing the class .

It may even be limited to the one quality that is common There is .

,

however a chara cteristic of general terms or conceptions which must

,

be notice d They may be regarded from t wo points of view These

. .

are called their i n t en s i o n and ext en s i o n Their intensio n is their .

qualitative power : their extensio n is their quantitative power Their .

intension denotes the qualities for which they stand : their extension
refers to their numerical capacity or the fact that they apply to more ,

tha n one individual even any indenite nu mber of them In their

, .

intension they denote one or more l i k e qualities ; in the i r extensio n

they may denote nu merical wholes including resemblances and differ
en ce s That is to say in their extension they are taken or conceived
.
,

concretely represented in consciousness by the individ ua l wholes which

,

help to cons tit ute the class n u merically while intensively they are ,

thought of in terms of their common properties .

Before anything further is said about general terms it will be n ec es

sary to dene and illustrate concrete and abstract concepts A concrete .

concept is one whi ch represents either a S ingle subj ect of qual ities or
an attribute thought of as a n attribute or even a present group of the m
,

thought of as su ch As said above the best illustration of a concrete

.

term is the Singular concept It is a p u r e concrete An abstract

. .

concept is one which represents any fact or property conceived

as if apart from the subject to which it actually belongs and r ep r e
sented grammatically as itself a subj ect of qualities Thus sweet .

ness, alacrity virtue are abstract co n cepts
,
7
They are also .

nothing else in compariso n with the co n crete That is they are p u r e .

,

abstracts .

It is however only in connection with the distinction betwee n

, ,

Singular and G eneral concepts that the terms concrete and abstract
have any importance in the problem of knowledge as I expect to dis
cuss it It is the fact that General concepts may be described as
.

m i xed concrete and abstract terms In their intensive or qualita

.

tive import they denote only a part of the real things to which they
apply namely the common properties and hence may be regarded as ab
, ,

stract In their extensive or quantit a tive import they may be described

.

as concrete because they are names for the group of properties consti
tuting the individual wholes in the class This fact of a mixed charac .

ter affects the question of the processes involved in their formation .

This will appear in its proper place F or the present it su f ces to .

1 10 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

k now that the problem of knowledge representing synthetic con

cep t io n s begins with the explanation of the formation of Singular and

Genera l concepts and as all possible concepts of the human mind may
,

be included in one or the other or both of these classes this proble m

a lso ends with the same results , though it may be in exceedingly c o m

plicated forms I need not take any special account of collective

.

c oncepts as these may be treated as either singular or ge n eral I am .

concerned only with the fact of synthesis as the fundamental one after
s imple apprehension is explained or dened I intend to assume .
,

what I think is an indisputable fact that all possible conceptions and ,

beliefs can be reduced to one or the other of these t wo classes of co n

c ep t i o n s
,
so that whatever process explains them in their simplest
form will explain the m in their most complicated form .

I shall treat p r o p o s i t i o ns as simply more complicated co n cep t i o ns .

So far as I can see they are nothing more than syntheses for which we
have not adopted single terms to denote their meaning F or example .
,

the concept man is a name for a certain group of qualities whether ,

intensively or extensively considered and these qualities are so ap ,

parent , analytic i n Kant s phrase that we do not require to indicate

them when the term is used But if I require to S pea k of any charac
.

t er ist i c s which are not analytically suggested say in the proposition , ,

man is a laughing animal I am obliged to employ a j udgment in

,

s tead o f a singular term If w e had a singular term like man fo r

.

laughing animal we should not require to use the proposition that

man is a laughing animal but simply the S ingle term Just as I
,

.

should have to employ some proposition like the vertebrate which is

a rational being etc is a biped social religious et c if I did no t
, , , ,

.
,

have the term man to denote the group of qualities indicated This .

is to say that the same j udgment is involved in the formation of the

syntheses expressed in conceptions as in propositions and the same in

propositions as in conceptions P ropositions are only economic de .

vices to prevent the multiplication of langu age So far as the deriva .

tion of knowledge is concerned they have to be treated i n precisely

the same way as conceptions .

No w h o w is synthesis possible to parody Kant s way of putting ,

the question ! I am not asking when or h o w it is valid but only how ,

it is effected The question of explanation and v al id i ca t io n I pro

.

pose to keep separate from each other as is not always done I am , .

only asking h o w we effect this synthesis in kn owledge h o w do we ,

come to group qualities and individual wholes in the way in which we

do it as a fact .
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YNT H E TI C K NO WLE D GE . 11 1

If we look for a mo ment at apprehension we can understand more .

clearly what is meant by this question We found apprehension to .

represent a kind of i m mediate a n d direct knowledge
In it the .

subject co m es into immediate contact as it were with the fact , ,

known . The fact known is presented immediately to c o n

sc io usness , and it is a S ingle fact It does not represent a group of
.

different properties in the same individual whole The fact a pp r e .

hended is a single quality and even this may not be thought of as a

quality though it is this in fa ct No attempt is made by apprehension
, .

to concei ve or interpret the relative import of any fact It is S imply a .

presented experience a conscious fact and in so far as the synthesis

, ,

of which I am speaking is concerned is a single isolated fact , simple

,

in nature and without synthetic elements No w it happens that in .

,

such conceptions as Charter O ak or tree there are represented
, ,

qualities or percepts that are either not apprehended all of them , ,

by the same sense or not apprehe n ded by di fferent senses at the same
time but are nevertheless in some wa y assigned to the same center of
,

reference that is have the same referee The question therefore

, .
, ,

how is synthesis possible pertains to this result H o w do we come to

, .

form systems of co nceptions which constitute what I have called syn

thetic knowledge How do we combine or come to combi ne the ,

obj ects of apprehension so that the synthesis represents what we call a

concept as distinct from a percept
The general answer which I give to this question is expressed in
the process of cognitio n or judgment I have adopted these terms to
.

express the generic character of all intellectual processes beyond a p

!

prehension In the adoption of them it will be noticed that I have

.

widened the com m on import of the term judgment to include what
is commonly expressed by conception judgment and rea soning , as in ,

di ca t e d heretofore I use the term cognition as one convenient philo

.

logically to suggest the synthetic nature of the intellectual process

concerned and the ter m j udgment to express both the assertory or
,

positing cha racter of the act and the a i liat io n of the doctrine to be
presented with the general tendency of thought in and since Kant .

It is in the fun ction or result of j udgment that the question of truth

or validity has al ways been raised When any assertion is made the
.
,

sceptic puts in his query for the ground of the assertion H e asks .
,

H o w do we know ! As indicated above the answer to this question

has been embodied in various expressions like intuition
intuitive ,

principles etc If asked , for instance h o w w e kne w that God
, .
,

existed , the answer w a s that in its last analysis it represented the

I TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

appli cation o f the intuitive principle of causality to the phenomena

o f nature . If as k ed h o w we k new that an external world existed we
m
received so e such ans wer as that it was intuitively k no w n that ,

it w a s an immediate obj ect of perception and not subj ect to doubt ,

etc This way of solving the question gave rise to a system of so

.

called intuitive principles which were treated as the basal a ssum p

tions of all intellectual processes of the higher sort In the Kantian .

system they received the name of Categories of judgment It was .

the English school that conned itself to phrases li e intuitive truths
k .

What was meant in both s chools w a s that there were certain laws of

thought ultimate or fundamental assumptions necessary assumptions
, , ,

if you li k e which lay at the basis of all intellectual synthesis U nfo r

,
.

t u n at ely the assumption of them was applied equally to determine

explanation and v a l id i cat io n at the same time It may be that the .

nal analysis will S how that this c an be do ne in some insta nces but I ,

shall not confuse the t wo questions The laws of thought may or may
.

not be necessary may or may not validate assertion so far as I am

, ,

concerned . I shall merely occupy myself with the explanation o f

synthesis by indicating the processes and the assumptions involved in
effecting the synthesis The tendency to synthesis occurs in the dis
.

positi on to unify experience

No w on what principles can w e o r
.

do we unify experience !
The demand for synthesis arises when we discover that facts are
not isolated things ; when we discover that phenomena exist in
relations ; when we observe that events begin in time and we wish to
know why they occur at all ; when we w ish to know why certain
facts are found together instead of separately from each other We .

seek the meaning of facts their interpretation their indication of some

, ,

thing more than themselves A ll of this implies unity and synthesis

. .

O n what pri n ciples does this synthetic action of the subject proceed !
What assumptions do w e make whether necessary or contingent when
, ,

we thus form j udgments u nifying or synthetiz ing experience

The English school answered this question i n the general form of
intuitive and necessary truths which it did not systematically classify
,

.

Kant answered it by his system of categories These were regarded .

as the principles of judgment and indicated by him to be the formal

,

principles of the same But whether formal or material they
.

were the conditions of synthetic intellection or thought .

In order to S how how cognition or judgment effects its syntheses it

will be necessary to exhibit a table of principles on which it proceeds ,
and it will be best to examine the Kantian system in order to S ho w
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN TH E TI C K NO WLE D GE . 1 1
3

ho w this table of principles both grows out of that system and h o w it

di ffers from it .

Quantity quality relation and m od a lity were not properly cate

, ,

gories ih the Kantian system but the names for the various ty pes of
,

them I need not repeat them here as I can assu me an adequate

.
,

knowledge of them for my purposes at present Nor need I repeat .

the criticisms which have often been made regarding them and the
manner in which Kant obtained them All that I require to remark .

is the fact that they were drawn fro m formal logi c and used to charac
t er iz e the various forms of j udgment No w it is noticeable that Kant
.

does not engage in any discuss ion of t h e g eneral problem of judgment

in the theory of k nowledge

nor does he provide any systematic
,

analysis of his problem which would exhibit the generic function o f

judgment though I thin k it only fair to say that he most probably con
,

ce iv ed it as the funda m ental characteristic of all knowledge beyond
sensation ( E m p n d ung and Wah r n em ung ) His understanding .

( Verstand ) probably had no other function But I think at the same .

time that he does not m ake this view as clear as he should have done .

But whether this is true or not it is certain that he began his work
,

with assumptions drawn from the formal logic of his time and co m pli -

cat ed it with conceptions of that subject in a way th at ma k es it meces

sary briey to review its nature in order to rightly u nderstand the

functions which Kant assigned to the categories and to prepare the
way for modifying his doctrine w h ile accepting the ma i n contention
that synthetic knowledge is determined by the action of cate

go r ie s .
The proper function of logic has not always been clear It h a s .

uctuated bet w een a wider and a narrower conception This is .

especially true since Kant whose example in the Kritik made it more
or less convertible with the idea of epistemology and many Germa n
writers still treat it as su ch Aristotle of course , conceived it as the
.
,

organon of knowledge generally but scholasti c writers while they
, ,

conceived it as the organon of k nowledge reduced this to what we ,

call f o r m a l l ogic and made this convertible with the ratiocinati v e

!

processes This was t h e conceptio n of it at the time of Kant But

. .

though the de n ition of it was that it concerned the laws of thought

it was not always made clear whether the laws of thought in so far ,

as they determined legitimacy extended over conception and j udgment

, ,

or were limited to the ratiocinative process But when it is noticed .

that there were no rules for determining the validity of conception and

judgment and that the v alidity of reasoning see m ed to be t h e i m po r t a nt

8
11
4 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

and supreme obj ect of logical science it beco mes apparent that we
,

may treat conceptions and judgments as constitutive materials of the

syllogism This is the way that they have usually been treated espe
.
,

c ia lly in all modern times The syllogism is an instrument or mechanism

.

W hich has its elements and these have to be dened and explained in
order to make the general subject clear These elements are c o ncep
.

tions and judgments The denition and explication of their meaning

.

does not vindicate their validity but only indicate their function in
,

constituting the conditions under which the syllogism is formed and

reasoning exercised Consequently logic became a s cience of the
.

validity of the ratiocinative process As this pro cess was n o t de

.

pendent upon the validity o f any of its constituent elements or matter ,

but only by the acts by which the conclusion or inference was drawn
in conformity with certain principles it was not necessary to raise any
,

question s regardi ng the functions of conception and judgment in the

problem of knowledge because the only knowledge immediately
,

concerned was the ratiocinative If then the legitimacy of our reason

.

ing process be the main problem of formal logic conception and judg ,

ment have a very subordinate place in it The question of their .

validity or invalidity does not affect the issue of reasoning , whatever

may be said about the material truth of the conclusion This is .

equ ivalent to saying that the laws for valid reasoning may be inde
pendent O f the criteria for the validity of conception and j udgment .

Now when this is once a d m ttte d it will be apparent that we can r e

c e iv e n o h el
p from formal logic and its accessories in the more funda

mental problem o f knowledge .

The most important circumstance to be noted after the above con

c l us i o n has been stated is the fact that the legitimacy of the syllogistic

process depends for its external credentials upon the qu a n t i ty and

, ,

qu a l i ty of the propositions constituti n g it The rules for determining

.

when it is valid and when not are embodied in the moods and gures ,

which are based upon the characteristics of qu a ntity and quality in the
propositions involved along with the general principle of identity The .

conceptions or categories of relation and modality have no place what

ever in this question O wing to this fact they have gradually dropped
.

out of the dis cussions of formal logic though they receive cursory
,

mention occasionally because of the inertia of tradition in the treat

ment of logic The effect of all this has been to make the subject of
.

logic formal in a far deeper sense than is often supposed as it tota lly ,

excludes the material truth of every proposition from its consideration .

T
his is concealed from the gen e ral student and often from t h e teach er
,
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YNT H E TI C K NO WLE D GE . 1 1
5

himself by the fact that we are constantly taught that logic is a method
,

o f proving the truth This is correct enough under limitations But

. .

it is nothing more than a guide to the correct systematization of prop

o sit i o ns an arrangement for guiding thought in its transitions so that
,

error does not creep into results when it is not in the premises That .

is all it can accomplish in its formal function Ratio cination can be .

legitimate whether the j udgments involved are tru e or not Under .

this conception of t h e matter the syllogis m is not concerned with the

t ruth of either premise or conclusion but only with the process of
, .

ransition The real question of knowledge is thus referred to

t .

o ther than ratiocinative processes for its m a t er i a l cba r a ct er is t i cs .

Whether the ratiocinative process is of the nature of judgment or not

has to be determined by the functions assigned to tha t process but ,

with the conception of formal logic as j ust i ndicated it is evident that

the problem of knowledge lies wholly outside its province .

Now whether the fundamental and comprehensive function of

knowledge shall be assigned to j udgment , after discovering that its
o rigin is not ratiocinative will depend upon t wo questions ( I ) What
,

is knowledge and ( 2 ) What range of application S hall be given to

t h e term j udgment
In his system Kant has not made clear what he meant by knowl

e dge. We are never informed whether it is certitude of conviction
o r the unication of experience It is apparent on the surface that he
.

h a s the latter conception in mind , though he may tacitly assume that

i t is this unication of experience that determines the measure of cer
t it ud e in all cases as this seems to be the position taken by some
,

writers and Kant has recogniz ed that consistency is at least a negative

,

criterion of truth I may agree that both factors unication and cer
.
,

t itud e , enter into complete

knowledge but this does not a ffect the
,

fact that they are separate factors Each has its own function or cri
.

t er io n in the problem But the failure to analyze the issues in a wa y

.

to recogniz e the t wo aspects of the problem cau ses a concealment of

the fundamental question namely the distinction between t h e validity
,

of a process and its function in unication It is certitude that is far .

more closely related to validity than systematization Besides this .

question of certitu d e wa s the issue raised by Hume and not the problem
o f unication at all The problem of scepticism is t h at o f certitude
.
'

and not that of unication and any att e mpt to answer its question by a
,
'

process of unication indicates either an ignorance or an evasion of

the issue If it is a proble m to S how how I come to have certain con
.

c e t i o ns the process of u nifying experience may be an adequate ex

p
1 16 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

pl a nation of the result but it is not a certication of it G enerally in

,
.

the history of philosophy and especially after Descartes and Hume the
,

problem of knowledge was to determine what I could be certain o f

and therefore what I could accept as true not merely how did I get it
,

or h o w complex ideas originate The primary question wa s wh at

.
,

can I accept as true Th i s was what was meant by the query what ,

can I know or what can I believe n o matter h o w I got it That this .

certitude of conviction was implied in the term knowledge is appa

rent in the Kantian system , though it is n o t distinctly and consciously
recognized and separated from the question of unication which seem s
to be the main purpose of Kant to explain in his conception o f
knowledge as synthesis In assigning the functions of the cate
.

go r ies he showed that it w a s this synthesis that he had in mind Co n .

sequently the impressi o n left by his syste m is that knowledge ap

plies to the produ ct of judgment and not to other processes O n thi s .

view of the case it would be excluded from sensation and perception ,

which might not exclude certitude as to the facts or phenomena o f

experience . Just at the point where Kant should have dened the

limits of extension for the term knowledge , indicatin g whether it h ad
any application to t h e certitude of immediate apprehension or n o t and
thus showing whether he was conscious of the equivocal import of th e
problem to be solved he has allowed himself to concentrate so much
,

emphasis upon synthesis as the fundamental conception of knowl

edge that he forgot what the problem of D escartes and H ume was ,

and conceived it after the manner of Lock e as a question of derivation

rather than certica tion .

In addition to dening the sphere of knowledge whether limited ,

to the syntheses of judgment or extending to the eld of apprehension ,

he should have made it clear whether he admitted j udgment into p er

c e ti o n
p or not If it did not enter into the process of perception , it
.

would be clear from the wide function which he at least tacitly ascribes
to judgment that knowledge in Kant s sense w a s convertible only

with the systematization of e xperience and obtained no certitude which

was not imported into it from that experience If it did constitute a .

pa rt of the pro cess of perception then Kant has not fully explained
,

his doctrine In fact he simply played fast and loose about this point
.

in a w a y that makes almost any sta tement about it possible so that it ,

is only a matter of individual opinion as to what his real intention s

were It is evident in any case t h at he intended to superpose judgment
.

upon experience whatever that meant m aking judgment an addi

, ,

t io nal function of consciousness It was customar y at his time and

.
,
 C OND I T I ONS OF S YN TH E TI C KNO WL E D GE .
1 1
7

e ven later to consider judgment as arising af t er sensatio n and percep

,

tion have done their work and after conceptions have been formed so
, ,

that in this view of the process it was one unifying experience and not
g iving content to it or in any way a part of it
,
It is , of course only a
.
,

matter of denition whether this limitation of its function shall be a c

c ep t ed or not and if it did not
, w ith this limitat ion solve the proble m
, ,

o f knowledge the process would have to be otherwise named But .

e verything in the solution depended upon the nature of the sensation

a nd perception with which we started and the function of judg m ent

a ssociated with it If the primary and initial processes of knowl
.

e dge contained valid convictions in regard to obj ective reality j udg

m ent i n being merely superposed upon them , only syste m atized the
,

disordered data of experience and performed only a formal service

i n the process But if sensation and perception were only subj ective
.

s tates and gave no reality but phenom ena j udgment would either have
!

to supply the objective content t h e conviction as to a reality not given

,

in the experience or it would again only have the purely form a l
,

f unction of unifying phenomena leaving reality as wholly

, u nk nown
a nd unk nowable .

No w Kant does not sufficiently analyz e his problem and hence does
n o t make it clear to us which of these alternatives he tak es H i s actual.

t reatment of the subj ect in various situations and the l anguage employed

would lead to the view that sometimes he took one of them and some
t imes the other F or he speaks of sensatio n in a way to imply that
.

i t is a purely subj ective phenomenon wit h no m eaning as reality ,

u nless this is given by perception ( Wa h r n eh u n g ) and then

uctuates between the conception of j udgment a s being obj ective

a nd as having a purely constructive function But when we discover

.

t hat his obj ective is only u niversality , or true for other min d s as
well as the one having the state at the time we see that whether with
, ,

o r without adequate reaso n for belief in the existence of other minds

t han his o w n his conception of
,
obj ective is only an equivocal w ay
o f treating the facts as subjective a nd no t necessarily indicating any

e xternal fact to mind whatever Hence with the cu rrent and tradi
.

t io nal conception of j udgment as a functional process applied to given

data before him it was natural that Kant s treatment of the categories

s hould assig n to them a purely formal function in the synthesis of ex

perience . Whatever he may have rea lly intended by it in the last
a nalysis of knowledge the pl ace that th ey actually had in formal
,

l ogic which Kant himself considered as a purely formal science i n ev

, ,

it a bly suggested the idea that they did not g i v e but sy s t e m a t i z e d

1 18 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

reality In logic quantity quality , relation and modality were sup

.
,
.

posed to be formal instead of material elements of j udgment
and as j udgment was not assumed to give any content to knowledge
their formal character was doubly certied in their limitations ,

namely by the exclusion of j udgment from sensation and perception

,

and by the traditions of formal logic It is of course not clear always

.

what Kant meant by making the categories formal principles o f
judgment , as he so frequently employed s cholastic terms and dist inc
tions with a change of meaning but the genius of his system as ex
, ,

pressed i n his insistence upon the anthropocentric point of View his ,

Copernican analogy justies us in assuming that he did not mean to

,

give the m the obj ective implications which some schools of phi
l o so p h y assumed But however this may be
. for m al in usual par ,

lance indicates a conceptio n denite enough in the denition of the

elements and conditions of the syllogism Here it denotes merely a .

mode of statement which is not at all concerned with the subject matter
or truth of a proposition but which has to be u n ifo r m ily stated in order
,

that we may k now what is meant by assertions The inference in the .

syllogism depends on conformity to these formal consideratio n s whether

the conclusion as a proposition be true or not But when it w a s found .

that only quantity and quality of propositions were concerned with the

validity of reasoning the characteristics kno w n as relation and modality

were no longer useful in the problem of logic as the science of reason
ing whatever value they might have in dening material elements
,

in j udgments or propositions which have to be explained in the problem

of k nowledge
.In the process of development these categories be
came a part of the m e a n i ng of propositions and not their form .

This has especially been the course of development in logic since Kant .

They are hardly e v en mentioned except to reje ct the m as irrelevant to

its problems The consequence is that formal obtains a purely
.

relative import That character which may be formal for one o b

.

e c t may be material for another This is perhaps admitted by
j .

most philosophers to day but the S ignicance of the fact for a m o d i

-

cation o f the problems of knowledge is not sui c ie nt ly emphasized

and made use of in dealing with the Kantian do ctrine It indicates .

a change in the character of the problem of knowledge of which

Kant was either not conscious or did not adequately reck o n with if ,

he was aware of it A S long as logic was considered t h e organon o f

.

conviction and so of truth and as long as it assumed tha t t h e means

,

to this en d was the ratiocinative pr o c ess t h e question of form was

,

n o t scrutiniz ed too closely Scholastic philosophers assumed that t h e

.
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN T H E TI C K NO WLE D GE . 11
9

truth was in some way forti ed if it was not origin a ted by sy l logi stic
, ,

reasoning , and little attention wa s paid to the distinction between v a l

idity of process and validity of results especially as long as relation
,

and modality were admitted elements of the data to which ratiocination

was applied O nly when relation and modality were excl uded from
.

the formal principles of reasoning did the mind become aware that
the truth of the conclusion depended upon the initial truth of the prem
ises while the l egitimacy of the logical inference wa s determined by
,

the formal principles of qua ntity and quality and t h e other cate ,

gories had nothing to do with its result It is evident therefore .
, ,

why relation and modality d ropped out of consideration in formal
logic and henceforth there will be no reason for treating them on the
,

same l evel or as in the sa m e class unless we also intend to assume that

,

quantity and quality may have other functions than the formal ser
vice ascribed to them But it is certain whether we class them t o ,

gether as categori es or not that they cannot all have the same
,

functions in formal logic in so far as the mere ratiocinative process
,

is concerned If they were accepted as giving m ea n i ng or content to

.

the material of the syllogism it wou ld be different but all that infer ,

ence requires as its criterion is modes of statement that insure the

proper application of the principle of identity and relation and modal ,

ity are not necessary t o this unless we are dea l ing with material
,

considerations in t h e syl logism which w e a r e not n o w supposed to do

, .

What Kant ought to have made clear if he saw it at all , w a s that the
,

problem of knowledge w as prior to all processes and conditions of

formal ratiocination and hence that his categories S hould not be
,

drawn from the principles of logic or that the categories of quan

,

tity and quality coul d not have a formal import in the theory of
knowledge Any other conception of the case would require us to
.

retain relation and modality as formal principles of reasoning

which in fact , n o one will admit There is then a fundamental dith
,
.

culty with Kant s conceptio n of the categories unless we assign t h e

,

function of determining the m ea n i ng of propositions which intro ,

duces the idea of matter rather than form into their interpreta
tion But if this is what we are to do with them how far have w e
.

gotten in the problem of

knowledge ! The function of deter
mining meaning does n o t determine validity and it w as validity that ,

was required to a nswer the doubts of scepticism But what S hall .

be the criterion of validity if the categories only indicate the meaning

of propositions and if meaning does not guarantee its o wn va lidity !
In order to answer this question w e must examine for a moment a
1 20 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

matte r which Kant seems not to have noticed and perhaps could no t ,

notice , u ntil the development of formal logic had eliminated the con
sideration of the categories of relation and modality from its functions .

This is the question of u n i v er s a l i ty in judgment and that of causal ity ,

a ssumed also to be a category a ffect i n g the

formality of j udgments .

Universality is one of the categories of quality and has served the

f unction of a criterion of truth in the history of S peculation with im
plications quite distinct fro m the other t wo categories under the same
h ead . No w Hume had questioned the validity of the idea of caus
a l ity,
though he did not dispute t h at of u niversality No w if the cate .

g o r ie s determine only the meaning of propositions and scepticism can

question the validity of some of them it ca n be consistent only in ex
tending its doubts to all of them and include universality as well as
relation and modality which are frequently enough disputed Now as .

univer sality h a s often appeared as a cr iterion of truth and cannot yet ,

in t h e eyes of Hume guarantee causality it is possible to raise the

, ,

s ceptical question with regard to itself unless certain reasons m a y o c

,

cur to render this i mpossible H ence so far as I can see there is no

.
, ,

common characteristic in Kant s system of categories except the idea

of m e a n i ng or material import and this neither implied validity n o r

,

had formal application in ratiocination If they perform formal

.

functions for judgment in any other eld it will be necessary either t o

extend the operation of j udgment into sensatio n and perception ,

where the material of knowledge is obtained or to assign the cate ,

go r ies no function but that of unifying or systematiz ing experience ,

which is Hume s associative synthesis and Locke s formation of co m

plex ideas by the understanding To give validity besides meaning

.

the categories should have some denite relation or signicance i n

experience as i n t er p r et i n
g it not merely synthetiz ing it
, It is .

claimed of course , that Kant meant this but it is certain that he does
, ,

not expressly indicate it w hile the categories are assigned such a

,

formal function in knowledge that w e inevitab ly conceive them as

unifying rather than as interpreting phenomena There is nothing in .

Kant to S how that he meant h is categories as modes of i nterpreting

experience but only as systematizing it and as his followers insist that
, ,

he made experience merely phenomenal there is no ground in
h i s do ctrine for the obj ective world as he apparently asserted it , but
,

everything is purely subj ective as with the Greek relativists

, .

There is a furthe r confusion in his treatment of the categories He .

includes causality among the categories but he does not indicate how
,

t his can be a formal characteristic of l ogical j udgments He gives .

 C OND I TI ONS OF S YNTH E TI C K NO WL E D GE . 121

no illustrations of ca usal j udg m ent and one is puzz led to know what
could be given for it though quantity and quali ty and perhaps r e
, ,

lation and modality are easily enough illustrated If causality is a

,
.

for m al principle of j udgment it should be illustrated in a type of

assertion just as quantity and q uali ty can be illustrated This simply .

shows that Kant had not worked out his do ctrine of the categories as

he should have done Either they are not formal principles of
.

judgment at all or they must S how a common feature in their relation

to judgment No w every j udgment is based upon the connection of
.

subject and predicate before quantity can be ad m itted as a character

i st ic thus making quantity a pur ely subordinate
,
category if it is to ,

be treated as one at all The categories if they have any capa city fo r
.
,

classication should represent the proper variations of the connectio n

,

between su bj ect and predicate The characteristic of quantity does

.

not relate to this connection as such but to its ex t en s i o n It does not .

indicate the meaning of the relation subsisting between subject and

predicate but only to the quantity of the subject to which the relation
may be applicable The categories of quality satisfy t h e principle of
.

classication but those of modality do not as they represent the de

, ,

gree of tenacity with w hich the mind may hold the connection That .

is they have to do with conviction and not with the nature of the
,

matter dealt with in the j udgment It is thus clear why s cholastic .

logic admitted them into its province , as conviction had to be associated

with the premises in order to obtain a place in the conclusion They .

thus represented matter and not form in reasoning and had to

,

be excluded fro m logic the moment that ratiocination was valued only
for its formal f u nctions Under the categories of relation only one of
.

them can be illustrated in a type of j udgments This is that of sub .

stance and attribute but there is no for m of judgment for reciprocity

,

and no n e for causality which cannot be redu c ed to that of substance

and attribute Hence Kant should not have chosen logical forms
.

for his categories with all the misu nderstanding which they were ca l
cu la t e d to produce .

O f course Kant had in mind not the linguisti c and grammatical

, ,

considerations which logic in its formal functions has to respect but ,

t be way s i n w/zi cb t /ze m i n a t /zi n bs a bo u t i ts o b ec t s

Laws of
j .

thought were his idea of the categories and his forms were modes
of action and not modes of expression But while this is the real point .

of view from which Kant has to be interpreted and represents a proper

way to view the fundamental principles of thought Kant should not ,

have drawn them from formal logic and S hould have given the m
1 22 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

another function than th a t of the mere u nication of pheno m ena or the

formal systematiz ation of experience which did not ta ke him beyond ,

H ume s associative synthes is It may be tha t nothing else is possible

. .

With that question I have nothing to do at present It is Ka nt s inco n .

sistency in the matter that is the subject of re mark , since he was pre
tending to refute the philosophy of H ume Had he cut himself loose .

from the li m itations of formal logi c as his break with schola stic dog
,

m at i sm required him to do , he might have seen that it wa s as much a

duty to recast the classi cation o f j udgments as it was to classify the
-

categories But he did not wholly free himself fro m the S hackles o f
.

the system which he resented and the consequence was that he remained
under the illusion of the formal methods which it was the genius o f
Hume to have reduced to extremities .

Schopenhauer simplied the matt er by reducing the l aws of thought

to four and even these he made subdivisions of one namely , the L aw
, ,

of Su fcient Reason His f o ur principl es were the r a t i o ess en di ,

.

r a t io
en d i , r a t i o ag en d i , and r a t i o co g n o s cen di These may be .

expressed as the n a t u r e ca u s e en d and e v i d en ce of facts or reality

, , , .

I am not at present concerned with either the merits or demerits of th is

simplication , as it does not affect the problem which I am dis cussing ,

namely that of j udgment formally considered , but only the possibility

,

of reducing t h e number of fundamental principles of knowledge .

When this is once accepted and especially when we remark the

,

possibility of assuming but one general principle that of Su fcient ,

Reason , or the tendency to explain phenomena we may proceed t o ,

examine the forms of judgment with reference to the embod iment o f

this principle and not with reference to the require m ents of formal

logic which has to do , not with the acquisition of knowledge as
,

interpretation but with the transmission of it as conviction Ka nt had

, .

neglected to remark that the problem of knowledge , apart from
ratiocination and in so far as it w a s a question of judgment was co n ,

cerned with the connection bet ween subj ect and predicate and not with
the princip l es a ffecting only the moods and gures of the syllogism .

Consequently he did not see that his rst duty lay in a new c l assication
of the forms of j udgments and then the determination of the categorie s
afterward In other words the types of j udgment should have been
.
,

the primary problem of inquiry instead of mere ly assuming that formal

logic determined them , especially as logic had been abandoned as the
primary condition of solving the problem of knowledg e .

The criticis m of Kant s method of obtaining the categories and th e

concl usion from it suggests th e task which lies before the ep ist emo lo
 C OND I TI O NS OF S YN TH E TI C K NO WL E D GE . 12
3

gist at the outset of his inquiries This has been stated to be a cla ss i
.

cation o f j udgments This duty of course is relative to the functions

.
,

ascribed to j udgment and these functions in the psychological analysis

,

of the pro cesses of knowledge are so general that j udgment appears

to represent the one type of mental action to which all intellectual
synthesis is redu cible What are the specic forms of it that justify
.

the assumption of more than a single category or l a w of thought !

Either there will be only one form of judgment with p l ur a l c a t eg o r i es

simultaneously applicable to interpret its content if there be more ,

than one such principle at all or there will be various types of judg
,

ment to suit the various modes of interpreting facts of experience .

There have been various classications of judgments which might

be made to pass under review here if it was my purpose to rej ect any
of them as a condition of adopting the one whi ch recommends itself
here But I shall treat existing classications of j udgment in the same
.

mann er as the classications of the sciences have been treated , na m ely ,

as relatively valid and useful Hence I shall not imply any invidious
.

reections in suggesting the classication which suits the purpose of

the theory of knowledge as I wish to discuss it here This w ill be .

especially true when it is remar k ed that the classication which I pro

pose act ually includes the various systems which it might be supposed
to supplant or reject This should be kept in mind
. .

Whatever their content therefore I w , ould reduce all judgments to

,

two types which I shall call i n t en s i v e and e xt e n s i v e judgments the ,

terms intensive and extensive being adopted partly for the con
v enie n ce of economic expression and partly as descriptive of certain

characteristics found in the j udgments so named By intensive .

judgments I mean to describe those which express the relation of

substance a n d attribute between subject and predicate F or example .
,

Snow is white
,
Sugar is sweet Matter is heavy Nor will
, .

such judgments as John struck James The su n heats the earth
, ,

Snow melts w ith heat be any exception to this conception of the

,

class We have only to observe that the idea of substance is rep

.

resented in the subject a nd that attributes may be divided into static

and dynamic , as is usual in all the sciences whether physical or meta ,

physical to bring these propositions under the class indicated All

, .

verbal predicates , transitive or intransitive m a y be treated in this way

,

for the sake of showing the f o r m a l mode in which the intensive judg
ment expresses itself though there will be certain philosophic reaso n s
,

for keeping the t w o modes of thought distinct from each other This .

w ill be taken up later but in the meantime we h ave only to recognize

,
I 2
4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

tha t there are tw o types of the intensive judgment the one representing ,

a static relation between subj ect and predicate and the other a dynamic

r elation between subject and obj ect or t wo subj ects usi n g subject ,

in its metaphysical sense .

By extensive judgments I mean those which express the rela
t ion of species and genus bet ween subject and predicate For ex .

a mple , Iron is a metal Apples are fruit
,
lVIa n is a biped
, .

There is but one type of these , and the nature of the relation expressed
limits the for m of statement to the copulative and neither the tran,

s i t i v e nor intransitive form of verbal expression is possible in them .

F ormal logic requires us to reduce both forms t o the latter type as ,

m ay be done in order to make reasoning universally applicable to

,

j udgments This is rendered possible by the fact that the intensive

.

propositions can be metamorphosed into the extensive by substituting

c lass terms for t h e predicate But as I am dealing with problems be
.

y ond that of formal logic I do not accept this simplication of the

matter as expressing what our problem requires Indeed were it no t .

t hat attributes may be divided into static and dynamic I should have t o
r ecogniz e three distinct types of ju dgment in the problem which it ,

w ould be convenient for certain purposes to do But as the act o f

.

mind explaining a static attribute by reference to its subject substance ,

o r grou n d , is very li k e that of referring an effect to its cause an event ,

to its dynamic antecedent and also as the circumstance that all sc ien
,

t i c and ph ilosophic reection i n cl ines to the reduction of a l l attributes

to the dynamic type we may as well simplify the case by the divisions
,

adopted and resort to t h e distinction betw een static and dynamic

a ttributes when it is necessary to distinguish between a world of 1m

m anent reality and a world of transeunt forces or between a world

without and a world with a co m m e r c i u m of relations a monistic and ,

a pluralistic conception of things

There is a form of thinking or conceiving facts w hich assumes
the expressio n of the intensive judgment but is governed by the prin
c i l e or category that determines the meaning of the extensive judg
p
ment This form of thinking and representatio n is very common so
.
,

common that we might even say with some plausibility that it de scribes
our general mode of thought and it might even be seized upon by the
,

phenomenalist to illustrate and prove the purely phenomenal and

associative nature of all cognition or synthesis I shall take this up .

again when I h ave indicated the categories which regulate synthetic

thought and which are not increased or diminished by this peculiar
m ode of thought . F or the classication of j udgments in form of ex
 C OND I T I ONS

OF S YNTH E TI C K N O WL E D GE . 12
5

pression and for ulti m ate r eection the intensive and the extensive r e
main as the primary types The form that appears to be an exceptio n
.

and to afford apparent ground for a third class is in meaning a sort , ,

of converse of the intensive w hich simply turns it into the exte n sive .

It arises thus , as in the example Snow is white It may be clai m e d.

that the subject s n ow has n o other me a ning than the particula r
white which is here said to be its attribute and that we identify it ,

by the perception of this particular white

This is to say that w e
.

should know nothing of snow but for the experience of a given
quality of white
. This is true e n ough whether we consider tha t
,

this substance is a synthesis of other qualities at the same time or not .

The predicate may be treated as only a way of explaining what w e

mean by the word , i n which case there is a kind of identity betwee n
subject and predicate It is true that I come to know what snow
.

is by rst perceiving its quality white and hence it is the r a t i o
,

co
g n o s ce n d i of its existence and so a criterion of the conditions unde r

which the word snow is applicable but while th is identies t h e
,

r ep r es e n t a t i v e conception of subject and predicate in the proposition

and ex plains h o w I come to k n ow the subj ect snow it does not ,

eliminate the idea of substance when a further question is asked as to

the implicatio ns of the predicate as a phenomenon or a ttribute demand
ing a ground or explanation so that ultimately the t wo fold division o f
,
-

judgments still holds good , except so far as we may desire to distin

guish between the causal and the substantive jud g ment within the in
tensive class The intensive judgment is based upon an ! e t i o l o g i c al
.

relation or concept ion of subj ect and predicate .

No w it is to be observed that the intensive judgments express in

some form the idea of ground or cause as the relation between subject
and predica te whether af rmed o r denied Extensive judgments ex
,
.

press some notion of identity or difference between subj ect and predi
cate according to whether the relation is a f rmative or negative The
,
.

principles which thus give meaning to these j udgments m ay be called

in Kant s phrase categories as representing laws of thought They

, .

indicate the w ay in which the facts of experience are explained o r

made intelligible In the intensive judgment the predicate is conceived
.

as a function or attribute of somet h ing a n d a s such is referred to the

subj ect as its ground or cause and hence does not appear as self
dependent In the exte nsive judgment the predicate is not so referred
.
,

but the subj ect is referred to the predicate as the class to which it
belongs or does not belong and hence the predicate appears as the
,

index of the qualitie s belongi n g to the subject though these are not ,
1 26 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

specically stated The obj ect of the extensive judgment is to make

.

the subject intelligible in terms of the predicate or to indicate the

identity or di fference between them It does not directly explain in
.

terms of causal ideas but only indicates t h at whatever explanation in

, ,

terms of a cause be considered it is the same for subject and predicate

, l
.

It assigns what may be called the m a t e r i a l or o ntological element o f a

concept by comparison with another already known The extensive .

j udgment is thus based upon an o n t o l o g i ca l conceptio n of the relation

between subj ect and predicate .

This analys is gives us t w o fundamental types of cate go r ie s as regu

lative of the meaning of all propositions in respect of the relation be
t ween subject and predicate But there is the question of the com
.

p l e xity of meaning involved in the conceptions of subj ect and predicate

and their quantity Concepts usually imply a synthesis of qualities
.
,

s o that the problem of knowledge is as much concerned with the

d etermination of this synthesis as it is with that of subj ect and predi
cate H o w does this synthesis come to ta k e place Besides there is
. .

the question of the universality of judgments which involves the ques

tion of extending the assertion or denial as well as originally forming
it Certain principles or laws of thought are involved in this as well
.
,

as in the primary connection between subject and predicate and so ,

also in the synthesis of conceptions .

The consequence is that we require other categories for the com

p l et e explication of j udgment in all its aspects I shall therefore enum
.

c rate what I conceive to be the categories necess a ry to explain the

fundamental process of judg m ent in the determinatio n of k nowledge .

They are sp a c e t i m e s u bs t a n c e and a tt r i bu t e ca u s e and ej ec t un i ty

, , , , ,

p l u r a li ty s i m i l a r i ty d i v er s i ty and r el a t i o n including coexiste nce

, , ,

and sequence and possibly one might also include inhesio n and nex us
, ,

the former for the relation between substance and attribute and the
latter for that between cause and e ffect although it is possible to r e
,

du ce them to forms of co existence and sequence There are nally the .

categories of m o d a l i ty which include possibility probability certi

, , ,

tude and necessity , certitude being added to the list of Kant and r epre
s enting much the same tenacity of conviction as ne c essity but not the ,

s ame exclusion of other possibilities There are situations in which

.

it is not easy if ever to distinguish between certitude and necessity

, , ,

a s the latter implies the former and often relies upon it as a cr ed en

,

tial But as there is a feeling of certitude which does not imply meces
.

s ity j ust as there is a feeling of possibility that does not imply any
,

probability we may well recognize a serial order of states of conviction

 C O ND I TI O NS OF S YN TH E T I C K NO WL E D GE . 12
7

or degree of tenacity in regard to beliefs i n w hich the later involve

and absorb the earlier ones .

Whether it is possible to logically classify the categories will de

pend upon the question whether any general principles o i classication
ca n be obtained I think thi s can be done I have already called
. .

attention to the close relation between causal and substantive co n cep

tions and also to the fact that identity and differen c e have a sort of
,

common function in determining the relatio n between subject and

predicate in extensive judgments Both of the m express some c o n c e p .

tion of what may be called reality by whi ch I may mean a nything

which is disti n guishable fro m non existence on the one hand and fro m -

relation and modality o n the other and so indicating the facts in con
n ect io n with which relation and conviction are possible I may there .

fore give a table of classicatio n and explain it afterward .

S p ace .

M tr
e o lo gi c al
i
.

T me .

S tat c i . A tt ribut e .

Ph e n o m e n o l o i ca l g .

D y n a m ic M o de .

Rea l i ty S t a t ic . S ubs t a n ce . G r o un d . No um en a l .
.

E ti o l o gi ca l .

D y n a m ic Ca u s e A c t i o n
. . . P h e no m e n a l .

U n i ty . Nu m er o ea d em .

Id e nt ity .

S i m il a r i t y . A r te ea d em .
On to lo gi ca l .

Ca te go r ies .

'
Pl ur al i t y . Nu m er o d i ver s e .

D i er en ce
D i v ersi ty . A r te d i ver se .

Rel a t i o n

M o d al i ty .

The principles employed in the c lassication of the s ciences ( p 2 5 ) .

explain the grounds on which some of the above categories are reduced
to systematic relations and no further elucidation of these principles is
necessary I have treated them as all forms of Reality in the sense
.

dened T h e only thing that remains to be made clear is the treat

.

ment of identity and difference and their relation to unity and plural ,

ity We are all familiar with the usage of the terms Identity and
.

Contradiction as principles of thought in formal logic but we do ,

no t always stop to consider their equivocal import Besides in meta .

physical and epistemologi cal problems it is better to use the term

Diff erence than Contradiction whi ch conceals the meaning im
portant for other than logical r e lations Hence I have here employed .

the terms Identity and D i fference to denote two categories of

1 28 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

thought reducible to the general type of ontological or materia l

principles of conception But they each have a double or equivocal
.

import There is mathematical and generic identity and mathe
.
,

m at ic a l and generic di fference

Mathematical identity is ex
.

pressed i n logic by the judgment A is A , in which we denote o ne
a n d t bc s a m e M i ng There is no distinction whatever betw ee n sub
.

j c et and predicate not even in number Hence there is an application

, .

of the principle of identity which means numerical identity nu merica l ,

unity or individuality , and is represented in thou ght by sameness in

space or what we may call p u n ct u a l identity Hence the maxim .

n u m e r o ea e e m as expressing its nature

But generic identity im
.

pli es plurality o f objects and like n ess of kind It is represented by t he .

extensive j udgment A is B
The j udgment a f rms the inclusion
.

of A in B as of the same kind though mathematically d ifferent Hence .

the maxim a r t e ea d em as expressin g the nature of subject and predicate .

The same general principles apply to the import of the catego ry o f

difference The differences between objects may be either mathe
.

m at ica l or generic They may be of the same kind but individually o r

.
,

numerical ly distinct , and hence t h e difference gives rise only to plurality .

P ossibly the formal statement of this fa ct would be A is not A,

where we have two A s compared Again the differences between .

obj ects or bet ween aspe cts of the same object may be of kind and no t
merely in nu mber Hence we h a ve qualitative difference to express by
.

t h e term w hich often coincides also w ith the mathematical di fferen ce .

Hence we may represent it by the ju dg ment A is not B

The .

maxims n u m e r o d i v er s a and a r t e d i v er s a repres ent respectively th e

mathemati cal and the generic differences of comparison I have taken .

t h e te r m u nity to represent mathematical identity , and similari ty that o f

generic identity while plurality represents that of mathematical differ
,

enc e s and diversity that of generi c differ e nce

,
It is s imilarity and dif .

ference however that possess the largest share of the functions inv olved
, ,

in the unication of phenomena in genera l , even though the ap
plica tion of the others are the primary condition of determining th e
data from which we start in the use of the latter B ut apart fro m .

this the distin ctions were necessary partl y for t h e purpose of recog
,

niz ing the twofo l d uses of the terms identity and difference ,
and part l y for the purpose of showing later the separate functions

which t h e d istinct meanings have in the problem of knowledge .

In the intensive jud gment it is possible to say that we have a com

bination of t h e unity and diversity n u m er o ea a em and a r t e di
,

v er s a ,
in the af rmative j udgment and th e combination of plu ,
 C O ND I TI ONS OF S YN TH E TI C K N O WLE D GE .
12
9

r a l ityand diversity n u m er o cl i v er s a and a r t e a i v er s a for the nega
,

tive judgment .

We are now prepared to study the relation of the categories thus ,

classied to the process of knowledge in its synthetic forms But
, ,
.

in order to do this it will be necessary to recur to the analysis of the

various processes by which we supposed that knowledge wa s a c
quired Taking Consciousness as a generic name for all the mental
.

states of which any direct account can be given we previously divided ,

the functions of knowledge into those of appre h ension or intuition

and cognition or j udgment the latter repre senting th e synthetic agen ,

cies in the result Cognition or j udgment was divided into perception

.
,

co n er cep t i o n
p apperception infero apperception or ratiocination and
, ,
-

genero perception or generalization It remains to sho w the relation

-
.

o f the categories to these various processes and what the results are .

Some preliminary denition and explanation will be necessary at this

point .

I have above indicated that judgments are of the intensive and

extensive types This division ho w ever denes them in respect of
.
, ,

their content or meaning It does not indicate the processes by which.

they are formed Besides it was also remark ed that the conceptions ,
.

forming the contents or matter of judgment represent the result of

cognition and as they may represent a synthesis of qualities or only a
simple quality , it is necessary to carry somewhat further the analysis
of judgment in so far as the term stands for a process The
, .

divisions of cognition into the several types of perception con ,

perception etc represent this analysis as they indicate different

, .
, ,

applicat ions of the various categories either singly or in combination ,

i n the formation of conceptions and judgments I have also indicated .

that the problem of knowledge begins with the formation of con
cept i o n s which serve as elements of judgments and that the process of ,

forming conceptions is one of judgment as an action Hence it is .

necessary to take account of the fact that conceptions may involve a

question as to how the synthesis of qualities can take place for which
a ter m may stand For example tree apple man are term s
.
, , ,

which represent a group of properties and the question is h o w w e

came to group them so The answer to this and various coin cidenta l
.

questions will be found in a presentation of the several cognitive

processes .

The general process of cognition is best explained by comparison

with intuition or appreh en sion This latter process we have shown to .

be concerned with the primary data of experience the simple facts ,
1 30 TH E P R OB L E III S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

of cons ciousness or phenomen a whether conceive d as such or not

The moment that any experience is conceived as a phenomenon ,

quality property attribute event etc it is thought of as something

, , , , .
,

r elated to something else either as a whole of w hich it is a part or as

,

a fact dependent upon another But before any such conception of a

.

fact arises it is only a fact isolated as it were I do not mean to say

,
.

that there is a remembered time in consciousness when we have only

apprehended facts not related i n any way Nor would I af rm o n .

the other side that they are always conceived as related Whether .

cognition is as old as apprehension and inseparable from it I need no t

decide I have here distinguished between elements in knowledge
.

which may be considered either a s a bstractions or as independent proc

esses I merely nd that we can abstract the antecedent of a fact and
.
i

concentrate the mind upon t h e ba r e fact and describe it a s if alone an ,

isolated element of consciousness , and this non synthetiz ed fact I speak -

of as an intuition or presentation which is a datu m for the application

of other functions of conscious ness than the merely apprehending
function Ta k ing the presentation of a color a sound a taste a pain
.
, , , ,

or any individual fact regarded as an event in the external world as ,

something which arrests attention and becomes a n obj ect of conscious

ness as a fact whose explanation is required if it is conceived as ,

implying more than itself we have a situation which denes the limits
,

of apprehensio n and creates the demand for the process which asserts
more than the given fact This process I call Cognition By it I
. .

mean t ne a pp l i c a t i o n of a c a t eg o ry t o a f a c t o r p h e n o m en o n the

,

assertion of the implicate which the conceptio n of the fact or phe

n o m e no n as relative demands T h is application of a category is the
.

act of synthesis and will be adequately explained in the various types

of cognition But as a general process it is an i n t er p r e t i ng act the
.
,

act by which the implication or meaning of a fact is determined As .

this meaning or implication may be various there will be correspond

i n gly various types of the process .

A further statement of an explanatory character must be made in

regard to the terms which have bee n employed to denominate the
several forms of cognition I intend to give a specic meaning to each of
.

the subdivisions of the general process This will be in one or t w o cases

.

a new and narrower import than the current use of the same term has .

T h e others are somewhat n ew terms and w ill present no dif culties

after the denition The most important one requiring precautionary
.

m
re ark is P erception This is a very com m on term and has both an
.

indenite and a philosophically specic use But even in philosophic .

 C O ND I T I O NS OF S YN T H E TI C K NO WL E D GE . 1
31

parlance it is variously employed to represent processes w h ich I pro

pose here to carefully distinguish F or instance we indiff erently
.
,

speak of the perception of a sound , the perception of a tree , and
the
perception of a truth etc The content of the mental act in
.
,

each of these cases is so different that w e have to consider the process

a s di fferent in so far as di fference of content j usties such a distinction .

Such an act as a perception of a sound I have dened as an a pp r e

h ens o i n and not as a synthetic act The . perception of a tree i
certainly synthetic in some sense of the term and therefore involves ,

either cognition or the combination of either apprehension or cognition

a n d inference. O f this later
. In any event the synthesis expressed

by the concept tree involves more than simple apprehension as I
have considered it , and so involves j udgment of some kind The .

perception of a truth is undoubtedly a judgment and involves sy n

thetic elements more abstract than tree The term is therefore
.

e quivocal ,
and in a proper analysis of the problem of knowledge
this ambiguity must be recogniz ed and eliminated I shall co u se .

quently use the term in a much more restricted sense than is usual ,

e xcept when I put it between quotation mar k s when I shall recogniz e

i ts general import . When not so indicated I shall give it the technical

m eaning in my denition of it whic h will be limite d to as si m ple a

p rocess as the most elementary synthetic act will permit C o n p e r c ep .

tion had to be coined to expres s a process more complex than Percep

tion Apperception I may use in a somewhat restricted sense thou gh
.
,

not more so than some writers The other terms will explain them
.

s elves i n their denition . But in regard to all of them I must premise

th e statement that I do not urge the common acceptance of the terms

as dened I adopt them and their technical meaning solely for the
.

purposes of the present discussion and for the proper analysis of the
e lementary problem of knowledge After the analysis of the prob
.

lem has been recogniz ed as correct , this being helped by the c o n cen
t ra t i o n of attention upon technical terms I do not care wha t becomes
,

o f the technical uses of the terms They are here meant only to over
.

c ome the inuence which association a n d habit have over all of us

when using a ter m instead of the concept represented by its denition

and illustration When that end has been a ccomplished I may safely
.

rely upon any system of circumlocution to effect the same object and ,

the ordinary usage can remain as it is with the u nderstanding that it

,

must be subjected to the proper analysis whe n dealing with ep iste mo

l ogical and metaphysical questions I would of course prefer to see a
.

t er m used in its technical sense and remain consistent with its adopted
1
32 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

denition when dealing w ith philosophic problems but it may be to o ,

m u ch to expect that traditionally xed conceptions can be easily sup .

planted by the necessities of an analysis and it may not be required fo r

any purposes but easy and briey expressed distinctions The use o f .

a technical or technically dened term always helps to x the concept

which its denition determines and if that is once e ffected so as to aid
,

an analysis w e may safely trust to the recognition of the idea to nd

,

its own expression where brevity is not a duty or a necessity .

The proble m now is to show h o w intensive and extensive judg

ments are formed The formation of concepts involves the same proc
.

esses , j ust as the judgments involved in conceptual synthesis may take

either the intensive or the extensive form , and as propositions have
been explained to be only more complex conceptions w hich merely
economiz e language we have before us the simple syntheti c problem
,

of the processes involved in Cognition of all types It will be impor .

tant to keep in vie w the fact that I desire to explain the process co n
s ist e nt l
y with any philosophi cal theories of the schools It may be .

necessary to repeat this caution in various places as the employment ,

of certain terms m ay imply the assumptio n of a certain philosophic

and metaphysical doctrine of things as a condition of understanding
and accepting the analysis and explanation of judgment here adopted .

But for the present this brief remark is sui c ie nt .

P E R C EP T I O N .

I shall use this term technically to mean the applicatio n of the cat
g y of causality or grou nd to the simplest facts of mental experience
e o r

or the simplest qualities of reality , namely an apprehension whether, ,

of the internal or external type In other words perception is the

.

synthesis of an apprehension and what is implied by the ae tiological

categories I do not care whether t his causality or reality be treated
.

as in its nature noumenal or phenomenal That is indifferent.

to the question of the existence of th e synthesis and what the implicate

is in relation to the facts of apprehension What I mean by the syn
.

thesis is that any given experience sensatio n or mental state prop
, ,

er t
y or event , may be seen and interpreted in the light of an implica
tion of something else than itself , and that the prima r y and fundamenta l
thing so posited by consciousness is the cause or ground of the fact
apprehended whether it be denite or indenite It involves no con
, .

sideration of time and space el e m ent s but o n ly the conception of mean

,

ing in terms of a cause or ground of so me kind at least Whether it .

is legitimate or not is not n o w the question but only tha t it seems to,
 C OND I T I O NS OF S YN T H E T I C If NO WL E D GE .
1
33

be a natural action of the mind in all stages of its development Thus .

I have the sensation of a color I may explain it by referring it to an

.

o bject as its property The thing to w h ich it i s so referred is its cause

.

or ground O r I may seek for its cause in some antecedent fact of a

.

phenomenal type and thus posit a trans cendent fact to make the a p
pat ently isolated fact intelligible But I do not have to go to the ex
.

t ernal world as a conditio n of satisfying the aetiological categor i es I .

may refer the sensation to an internal ground I interpret the sensa .

tion as my o wn as a phenomenon of a subject instead of as a property

,

o r quality of an obj ect I do not require to go beyond Solipsism

.

fo r the use and application of the categories The epistemological .

problem is satised with a purely subj ective point of View and the o b
j ect ive will be only another applicatio n of its postulates extending the
eld of their uti l ity If I refer a fact or event to myself as its cause
.

o r ground and mean nothing more than the cause of that particular

fact or event I have satised the principle of causality in the case and
the question of an external cause or reality will be either supererogatory
o r an additional proble m As a fact external reality has always been
.

associated in some way or relatio n with the subjective point of view ,

but it is not necessary to the utilizatio n of aetiologica l categories as

t hese may be sati s ed by a subjective causal reference The dis crimina .

t ion between internal and external reality may be late All that I .

am maintaining here is that apprehension is never satised with itself ,

a nd that co n sciousness tries in some way to nd the fact or cause to

which a ny given phenomenon or event is related even if it cannot get ,

beyond the simple se lf as this cause or ground But in the doctrine of .

perceptio n epistemology has always r eferred to the t h eory of
reality and this reality has meant the existence of a n external

world other than the sensations to be accounted for either as the primary
question or as the necessary complement of the subj ective reality .

In either or both of these points of view a subject or obj ect , or ,

subject object or obj ect subject , other tha n the phenome na or func
-

,
-

t ions of consciousness w a s implied no matter what further investiga

, ,

tion might sho w tha t other to be No w I am using the term .

perception to indicate this implication except that I do not use it ,

to imply that this object is known in the simple act of perception as

,

dened , to have a c omplexus of attributes su ch as is denoted by the ,

term tree
orange or mind
H o w the idea of a tree or
.
, ,
orange can be obtained wil l be a subj ect for later consideration
.

Here I limit the term perception as I intend to use it to the applica

, ,

tio n of causality or ground to a single and individual datu m of a p pr e

1
34 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

h e n s io n. I am supposing that I have nothing more to account fo r

than a sensation of color and nothing more to associate with it than
what the idea of a cause or ground calls for Whether any sensation .

of sound or tactio n is related to the s a m e cause I am not supposed even

to conj ecture or imagine as possible O f this m ay I remain ignorant
. .

I am to account only for the single phenomenon of color which I co n

ce iv e as a phenomeno n or event w hich has somehow or other come
into existence That something is implied by it is necessa rily involved
.

in the initial conception of it as a phenomenon event or related , ,

fact and the only question is as to what we shall call this implicate .

We may not name it at the outset It su fces to recognize that the

.

fact implies this something other than the fact to be rendered i nt elli
g ibl e in terms of a cause or ground The most elementary form o f
.

this j udgment or application of the ze t i o lo gi ca l categories is the imper

sonal judgment F or example it rains ,
,
it snows it is clear ,

ing ,
it blows , etc Here the subject or cause is not specically
.

named O nly the fact of a cause or grou nd is indenitely recognized

. .

In some respects we might say that the impersonal judgment is only a

statement of the fact of occurrence and not a stated implication o f
cause This is true enough in so far as the explicit recognition of the
.

cause or ground in kind is concerned but when we exami n e carefully ,

into the signicance of the it in the statement which is not the ex ,

p l e t iv e it the idea of a cause or ground is there , but is so indenite

,

that only the fact of occurrence is most apparent But aside fr om the .

question of the real interpretation of the impersonal judgment all that ,

I wish to contend for at present is that it is the best form of statement

for illustrating what is meant by the el ementary j udgment of percep
tion as its function is here conceived This distinguishes it very clearly
.

from su ch statements as the clouds rain
the weather is clearing
, ,

and the wind blo ws where the subj ect real or imaginary is spe
, , ,

c i ca ll
y named and conceived representing a more mature stage o f
,

reection The only cause however which this simple perception is

.
,

s upposed to determine or posit is the single implicate warranted by th e

conceptio n of the individual apprehension as a related fact a phe ,

nomenon o r event not explicable by itself .

The legitimacy of this process may be questioned by saying that all

of our knowledge is limited to phenomena th a t we know

naught beyond phenomena My reply to this would be that so far
.
,

as I am at present concerned and so far as my denition and co ncep

,

tion of reality and causality are concerned we may limit knowl ,

edge as we please I do not care whether phenomenalism or nou
.
 C O ND I T I O NS OF S YNTH E TI C [( NO WL E D GE . 1
35

m e na l i s m ,
or both or neither is true Whether the cause shall be a .

noumenon different absolutely in kind from all phenomena which it is

supposed to explain , or whether it is simply another phenomenon
like or different from the one in view does not affect the genera ] con ,

c ep t io n of the process I have admitted empirical causality or

.

reality in my very classication of the categories What I am con .

tending for is that the application of a category of causality or ground ,

whether w think of it as
e noumenal or phenomenal , whether

we think of it as a thing in itself or as mere antecedent fact is the ,

same in its im pli cia t io n when trying to expl a in a given fact of ex

per ienc e .The recognition of the indi vidual phenomeno n of ap pr e
h ens io n is simply the occasion and j ustication of the search for some
thing other than itself to account for it We may divide our opinions .

as to what we shall call this other than itself but not in regard to ,

the question w h ether it is another fact than the one in consideration .

O ne school will insist upon denominating it a n oumenon or non
ph enomenal reality a nd m ean to a ssert or imply that it is w holly u n
,

k
li e phenomena in its nature The other will insist upon main .

taining that it must be a phenomenon , whether this be the same or
different in kind from that of which it is supposed to be the antecedent

or cause But this p enomenal interpretation of the case does not
. h
alter the problem I n bo t /z v i ews w e t r a n s ce n d t be f a ct t o be ex
.

pl a i n ed whether w e choose to call t h e transcendent thing a

, phe

n o m e no n or noumenon a knowable or u nknowable real
,

ity The empiricist in his reduction of caus a lity to antecedent a n d

.

in his application of it to any concrete case of present event transcends

t his event or phenomenon when he seeks the cause condition or an , ,

t ec ed en t to explain his present fact quite as mu ch as does the anti

pheno m enalist in his resort to non phenomenal facts or postulates -

.

The empiricist may not transce n d a ll phenomena I am not here .

asserting that he does O f that in its place But he does transcend

. .

t be pheno m enon in question and wheth er the transcendent or in P ro

, ,

fesso r Ladd s phrase tra n s subjective datum or suppositum is other

,
-

than a phenomenon of any k ind remains still to be decided by

f urther inquiry H e always adm its the right and duty to so transcend
.

it for the explanatio n as no event explains itself unless science and

,

philosophy mean to commit su icide O n any theory we must seek the .

cause ground or ant ecedent in something that transcends the fact to

, ,

be explained or made i n telligible The question here is not what we

.

s h all call this transcendent fact but whether all intellectual synthesis of
,

the expl a n atory and interpreta t ive sort does not a ct ua ll v so transcend
I
36 TH E P R O B L E AI S OF PH I L OS OP H Y .

the given experience in its operations aiming at satisfying the mind .

H ence I mean t o construct the theory of perception so as to consist

w ith either view of our knowledge whether it be limited to phe
momena or extended to noumena .

P erception therefore as I mean to conceive and de n e it for the

, ,

purpose of indicating the primary and most elementary act of intel

lection simply and only means that an individual apprehension has no
,

i n terest for consciousness if we try only to consider it by itself It gets .

what interest and meaning it has from the mind s seeing it in the light

of a cause or ground or antecedent which is supposed in some way to

determine its existence or to support it as a dependent fact All that .

association can do is to recall some occasion and with it the coex

,

is tent or antecedent fact that was found in its connection , and assume
that this circumstance was its cause The idea of cause or ground
.
,

condition or necessary nexus comes into the case in some way to m ake
,

the fact intelligible and to prevent the mind from feeling the constraint
to treat the fact as S pontaneous or inexplicable Before association .

arises and after it arises the possibility of viewing the experi e nce
in isolation from a denite environment shows where the mind looks
for explication especially when there is no past association to suggest
,

the empirical synthesis which that act of association indicates and ,

this source to which it looks is something oth er than the event itself ,

leaving it open to decide by any other process we please whether this

other than itself is phenomenal or non phenomenal The main
-
.

point is to conceive t h e simplest act of judgment as the appl ication of

an ae tiological category to an individual apprehension which we can ,

isolate at least by abstraction for the sake of discovering why we do

n o t rest content with the mere present fact of consciousness .

Just when this act rst occurs in t h e life of consciousness it may

not be possible to say I would even admit that it may not in all or
.

any cases often occur in its simple form as dened any more than that
simple sensations occur as dened by the philosopher But if it does .

occur historically in this way it is perhaps very early in the life of the
,

individual Later in the mature co n sciousnes s it has to be the result

.

of deliberate experiment with abstraction of concomitant elements so ,

that it has to be determined for the philosopher bv the result of a na ly

sis rather t h an by direct memory o f cons ciousness We h ave to nd .

its n ature in t h e same way that we nd the nature of sensation which

we never remember apart from the complex acts of consciousness that
constitute the adult experience Nor is it necessary to nd the act in
.

the early history of th e individual in order to maintain that it is prim

 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN TH E TI C K NO WL E D GE . 1
37

ary and elementary any more than it is necessary to nd a sensation

,

without associates It is not the historical evolution of consciousness

.

or the gradual superposition of additional elements upon the earliest

that is here the proble m i n order to explain the synthesis but the ,

question of discovering the elements of a complex process as observed

in mature experience The study of babies is no help in this problem
.

and the whole doctrine of evolution is irrelevant to it There is no .

way of telling w hat a baby or a dog t h inks but to nd rst what the
intelligent man thinks as a condition of making infant and animal ex
,

per ience intelligible Hence I do not nd myself expl i citly obliged to

.

nd the simple a ct of perception as dened historically isolated in the

life of every individual in order to j ustify the appeal to it I merely
, .

nd that I have to assume it o r actually discover it as the nal element

in the analysis of the complex data which I nd in the mature mind .

We proceed here j ust as w e do in the isolation of any function of mind .

We nd variations of complexity in adult experience that discover the

variant in it which by that very fact is proved not to be a necessary
element of every consciousness By abstraction of the various ele
.

ments of the complex I nd that any one of the m might take place in
isolation which I could call a simple perception Thus suppose I see .

a color and have a certain taste at the same time and think of a n orange ,

and again see a color and feel a certain tactile sensation and think
again of an orange or again have a certa in taste and a certain tactile
,

sensation at the same time and think of an orange I dis cover in the .

case that the sy nthesis of any t w o of the experiences is not necessary .

Their connection with each other is contingent and the order of my ,

experienc e shows clearly enough th at I cannot treat any one of them

as the cause of the other Conseq uently I consider them individual
.

elements of a whole a ny one of which might o ccur in isolation and ,

in fact I can test this possibility by actual experiment whe n I please ,

and the idea of cause or ground appears in consciousness as inevitably

as if their synthesis were present All that I hav e to do in the presence
.

of the complex data of any given consciousness which I recogniz e as ,

complex , is to ask what I would think if only one of the quali

ties were presented to the mind instead of the totality a nd I should
nd myself predicating a cause or ground qu ite as readily and co n
dently as I do the singleness or unity of this cause or ground for the
synthe sis of qualiti es It is probable therefore that perception a s I
.
, ,

have dened it here is an actual and early experience in the mind s

life and only lacks the maturity of self consciousness and reection to
-

reme mber it as a fact Aside fro m the question whether it is chrono

.
138 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

logically an elementary act it is both logically and psychologically

,

the most elementary act of j udgment inas m uch as it c o ntai n s in the

synthesis fewer of the elements that constitute mature consciousness
and that do and must appear as variants in it The illustration above .

given shows this to be a fact The simplest act , therefore of judg

.
,

ment is the reference of any fact or event to a cause and this I have ,

decided to call perception We may not at rst separate the cause o r

.

ground from the e ffect or attribute in space or time We m ay do .

nothi n g more than think that there is some reason for the occurrence

of the fact or phenomenon In the earliest stages of consciousness
.

the experience may not assume any division of aspects or parts But .

what occurs in that stage is not a matter which any one can historically
determine All that we can say is that if at any time in the history o f
.
,

the mind no distinction of cause and effect of ground and attribute ,

takes place the fact of experience can neither be a phenomenon
,

nor anyth i ng else of a relative sort to cons ciousness We would n o t .

think of it as a color
sound taste or odor as these

, , , ,

facts are understood in mature consciousness where they are conceived

as events or c h anges involving an implied something else connected
with them even if we can neither na m e it nor conceive it in terms
,

similar to the facts presented We could only ta k e them as inex .

plicable facts having no implications and no characteristics suggesting

relations of any kind It is the moment when I conceive a fact as an
.

event or phenomenon that the caus a l ground is implied The percep .

tion which I am dening and illustrating is the judgme nt that arises

when the mind decides to view any or all events a s such as something ,

beginning in time or place and not of themselves explicable as having

an independent existence We may not denitely think or name the
.

cause or ground We may not say .

substance or
matter o r , ,

soul or other general reality and much less brain or tree
, , , ,

or ower The j udgment need be nothing more than
. some

thing . This indenite implicate suf ces to exemplify the conception
of elementary synthesis or explanation and later multiplied e xp er i ,

ences will indu ce other elements into the more complex syntheses .

Later experiences will also differentiate this something into t h e

particular causes or grounds of ordinary language and thought F inally .

by comparison and the application of other categories the various in

dividual implicates of simple perception will become systematically
classied so that substance will stand at their head a n d si n gular
,

terms at the foot of the series The r st st ep howe ver is the generic
.

j udgment of a reality other than the fact to be accounted for and this
 C O ND I TI O NS OF S YNTH E T I C K N O WL E D GE .
1
39

judgment is the primary one not involving any space or time as ,

sumptio us whatever as conditions of either its meaning or formation .

Space and time may be characteristics of each individual apprehension ,

but in perception as here conceived this space and time are not condi
tions of the judgment which is formed on the occasion of the ex .

p er ien ce .

The object of perception percept a s I shall call it to distinguish

,

it from concept is not a complexus of attributes su ch as the concept

, ,

tree or horse
If any such reality actually existed alone it
.

would be H erba rt s Real a thing with but one attrib ute or property

, ,

or an at om like that of some physicists wh o in sis t that a true ato m can

have but one quality and that if a number of attributes are discovered
,

to belong to the same subj ect the fact is evidence that we have not
found the true atom and that the supposed instance is a compound
,

such as w e k now wa ter nitric a cid etc , to be and so is resolvable

, ,
.
,

into simpler elements which might prove to be the true atoms .

Whether su ch things exist or not I am not concerned to a frm or

deny I am only choosing an actual mode of thought to illustrate the
.

limits of the process which I have dened as perception and which if ,

no other process of knowle d ge were possible would never give us ,

anything but this simple unanalyzable reality for an object What .

ever the actual nature o i real obj ects , perception is the evidence of but
a ground or cause for a single apprehension unassociated W ith another ,

and if we ever dis cover that the same cause or ground also has other
properties or functions than that which excites a given sensation we
have to determine the fact by other conditions than those which I have
been considering .

C O NP E R C E P T IO N .

I have distinguished percepts from concepts the former represent ,

ing the obj ect of a single apprehensio n an object that may be nothing ,

more tha n the idea of an indenite cause or ground and which but for ,

other considerations might result in the conception of a s many distinct

worlds or realities as there are avenues of apprehension Concept .

stands for either a synthesis of qualities or a synthesis of o bje ct s : t h e

former as we have seen above , being called a singular and the latter
, ,

a ge neral concept But the point here to be noticed is the fact that
.

concept simply as a term means synthesis of some kind which

, ,

unies the application of the categories and represents the rst step in
the process of unifying the world or cosmos It is the process of con .

perception that begins this movement and lies at the basis of the forma
tion of s i ng ul a r concepts General concepts are the result of late r
.
1
40 TH E P R OB L E A/I S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

a nd additional processes the order of development being in so far as

, ,

simpl i city and complexity are concerned percepts singular concepts , , ,

a n d general concepts O f this again

. .

P erception is a simple process C o np er c ept io n however involves

.
, ,

more elements and conditions than perception Its rst characteristic .

is that it must represent the application of causality or grou nd to t wo

or more or any conceivable number of s i m u l t a n eo u s a n d i d en ti ca
,

l o c a l apprehens ions That is it must represent t w o or more simul

.
,

t a n eo u s perceptions But it is more than the mere application of an

.

a
g
e tiological c a te ory which might give as many realities s e pa rate from
,

each other a s there are perceptions involved It is the additional ele .

m ents that determine its value Hence as the second important element
.

and co n dition co np e r cep t i o n includes sp a ce a n d t i m e r el a t i o n s That .

is space and time determine the form of the result which the j udgment
,

effects If the apprehensions are incited from the same point in space
.

a n d occur at the same time for both or more experiences the j udg ,

ment under the category of causality or ground represents this object

, ,

a s the same for all of them namely as a si ng l e subject or thing

, , ,

n u m e r o ea d em , whatever else it may be The object will thus be .

complex in respect of its qualities or functional activities n u mer o ,

d i v er s a but simple in respect to its sp a ce and time re l ations , n u m er o

,

e a d em . If the t wo or more different apprehensio n s occur in different

points of space , at the same time , or in different moments of time at the
s ame point of space the j udgment of causality c e t e r i s p a r ibu s will
, , ,

represent as many different obj ects or subjects of attributes or things ,

a s the source of sensations obj ects that are different in kind n u m er o

, ,

d i v e r s a , whatever else they may be It will be noticed that the onto.

logical categories are here involved in the product of co n p er c ep tio n ,

but only in so far as unity and plurality are concerned Similarity and .

diversity of kind are not concerned I need not more than refer to this .

fact as an i n dication of having remarked it The most important point .

to note n o w is the place assigned to space and time as fa ctors affecting

the form whi ch the application of causa l ity or ground takes It refers .

the ground of the qualities represented in consciousness to single or

plural objects according to the conditions indicated above In the rst .

and properly co np er c ept ive act when the space and ti m e are the same
,

for the perceptions w e have the same subj ect or cause for the t wo or
,

more attributes We have a c o n per c ep t as we may call it in distin c

.
, ,

tion from percept and hence a singular concept like P lato , Eu

,

cephalus , Charter O a k etc In the second form when the space
, .
,

a n d time relations involve the plurality of one of them we have a ,

 C OND I T I O NS OF S YN I YI E
-

T I C K NO WL E D GE . 1
41

plurality of objects or things whether as percepts or co np er cep t s the

, ,

o ne or the other being determined by the simplicity or degree of com

l exity involved i n the mental acts at the time If no t w o apprehensions
p .

occur at the same point of space and in the same moment of time that ,

is , simultaneously there will be no co np er c ept io n at all but only plural

, ,

perceptions no t involving any conceptio n of unity in cause or ground .

If t wo or more apprehe n sions occur u nder co np e r c ep t iv e conditions for

t wo of the senses a n d t wo or more u n der co np er ce p t iv e conditions for
the other senses there wi ll be two distinct co np er cept io n s representing

different unities for cause or ground and hence a plurality of obje cts ,

but with each of them representing the syntheti c act of co np er cep t io n .

Let me illustrate the process and results .

Let me suppose that I have an orange on my table F or the pur .

poses o f my illustration however I am not assuming that the obj ect is

, ,

yet known to be an orange or even to be known as anything I merely .

as sume a case of complex attributes a n d that I do not y et kno w the

fact I rst have the s ensation or apprehension of color This will
. .

give rise to a perception and nothing more Suppose also that I touch.

the object without seeing it or having the sensation of color I would .

again have nothing but a p erception when interpreting the meaning of

the experience . But suppose that I have simultaneously the appro
pr i at e sensatio n s of color and tou ch and they represent the same point
or space locality , why should I refer the cause or ground of the events
to the s a m e object ! Why not suppose that I am seeing one thing and
touching another seeing a house across the street and touching the
,

orange before me ! The answer to this question is simple If I have .

reason to believe , or actually see that the visual apprehen sion has its
causal source at the same point of space as the tactual both being sim ,

ult a ne o us by hypothesis I simply use the principle of mathematical

,

identity or unity in other words act according to the Law of Parsi

,

mony in my causal judgment a n d refer the plural qualities to the same

,

subject or obj ect The object before me becomes a synthesis of prop

.

ert ies a single whole and with frequent experience means this so
, ,

that on the apprehension of one of them I may anticipate the possible

apprehension of another It is in this way that I u ltimately derive the
.

basis for a l l conceptions of individual wholes or syntheses of qualities .

This is the judgment of c o n p er cep t io n O n the other hand if I have

.
,

a sensation of color and at the same time one of touch when I have ,

reason to believe that the t wo do not originate from the same point of
space I must refer them to different realities
, Ce t e r i s p a r ibu s
.
,

it will be the same if the apprehension issue from the same point of
I
42 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

space but occur at different moments of time without any eviden ce that
the cau se of the rst sensation has remained at the same point of space
in the meantime The real co np er cept iv e synth esis can take place
.

o nly in the unity of time and space with the a p p li cation of the aet io

logical categories , and we begin by this process the unication of

experience and rely upo n it in all later knowledge to test the
accuracy and legitimacy of the anticipative j udgments of infero apper -

c e t io n and genero perception

p
-
.

It is not important to discuss the origin or nature of space ap pre

h en si o n in thi s problem as I am not concerned with any theory o f
,

either nativism or empiricism in the matter of genesis or of subject iv ,

ity or obj ectivity in nature Whatever i t s genesis , or nature its use in

.
,

c o n p er c ep t io n is the same It is probable that visual space however

.
,

d erived is the basis for the assu m ption of identity and di fference in
,

the conditions a ect ing c o np er cept io n F or instance in the illustra

.
,

tion of the orange I can ascertain whether the tactual sensation orig
,

i na t es from the same point in space as the visual by n oting that the
point of xation for seeing the color coincides wi th the point of tactual

contact as visually determined in the optical eld O therwise I should .

e ither have no evidence of spatial coincidence or have to resort to

other means for determining it The sense of vision sufces with the
.
,

a djustment of touch to its eld to determine the coincidence and that

, ,

is all that is required to have the process of synthesis effected at any

time whether the ideas of space and time be a priori or em
,

p ir i ca l .

It will be interesting to remark at this stage of the problem that we

have data for some representation of co nsequences P erception as .
,

already remarked does not involve any concept ion of a u nied universe
, .

It is quite consisten t with a chaos It does not require for its action
.

o r satisfaction the existence of any relations other than a cause nor any ,

reciprocity or interaction between various causes or obj ects whose ex

ist e n ce it assumes or postulates no matter h o w such things may be
,

actually related It simply goes beyond the individual phe n omena

.

of apprehension for their causes or grou nds and does not determine
whether they are interrelated or not or wheth er there is any common
,

basis for a synthesis of different qualities So far as perception is .

concerned the world may not be an ordered one at all but only a chaos , .

But c o np er cept io n begins to suggest some sort of unity even if it is ,

only limited to a synthesis of qualities in a single subj ect and leaves all
such synthetic obj ects if they are plural as unrelated as perception
, ,

might leave them When it gives a unity of reality for a multiple of

.
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN T H E TI C [( NO WL E D GE .
1
43

qualities it simplies to that extent the possibilities of the world of

, ,

knowledge It i s therefore the rst step in the unication of

knowledge which has to be carried further by additional processes
to complete the work .

AP P E RCEP I
IO N .

'

What I have called apperception in t r o d uc es st il l greater complica

tions into the synthesis of knowledge , in that it is superposed upon
the t wo previous processes which are at the basis of intensive judgments
, ,

as apperception is at the basis of extensive j udgments The term is not .

new nor is the import w hich I give to it wholly n ew It has not had the
,
.

same meaning however in all systems of philosophy It had one

, , .

meaning in Kant another in Leibnitz and still another in Wundt and

, ,
.

others Without taking the trouble to decide whether any or all of

.

them are correct or to decide whether the use of it in the present work
,

is identical with any of them I shall simply dene it as having to do ,

with the assimilation and di ffere ntiation of experience or the com ,

prehension of specic relations of li k eness and differences if relations ,

these ca n be called As here conceived it always involves compariso n

v

a nd is the main step in what is usually conceived to be intelligibility .

But I s hall use the term so as to include in this general description of

its signicance a more specic recognition of the principle which en
ables it to have the function which I assign to it as a mental a ct ,

n amely that it involves the application of a category and is a form of

,

judgment This category is what I have dened as the ontological

.

principle the use of the ideas of identity or difference to determine the

,

nature of things A peculiar characteristi c of it is that it may be

.

a pplied witho ut any accompaniment of perception and c o n e r c e t io n

p p ,

o r ae tiol ogical principles or it may be superposed upon the results of

,

t hose processes and thus be subordinate to them i n the determination

o f the total meaning of things O f this again . .

I have said that the fundamental characteristi c of apperception is

that it involves comparison There must be at least two obj ects of con
.

s c io us n ess that its action may be applied

,
These objects may be mere .

phenomenal experiences u nreferred apprehensions if we like to

, ,

l imit knowledge to su ch facts , or they may be percepts and c o n p er

c e t s if we wish to include such within the possibilities of knowl
p ,

edge conceived as more than phenomenal syntheses It should

.

be remembered , however that I have ende a vored to interpret percep

,

tion and co nper c ept io n in a wa y that does not absolutely require us to

transcend a ll phenomena in our cognitions though the language ,
1 44 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O P H Y .

employed is intended also to be consistent with such transcendency in

the application of ae tio logical categories But we do not re quire to
.

consider the possibly double i m port of ontological methods as dened ,

as there is no necessity for anything more than a comparison and dis

tinction o f phenomena to satisfy the use of an ontological principle .

Consequently I may dene apperception consistently with any theory

of the ultimate nature of knowledge and so regard it as the appli
cation of the categories of identity and di fference to facts , whether

noumenal or phenomenal , for the deter m ination of their
nature in terms of their likenesses and differences As already t e .

m arked it constitutes the nature of extensive j udgments which illustrate

its action , and rst represents its functions in th e formation of g ener al
concepts Memory and association may be connected with the process
.

in supplying data for the a pplication of the categories , but these are
not absolutely necessary All that they do is to enable the mind to
.

establish some sort of continu ity or discontinuity with the past while ,

the comparison involving identity or diff erence between objects of co n

s c i o u sn es s ma
y be effected entirely within the limits of the present
co n tents of co n sciousness so that me m ory and association only increase
,

the range of phenomena to which its categories are applicab l e .

It is not the fact that two or more objects are before consciousness
that constitutes an act of apperception but the fact that they are o h
,

served to be t w o or more and their similarity or di fference remarked .

The apperception does not take place until the plurality and similari ty
or diversity are observed T h e process can apply to a single object
.

of consciousness only when a diversity of qualities is observed in

connection with the co np er c ept i o n of them in the same subject In .

all other cases the category of plurality is present and individual objects
are distinguished at least m athematically and may be either identied
or distinguished generically This is probably self evident from the
. -

analysis made But it should be remarked for the sake of complete

.

n ess of statement The principles w hich determine plurality materi

.

ally are time and space which I have recognized as the principles o f
both co nt i nuitv and individuation Sameness of time a nd space are the
.

determinants of mathematical identity or absolute unity Differences .

of time and space are the determinants of plurality or separate indi

v i du a l it ie s that is m a thematically distinct at l east a n d usually separate
, , ,

in all senses a ffecting independence of existence and center of refer

ence Thus t wo obj ects of consciousness may be so absolutely alike
.

as to be indistinguishable in all but their individuality of space or time

existence that is so much alike that if not seen simultaneously they
, , ,
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN T H E TI C K N O WL E D GE . 1
45

migh t be assumed to be one and the same thing But the mere fact .

o f differences of time or space is su f cient to determine the plura lity

which makes comparison and distinction as individual wholes possible ,

provided th at the conditions assure us of the plurality in cases where

the objects are not simultaneously b efore consciousness The rst act .

will be the observation of similarity or diff erence between plural o b

The next will be the a ct of determining the genus a n d specie s
jects.

in the case and nally whe n a species or genus has bee n for m ed the
,

apperce ptions will take the form of extensive j udgments where simi
l ar ity wil l determine the a i r m a t iv e and diversity the negative j udg
m ents .

The i m p o r t a n ce o f t h e process , however is as has been briey indi

, ,

ca ted that we may or may not accept the aetiological categories in the
,

noumenal sense of transphenomenal reality w hen considering the act of

apperception We may be satised with phenomenal facts and
.

their similarity and diversity and so treat the problem of knowledge

,

as solved for all practical purposes at least when facts have been sys
, ,

t e m a tiz e d and the uniformities of events observed This is to say that

.

the ontological categories can be applied to classify facts without cau

sally o r ae tiologically explaining them and can serve as the principle
,

of classication and systematization where things are not wholly chaotic

o r irreduci ble to an order of likenes s in kind Universal d ifferences
.

would leave us without any use for the principle of identity while the ,

existing system of facts offers data for what are called similarity and
difference which are the ontological categories .

Though we may actually apply t h e ontological categories to phe

no m e na w ith o ut using the aetiological a little observation will show
'

that interpretation and expla n ation are not complete until the latter are
applied There are t wo facts which indicate this F irstly all that
. .
,

the principles of identity and difference can acco m plish is the reductio n
to classes or exclusio n from them Classication only indicates that a
.

given fact belongs to a genus already known When a n ew fact comes .

befo re co n sciousness the mind may not at rst kno w w hat to do with
it and afte r inv estiga tion nds th at it belongs to a known genus This
, .

is the ai r m at i o n of its inclus ion in that genus and hence the af rmative
,

judgment of extension If excluded the judgment is negative The

. .

fact is supposed to be made intelligible by thus classifyi ng it l ess so in ,

the negative than iri the af rmative judgment as its redu ction to the ,

known remains still to be affected But we are supposed to know

.
_

a thing when we can classify it The fact is however that w e do not

.
, ,

know it in any sense t h at it is fully explained when it is thus classi

1
46 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S DP H Y .

ed , but we only discover that it belongs to the class of supposedly

know n or explained facts This means that the principle of iden
.

tity only discovers that a n ew fact has t h e s a m e explanation as o ne

previously known , and not that the fact is ultimately explained .

Secondly exte n s ive j udgments though they may classify facts without
, ,

special reference to their implications nevertheless do not release the ,

mind from the habit or necessity of thin k ing of them as related astio
logically in some way If in forming such j udgments we assume
.
,

that the facts are phenomena events a ttributes or properties we , , , ,

have a conception of them which postulates with it the idea of cause

or ground H ence whether the terms of such judgments are the
.
,

names of events or qualities or of substantive realities the idea o f, ,

ae tiological principles is subsumed in the case This is quite apparent .

even in the extensive judgment when composed of substantive terms .

F or exa mple Men are vertebr ates
, H orses are animals Stones , ,

are matt er etc Here we have concepts and j udgment which are easily
, .

reducible to the intensive form to express practically the same facts as

the extensive Men . vertebrates , horses etc are conceived , , .
,

as subjects of attributes the cause or grounds of a given group o f

,

qualities so that the ae tiological postulates are implicated in even the

,

extensive j udgments , and serv e as the u ltimate means of making facts

intelligible They are the point where explanation stops All that
. .

apperception does is to unify explanation not to produ ce it If we do , .

not understand the predicate of an extensive judgment the subject

will not be understood The value of the judgment is that it
.

redu ces the n ew to the familiar to the presu mably intelligible to

, ,

what is already known and hence serves especially the import ant
,

object of the communication of knowledge , not the prima ry deter

mination of it in its explanatory aspects The e tiological categories .

ta k e the precedence in t h is fu nction The o n tological principles enable .

us to assign a simpler order of things than the aetiological They give .

evidence of a unied system of facts in terms of similarity and diversity

as well as unity and plurality and so reduce the conditions of a chaos
,

to a minimum .

RA T I O C I N A TI O N .

Ratiocination is the general process of inference I intend that .

it shall comprehend the elds of both induction a h d d edu ction This .

fact explains the scope and range of the term as employed and as I do ,

not in any way limit or extend the accepted usage of the term further
denition of it is not imperative W h at the process is therefore is .
, ,
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN TH E TI C K N O WLE D GE .
1
47

suf ciently well kno wn not to require denition and explanation or il

lustration at length The important fact for consideratio n here is the
.

reason for classifying the process under the general head of j udgment
or cognition It has been usual to treat the pro c ess as if it were an
.

unique one and different in nature fro m that of j udgment This may .

not always or ever be intentional but the m anner of treatment as well

,

as the material in volved is calculated at least to suggest the general

difference betwee n j udgment and reasoning But I think it simplies
.

the problem of knowledge to conceive ratiocinatio n as a for m of

judgment The difference between them i s apparent in the relati ve
.

complexities of the syllogism but it is only apparent If w e simply

, .

remark the fact that the conclusion of the syllogis m is always a j udg
ment formed from the maj or and m inor terms we certainly discover
, ,

that the result is a j udgment in matter and we may well ask whether
the process is anythi n g more No w if we further observe that the mid
.

dle term represents an application of the principle of identity or di ffer

ence and that the mental act which a pprehends the relation invo lved
in the connectio n between the maj or and minor terms on the basis of
the middle term is an apperception , we can readily see that the whole
illative process is a j udgment in i t s essential characteristics and the ,

distinction between it and ratiocination is in the equivocal import of

,

the terms n o w used to denote a process and agai n the subj ect matter
,

to which it is applied Ratiocination is only the well known act in

.

more complicated conditions It has for its matter propositions i n

.

stead o i mere concepts , though we might well ca l l propositions nu

named concepts and thus indicate another evidence that the reasoning
process is only a j udgment or cognition The reason that it has seemed
.

to be different from j udgment is that we have gotten into the habit of

conceiving and dening it by t h e character of its subj ect matter rather
than the psychological act by which the conclusion is obtained and as ,

the proble m of knowledge is at present discussed we require to

thin k of processes instead of subj ect matter .

Though ratiocination is here conceived as apperception it is im

portant to remark that it has a relation to time and space which a pp er
ce t i o n does not h a ve Apperception compares t h e terms of present
p .

syntheses or the terms of the past and present Memory is necessary

.

for the apperception of the present in reference to the past : it is not

necessary for the apper c eptive synthesis of the present But reasoning
.

may include judg m ent as to the future as well as the past It is there .

fore o r may be prospective in its conceptual synthesis Mnemoni c a p .

perception is retrospective ratiocinative apperception may be pros ;

,
1
48 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

possibly must be It applies to data not a ctually pre sent

p ec t iv e , . to
consciousne s s although founded upon the present data
,
.

G E NE RA L IZ A T I O N .

What I have called genero perception or generaliz ation is simply

-

the application of judgment u nder ontologica l categories to the time

, ,

and space relations of present cognitions , that is perception co nper ,

c e t io n s and apperceptions It will not require elaborate explanation

p .

until we come to testing the validity of knowledge

I remark it .

here only because it may not be apparent in the denition of r at io cin

ation which may be either prospective or retrospective It is only be .

cause ratiocination may not explicitly generaliz e its conclusion th at

the application of the judgment so formed to all time and space is
concealed What generalization accomplishes is the explicit r eco gni
.

tion of u n i v er s a l i ty in judgment a characteristic which is determined

,

by the use of the principle of identity or d ifference in fact is but an ,

embodiment of it P resent ment al states are all that are required fo r

.

perception co n p er c ep t io n and apperception and their products need

, ,

not represent more than the present facts even though it is possible to ,

bring past experience into relations in which these processes may

be applied What I did in the treat m ent of them as processes was t o
.

use the least number of complications in illustratio n s of the ir functions

and so to limit the elementary factors to the fewest possible allowing ,

the admission of other matter as the w ider conditions of knowledge

required Hence it has been necessary to distinguish the special act

.

of universalizi ng a ju dgment as an additional act to that of simply

forming a present synthesis I woul d recogniz e u niversality as a
.

category were it not that it is nothing more than a special application

of the ontological principles as dened .

O BJ E C T I O N S
E X P L A NA T I O NS A ND .

The rst objection which presents itself to this analysis of the ele
mentary synthetic pro cesses in knowledge is that there are no such
simple processes in normal adult experience as perception and co uper
ce t io n , as I have dened and applied them I would be told by
p .
,

some at least that the actu al mode of acquiring kno w ledge is

,

either quite di fferent fro m what I have indicated or that it is much

more complex My reply to this objection would be that I am not
.

pretending to assert that all my mental habits and acts represent these
functions in their simplicity in normal experience I quite fully a gree .

that mv normal mental action in the majority of my experiences may

 C OND I T I ONS OF S YN T H E TI C K NO WLE D GE .

represe nt very much more co m plex conditions than are found in the
individua l acts dened But the critic must remember that I m ay ask
.

the question on this admission whether t h ese more complex processes

,

give any kn o wl edg e . It is one thing to use the term knowledg e
to represent the acquisition of ideas , suppositions , possible obj ects
o f experie nce , a nd another to obtain facts with a certitude and i n t elli

g ibil ity
that are usually supposed to be implied in knowledge .

What our usual epistemologist forgets is that knowledge is an ex

t remel y equivocal term a nd that in the looser parlance of philosophic

discussion it stands for the acquisitio n of ideas not their certitude and
,

l egitimacy or their proof . I a m not just no w discussing h o w I get

ideas nor what the mental processes are by which I for m conj ectures
,

which have t o be veried but after having dealt with the question of
,

origin I am trying n o w to explain the elementary acts by which my

certain and unied truths are obtained in the last analysis when any
s ceptical question is raised as to their legitimacy The whole problem .

is rst to determine what you shall mean by knowledge and the n ,

gauge your psychological analysis to suit that denition I agree

r eadily enough that if k nowledge

means any thought or idea that
happens to get into my head there are some far more complicated
,

processes involved than those which I have indicated as elementary

a nd fundamental . Memory and association conjecture inductive in
, ,

ference and deductive reasoning whether valid or not often combine

, ,

in my mature experience in suggesting what my mind entertains but ,

we may well ask whether all this is knowledge It is such if .

knowledge means only this produ ct But in all rational ph il o so ph i

.

cal discussion knowledge must have either a more denite meaning

o r a recognition of the s ep a r a t e problems implied in the general and

a bstract Conception of the term as it is too often used in philosophy ,

if there is to be any sane investigation of its issues at all If for in .

,

stance I assume that knowledge implies certitude in regard to the

,

object matter of consciousness I must admit that the maj ority of my

,

m ental processes which are either inductive inferences or associated

,

with these never give it to me at all

, But if knowledge is only

ideas , possibilities of experience anything might give it to me
, ,

a ssociation
, unveried inference imagination or even dreams But I
, , .

a m not concerned with any such conception of

knowledge These .

are processes which require verication and on that account take a

subordinate place to those which we are in the habit of regarding as
more elementary and more trust worthy Hence when w e wish to nd
.

what it is in the complex pro cesses of normal experience that de

I 50 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

termines the certication and unicatio n demanded in the term knowl .

edge we simply eliminate from consideration t h e inferential and as

,
!

so ci a t io na l factors and ta k e those which are un e li m in a bl e and which

characterize the c onstitutional nature of consciousness as a source o f

any certitude at all and regard them as the real agen cies in the result
, .

I ca n not easily pick out a perception or co nper cep t io n in ordinary ex

p e r ie n c e without nding other processes associated or implicated in
them so that the total exercise of functions in normal life may contain
,

more than the analysis which I have given would seem to indicate .

But this complexity does not exclude the presence of these functions as
dened and when the whole process has been analyzed into its elements
,

we s h all nd all of them there and the only question will be as to

,

w hich of them delivers and guarantees

knowledge this depending ,

on the original denition of our problem .

The whole actual process of knowledge may be illustrated in

detail An object is before me All that I am immediately aware o f
. .

is a certain yellow color If it is the rst time that I have seen any
.

obj ect at all and I have only the apprehen sion of a c olor the only thing
that is possib l e for j udgment is expressed in the limited meaning
which I have given the term perception But by the time that the .

period of reection and self consciousness has arrived so much has al

-

ready been done in the way of maturing the combination of a number

of processes that it ma y be impossible for me to wholly isola te such a
simple process for my imagination Certainly in mature experience
.

I am not likely to escape the inuence of memory and association in the

event of having a sensation o f color as imagined H ence in such an .

illustration at a time when the process has any intelligibility at all t h e

apprehension represents an occasion which suggests something besides
a cause or grou nd of the color sensation This however depends .
, ,

wholly upon the condition that I have in the past had some a p pr eh en
sion besid es that of vision or color in connection with color Unless .

this be so anything whatever might be s u ggested by the present ex

p er ie nce But the supposition that any other sensation has been asso
.

c iat ed with the present one in the past is a n admission of a couper

ce t i v e synthesis which is here supposed to be the subj ect of scepticism

p ,

But it is the only condition that any single apprehension afterward

shall suggest the possible association of another qua l ity than the present
o n e apprehended However w h e n the apprehensio n of the yellow
.
,

color does take place alone after so m e c o np er cept iv e synthesis in t h e

,

past the process instigated by memory and association is an anticipa

,

tive one It is an inference that some other quality is present in the

.
 C OND I TI ONS OF S YNT H E TI C K NO WL E D GE .

object though not at the time an obj ect of immediate present a ppr eh en
sion The yellow color may suggest and I may infer that the obj ect
.

has a certain taste and a certain internal structure with which past ex
e r i enc e is familiar The combination of these qualities i n the same
p .

object is what I have in the past considered as constituting say , an

.
,

orange . Instead of depending upo n visual experience in the case to
instigate the suggestion it may be taste to start with and I infer the
color Hence in actua l experience in adult and m ature life what I nd
.

is a large dependence upon infer e nce and association in connection with

more or less isolated apprehensions and not a perpetual co np er ce pt iv e
synthesis of the qualities which are the obj ect of consciousness at the
time That is to say in n ormal life I do not all the time nd either
.
,

a n isolated apprehension an isolated perception a perfect and com

, ,

plet e co np er ce pt io n all in the order in whi ch the a nalysis above given

,

presents them but I nd a process which ca n be more aptly dened

,

and described as one of i nf e r o appr ebens i o n a combinatio n of a pp r e

-

h ensio n and inference The strea m of consciousness is scarcely any

.

thing else Inference and inductive inference at that is by far the

.
, ,

most frequent condition of my thought at a ny mom ent of the reective

o r u nr e ec t iv e mental life But when we come to test whether this
.

inferential act is valid or not we have to test its accuracy by the appro
r ia te
experience or apprehension If on the apprehension of the
p .

particular yellow color I inf er the taste and internal structure which I
have in the past associated with that particular color I can v erify it only
by opening the object and tasting it But I cannot verify this without .

a co nper cepti ve synthesis I must be convinced that the taste and in

.

ternal stru cture belong to the same obj ect as the color and the condi ,

tion of this result is the unity of time and space as above described .

If this condition is no t satised I have no evidence whatever that all

the qualities belong to the same obj ect H ence some degree of con .

perception is absolutely necessary to any synthesis at all in exper i

ence . It must take place some time in order to make the inferenc e
to it at any time possible and rational The synthesis may not always .

be the same No w color and taste may be associated and again colo r
.
,

and tactual qualities and still again tactual and savory qualities o r
, ,

again all three of them When once the conviction has been formed.

by various co n p er cept iv e syntheses that a ny n u mber of qualities are

associated in the object I can infer all of them on the occasion of a

single apprehension This then is the usual process of knowledge
. .

It shows infero apprehension as the normal function of the stream of

-

consciousness But in spite of all the co np er c ep t iv e process at some

.
,
1
52
. TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH IL O S OPH Y .

past time is a bsolutely necessary to the produ ction o f this infero ap -

prehension and as necessary to its verication in the future Now if .

c o np er ce p t i o n be thus justied as an ele m entary condition of knowl

e dge , which is dened as synthetic certitude , it is only a question o f
f urther analysis to determine whether there is any such process as sim

p l e perception in the denition of it adopted Now as c o np er c ept io n

.

a s sumes postulates cogniz es or implicates the s a m e cause or ground

, ,

f o r all the qualities simultaneously apprehended there is no escape ,

from the supposition that a single apprehension demands the same

categorical explanation Cause or ground is not another gua l i ty
. .

Both perception and co n per c ep t io n a r e on the same plain and are to be

explained not one by the other but both by the same other than them
, ,
;

selves Hence percepti on is but a name for t h e explanatory jud gment

.

of the mind on the occasion of a single apprehension and hence for

o n e of the double functions invol ved in an infero apprehension which -

h a s the ratiocinative act of expectation or anticipation of e x er i

p
e nce and the exp l anatory function of reference to cause or ground , as
w ell as a retrospective function of memory and association But the .

perception is there as an element of the totality a n d must be regarded

as the simplest form of the cognitive consciousness in the application
of a category T his h a s all to be determined by analysis and not by
.

an actual memory of the original experiences with which knowl

edge began The description of the infant consciousness cannot
.

be made from memory and whether in self or others has to be deter

mined by the analysis o f the adult consciou sness .

Accepting therefore the supposition that analysis is a legitimate

, ,

method for determining the fundamental and elementary processes of

kn o wl edge I shall merely call attention to the motive which has

governed it It was that I wished to show rst that j udgment was the
.

one pro cess to which all higher mental action of the intellectual type
is redu cible and secondly th at this involves the application of a cat
ego r y constituting the act synthetic Assuming then that judgment
.
, ,

re p resents the one general type of mental action beyond the sensory ,

mnemonic and internal mental states it may be noted that this is only
,

a simplication of Kant s analysis I have o n ly reduced the processes

.

beyond sensibility in h i s syste m to this one act of judgment I think .

it was in fact the conception of Kant but it was not expressly and ex
,

p li c it ly indicated and was concealed by the vast machin e ry of d ist inc

tions between the functions of understanding ( Versta nd ) and reason
( Vernunft ) If I may express the distinctio n apparently latent in the
.

m ind of Kant the whole process in his problem would be found in

 C OND I TI ONS OF S YN TH E TI C K NO WL E D GE . 1
53

p t i v i ty and
r ece as characterizing the two general functio ns
a ct i vi t
y ,

of knowledge
But as this way of indica ting the process is too
.

c losely associated with the metaphysics of Leibnitz and the mechanical

philosophy of the anti Leibnitz ians and as all mental action sensory
-

, ,

and intellectual must in the last analysis be treated as a ct i v i ty I think

, ,

intuition and cognition ar e more suggestive of the conceptions which

we have to take of the t w o processes covering the prima ry and the ,

synthetic functions of consciousness I have of course , to free the idea

.
,

of intuition from many historical associations and limit its import to

a ny immediate apprehension of consciousness but t h at is only a matter ,

of denition while cognition easily suggests synthesis , so that the r e

,

c ept iv it y and activity of Kant with their metaphysical associations in

materialism and idealis m m ay be avoided I am not presenting a .

theory of knowledge with the assumption tha t it decides without ,

specic denition any metaphysical doctrine but one that shall be

, ,

true if true at all for either the phenomenalist or the t r a n sp h eno m e

, ,

nal ist .All questions of the m etaphysical nature meaning and implica
tions o t h er t h an phenomena must be settled independently of the syn
thetic functions ascribed to them here I am aiming only to simplify .

the m en tal acts involved in the ultimate or elementary process of

knowledge and so to show h o w the evolution of percepts and con
cept s and their synthesis in judgment takes p l ace , with the elements or

contents that constitute them In effecting this result the question is

.

not what my present developed and complex mental stat es are but what
their elements are as deter m in able by analysis and the eli m inatio n of
,

the purely associative factors We m ay thus show how the mind pro
.

c ee ds from the indenite to the denite or from the simple to the com ,

plex in its knowledge of the various adj unctive and synthetic ele
,

ments in a present mature state Hence I have endeavored only to .

indicate that the rst and simplest step in synthetic knowledge is

the application of causality or ground in general to the phenomena

of experience without any necessary attempt to assign that cause
,

or ground denite characteristics other than the one that it assumes to

explain This m ay mean that what we primarily as well as ultimately
know of reality is what it does and nothing more I have no o h .

ject io n s to this conclusio n and expect to take it up again but it is no ,

part of the system at present to either assu me or defend su ch a con

cl us io n I am concerned only with the systematic application of the
.

categories as explained in the reduction of j udgments to intensive and

extensive types and their regulation by the aetiological and ontological
categories in the determination of their material contents This s im .
1
54 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

p l i c at io n of the problem prepares the wa y for a simpler solution

of it .

But in thus conceiving the problem to have been redu ced to the
functions of intensive and extensive j udgments it is easy to lose sight
of an important consideration because the actual order of thought in
,

the expression and statement of its original results seems to indicate

that the order of genesis is the same as that of statement But this is .

not the case and it is important to remark it and to keep it in mind .

In explaining the nature of the intensive judgment we must remember

that the order of expression is not an indication of the chronological
order of genesis The synthetic act of judg m ent does not imply that
.

we know the subject rst and the predicate afterward and that by
some hocus pocus process w e get them together The very condition .

of their unity in time and space excludes this though there are judg ,

ments in which the synthesis is subsequent to the independent knowl

edge of the data that se rve as subje ct and predicate when connected .

But the important fact is that in all primary and elementary knowl
edge the order o i acquisition is predicate and then subj ect The
,
.

actual dependence of e ffect or qua l ity upon cause or ground gives the
impression that the order of expression is the order of acquisition .

But the form of logical expression happens to recognize the o r d o

n a t u r e: of the relation between subj ect and predicate while the o r d o

co g n i t i o n i s is the reverse and represents the order of genesis in

knowledge as predicate rst and then the subj ect which is a reex
of the application of a category to the given datum This is only to .

say that the chronology of nature may be the reverse of the chr onology
of mind in k nowing n ature or that the o r d o n a t u r a is the
,

reverse of the o r d o co g n i t i o n is S imply expressed therefore we

.
, ,

have an experience a phenomenon of consciousness an ap

, ,

prehe n sion as the datum from whi ch j udg m ent proceeds For all th at .

the theory of knowledge m ay care or k now there may be a stage o r
period of development in the life of the infant when it exercises no
function of cognition or judgment as synthetically exercised in m ature
life But whether this be true or not there is certainly a point where
.
,

the mind regards a fact as relative phenomenal or in some way

, ,

explicable by something not itself and from that point on in the life o f
,

the i n di v idual the mind insists on referring this fact to its gr ound or
cause The fact or phenomenon of experience represents the predi
.

cate and the subject is the reex of the ae tio l ogi c al category and hence ,

the order of knowledge is predicate and then subj ect This rela .

tion of the o r d o co g n i t i o n i s to the o r d o n a t u r ae will be a matter o f

 C O ND I T I O NS OF s YNT H E TI C K NO WL E D GE .
1
55

consideration again when a further obj ection to the above analysis of

the process of k nowledge is the subject of attention as it affects ,

certain questions which have n o t been considered .

We may apply the same observations to the extensive j udgment

with some qualica tions A condition of its formation when the two
.
,

terms are non co er d ina t e species apperceived as ali k e is that the predi
-

cate should represent an obj ect or class already known and the subject
then becomes a later obj ect of consciousness both as to fact of its ex
ist enc e and its re lation to the predicate This makes the subj ect k nown
.

last , as in the intensive judgment though the order of inclusion logi

,

cally is the reverse of the intensive But in the pri m ary apperceptive
.

judgment involved in the elementary formation of general concepts the

, ,

t wo or more obj ects of cons ciou s ness may be simultaneous and the

similarity or difference between them makes them to appear to be

contemporaneously known w ith the real or supposed genus of which
they are coordinate species But in all apperceptive judgments in
.

volving a comparison with the past the most natural order is genus rst
,

and species last , a fact which makes the subject last and the predicate
rst in the order of knowledge The possibility however of mai n
.
, ,

taining that in all judgments whatever u nles s we except the rst forma
,

tion of a genus the subject is known later than the predicate is not
,

an important one to insist upon in extensive j udgments because of ,

their nal redu ctio n to the intensive as the primary one in the order of

knowledge . This is incontestable in all extensive j udgments which
represent subject and predicate as things or realities having attributes .

The formation of the very elements of t h e extensive judgment thus

involves the primary applicatio n of t h e intensive making the category,

o f causality or ground prior to all others and the ultimate source of

mental satisfaction in the explanation of facts The aetiological syn.

thesis thus precedes the ontological in all cases where subject a nd pre
dica t e represent substantive concepts It is tacitly implied in merely
.

attributive concepts for these conceived as phenomenal facts imply
,

the aetiological categories even when they are not expressed so that in ,

all cases the intensive judgment is prior in its functional importance ,

or at least more fundamental th an the extensive which does not con ,

stit ut e the whole of the act of

knowledge In the intensive judgment
.

the subject is necessarily posterior to the predicate in knowledge and ,

whatever real or appare nt exceptions to this law appear in certain forms

of the extensive or apperceptive judgment the intensive represents the
ultimate process of k nowledge whe n it seeks more than the mere
a pprehension and association of facts as phenomena .
1
56 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

The statements made about the o r d o c o g n i t i o n i s in the problem of

knowledge suggest an obj ection to the analysis of it which the
treatment of intensive and extensive judgments may assume I pre .

v i o usly called attention to a mode of interpreting the relation between

the subj ect and predicate in certain apparent intensive j udg ments
which seemed to imply an identity of meaning between the two The .

illustration chosen w a s the propositio n Snow is white , in which it
was remarked that as the order of acquiring my conceptions was that
,

o f

white rst and
snow last it came about that the subject
,

in fact had no other meaning than the particular white which the
predicate represented Th is meant practically at least that the prin
.
, ,

c i l e of identity might re resent the content of su ch judgments and

p p
aetiological categories were excluded from their interpretation This .

view however , rests upon a c onception of knowledge which I

,

h ave not noticed and which d oes not involve the application of judg
ment to it as I have explained it It assu mes that t h e mode of forming
.

judgments as they are expressed in language can have little or nothing

to do with the process of kno wledge and that w e have to look else
where to nd the true genesis of it In other words it would limit.

knowledge to apprehensions and exclu de all synthetic functions from

it while it would rob us of the right to think of s u bj e cts of any k ind
, .

There is a divisio n of knowledge into p r es e n t a t i v e and r ep r e

'

s en t a t i v e by which is meant the distinction between actually present

phenomena a n d p a st
phenomena represented in memo r y and
'

imagination Hume s distinction between
, impre s sions and their

copies . The distinction is an important one and involves a true
conception of the elements constituting the stream of consciousness .

If knowing or knowledge expresses nothing more than hav
ing ideas directly before consciousness as presentations or r ep r esen
t a t io ns mere facts of experience

an ev er o w i ng series of events
, ,

a n d judgment only a m ode of explaining the meaning of words which

shall variously apply to either individual or to collective groups of

these facts then the problem seems to have another interpretation of
,

its nature .

No w it is true enough that every term calls up certai n r epr esen

tative qualities or perhaps one quality which stands for the object
, ,
.

We call this or them its essential property or properties But .

usually some one quality is the properly representative o ne as the ,

pictured fact by which the mind thinks what a term or thing

means O ther qualities may be im p lied by the term , but are not
.

represented in consciousness unless a special reason makes it neces

 C OND I T I ONS OF S YN T H E T I C K NO WLE D GE . 1
57

sary to do so They are always possibly representable and have

.
,

come to be asso ciated with the term by the various coexistences a n d

sequences of experien ce so that whatever syntheses we have are
,

supposedly the phenomenal syntheses under the categories of rela
tion coexistence and sequence In the use of any term , therefore a cer
,
.
,

tain quality , present or represented in imagination , is before conscious

ness as its equivalent and if others are implied or asserted of the same
obj ect it is as a synthetic associate of the representative instance .

The judgment would me an connection between the t wo or more quali

ties which have become asso ciated in exper ience while t h ere is ,

identity between subj ect and predicate in so far as the representa

tive fact is conc erned and the others correspond to Kant s synthetic
function A j udgment will appear a nalytic when the subj ect impl i e s
.

the predicate idea for which the ter m stands and synthetic when other
,

qualities not representative are associated with it Such things a s .
,

categories implying something other than the presentative or rep

r e se nt a t iv e facts of consciousness are supposed to be unnecessary in

determining the meaning of propositions or i n expressing the content

of thought .

The strength of this general obj ection against the analysis of judg
ment as I have presented it is in the actual amount of truth which it
involves O n e of the fundamental meanings of the term knowledge
.

which I have reco gniz ed as important to keep in mind w hen discuss

ing its problems is that w hich represents it as expressing what I cer
ta inly
know what I have in consciousne ss and this makes it
, ,

convertible with apprehension , experience or immediate conscious
,

ness and does not imply synthetic activity or interpretation In thi s

, .

way representative phenomena of cons ciousness become kno wl
edge as well a s presentative simply by virtue of the fact that i n
, ,

spite of the absence of r eality su ch as the presentati ve conscious

ness is supposed to possess or indicate the actual picture of past or
,

possible experience is a certain fact ideal though it be No w

,

.

passing from the representation that the stream of consciou sness is

a series of presentative and representative states to the c h a r a ct er i
z a t io n of kno w ledge also as the various forms o f s y nthesis applied
.

to the elements of this stream we have undoubtedly a conception

,

which shows what the mind must think of when it is as k ed w na t

it knows . The description and denition of its kno w ledge will
always be in terms of the presentative and representative states whether ,

as individual events or collective groups of them . Wba t it knows

.

as co m m u n i ca bl e content is undoubtedly the sensible fact o r r e p r e

1
58 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

s e nt a t iv e , and whenever we have to make ourselves intelli gible to

queries in regard to ou r knowledge we have to refer to this c on

tent as its meaning .

But all this description of the pro cess true as it is for the social
,

function of the co m munication of ideas is wholly irrelevant to the ,

problem of what consciousness actually does in its thinking and

explanatory functions What w e constantly forget in the attempt to

.

solve the problem of knowledge is the distinction between the c o n
dition for co m m u n i ca t i ng ideas for making ourselves intelligible to
,

others in terms of their experience and the i n co m m u n i ca bl e facts
,

of consciousness which are indicated in the various ways i n which we

relate empirical or sensible and representative data No mat .

ter what the stream of consciousness may be or what the syntheses ,

of association may be , or what the representative identity between

subj ect and predicate m a y be in the analytic aspect of certain judg
ments nevertheless there is no more es cape from the noumenal im
,

port of some terms than there is from the phenomenal import o f
others which a ctually imply the noumenal We ca nnot appeal to .

adj ect iv a l concepts as exhausting the eld of what we think or co n

c e iv e because all terms assumed to express or imply
phenomenal
,

facts events , attributes qualities properties etc , carry with them

, , , , .

the correlated i mplicate which the objection under consideration tries

to eliminate from knowledge and which can be eliminated only by
,

limiting the denition of knowledge to what we ba v e presentatively

and representatively as sensible or mnemonic content before conscious
ness But in addition to the implication of all terms naming phe
.

n omena o r attributive facts there are also all substantive terms
, ,

w hich in spite of the

representative concept or idea indicat ing
,

their predicate meaning are as mu ch entitled to the recognition of their

,

transphenomenal import as any terms have to their phenomenal

implications No w it is precisely this which t h e categories indicate
.

and they apply to these implicates whether further investigation results

in characteriz ing them as equally relativ e or not The main point is .

that consciousness is not satised with the mere apprehension of events

and as long as it regards them as events it must re cogniz e the implica
tion of this conception which even the associational school must do in
,

its search for the antecedents and consequents of the facts which it
a ccepts as the present data of knowledge

O n a n y theory of de.

m
n it i v e and co municable
knowledge t h e postulates of reective
,

and explanatory thought are actually involved in the content of con

s c io u sn e ss and the conceptions which it forms of facts We may cla im .
 C OND I T I ONS OF S YNT II E T I C [( N O WL E D GE . 59

that such imp l icates a n d conceptions are practically useles s, that they
are not necessary in the regulation of actual conduct that their e x is ,

tence cannot be proved , etc The s ceptic may worry us to convince
.

him of their validity by asking for tangible proof or to explain mba t ,

they are But all real or imaginary di fculties of this kind do not a ffect
.

the question of fact as to the existence of these ideas in conscious ness

and their actual implication in the very conception of the terms of
judgment We may treat the m as pseud ideas if we like but they are
.
,

there as much as any other ideas and eve n result from the purely rela
tive import of the pheno menalist s o w n description of things I have

.

no objections to ad m itting that they cannot be proved as this a l ,

ways involves a n application of the principle of identity while caus ,

ality or ground is not ontological but ae tiological in its nature and r epr e

sents in some form , an antithes is or difference bet ween phenomena
,

or events and their causal ground D enition and proof of wIza t
.

a fact or event or thing is depends fi rst , upon the communicability of

,

the conception which will convince others and that is sensible r ep r e

sent a t io n or experience and secondly , upon the use of extensive
,

judgments and these involve the application of the principle of identity

o r difference and not the e tiological categories The latter only ex
.

plain they do not prove To put the matter in another way although
, .
,

the meaning of subject terms is expressed by the predicate ideas which

are the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i of them this fact does not in any way identify
,

the total import of the subject terms with the predicate but is only a ,

way of saying w hat the subject implies as to facts while the presented ,

facts of experience equally imply a subject idea The fact that .

consciousness returns to a predicate idea to explain the phenomenal

import of a subject does not eliminate the subj ect idea nor contradict ,

the opposite movement of thought in referring a present or represented

event to a ground The implication is applicable either way so that
.
,

the assumed identity of meaning between subject and predicate in the

intensive j udgment is only apparent and applies only to what may be
called conceptua l representation and not to the total import of the t w o
terms one of t h e m d irectly standing for the subject idea and the other
,

for the attribute idea the two being correlated and mutually implica
,

tive Whether we need substantive nou menal or transphenomenal

.
, ,

concepts for practical life is not the question but whether they exist
,

and whether they represent and satisfy certa in intellectual tendencies

and instincts qu ite as ineradicable as any philosophy that talks glibly
about the limitations of knowledge to phenomena a view admis ,

sible enough when knowledge means nothing more than Iza v i ng

1 60 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

sensib l e sta tes as occurrences But if intelligibility and explicability in

.

terms of causality and ground are equally facts of consciousness th eir

admission as a part of knowledge is unavoidable whether they have
an y utility or not
. This is reinforced by the fact that any attempt to
explain the intensive j udgment as expressing nothing more than an
associative synthesis of phenomena ca nnot stand an application to the
concrete case or illustration For example the j udgment O ranges
.
,

are yellow does not seem intelligible under the explanation th at it

means to afrm that the facts A B and C are D or that the group
, , ,

of facts ABC are D The fa ct is that the copula expresses either

.

identity of some kind or a relation of inhesion or n o n i nhesion T h e -

.

form of state m ent has no rational meaning unless this be the conception
of it The fact of coexistent synthesis is also there as a condition o f
.
,

apprehending any other relation but this fact d oes not force me t o
,

limit the meaning of the judgment to the mere category of space o r

time relations The other is there as a pa r t of the intellectual inter
.

p r et a t io n of what the facts imply as well as associative synthesis and ,

the questio n of utility must be settled afterward if it be present at all

,
.

This is evident in the actual thinking of the physical sciences which

always interprets its facts and phenomena as m odes or attributes o f
substantive realities without regard to questions of asso ciational theories .

It was not in metaphysics that this intellectua l h abit began but it ,

lay at the very basis of all physi cal s cience as a part of what was
assumed to be necessary for satisfactory explanation This necessity .

was for a nucleus or center of reference to make all change intelligible

and to escape the supposition that things have come from nothing .

The philosopher will accept almost any supersensible fact rather than
abandon the maxim of ex n i /zi l o n i bi l t .

But the force of t h e s k eptic s and phenomenalist s position and

the limitation of knowledge show themselves best when we ask what

this cause or ground is which persists in asserting its legitimacy
,
.

It is t h e old problem of telling what any thing is In such a proposi

.

tion as Snow is white it is not al ways assumed that we are telling
w hat snow i s but only telling the fact that it has the property o f
,

w h iteness and as the whiteness is

, representatively and exper ien
t i a lly the same as snow the query to k now what more it can mean ,

if it is not absolutely identical with the predicate is qu ite natural That

,
.

is we may naturally enough ask what snow i s if it is not convertible

,

with the experience which is certainly the prius of all that the term
is supposed to ind i cate To assert or assume that the snow is the
.

ca use or ground of the whiteness is at once to assert more th a n t h e

 C OND I T I ONS OF S YNT H E T I C K NO WL E D GE .
161

given experience which is supposed to be the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i of

more than a phenomenal fact If the sceptic thinks that h e .

knows nothing more than this phenomenal fact he asks th at we

give some account of the assumed reality that claims to be m ore than
the experience What is a cause or ground if it is n o t a mere
.
,

illusion !
No w when the sceptic asks the questio n What is a thing ! there

is i mplied in this question that if we cannot tell him w na t it is , or

convince him in terms of his o wn e xperience what the asserted or
assumed reality is we have no right to believe in it The inability
, .

to answer the query to the s ceptic s s a tisfa ction is construed as tanta
mount to a confession of ignora n ce on the part of the person questioned .

But the fact is that the sceptic s question cannot be rationally ans wered

until we know what it means o r in reality asks for It is an equiv o .

cal interrogation It appears to ask for simple information which ca n

.

be supplied by stating a matter of fact but it really carries with its,

apparent demand for information a n assertion that unless proof of ,

what is assumed in the idea of cause or gro und is forthco ming its truth ,

is no t credible That is behind the sceptic s question is an assumption

.
,

quite as much needing support as any that he means to doubt H e .

neither recognizes the equivocal nature of his query nor frankly faces
the assumption which is concealed behind an apparent demand for i n
formation as to matters of fact But his assumption that I must either
.

convince him of my belief or admit its invalidity is easily disposed of

by the fact that it is not my business to convince anybody of anything
whatever , if I cannot rely upon huma n faculty to do its duty in the
process The advantage of the sceptic lies in the fact that he can
.

shelter himself behi n d the f o r m a l question for information while he

tacitly holds to a dogmatism which is not willing to come out into the
arena and accept respon sibility for its assu mptions or assertions O f .

course I cannot expect him to believe unless I can give h i m good rea
,

sons in some way for doing it but neither can he expect me to accep t
,

his implied limitatio n of k nowledge unless he can give equally goo d

reasons for his belief B oth must agree as to the la w s of thought i n
.

order to get any basis for fruitful interchange of ideas at this point an d

if thi s agreement cannot be obtained none can be The s ceptic h o w .

,

ever cannot well admit that we actually do think in terms of somethin g

,

else than phenomena while impeaching the validity of the process

and at the same time assu me or assert that the test of all truth is the

facts of experience because the cogency of his contention against
,

tr ansph en o m ena l ism is that the fact of a mode of thought is not guar
II
 1 62 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

antee of its validity a n d he can have no guarantee of the limitations o f

knowledge to phenomena except the alleged fact that mental
action is so limited But the denial that facts or laws of thinking as
.

f acts or instinctive habits can guarantee themselves leaves the sceptic

where he must question the assumption that know ledge is limited
t o the p h enomena expressed by the predicates of j udgments quite
a s much as he questions the extension of this k nowledge to the trans

p henomenal nature o f t h e facts expressed by the subjects T h is how .

,

e ver places him where h e ought to have started namely in the posi
, , ,

tion of the agnostic , which is the true scepticism and which will say as
l ittle about the limitations as the extension of
knowledge and this ,

a gnosticism is the confession of ignorance which is as great in one as

i n the other of these terms There will be nothing to be s a id against

.

this position , as no argument or statement can appeal to the lack o f

mental power to see a truth .

The same conclusion results from another way of presenting the

case The question what is a thing either demands evidence for the
.

assertion of its existence or that existence is admitted as a fact and its

nature is as k ed for That is to say in as k ing what a thing is we
.
, ,

have an equivocal question We may be doubtful as to the fact as

.

set ted or assumed or we may admitting it to be a fact , wish to know

, ,

its nature The former is the true sceptical question and the latter
.
,

is a question for further knowledge to make the alleged fact more

intelligible Now the only answer to the latter question is a d en i t i o n
.
,

as long as the intensive judgment and its implication of causality o r

ground other than the predicate is the subject of doubt No w all de .

n it i o n is possible only under the principle of identity The principle .

of contradiction or difference is not allowed in denition I mean o f .

,

course logical denition and not descriptive denition interms of in

, ,

tensive propositions If then the question What is a thing ! is an
.
,

s we r e d by a denition and by means of the principle of identity it ,

must be done in terms of ext en s i v e judgments which are satised by

ontological categories and do not require to m ore than tacitly assu me
the aetiological if even this mu ch is admissible Now this identity
, .

required by the denition must be expressed either in terms of a like

aetiological category to that which is supposed to determine the mean

ing of the reality whose existence is under suspicion or in terms o f

phenomena But as aetio l ogical existence is what the sceptical ques
.

tion doubts it cannot be assumed to dene it for any purposes of con

,

v in c in
g the doubter whatever else the denition may e ffect
, To the .

s ceptic the cause or ground is unknown and any denition that he can
 C OND ITI ONS OF S YN TH E T I C K NO WL E D GE . 16
3

a ccept as either intelligi ble or suggestive of tr uth must be in ter m s of

what is known to him as he si m ply pushes his inquiries farther
,
.

denition in ter m s of what he knows must represent predicate

B ut
c oncepts of the phenomenal type and not the a t io lo g ica l But this .

would convince or co n found the scepti c only o n the condition that the
tiological concepts remained indistinguishable fro m the h en o m e
ae p

n al.
That result would resolve all j udgments into the extensive and
leave knowledge with nothing but the principle of identity or dif
f erence as its determinative category and with nothing to explain the dis
t inction bet w een coexistences and sequences that are casual and those

t hat are causal But conceding either the truth or error of this posi
.

t ion it is certain that any attempt to answer the sceptic s question i n

terms of the principle o f identity , which is all that we can do in the

c ommunication of knowledge from mind to mind must assume ,

t hat the conception by which the a

e tiological idea is de n ed is known
by the ipqu ir er and that he is asking for an explanation of an individ4
ual case B ut the fact is that the s ceptic suspects the very conception
.

by which the denition is possib l e and hence s u bj ec t concepts are not

usable in the process of satisfying his demand and predicate concepts , ,

which he admits he does know are neither disputed in regard to

t heir existence and validity nor capable of provi ng a content supposed

t o be other than themselves u nless the category of causality be a d

m it t e d The principle of identity will not transcend the fact given
.
,

n o r give anything but a n ontological explanation It is primarily the

.

ae tiological category that explains phenomena It is at least necessary

.

t o explain their occurrence or existence The limits of denition and

.

argument are such that , unless the premises contain the material truth
s ought the formal process can never guarantee it
, T h is is a truism but
.
,

w e require to be reminded of it at this j uncture in order to be sure that it

will be applied to the concrete case No w however the ze t io l o g ica l
.

c ategories may coincide with the ontological or to

, pu t it more specif
i ca l ly however the principles of causality may coincide with that of
,

i dentity the t wo are not co n vertible

, Again w e must remark that only
.

t h e principle of identity can be involved in the transmission of

knowledge whether by denition or ratiocination
, [E tiological .

p rinciples can never determine the process of reasoning a s a medium

f
o r vehicle for trans mitting ideas so that unless it is invo l ved in the
,

m a t t er of the act of communication causality can never be found in

the conception or conclusion conveyed Consequently w e cannot con
.

v ince the sceptic or make our answer to his question about the nature
co t a cause or ground i n telligible by the only resource which is l eft us
I6 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH IL OS GP H Y
4 .

after the aetiological principle is made subject to the l a w of ratioci na

tive proof By supposition it is not convertible with the o nto lo gi
.

cal and so cannot be subj ect to any a d no m zn em construction and

'

hence , if admissible must be the product of individual and not o f

,

so cial functions That is to say the sceptic must see it for himself
.
,

a nd if he d o es not there is no way to make him see it H e must be .

capable of an alyz ing the contents of his own consciousness and these
must be t h e same as his neighbor s The same would be true of any

.

other principle which he might question The ontological categories .

only happen not to be disputed so that the extensive j udgment and its
,

interpretation never becomes the subj ect of doubt But if he raised .

any sceptical question as to its validity the social function s which co n,

st it ut e the essential nature of the ratiocinative process as it n o w acts ,

would never substantiate it because its very basis would be subject

,

to doubt and he would have to be turned over to his personal conscious

ness quite as certainly and quite as absolutely as he must be in the
aetiological principles whi ch cannot be made convertible with the
ontological the latter being the sole condition of all social relations
,

and interchanges in the intellectual world .

Having disposed o f that implication of the s ceptic s question which

suggests the invalidity of the causal idea unless its nature is told him
in terms of the principle of identity and hence having thrown him upon
,

the responsibility for conviction a s to the fact of a principle not so

convertible there remains the further examination of the associations
,

and implications usually involved in the dema n d to know wiza t a

thing is .

The habit of telling what a thing is by means of a denition leads to

the tendency to conceive this
nature in terms of the principles
which determine the meaning of a denition and these principles are ,

the ontological As I have shown all denitions are regu l ated by the
.
,

principle of identity and difference and the consequence is t h at all

,

attempts to state the nature of a fact or thing by means of a deni
tion will bring to the front of consciousness the idea of identity and

difference as determinative of this nature even though substantive ,

terms a r e employed in the denition That is the extensive judg .

,

ment will always carry with it as its primary signication merely the
identity or difference between subject and predicate without regard to
other conceptions indicated or indicable by its terms The principle .

of difference is employed not to determine the primary e l ement o f

,

the denition but the seconda r y or differential This is explained

, .

by formal logic What I wish to note in the fact is that the deni
.
 C OND ITIONS OF S YNTH E TIC K NO WL E D GE . 1 65

tion of the nature of a thing is not completed until the differential

or specic as well as its conferential or generic qualit ies are indicated ,

a circumstance that will have some s ignica nce in the sequel of this
discussion .

The fundamental fact to be noticed in this process after we have ,

called attention to the functio n of denition in the communication of

knowledge which has been a studied object and which keeps the idea
,

of identity and extensive j udgments in the foreground is that in spite , ,

o f the formal character of the denition as embodying identity it has all ,

the implications of the i n tensive judgment The predicate of a d en i

.

tion has no meani ng unless it indicates if only by implication the a t

, ,

tributes o r qualities of the subj ect The di fferential characteristic can

.

not have any other import since it is specically excluded from the
,

generic or conferential term in the case The conferential properties

.

are implied Even when the concepts dened represent attributive

.

ideas the denition conceives the subj ect as the possessor of a property
in terms of the differentia so as to conform to the formal demands of
,

a denition But as this is not always the case a mere relation being
.
,

used to e ffect the same end the main point is to observe that in spite
, ,

of the use of extensive judgments in the denition the obverse side of ,

them indicates the presence of the intensive judgment by implication

at least and the conception of qualities events phenomena comes
, , , ,

in with its relative import dem a nding for explication something else
than itself whether that something else turns out on investigation to
,

be phenomenal o r transphenomenal Besides the fact that the int en

.

sive judgment is the prior form of cognition also shows that the ulti
mate process o f knowledge is in terms of the intensive j udg m ent
and not in the exte nsive as the sceptical position would imply The .

nal interpretation of the extensive j udgment enforces t h is view This .

means that ultimately the nature of a thing is expressed by what it

d o es by the prope rt ies which it exhibits
, This fact is easily concealed
.

by the ontological implications of the extensive judgment and also by

the fact that when any state m ent is made su ch as Snow is white ,
, ,

the further question to know what snow is leads most naturally to

,

the extensive judgment which conceals the intensive import behind the
employment of ontologi cal principles Besides the very question to
.

know what the thing is in terms of something el se than the ai r m ed

quality white creates the impression that the nature of a thing
is something else than t h e fact stated and when this something else than
the predicate given is indicated observation will soon show that it too
is either a like predicate or implies one The conseque n ce is that the
.
1 66 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

u ltimate mode of telling wna t a thing is simply states what it d o es or what

it is in intensive terms In the question the copula n aturally conveys
.

the conception of the extensive judgment and so the idea of identity,

but remembering that the same term in the intensive judgment is com
patible with or implies the relation of attribute to subject we nd that ,

is can j ust as w ell express the nature of a thing in its qualities

or what it d o es as it can in terms of identity with something else .

This means that the intensive j udgment can as well be chosen to ex

press the nature of a thing as the extensive though it does no t ih ,

volve comparison and represents the ultimate type of knowledge

,

in expressing the nature and l imits of the process We can therefore .

,

as well tell what a thing i s by telling its attributes and what it does ,

which is only a way of expressing its qualities in dynamic terms as by ,

a denition though the latter is the only method of co m m u n i ca t i ng

,

this knowledge in terms of the experience of others When .

therefore we want to know what a thing i s we have only to seek what

it d o es or what qualities it presents and these are ultimately all that we
,

can obtain as sensible p h enomena representing the evidence of the

reality whose nature we inquire for and whose n ature does no t
need to be conceived in any other terms .

Now as the s ceptical question seems to ask for somethi n g which we

are supposed not to k now and as this nal outcome of the analysis
,

results in the assumption that what we know is precisely the quali

ties or phenomena represented by the predicate we seem to confess that

the ae tiological principle is not known a nd in the adoption of the ,

phrase that all that can be known is what a thing does we may
be chargeable with phenomenalism after all has been said and done .

I do not obj ect to such a conclusion if we understand rightly the use o f

the term knowledge
.

If k nowledge mean to na v e as a phe
nome mal or sensible datum of cons ciousness , I agree that we cannot
'

know a ny ae tiologica l fact and it will be hopeless to dene it as the ,

sceptical question would demand especially in terms of the category o f

,

identity But if knowle dge mea n also what explains or is implied

.

by events
phenomena qualities etc the correlates of all that is
, , , .
,

conceived as relative then causes or grounds are equally known

,

though we may not na v e th em as a part of the phen omenal content

of the act that cognizes them In saying that phenomena are the
.

only evidence of causes or grounds we do n o t say that the thing ev i

d e nc e d is not known except that term be limited to lza m ng the state '

of consciousness without regard to its implications Phenomena are .

the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i of causes not their r a t i o ess en d z as conceived

,
'

,
 C OND ITI ONS OF S YNTH E TIC K NO WL E D GE . 16
7

under the usual mode of representing it , namely by denitio n and de

scription which are expressed in terms of comparison and the principle
o f identity In saying then that all we know is what a thing

.
, ,

does we only say that the only evidence of its existence is this fact ,

but the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i does not ne c essarily determine the r a t i o

ess ena i of a thing

It is only a way of indicating the reason for the
.

mind s belief or assertion of a fact The same fact m ay be its r a t i o

.

ess en di assuming that this idea has as much elasticity as our c o n cep
,

tion of judgment which we have seen may be either intens ive or exten
,

sive but it will be regarded a s su ch only in so far as we adopt the

,

expression that a th ing s nature is as well indicated in What it d o es

as in what it i s expressed in terms of identity Hence we may well

, .

sa
y that phenomena are the evidence of causes or groun d s not their ,

nature in terms of identity so that we can describe this nature
,

in terms of phenomena only after the conception of the intensive

judgment which holds to this nature compatibly with the implica
tion o f cause or ground which the conception of phenomena i m
plies whether the nal analysis dis covers a h identity between the pre
,

dica te and subject or not .

 CHAP TER VI .

T H E O R IE S O F K NO WL ED GE .

I H A VE so far only indicated the processes by which what is called

kno wledge is obtained and have not intended to determine nally by
such an explanation either the nature or validity of that knowledge
beyond what may be suggested by the chara cter of the process itself
'

But we come now to the consideration of those theories which have

meant to say s o methi ng about what we are supposed to know o r
,

rather perhaps whether this knowledge involves the legitimacy o f

any assertion about reality beyond the states of consciousness as

sumed to k now or not know it These theories are supposed
.

to indicate the extent or limits of knowledge and to consider the

validity of judgments affecti n g those limits T h e t wo theories which
.

have been variously discussed in the history of speculation in connec

tion with perception have been called Idealism and Realism I .

have already indicated the limits within which I shall apply them ,

namely that they shall be treated as epistemological and n o t noumeno

,

logical theories This limitation w e found to mean that they are modes
.

of expression for the nature and li m its of knowledge and especially

,

for the limits of our knowledge of external real ity I insisted
.

that the question of the nature of a reality at any time known

was distinct from the question of our knowing it and I mean still
to carry out this conception of our problem The reason for this will
.

be more apparent later than at present as the general usage of the term
,

Idealism as a metaphysical theory te n ds to prevent t he immediate re

cognition o f the more limited application of it as dened here But if .

we once ma k e clear the distinction between the problem regarding th e

reality
f a c t of and that regardi n g the n a t u r e of it we shall more
,

easily recogniz e the limitation of import here assigned to the terms

Idealism and Realism .

I must n o w enter into a more careful denition of these theories

a n d what they attempt to do All that I have done hitherto is to indi
.

c ate what they are not a n d what they do not predetermine I have.

s aid that I s h all treat both of them as quite com atible with either o f
p
t h e metaphysical theories ,Materialism and Spiritualism What we .

h ave next to do is to say what they do mean in positive terms .

If I were to ignore historical usage of the terms and the p h il o so ph i

1 68
 TH E O R I E S OF K N O WL E D GE . 1 69

cal conceptions and systems which gave rise to these t w o ep ist em o

logical theories I might nd it easy to dene them I would suit the .

denitions to the problem to be solved i n perception and the tra
dit io na l opposition to the theories But I might beg the whole question
.

in this and hence it is better to recognize what others have said about
,

them at the starting point of the dis cussio n .

When I come to look about however I nd that the idealists have

, ,

never condescended to any clear denition of their position So many .

di fferent philosophical doctrines have taken refuge u n der this c o n cep

tion or term that i t would not be easy to dene it clearly And it seems .

also to be characteristic o f every s chool of it not to do its philosophical

thinking in a way to favor clear denition Its advocates are generally
.

vociferous in their declarations identifying themselves with what they

call idealism but they do not take the trouble to indicate denitely what
,

the doctrine stands for O n e exception can be made to this st atement

.
,

o r at least appare n t exception The idealist is always opposed to

.

Materialism T h is is a red rag to h im and always invokes his con

.

tempt What this Materialism is how ever I have never been able
.
, ,

t o identify or associate with that Materialism which has a l r eady pro

v o ke d controversy. H ence I do not nd in this opposition to Material

ism any de n ite hint o f w hat will dene the term Id ealism O ne .

term is as undened as the other in all of the issues that have given the
doctrine of Materialism its import and inuence Generally when a .

term is not denitely dened its relation to what it is supposed to con

t r a d ict is a clue to its s ig nicance and hence if we knew what
,

Materialism represented we might easily understand what Idealism

meant by knowing what it denied But the traditional Materialis m
.

i dentied with Lucretius and Epicurus and with the modern atom ic
,

doctrine and its implications in the explanation of the phenomena and

functions of organic life besides being a metaphysical theory is not
, ,

the conception against whic h the idealist directs his opposition Con .

s equently it a ffords no indication of what we shall suppose Idealism to

be in any clearly dened issue This would make no di fference to us

.

if the idealists had supplied us always with a denition of the issue as

they understood it as we should not require to resort to the assumed
,

negation of Materialism for a suspicion of the term s meani ng

.

But I have never yet found any denition of the doctrine which would
a pply in the Same sense to the philosophical doctrines which masquerade

under the term and mu ch less any disposition to state clearly the issues
,

i nvolved at the outset . The consequence of this is that I ca n not state

any generally accepted import for the doctrine of Idealism in the lan
1
70 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

guage of its defenders I could indicate what I think their position is

.

and means bu t this is not allowing its advo cates fair play There are
,
.

certain propositio ns w hich they usually agree are the maxims or bases
of their doctrine and which might be appealed to as a denition , or an
indication of what the denition would be They are such statements .

as the follo wing All k nowledge must be in terms of consciousness .

All reality can be k nown only in terms of cons ciousness We .

can know nothing about things except in terms of cons ciousness .

Things can be known only in relation to consciousness etc If , .

these statements were perfectly self interpreting we might determine -

exact ly what Idealism means but they are form s of expression that are
,

either equivocal or are admissible without debate by the school to which

the idealist is presumably O pposed Unless the latter is at the same time
.

a phenomenalist he does not unequ ivocally commit himself to the state

ment that we know only mental states even when he limits knowledge
to phenomena Consequently between the sceptical position that we
.

know nothing but subjective states and the relativist s position that

w e do not know things in themselves but only phenomena we ,

do not nd any assured limitations to the idealist s conception of his

do ctrine .

I have also remarked in a previous chapter that Idealism has been

opposed historically to Realism If then w e can nd a clear co ncep
.
, ,

tion of what the realist maintains we may be able to ascertain just what
the idealist would have us understand by his position No w there is .

one ge n eral conception for which Realism has universally stood It is .

that co n s c i o u s n ess ca n k n o w s o m et ni ng bey o n d i t s etf That is .

knowledge can be of an object not itse lf No w if Idealism is to

.

be conceived as disputing this view its position is clear and it could be

dened as the doctrine which limits the knowledge of consciousness
to itself This would establish a clear antithesis between the two do c
.

trines and also identify Idealism with Phenomenalism of the subjee

,

tive type But unfortunately for this clear conception of the problem ,
.

which would mak e Idealism identical w ith Solipsism w e have to reckon ,

with practically three schools of realists and at least two of idealists .

The realists divi de as already indicated into the Natural or Intuitive

and the Hypothetical Realists The hypothetical realists a dmit that
.

sensations do not present or represent the n a ture of the object o f

knowledge but are affections of the subject They interpret th e
, .

belief in the external object or reality as the produ ct of an infer

ence based on the principle of causal ity The natural realists deny
, .

that it is an inference and maintain that it is an immediate object o f

 TH E O RIE S OF K NO IVL E D GE . I
71

consciousness But there are two types of this which I may call t h e
.

na i ve and the reective or perhaps philosophi cal The na i ve is that

'

.
,

of the common u neducated man who has never suspected that there ca n
be a problem in the matter and who does not kno w or reect upon the
relation of illusion to the question He seems never to suppose that
.

the nature of things might be diff erent fro m what they appear in his
sensational experience He takes his uncritical or uncriticised j udg
.

ment as the nal word on the matter The reective realist not wish
.
,

ing to expose the certitude and felt necessity of his belief to the pre
carious certication o f inference and also wishing to admit the problem s
incident to illusion and critical j udg ments of sense resorts to an intui ,

tive process for giving this reality though he ma k es it now an a p
,

plication of the principle of causality and n o w a direct perception
based on the primary qualities of matter with allowance for the claims
,

o f Idealism in the secondary qualities It will be in this however

.
, ,

that the reective realist comes very near to hypothetical Realism so ,

near that it might seem possible to push him over the prec ipice into
this by dexterous logic O n the other hand there is a type of idealist
.
, ,

sometimes called Cosmothetic which adopts the statement that all i m

,

mediate knowledge is limited to the states of consciousness but ,

admits that the belief in the existe n ce of an external world is too tena
c io us to be resolved into a sort of nihilism and so admits that thi s

reality is a n object of inference and thus this type of thinkers be

,

comes identical with the hypothetical realists In order therefore t o

.
, ,

be absolutely opposed to Realism the idealist must l imit the conception

of knowledge to immediate certitude and presentations not r e pr e
senta t ive of an external reality and adopt the doctrine of Solipsism .

Any other position brings it into agreement with realism in some form ,

a nd the opposition of those theories is not what it seems in the discus

sions of philosophers H o w apparent this is in every for m of

. o b

jective Idealism will be seen by further analysis and discussion .

Not h aving been able to obtain a denition of either Idealism or

Realism that would embody a single clear issue between them it will ,

be necessary to exami n e t h e various positions indicated and the several

conceptions involved in the postulates of the modern idealists There .

is of course a clear opposition between nai ve Realism and every form

, ,

of Idealism But the same opposition exists bet ween na i ve and r e e c

.

tive Realism or between na i ve and hypothetical Realism Hence t h e

, .

idealist gains nothing by indiscriminate assault upon Realism We .

must rst kno w just what particular type of Realism he is attacking

before we accord him the advantage of the argu ment We may nd .
1
72 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP ] ! Y .

him doing nothing more than repudiating the ideas of his childhood
without exhibiting due knowledge of the history of human thought
w here Realis m has stood for something more defensible against sc ept i
c i sm than the crude ideas of peasants and children Whatever his .

errors and misconceptions of idealists he has always intended that his

do ctrine should be expressed in a rm condence in the belief of some
thing else than the individual s states of consciousness It is the denite

.

and explicit antithesis of Phenomenalism in all forms in the funda

mental postulate that a reality other than men tal states is a certain
or necessary truth Idealis m can oppose this only by taking up the
.

position that our knowledge is limited to our subj ectiv e states o r
phenomena that is to Solipsism We are brought therefore t o the
, ,
.
, ,

examination of this postu late and the various propositions which are
advanced to dene or support the doctrine of Idealism .

If w e adopt the statement that we know only phenomena and

then dene phenomena as appearances meaning thereby states o f ,

consciousness and those of the subject having them we have Solipsism ,

a s the interpretation To escape it w e should have to enter into an

.

a nalysis and denition of the terms knowledge and phenomena .

If we adopt as the premise of our arg um ent the proposition that we

can kno w things only in terms of cons ciousness we have a state
ment which is not so clear as it seems unless it is identical with the
one j ust mentioned If identical with this the conclusion will be the
.

s ame . If not identical with it the only meaning that it can apparently
have other than this is either that we cannot k n o w anything with
out being conscious o f it or that we cannot be certain of anything
,

except our states of consciousness The former is a truism for both

.

the realist and the idea l ist e x cep t that it assumes conscious knowl
,

edge to be of the subject s own states only in wh i ch case it again ter

,

m i na t e s in Solipsism The latter does not exclude a rational bel i ef in

.

what is not an immediate datu m of co n sciousness so that the opposition

between Realism and Idealism would be redu ced to the question
w hether the existence of something other than the subject s o w n states

was an object of mediate or immediate knowle d ge or whether it ,

was an obj ect of belief or an object of knowledge This is a legit i .

m ate distinction to make but it h a s no practical importance of great

,

d imensions unless we accord belief far less inuence on condu ct than

,

i s the fact.

It is in the relation to action that the whole crux of the interests

involved is to found All belief and all knowledge are of interest
.

to men only as they affect their a ctions No one would care for theo
.
 TH E O RIE S OF K N O IVL E D GE .
I
73

ries of reality and knowledge were it no t for the validity and

effect of certain accepted maxims or supposed truths on the question of
the rationality of conduct If there be no hobgoblins for instance I
.
, ,

do not have to regulate my action on the assumption that there are such
facts If there be no precipice in front of me I can continue my walk
.

without personal danger in the desired direction Now it is unfo r t u .

nate for this discussion between Idealism and Realism that certain im -

plications are associated with the phrases in which the limits of

knowledge are expres se d To say that I k now only phenomena
.
,

know only my own states

o r that I is to imply that there is some
,

thing o r that there m ay be something which I do not know It is .

agreed on all hands that there is reason to assign decided limits to our
knowledge But it is customary to interpret the expression I
.

don t know as one permitting a freedom in regard to action and ih

action that is not a dmissible in the case of knowledge Scepticism .

has always clai m ed a freedo m in the absence of knowledge which

it would not assert if it were certain that the object of doubt were
known H ence it is a natural tendency to interpret the limitatio n
.

of knowledge to subjective states as imp lying the right of i n d iffer

ence in action related to the external reality supposed ly not
known F or example if I am entitled to ignore the existence of
.
,

any thing not k nown to be a fact when I come to act I might ,

ignore the walls of my room on the assumption that I know noth

ing more than my states of consciousness This of course is the con
.
, ,

cept io n of the case whi ch really or appar ently gave force to Johnson s

reply to Berkeley in the famous example of ki cking the stone It may .

o r may not be a misconceptio n of the problem on which the di f culty

is founded With this I am not concerned I am only indicating the

. .

conceptions in the general habits of mankind and the use of language

that evokes opposition whenever such fundamental statements as the
idealists ma ke are made the premises of a do ctrine and we are entitled ,

to mention the fact as a means of demanding a critical exposition of

the real meaning of their terms consistent with condu ct If the idealist .

would supplement his denial of the knowledge of external reality ,

which is an i m pl icato n of the limitation of it to consciousness by as ,

serting the rights of belief where direct and immediate knowledge

is not possible the case might be different But in ignoring this

, .

resource for legitimating the action of men toward that w hich may not

be considered an obj ect of knowledge he actually if indirectly , ,

lends support to the popular conception of the absurdity of his positio n

and so does Dr Johnson s mode o f illustrating it
.

.
I
74 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PHI L OS OPH Y
.

What the idealist ought to realiz e is that the prim a ry dii culty with
his doctrine is the equivocal meaning of the term knowledge
I .

have already called attention to its double meaning both of certitude ,

a nd syste matiz ation in which the latter conception involves nothi ng

,

more than the probability of induction and also the further double ,

meaning of perceiving and lza v i ng or be i ng It is this latter equiv .

o c at i o n which I wish to notice more carefully for the present .

There is a natural tendency to identify the conception of know

ing with ba v i ng a state of cons ciousnes s This grows out of th e .

frequent if not general a ssumption that intuitive or immediate co n

, ,

s c i o usn e ss is possible only for the limits of consciousness as a func

t io n a l activity of the subject We noticed in dis cussing Apprehension

.

that w e could not nally distinguish between sensation and a p pr eh en

s ion or mentation and apprehension at le a st in their numerical aspects
, , .

This suggests to the mind that k nowing and being a state o f

consciousness are the same T h e consequence of this tendency co n

.
,

s cious or unconscious should induce the idealist to analyz e carefully

,

the propositions on which he founds his general doctr ine and if he ,

thinks that immediate knowledge or knowing is or implies ,

being or ba v i ng a state of consciousness he should disti n g uish that ,

c ertitude which he accords to the belief in objective reality from the

certitude of knowledge That is he should recogniz e t w o sources
.
,

of certitude if he admits the fact of this certitude in regard to both ih

,

ternal and external reality This would put an end to illusions and
.

c ontroversies about the meaning of his theory The question is no t .

w hether w e shall call our convictions regarding objective reality

an act of knowledge but whether o u r convictions are either cer
,

tain or rational or suf ciently rm and cer t ia ble to give our conduct
,

a rational meaning .

The best way to test the mea ning of Idealism a n d its relation t o so
c alled Realis m as an opposing theory is to ascertai n whether the

idealists are willing to accept the real or apparent logical co n sequence

of their fundamental propositions which lead to Solipsism There is .

an interpretation to these propositions whi ch leads nowhere else The .

limitation of knowledge to states of consciousness n aturally implies ,

to many people at least that the subj ect cannot transcend his own men
,

tal acts in what he knows or believes
If the idealist actually .

accepts this position or Solipsism it is di fcult if not absolutely im

, , ,

possible to dislodge him I know of no way to refute Solipsism It

.
.

is logical and offers no premise when strictly maintained for an a d

, ,

lzo m i n em argument against it and it is d ii cu l t to secure any other

 TH E OR I E S OF [( N O WL E D GE . I 75

argument when a d r e m considerations are not appreciated by the s eep

tic who insists o n being logically consistent in the subjective i nt er pr e
tat io n of knowledge But I doubt whether there has ever been an
.

idealist wh o would for a moment accept the solipsistic interpretation of

his doctrine Even Berkeley when he insisted o n denying the exis
.
,

tence of matter was emphatic in the a fr m ation of something else than

,

his o wn states of consciousness He admitted the existence of some .

other reality than hi m self somethi n g outside himself even if , ,

he called it spirit ( God ) and other minds ( men and animals )
than his o wn O ther idealists quite universall y agree that there are
.

other individual beings with states of cons ciousness besides themselves .

They are very vociferous about social units or social consciousness and
no t one of them would a llow it to be supposed that he had a ny so l ip s i s

tic sympathies All this whatever the phraseology adopted in their

.
,

fundamental espist e m o lo g ical maxims simply proves that they accept ,

in some way the realistic conception of the possibility that conscious

ness transcends itself in what it posits That is it k nows some
.
,

thing besides its o wn states tho u gh if that is an obj ectionable term

, ,

we may say that it accepts the existence of transsubj ective facts with
the same certitude that it feels in regard to the subjective call the latter ,

what you will This belief is an acceptance of the fundamental postu

.

late o f Realism a nd makes Idealism identical with it in all essential

characteristics It appears then that the defence of Solipsism is the
.

only hope of any direct and clear oppositio n between Idealism and

Realism The question as to the nature of objective reality does
.

not enter into the controversy so far as the problem of transcending

consciousness is concerned There are diff erences of opinion on this
.

point but they are not a ffected by the question whether the area of
,

knowledge is or is not limited to the states and a ffections of the

subject If we can on either theory transcend consciousness in what

.

is a f rmed to exist that is the consciousness of the individual subj ect ,

, ,

we have a position that does not dene its o wn l imits and it will only
be a question of what the capacities of the subject are and the facts to
determine whether this transsubj ective fact is or is not like the state

which knows it O n the fundamenta l question of epistemology
.

therefore Idealism a nd Realism do not di er from each other in their

doctrine and there is n o fair excuse w h y the animosities real or appar
,

ent between them shou ld be any longer entertained .

There is a decided difference of opinion between the na i ve realist

and the scientic idealist but this is nothing more than the difference
,

between the clodhopper and the educated man o n all questions in any
1
76 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

subject It is a difference of culture of breadth of knowle d ge and no t

.
, ,

of opin i on on the question whether knowledge has a r ange of asser

tion beyond the subj ect s states The idealist who insists upon assert
.

ing or implying that Realism has had no ot h er meaning than the un

critical conceptions o f the u neducated would give it either ignores the ,

facts of history in philosophy or he is interested in the m isr e p r esenta

tion of the case F or it is apparent to the merest tyro in philosophy
.

that ever since the Sophists and the later Sceptics it has been a prob
,

lem to explain h o w consciousness could know anythi ng but its o wn

states and that the realist has stood for the possibility of knowing
,

more than these It is true tha t often the realist in proportion as his
.
,

education or interests identied him w ith the na i ve conceptions of man

kind generally thought that we as directly knew the nature o f
,

reality other than consciousness as well as the fact that there was a
transcendent existence But the historical position of the hy p othetical
.

realist as we l l the fact that the very conception of the real other
,

than the ideal does not commit the mind unequivocally to the n ature
of it shows that we have no right to impress upon Realis m the un cr it i
,

cal conceptions o f unedu cated people simply to save an aristocratic

and respecta ble position for Idealism O n the only point having any .

interest in epistemology namely the transcendency of knowledge

, , ,

they are essentially agreed That conception of Idealism prevalent in

.

Ethics I do not admit as relevant in this question In epistemology .

Idealism is a theo r y as to what we know a s fact In Ethics it is .

not a name for a theory of any reality other tha n or outside
consciousness but for the doctrine that ideals are the still u n r ea liz ed
,

object of consciousness It is a name for what o ug /zt to be as distinct

.

from what i s O r it is the name for the fact that m a n can create an
.

order in the physical and social world better than a given order so that ,

ethical Idealism is a name for possible ends of volitio n that are desir
able and not mere facts of cognition or knowledge before the act o f
idealiz ation takes place The consequence is that Idealism in the ethi
.

cal sense has no relation whatever to the epistemological question o f

t h e subjective or transsubjective range of knowledge .

There have been however certain advantages to reective though t

, ,

associated with the development of Idealism that the realists have no t

been any m ore fo r ward to claim than the idealists They are the t e .

su lt s of scepticism The only element in Idealis m that has been of any

.

value to speculative thought has been that of scepticism an d the em ,

phasis upon the anthropo centric point of view which it enforces It .

has not been the suggestions of the term Idealis m that have done
 TH E ORIE S OF K NO WL E D GE . 1
77

the work but the fact of scepticis m at th e basis of the whole movement
,

and which cou ld conceal its o wn operation u nder an orthodox mask

.

If th e idea l ist had avowed that it was scepticis m that lay at the basis of
his system and tendencies he would have received no hearing but by ,

concealing this fact and adj usting himself in some w ay to the conser
vat ive instincts and beliefs of mankind he has been able to secure the

respect of the intel l ectuals and of the religious type w hile he eva ded
cla ssication with the untutored plebs His sympathies intellectu a l
.
,

and moral have always been on the side of what is best in human
achievement and aspiration though this required him to mediate be
,

tween ignorant conservatism and i nt o l er ent radicalism The necessity .

o f concealing the sceptical basis of his system and of maintaini ng

silence on the popular religious ideas has alway s exposed him to t h e

charge of hypocrisy by those temperaments that love and exa lt free
do m but this has been the price which he paid for the opportunity t o
,

be serviceable at all This is clear in the philosophical systems of t h e

.

great idealists who could be neither clear and radical nor orthodox a n d
conservative on any of the great problems of theology O n the other .

hand the realist has allowed his system to be associated with the inter
ests of dogmatism in both philosophy and theology and hence has dis
credited its intellectual acume n as mu ch as the idealist had compre
mised h is clearness and sincerity I d ea l isnr c o n c ea l s in its folds t h e
.

seeds of both culture and a narchy depending on the question
,

whether its issue is in Solipsis m or a modied realism O n the other .

hand realis m conceals the tendencies of both imperialism and social

,

ism depending o n the question whether it issues in dogmatism or a

,

modied idealism All these sympathies and antipathies however

.
, ,

were not the necessary consequence logically of any fundamental differ

ence between the t w o schoo ls of thought in the essential question of
epistemology as I have dened it namely the question of fact regard
, ,

ing the subjective or transsubjective capacity of k nowledge but o f ,

other motives and inuences altogether The consequence is that I

.

attach no importance whatever in epistemology to the controversy be

twee n Idealism and Realis m u nless the former accepts the most pal p
able interpretation o f it s language and identi es itself with Solipsism .

O n any other view its real beliefs are the same as Realism as I have ,

shown on all the questions having any value for clear think ing a nd
,

the determination of practical truth .

 CHAP TER V II .

T H E C R ITE R IA O F T R U T H .

PILA TE question What is truth was an echo of Gr ae co Roman

S ,
!
-

philosophy and was probably not appreciated in its s ceptical sense by

the person to whom it was put But whether so or not it is the ques .
0

tion of all inquiring minds and assumes either a desire for mere in fo r
mation as to facts or a demand for proof of assertions already made .

The conception of a criterion for truth s eems to ha ve rst been

suggested by the Stoics though it was implied by the work of P lato
,

and Aristotle It indicates that there is a standard by which truth is

.

to be adjudged or measured The demand for such a criterion may .

be made in a s ceptical spirit in which it appears to deny the possibility

of truth If this is its meaning it destroys itself as the denial of any
.
,

a n d all truth whatever is self contradictory This position has itself

-
.

to be true in order to make the question or doubt rational This is the .

simple answer to universal s cepticis m which by the very nature of the ,

case is impossible But while Pyrrhonism is impossible it is equally

.

certain that we cannot say that all conceptions and opinions are true .

That is between universal af rmation and universal denial neither is

,

true but that the truth lies somewhere intermediate To distinguish ,

, .

therefore what is concretely true or what is true in individual cases

, , ,

requires what may be called a criterion or evidence This is to say .

that any statement made cannot stand on its own basis unless it is ,

what is called a self evident truth and consequently what does not
-

evince its own validity must have some other fact than itself to secure
its a cceptance This then i s what is meant when we demand a cri
.
, ,

te r i o n of truth The abstract for m of statement has the unfortunate

.

impli cation th at a criterion must be had for absolutely all truth but ,

the impossibility of univers al doubt on the one hand and the exist , ,

ence of self evident propositions on the othe r show that the demand
-

for criteria has its limitations These limitations circumscribe the .

area between possible and necessary truth and so dene those cases ,

whose enunciation does not carry with them their o w n credentials .

But there is no single simple criterion of truth because there is no

single truth Truths are too manifold in number and kind to be deter
.

minable by any simple sta ndard Each class of truths has its own cr i .

teria or credentials even if the ultimate source of certitu de in all

,

1 78
 TH E CR I TER IA OF TR U T H . 1
79

c ases is one This is because the term truth applies to beli efs as
.

well as knowledge , to the Credible , rational and probab l e as well as

the certain The eld , therefore over which criteria have to be
.
,

applied beco mes very large and this is made a ll the more apparent
,

when we recognize that in the application of the conception of criteria

t h e distinction between mediate and imm ediate knowledge has to
be drawn and each type of knowledge considered in its own w ay .

The term itself whatever else it implies embodies all the functions
, ,

s upplied in the ideas of e vidence and proof It represents whatever .

will guarantee the truth of a statement other than its assertion and is ,

o ften also identied with the pro cess which guarantees a self evident -

t ruth. In the strict sense of the term however criterion must
, ,

r epresent a mark fact or incident which will be a universal test of

,

what would appear doubtful without its presence It is this e quiv o .

c ation i n its meaning varying in nature according to the eld in which

,

it is applied that makes it necessary to analyze the problem But the .

rst distinction to be observed in the attempt to ascertain the criteria

o f truth is that between mediate and immediate
knowledge Mediate .

knowledge or truth will have to recogniz e a distinction between

certitude and probab ility which involves the difference of criteria in
d eduction and induction Then in any case it will be necessary to dis
.

t in gui sh between primary and secondary or ul timate and derived truth ,

in the application of criteria This last distinction coincides with that

.

between immediate and mediate knowledge and so must be treated
as one and the same problem We have , the n as our primary dis
.
,

t inction that between mediate or derived and immediate or ultimate

t ruth. F ollowing this comes the distinction between the two types of

d erived or mediate knowledge an d this gives rise to that between
,

Logic and Scienti c Method as subdivisions of ratiocinative methods

, ,

the rst being the name for the f o r m a l and the second for the m a t e r i a l
c riteria of
knowledge
Consequently the three criteria of truth
.

which invite discussion are Intui tion experience or any assumed
, ,

p rocess of immediate perception Lo gi c and Scientic Method
, ,
.

It would appear that these ought to be examined in their order as

s tated proceedi n g fro m the simpler to the more complex
,
But there .

a r e reasons in the general prob l em of knowledge for taking them

up in a differe n t order The fact that scepticis m can variously raise
.

q uestions about the nality of ratiocination in the determination of

truth and thus convert the whole question into the validity of what
must itself determine the results of reasoning requires us to examine
t his process of ratio cination and its relation to the determination of truth
x80 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

as the rst step in an swering the query put by the doubter C o nse .

quently I think it best to dis cuss rst the nature and functions of Logi c
in the determination of knowledge and as certain where we ha ve t o
look for the ultimate test of truth and consequently the means for a ,

nal reply to scepticism .

I L O GI C . .

There has been su ch a wide divergence of opinion as to the nature

of Logi c that it will be necessary to examine its history and to den e
it somewhat carefully This diversity of conception is indicated very
.

clearly in the statement of Adamson who after giving a list of lo gi , ,

c ia n s remarks that
,
in tone in method , in aim in fun damenta l prin
, ,

ci l es in extent of eld they diverge so widely as to appear not s o

p , , ,

many different expositions of the same s cience , but so many different

s ciences .This is unquestionably a fact and a regrettable fact a s , ,

it shows an equivocal con ception of the subject whi ch prevents all

clear thinking until some agreement is found in the proper functions
of the s cience o r conception of the term tha t will ena ble us to make
any progress in the dis cussion of intellectual problems .

The reader will remember that in the classication of the s ciences

, ,

I treated Logic merely as a department of Epistemology namely as ,

'

that which deals with the ratiocinative processes while the othe r
i
,

departments o f Epistemolo gy were represented in Apprehension and

Cognition with their various elds I shall continue so to treat it and
.

no t to regard it as in any proper sense a substitute or synonym for

Epistemology I shall limit it to the s cience of reasoning the laws

.
,

of thought as ratiocinative But the determina tion of its function in

.

the acquisition or verication of truth can be effected only by a n

examination of some historical conceptions .

Aristotle s O rganon was a combination of Epistemology and the

s cience of F ormal Logic It arose out of the situatio n whi ch evoked

.

the dialogues of Pl ato who was inspired by the desire to overthrow

,

the doctrine of s cepticis m as he found it in the Sophists Plato laid .

down no rules for governing human thought He simply reasoned .

and did not reach the stage of development in which some denite

criteria of knowledge should be formulated Aristotle s aw that it .

was necessary to systematize the processes which P lato had used and
his O rganon was t h e conse quence The fact that the whole system .

wa s evoked by the necessity of answering scepticis m gave the subject

an epistemological coloring though it is noticeable a n d is perhaps
, ,

remarkable that preliminary psychological analysis of elementary

,

mental processes does not enter into his conception of the problem .
 TH E CRITERIA OF TI! U T H . x8 x

T he consequence is that the logical outcome of the s y stem , in spite of

its epistemological coloring and aim , nally develops into formal
Logic alone But as Aristotle conceived the O rganon it was an in
.

s trument in the acquisition of material truth as well as a formal

s cience ,
the distinction not then being so clearly drawn as n o w T h e .

s imple reason for this tenden cy t o develo

p into a purely formal s cience
wa s twofold F irst , the Greek reective consciousness had no con
.

den ce in sense perception It was the dis covery of its illusory na ture
.

t hat ill i c it e d all attempts to vi ndicate belief a nd kn owledge

In .

a dmitting that sense could n o t determine truth the Greek could only

c onde in reasoning Logos Second the C h ristian system abandoned

.
, ,

a ll study of external nature and so w a s not interested in phenomena

t hat requi re d inductive methods with the special emphasis upon the
,

o bservation of facts which necessitated at least some respect for sense

p erception . Its world was a trans cen dental one beyond sense and
when it came to seek a justication of its doctrines it had no alterna !

t ive to the use of the Greek O rganon of knowledge and in using ,

t h e Aristotelian Logi c it naturally made a formal s cience of it The .

s cholastic perio d therefore developed Logi c as a formal science to its

, ,

highest degree of perfection It will thus be seen that the Greek dis
.

t rusted sense for one reason and Christianity distrusted it for another .

T h e Greek considered it i ncapable of determining the truth about the

p hysical world and the Christian distrusted it be cause it gave no i n

f ormation about his spiritual world that trans cended all knowledge
a n d was an obje ct of faith Both however accepted supersensible
.
, ,

s ources of belief the Greek ma k ing it reason which

, g ave a s u p er se n
s ible physical world and the Christia n making it at rst and perhaps ,

a lways faith giving both a supersensible and a superphysical world

, , ,

o r what may be called a supersensible spiritual worl d In time h o w .

,

e ver when he felt obliged to make his peace with philosophy he

, ,

a ccepted the criterion of reason in the justication of his faith a nd so

was obliged to utilize the Aristotelian Logic as his method and hav ,

i n g disregarded the study of fa cts he could only attempt to deduce his

d octrines from existing and accepted conceptio n s whose origi n he did
n o t investigate .

It was the inuence of Kant s Critique that converte d the co n c ep

t ion of Logic ba ck again into that of E i temolo y

ps g It is cl ear that .

h e had embodied many of the s cholastic ideas i n his conception of

Logic , especially as obse r vable in the outlines of it taken from his
l ectures . But as he developed no elaborate system of f o rmal Lo gic
t h e conceptions of the Critique overshadowe d what might have other
x8 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH IL O S OP H y .

wise been a distinction between the problem s of knowledge i n

their widest import and the narrower eld of formal Logic or ratio
c i n a t iv e processes The consequence has been tha t German treatise s
.

of Logic simply cover the whole province of the theory of knowl

edge and reasoning is a section of it which does not always receive
,

any te chni cal name except as that of Logic is approp riated for it i n
,

obedience to a traditional conception of it mu ch narrower than t h e

wider import determining the province of Epistemology I canno t .

but think this a confusing tendency because however we may ulti , ,

mately nd that the psychological process in reasoning is the same as

in Apprehension and Cognition the content of knowledge is s o ,

different in various cases so complex in some as compared with others

, ,

that this difference of matter h a s to be taken as the basis of distinctions

which cannot be drawn in pro cesses Epistemology deals as much .

with the primary psychological activities as with the secondary an d

ratio cinative that is with what are usual ly called the simple as wel l
, ,

as the complex and whether w e regard this simplicity and complexity

,

as subjective or objective it is certain that the content of knowledge

is often more complex in certain instances than others and that thi s
distinction of simplicity and complexity of content gives rise to name s
for different s ciences or supposed processes fo r dealing with the prob
lems so dened Consequently when we have the term Epistemolo gy
.
,

as a general name for the s cience of knowledge at large it would ,

be better to retain that of Logic for the particular and quite large eld
of ratiocination considered as the combination of a pro cess with cer
,

tain complex data of thought which has its o w n peculiar laws and
,

difculties though all the while treating it as a department of t h e

,

general subject The special reason for this separation of the question s
.

is the fact that the criteri a of knowledge in reasoning a re quite dif

fe r en t in so far as they are objective from those in the so called p r imary
, ,

processes of kno wledge Now as reasoning is not the primary

.

process in the origin of material knowledge it must be treated as a

formal pro cess of some kind and the sci e nce limited to it must be con
si de r e d a formal science This is the general conception which I
.

mean to take of it It is the most general conception of English

.

thinkers and of course has its origin in the adopti on of the scholasti c
, ,

conception of the subject though in s o far as Kantian philosophy h a s

,

inuenced the English mind we see a corresponding tendency to con

fuse the wider questions o f Epistemolo gy with the narrower ones o f

the traditio nal Logic by using the term Logic and dis cussing unde r
its cover problems which at one time were not considered as logical
 TH E CRITE RIA OF T RU T H . 18
3

at al l . I should have no objections to the cha n ge in the meaning of

t h e term if proper denition and analysis ac companie d it
,
But the .

necessary distin ction of problems as suggeste d by the distinction

,

bet w een mediate and immediate knowledge , in my opinion ne ces
si t at es a corresponding distinction of s ciences even if one is made a ,

department of Epistemology O n this account I must regard Sir

.
,

William Hamilto n a s having given the best conception of Logic in

modern times as he most clearly distinguishes between the general
,

problem of knowledge and th e rati ocinative process assigning the

.

latter no function in material truth I a m willing also to say at the

.
,

cost of challenging the contemptuous spirit with which Hamilton is

generally treated by Kantians generally that Hamilton has produced ,

the most thorough analysis of the w hole proble m of knowledge

and Logic since Aristotle not exceptin g Thomas Aquinas and the
,

s cholastic philosophers generally Kant made no analysis at all He

. .

could only divide everything into empirical and transcendental

without either illustratio n or clear exposition But Hamilton i n his .

notes to Reid especially has analyzed the whole el d of knowledge

and Logi c in a way to leave little more to be done H is solution of .

the problem is another matter I have no estimate to make of that as

.
,

I a m not concerned with either its correctness or incorrectness for the ,

re ason that I shall not co mplicate the theory of knowledge which

I am presenting with any prejudices that exist for or against any system
of philosophy But I do recognize Hamilto n s conception of formal
.

Logi c as the one best calculated to develop the real criteria of truth
outside the sphere of reasoning which has always been the essential
characteristic of the s cience of Logi c The various problems of huma n
.

thought ou ght not to be jumbled together under a single term when it

is necessary to distinguish between separate aspects of them Whe n .

we are limiting our consider atio n to s ome common characteristic of a

number of problems we may rightly enough employ a single term t o
cover them But when it is necessary to subdivide a general proble m
.

into several distinct types with di fferential characteristics it is equa lly '

necessa r y that we should have the technical terms to denote the speci c
eld of investigation and not to confuse terms whi ch should be kept
distinct It is however wholly a matter of denition and this gives
.
, ,

considerable l iberty to the investigator but this denition is a ne ces

,

s ity ,
if he does not wish to be exposed to criticis m for errors arising
out of departures from current and traditional uses of the same terms .

A denition of terms and the consistent application of them without ,

implying any necessary contradiction wit h doctrines founded on di ffer

 1 84 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH IL O S OP H y .

e nt denitions ent itles any man to any liberty he may wis h to e njoy
,
-

and he must be judged by the internal consistency of his syste m inde ,

p endently of the question of propriety in the alteration of current and

tra ditional meanings of the same terms .

These considerations and the develop ment of Logic after Aristotle

justify me I thin k in dening Logic as a formal s cience of ratiocination
, , ,

as the best way to assign it a meaning denite enough to enforce the

d istinction which must be m aintained between intuitive and ratiocina

t ive objects of kn owledge and so to technicalize so to speak that
, , ,

d epartment of Epistemology which is subordinate to the primary and

ultimate problems of k nowledge The importance of so doing will
.

be a pparent in further dis cussion .

While I might therefore adopt the denition of Logic that it is the

, , ,

s cience of the formal laws of thought as those do who treat it as I

,

h a ve here conceived it I shall des cribe it in more specic terms after

,

a dmitting that this denitio n properly indicates its object namely the , ,

determination of the laws and conditions under which correct thinking

i s possible . But this denition does not explicitly indicate the function

w hi ch ratiocination performs in the problem of knowledge and it is ,

this function on which I wish to lay the emphasis of present consider

a tion .Consequently I shall des cribe ratio cination thus further e xp li ,

cat ing its usu a l denition as t be o e/zi c u l a r ag e n cy o r m e d i um f o r t be

,

t r a n s m i ss i o n of c o n v i c t i o n n o t f o r t be o r ig i n of i t
, t /ze t r a n s m i s s i o n
o
f ce r t i t u d e i n d e d u ct i o n a n d of p r o ba bil i ty i n i n d u c t i o n This I .
,

s ha ll maintain , is the sole function of ratiocination in the problem of

k nowledge and in no respe ct can it be treated as the source from
,

w hich any real content in knowledge is derived I have explained .

earlier that there are two distinct meanings attached to the term

knowledge one that of certitude and the other systematization of
,

.

c ontent in experience Ra tiocination can do no more than transfer

.

conviction from one content to a noth er which does not evince its own
acceptability without the unication effected by the apperceptive process
at the basis of reasoning H o w this is brought about will be indicated
.

f urther on .All that I wish to assu me now is the fact that the function
o f ratiocination is t h e transfer of conviction and nothing more di r ectly ,

o r primarily and intentionally .

This contention can be illustrated and proved by a brief examina

t ion of the syl logism .I take deduction as the best type for the pu r
p ose We have always been accustomed to hear that the conclusion is
.

c ontained in the premises Taking this as th e true representation

.
,

w hich I think no one will dispute it will be apparent that the a c c e p ,

 I HE CR I TERIA OF TR U T H .
1 85

tance of the conclusion , assuming that neither formal nor material falla
cies have been committed depends wholly upon the acceptance of the
,

premises F alla cies do not show the falsity of the conclusion as a

.

p roposition but only the illegitimacy of the p ro cess of inference Both

,
.

of these statements are the truisms of Logic But as it is the truth of .

the proposition in the con clusion in which we are really interested w e ,

forget what it is that has determined it for us in the act of drawing it .

It is the a ccepted truth of the premises not the fact of inclusion This ,
.

will be evident by stating the following accepted facts in Logic .

.
If the premises are false and the reasoning correct the conclusion
will be false If the premises are uncertain and the reasoning corre ct
.

the conclusio n will be uncertain If I know n othing about the premises .

a n d the reasoning is correct I sha ll k now nothing about the conclusion .

If the pre mises are true and the reasoning is correct the co nclusion will
be true In all cases where the mental attitude toward the conclusion
.

is at all affected by the ratiocination or apparently so affected it is , ,

wholly dependent o n the premises and consequently upon the convi e ,

tion felt in the premises No certitude is felt in the conclusion when it

.

is not felt in the premises and hence the conviction felt or increased if
, ,

in the conclusion is simply what is tran sferred from the premises h o w

, ,

ever they have been obtained No new knowledge as content is .

, ,

discovered but only a re lation not explicit before while the conviction
, ,

is derived fro m convictions already existent .

But wh e re do the convictions regarding the premises arise ! A r e

they also r at i o c in a t iv el y determi ned ! The answer is that they may be
in particular instances but this is not ultimately the case The sy l l o
, .

gism cannot indenitely prove its premises Stri ctly speaking no syl .

l o gis m can prove its own premises and the deductive process can not ,

be carried on a d i n n i t u m without leaving all conclusions in entire

suspense Consequently if we ever have any certain conviction regard
ing the premises ultimately it must be derived by a non
.

,
ratiocinative
process The ultimate test of truth therefore lies in what antedates
.
, ,

reasoning which ca nnot originate but only derive certitude or prob

, ,

ability I coul d illustrate the same facts in the pro cess of induction
.

where we have probability as the result instead of ce r titude But the .

reader can do this for himself as I care only for the general pri n ciple .

A comment on Mill s theory of deduction is a natural corollary of

the remark above that all conviction certitude or probability is ulti , ,

mately obtained by non ratiocinati ve functions and only transferred by

-

these that is antecedes reasoning It will be remembered that Mill

, , .

depreciated deduction and subordinate d it entirely to induction main ,

I 86 TH E P R OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

taining that the premises of deduction were derived by induction The .

fatality of this for any certain truth whatever by ratiocinative processes

is self evident No one can claim any certitude for the inductive process
.
,

and if it supplies the premises of deduction we have no material certi

tude to start with and can obtain none in the end Besides Mill relied .

upon deductive reasoning to prove his case 1 The contradiction of thi s

with his system is apparent O f course when analyzed his conceptio n
.
, ,

of inductions turns out to be more than a ratiocinative process and in ,

c l udes experience observation etc He ought to have seen that any
, , .

such conception forbade its comparison with deduction which denitely

contained nothing more than ratiocination and if induction is to be con ,

t r a st e d with it clearly it must also represent nothing more than that

process in a modied form What Mill shoul d have observe d is the.

fact that non ratiocinative functions antecede and condition the premise s
-

of both induction and deduction in the last analysis This will be .

alluded to again probably in the dis cussion of s c ientic method All .

that I wish to enforce at present is the fact that Mill s position when

examined analyze d and developed terminates in the doctrine here

,

defended n amely that reasoning is not the origin of convi ction but the
, ,

transfer of it .

But how is this affected ! What are the conditions of this trans
fer ! The simple reply to this question is that all ratiocination is based
upon the principle of identity This is evinced in the character of the
.

middle term The principle of causality never determines it P ropo

. .

sit i o n s involving the conception of causali ty may constitute at least a

part of the m a t e r i a l content of ratiocinati ve argument but the pr i nc i ,

ple of causality does not serve as the basis upon which the syllogistic
process is founded It is noticeable even that both premises cannot
.

consist of causative or intensive propositions at the same time At least .

one of them must be extensive so as to insure the use of the principle ,

of identity in the middle te rm This identity under certain conditions

.
, ,

guarantees the transfer of the conviction felt in the premises to the

.

conclusion These conditions are t h e criteria for determining it when

.

this identity applies in a way to justify the conclusion Qu a n t i ty is .

this test Identity is the fundamental condition and quantity is the

.

test of the extent of this identity That is the quantication of terms .

,

in some denite and explicit form is the objective test of the iden
tity necessary to draw the conclusion if I may use the te rm objective ,

in the Kantian sense of true for others as well as for the subject .

I refer of course to the doctri n e of the distribution of terms But

, , .

what I wish more especially to remark about it is its n ecessity and th e

 TH E CRITERIA OF TR U T H . I 87

reason for it in the determination of the conclusion When the sub .

je ct or re a soner sees the identity expressed in the middle term , it may

not be necessary to consider quantity , but when we wish to make this
inclus ion or identity clear to others it is ne cessary to denitely quantify
our terms This is shown clearly i n the case of undistributed middle
.
,

where there is no conclusive evi dence that the minor premise is in

cluded in the major unless the major exhausts the eld of conceptio n
in which the minor must be found The identity may be there and
.

would have to be seen by the person to be converted but the only secure ,

test of the identity when it is not explicitly perceived is tha t quan

t i ca t i o n which makes it impossible that both propositions shoul d be

true without t h e inclusion of the minor in the major The distribution .

is the test of this , and insures the validity of the i nference , other things
being equal .

The manner in which quantication affects the question is apparent

in the fact that it is the ext en s i o n of concepts that determines their
numerical capacity A term or concept ta k en intensively is abstract as
.
,

the intension in general concepts does not denote the whole of any in
dividual to whi ch the term applies but only the conferential or com
,

mon property or quality But the extension indicates the individual

.

wholes denoted by the concept and when this is explicitly quantied in

denite term s we know that the predicate is afrme d or denied of every
individual in the class The general proposition does not indicate
.

explicitly whether we are referring to the whole o r a large part of the

-

class and h ence there is no criterion as to our denite meaning i n our

statements so made Whether the inclusion of the minor premise
.

c a n be assumed is not made clear unless the major is explicitly univer

sal say in the rst gure , and the consequence is that no proof is pos
,

sible to h i m demanding it Thus if I say Religion is humanizing
.
, ,

Government is useful , or P ine woo d is good for lumber I use

,

propositions which are abstract and perhaps general i n whi ch I may ,

be thinking of a certain characteristic of ideal religi o n or government

and of pine wood as a substance rather than their concrete forms and ,

consequently my statement does not explicitly indicate that I am think ing

of the individual instances as w holes They are useless for ratiocina
.

tion since they give rise to some fallacy of accident The only wa y to .

avoid this objectively is to explicitly quantify our terms and in this

way w e denitely construe our propositions in their extension and con
c r et el The limits of our statement are denitely as s ign ed in so far as
y.

the included assertions are concerned and the reasoning becomes pos
sible The identity and inclusion are explicitly indicated by the pro cess
. .
1 88 TH E P R OB L E AI S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

T he best illustration of this condition of reasoning whether explicit ,

o r implicit is in mathematics The quality or inequality existing be

.
,

tween subje ct and predicate is always indicated in mathematical propo

s i t i o n s and this assures reasoning without falla cy The predicate is .

e xplicitly quantied as well as the subje ct and the consequence is that

the moods and gures can be dismissed from view in the reasoning .

It is merely a question of quantitative as well as qualitative identity

between terms and when this is denitely indicated w e have in math
,

e m a t i cs the simplest form of reasoning and one in which the expo

s ure to fallacy is the least possible It is in this respect that I regard

.

Hamilton s do ctrine of the quantication of the predicate as corre ct

,

a n d as the n ec es sary consequence of recognizing quantity in ratiocina

tion at all I do not regard it as of any specially practical use but as

.
,

necessary in the correct theory of re asoning The rules for the sy ll o .

gism have been developed from the observation of what was necessary
in the actual use of language and the most frequent forms of reason
ing This is quite apparent in Aristotle s whole treatment of the sub
.

je c t He has obse r ve d that universal af rmative propositions coul d

.

not be converted simply and at the same time he recognized that i n

r easoning the subject in one case at least had to be distributed But as .

he did not detect that it was this denite quantication that determined
the right of inf erence formally he also did not see that theoretically the
,

predicate might be similarly quantied denitely Simply because .

it was not quantied in fact in some propositions he did not dis

cover what was theoretically correct and important Language is i h .

uen c e d by ae stheti c and e conomi c considerations as well as logical ,

and economizes the concessions to logi c all it can As nearly all our .

ordinary reasoning is done in the rst gure of the syllogism it is ,

not necessary practically to recognize distribution or explicit qua nt i

cation in all our terms as it is not needed in the predi cate in such
,

cases Consequently economy and ae sthetics that is rhetorical con

.
, , ,

siderations lead t o the omission of all denite and explicit qua n t i ca

,

tion of the predicate Aristotle did not see this and hence as he was
.
,

extra cting his rules from practice rather than discovering the reason
for the rules he failed to see that theoretically the quantication of the
,

predicate was just as essential as that of the subject Consequently I .

I thin k that Hamilton exhibited the corre ct conception of the theory of

the syllogis m when seeking to indicate the criterion of its objective
forcefulness It e xplained in his doctrine the nature of m a t h e m at
.

ical reasoning and shows how it is so secure against fallacy and why the
ordinary reasoning of every day conversation is exposed to di fculties
 TH E CRITER IA OF TR U T H 18
.
9

by the vari atio n from t h is model and exposes the liability to error
,

precisely in proportion to tha t variation .

I have referred to thi squanticatio n of the predicate for two reasons

The rst is that it is the necessary consequence of admitting the princi
ple of quantity at all into the doctrine of the syllogism The second is .

that the impli catio n of both mediate and immediate processes of

reasoning that follows fro m the doctrine is the best illustration of the
function which quantication has in ratiocination This is that quantity .

is the securest test of the i dentity so n ecessary as a condition of inference ,

as is proved by the consequence of attempting to reason with four terms .

D en it en e ss is the rst requisite of cle a r ratio cination and quantity se

cures this characteristic and if it be assumed to be unnecessary in sub
,

ject iv e inference it is certainly the clearest w ay to avoid i n de n it en ess

,

and equivocation in objective ratiocination as the actual develop ,

ment of language shows The combinatio n of quantity a n d quality i n

.

the identity has the effect of a double criterion for the meaning of our
propositions and their relation to each other and allows no excuse for
misunderstanding The transfer of conviction becomes inevitable in
.

such a case The general identity between the minor and major term s
.

might be admitted without the quantication expressing or necessitating

inclusion but there would be no evidence without this quantication
, ,

explicit or implicit that they were related in the S pecic characteristi c

,

which it is the purpose of the syllogism in the case to prove .

This view of the value and function of denite quantication of ter m

and its relation to certitude in deductive reasoning is reinforced by the
failure of induction to ach ieve this result In deduction w e have the
.

conclusion contained in the premises so that quantitatively we remai n

,

within the area of our conceptions But in induction this is not the
.

case The conclusio n extends beyond the premises and gives universals
.

which are not quantitatively included in the premises Either our mid .

dle term is not distributed in the inductive syllogis m or the mi nor and
major terms may be distributed in the conclusion when not distributed
in the premises This increase of quantity taken with the fact that
.
,

objects not merely mathematical that is units of time and space are
, , ,

qualitatively variable with a numerical increase of individuation show s ,

with what suspense of ce rt itude w e have to draw our indu ctive i nf er

en c es .
The identity expressed by the premises is only partial or the ,

absence of denite quantication of terms expressing inclusion leave s ,

the ide ntity indenitely determined and so the conclusion can have only
that probability which is suggested by the amount of evidence involved
!

and that is indicated by the numerical exte n t of the individuals included

I 9O TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y
.

in the data of the premises a fact not denitely expressed without ex

,

p li c it statement The absence of the quantication that e ffectually in

.

s ures certitude in deduction simply shows what function is performe d

by that condition while induction gets its character solely because that
,

quantication is absent from the premises , and the conclusion appears

n o t to be proved because the quanti cation there is expressed when
it is not in the premises We can then see why the s ceptic will often
.

say to a man who is reasoning inductively whether cons ciously or uh ,

cons ciously without explicitly indicating the fact that his argument
, ,

does not prove his assertion There is the recognition that the
.

conclusion is not contained quantitatively in the premises and that dis

qu a li es proof If the defendant could retort that he was only
.

arguing indu ctively the objection that the case w a s n o t proved

, ,

would have no relevancy as the reply should be inductive unless the

, ,

inductive inference made at rst was contradicted by a well k nown fa ct .

I have alluded to subjective and objective reasoning in the

dis cussion above and now this requires some expla nation What I .

w ish to call attention to is a double fun ction performed by ratiocination .

Some might call it two different processes but it may as well be called ,

a double function I express this by the distinction between i nf e r e n c e

.

an d p r o of or a rgument I mean that inference shall express the dis

.

c o v er y of the con clusion from the premises which has for its object the

enlightenment of the subject P roof or argument means that the con

.

e lusion is known or announced and that the premises must be found

for convincing another than the subject In this case the inference or .

reasoning subjectively considered must be done by the person or sub

jec t to whom the proof is presented This has already been done by .

the person who presents the argument I can des cribe them as pro .

gr ess iv e and regressive reasoning according as the conclusion is dis

,

covered from the premises or the premises discovered for proof of the
c onclusion . In the latter case the conviction regarding the con
e lusion is not transferred but is alre a dy in existence having been
, ,

transmitted by some previous reasoning or dis covered by some other

process But in the former case the conviction is communicated to
.

a nother subject this subject having to accept the reasoning to obtain

,

co n viction when it does not evince itself by the mere enunciation of the
p roposition to be proved This communication of conviction from
.

s ubject to subject is one of the most important functions of ratio cina

tion It is in fact the chief inst r ument for the distribution of
.
, ,

knowledge and assumes that it has already been dis covered ,

w hether by
experience or other reasoning so that it appears to be ,
 TH E CR I TERIA OF TR U T H .
1
91

a so cial function for the communication of truth rather than the dis
co v er
y of it when we come to admit that ultimately the acquisition of
knowledge is non ratiocinative The process of reasoning or p roof ,
-
.

f
a s the communicator of conviction , may be either a a lzo m i n e m or a d
r em . In either case its function is to establish agreement between
individuals not to dis cover knowledge as content The percep
,
.

tio n or dis covery must be made by the subject in all instances The .

proof by ratiocination is only a substitute for force or the struggle for

existence It is in the intellectual world what private contract is in
.

t h e political and represents a method of obtaining voluntary adj ustment

to social conditions instead of mere obedience under police regulations .

It is an objective uni e r of consciousness which leads to an automatic

uni er of wills in civilization In human life w e have either to ght
.

or reason We must conquer our neighbors either by force or by

.

reason ; that is let them conquer themselves by a ccepting the cogency

,

of an argument Wherever there is any love of trut h this latter course

.

is possible but where the desire for consistency and truth does not
,

exist there can be only a conict of will s and its consequences Bar .

bar is m and civilization are the t w o things between which w e have to

choose and it wil l be one or the other that we obtain according to our
, ,

adoption of force or reason as the means of securing the coordination

,

of the social will .

Now quantity is the criterion of what we can make effective in an

argument We cannot argue in general and abstra ct terms O ur
. .

propositions must be denite and de nit en ess can be enforce d only by

,

the most explicit quantication of conceptions In s uch conditions .

scepticism must either accept or deny the premises It cannot display .

indifference to the truth or error of them and cry n o n s equ i t u r so

easily but must dene its demands at once or accept at least the pre
,

sumptio u s against itself This means that quantication of terms

.

makes the issue clear and establishes the limits within which the proof
must be conducted But while it is the measure of the extent to which
.

the principle of identity is applied and the indispensable condition to

the enforcement of the conclu sion and its a cceptance by others it does ,

not originate any n ew truth nor do anything else except transfer the
conviction held in the premises to the conclusion established by it whe n
that conc lusion does not evince its o wn truth The results of the dis .

c ussi o n may be summarized as follows

( a ) Quantity is the nal test of escape from formal fallacy in rea

soning and is thus a negative criterion of ratiocinative truth or the con
v i c ti o n ,certitu de or probability transmitted by it , .
1
92 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

( b) P roof or regressive ratioci nation is not a criterion of truth to

the subject but a social instrument for its communication or the trans
fer o f conviction to another subje ct and thus becomes merely a n
,

agent in p r o dudin g consentaneous cons ciousness while the materia l

truth of the judgments concerne d m ust be subject to some other na l
test .

( c ) All ratiocination is merely a means for transferring conviction

and not originating it It may be treated as an important criterion o f
.

truth in this respect but not in any other sense The conception o f
,
.

it as a determinant of truth arises fro m its function to displace doub t

in regard to the conclus i on involved but it do es not prevent s cepticis m
, .

of the premises and so is not the test of truth that the theory o f
k nowledge requ i res .

'

( d ) A s ratiocination is not the ultimate criterion of truth som e

antecedent function must be sought to determine this Exclusiv e .

dependence on reasoning ten d s toward dogmatis m and authority a n d ,

sin ce the premises are always formally open to scepticism and the ulti
mate test must be non ratio cinative the one fundamental consideration
-

,

in the whole problem of k no w ledge is that t Ize s u bj e c t ca n n o t
es cap e p er s o n a l r esp o n s i bi l i t
y f o r s ee i ng t /ze t r u tb bi m s elf Thi s .

is apparent even in ratiocination when it is properly examined though ,

the fact is concealed by the habit of accrediting the reasoner with the
result of imparting conviction Unless the subject to whom the rea
.

soning is presented s ees the relation and identity involve d between

premises and conclusion the perception of truth escapes and no con
,

v i c t i o n is imparted . Consequently the primary test o f truth in al l

cases is the subject s own perception of it and not the external

characteristics and methods necess a ry for communicating it and trans

mitti n g conviction .

II I M M E D I A T E C O N S C I O U S N E S S
. .

We have found that ratiocination in its regressive form h a s a n

objective or social value and comes to be recognized as the main
process in the supposed credentials of knowledge because of the im
portance of its use in the c o n cen sus of opinion which is often take n

for knowledge . But the a nalysis of the process subjectively and
the fact that its social utility concealed the pri m ary source of the con
v i c t i o n which it transmits brought us to the conclusion that the ulti

mate source o f knowledge was non ratiocinative and that the sub -

e c t could not escape responsibility for personal insight This is

j .

simply to say that we are n o t obliged ultimatel y to answer all the ques
 TH E CR ITERIA OF TR U TH .
1
93

tions that the s ceptic may raise if they simply repeat his doubt about
,

each premise assumed to an s wer any given demand for proof The .

fact that the syllogism cannot prove its o w n premises that ultimately ,

w e have to determine the premises by a non ratioci n ative process

-
-

and that the s ceptic so far a ccepts perception or insight as to admit

the cogency of the reasoning when formal obje ctions to it cannot be
presented are proofs that ultimately he must accept that criterion if
, ,

criterion it be for such knowledge as is given in that w ay and the

, ,

existence of any k nowle dge at all is a presumption for its possibility

in other directions if satisfa ctory credentials can be produce d to show
,

that it does not limit itself to immediate perception .

I have taken the terms immediate cons ciousness to denote the

general class of non ratiocinative processes in the determination of
-

k nowledge They have variously been calle d intuition
. e xp er i ,

ence ,
immediate perception attuition etc I have compre, ,
.

hended what is intended by these c onceptions in the term A p p r eh en

sion I also intend to include in the acts of immediate cons ciousness
.

all the processes of Cognition or Synthetic Apprehension I have .

cal l ed them acts of Judgment but regard them as immediate rather

,

than mediate acts of mind I do not include the acts of generalization

.

or universalization of judgments This I shall consider in its place . .

Here I am treating of the primary a cts connected with and possessing

only an immediate content for cons ciousness not anticipating e xp e r i
ence in the future That is to say I am trying to as certain the
.
,

elementary data and p rocesses which determine the rst accepted

knowledge a n d if possible that
,
knowledge which is proof
against scepti cism and which either has a satisfa ctory criterion or does
not require it for assuring its validity I shall term these acts in gen .

eral Im m ediate Cons ciousness This is nothing more than the co g i t o

.

er
g o s u m of Des cartes I need not expand it It is too generally a c
. .

ce t e d as the ultimate source of elementary knowledge to be dis

p
cussed B ut I shall briey examine its sub divisions as I have indi
.

c at e d them .

1 App r ebens i o n
. Apprehension gives us the simplest datum o f
.

knowledge Some will say that it gives us no knowledge at all

. .

But this is a mere matter of de n ition If k nowledge invariably .

mea n s synthesis or synthetic content I should at once agree tha t

apprehension gives no knowledge But while we are always .

privileged to give what denition we please to our terms w e cannot , ,

on the basis of our own denitio n s condemn systems with different ,

d enitions We should have to ignore them or allow them as much

'

.
1
94 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

right as our o w n if consistently developed Besides the history of

,
.

philosophy shows that there is no monopoly of the conception of

k nowledge I have already shown that one of its fundamental
.

ideas is certitude This is the conception of it as applied to certain

.

d octrines which s cepticism takes of it though denying the possibility ,

o f it in these supposed cases Such are the existence of God of the

.
,

s oul ,
of immortality of the nature of the external world etc S cep
, .
,

t i c is m never doubts the fact of synthesis but the validity of alleged ,

r ealities at the basis of phenomena and synthesis All the explanations .

i n the world of synthesis are no answer to s cepticism but simply ,

evasions of the issue H ence when w e pretend to refute s cepticis m w e

.

are trying to vindicate some belief or certitude as to fact and reality ,

so that we cannot evade the consideration of the term knowledge

as expressive of certitude in our reply to s cepticis m and agnosticism
claiming its impossibility in certain concrete instances It may be .

true that the term is also used in certain other relations to express syn
thesis and I agree that it is But this fact is a reason for separating
,
.

its two meanings and dealing with corres pondingly distinct problems
rather than ignoring or denying one of the t w o historical imports of
the term .

I am concerned therefore at present with the question whether

, ,

scepticism can apply to absolutely all phenomena and beliefs Is there .

any datum that can se r ve both as a refutation of doubt and a basis for
beliefs which scepticis m is able to dis credit at least until they can g ive ,

a good account of themselves ! The simple knowledge of a p p r e

h en s i o n is an answer to this question The sim p le states of cons cious.

ness the apprehensions are invulnerable and absolute knowledge

, , ,

if that expression can be used There is n o way to raise a doubt .

about them Their relations are not an issue but the question whether
.
,

they are facts If they were inferred we might consider a doubt about
.

them but they are not inferences They are direct data of mind facts
,
.
,

or phenomena with which it comes into immediate contact , so to

S peak They are su ch that knowing is having and no analysis
.
,

of them into antecedent and itself as consequent is possible or into a ,

state and its implications It may be true that in all adult experience
.

no simpl e state appears in the form dened without concomitants , but

this does not prevent ou r abstraction of the conti n gent elements of such
a complex whole and indicating the irresolvable element of it I am .

simply naming the datum and act whi ch we recogn ize when we have
abstracted all that can be thought a s an associated content a nd that is

commonly supposed to be an adjunct due to experience The a p .
 TH E CRITERIA OF TR U T H .
I
9S

p rehensions are nothing more than the result of eliminating the syn
theti c elements contingently associate d with any complex conception or
'

s tate of cons ciousness and concentrating attention upon that pri m ary

fact or content which c a nnot be eliminated without a n nihilating the

consciousness itself This a ct and datum I treat as i nfallible if that
.
,

e xpression can be adopted without being misunderstood It is sum .

m a r iz e d , as remarked above in the co g i t o e r g o s u m of Des cartes ,

,

which is simply the general term for the various concrete manifesta
t ions indi cated in sensation self cons cious ness re cognition etc
,
-
The , , .

f acts of c ons ciousness a r e n o t subject to the court of s cepticis m We .

m a y have all sorts of doubt or discussion as to what the facts of con

s c i o us n ess are , as to where the line shall be drawn between what are

f a cts and what are not facts of cons ciousness but in all historical forms,

of s cepticism enough has been admitted as fact of immediate con

s c i o us n ess to determine the limits of that do ctrine , and however men

h ave quarrele d about de n itions at this point they have agreed ,

t hat the facts of conscious ness are beyo n d dispute , though the limits

o f such facts are not al w ays determined at the same point Fo r ex .

a mple ,
all woul d agree that sensation is a fact of cons ciousness but ,

n o t all would agree that the existence of an external

reality corre
s p o n ding to it was a fact of consciousness When w e know what the
.

t estimony of cons ciousness is it has to be accepted as nal , and this

,

q ualifying statement , when we know does not imply that all men
,

tal states are subject to su ch an hypothetical qualication but only tha t ,

t h e limits of im mediate knowledge are not always clearly dened

i n the history of O pinion .As regards its o wn states the view has
n ever been questioned . The dispute h a s been whether immediate

knowledge w as limited to subjective phenomena and n one at ,

all regarding the certitude of its o w n states and affections .

In thus assigning certitude and nality to the facts of apprehension

I am not conditioning its validity i n any w a y by supposing that it
applies only to the normal and sane s ubject I intend that it shall be
-

t rue of the insane as well as the sane The elementary knowle dge
.

of the mind must be as acceptable in the case of the insane as the s ane .

T h e testimony of cons ciousness has to be a c cepted everywhere a n d in

a l l conditions
. This does not mean that all whi ch claims to be such
t estimony must be accepte d but that when such testimony is once
,

d ened properly it is the nal court of belief Nor does it mean that .

any statement that an insane person makes about hi s feelin gs or ex per i

e n ces is to be accepted . What the insane person actually feels or
e xperiences is , to any one else than himself a matter of inductive ,
1
96 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

investigation and not o f immediate ce r titude to any one but himself .

It is not his statements about himself that are acceptable or nal but ,

only his actual States of cons ciousness What they are may never be .

known by any one but himself The same is true of the sane It is
. .

not the sanity of any individual that guarantees the testimony of h is

cons ciousness but the fact that he has the cons ciousness His sanity
,
.

protects his statements about it and nothing more We can accept the .

statements of the normal and sane man more readily but we kno w ,

nothing more about his affections than w e do of t h e insane In a ll .

cases the subject alone is the direct witness of his experiences What .

any one else than the subject feels or directly knows whether sane ,

or insane is purely a matter for inductive inference

, .

It may be contended that this position very much limits the area o f
positive and certain knowledge and I shall not contest the supposi
,

tion as it is not my purpose to extend our assured knowledge
,

beyond its legitimate boundaries All that I am c oncerned with is the

.

facts of the case and these assign as distinct limits to scepticism as t o

dogmatis m I regard universal s cepticism as impossible as universal
.

dogmatism even though it be desirable I do not regard either o f

, .

them as desirable and I think that scepticism when it is dened and ,

rational is quite as useful in civilization as belief But it is itself

, .

defe n sible only when it can admit at least a modicum of positive

k nowledge , which it must do to accept the legitimacy of formal
ratiocination and even the assertion of universal doubt As a fact t h e .

s ceptic has usually admitted the existence of positive k nowledge

within the limits of impressions sensory experience a nd imme ,

diate conscious ness so that it is not necessary here to dene the prob
,

lem in any but the s ceptic s o w n terms to justify the functions here

assigned to apprehension The amount of positive knowledge

.

obtained by it may be very small but such as it is it is denitely ,

assured and a ful crum is secured for the explanation and determina
,

tion of all complex conception s involving the facts of apprehension a s

their basis Dogmatism may have to yield as much as scepticis m in
.

the end But I am not primarily concerned with these questions

.

beyond dening the elementary phenomena in the eld of positiv e

knowledge so far as its non synthetic character is concerned -

Whether there is any other eld of such conviction is not a matter o f

interest at present and I am also willing to say is not a matter of
, ,

deduction from the acceptance of this pri m ary knowledge .

There must be no misunderstanding as to the area of this positive

know l edge I do not include in it the conceptions of external
.
 TH E CRI TERIA OF TR U T H .

objects as we Ordinarily ass ume In fact such conceptio n s as trees .

,

stones horses ,
,

houses , and much more s uch as substance

God ,
cause are not the obje cts of apprehension The objects

,

.

of this pro cess are far simpler They are the facts of cons ciousness . .

These are all that can be apprehended These are the rst data of .

assured knowledge I do not say that they are the only things
.

known but they are the only things properly apprehended in the
,

technical sense of that term and as dened My knowledge , that .

is assured truth , may extend far beyond my mental states but w e do ,

not app r eben d anything more as that is te chnically dened If there ,

.

are any functions of cons ciousness which can present other assured
truth they remain still to be dis cussed , and whether also they are
capable of delivering such knowledge whe n supposed to exist
remains to be determined But apprehension is circums cribed by what .

we call the facts of conscious ness This su f ces to show in the prob .

lem of epistemolo gy that there is one p rovince in whi ch certit ude is

possible in which one fact or conception implicated in the term
,

knowledge is certie d and placed beyond the corrosive solvent of
s cepti cism With this conclusion I may turn to the next type of
.

immediate knowledge .

2 . Co g n i t i o n I come n o w to treat of what I shall call the syn

.

thetic pro cesses and pro ducts of knowledge Apprehension is not .

s ynthetic It is a simple a ct with a simple object of cons ciousness

. .

If I may adopt a barbarous expressio n very current in philosophy it ,

is identical with itself But Cognition is complex or synthetic in that

.

we have to take account of the mental state and its meaning or im pli ,

c ation i f that last word c a n be permitted

,
We begin in this act to .

r ecognize relations and to interpret phenomena It is the rise of judg .

ment in fact is elementary judgment as a previous chapter has ex

, ,

plained Also as explained it compr ehends three types , namely Per

.
,

c ept i o n C o n er c e t i o n and Apperception These I shall treat as the

p , p , .

elementa ry and immediate ju dgments I distinguish them from what .

must be regarded as mediate ju dg m ents The i mmediate judgments .

o f which I here speak are a combination of presentation or a

pp reh e n
s ion and interpretation or the applic tio n of a category These also I
a .

r egard as gi ving certain k nowledge beyond the attack of s cepti cis m .

But certitu de is not the only fact involved in cognition A p p r e .

h ensio n gives certitude as its main characteristic It gives nothing .

else however as a mark of knowledge

But cognition or judg
, ,
.

ment adds to this mark what I sha ll call objectivi ty externality or , ,

a n object of co n sciousness other than t h e presentation itself on which

1
98 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H y .

attention may be concentrated That is to say the meaning of a give n.

presentation or fact of consciousness is asserted and this meaning i m

plies the existen ce o f a correlate to the fact given by apprehension .

In sensation it is the external reality
In mentation it is the sub .

jec t In phenomena it is the cause or antecedent In a relative

.
, .

it is the corr elative fact The m ea n i ng points to some fact beyond

.

the present fact Cognition interprets as well as apprehends It as

. .

sociates another content with the present fact , or involves synthesi s

which is this associative a ct It is the process which gives knowl
.

edge its transsubjective implication its transphenomenal aspect it s , ,

import as expressed in the idea that knowing is more than being

or having a state of co n s ciousness The fundamental question is .

whether consciousness does thus trans cend itself Can it k now .

anything but its o w n states !

In regard to the assume d possibility that cons ciousness tran
scends itself in k nowledge of the i nterpreting or synthetic sort ,

as conceived by the realist a ccording to the idealist s notion of that

,

doctrine there is a curious illusion in the minds of most if not all

,

idealists This class of philosophers is perpetually reiterating state

.

ments wh ich it supposes a rea l ist cannot admit without intellectual

suicide This statement is variously expressed
. We cannot assert .

any universe except that whi ch is an object of knowledge We

cannot k now anything except the object of consciousness We .

cannot know anything except in relatio n to consciousness E sse .

is p er c ip i etc , .

No w these statements so far from being important and conclusive

,

of a particular system of philosophy are so equivocal that nothing c a n ,

be inferred from then without analysis and denition They may be

. .

treated as simple truisms tautological propositions in which subject

, ,

and predicate are absolutely identical in which case no philosophy ,

whatever can be founded upon them Synthetic propositions are .

t h e condition of implied truth If knowledge be dened as the.

present state of the mind as a functional activity limited to the space

,

and time of the moment in which as an individual presentation

oc curs that is to say if knowledge means that the knowing
, ,

act and the thing known are one and the same thing then it is ,

clear enough that we cannot assert the existence of anything but what
is an object of consciousness But this obje ct be comes the men .

tal state itself and the existence of anything other than it outside ,

consciousness not in consciousness cannot be known

, I am not , .

here u s ing the term in any necessa r y s ense of certitude but of compas s ,
 TH E CRITER IA OF TR U TH .
1
99

or content But if it be of the very nature of k nowledge as syn

.

thetic as interpretative as a ssigning meaning and necessary implica

, ,

tion , that is , if knowing means that the object of consciousness

may be something other than the state knowing the n there is ,

nothing to hinder the subject from asserting t h e existence of a

reality whose existence does not depend on the act knowing 1t
though the assertion of this existence does depend on the k n o win g

It 15 simply a question whether you shall dene the k nowledge i n
solipsistic terms as the relativist of the Sophistic type does or in terms
, ,

of those w h o m ak e judgment a process referring to fa cts other than

t h e act effecting the reference Conscious ness is the r a t i o c o g n o s ce n d i
.
,

not the r a t i o es s en d i of re ality in the minds of all but the solip
,

sist and the s ceptic of a certain type The consequence is that the .

p ropositions which I have mentioned have only two possible i nt er p r e

t a t io n s
. O n e is that the existence of reality is convertible with the
mental act which cognizes it and the other is that this existence is not
,

convertible by the mental state but only evidenced by it The former .

conception limits reality to states of conscious ness in the individual

having the m and so limits knowledge to these The latter admits
,
.

that something may trans cend consciousness as an object and so is

n either created by the act of knowing nor identical with it in time
and space As I have already pointed out the idealist and realist
.

are at one when we eliminate solipsism from the interpretatio n of

the idealist s position their further differ e nees being on the n a t u r e of

,

this reality other that the state knowing it rather than the exist
ence of it .

Now in apprehension or presentation knowi n g and being are

one and the same thing The object and the act knowing I t
.

are the same If we take this conception of the phenomenon of

.

knowledge as the one to dene our term the universe of knowl ,

edge and the universe of reality are identica l ; that is one and ,

the same thing No distinction of time and space can be made be

.

tween them This is the position of the scepticism in Sophistic spec

.

u l a t i o n and the later Academy But subsequent philosophy has altere d

.

its conception of the term k nowledge without altering the phrase

ology which limited what is assertible to the subjective menta l acts .

It has come to make knowledge convertible with j u dg m en t rather

than prese nta tio n and hence in c ludes in it ass er tibi lity of something
which is not the mental act itself and yet tries to d iscredit realistic ,

conceptions by repeating assertions whi ch originated in a solipsistic

doctrine and get all their contradiction with realistic ideas fro m that
,
2 00 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS O P H Y .

origin But as we have come to assume that an essential element of

.

knowledge at least of the synthetic type is j u dg m e n t which is cer
, ,

t a i n ly not a presentation but a positing assertory act of mind we have

, ,

a notion that implies the existence or a belief in the existence of , ,

something other than the state which is ne cessary for the knowing .

This is only to say that we have extended the meaning of the term to
mean more in ce rtain conditions than the presentation which was the
solipsist s and sceptic s original limitation of the term Consequently

.

the opposition between the idealist and the realist as I have already ,

shown above is nullied, .

There is another way to establish the same conclusion When any .

realist or simple minded man supposes or asserts that cons ciousness

-

transcends itself in the act of knowledge synthetic knowl ,

edge the idealist w h o wants us to b elieve that he is putting a very
,

profound question will a sk him H o w do you kn ow this ! ,

If the

answer is not clear and con clusive the questioner thi n ks that his c ase is
won But the fact is that this question should never be answered at
.

all until its meaning is explained It is not so clear a query as is usu.

ally supposed It is often put in the spirit of the sceptic who assumes
.
,

that unless you can show him bo w you know a thing you have no
right to your belief in the fact asserted or supposed No w this ques .

tion is equivocal It may mean that the interrogator is asking for

.

exp l a na t i o n or that he is asking for p r o o

, f The former may be rational .

and the latter may not But its form covers the irrational question
.

by the rational If I am asking th e explanatory question I am see k ing

.

the explanation of an admitte d fact the process or cause which will ,

explain the fact No w all that the man means who supposes that cog
.

n it iv e knowledge is transsubjective is that it is a fact that con ,

s ci o us n ess so trans cends itself and he does not care so far as the ,

validity of the fact is concerned whether it is explicable or not T h e

, .

failure to explain it will not discredit the fact It simply indicates that .

it is not so intelligible as may be desired but it is not questioned as a ,

fact by the failure to assign its cause O n the other hand if the ques .
,

tion means that we must have proof that the fact of the alleged trans ,

c e nde n c y of consciousness in cognitive judgment must be proved we ,

may answer that it cannot be proved if we are so inclined If cogu i , .

tive ju dgment be dened as an immediate a ct of mind no proof is pos

sible It is only m edi a t e knowledge that is probative It is im
. .

possible to prove immediate k

nowledge except that proof ,

be convertible with the experie n ce intuition insight personal t e , , ,

a l iz a t i o n in cons ciousness of the subject himself But ratiocina tive

, .
 TH E CRITER IA OF TR U T H . 20 1

p roof cannot be applied to what is denitely immediate We may be .

w rong in so limiting cognition to immediate knowledge but when ,

we exp ressly do so the s ceptic cannot ask us for ratio cinative proof of
,

it or of the obje ct which is said to be given by it The fact is that

,
.

t h e scepti c s question is a survival either of the solipsisti c position or

o f hypothetical Realism Where reality was made an inference .

fr om presentations it was legitimate enough to ask for the proof of its

e xistence as all inference or perhaps rather a l l assertion that is in r e
, ,

a lity inference requires proof or involves the fairness of the demand

, ,

for it But when both idealist and realist assume that cogni tive
.

knowledge or judgment of this early synthetic type as I ha ve de ,

ned it is immediate the demand for proof o f the ratiocinative
, ,

s ort is not rational But the rationality of the explanatory question

.

conceals this characteristic and only an analysis of the question will

reveal the fact F u rther also it is n oticeable that the question is
.
, ,

often asked with the implied assertion that the absence of the proof
demanded is equivalent to the non validity of the assumed objective -

knowledge That is the want of proof discredits the claim while
.
, ,

the existence of proof determines its validity This assumption c a n .

be made only in that period of intellectual development whe n ratio cina

tion is supposed to be the criterion of truth But I h ave shown here .

that ratiocination only transmits certitude and validity and does not

originate it and consequently the ultimate criterion of knowledge
, ,

if criterion it be , is some immediate mental process itself incapable of ,

s yllogistic proof The s ceptic therefore cannot ask the question at

.
, ,

all , except as an explanatory query unless he maintains that the belief ,

i n objective reality is mediate instead of immediate But as pre .
,

v i o usly explained the de mand for the cause or pro cess which explains
,

h o w we know the objective admits the fa ct and the fact of it is all ,

that the realist requires for the justication of his view that cons cious
n ess can assert the existence of events or realities beyond the limits
i n space and time of the subject , or of the particular mental state whi ch
makes the af rmatio n .

But the sceptic may put a nother questio n which appears to continue
the doubt about the validity of judgments regarding an external r e

ality. He may ask the assertor What is this reality ! Suppose

I assert that consciousness can know something beyond its own

states the doubter may ask me What is it !
, This is often an equiv ,

a le nt to the demand for proof which I have already dis cussed .

,

But its real import is a d emand to give some accou nt of the n a t u r e

o f the reality af rmed No w there are only t w o ways in which w e .
2 02 TH E P R OB L E III S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

can tell what a thing is We can name the class to which it belongs

.
,

that is dene it in regard to its qualities as a member of a genus o r

, ,

we can describe it in terms of what it d o es Usually the demand means .

the former and hence if made by the philosopher is understood to be

,

a requirement for a denition of the reality in terms of its confer

entia an d differentia its distinctive and its generi c properties It is
,
.

quite possible that such a denition of the ultimate reality of cog

n i t i o n cannot be given My own position is that it cannot be given
. .

As I have already shown in a previous chapter Apperception is n o t t h e

process for determining either the fact or the nature of ultimat e
reality but that P erception and C o n e r c e t i o n are the means f o r
, p p
this that the ultimate nature of anything must be expressed in term s
,

of the principle of Causality and not of Ide ntity But it is not n e ces .

sary to insist upon the truth of this doctrine in order to support t h e

contention here The primary question of Cognition as I am here de
.

fending it as a source of immediate k nowledge

of an objective
,

reality is not m iza t a thing is but wbet /zer it is other than sub
, ,

je ct iv e mental states All that is here maintained is the Cogn itio n

.

in Perception and C o n p e r cep t io n assert t /za t an objective reality
exists not wba t it is in any such terms of expli citness as are demande d
,

by the question The capacity for giving a denition of its primary

.

deliverances is not necessary to its validity but may be useful in prob ,

lems of intelligibility or communi cation In other words a si m ilar .

,

answer can be given to this question as was given to the previous o n e

discussed The inability to tell what external reality is in term s
.

of principle of Identity does not dis credit the fact of it but in reality
assumes it to be a fact and demands further knowledge regarding it:
rather than justi cation for the assertion when it is the simple reex ,

of experience itself or the necessary interpretation of a presenta

,

tion when that is conceived as a related event Ability to dene r e .

ality does not justify the belief in it but mak es the assertion of it intel
,

ligible to others in terms of their experience The result here is .

analogous to that in r atiocination denition only transmits intelligence ,

but does not verify or justify the judgment originally .

It is often cert ain metaphysical interests that prompt to the ques

tion The idealist who thinks that his theory must be sustained in
.

order to have a foothol d against Materia l ism and who assumes u n wa r

r a nt a bly that Realism leads to this Materialism raises the question a s

to what obje ctive rea l ity is that he may avail himself of all th e
,

sceptical insinuations suggested by the failure to answer the que r y

in a manner satisfactory to him that he may m a k e the existence o f
,
 TH E CR I TE R IA OF TR U TH . 20
3

matter an object of doubt or contention But I am not at all c o n .

cerned with this controversy one w ay or the other We may make .

objective reality anything we please whether it suits either idealist ,

or materialist All that I am contending for is that cognition in Percep

.

tion and C o np er cep t io n tra n s cends the subjective state which they are ,

as states of consciousness as functions of the subject and that the r e

, ,

ality whi ch they attest is not the same thi n g as the mental state even ,

if it is l i ke the mental state making the assertion Whether the objective .

reality posite d by judgment is like or unlike similar or diverse from , ,

the mental state making the assertion is wholly indifferent to the issu e
with whi ch I a m concerned This is the mere questio n of fact whether
cons ciousness can know anything but itself the actio n s a n d reaction s ,

of the subject Let me summarize the arguments for this fact

. .

( a ) As I have already indicate d the idealist admits all that is con

tended for when he refuses to a ccept solipsis m as the proper in t er p r e
t a t i o n and conception of his doctrine Solipsistic phenomenalism .

denies the possibility of knowing anything but the subject s o w n

mental states But I have shown that idealism and realis m are agree d
.

on the point that there is something else known than one s o wn

states that a social consciousness at least is admitted whic h mean s
,

that there are other individual c o n c i o usn ess es besides our o w n Thi s .

is all that is necessary to sustain the contentio n here advanced The .

argument however is only a d k o m i n e m

, ,
.

( b) P henomen a lism which assumes the l aw of coexistence and se

,

qu e n ce i n events supposes this objectivity quite as distinctly as the

,

believer in causality The phenomenalist does not think that events are
.

self s uf cien t or that they stand alone H e endeavors to make the m

-
.

intelligible by seeking for their antecedents or coexistent events as

sumed to explain them The externality of one event to another is
.

a fundamental assumption of its theory and it dis tinguishes as denitely

between external reality and the states of cons ciousness as bet ween
the different mental states Besides the phenomenalist is as opposed
.

to solipsism as any other philosopher and a ccepts a n external reality .

This argument again is only a d Izo m i n e m

, ,
.

( c ) The implication of the term phenomenon itself i s tha t there

something besides this in existence It is a pur e ly relative term li k e

father or slave
, It has no meaning except in reference to that
.

which phenomenalizes There are just t w o pertinent meanin gs to the

.

term The rst is that of appearance which is the usual denition
.
,

of it as given by the i nterpreters of Kant Nothing is clearer than t h e .

fact that appeara nce is pu rely a relative term and implies that s o m e
20
4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

t /zi ng appears We may not be able to dene this something

.

in terms of a pp er c ep t io n o r class kind and it is not necessary as I have ,

shown to do so in order to accept the fact of it because it is the prin

, ,

c i l e of causality that determines the existence of this something

p .

But phenomenon and appearance have no intelligible import
unless they imply this correlate which indicate s that we must tran

s cend phenomena in our k nowledge O f course if knowl .
,

edge be made synonymous with having sensations or mental states

.

and nothing more it will be true that we k now phenomena and

nothi n g more But if knowledge mean conviction that somet hing
.

else is a certain or probable fact a rational object of belief or certitude

, ,

then we may be said to know more than phenomena in the n ec es
s it
y of accepting the correlate as a necessary object of cons ciou sness
although this object ca m1 o t be a presentation .

The second pertinent meaning of the ter m phe nomenon will

l ead to the same conclus ion It is that of
. event or change

.

T h e rst meaning has generally had a avor of subjective import ,

because it is the conception usually adopted by the idealist and from

the general nature of his system the suggestion is that of mental states .

But the meaning change o r event is somewhat diff erent It is .

adopted in deference to the very idea of a n external reality It .

means to describe the transient facts of both internal and external exist
ence and hence assumes the external in its very primary import
Besides change is also a relative term implying that something
changes Change attaches itself to something as a mode of it and
cannot hang in the air so to speak as a self subsistent fact It always
, ,
-
.

has a correlate so that we can be said to know more than change

,

when that is k nown at all assuming of co u rse that import of the

,

term know which I have explained That is all that is necessa r y . .

I must emphasize however the fact that in assuming the existence

, , ,

of a direct and certain knowledge of reality whether external ,

or internal other than mere mental and subje ctive states I do not
, ,

mean to assert or imply that we at the same time can determine wk a t

this reality is That may remain an open question for settle m ent
.

by other m eans as the case may be All that I am contending for is

, .

that we have the right to assert on the basis of perceptive and co n p er

c e t iv e cognition that there is more than mere phenomena or sub
p
je ct iv e states within the range of certitude What it is I might even .

never know so far as this fa ct is concerned I would even admit
, .

and assert that apperception can never give this reality in the rst
conception of it Apperception may say s omething about it i n co m
.
 TH E CR I T E R IA OF TR U T H . 2 05

parison with any other reality obtainable but it does not originally ,

give it The prin c iple of identity is not qualied to determi ne a

.

reality other tha n phenomena in any case though it may say ,

something about its nature either in comparison with other like

realities or in respe ct of the uniformity of its behavior But it can .

not primarily determine it The principle of causality is that whi ch

.

determines the existence of more than phenomena but it does not ,

determine the ki n d in any terms of co mmon qualities as does appe t

c ept i o n a n d the principle of identity F rom the standp o int of app er -

c e pt i o n the ulti m a te reality may remai n unknowable which is

only to say that it could not be dened in terms of co nfe r ent ia and dif
fe r ent ia that is of k i n d
, , The knowledge of it as determined by
.

the principle o f causality is only that of the fa ct not of the nature ,

or kind except i n so far as nature is expressed in what reality does .

I mean therefore to maintain nothing more in this do ctrine of the

, ,

immediate cognition of reality than the fact of it and shall leave

the determination of its nature to further and more complicated
investigation O nly one step at a time can be take n i n the theory of
knowledge whose condition is an analysis of the complex product
as the mature cons cious ness nds it .

I must still further remark for the reader that I am not assuming
at present any distinction between empirical and a priori proc

esses of acquiring knowledge I wish my state m ents to be true
.

on either theory being true or false The immediate knowledge .

which I am defending is intended to be entirely independent of that

controversy that so dominated the philosophical discussions of the last
century I do not intend that im mediate knowledge shall be con
.

dit i o n e d upo n the settlement of that issue or the choice of either side

of it Whether empirical or a priori
. I m ean that what is ,

given in cognition shall be certain .

But there is a de cided limitation to the area of this certain and i m

mediate knowledge whi ch I have supposed I intend that it shall .

extend no further than the judgment of reality involved in p r es en t

fact I am not explaining or justifying the process in those judgments
.

which are called universal and ne cessa r y These must be subje cted
.

to further and di fferent investigation I am explaining and justifying

.

only what I shall call the s i ng u l a r a n d p r es en t judgment It is the .

synthesis of an apprehension and a principle of judgment or catego r y .

The application of cau s ality or identity to a n apprehension results in

the interpretation of it at the moment either as pro ceeding from a
given cause or as related in kind to another fact It doe s not pro .
2 06 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

nounce upon its universality or ne cessity T h e simplest illustration .

of this is the impersonal j udgment F or example It rains It .
,

snows ,
It is clear It reads well It sounds beautiful
,
It is , ,

e vident etc The impersonal j udgment aims to express the fact of

, .

a n event or phenomenon and does not sp ec ic a l ly indicate the sub
,

j c et or cause It assumes a cause or ground in general but does not

.
,

name it in terms of comparison with other S pecic facts or realities .

O f course the order of ,

k nowledge is predicate then subject as is

a lways the case but the order of statement is that of
,
reality subject ,

rst and predicate after ward conforming to the fact that the o r d o co g ,

n i t i o n i s is the reverse of the o r d o n a t u r es But the immediate judg '

.

ment to w hi ch I give certitude and synthetic and objective cha racter is ,

l imited to the present experience and its reference to a subject

whether we are certain of w k a t that subject is or not Also whether .

in apperception the conn ection between subject and predicate as i m

plied in the attributes involved is accidental or necessary is not as
s umed . It is only the present fact of identity or di fference whether ,

contingent or necessary that is concerned No questions but the fa ct ,

.

o f present reality are involved in the assumption of certai n imme

diate knowledge of the syntheti c type as expl ained We might .

exten d the illustrations of it to su ch judgments as This is white or ,

This shines etc But however we express it the immediate co gn i
,
.

tions to w ln ch I intend to assign a certitu de probably as great as in

apprehens ion are only the reference of a present fact of experience
to its cause or its kind .

O b e c t i o n s There is a certain class of phenomena w h ich will

3 .
j .

appear as objections to this supposed c ertitude and validity of co gn i

tive judgments T hey are those of Illusions H allucinations and
.
, ,

Dreams In all of these we form judgments of reality and then are

.

supposed to discover their error Until that error is discovered or .

,

presumably dis covered the conviction of the validity of the previous

,

judgment is as strong as that of apprehension But any one of the .

phenomena mentioned seems to remove the right to any such convi e

tion The force of the argument lies in the fact that as experiences
.

as facts of consciousness as apprehensions they have to be accepted , , .

They have one common characteristic with the facts of normal con
s ci o us ness n amely the characteristic of being a fact of cons ciousness
, , ,

the difference being only that in one a corresponding reality is not

valid as it is supposed to be in the other namely in the n ormal con , ,

s c i o usn ess It would seem then that the only knowledge of which
.

we can be absolutely certain is that of apprehension and that al l the

 TH E C R I TE R I A OF T R U TH .
20
7

r est more or less doubtful At any rate if we can sustain the cer
is .
,

t it u de of cognition as dened , it would appear that w e should have to

base it on the distin ction between normal and abnorma l cons ciousness .

We found in apprehension that this distinction w a s n o t require d and

that apprehens ions were valid without regard to the question of sanity
or insanity But it would appear that if we are to mak e good the
.
,

contention in regard to the uni v ersal validity of cognition it must be

based on its limitation to the normal cons ciousness and some criterion
f o r distinguishing between the normal and abnormal min d .

I do not conceal from myself the fact that there is a real problem
here of some interest and perhaps of importan ce in the theory of

k nowledge Nor shall I venture on a reply to these obje ctions in
.

an
y dogmatic S pirit It is possible that the answer that I shall present
.

may appear to m a ny as unsatisfactory But be this as it may I can .

,

only p resent su ch facts and arguments as are accessible and if they ,

a r e not conclusive the case must be maintained with reservations .

Let us ta k e rst the phenomena of illusions N o w it is peculiar .

to them that the very conception of illusio n implies a standard of

reality by whi ch to determine their existence We could never dis .

c over a h illusion unless there were some reality from which they
a r e a variation and exception and by whi ch their nature is estimated .

That is to say w e should never dis cover illusions but for this variation
,

and no distinction could be drawn for polemical uses between the

real and the unreal Just in proportion to the certitude tha t
.

there are illusions would we have a certitude of the reality whi ch

determines them .

But there is another fact of much greater importance tha n the one
just indicated and perhaps more satisfactory as an answer to the ques
,

tion It is that an
. illusion is a false inference or due to a false ,

inference , from a fact of experience It is not O pposed to co gn i
.

tive judgment as I dened it , but only to i nf e r e n t i a l judgment T h us .

I see an object before me whi ch I ta k e to be an orange No w .

orange denotes a group of properties more numerous than may be

presented in c o n p er cep t io n I may have only the visual percept
.

of it and I infer from previous experience that the tactual and

,

s avory properties will be found in the object under the appropriate

conditions If I put the case to the proper test to decide the truth of
.

this inference I may nd it erroneous The object may be a piece of

.

soap like a n orange in its visual appearance Hen ce I call my .

previ ous judgment an illusion Cognition does not require that I
.

should immediately know that the merely visual object should be

2 08 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

an orange but that before I pronounce su ch a conclusion I must

,

have the adequate co n p er cep t io n All that cognition gives according .

,

to the denition and explanatio n of it is the existence of a cause othe r ,

than the presentation and not that it should be either a complex of

,

attributes or any specic object of experience involving memory
and inference That is given in all illusions as well as other states
.

assumed to be free from their defects We always assume that both .

the illusion and the experience which turns out to be an illusion are
caused have a subject though w ka t that subject or cause may be is not
, ,

determined by this merely general fact The cause is n o t necessarily .

the fact or expected fact that is inferred i n fact one might say is , , ,

never that but the reex of the actual experience we have rather
,

than the ground of some inferred and possible experience This is .

to sa y that cognition and its certain knowledge still holds good in

illusions The denite ground or cause of them may be inf erred in so
.

far as that is supposed to be identical with the ground of the inferred

experience To illustrate when I infer that the visual object
.

,

before me is an orange I suppose that under the approp riate
,

co nditions the tactual and savory qualities will be present in con

s c i o us n e ss which is to say that I should expect to nd that the cause
,

of the present sensation is the same ( n u m e r o e a d em ) as that which

would explain the corresponding tactual and savo ry qualities when
realized O nly co np er c ep t io n could ever deci de the truth of this infer
.

ence If co n p e r c ep t i o n be applied and the inferen ce is not veried we

.

say that the original supposition was an illusion and this means only ,

that the inferred sameness of the cause for the visual object with that
for experiences of another k ind is wrong not that there is no ca use ,

or object at all present It will appear then that cognition as I have

.
, ,

dened it namely the process of ai r m in g the simple fact that of a

, ,

reality other than the phenomenal event is still valid and holds ,

true even of illusions .

A si m ilar answer to the objection fro m hallucinations can be made .

They d iffer from il lusions only in degree They are more constant .

and xed and the ab normality is perhaps more decided But whether
,
.

the sa m e or not in k ind with illusions the same argument applies The , .

question is not whether the cause assigned by the hallucinated mind i s

the correct one or not but it is whether it is right in assigning any
,

cause or ground at all It will satisfy all the conditions of cognition

.

if n o other cause or ground is assigned than that of the subject him

self and hallucinated persons probably refer the experiences or
,

presentations invariably to themselves as their own This self is some .

 TH E CR I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
20
9

thi ng other th a n the phenomenon even if it is not external in,

the sense of outside the organism .

A further reply is possible The theory of h allucinations in physi

.

ology and psychology m a intains that t h ey are not purely spontaneou s

pheno mena but the effe ct of secondary stimuli that is of stimuli a s
, , ,

foreign to the brai n centers involve d in the hallucination as are stimuli

outside the body The only difference between them and the normal
.

experience is in the denite c o Or din a t io n between stimulus and sensa

tion in the normal case and the i n co Or d i n at io n of the hallucination s
with their stimulus That is to say the hallu cinated mind infers the
.
,

identity of the cause of its experience in the real hallucinatio n with

the cause in the normal experience The error is th e n in the infer
.

ence and not in the fa ct of an external ground of the phenomenon .

The physiological explanation assume s as necessary for its nature the

existence of an external reality quite as certainly as in normal ex
p e r ie n c e , only it does not require the normally specic cause .

No w as dreams are only a type of hallucination and generally ex

plained by some organic stimulus they and their relation to the cogu i
,

tion of reality are to be explained in the same way In additio n .

to this fact they are also hallucinations that lie midway between the
properly abnorm a l ph e nomena of that name and the illusions of the
wakeful state Consequently they are open to the study of the sub
.

ec t in his normal and wakeful condition as the ordinary hallucina

j
tions are not It is i nte resting to note therefore that the ve ry fact of
.
, ,

the existence of dreams as different from the experiences of the

,

normal wak ing state requires the wa k ing judgment for its determina
,

tion That is w e can determine the illusory character of dreams by

.
,

comparison with the waking life If the wak ing life and its judg
.

ments are t h e s tandard we can assign dreams an illusory nature only

,

on the assumption that the reality of the wa k ing life is a bsent .

But it is perhaps more important to remark that the drea m life is not
usually characterized by the reective feeling of either reality or
'

u nreality but that the distinction arises only in the waking and t e
,

e ct iv e state a n d if once we assume that this latter is the standard

,

r ather than the bare a pprehensions of s leep w e must a ccept the con

sequence which is the interpretation o f the dream according to the

principles involved in t h e waking and reective con s ciousness More .

over if w e accept the view that dreams are only the wa k ing state of
,

some one or two senses while the others are still a s leep we can under

stand that dreams i n their sense of reality are simply the result of
the inference whic h even t h e normal wak ing consciousness would
2 10 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

draw under the same circumstances but is prevented in this n ormal

,

state from drawi n g by the presence of the normal corrective some ,

space or sensory fact incompatible with the inferred fact Dreams are .

thus illustrations of both illusion and hallucinations an d do not stand

in the way of s o m e reality as the object of conscious ness though ,

it is not specically the inferred reality which we should expect in

normal experience . The cause or stimulus representing the causal
,

reality is secondary
, .

But while we thus v indicate the certitude and objectivity of c o gn i

tion in perception and c o np e r cep t io n w e do not obtain for them a ny
large area of application The knowledge given by them is small
.

or represents a small area Both app rehension and cognition are con
.

ned to the present facts of experience or consciousness The .

former has n one of the material content of judgment as synthetic ,

though judgment h a s apprehension for its basis B ut j udgment in so .

far as dened and in so far as it represents the kind of knowle dge

with which we are at present concerned namely the simplest facts of , ,

certitude and objectivity deals with the present data of apprehension

, ,

and all that it can pronounce with condence is the existence of an i n

d en i t e ground o r cause which can be sp e c i ca l ly determined o nly by
further methods The area of this certain and objective knowledge
.

becomes very small and it contains very little of those ideas which
,

represent the main interest of science and philosophy We have a c .

complished very little in the p roblem of k nowledge so far as it
,

intere sts men generally and we may not be able to get any farther .

We have found that there is a vast system of conceptions beliefs and ,

convictions which represent various combinations of apprehension ,

cognition association and inference whose validity is not subje ct to so

,

easy an explanation as a reference to these elementary processes of

apprehension and cognition The investigation of these complex proc
.

esses and the measure of their validity and invalidity depends upon the
criteria supplied by s cientic method But prior to the discussion of
.

this is the fact of generalization or the universalizing of judgments .

We have found th a t apprehension gives a present fact and cognition

gives only a present singular ju dgment Knowledge however as
.
, ,

usually conceived involves judgments which are supposed to be uni

,

versal and some of them necessary

Are these on the same foot
.

ing as the present cognitions !

G en er a l i z a t i o n We have already found h o w generalization
4 .

tak es place a n d that it is a process of extending a judgment beyond

the present moment or the present locus of experience It rem a ins .
 TH E CR I TE R I A OF T R U TH .
21 1

to examine the validity of this act Su ch ju dgments always involve .

some form of plurality in their meaning They are called Particular .

a n d Universal propositions P ossibly we could add what may be

.

called the General proposition This last however is ambiguous in .

, ,

i t s import . It is part i cular in its form and is often taken for universal
in its meaning It should therefore be treated as one or the other in
.
, ,

clear thinking Some men are black will illustrate the particular
.

judgment an d All m en are mortal the universal But there is still
,
.

a n equivo cation lu rking in the copula and related to the modality of

the judgment This is an ambiguity which is not often noticed Thus
. .

I may say All w a r is demoralizing or All poisonous substances
, ,

a r e injurious and I may mean either that they are so merely in fa ct

,

or that they are necessarily so The copula is or are does not .

i ndicate which meaning I intend The consequence is that I shall

.

d ivide judgment into three types the a c t u a l the m n e m o n i c and the a

, ,

pr i o r i . The actual judgment is illustrated by the proposition This ,

is cold meaning nothing more than the fact that a given object i s n o w
,

cold Nothin g is said or implied as to the past or future The

. .

mnemoni c judgment though the copula is of the present tense sub

, ,

ject iv ely assumes that a statement is made involving past experience

a n d is illustrate d by such propositions as
Men are
( always have

been ) mortal This ju dgment states a fact of the past as well as of
.

the present a nd may keep the future open to further experience or

,

knowledge The a p r i o r i judgment is the universal and necessary

.

pro position It means that the assertion holds good for all time and
.

place It may be illustrated by the proposition

. All matter is ( meces ,

s ar i l
y ) extended or T wo and two make four
,
.

The a ctual judgment may be dismissed from consideratio n at

present , as it has been virtually discussed in the problem of cognition ,

g enerally including perception and c o np e r ce p t io n It is the act u al or .

present singular judgment that is given by that pro cess and nothing
more according to the denition of the process In generalization or
,
.

the pluralization of judgment we are concerned only with the mnemonic

a n d a p r i o r i propositions We may briey des cribe them as the f a c
.

t u a l and the n e c e ss a r y In the problem of knowledge however
.
, ,

the factual judgments are not a subject of dispute Their validity is .

a dmitted with the recognition of the facts Whatever the process of .

d etermining the fact of any given connectio n between subje ct and

predicate the validity of the judgment asserting it is not subject to
,

doubt or question when the process is not disputed The real problem .

of knowledge is the right to assert a necessary connection between

212 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

subject and predicate a connection that is to hold true of the past a nd

,

future independently of experience or actual observation and mem

ory Consequently the problem is to determine the criterion for the
.
,

validity of a p r i o r i or u niversal and necessary judgments That is .

,

when a m I entitled to suppose that an assertio n is absolutely universal

and necessary and not reducible to some f o rm of particular or merely
factual proposition !
Preliminary to the answer to this question several matters of im
portance will have to be examined The rst is the recall of the way
.

in which we come to generalize at all We have found previously tha t

.

the o r d o co g n i t i o n i s a n d the o r d o n a t u r a in propositions or knowl

edge are the reverse of each other The o r d o co g n i t i o n i s is predi

.

cate then subject , and the o r d o n a t u r a is subject then predicate

, , .

Now in simple cognition the only evidence that we ever obtain for the
,

existence of the subject is not only in the fa ct of apprehendin g t h e

event or eve nts represented by the predicate of the perceptive and con
perceptive judgment but it is more particularly the assumption o r
,

k nowledge that it is a relative fact and to be explained by the prin

c i l e of ca usality The subject thus becomes a reex of this principle
p .

and is , as explained an indenite this or it

,
Its specic char
.

acter as dis criminated from other centers of reference is a subject o f

determination by addition a l processes But we state this order of de .

pen denc e in a manner the reverse of its discovery and hence the cause ,

is put as prior to the eff ect or attribute But it should be noted that .

if we suppose that this attribute is a necessary one of the subject ,

whatever necessary may mean we expect to nd it in a ll cases o f

,

t h is subject in time and place This expectation is based upon the

.

unif o rmity of causation no matter h o w we may suppose that such a

,

l a w is derived . This ide ntity of cause in all instance s means that the

effe ct or fact of experience is the same in su ch cases The ev i .

dence is the fact of apprehension and the uniformity of kind in the facts
apprehended But without stating the case in terms of the r a t i o c o g n o s
.

ce n di we extend the judgment to a l l cases on the ground of the identit

y
of kind expressed by a universalized subject as determined by the pres
ence of the same attribute It is not the identity of subject and predi
.

cate that determines it but the identity of t h e different subjects o r

, ,

rather their essential similarity as determined by the sameness o r

,

similarity of the predicate or attribute in each case The subject and .

predicate may be identical as a matter of fact in certain cases but t h e ,

universalization is not based upon this circumstance Hence for the .

m oment I am dismissing the question ko w we come to know t h e

 TH E C R I TE R IA OF TR U T H .
21
3

u niversal and am concentrating attention upo n the g r o u n d of the

a ssertion . That is the principle of identity in the subjects and in the

predicate as an object of experience or apprehension H o w the .

principle of identity is the determinant of necessary j udgments will

a ppear in the further analysis of the problem All that I indicate at
.

p resent is the fa ct of it .

It will be i mpo r tant to note a division of judgments bearing upon

t h e question under consideration This distinction as involving a n
.
,

i mportant di fference in nature is not always recognized if ever in the

, , ,

f orm in which I wish to state it I shall therefore divide judgments

.

i nto m a t k e m a t i c a l and s u bs t a n t i v e judgments Mathematical judg .

ments are based upon space and time Geo metry and its congeners .

represent the mathematical problems of space Arithmeti c and its .

'

c ongeners represent the mathematical prob l ems o f number i n either

S pace or time or both Substantive j udgments are based upon the con
.

c ep t i o ns of substance and attribute whether material or mental

,
or any ,

a nd all other realities other than space and time The eld may .

be best illustrated by the p ky s i ca l world and it may not be neces s ary

t o d r aw our representation of such judgments from any other province .

H ence w e may take all the judgments in physical science except those ,

which are base d upo n the space and time quality of matt e r as rept e ,

s enting what i s meant by substantive judgments

Iron is a metal
, ,

Wood is combustible Snow is white
,
Mathematical judgments
.

a r e ill ustrated by s uch as T w o and two make four The angles of ,

a triangle are equal to t wo right angles Things equal to the same
,

t hing are equal to each other .

Now before dis cussing the difference between these t w o types of

judgment in the problem of a p r i o r i and necessary truth I must call
attention to certai n differences between them in the relation of subject
t o predicate . In mathematical propositions this relation is that of
e ither e u a l i t
q y or i n equ a li ty qua ntitative identity or di fference with
, ,

out any reference to qu a litative character In substantive judgme nts .

t h e relation is inhesion or exclusion for intensive and similarity or

diversity for extensive propositions and hence may be sai d to be quali

,

t at iv e in character . Now the ge neralization of the judgment does not

depe n d on the questio n whether thi s relation between subject and pred
i ca te is quantitative or qualitative but upon the que stion whether the
,

s ubject remains the same or constant in spa ce and time and upon the .

question whether the predicate is necessarily conne cted with the

s ubject in any case .

It is apparent the refore that the problem requires us to say some

, ,
21
4
. TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

thing about what is meant by necessity or necessary connection .

There are various meanings of this term which ma k e it dif cult to x

upon any single clear import for dis cus s ion Any dictionary will show .

this to be true But I thin k there is one general conception of it which

.

will cover t w o or more specic appl i cations of the term This is .

found in its contrast with the idea of freedom in which possible alter
natives to any given fact or event are supposed instead of being
excluded . Necessity in such cases therefore , implies the i m p o s
,

s ibi li ty of alternative facts or events and so the constraint of assuming

,

only one fact if any at all This general conception will cover the
,
.

ideas of both logical and physical necessity Logical necessity .

is the constraint of accepting a conclusion or belief which the evidence

o r argument compels Physical
necessity is inevitability of a n
.

effect fact o r event under the conditions supposed to be the cause

,
.

No w as to the necessity of the connection between subject and pred

i c a t e in any case there is rst the mere question whether any identity
exists between them and second the question whether the connectio n
is supposed to represent the idea of causality In the rst case t h e .

necessity is convertible with identity or implied by it and in the ,

second case causality has no meaning unless necessity is impl ied by

it This does not mean that any cause is itself a necessity for there
.
,

may be no causes at all so f a r as we are concerned but only that if

, , ,

there is an effect if there is any fact beginning in time it requires a

, ,

cause to explain it It is the assumption that any fact is an effect o r

.

event that compels us to talk about causes , and that compulsio n is

simply the la w of our nature to assume some cause where we suppose ,

believe assume or are certain of effects The necessity of the
, , .

co nnection between the fact represente d by the predicate and it s

cause or ground in perception and c o np er c ep t i o n is simply t h e
, ,

co rrelate and reex of the l a w of thought about su ch facts w h il e ,

the necessity of the connection where similarity is involved as ,

in apperceptive judgments is a reex or representative of that idea

,

of persistence or x ity for which ne cessity has oft en stood in .

human thought But once assume thus the existence of necess a r y

.

connection in any individual case the only question that remains is

that of its uniformity afterwa rd and that uniformity w ill be guaran
,

teed by the identity of the subject and predicate in space and time .

This means that the evidence of the necessa ry connection will
depend more distinctly upo n the identity of the s ubjects in space
and time which are indicated by the identity of the predicates in

experience . The prediction of universality which a p r i o r i judg
 TH E C R I TE R IA OF TR U T H . 21
5

ments embody will depend on this uniformity of the two terms and
t h eir connection .

No w in mathematical judgments which are based upon the world ,

of space and time , we deal with subjects whi ch are changeless .

Space and time are each homogeneities , continua , self identical -

throughout if I may use that expression to dene their unity of kind

, ,

not between each other but between the parts of each and the whole so ,

to speak They are the principles of both continuity and individuation

. .

In dimensional quality they determine continuity In divisional qual .

ity they determine individuation points that in space and moments that
,

in time Points are the individual u ni ts of space moments thos e of

.
,

time The units are identical in kind and the collective whole is con
.

t i n u o us and identical in quality but not in quantity with the units or

, ,

parts They are the constants of nature They are not complexes of
. .

attributes nor grounds of variable modes but realities with but one
, ,

xed property if that expression can be used or dimension namely

, , ,

commensurable quality In fact one cannot well distinguish between

.
,

the quality and the reality of which we may think it ne cessary to speak
when referring to quality of any kind in time and space C o m m e ns u r .

able quality is all that we have to think of in space and time The .

consequence is that they rep resent the best illustrations of the principle
of identity that we can choose in a concrete form The subjects of math .

e m a t i ca l judgments therefore represent facts having or embodying as

,

perfect identity of kind throughout space and time as we ca n imagine

and the identity between sub ject and predicate as dealing only with ,

quantity of commensurable quality , is so denite that the generalizatio n

of all mathematical propositions can be made a p r i o r i In the judg .

ment 7 5 are dis missing the actual and m nemonic or factual ,

judgments as not the subject of dispute , we have the a p r i o r i judg

,

ment that 7
, 5 are always and ne cessarily simply on t h e
ground that the subje ct remains constant changeless and the predicate , ,

is quantitatively and qualitatively identical with it The principle of .

identity thus determining the case we have a necessary truth of which ,

certitude can be proclaimed just as the certitude of the conclusion in

,

deductive reasoning is determined by the same principle In mathe .

m a t i ca l judgments we can reason from the singular to the universal so ,

to spea k because there is no possibility of any qualitative difference

,

between them .

In substantive j udgments we are deali n g with a world of change as

well as incontrovertibility of subje ct and predica te qualitatively in
intensive propositions and in extensive propositions the convertibility
,
 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O s OP H Y .

oc curs only when quantity is considered But as extensive proposi .

tions have their ultimate meani n g dete r mined by their conversion into
intens ive judgments we can redu ce the problem of generalization in
s ubstantive judgments to that of the intensive propositions such as ,

All men are mortal

,

Snow is white or Blood is red ,

No w .

i n intensive judgments there is no evidence of identity of kind between

s ubject and predicate . As the properties of the subject cha n ge under
various conditions while the subject or substance is supposed in the ,

l a w of the indestructibility of matter and substance to remain constant ,

o r to persist in space and time we have conditions under which it is

,

d i f cult to generalize with a p r i o r i condence and certitu de as in ,

m athematical ju dgments As I have indicated a p r i o r i generalization

.
,

d epends on the uniformity of the conditions under whi ch the relation

.

between subject and predicate can be asserted When subject and pred .

i c a t e are conceived as convertible with each other either quantitatively

or qualitatively or both and the subject or predi cate are assumed to be
changeless in space and time the universality of the judgment of per
,

c aption and c o np e r cep t i o n is adequately gu aranteed But when we .

begin to deal with a universe of change , or of phenomena the gener ,

a li z a t i o n will be subject to other conditions in the determination of its

validity O n the other hand in denitions and in abstract conceptions

.
,

we seem to be able in spite of this world of change to generalize with

, ,

tolerable certitude Besides we may generalize hypothetically with as

.

much certitude as in mathematical judgments Consequently it will .

be necessary to consider the vari ous conditions u nder which the ce rti
tude and incertitude of these generalizations occur .

It will be important to remark however that this world of change

, ,

to which I have referred is qualied The change is in the predicates

.

of reality and is not supposed of the real ity or substance itself .

The Changes are in the modes of a changeless reality the phe ,

nomena are a ctivities of a subje ct or substance which remains perma
nent and xed as a subject of phenomena This is illustrated in the .

doctrine of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy .

Whether these doctrines are true or not is indi fferent to the present
question I am stating them as believed That is all that is necessary
. .

for my present contention If it should be disputed we should only

.

h ave to hol d the fundamental doctrines of physical s cience in abeyance .

The conceptions here defended are only obtained in deference to the

doctrines of physica l science In all cases however the pre d icates
.
, ,

or phenomena of reality are represented as modal changes so that ,

t here is not the same constancy or pers istence in the physical world
 TH E C R I TE R IA OF TR U T H . 21
7

as in the m a them atic a l worlds of spa ce and time No w it should be

.

obse r ved that in so far as s ubstance , whether material o r mental parti ,

c i a t es in the worlds of space and time in extensive and protensive

p ,

quantity it becomes subject to the laws of mathematics those of space

, ,

a n d ti m e , and all perceptive and c o n p er ce p t ive judgme n ts involving

t h is relation will be generaliz able as ar e the propositions of pure math

e m a t i cs
. Beyond that the generalizations must be examined with some
care All this is only to say that when the predicate of a judgment is
.

c on c ei ved as qualitatively and quantitatively identical with the subject ,

as in mathe m atical propositions the generalization can be a p r i o r i cer

,

tain universal and necessary But when this relation does not obtain
, .
,

the proble m becomes one of different conditions and must be submitted

to analysis Let m e begi n with denitions which have universality and
.

necessity .

( a ) In all denitions w e have a combination of intensive and exten

sive judgments in which there is su ch a quantication of terms that the
subject and predicate become quantitatively and qualitati vely identical .

The subject and predi cate are thus necess a rily connect ed or related so ,

that wherever either term is found the other must be found by virtue of
this identity and the universality and necessity are but a reex of the
,

la w of identity in the case F or example
. Man is a rational animal
, ,

in which rational is taken as the diff erentia and animal as im

plying the c o n fe r ent ia The predicate is thus identical with the sub
.

ject as constituting the whole of it and hence where we nd the predi

,

cate or the qualities represented by it w e should nd the same subject

,

and the relation is necessary as being convertible with their identity .

The denition , however is nothing more than an explication of the

,

me a ning of the t wo different terms so that the denition means only that
,

wherever we use the term man we should expect to nd the quali

ties expressed or implied by the terms rational animal not that there ,

is any constancy or persistence in the realities so named O u r con .

c e t s and ter m s must have identity a n d constancy of meaning whether

p ,

nature is such or not and hence denitions have a formal universality

,

and necessity which is important for the communication of knowl

edge and for the interpretation of facts whe n they occur but are not ,

indicative of th e constancy and identity in spa ce and time of the fa cts

which they interpret This is only to say that the knowledge ( cer
.

t it ude and necessity

) expressed in denitions may not have or require
re
objective real content vali d meaning and implication of a
,

ality other than an idea a s occurs in perception and c o np e r ce p ti o n ,

but simply im p li cates the identity of subject an d predi cate for thought
z18 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

without implication one way or the other in regard to reality The .

reality when it is found will be observed to accord with the ideal

case It is a mere problem of identity and the world of denition will
.
,

be the same as the world of mathematics The universality and n e .

c ess i t
y are but other expressions for the identity of the subjects and

predicates , and the judgments will not hold good for any real world
u n les s identity constancy or homogeneity are characteristic of it a s
, ,

they are characteristi c of t h econcepts and their relations to each other .

b
( ) There is the ordinary ,
apperceptive or extensive propositio n

which m ust be briey examined and the generalizations involved in it .

It may be illustrated i n su ch judg m ents as All men are vertebrates ,

Iron is a metal Wood is a substance
,
Letters are symbols or , ,

Philosophy is a s cience and Painting is an art
No w if the gener .

a l i z a t i o n in these judgments is more than factual or empirical whether ,

actual o r mnemonic that is if they are universally and necessarily

, ,

true as in mathematics it must be because of some application of the

, ,

principle of identity in the m which will enable us to extend them be

yond their empirical application No w being apperceptive judgments .
, ,

whethe r factual or necessary they represent some sort of identity in

,

kind between subject and predicate or between the things expressed ,

by their ter m s and hence the ne cessity of the connectio n betwee n

,

them even in thei r empirical conception But the question now is

,
.

whether this connection will hold in all space an d time Now if the .

predicate or quality expressed by it represe n t an identical or per

, ,

sistent a nd constant fact in time or space the identity of the subject i n ,

k ind goes with it simply by virtue of the fact that being apperceptive
, ,

or extensive judgments the t wo terms are identical in their impli ca

,

tions of properties identical in quality though they may not be in

,

quantity T hey partake of the nature of a denition in all but their

.

quantication and this fact carries with it the implication of the n e ces
,

si t y of their conne ction if the fa ct expressed by the predicate is con

,

stant in experience or the same in thought The only differe n ce .

between this type of judgment and denitions is that the latter a r e

s i mp ly convertible owing to the qualitative and quantitative identity
,

between the t wo terms while the for m er are o nly qualitatively i den ti
,

cal and this identity suf ces to give them universality and necessity in
,

S pace and time but only in so far as the quality expressed by the pred
,

ic at e is i dentical with the quality expressed in the subje ct I am deal .

ing only with the extensive and apperceptive import of the proposi
tions and nothing else and this i nvolves identity of kind between
,

subject and predicate and identity of kind in space and time of t h e

 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 2 19

predi ca te as an obj e ct of expe rience The necessity however .

, ,

indicated is not the ne cessity of this identity in space and time of the
predicate as a fact , but only the n ecessity of its relation to the subject
which it evinces The generalization is only a reex or e mbodi ment
.

of this universal or necessary relation That is , the subject must mean

.

the same thing wherever the qualities are found whi ch determine its
meaning in the individual instance But it is apparent th at o n ly whe n
.

the j udgment represents an embo diment of the principle of identity in

some form that its neces s ity can be assumed and tha t identity must be
between the t w o terms of the proposition as a guarantee for the possi
bil ity of generalizing at all that is , of asserting the connection for
,

all individuals though the generalization may be only hypothetical

, .

( c ) I next ta k e up intensive judgments They are illustrated in .

all propositions representing the relation between substance and

attribute F or example
. Iron is hard , O ranges are yellow , ,

Snow is white Man is rational
,
Water has speci c gravity
, ,

etc We have in these judgments examples in which the subject and

.

predicate do not seem to be in any respect s imilar or in that regard

representative of the principle of identity S o far as the principle of .

identity is represented by unity of space or time they may embody it ,

but not in the conception of similarity which is the imp ortant condi
tion of necessary conne ction in universal propositions as the assumed ,

plurality of subjects involves at least a numerical di fference The ab .

sence of this identity between substance and attribute implied in the in

tensive judgment taken with the fact that the substantive world is one
,

of change in many of its aspects at least prevents us from generalizing

, ,

unconditionally in intensive propositions That is to say w e cannot .

,

generalize an individual case of perception and co np er c ept i o n with

any a p r i o r i certitude and necessity without recognizing conditions of
its validity which apparently hold good in some cases and not in others .

For exa mple suppose we have the individual instance in perception

,

of This iron is hard We cannot assume from this that All iron
.

will be hard be cause iron in a melted condition is a liquid in a
, ,

volatile state it is a gas frozen by liqui d air it is brittle H ence we

, .

cannot say that All iron is hard in the ordinary i mport of that term ,

hard meaning that Iron in all conditions is hard
,
I can equally .

say,
Iron is volatile Iron is uid
,
Iron is tough Iron is
, ,

brittle. These are contradictory ju dgments as they stand though all ,

true with the qualication of t h e special condition in which the predi

cate holds true of the subject This is to say that in su ch intensive
.

judgments I cannot generalize in an a p r i o r i manner except that I ,

2 20 TIJ E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

a ssu me an i d e n t i ty of t be c o n d i t i o n s under which I observe the con

.

n e c t i o n of subject and predicate in perception and c o n er c e t i o n The

p p .

extent to which w e can generalize in such cases is dependent upon in

d u ct iv e methods and so the generalization does not represent a n eces
sa ry truth for all time and s pace in the world of change but only in ,

the identity of the conditions determining the relation in the rst

i nstance .

The last remark suggests the reaso n for the apparent validity of
t e universal judgment
h Snow is white
This seems to be n eces
.

s a r il
y true . But this is be cause the subject is a name for the condi
t ion of a given substance in which it appears always to be white Or .

p erhaps we ca n express the same fact in another way The whiteness

.

c oncerned is the eviden ce of the condition of that substa n ce which I

c all

snow in that condition and snow becomes not the name
,

o f the substance but for its condition which is whiteness of a certain

,

s ort . In spite of its substantive form the term s now becomes

attributive or phenomenal in its import and conver tible with the ,

p redicate that is identical wi th it and the generalization and necessary

, , ,

connection apparent is due to this fact .

No w it should be observ e d that the subjects of all judgments ex ,

t ensive or intensive are s u bs t a n t i v es the predicate is substantive only

, ,

in extensive and never in intens i ve propositions But in S pite of its .

s ubstantive form of expression the subject is not always substantive in

its dire ct and primary impo rt but only in its secondary meaning and
,

i mplication Hence before we can settle the a p r i o r i and necessary

.

character of generalizations in intensive judgments as formally dened ,

we require to distinguish between subje cts of propositions that denote

s ubstances and subjects that denote their condition or denote attributes ,

o r phenomenal facts in spite of their substantive form In the former .

c a se a p r i o r i generalization of the certain and necessary kind is not

possible because there is no apparent identity between subject and

,

predicate implied by the conceptions and the predicate , in the individ

u a l case may not represent as persistent a fact as the subject and it
, ,

m ust do this to justify the ne cessity of the generalization But in the .

s econd case where the subje ct may be identical with the predicate in
,

S pite of its form of expression the a p r i o r i genera lization is possible

, .

Wh at has just been said about the double import of substantive

terms brings us to an important aspect of the present problem If we .

could assume but one meaning for intensive propositions in the denota
tion of the subject and that the mere conception of substance with
indenite variability of its predicates or attributes and conditions the ,
 TH E C R I TE R I A OF T R U TH .

whole case would be clear against the universality and necessity of th e

ju dgments involved But the fact that substantive terms may have a n
.

attributive or phe n omenal import as well as the real or that of a sub ,

stratum , establishes a condition of things which suggests that w e m a y

treat the subject of all intensive judgments in thi s way and disregar d
the con s ideration of the substa ntive reality altogether The ne ces .

sit
y of doing it in some cases is clear from the fact that the subject o r
substantive term may have a phenomenal import identical wi t h that of
the predicate Thus to apprehension snow and white hav e
.

absolutely the same meaning If we were aske d to tell another what

we meant by snow w
.

e should have to distinguish it by its essentia l

appearance to apprehension If we ever dis cover or conceive a differ

.

ence between the subject and predicate concepts it will be either ( a ) in

perception and co n p er cep t i o n where the cause is thought to be other
than the effe ct , whether different in kind or not or ( b) in the cas e ,

where the subje ct concept represents a group of qualities other than t h e

one indicated by the predicate or one thought of as more essentia l ,

than the predicate O nly in the rst of these two instances have w e
.

the properly substantive judgment which makes the generalizatio n

inducti ve and subject to the determination of other crite ria than mere
cognitio n and a p r i o r i ge neralization except of the hypothetical and ,

formal kind The second case will come up in a moment for co nsi d
.

e ra t io n. What I have rst to complete is the dis cussion of thos e

instances li e Snow is white in which there is an identity element
,
k ,

involved between subje ct and predicate which is the basis of the gen ,

e r a li z a t i o n so evident in the m As remarked above so far as a p p r e ,

h e ns i o n is concerned
snow and white are identical and t h e
, ,

experience white will always be the evidence of the existence of t h e

subject or substance asserted in perception and c o n pe r cep tio n as wel l ,

as asso ciation and inference Consequently in our r epresentative con

.

ce p t i o n the subject and predicate will be identical and the substantiv e

idea will be implied only on question as to the full import of the term ,

and then be only indenite as we found in the example of iron

.
,

The effect of this in all cases where the identication of the subject that ,

is the dis covery of it dep en ds o n th e apprehension or r epresentation

, , ,

Hume s CO py o f impressions or where the subject term would not be

,

used unless it denoted the predicate percept or recept the generaliza ,

t ion is safely a p r i o r i and necessary even though it be hypothetical as it

, ,

must be It is apparent therefore that the pro cedure is still depen

.
, ,

dent upon the appli cation o f the principle of identity so that thi s ,

would seem to be the one condition of all a p r i o r i necessa r y judgments .

222 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

In the second class of subje ct conceptions mentioned above we , ,

ha v e the most important instances of such as must give trouble to any

a ssertion of a p r i o r i and necessary generalization They are impor .

tant because they represent propositions in a way to mak e it apparently

unnecessary to suppose a ny valid conceptions of reality beyond the
phenomenal In them we may suppose that subject terms require no
.

other meaning for their use in substantive and intensive judgments

than as names for facts events phenomena or experiences just as
, , , ,

the predicates in such propositions do These subject conceptions .

may represent facts S imilar to or diverse from the predicate and corre
s o n di n l
p g y affect the question of generalization ma k ing it empirical ,

or a p r i o r i as the case may be Let me resort to illustration

,
. .

In the proposition gold is yellow we have a subject concept
which we m ay conceive either as a substance or as a group of quali
ties Suppose we say that these properties a r e extre me malleability
.
,

metallic luster spe cic gravity of ,

and yellow color Let us .

call these B C D and E ,

Let me use A for the substantive import
,
.

of the term We could then say in terms of the intensive judgment as

.

dened that A is B A is C A is D
A is E

But
; .

on the assumption that A is substantive in reality we could not say

that it is always and necessarily either B C D or E individually or , ,

these collectively except we assume the identity of the condi t ions

,

which make it these in any given case since the cha nges of substance ,

i n its modes and the assumed non identity of the conne ction between -

s ubject and predicate prevents the inference or generalization uni

v er s a ll
y and necessarily But if A is interpreted as identical in impo rt
.

w ith B CD E the case is di fferent That is if instea d of having the .

,

s ubstantive import A the term for the subject namely gol d mean , , ,

E GB E then the proposition becomes a p r i o r i necessary but tau

, ,

t o l o gi ca l as in every case where the subject is identica l absolutely with

,

the predicate in its import .

But the fact is that there are various interpretations of such judg
ments F irst assuming that the subject is the name for a gr oup of
.
,

a ttributes the proposition es capes a tautological meaning when we

,

s uppose t h at it intends to emphasize certain i n stances as satisfactorily

determinative of what the subje ct is or means and the predi ca te appears

a s a sy n thetic addition But this group may represent different a tt r i
.

butes in the same sensory eld or diff erent attributes in different sen
s ory elds and this distinction may be a matter of impo r tance in the
,

issue But assuming the latter rst we should have the subject B CI)
.
,

with the predicate E Concretely the proposition Gold is yellow

.
 TH E CR I TE R IA OF TR U T H .
22
3

would be B C D is E
,
or better Gold that is a certain specic
, , , ,

g ravity malleability and metalli c lustre is connected wit h a yellow

, , ,
' '

color Now W hether that conne ction c a n be made a p r zo r z or not will

.

depend on certain conditions As specic gravity is a tactual quality

.
,

a n d is considered as the nal criterion of gol d as compared with ,

other realities it s differential a n d es sential mark we might suppose

, ,

that gold meant this quality and that the assertion that All gold
is yellow meant that whe n we found this tactual quality present we
, ,

might safely infer the presence of i ts yello wness Now I must con .

ten d tha t we can do nothing of the sort wi thout experience The .

perception of gold considered tactually alone with the speci c

gravity concerned will permit no generalization whatever except with ,

reference to this t a ctual percept and that it should be yellow also is a

purely empiri cal judgment and no a p r zo r z anticipation of other sensory
' '

qualities previously to their asso ciated presence through co np e r cept io n

, ,

can be asserted Consequently this syntheti c character of the judg

.

ment as explained makes all a p r zo r i necessary generalization a

'

, ,

generalization of the co nn ection between the subject and predi cate as ,

long as the proposition is conceived in the manner indi cated This is .

briey stated in the fact that whenever the predi cate is the synthetic
,

addition of anothe r sense tha n the fact o r facts represented by the sub
jec t the judgment cannot be a p r i o r i and necessary but is empirical
,

only If afterward we agree that the subject shall be atteste d by the

.

synthetic presence of all these various properties we may then make

the subject and predicate identical in meaning by means of denition .

But any necessity assumed under these conditions is hypothetical and

dependent upon empirical antece dents and may be said to be only ,

logical I think the same general treatment can be applied to syntheti c

.

judgments with subject and predicate represented in the same sensory

experience The connection between the attributes involve d must
.

be empirical , if they do not embody the principle of identity in some .

w ay .

Let me take one more illustratio n for dis cussio n the exa mple , ,

O ranges are yellow This again is a judgment in which the sub
.

je ct represents a group of attributes or phenomena if you like assum

, , ,

ing that w e are not taking the term i n a substantive sense Suppo s e .
,

however instead of taking the group of qualities into accou nt here we

,

take o nly one that of taste o r peculiar sapidity which is supposed to

, ,

characterize the orange and with it the supposed yellow color No w

, .

if we mean by the term orange this peculiar sapidity then the ,

predicate is not identical with the subject and the proposition only indi
22
4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

cates connection between them In saying All oranges are yellow.

we simply say that All sapid things of a given type are also yellow ,

or All cases of this supposed sapidity are also asso ciated with t h e
color yellow
No w apart from co n p er ce pt io n this synthesis o f
.

yellow and orange sapidity cannot be treated as necessary There .

is no reason apart from c o n pe r c ep t io n for supposing that they woul d

ever be conne cted at all and hen ce we cannot a p m o r z generalize this
' '

connection for all conditions other than hypothetically which woul d

, ,

only mean that the repetition of the same fa cts would give the sam e
judgment a conception too form al to be of a ny value in regard to the
,

question at issue which is the necessary connection between the sub

,

je ct and predicate when the subject means something di fferent fro m

,

t h e predicate What is actually stated and without qualication as t o

.

conditions is that A 11 oranges ( cases of this sapidity ) are als o

yellow and this means that subject and predi cate are not identi ca l
,

but connected The primary di f culty is in the equivocal import o f

.

the copula in all propositions if we assign it any meaning at a ll In

, .

intensive propositions conceived as representing the connection betw ee n

substance and attribute the synthesis is not of ki n d but only of connec
tion that is does not imply identity but relation But in extensive
, , ,
.

propositions the synthesis is that of similar realities and the copula

expresses iden tity of some kind H ence we must say either the copula
.

has no meaning in a sentence or it ta kes the me a ning of conceived identity

or relation between subject and pred icate Assuming the la tter as t h e .

natural tendency of the mind and the actual meaning of half the pro
positions in use we can dis cover a source of equivocal i m p o r t in judg '

ment generally and it will only be when we re ckon with the actual
intention of the judgment that w e can determine the nature of t h e
generalization When the s ubject and predicate do not expres s som e
.

kind of identity n o matter whether the judgment be treated as exten

,

sive or a s the synthesis of phenomena of different kinds , as in cases

when the subject is conceived a s one phenomenon and the predicate
as an other the generalization c a n never be a p r zo r z n e cessary but must
'

, ,

be empirical We could not infer the yellow color of an orange

.

from its sapidity a lone and without experience
We could only .

generalize the color by making it a t least one of the essentia l a tt ri

butes by which the orange should be known as well as by the peculia r
sapidity by which we test the correctness of our inference when we
s e e the orange without tasting it .

But this allusion to essential qualities requires us to examine

what the term means It is an equivocal term again lik e al m ost all
.
,
 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 22
5

terms having any philosophic importance Esse ntial h a s at least .

t w o distinct meanings They are ( 1 ) common qualities , and ( 2 )

.

necessary qualities Bot h of these meanings are supposed to describe

.

objects ontologically that is , their nature

It should be n oticed
, ,
.

howeve r that the rst of these meanings represents matter in whic h

,

the obje cts s o qualied are of the same kind This implies that when .

essence denotes common qualities it indicates likeness of kind

between the things classied It therefore represents a conception of
.

the principle of identity as I h ave dened the term ontologi cal .

The second import of the term however that of necessary does not, , ,

imply identity between the quality called necessary and the s ubject
to which it belongs It indi cates only that the connection between
.

subject and predicate is su ch that when one of the m is fou nd the other
will be present not that they are the same in kind The rst import
, .

is the principle of classication the second is a p r i n c ip l e of cognition ,

,

The rst is onto l ogical the second is epistemolog ical the one r a t i o
, ,

es s e n d i and the other the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i of the subject When

, .

essence denotes the common qualities it involves the compariso n of

di fferent ( n u m er o d zv er s a at least ) subjects and their identity in kind
'

But when it denotes necessary qualities it is merely the test of apply

ing a given term to the cognitive subject of the fa ct in experience ,

which may not be identical with the predicate , though as a subject it

may have remaine d identical in time ; that is , is and will be the
same or the sam e in kind with the subject of the same past exp er i
,

ence. The reason for thus distinguishing between the t w o meanings

of the term essential is the fact that there may be a slight differ

ence of meaning between u n iversal and n ecessary though they ,

are often made convertible with each other or the universal taken ,

as evidence of the ne cessary But as we can conceive a quality as

.

universal without regarding it as necessary we must in all such ,

cases or possibilities regard the t w o terms as not exactly synonymous .

Thus I may say All m en laugh and yet no t suppose for a moment

that the capacity to laugh is a necess ary quality of man
Of .

course if necessary means no more than actually universal thi s

, ,

last observation will not hold good But as we are in the habit of dis .

t in gu ish i ng between certain universal properties as accidental a nd

-

certain others as essential for example regarding v e r tebr a t eness a s
.
, ,

more essential than risibility in man we nd it important to dis ,

t i n gui sh betwee n essential as merely common properties and

essential as necessary qualities What we choose to regard as .

necessary qualities may be or appear to be quite arbitrary when

, ,
2 26 TH E P ] ! OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

these are not the actually universal qual it es , if such a thing ever hap
p ens . It is probable however that the distinction will always lie
, ,

w ithin the eld of the universal qualities and only indi cate that
p art of them which has more v a l u e for certain purposes than others .

This suggests that quite often necessary carries with it a t el e o l o g

i cal import when certain unive rsal properties may ha ve only an
o ntological import and no teleological and also no gnosiologi cal or
,

e pistemological signicance in the recognition of a subject When the .

essential properties are taken as the evidence of the subject they ,

are ta k en in that narrow meaning whi ch ma k es the predicate whi ch

they denote convertible with the subject in formal logic This is not .

necessarily the case with universals merely V er t ebr a t enes s
.

may be a universal quality of man and also of other beings so that ,

it may be regarded as equally essential to man and certain animals .

But there m ay be universal qualities in man that are not found

elsewhere and hence are essential to man in a more f un da mental

sense This is the di fferential essen ce which will be true of indi
.

v id u a l s as well a s classes or genera .When the essential qualities
are so conceived they mak e subject and predi cate convertible in formal

logic and in k nowledge without making them identical in kind .

In thus considering any quality as necessa r y or essential to the
subject w e only indicate our intention to apply the subject term when

ever we nd that particular predicated in experience
. Tha t is w e .
,

mak e this particular predicate the r a t i o co g n o s c en d i of the presence

of a given subject or subject term and the constancy of the former
,

will be tak en as evidence of the constancy of the latter Thus if I .

,

assume that a particular k ind of yellow shall be treated as the essen

tial quality of an orange I shall be able to say and think that
,

All oranges are and must be yellow because in the conception of

,

yellow I have indicated my intention to regard it as the invariable
indication of the subject and the property convertible with it logically .

It thus becomes like a denition in whi ch subject and predicate are

identical for knowledge whether they are or not for reality
, .

This is to say that though subjects are not identi ca l the identity of the
, ,

predicate in time and space its constan cy and the assumed n eces
, ,

sa r y connection or essentiality of it as a quality of the subject ,

guarantee the identity of the subject in time and spa ce F or example .

,

when either a particular sapidity or a distinctive yellow is taken as the

criterial quality of a subject to be named orange the generalization , ,

All oranges are of a given sapidity or All oranges are yellow
, ,

will be neces s arily true not because the subject and its attribute are
,
 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
22
7

identi cal in kind but because the temporal identity of the predicate
,

fact or phenomenon when assume d to be the differential essence of what

,

shall be the subje ct involves the same identity of the subject as a cog
,

n it iv e object if the principle of causality is to have any application at

,

a ll to phenomena . Assuming the p redi cate at any time to be the dif

fer e nt i a l essence is only to say that with or without a reason a given
, ,

fact is to be treate d as the evidence of a subject which shall be the

same as long as the predicate remains the same If we so desire we .

may call this an epistemologi cal identity as distin ct from an o n to l o g

ical identity which is found only in extensive propositions This .

s o called epistemologi cal identity is not one of k ind but only one of
-

relation or co n stancy of connectio n and this suffi ces to determine t h e

,

generalization and to make it a p f zo r z and necessary to the extent of

' '

that identity though it may be only hypotheti cal as it depends not

, , ,

upon the identity of subject and predicate in kind but upon the iden ,

tity of the predicate in time and space and the uniformity of causation
for its validity It is conditioned too by the ass umption of the pred
.
, ,

i c a t e as the differential essence of the subject and this a fliates the ,

conception to that of a denition in which the principle of identity ,

either i n the form of unity or similarity is the determining factor of

,

thought and where this prevails in a ny form the generalization may

,

be a necessary one to the same extent .

The real dif culty in such cases however is in the fact that in all
, ,

judgments involving the assumption of the predicate as the d ifferential

essence of the subject where it is the common quality of the class de
,

noted by the subject and the property distinguishing this s ubject from
all others at the same time the prius in knowledge is t h e predicate
, ,

while in all other propositions the prius is the subject This fact eu .

ables u s to analyze the problem of generalization as follows .

In all mathematical judgments the subject is intelli gi ble without

stating the predicate and the identity between it and a ny predicate
which may be assumed as it is determined by the very nature of su ch
,

judgments , is the guarantee of their universal necessity The propo .

s it i o n s can be treated as and a re ex tensive judgments in whi ch the

o rder of thought is subject and then predicate In denitions the same
.

fact is seen and they are practically and lo gically the same as mathe
m a t i ca l judgme nts .

In intensive judgments which represent the r elatio n between sub

s tance and attribute the possibility of a p r i o r i necessary generalization

is purely condition al The permanence of substance and the variability

.

of attributes or phen omena make the relation between subject and

2 28 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

predicate an empirical one to knowledge The constancy of t h e .

subje ct will be no guarantee for the constancy of the predicate as this

m ay vary indenitely with the persistence of the sa me subject What .

the p redicate will be in properly intensive ju dgments is never a p r zo r z

' '

determinable from the mere subject conception without specifying t h e

conditions under which the subject conception is viewed The co u se .

quen c e is tha t there are s everal li m itations to the ge n eralizations in thi s

type of judgments .

F irs tly the predicate is the prius in knowledge and the subject
,

when conceived substan tively is only a reex of the principle of caus

ality and unless the predicate remains ide ntical in space and time n o
universality and necessity is possible even though the subject persists , ,

as both m ust be constant to satisfy the conditions of judgment in t h e

generalization H ence phenomenal identity has to be assumed t o
.

justify the assertion of noumenal identity in the s ubject The predi .

cate idea has to be assumed to represent the essential fa ct in the meas

ure of what the subject shall be and this means that for the p urpose s ,

of generalization the subject is conceptually identical either as unit!

, , ,
r

or similarity with the predicate and the principle of identity become s

, ,

the criterion of the generalization In any other view of it the rela.

tion is empirical and not necessary .

Se condly , intensive judgments may be only formally such T h e .

subject term may not be conceived as a substantive but as a phenomena l

term That is instead of importing s ubstance into the proposition it
.
,

may mean some representative phenomenon or experiential fact which

is not the reex of causality or ground and the predicate may stand fo r ,

some synthetically connected quality In such cases the subject m ay .

be the prius of thought and the relation of the predicate to it a n

inferred one .

Thus A ll oranges ( sapid quality ) are yellow ( visual quality ) .

The relation here is purely e m pirical and never necessary as the result
of generalization unconditionally from either infero apprehension o r -

co n p er c ep t i o n The synthesis is itself due in many cases to associatio n

.

and experience .

Thirdly in all judgments whether extensive or a p p a r ent l v i nt e n

, ,

sive if the subject is simply symbolical or representative of the att r ibu

,

tive term or phenomenon whi ch it denotes thus appearing conceptually ,

identical with it the proposition may be regarded as a p r zo r z n e ces

'

sary O therwise it is not as some form of essential relation h a s

.
,

to be assumed to guarantee the right to assert the necessary characte r

of the generalization .
 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 22
9

In conclusion we must remark th a t the fundamental condition of

a p r i o r i necessary generalized judgments will be the identity of the

subject in space and time But there is no guarantee of this identity

.

but in the similar identity of the predicate or p h en o m ena l fa ct in space

and time If this latter condition is not fullled in reality no general
.

iz a ti o n can be more than hypothetical and formal In the last a nalysis .

we have found that it is always the predicate that represents the prius
in k nowledge and that the subject is the reex of the principle of
causality since extensive judgments are reducible to intensive in their
,

ultimate interpretation No w if the predicate fact phenomenon or

.
, ,

attribute is not the same in all conditions there is no evidence t hat the
s ubject will be the same , though it actually be so in fact Now in .

mathematical judgments the predi cate requires for its realization

n othing more than space and time These are severally homogeneous
.

constants whether as principles of continuity or principles of indi

,

v iduation and consequently assure the constancy of the concepts which

,

may furnish the predicate of propositions while the quantitati ve and ,

qualitative identity ( difference in negative judgments ) assures t h e

n ecessary identity between subject and predi cate to m a ke the general
' '

i z e d judgment universally necessary a p r zo r z necessary both formally

,

a n d really . But in substantive judgments only experience can

determine the extent of the constancy or identity in space and time of
, ,

the predicate or phenomenal fact for which the predicate stands and ,

hence the generalization can only be formally and hypothetically meces

sary in so far as they are th e immediate extension of judgment on the
,

occasion of perception and co n p er c ep t io n or of apperception Even , .

then , it is conditioned upon the assumption of essential qualities
which will determine the empirical import of substantive terms and
only indicate that the predicate phenomenon is the r a t i o c o g n o scen d i ,

not the r a t i o ess en d i of the subject in the ordina r y ontological sense ,

the necessary connection being contingent upon the constancy of the

predicate phenomenon and the uniformity of causation The con .

sequence is that outside o f mathematical j udgments all generalizations

, ,
' '

o f an a
p r zo r z and necessary kind must be of a formal type and depend
upon some form of the prin ciple of identity assumed between subject
a n d predicate Apart from this condition they are empirical , or the ir
.

universality is factual an d not ne cessar v This makes it apparent .

that the el d of a p r i o r i necessary judgment is a narrow one and that

we have yet to explain that of empirical generalization and its relation
'

to the a p r zo r z This brin gs us to t h e consideration of Scien tic

'

Method as a criterion of truth .

2
30 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

III S C I E N T IF I C M E T H O D
. .

I have dis cussed three forms of knowledge namely Logic , , ,

Immediate Cons ciousness and Generalization ,

The rst was said .

only to transmit certitude not to originate it The second indicated

,
.

the sources of two types of certain knowledge one of them presen ,

t at i o n or apprehension in which the

knowledge is not synthetic ,

and th e o ther Cognition which is synthetic that is simultaneously , ,

apprehension and the application of a principle of cognition to it t e

lating it to something else than itself and giving the rst form of inter,

p r et a t i v e conceptions It was li k e apprehension however limited to

.
, ,

the present state of cons ciousness in the range of its assertion though ,

adding to apprehension a conception of obje ctivity The third .

form generalization extended judgments so as to universalize them

, ,

and to assume or assert the necessity of at least some of them But in .

many cases this generalization was conditional , and it left out of a c

count those generalizations which could not represent ne cessary

truth but which are con ceived as more or less probable even when
, ,

associated with a certitu de of feeling which coul d not easily be distin

guish e d from convictions that we do not represent as probable This .

class of cognitions o r judgments have a modality representing less co

h e si v e n e ss and inexpugnability of convi ction than those asso ciated with
absolute certitude and n ecessity which were represented in app r eh en
,

sion cognition and some instances of generalization of the a p r zo r z

,
' '

kind This body of knowledge if that term can be used to denom
.
,

in at e it whose modality is probability of some k ind or degree is a

, ,

large one and is very complex in the nature of its genesis and content .

It consists of what may be called associational or inferential syntheses

and empirical generalizations Their nature and degree of validity are
.

subject to what is called scientic method This conception will
.

have to be examined with some care .

Science and philosophy in a very common usage have the ,

t wo meanings which are dened by the terms Inductio n and De

duction . This distinction between them came about by the associa
tion of their activities with the methods that described them The .

S cholastic period dominated wholly by the philosophy and logic of

,

Aristotle was introspective and deductive in its methods The revolt

, .

against it formulated by Bacon but initiate d by many others like

, ,

Copernicus Galileo and Kepler was described as inductive and extro

, ,

s e c t iv e This opposition of their methods resulted i n very much

p .

determining the distinction between the two elds of ree ctio n so that ,

the expression s cientic method came to be synonymous with the

 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U TH . 2
31

ide a of indu c tion and opposed to that of deduction an d as ,

deduction was uniformly regarde d as a mode of ratiocination so ,

also w as indu ction a n d s cientic method is often made inter

,

changeable with this idea Let us examine briey how this came to
.

o ccur.

The whole s chola sti c movement was as I have remarked under , ,

the inuence of the Logic of Aristotle Its whole conception of the .

problem of knowledge w as determined by this fact T h e period .

had abandoned the study of nature , as I mentioned earlier because the ,

world in which it wa s interested was superphysical as well as super

sensible and it s organon of truth regarding it was faith until it found
,

it necessary to prove its faith The realization of this need intro

.

d u c e d the applic a tion of A r t i st o t l e s Logic the study of nature

,

inductively not being supposed to be necessary Its method .

,

therefore was the syllogism All kno w ledge certifying faith had
, .

thus to be r a t io c ina t i v ely determined Deductive logic became the

.

supreme and only organon of truth and knowledge

The effect .

was to substitute reason or reasoning for faith and authority but ,

for us the point to be noti ced with emphasis is the fact that scholastic
conception of method w as deductive reasoning No w it soon became .

apparent to men like Bacon that this process only proved accepted
beliefs and di d not originate them As I h a ve endeavored to show it
.
,

only transmitted conviction either from proposition to proposition or

from person to person and does not originate it I remarked also .
,

what is universally admitted by students of logic that the syllogism ,

cannot prove itself and that ultimately the premises have to be deter
, ,

mined by some other process than the deductive and I think by non , ,

ratiocinative processes altogether Mill thought the basis of deductive

.

reasoning w as inductive However this may be it is clear that the

.
,

deductive syllogism adds no n ew content to knowledge but only

systematizes what we have and transmits conviction from the general
to the particular case It was this peculiarity of its function that
.

disgusted Bacon with the Aristotelian logic He sa w clearly enough .

that it added no n e w knowledge as material content to our stock
,

of truth H ence he and his disciple s set up induction to effect this

.

result The term had been known and used before as a mode of rea
.
,

soning opposed to the deductive but this idea had dropped into
,

desuetude owing to the causes which disinterested mankind in the

,

study of the physical world But t h e intellectual habits of the scho

.

lastic period were not wholly abandoned even when the n ew move ,

ment in the revival of s cience found it necessary to introduce a
2
32 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y.

new metho d of k nowledge , as Bacon and his followers still

regarded their method of discovery a process of ratiocination The .

O pposition between re ason and faith ten ded to produce this effect .

When the latter was questioned as to the ultimate source of truth in

any matter w hatever , it was natural to accept reason and the
equivocations of this term easily lent their support to the interpreta

tion of the term induction which , as representing the study of the
,

physical world quite naturally suggested opposition to faith as well as

,

to deduction and so identied its import with the function of

,
reason w hich was so generally associated with ratiocination .

H ence both the older use of the older meaning of the term induc
tion and the habits of the age treated that idea as a ratiocinative one .

At the same time the exigencies of the problems of new inquiries and
discoveries and experiments suf ced to carry into the term all the con
dit i o n s and assumptions asso ciated with what n o w passes for s ci

e nt i c method, which represents much more th a n mere reasoning .

Consequently the term induction represents two distinct meanings .

The rst is that o f a mode of ratiocination O pposed to deductive

,

and the second all those processes which are necessary to the acquisi
.

tion and verication of n ew knowledge The peculiar character
.

ist i c of deduction is that we can never get beyond the premises in

what we i nf er It is this circumstance that insures certitude in the
.

conclusion wh en all the formal conditions of the syllogism have been

satised and the premises are accepted The fundamental feature of
.

inductive reasoning is that it ta k es us beyon d the premises and at least

appears to supply n e w knowledge It is this fact that prevents it
.

from giving assurance of a positive kind to the inference so drawn .

But it was the historical restitution of the study of nature that deter
mined the conception o f the term for the modern mind and not its
formally ratiocinative character so that it came to mean any process
,

other tha n introspe ction and deductive reasoning and so the sou rce of
n ew k nowledge .

Consequently there was confus ion bet ween its
import as a ratiocinative process which was distinct and opposed to

deduction and its import as scientic method which in cluded
dedu ction.

The best illustration of this confusion is Mill s Logi c This.

work is in fact n o t a treatise on formal logi c at all It is a presenta

.

tion of scientic method which may include at least a part of logic .

Mill seems never to have understood what the science of logic w a s

and what it was intended for With Bacon and his school he sa w
.

clearly enough that deductive method could never determine for us the
 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
2
33

laws of nature and that when the acceptance of the premises was
,

concerned deduction could not ultimately certify t h em H ence he

,
.

dis m isses the subject of deduction with very short shrift in his work ,

m aintaining that the process was wholly subordinate to induction and

that its premis es were derived from induction This view will be .

true or false according to the wider or n arrow m eaning of the term .

If induction be synonymous with s cientic method which includes

all processes of apprehensio n , cognition and experience in other
,

words , all the non ratiocinative functions the doctrine is quite accept
-

,

able But if it is limited to the inductive ratiocinative process it
.
,

ean easily be shown to be inadequate This is apparent from the .

very nature of the process As ratio cination . induction is co o r di ,

nate with deductio n and cannot be supposed to supply the latter s

premises Then agai n it is noticeable that deductive reasoning trans

.

mits certitude from premise to conclusion , while inductive reasoning

cannot transmit any such quality to its conclusion If it supplies the .

premises of deduction and can support no assu red truth the deductive
process is incapable of supplying it because it does not receive it from
the ind u ctive result No w Mill tries to prove his case by deductive
.

reasoning which his own theory maintains is not valid except as based
upon induction and as this a ffords no assured truth he must admit
,

that his argument is worthless What Mill ought to have seen was
.
,

that the premises of both inductive and deductive reasoning were fur
n i sh e d by non ratio ci n ative processes altogether and not that one of
-

them was the ba sis o f the other His actual dis cussion of s cientic
. .

method in its use of observatio n showed that this view of the case w a s
i m plicit in h is sy stem and that it contradicted the attitude taken
toward deduction as dependent up o n induction in so far as the reader ,

would understand that he was speaking of a reasoning process But .

the fact is that Mill w a s not clear in hi s use of the term He pla y ed .

fast and loose between induction as a ratiocinative process and

indu ctio n as s cientic method in cluding much more tha n rea
s oning .

The function of deduction is to transmit certitude and necessity

the function of indu ction is to trans mit probability The only reas o n .

that it cannot do what dedu ction does is the fact that its conclusion is
not quantitatively involved in the p re m ises as in de duction There is .

no objective test of the reasoning as in deduction It is only .

subjective
There is identity recognized in the pre m ises but there
.
,

i s no indi cation that this identity i s inclusive or that it involves the

essential qualities of the data concerned Consequently the inference .
2
34 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O P H Y .

is not assured but will have a probability proportioned to a rather

,

indeterminate set of conditions obje ctively considered In both .

deduction and induction there is anticipation of experience or the

a
future The process might be called
.
p r i o r i in both forms of
reasoning only that the conclusion is not necessary in one of them
,
.

The strict import of a p r i o r ! is only anticipatory and not necessity .

In both cases the reasoning does not represent the phenomenal realiza
tion of the facts which the conclusio n expresses but the prospective ,

realization of them when the conditions are fullled in experience .

In one it is the necessity of this occurrence a n d in the other its proba

bility They forecast the hypothetical certainty or probability that
.

experience will be the same for the future as for the present and
past The inference in deduction represents a n ecessary truth but not
.
,

the necessary occurrence of the facts which would involve its phenom
enal realization in the future The inductive inference is probable in
.

the same sense We might call them both A nt ep er ce p t io n a s
.

,

indicating that they anticipate experience that is are re l ated to the , ,

future in the same way that reapprehension or Memory is related t o

the past except that they are in no way categorical in their f a c t u a l
,

implications But it is apparent that both must derive the chara cter
.

as well as the matter of their premise s by non ratiocinative processes -

.

This fact forces us to base all s cienti c method upon some other basis
than induction as a reasoning function It can have importan ce only .

a s comprehending processes of a cquisition antecedent to all forms of

inference These are t h e primary pro cesses already dis cussed an d

.

they condition all systematizing functions Scientic method thus .

becomes the su m of all processes involved in the acquisition and veri

ca t i o n of knowledge whether of the necessary or probable sort
, .

It can have no opposition to deduction except to that claim that

deductive ratiocination is the o n ly source o f knowledge D e du c .

tion is not the whole but a part of the whole and s cientic method
,

includes it as one of its functions .

There is a fact in the p rogress of scientic development which

conceals this inclusiveness o f what is meant by s cientic method
when strictly dened It is the circumstance that when what is usu
.

ally understood to be scientic method is applied there has already

been the acquisition of much knowledge which is simply cal l ed

experience In the books scientic method is made convertible
.

with the formulatio n and application of certain rules indi cati n g h o w

we acquire and verify certain inferential t ru ths and little or no stress
is laid upon the simple and primary processes which condition the
 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 2
35

more complex acquisition of kno wledge involving all the more ,

element a ry functions without our explicit recognition of them .

There is another conf usion in the use of the terms s cientic

metho d which grows out of the a ntagonisms bred by the co n t r o v er
sies betwee n s cholasti c philosophy with its alleged introspective and

a pr io r i or deductive methods Inductive meth od in supplanting
.

the dedu ctive claimed only to supply empiric a l knowledge
and to limit a p r i o r i knowledge to the formal process of the syl
l o g is m if it admitted anything at all in this process
, III this way .

empirical came to stand for indu ctive methods and the a p r i

o r z for the deductive and introspe ctive This tendency and .

development of conceptions tacitly omits the consideration of all those

processes of certain knowledge which are prior to a ll inferential
functions and includes only the possible probable and conjectural ,

generalizations of experience involving suspense of judgment on
,

all assertions beyond this

experience and tending in so far as ,
inductive excludes certainty and necessity of all k inds to either
,

interpret the ide a of experience as m ore or less dubitative or to

dene the area of induction as representing the conjectural eld
beyond experience and holding conviction in abeyance u ntil some
mode of verication could assure the truth This simply means that .

the empiricist plays fast and loose between the terms experience
and induction Where the former is assu med to give certain
.

knowledge the latter has to be conned to probable inferences and
,

generalization beyond the mnemoni c type or s imple enumeration .

But where induction is in any w a y made co nvertible with exp er i

ence instead of bei n g merely based upon it and proceeding beyond
,

it and experience is assume d to give any certai n k nowledge

,

,

the term broadens into the larger conception of s cientic method and
cannot be O pposed to deduction because it does not in this wider ,

meaning limit its import to ratiocinative action If any clear thinking

,
.

is to be done in connection with the use of the te rm induction it is
,

apparent fro m this that the equivocation in its usage must be corrected ,

as it cannot do service for both s cie ntic method and the mere
indu ctive inference which is a very s mall part of that method Hence
with the choice of terms I shall limit the term induction to the
inference by that n a me and employ the expression scientic method
to denote the complex processes and conditions regu lating the pro

ce dur e known as s cience as distinct fr o m mere introspection of the
,

mind s conceptions This method can be applied to mental phenom

.

ena as well as the physical and even to introspection But it h a s

,
.
2
36 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

developed as a method in the investigation of physical phenomena

'

and contrasts with mere introspection and a p r zo r z speculation in its

'

curtailment of dogmatism and in its emphasis upon experiment .

O therwise it in fact includes introspection and deduction as means

respectively of analyzing conceptions and of verifying dis covery or

s ystematiz ing k nowledge .

But there are two important qualications which are necessary in

the denition of s cientic method The rst is that it is as much
.

o ccupied with belief as with knowledge The latter term is gener
.

ally used in a suf ciently comprehensive sense to include belief as it ,

is often made convertible with systematization and belief is this I , .

shall therefore employ the term often to comprehend all of the convi e

tions whi ch the mind forms by scientic method whether necessa r y ,

or probable When it is required to distinguish carefully the kind of

.

knowledge involved in any particular case I shall specify it But

. .

it must be understood that in the general examination of the fun ctions

of scientic method I shall have both knowledge and belief in
mind in the use of the single term unless otherwise indicated The
,
.

s econd qualication of its scope is that which connes it to the more

advanced reective stage of intellectual development By this I mean .

to say that I shall lay no emphasis upon the elementary pro cesses of

knowledge in the denition of its p rovince It is true that all the .

primary functions of knowledge are necessarily involved in the ap

plication of s cientic method and must be constantly deferred to in
all advanced stages of investigation But s cientic method as it
.
,

characterizes the conscious and reective or experimental period of in

qui ry may be discussed without further allusion to these primary proc
,

esses than a reference to what has been said in a previous chapter and ,

in the earlier part of the present chapter which has so far been o ccu , ,

pied w ith the criteri a o f assured knowledge and of that type which ,

comes spontaneously and is not necessarily instigated voluntarily and

experimentally .

I cannot here dis cuss the subject of Scientic Metho d on a large s ca le

o r as fully as it needs to be discussed It would require a large volume
.

f o r that purpose . It will suf ce so far as I am concerned to refer to

, ,

the work s of Mill Sigwa rt Whewell Wundt and others to ind i cate
, , , ,

the manner in which I should pro ceed to deal with the subject both in
principles and illustrations I may therefore refer to their works as
.

making it unnecessary to develop the subject anew and as sui c iently a c

c ep t a bl e in their conception of method whatever be thought of their
,

philosophic assumptions to make elaborate dis cussion superuous here

, .
 TH E CR I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 2
37

But before outlining its general principles it is important to notice

a few fundamental characteristics which dene the main purpose of
Scienti c Method and so determine its actual applications While it .

may be said to determine the conditions of all knowledge whatever ,

it formulates its rules with reference to the more advanced stages of

intelle ctual growth Hence it appears less as a method of accu m ulating
.

data than a mean s of estimating the material of earlier acquisition The .

reason for this is quite simple Its histo r y has been associated with the
.

discovery of new truth rather than the teaching and proof of the old .

The scholastic period and its non progressive methods illustrate d the
-

poverty of everything in material knowledge but what is called s eien

t i c method and hence the emancipation from the inertia of deductive
,

procedure naturally carried with it the idea that it wa s not the possession
,

of the existing body of truth that required the attention of science but the

acquisition of n ew knowledge Consequently when any question
.
,

of evidence or proof for ne w dis coveries was raised the only sou rce for
the defendant w as to produce a n ew organon to ta k e the place of the
old and this assumed the name of s cientic metho d in cont rast with
the philosophic and introspective speculations of the preceding age .

What this inuence effects is a tendency to conceive and represent the

work of scientic method as chiey occupied with the certication

of experience This as cribes to it as its most importa n t functio n
.
, ,

the application of means for testing and certifying the inferences wh i ch

arise on the occasion of various experiences It thus becomes pre .

dominantly a method of determining the degree of certitude or proba

bil it y with which generalizations can be a ccepted The primary i n .

t er est of man is in generalization which represents what is true for all

,

spa ce and time In fa ct
. truth of any kind has value precisely in
proportion to its connotation for universality We generally mean by .

it what holds good beyond the present place and moment Any pres .

ent event or experience whi ch leaves our existence unharmed has

no su ch interest for us as the future possibilities of change may have
for the disturbance of our plans and ide als What our hopes whether .
,

practical ethical or reli gious require for their realization is some st a

, , ,

bil ity in the order of things and some condence in our judgments We .

wish and need to know what the certainties or probabilities of the future
will be in order to justify action with reference to the realiz a tion of our
ideals Consequently w e must know when an inference or an expecta
.

tion is founded on a reasonable probability that nature will be uniform

and that there is some truth beyond the phenomenal p resent some ,

generalizations on which expectation and h Op e ca n be based The .

2
38 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

c onsequence of this is that s cientic method seems to be primarily

c oncerned with the results of all those processes whi ch are embodied

in our inferences from phenomena But it is in fact o ccupied with the .

determination of the data upon which inferences can be made and which
a lso aid in the verication of inferences when once made Whatever .

its relation to primary judgments it thus becomes preeminently occupied

with what are called empirical generalizations and the efforts to test

them or to give them t h e character of more certain knowledge .

I may therefore dene Scientic Method as the rational mode of

pro cedure by which we regulate the acquisition and verication of
c onviction of knowledge and belief I distinguish between
,
.

a cquisition and verication not because the method of validating

,

them is different but because they supply different elements of the

,

c omplex whole in knowledge Acquisition is primarily concerned

.

with the discovery of facts and especially with new matter or content ,

a n d verication with the certication of the judgments formed on the

occasion of acquisition Acquisition increases content verication

.
,

i ncreases conviction But while the same general principles regulate

t h e pro cedure in both cases it may be convenient to treat them as if

,

they were distinct from each other in their relation to method simply
t o recognize the fact just mentioned With this established w e may .

proceed to analyze the problem more fully Such an analysis will .

i nvolve two questions The rst is the P r o ces s es characterizing

.

Scientic Method , and the se cond is the P r i n c ip l es of S cientic

Method .

I P r o cess es of S c i en t ic M et /20d
. .

The several processes involved in the determination of knowl

e dge as here considered may be enumerated as O bservation E xp er i ,

ment Classication Explan ation H ypothesis and Veri cation

, , , , .

These however I think can be somewhat simplied and possibly be

, , ,

r educed to three ty pes if the terms are properly dened namely

, , ,

A cquisition Explanation and Verication

,
As they have been
, .

enumerated above it is noticeable that as processes they do not

, , ,

n ecessarily follow each other chronologically but will be related to ,

each other according to the various co ntingencies of phenomena .

Thus experiment might not be resorted to at all and in individual

cases explanation might not depend in a ny way upon classication .

They are consequently elements in the problem that are determined by

the exigencies of the case some of them being the resou rce in certa in
,

emergencies and others in different circumstances Moreover classi .

cat i o n is often regarded as a mode of explanation P henomena are .

 TH E C R I TE R I A OF TR U TH . 2
39

o ften regarded as intelligible when they a r e seen to belong to a known

class which is presumably explained Consequently for general pur
.

poses I may reduce the pro cesses involved in s cientic metho d to three
types making observation and experiment subdivisions of acquisition
, ,

and classication and ca usi cat i o n subdivisions of explanation with ,

hypothe s is and verication remaining , the former the means and the
latter the proof of explanation
A cqu i s i t i o n This process represents all those primary
.

.I

agencies by which conceptions and facts are as certained and which

are the phenomena or material for the application of explanation and
verication I nee d no t enter into any elaborate analysis of it after
.

what has been said of the primary and elementary agencies in knowl
edge . The part of observation is to embody these functions What .

it is and does I shall not dene or dis cuss but leave to the considera
tion of the reader who can co n sult the works referred to above .

Includin g apprehension perception co n p er cep t io n a pperception

, , , ,

ratiocination , i n fero apprehension consociation etc as determinative

-

, , .
,

of the data for investigatio n its distinctive character consists in its use
,

of attention and voluntary e ffort to a cquire more than merely casual

experience would present and in its implication that the subject
,

observer is a mere spectator of phenomena whi ch he does not himself

produce but which , so far as he is concerned spontaneously occur in
, ,

the order of nature Experime nt is the arti cial pro du ctio n of phe
.

n o m ena combined with observation It employs the inte r vention of the

.

huma n will an d other agencies to produ ce phenomena which might

not spontaneously occur in nature or to repeat a n d multiply those
which may casually occur a n d thus increases the chance for careful
observation It endeavors to reproduce phenomena with fewer com
.

plications than such as might naturally accompany experience .

But both experiment and obse r vation are concerned in the discovery of
f a ct s of phenomena or events which are the data of explanation
, , .

.2 E xp l a n a t i o n
. Briey dened explanation is simply the con
s cious application of the categorie s to fa cts Cognition as a primary
.

process of knowledge may not represent any cons ciousness of the

principles applie d to apprehensions or phe n omena It is so to speak .
, ,

instinctive or intuitive an unanalyzed mode of thought when the proces s

,

rst occurs But explanation represents the reective stage of thought

.

when the ideas of kind and of causality have become cons cious objects

of knowledge , and so applies them with reference to some p a r t i cu
l a r conception of kind or cause as disti n ct from the general or abstract
conception which has the character of an ultimate assumption r e p r e ,
2 40 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

senting a conditio n of think ing at all n o t the empirical fact ,

thought Thus I have already said tha t perception and co n p er ce p t i o n

.

gave only the general and undened fact of a cause or ground an d

apperception that of similarity without regard to the question whether
it is essential or accidental and so do not specify the kind of cause o r
,

the necessary relation of the things apperceived But after exp e ri .

ence has taught us to group phenomena together in a denite sub
j c et or facts in a class we may co n sciously use this subject or type fo r
rendering n ew knowledge intelligible The functional activity o f .

the mind i s the same in cognition and explanation but the content of ,

the two may be different the o n e being more simple and the othe r
,

more complex Take an example Cognition may give the convi e .

tion that rai n has a cause or ground for its existence or o ccurrence ,

but it may not know what parti cular thing or fact is that cause .

H ence the judgment It rains which is the simplest form of a n
, ,

intensive judgment of cognition But when we know more about .

the phenomenon and its connections , all of which are acquired by some
process of apprehension cognition , association and consociation w e
, ,

may be able to assign the e ffect to the inuence of temperature on

atmospheric vapors We may see a color say red and cognition will
.
, ,

tell us nothing more th a n it belongs to a ground or cause but e xp l a ,

nation o f a denite kind will say whether it belong to an apple or ball .

Explanation therefore while it applies the categories has a refer

, , ,

ence to phenomenal relations the coexistence and sequence of phe

,

momena which the primary mental processes do not even though t h e

, ,

l atter may imply them It is simply a more advanced and complex

.

stage of mental action and involves the use of phenomenal facts and
,

groups of them as representatives of the causes and grounds by whi ch

the mind makes facts intelligible It is governed by two principles o r
.
.

categories the r a t i o es s en d i and the r a t i o e n d i The former r ep r e

, .

sents the principles of identity and difference and the latter the princi
'

ple of causality The application of the r a t i o es s en d i or principles

.

of similarity and diversity determines classication or the unication of ,

phenomena in kind and the application of the r a t i o en a i determine s

,

ca u s i ca t i o n
,
as I sha l l call it in contrast to mere classication a n d
, ,

means the assignment of causes .

No w explanation may be kn o w n or co nj ect u r a l Known exp la .

nation will also take two forms cognition and generalization on the ,

principle of identity that is a p r i o r i generalization I have already

'

, .

discussed this type of explana tion Conjectural explanation is induc .

tive in n ature and represents the formation of hypotheses and em p ir

 THE C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
24 1

i cal generalizations Their verication is the last step in the deter

.

mi nation of knowledge , p revious steps being hypot h etical No w

.
,

as hypothesis is the most important chara cteristi c or agency in what is

called inductive method and represents the step by which a given
,

explanation of a phenomenon is proposed it will be necessary to exam

ine it somewhat carefully .

3
. H yp o t/ze s i s. A n hypothesis is a s upp o s i t i o n an inference of ,

the inductive type and consequently rep resents w hat the mind thinks
,

may be a fa ct o r cause not immediately presente d in experience at
the time the hypothesis is formed To illustrate ta k e the Copernican
.
,

system o f astronomy Copernicus obse rved certai n complex relations

.

involved in the P tolemaic system and conjectured that a simpler theory

for the explanatio n of the apparent motion of the sun around the earth
was the motion of the earth around the sun This inference did not
.

guarantee its o wn certitu d e but had to be consistent with other facts

,

beside the possibility of it in terms of the mind s conception of it I

.

see d rops of water on the grass in the morning and infer that they are
due to the inuence of cold air on the vapors suspended in the air I .

hear a certain kind of noise an d infer that it is caused by t h e approach

of a street car I n otice the fall of obje cts when unsupported in the
.

air and suppose that the gravitation of the earth extends indenitely i n
space All these have to be veried in some way before they become
.

more than hypotheses .

But the fundamental quality of an hypothesis h a s not been r e

marked I have only said that it is an inference of the indu ctive sort
.

and illustrated the application of the term We must indicate its .

essential characteristi c in order to dene it accurately I identify it .

with the pro cess of an inductive inference as does Whewell and so , ,

must dene it as t e s up er p o s i t i o n of a n i d ea o n a f a c t This con .

Cep t i o n of it represents it as similar in its general conception as the

application of a category or principle of judgment to an apprehension

or phenomenon The di fference between them is the fact that co gn i
.

tion is a p r i o r i while hypothesis is empirical
,
The principles .

of cognition represent native laws of thought ; the principles of h y

p o t h esi s the us e of an idea of the empirical sort i n the same
manner as judgment uses a category The fact in the application of
.

hypothesis will be given in experience or obse r vation and the ,

explanation will be fou nd in the superposition upon it of an idea

or conception which renders the fact intelligible or indicates its cause .

The hypothesis is its interpretation or the assignment of its meaning .

It represents m o r e than is given in the individua l experience to be

242 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

interpreted or explained If it were not more than what is given an

.
,

inductive inference would not be required but we should have an ,

apprehension or cognition or generalization of the a p r i o r i type To .

illustra te the denition of it as the superposition of an idea on a

fact ta k e Kepler s theory of planetary motion This theo ry was that
,

.

the planets revolve about the su n in elliptical orbits A l l that the .

Coperni can theory maintains was that the planets moved about the sun ,

but it did not denitely determine the n ature of this motion Now .
,

the facts in Kepler s observations were certain determinate positions of

the planets in space as observed at different times H e noticed that .

these positions represented or coincided with points in an ellipse H e .

therefore simply inferred that an ellipse represented the whole line of

the orbit H e found a part of an ellipse in his observations and in
.

ferred the rest .

That is he superposed the known idea of an
,

ellipse upon the facts which represented points in such a line This .

inf erence w as veried by further observations The Newtonian h y .

p o t h e si s of gravitation was formed in a similar manner The obse r ved .

fact was falling objects and the doctrine of terrestrial attraction as

determining the motion bf these objects The hypothesis w a s the .

extension of this attraction to other and celestial bodies explaining ,

their elliptical motion In the Keplerian hypothesis the idea super

.

posed was that o f an ellipse already known in mathematics and in the ,

Newtonian hypothesis the idea superposed was that of terrestrial

attraction and the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces .

Another illustration of hypothesis is F ranklin s identication of elec

t r i c i ty and lightning Certain common facts in the phenomena of both

.

were obse rved and their identity in other respects inferred from these .

The ideas k nown in electrical phenomena were simply supe rposed

on the fact of lightning That i s lightning was interpreted or ex
.
,
.

plained as a form of electri city The volcanic theory of the earth s

.

center is another instance T h e hypothesis of evolution was the a pp l i

.

cation o f the ideas of continuity and the va riatio n of domesti c spe

cies under cultivation to the origin of species in general The same .

principle will be found in all legitimate hypotheses .

The resemblance of this procedure to the use of the Categories in

judgment as Kant treated it is quite apparent Kant s categories
, , .

were a p r i o r i while the ideas whi ch are superposed in the
,

indu ctive process are empirical though I should not object to the
,

use of a p r i o r i in these cas es What I am m aintaining is inde
.

pendent o f the genesis of t h e concept applied or superposed I call .

attention to the relation of the process to Kant s doctrine to show that
 TH E C R I TE R IA OF TR U T H . 2
43
.

the inductive activity of the mind is fundamentally like the deductive ,

and differs only in the modality or certitude of the result In a p r i .

o r i judgments the modality is certitude or necessity ; in empiri cal
or indu ctive judgments it is possibility an d probability .

T h ere are however certain conditions of legitimate hypothesis

, , .

Suppositions cannot be m a de a a l i i t zm z and without reference to
relevancy They are subject to certain limitations in their application
. .

T wo rules probably s ui ce to regulat e their l egitimacy .

( a ) An hypothesis should not be inconsistent with k n own facts

and causes but in the att empt to explain n ew phenomena should be
,

show n to conform to the known in essential characteristics That is .

,

the n ew hypothesis must have some continuity with past knowledge .

To illustrate Newton s hypothesis of universal gravitation appealed

to the admitted attraction of the earth for falling bodies and only
extended its Operation indenitely in space He said of his do ctrine , .

by p o t es es n o n ng o Kepler appealed to existing ideas of
_
.

ellipses , Copernicus to our conceptions of motion and its cause to

remove the perplexities of the Ptolemaic system Darwin appealed .

to the str uggle for existence , do m estic variation and the continuity of ,

different species to justify the theory of evolution The theory of dew .

could depend on the l a w of aqueous distillation As examples of .

illegitimate hypotheses take the cases of materia pinga is fatty ,

matter and lapidifying juice to ac count for the traces of fossils in

,

the rocks instead of using what we know of deposits on the shores of

,

rivers and bays A lso the arbitrary assumption of the Italia n p h ilos
.

opher who sought to reconcile the Aristotelian and P latoni c theory of

the rotundity of heavenly bodies with the supposition of Galileo ,

proved by observations with the teles cope that the moon had a rough ,

surface by imagining that the hollow parts were lled with t r a nspa r
,

ent crystal which would permit the same a ppearances of light and
shadow as those which we observe This w as an unnece ss ary sup .

position made merely to remain consistent in some absolute sense with

the a p r i o r i assumption that the heavenly bodies were pe r fe ctly round
beca use nature tended to perfe ction .

( 6) An hypothesis should permit the application of deductive

reasoning or of inferences to consequences whi ch are capable of
,

comparison w ith the results of observation or vericatio n thereby .

As an illustratio n of hypotheses which do not conform to this rule

we have the old theory of phlogiston as an assumed explanation of the
phenomena of heat It was only another term for the facts themselves
. .

Every legitimate hypothesis must represent some other fact than those
2
44 THE PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

needing explanation and hence a fact f rom which can be deduced th e

probability or certainty that consequences not yet observed will follow .

Thus if I suppose that the attraction of the moon causes the tides I ,

can infer that there will be a certain mathemati cal relation between the
moon s mass and the height of the tides O bserv ation veries this

. .

Again if w e suppose that gravity acts on matter in dire ct proportio n

to its mass we may infer that its velocity i n falling will be equal in all
cases under the same conditions If the Newtonian hypothesis of
.

g ravitation be legitimate we can deduce from it the fact that there will
be a certain law of planetary motion and if this law is no t found to be
,

true there will be some dii cul ty in admitting the Newtonian theorem ,

unless the anomalous dis crepancies can be explained consistently with

the main hypothesis If irides cence be due to the form of the matter
.

in connection with which it occurs and n o t with the nature of it then ,

we ought to be able to infer that the phenomenon will be producible

by the articial creation of this condition as found in the mother of
pearl Experiment shows that this is a fact If the undulato r y theory
. .

of light be legitimate we should expect to nd areas of da rk ness at the

point of the intersection of the rays of light as silence is found at the ,

inte rs ection of sound waves In all such cases the fa ct or cause which
.

serves as the starti n g point of the hypothesis does more than name the
fact to be explained It names other facts with certain known i m p l i
.

cations so that when we apply the hypothesis to the ne w phenomena

,

we should be able to test the meaning of our application by i nferring

that the theory is more than the new facts and involved cons equences
possibly not observed at the discovery of the new phenomena .

It must be remembered however that this conformity of hypoth

, ,

eses to known facts and to the requirement of deductive reasoning

may not prove the hypothesis to be true It only establishes its righ t .

to recognition , and verication may have to come in to complete it s

validity .

4 Ve r i ca t i o n
. The verication of hypotheses is their proof
.
,

or is the pro cess of testing their validity When they are rst made .
,

unless the conditions under which they a r e proposed a t the same time
satis fy the demands of assured truth they are held more or less in,

abeyance and suspense of j ud gment They are simply probable o r

.

le gi timately possible to the extent of being tolerable The desire of .

the mind is to see t h em proved Consequentl y in various ways we

.

seek the evidence of their validity in facts that increase the tenacity of
conviction The facts which verify an hypothesis may be of the same
.

ge n eral kind as those which suggest it and only serve to indicate that
,
 TH E CR I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
5
24

u niformity of nature which helps to sustain belief in the processes

whi ch explain the phenomena s uggesting a theory It should be .

n oti ced however that verication does not add or doe s no t require to
, , ,

a dd to the material content of

knowledge in the process of proving
,

h ypotheses Its chief fun ctio n is to affect the m o d a l i ty of judg

.

ments already forme d and not to s uggest them It is a process for .

i ncreasing co nviction not for producing n ew matter of truth

,
Hence .

i t is an e v i d e n t i a l not an explanatory function of belief

,
It seeks to .

e stablish conviction , not m a tt e r of cons ciousness We found that .

e xplanati o n involved the r a t i o ess e n d i and the r a t i o

f en d i of phenom
e n a and things that is content of belief and knowledge
, ,
No w .

v erication is based upon the r a t i o c o

g n o s c en d i of knowledge and ,

belief It represents the evidential criteria whi ch i n crease conviction

.

i n cases where it is but provisional to start with The facts and con .

d it io ns may be capable of suggesting either the hypotheses conrmed

or new ones to be further tested , but used for vericatio n they only
increase the tenacity and cohesiveness of belief in the suppositions
otherwise suggested Consequently in thus attesting hypotheses or
.

s upplying them with the r a t i o co

g n o s c en d i verication simply acts ,

as a criterion of truth and may rea ch all the way to proof though
, ,

its purpose is satised if it simply increase s the probability of the

supposition with which it starts .

The various processes of verication are O bservation Experiment , ,

D eduction and Induction,

These , of course are only the continuation
.
,

o f the processes w hich may give rise to hypothesis except that they ,

a r e expected to supply additional facts in support of the inference rst

s uggested They are all based upon the Principles of Scientic

.

M ethod still to be consi dered and may be illustrated briey in the ,

f ollowing manner .

Wh en Newton rst thought of the la w of universal gravitation , he

w as not content with its power to explain the single phenomenon
which suggested it but he s a w that certai n other facts must follow
,

f rom it or be associated with it He therefore set about a m ath e ma

.

t ical calculatio n to see if the result coincided with what ought to occur

in the case and seeing that it did not he gave up his theory until n ew ,

data some ten years latter were discovered regardi n g the true distance
, ,

o f the moon from the earth H e then resumed his calculations and
.

f ound that the result coincided with his hypothesis He regarded this .

as a verication of it When the hypothesis that all gases are com

.

pressible into liquids or solids was advanced it was at least a partial ,

v erication of it to have succeeded in compres sing hydro en into a

g
2
46 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

a liquid under a low temperature and high pressure When the Coper .

nican theory of planetary motio n around the sun was proposed and the
explanation of the phases of the moon was accepte d it was argued ,

that Mercury and Venus ought to exhibit similar phases This was .

admitted by the advocates of the Ptolemaic theory even and stated

as contrary to actual observ ation But when Galileo tu rned his tele
.

s cope upon them the inference was veried by the dis cove r y of these
phases An experiment of Sir David Brewster s showed that irides
.

cence was due to the form and not to the n ature of the substance of
mother of pearl He took a wax impression of mother of pearl and
.

produced the same effect as in the substance of pearl .

These illustrations suff ice to show what the function of verication

is in the determination of conviction in connection with hypotheses .

Before further discussion of the question it remains to consider the

principles of scientic method which are Operative throughout the
whole process of acquisition and verication When these have bee n .

considered we may ascertain the nature of inductive generalizations

and their relation to those which seem to have a modality mu ch more

certain than the empirical truths of induction though s cienti c ,

method m ay include the means of determining certitude and necessity .

II . P r i n c ip l esf S c i e n t ifi c M e t /20d

o .

I have dis cussed the various processes by which k nowledge a n d

belief are formed in the application of scienti c method and it now r e
mains to examine the principles upon which it proceeds These prin .

c i l es I shall treat as the r a t i o c o

p g n o s cen d i of scienti c knowledge
and more parti cularly manifest in the process of verication though ,

they al so condition the legitimacy of hypothesis as well They are n o t .

constitutive of the nature of judgments as they are to be employe d but ,

criterial of their legitimacy They represent rules to whi ch s cienti c

.

investigation of all kinds must conform , and by scienti c I mean

every investigation into the truth of a i r m a t i o n s and negations whether
in the eld of philosophy or the so called empirical s ciences Mill
-
.

des cribes them as the Method of Agreement the Method of Dif
,

ference the Method of Concomitant V ariations the Method o f
, ,

Joint Agreement and Di fference and the ,
Method of Residues .

I shall reduce these ve methods to t w o as serving our general purpose .

Thus the Method of Concomitant Variations is only a form of the

Method of Agreement in th at two different phenomena are simply
des cribed as agreeing in their variations and the Method of Joint
,

Agreement and Difference is only a combination of both of the funda

 TH E CR I T E R IA OF TR U TH . 2
47

mental principles while that of Residues is one of Difference

pure an d s imple so named only because of its S pecial applicatio n to
,

residual phenomena But in reducing them to two types of principles

.

I shall slightly alter the phraseology I shall call them the P rinciple
.

of Coincidence and the P rinciple of Isolation . The former is the

same as that of Agreement and the latter the same as that of Dif
ference The slight change Of phraseology is designed to avoid all
.

implicatio n s of the categories of Identity and D iffere n ce as explained ,

in earlier dis cussions There is undoubtedly a close relatio n between

.

them and I should be quite willing to as sume and admit that the prin
c ip l e s are the same as in the exercises of judg m ent but I wish to use ,

them here a s r a t i o co g n o s ce n d i as evidential criteria and not as r a t i o

, ,

es s e n di and r a t i o
e n d i or as constitutive elements of the meaning of
judgment The principles of coincidence and isolation represent the
.

conditions on which the formation and verication of hypotheses can

take place and so represent criteria of legitima cy not the nature of the
,

subject matter of k nowledge and belief With this explanation of

.

the meaning of the changed phraseology I may leave the conceptio n of

the facts and the na ture of t h e Methods to the reader to actually
be identied with the principles of Mill and other writers .

I P r i n c ip l e of Co i n c i d e n c e o r Ag r e e m en t
. The Canon of C o
incidence o r Agreement may be dened as the principle which deter
mines the probability o f a give n identity or connection o n the ground
of the actual frequency of certain resemblan ces or coincidences unde r
varying conditions O r more simply still the coincidence or agreement
.
,

of t w o phenomena in respe ct of the qualities producing them or in t e

spect of the connection in whi ch they o ccur is a criterio n of their cause ,
.
,

whether material or ef cient .

To illustrate : If I dis cover that rainfall is frequently consociate d

with a certain type of cloud I may infer that this type of clou d is its
,

cause or an index of what the conditions are that cause the rainfall .

The more frequently that this coincidence occurs the more general will
be the judgment so passed If I nd that certain owers turn in the
.

dark toward the light I may infer that the light is the cause If I nd
,
.

that the roots of trees grow in greater quantities and at greater l ength
toward water courses I may infer that the water course is the cause of
,

the phenomeno n If I discover certain organi c resemblances between

.

species or perh aps I should say individuals I may infer that they
, ,

belong to the same genus If two eleme nts agree in a quality that puts
.

them in a given class w e may infer that other qualities of that class will
,

be fou n d if these other qu a lities are regarded as necessary to the type

, .
2
48 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

If I nd consciousness a lways associated with an organis m and do not

nd it apart from such I must infer that it i s a function of this organism
, .

I must interpret it as I do other functions or properties s o found If I .

f requently nd hard times associated with failure of crops I may ,

infer that there is a causal connection between the t w o and expect the
f act always to occur .

T h e cogency of the inference is greatly strengthened if the co in c i

d ence is connected with other facts which we would naturally expect
to be related to the phenomena observed Thus if we know that trees.

u se moisture in the process of growth it renders all the more probable

,

t h e supposition that the water courses a ffect the growth of their roots

t oward them . We thus nd that the probability or certainty of our

i nference and generalization will increase in proportion to the c o i n ci
d eu ces involved in the phenomena associated and consociated .

P r i n c ip l e of I s o l a t i o n o r D if e r en c e

2 .
, The Canon of Isola
.

t ion may be dened as the principle which determines the probability

o r certainty of an inference or generalization by the extent to which

phenomena and their causes are separate d from the connections which
would ma k e any other cause possible in the case If t w o phenomena .

are constantly isolated together from other groups which remain inva
r i a bl e without the accompaniment of the t w o under consideration the ,

separated phenomena may be tak en as necessarily connected in the

relation of cause and effect the antecedent being t h e cause and the
,

consequent being the effect .

To illustrate : It was inferred from t h e nature of gravity that it

acted equally on all bodies and that wei ght had no inuence to modify
the motion of falling bodies This supposition seemed to be contra
.

dicted by the fact that bodies lik e lead and feathers did not fall with
the same velocities But when the lead and feathers are put in a r e
.

c eiv er and the air exhausted from it they are found to fall with equal

velocity through equal spaces in equal times The isolation of the .

bodies from the retarding inuence of the air which can a ct with more
,

force on the feathers than the lead because of the greater surface exposed
i n proportion to specic gravity went to show that there can be but
,

o n e caus e of the effe ct . The inference is conclusive in propo r tion to

th e certi tude that the conditions represent this isolation of phenomenon
and cause Again if I actually isolate a substance from its association
.
,

with another element whi ch has prevented my dis covery of it I have ,

the righ t to assert the existence of a new element O therwise it .

might be an instance of allotropism or isomerism If we isolate an

.

individ ua l cons ciousness from the organism with which it has been
 THE C R I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 2 49

n aturally associated w e prove its independent existence ; that is we

, ,

prove that it is not a function solely of the organis m but is the func
'

tio n of some other subject The method of coincidence favors the

.

s upposition that cons ciousness is a function of the organism but the ,

method of isolation would prove beyon d a doubt that it was not so .

To quote Jevons Thus we can clearly prove that friction is o n e

cause of heat because when two sticks are rubbed together they become
,

heated ; when not rubbed together they do not become heated Sir .

Humphrey Davy showed that even two pieces of ice when rubbe d
together in a vacuum produce heat as shown by their melting and
, ,

thus completely demonstrate that the frictio n is the source and cause
of the heat We prove that air is the cause of sound being communi
.

c a t e d to our ears by striking a bell in t h e receiver of an air pump as ,

H a wksbee rst did in 1 7 1 5 and then observing when the receiver is

,

full of air w e hear the bell ; when it contains little or no air w e do not
hear the bell We learn that sodiu m or any of its compounds pro
.
, ,

duces a spe ctrum having a br ight yellow double line , by noticing that
there is no such line in the spectrum of light when sodi um is not
present but that if the smallest quantity of sodium be thrown into the
,

ame or other source of light the bright yellow line instantly appears
,
.

All these cases are instances of the principle of isolation .

It is possible to maintain that the principles of coincidence and

isolation may be cooperative in many instances in which our convi e
tions are formed and veried These instances would be such as those
.

in which coincidence suggests what isolatio n proves But it will not .

be necessary to more than admit this fact as a possible one as I am ,

not here developing a guide for the practical investigator in all elds
of investigation , but only indicating the general principles which reg
ul a t e co nv ictions in any case and s o suggest the primary canons of

epistemology when it comes to legitimizing and verifying the judg

,

ments and generalizations which dene belief and knowledge .

Some judgments have so little probability when rst suggested that

the mind see k s some w a y to decide which side of the issue its a ll egi
ance may support In mathematics there is no di f c ulty in deter
.

mining what is true and what is false But in the inductive sciences
. .

a n d in all those generalizations whi ch represent various degrees of

probability it is sought to investigate the integrity of statements and

,

to conr m them in the various ways intimated The reason for this i s .

that probability has degrees certitude and necessity have not P rob .

ability denotes a modality extending f rom an incipient belief of the

m erely possible sort to convictions which are so tena cious that doubt of
2
50 TH E P R OB L E IV
IS OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

them seem s dif cult Within this range of probabilities there is a

.

great need of such criteria as I have dened and illustrated in the

principles of coincidence and isolation They are applied to test the .

validity of a judgment and its extent and it will be acceptable in pro

,

portion to the constancy with which the phenomena to be explained

occur in the same or di fferent connections The conviction m a y .

have but a slight probability in its initial stage and then rea ch proof in
its nal stage which will occur in the application of the prin ciple of
,

isolation T h e whole process will indicate the extent to which asser

.

tions can be made universal or necessary or not In all stages inter ,

.

mediat e between the primary acts o f the mind and the application of
the principle of isolation which is practically the realization of the
,

conditions dening the primary the generalizations will be more or

,

less contingent and empirical It is the business of investigation

.
,

analysis and the application of s cienti c method to determine the

,

measure of certitude and probability accruing to j udgments thus r e

lated and it succeeds in proportion to our ability to use the principles
,

which I have dened and illustrated .

The analysis of scientic method was undertaken in orde r to deter

mine the character o f certain forms of judgment which were not self
evident and whose universality and necessity were subject to doubt .

Thus we found in such propositions as 2 2 are 4 statements that

were accepted as certain and ne cessarily true but in su ch statements ,

as All oranges are yellow we had judgments which might not
,

seem to be necessarily true We could easily conceive that oranges

.

might be white or red H ence it would appear that the only truth
.

assignable to such propositions would be empirical that is m ue , ,

m o n i ca lly true
universal within the limits of experience and
,

not necessarily so for future experience H ence it became n e c es .

sary to examine the processes and principles whi ch determine such

propositions as distinct from those of mathematics They were found .

to be more or less co ntingent and the question arises why they are so .

The general answer was of course that i n mathematics we were deal

, ,

ing with a s t a t i c world and in physics with a dy n a m i c world a

, ,

system of phenomenal changes The contingency of j udgment in the

.

latter world is just as certain as its necessity in the former and yet ,

there were found a system of judgme nts in the physical or s ubstantive

world with quite as cohesive a ch a racter in the relation between sub
j c e t and predicate apparently is in the static world The questio n .

was to determine why this is the case The answer is that s cienti c .

m ethod shows a measure of constancy even in the world of change

 TH E CR I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
2
51

and in that proportion we ca n a f x cohesiveness to judgments r ep r e

senting the relations of phenomena .

In order to understand the use of the principles of s cientic method

in the study of judgments it may be well to review their nature and
types somewhat briey We had originally two kinds of judgment
.
,

intensive and extensive The former are always substantive and the
.

latter may be either substantive or mathematical Universality and .

ne cessity could be predicated of mathemati c al propositions , owing to

the quantitative and qu a litative identity of subject and predicate .

Their validity is never in question But we found some confusion in

.

the problem as affected by intensive judgments In their pure form .

as dened their universality is not a p r i o r i That is we cannot say ,

, .

except hypothetically assuming that conditions remain the same

, ,

that the union of subject and predicate holds goo d for all time and
space which is what an a p r i o r i and necessary judgment must do
,
.

We found it n eces sary therefore to distinguish between the f o r m a l

, ,

and the r ea l intensive j udgment The formal intensive judgment

.

exhibits the same form of expression as the real but the mind may ,

substitute the idea of an attribute for that of substance in think ing of

the subject so that we have an association of t w o attributes or
,

phenomen a in the proposition instead of an a ssociation of a substance

and attribute This tendency gives rise to the opportunity for intro
.

d u cin g the principle of identity into the real meaning of propositions

that are apparently regulated by the principle of causality The intro .

duction of identity into them may affect the generalization to an extent

that renders s ome sort of forecasting of the future possible In what .

sense this is possible I shall examine in a moment I shall rst repeat .

the considerations which prevent the application of a p r i o r i univer

sa l it
y and necessity to pure intensive judgments This we found to .

be the noumenal and persistent nature of the subject and the phenom
enal and changeable nature of the predicate We found that in the .

substantive world we are dealing with a system of change except that ,

substance itself is supposed to be permanent and constant Its att r i .

butes change This fact prevents us from asserting the necessary con
.

st a n c
y of any attribute in space and time though the substantive
subject be the same or the same in kind But as w e do not always
, .

think of the substantive import of our subject terms taking instead its ,

attributive or phenomenal implication as its equivalent w e n d that ,

w e may be representing a relation between phenomena not noticeable

in the merely form a l character of the intensive ju dgment and this ,

relation will be one of identity or difference according to circum

252 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

s tances Consequently no a p r i o r i generalization rega rding the class

.

c a n be made until we determine when the relation is one of identity

a n d when it is one of di fference The process by which this is done

.

is not easily dened But it brings out some fundamental considera

.

tions in what passes for the proble m of knowledge I must .

examine these with the qualications which they apply to the question
u nder review .

The rst thing to observe is that denitions are not existential judg
m ents but only an explication of the meaning of terms
,
Whatever .

a p r i o r i universality they O btain is due to the identity of subject and

predicate and the necessity that the meaning of language shall be uni
for m whether nature is so o r not The denition does not imply either
.

that the thing dened exists or that if it exists it shall continue , but
, ,

only that when it exists the term can apply to it No w this necessity .

o f the x it y of meaning for terms is important for all communication

of k nowledge or ideas Unless a term shall have a constant mean

.

ing it is useless to indicate what are the objects of thought and discus
sion Consequently our concepts must have stability of meaning in
.

terms of the language which denominates them whether nature has ,

that stability or not Nature repeats herself enough for us to insist

.

upon the constancy of our conceptions amid the changes of facts and
s o propositions embodying denitions may be a p r i o r i and necessary

without implying a ny existential fa cts corresponding to them at all

times and places A some what similar status obtains for certain other
.

propositions .

No w in spite of the fact that a subject in an apparently intensive

judgment may have a substantive import in common parlance and ,

dis cussion it does not seem to have this exclusive meaning We .

n oted that in intensive judgments of the pure and real form the predi

cate as a phenomenal fact of
,
experience is the r a t i o c o g n o scen di
,

of the subject not its r a t i o ess e n d i ( ontological material cause iden , ,

tity ) while the subject may be viewed as the r a t i o e n d i of the pred

,

i c at e the o r d o co g n i t i o n i s being the reverse of o r d o n a t u r e

,
But the .

very nature of this relation between the phenomenal predicate and its
subject ( numerical identity n u m e r o e a d em ) makes the abstract subject
,

of cognition convertible with the predi cate in so far as conception or

rep r esentation is concerned and when this is on ce done the word
,

which names the subject is conceived more or less in terms of the pred
i ca t e . This is to say th at the predi cate is t a ke n to be its essential
,

quality which shall a l ways be ou r criterion of the presence of the sub

j c et in experience Whatever substantive meaning the term may have
.
 OF TR U T H 25
TH E CR I TE R I A .
3

to give the proposition a really or apparently synthetic character the

subject may denote the predicate by implication and be conceived in
its terms We get such judgments as snow is white from this proc
.

ess and when we thus decide to take a certain quality of w h iteness as

,

the evidence of the presence of the subject , and as the attribute whi ch
w e treat as essential to i t we get a proposition which is li k e a d e n i
,

tion i n respect t o its universality and necessity but differs from a ,

denition only in th e n o n distribution of the predicate But when a

-
.

term has once come to be convertible in conception with the phenom

enon which is the fu n ction or quality of the subject or substance al so
n amed by the term the real character of an intensive judgment may be

lost and the synthesis may represent the conn ectio n between t wo phe
n o m e n a or attributes Thus if taste represent the essential quality

of or an ges a yellow col o r may not be a necessary consequence of the

presence of this particul a r t aste It may be a fact that all orange s
.

are yellow b ut it may not be a necessary fact that this synthesi s

,

shoul d exist Before we should be entitled to assert that the yellow

.

color was a ne cessary attribute of oranges we shoul d have to decide

that we should not use the te r m orange unless both attributes were
simultaneously present This is simply xing on the conditions unde r
.

which the term shall be used and would make it necessary to employ
some other ter m for objects in which the taste was the same as that of
oranges while th e color w a s different There is no a p r i o r i rea
.

son for the synthesis of these two qualities It is empirical . The .

convenience of p ractical life has made it useful to treat the t wo a tt r i

butes together so that the presence of a cert a in yellow color may be the
,

basis of an i nference to a certain taste and the presence of a certain

,

taste may be the ba s is for an inference to a certain color the color ,

being the equivalent of orange for sight and its sapidity the equiv
a l e nt for taste T h e e m ployment of both qualities for determining the
.

meaning of the term o nly indicates th e desire to prevent the ter m fro m
beco m ing equivocal and to x its import so that whatever universality
it may have this characteristic may no t conict any more than is pos
sible with actual experi ence B ut it will be apparent that the
.

whole procedure is empi ri cal .T h e whole extent of the generali

z a t i o n is dependent upon th e amount o f coincidence in experience
between a given taste and a iven col o r an d it can never take the for m
g ,

of necessity as an existential j udgment unle s s we prove that the caus e

,

of the Color is the same as that fo r the taste and that their connection
is inevitable fro m the chemi cal combin ations required to produce the
orange It is possibl e that the majority of our apparently intensive judg
.
z
54 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

ments are p r ecisely like the o ne just dis cussed Wherever they are so .
,

it is evident that the measure of their generality and of the cohesiveness

of the relation between subject and predicate is solely determinable by
experience and dependent upon the principles of coincidence and
isolation for the measure of certitude which the synthesis shall possess .

The frequency of their association and consociation in experience ,

other things varying creates the probability of their relation in the

,

future but will not make it necess ary until the principle of isolation
,

has been satised T h e consequence is that there is nothing in the

.

form of propositions that will indi cate when their predi ction of the
future is certain except in mathematical propositions and denitions
, ,

and su ch as interpret the meaning of the subject by the co n ception of

the predicate that is are analytical in Kant s denition of them The
, ,

.

modality of all others is problematical .

III f R es u l t s
. S u m m a ry o .

We have found that the problem of knowledge starts with a

demand for certitude and necessity in at least some of our judgments
and is nally forced to distinguish between what is probable and what
is necessary as a condition of preserving any clai m s at all It was easy .

enough to show that there were some things of which we are certain ,

but it too often happens that the things of whi ch we are certain are
n o t the things for which certitude is sought and hence the quest for ,

dat a a nd proof of beliefs w hich seem too important to remai n in a

merely problematical condition Knowledge of the present moment
.

gave no difculty All are and were agreed upon that It is knowl
. .

edge of the future that represents the important quest Universal .

and necessary truth claims to determine what is true for the future as
well as the past and present Apprehension and memory decide the
.

past and present and the question is whether there is any faculty or
condition u nder which propositions valid for the future can be asserted .

The exigencies of the whole question require us to distinguish between

the communication and the acquisition and between the cognitive ,

a cquisition and the generalization , of k nowledge

No w we found .

that it is on ly in the process of generalization that any pretense of a

knowledge of the future is possible All others are occupied with .

present facts But man thinks before and after H is pra ctical and
. .

ethical intere sts re quire him to know at l east some of the probabilities
of the future in order that he may have a better chance to survive in
the struggle for existence This is very simply illustrated in the rela
.

tion between the sens es of sight a n d touch Sight is an a nticipatory .

 TH E CR I TE R I A OF TR U T H . 2
55

sense and touch is the protective sense What w e see enables us to .

a nti cipate the risks and dangers of certain tactual experiences and this

a nticipation is only fore casting a future sensation Man s power of

.

survival and avoidance of danger his power of self prese r vation is

,
-

largely dependent upon this anticipation of the future H ence his .

desire to know it if possible O nly when he gambles or patronizes

,
.

the lottery does he satisfy him self with mere chance in his conduct .

In more serious nancia l business and in his rational condu ct he is less

content with risk He demands a mortgage or other se curity for his
.

investment and this presuppose s some stability in the course of n ature

,

or condence in the honesty whi ch is only another name for the

,

s tability of ch a racter in his fellow man

,
In his religious life he wants
.

to know what condence he may have in the order of the cosmos

whi ch plants in him ideals demanding an extension beyond the present
order of things for their realization In all his affairs whether .
,

d omestic or political economic or social moral or aesthetic material

, , ,

or spiritual he demands some way of counting on the future as a con

,

dition of making any rational plans or ideals p ra cti cal or obligatory .

If the seasons are irregular and their return cannot be relied upon I
refuse to plant my crops We want some reasonable hope and
.

expectation of realizi n g our ideals if they are to have any validity or

imperativeness at all This hope must assume some probability or
.

cert a inty about the course of nature in some respects at least To .

form a conception of this future man must generalize from his

experience or his cognitions The ability to do so depends wholly
.

upon what is given in that experience or cognition In the worlds .

of space and time we nd the static conditions which enable us to

entertain at least some universal and necessary truths whether we con ,

s ider them as formal or material In the physi cal or substantive world

.

the conditions are different It is pre eminently a dynamic world a

.
,

world of change in the phenomenal mo des which supply the predicates

o f all propositions whatever w e may think of t h e changeless character
,

of the subject There is no guarantee whatever of any universal and

.

necessary truth in this world of perpetual ch a nge unless it be hypo ,

thetical This is only to say that w e cannot a p r i o r i forecast the

.

future in the physical world in any material way O f course obser a .

v

tion shows a relatively uniform and recurrent l a w in the happening of

phenomena so that in spite of the fact that nature is governed by
,

a law of change there are unities consistencies uniformities what

, , , ,

ever their conditions that offer a basis for rea s onable expe ctation of
,

the future and though we cannot draw any hard and fast line bet w
,
een
2
56 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

the certai n and the probable in concrete cases the general eld of t h e
two kinds of modality in judgment are fairly well determinable In .

all cases however the l a w is empirical , that is based upon o bser
, , ,

vation of the actual uniformities of phenomena and the future has a ,

probability in proportion to the amount of uni formity or coincidence

in volved Where phenomena exhibit a law of re currence there is
.

some constancy of the conditions which make this possible and gen
er a l i z a t i o n becomes a safe adventure But in all cases whether in t h e
.
,

mathematical or the material world , the generalization has its validity

determined by the extent to which it embodies the l a w of identity an d
difference In the m athematical world of space and time the homo
.

ge n e ity of these data their unchangeableness is a guarantee for t h e

, ,

a pr io r i universality and necessity of the judgments based upon

them In the material world except in so far as it participates in
.
,

space and time qualities can its phenomena be predicted at all with
,

certainty Whatever probabilities generalization may have in thi s

.

world will depend upon empirical observation of a ctual uniformi
ties o i coexistence and sequence The assured generalizati on i n thes e
.

circumstances will be mnemonic or that of simple enumeration but is ,

not previsio nary or predictive beyond a certain degree of probability ,

as measured by the extent to which the principle of identity has bee n

realized .

In the mental world the same l a w holds good except the ideal ,

world of formal concepts which have no objective existential import

apart from the occasion of experience
Their universality is a
.

necessity for the communication of ideas not for the expression o f ,

existing facts in all places and times The universality and necessity
.

assumed in any of these formal judgments depe n ds upon the assumptio n

that the subject has been conceptually identical with the predicate in
some respect to make its meaning denite at all This conditio n .

ma kes such judgments a mere means for making facts intelligible whe n
they occur not of assuring their recurrence They do not predict the
, .

future but only what future events will be if they oc cur at all In
, , .

fact this may even be said of all judgments of the u niversal and meces
sary kind including the mathematical I do not nd it necessary to
,
.

exempt ev en t h ese from this l a w or condition But this l a w is cer

, .

t a i nly clearer in all these ju dgments which condition their universality

upon some real or apparent identication of subject and predicate ,

and in the physical world this often appears arbitrary F or instance .

,

at one time the judgment All metals have a specic gravity greater

than water was taken as a settled truth but after potassium sodium , , ,
 TH E CR I TE R I A OF TR U T H .
2
57

and lithiu m were discovere d and placed among the metals as they will ,

oat on water the origi nal ge n eralization did not hold But this w as
,
.

because the r a t i o co g n o s cen d i of what a metal is wa s changed .

When tha t propo s ition asserting a specic gravity greater than water was
held to be true it wa s on the condition that this specic gravity wa s the
test of the application of the term and any insistence upon the retention

of this test woul d exclude the n ew metals fro m the class to be
denominated by that ter m It w a s only the selection of a n ew criterion
.

or characteristic for cla ssication that cha nged the form of st atement ,

though it did not alter the real facts of nature But we see i n the
.

incident that whatever universality and necessity w e get in physical

judgments it must depend upo n a real or assumed identity between
subject and predicate terms even when the realities expressed by
,

the term are not in fact ide n tical . The identity may be only uni
formity of impli cation and that sui ces to give stability of meaning to
terms and conceptions , which is necessary to interpret the facts of
nature when they occ ur , n o t to predetermine their occurrence .
 CHAP TE R V III .

T H E P E R C E P T I O N O F S P A C E A ND O BJ E C T I VIT Y .

I N dening and disc ussing the nature of sensation I c alled attention ,

to the di f culty of distinguishing between sensation and apprehension ,

o wing to the fact that they are so closely associated in the same com

plex state of consciousness Indeed I went so far as to recogniz e the

.
,

f act that we might consider them as terms denoting the same event
s poken of in di fferent relations apprehension being the name for the
,

mental reaction viewed as an act of k nowledge and sensation as the

name for the same reaction as the result of stimulus It may not be .

n ecessary to conceive the terms as denoting exactly the same individual

f acts though the occasion of their o ccurrence seems to be a single one

,
.

This is especially true if we are li k ely in doing so to imply that the

, ,

state concerned is not a complex one It is quite possible to conceive

.

the mental reaction against stimulus a complex of at least two func

tions which we may call sensation and apprehension and then in later
, ,

experience add to this co m plex the var i ous functions of cognition
,
.

But whether simple or complex it is not n ec essary to reconsider these

,

questions further than to remark that all psychological criticism and

discussion centering about the primary functions of intelligence soon
have to meet the question h o w we can perceive an external world .

There was no trouble in the early history of speculation in ascribing

this to sensation But as time w ent on philosophy bega n to dene
.

and describe sensation as purely subj ective the mind s affair ,

which did not have the meaning for external reality which it was once
supposed to have that reality had either to be given up or ascribed to
,

some other function such as apprehension ,
,
perception intui ,

tion o r judgment This n ew way of presenting the case conceded
,
.

that sensation was an event in t h e organism and without any per

ceptive reference to external reality so that this presumably desired
,

result had to be obtained by na m ing a special function for the purpose ,

especially w herever idealistic solipsism w as not acceptable Whenever .

the puzz ling question as to how we cou l d know external reality was
raised if sensation were subjective the common sense philosopher
, ,

had only to name intuition or perception as the pro cess But .

s uch an answer has not always proved satisfactory and the questio n

258
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJE C TI VI T Y . 25
9

s till persists wherever we are impressed with the relative ,

n o m e na l or subjective nature of experience .

In discuss ing the process of synthetic knowledge or Cognitio n I ,

endeavored to present processes that justied a belief in objectivity an ,

external world without co n ditioning it upo n a theory of space I

,
.

r el ied u o n the principle of causality for the evidence of an external

'

p
world using the idea , however to denote externality to the phenomena
, ,

to be accounted for rather than the externality of space intu itions I .

come n o w to discuss the same general problem in connection with the

perception of space which I think the question best calculated to
,

c onsider in connection with the perceptive process in re l ation to

s ensation . It seems possible to condition our k nowledge of exter
nal reality upon two processes instead of one namely the categories , ,

of space and causality combined There can be no doubt that space

.

a ppears in our ordinary conception as the chief factor but I think that ,

the total of our j udgment will be found to comprehend both causality ,

as determining the indenite notion of otherness than a given fact and

space the denite sensory datum for its clearness I do not mean that .

c ausality can give anything spatial but that the complex conception of
,

o bjectivity is associated with both space and cause as determinative of

it In the physical u niverse objectivity is usually spatial as well as

.

c ausal and it is space that indicates the plurality of the elements con
,

s ti t ut i ng the known cosmos when their causal relatio n w ith each other

r eveals their unity of action and with the mind their existence But .

h owever this may be a position not necessary to a f rm here the place

, ,

w hich the idea of space has in the determination of externality makes

i t important to examine our perception of it as a step in the analysis of
k nowledge and in the interpretation of nature The concrete form
.

which externality takes in our conceptions is represented by some

s patial relation and as the determination of this is closely associated

with sensation and perception or apprehension the process of reach ,

i n g externality and obj ectivity can be best studied in those phe

n o m en a of experience which can be analyz ed into their elements and
t heir function in the whole determi n ed accordingly By this I mean .

t hat what perception really does in connectio n with obj ectivity can
be studied in connection with space intuitions more effe ctively than
i n any other pheno m ena .

There are t wo closely related pr o ble ms in space perceptio n

h istorically considered . The rst is the g en es i s and th e second
the n a t u r e of the conception of space The theories of genesis
.

d ivided into
empiricism and nativism and those of its n ature
,
2 60 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

into the realistic or obj ective and the idealistic or subjective nature
of space .

It was the do ctrine of Kant that gave importance to the proble m of

space perception Had it not been for that philosopher s p ar a do x i
.

cal assertions about the nature o f space and its perception w e
should have probably ta k en this datum of knowledge as a dogmatic
obj ect of faith much as did the Cartesians and Lo ckians P revious to .

Kant no special theory of k nowledge or metaphysics depended so

absolutely upon any particular doctrine of space and its perception ,

or drew su ch consequences from them as did Kant This theory con .

sisted in a double qualication of its nature He described it as a .

form of intui t ion and qualied this as a p r i o r i and subj ective Ex .

a c tl
y what he meant by this will be the subj ect of further inquiry again ,

but it pointed to idealistic associations as the development of his phil

osophy has shown In the f E sth et ic Kant admitted that spa ce was
.

also obj ective as well as subjective and in the Analytic he seems t o

,

regard it as wholly subj ective But leavi n g real or apparent i n co n

.

si st en c i es aside the spirit of his position in both looks toward a con

,

ce t i o n of space which has always appeared as paradoxical to commo n

p
sense namely that it was an ideal and subjective pro d uct of the mind
, , .

That it w a s a na tive or intuitive perception was the generally
accepted doctrine after Descartes but no one had attempted to describ e
,

this native perception as subj ective unt il Kant ventured upon the

assertion The consequent ide a lization of knowledge and reality
.

,

whatever such idealization meant had so many revolutionary implica

,

tions in philosophic thought that it created mu ch offence in the rank s

of com m on sense and science Common sense did not like t h e ideal
.

ism founded upon it and the scientist did not like the doctrine of t h e
a p r i o r i w h ich appeared so antagonistic to his theory of
e x er i
p

ence . With the one the reduction of everything to states of mind was
absurd and with the other induction and experience were the source s

of all k nowledge
Both schools of thought conceived it their in
.

ter e st to attack the Kantian doctrine of idealism assumed to be as absurd ,

to the scientist as to common sense by depriving it of its foundation

, ,

which as I have said Kant had placed in the a p r i o r i and ideal n a ture
,

of space and time The scientic man attack ed its a p r i o r i nature and
.

the common sense philosopher its ideality Between the two it was . .

hoped to eradicate idealism and a p r i o r i s m The consequence was a .

vast literature and direct experimentation to determine the issues raised

by the alleged signicance of the Kantian doctrine The fa ct h o w .
,

ever was that the Kantian system was less dangerous to science a nd
,
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND OBJE C TI VI T Y
.
2 61

less antagonistic to the existing philosophy as a whole than was sup

posed The real conict between science and transcendentalism lay in
.

t h eir associations The one was l iberal and the other conservative in
.

its af liations . Scien ce had atta ched itself to progress and r ev o l u .

t io na r y tende n cies Trans cendentalism , whatever its sceptical i m

.

pulses had easily adj usted itself to the conservative institutions of

,

so ciety resisti ng change and the dissolution of tradition As the whole .

apparently revolutionary system was consciously made to dep end upon

the a p r i o r i and subjective nature of space and time the scientic mind ,

resolved to remove this keysto ne to the arch of the structure and con
sequently directed his experimental investigations to proving that space

perception was empirical assuming that he had not to discuss
,

any of the larger philosophic problems ostensibly founded upon the

Kantian theory of space and time The common sense philosopher .
,

with the same object in view and admitting the a p r i o r i or intuitive

nature of space and time attacked their ideality
, .

The outcome however has not been what was expected It was
, , .

thought that the refutation of the a p r i o r i perception of space would

disqualify the idealism founded upon that doctrine but a s the Nemesis , ,

of scepticism would have it Wu ndt an empiricist in the doctrine of

, ,

space perception denitely claims that this view affords a better basis
,

for the Kantian idealism than Kant s o w n conception of its condition

.

In fact the solution of the problem has been found not to be so easy as
was at rst imagined The complexities and equivocations i nvolved
.

in the conception of space suf ce to take the d o gmatism out of both

theories of its genesis and n o w no one cares whether space perceptio n
,

is empirical or a p r i o r i
3

No such philosophic consequences for
.

its nativity as Kant claimed for it are so uncompromisingly recogniz ed ,

and a p r i o r i has come to imply its subj ecti v ity as much as anything
else The controversy has changed from its genesis to its nature
.
,

whatever its genesis Hence the issue has completely shifted from the
.

psychogonical to the epistemologica l problem which lies on the

boundaries of metaphysical speculation .

A few remarks may be necessary at the outset of our study of this

question in order to indicate what w e shall have to face i n the conclu
sion They pertai n to the co mplexity of the proble m which is much
.

greater than Kant ever supposed If we could assume that the per .

ceptio n o f space involved no complexity of function and j udgment
and if we could assume that the conception of it involved no denition
and analysis prior to the study of its genesis we might very much sim
p l ify our problem But we have learned fro m various experimental
.
26 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

sources that it is one of the most complicated of our psychological

questions It is not a problem of metaphysical consequences attaching
.

to any theory of origin but only to its nature and besides the whole ,

question of origin is so complicated by the complexity of the elements

entering into the idea of space that the philosophic interest attaching
to the former conception of its simplicity has been lost .

In choosing between nativism and empiricism as theories of ,

space p erception we have rst to ask whether the question with

,

one or the other of these theories is that of d en i t e or that of i n d e n i t e

space , that of localization denitely represented or that of the general ,

space quale which we distinguish from other and associated charac a

t er ist i cs in the sens a tion Accepting the distinction betw een denite
.

and indenite space the theories of empiricism and nativism might be

reconciled if that term is usable by dividing the territory empiricis m
, , ,

taking that of denite space or localization and nativism ta k ing that of

indenite space or the extensive quale .

But the problem is still more complicated and in a twofold man ,

ner There is rst the questio n of the spatial quale in the individual
.

senses especially those of vision touch and hearing : and secondly

, , ,

their relation to each other in experience In regard to the rst .

of these some will insist that space is not a common sensible but an ,

obj ect of one of the senses and having an associative equivalent in the
others somethi n g from which the presence of an associated spatial
,

quale is inferable O thers will insist that space is a common sensible

.
,

representing a like characteristic in at least three of the senses I .

think that much can be said for the truth of both claims though
with qualications It is true that there are elements in the sensations
.

of each sense that are wholly di fferent in ch aracter from the phe
n o m e na of the other senses Color and sound have no common quali
.

ties nor hardness and color , though mutually associable It is possi

, .

ble to view the spatial quale of each sense in the same way except ,

that there must be something common about the spatial element in

order that the term space may be legitimately applicable to the
conten t at all But in spite of this the t w o or more qualia may have
.

a ccompanying di fferences which it may require experience to eliminate

for the discovery of the common characteristics It is very probable .

that the criterial space percept is taken from one of the senses ,
usua l ly the visual phantasm and the others adjusted to this by exp er i
,

ence and association .

The view here taken will indicate the answer to the question whether
the conception of space is abstract or concrete Kant emphatically .
 PE R CE P TI ON OE S P A CE A ND OBJ E C T ] VI T Y
. 26
3

denied that it was an abstract general concept but he gave no denite ,

a f rmation or description of what it was except to call it a pure in ,

tuition which has no me a ni ng whatever as a n intelligible account of

,

it It is probable that Kant took his conception of space wholly fro m

.

visio n , fro m the visual phantas m or expanse If he ever admitted .

tacitly or otherwise that a S p a ce percept was possible in other

senses he probably conceived it as exactly the same as in vision
,
.

Kant is absolutely silent on this matter If he limited it to the intui .

t ion of vision it is clear why he denied that it was a general abstra ct

,

concept But as it is possible to recogniz e a spatial quale in several

.

senses and as with the differential characteristics in them , there are

,

data for an abstract concept of space which is more than probably a ,

fact even if the matrix out of w hich it is formed is obtained from one
,

of the senses and other experiences interpreted in terms of it we may ,

nd a basis for an interpretatio n of its meaning somewhat di fferent from

the usual one ascribed to Kant But this conclusio n that the idea of
.

space may be abstract does not interfere with the main contentio n of
Kant that it is unique in its character and that our vie w of the nature
of space a ffects metaphysical problems while its genesis does not .

In the light of the analysis of space conceptions just indicated ,

showing that they m ay represent both a de n ite and an indenite

percept and both an abstract idea and a number of concrete forms ,

it will be u seless to decide the merits of the controversy between em

p ir i c ism and nativism in any other way th a n to accord both of them a
relative j ustication It will then devolve upon us to examine the
.

nature of space perception as a condition of estimating its relation

to the knowledge of objectivity .

The immemorial problem of knowledge has been connected with

the question whether we could ever know anything beyond our men
tal states and a ffections This we have indicated in previous discus
.

sions In thus dening it I am not ignorant of the complexities and

.
,

equivocations of such a formula lurking in the terms knowledge ,

beyond mental states etc I am only stating a form of conception
, .

which is n o t of my o w n making and which at least appears to conne

kno wledge to t h e functions o f the organism or m ind in the sense
that its boundaries are to be dened by the limits of the organis m itself .

It is not my task here to dene or analyze the formula or to determine

what is true or false in it but only to indicate for the present that the
,

resu lt of conceptions antecedent to the adoption of the formula has

brought men to state their conclusion in this language with its real or
app a rent i m port How this movement began we shall see in a moment
. .
2 64 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

But long after it had seized speculation the triumphant refutation of

scepticism was based upon the accepted integrity that is obj ective , ,

import of our idea of space and its impregnability against s ceptical

,

analysis and attack But the Kantian claim that space is subj ective
.

a nd ideal whatever Kant meant by it reanimated the old controversy ,
, ,

and at least in the light of traditional conceptions and implications

,

of the terms subjective and ideal suggested the limitation of ,

knowledge to states of conscious ness in a more radical sense than

ever While previous thought accepting the relativity of our knowl ,

edge o f matter had still remai ne d by the obj ectivity of space the n ew
, ,

position ta k en by Kant , applying the same language of relativity to space ,

left the im a gination with nothing but the subj ect and its own evanescent
states as the obj ects of knowledge What it meant in the eld of
.

perception was that we could p er cei v e only what we La v e in

experience that is nothing outside cons ciousness and so at least
, ,

apparently outside t h e organism could supposedly be k nown ,
The .

range of the knowable was limited to the states kn o wn or Iza d

as a ctions of the subject .

The phenomena of illusions have been the most important in u

ence in suggesting the w ay in which the limits of perception shall
be determined They indicate that the supposed reality beyond the
.

mental state and which is so condently assumed in normal conditions

may be nothing more than the subjective act The resemblance be .

m
tween the illusion and the nor al state between the phenomenal ,

and the real is so close that the unity between them is gotten by
,

eliminating t h e reality of the norma l the only difference between ,

the t w o being that the reality which may be assumed to be infer

e n t ia l is liable to error so that cer t ied knowledge appears to be
,

conned to the subj ective Valid perception seems thus to be r e

.

a l i z e d as fully in illusions as in the supposed normal consciousness the

,
reality of whose external obj ect seems dubious because it is infer
e n t ia l . Briey stated again the formula of the ide a listic doctrine seems
,

to indicate that we can perceive only what we Iza o e ; that is
knowing and being are identical or ess e i s p er cip i , .

The rise and development of this conception is an interesting bit of

history . I mean of course in reective and speculative thought
, , .

The whole doctrine got its inception from the n ai ve materialism of

Empedocles which wa s most probably a reection of common notions
at the time The m anner in which Empedocles accounted for sense
.

perception by the impact of eidola or co rpuscular ef uv ia u pon the sen

s o r iu m eidola which were the f a cs i m i l e of the obj ects from wh ich
,
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND O BJE C TI VI T Y . 26
5

they were proj ected appears to us absurd enough especially fro m the
, ,

point o f view of evidence But it illustrates clearly the assumptio n

.

that there is some qualitative rese m blance between the impression

and the stimulus or cause of sense perception The gure of a seal
.

and the wax even in Aristotle carried the sa m e implications with it and
probably affected the conceptions of antiquity to a large extent The .

Greek admitted the distance of the obj ect from the sensorium but be ,

cause he coul d not admit any doctrine of a ct i o i n d i s t a n s he could not

account for the knowledge of the object without importing into the
proces s the conception of contact with the subject and a stru ctural r e

semblance between the object and the impression probably because ,

of his monistic philosophy assuming a larger meas ure of identity be

t ween thought and reality tha n modern speculation That is to say .
,

though knowledge was not limited to the subjective state there was ,

some kind of identity between objects and knowledge , the reality
and the impression being similar w hile the intermediate distance
,

between them was traversed by eidola resembling both of them .

B ut this nai ve corpu scular theory was very soon supplanted by the
doctrine that it was not eidola but motion that affected the subj ect by
passing through the space intervening between it and the object and ,

hence served as the mediate stimulus of the sensorium as did the

assumed eidola H ere the whole conception of the case is changed
. .

In the Empedoclean view the assumption of identity between the i m

pression and the eidola and between the eidola and the object suf
, ,

ce d to j ustify the belief about the nature of the obj ect But in this .

new view depending upon the mediating and causal agency of motion
, ,

there w a s no denite indication at rst that motion and object were

l ike each other In fact it was rather distinctly assumed that they were
.

di fferent , and as the old e r conception of the object still prevailed the
analogy of the seal and the wa xdid not apply Consequently the i n
.
,

evitable tendency of the n e w conception was to set up an antithesis of

k ind between some of the data involved in sense perception There .

were three things to be considered : object motion and impres ,

sion. Until P lato came to revise the proble m the motion was not
like the object , and then the pro blem was to d etermine h o w the exter
nal object separated from the impression and unlike the m ediating
,

cause could be known

, The consequence was owing to the con
.
,

tin n ed prevalence of the assumption that contact w a s necessary to

knowledge that perception w a s limited to the sensory state
, ,

whatever that w a s and the further assu mption mad e th a t this state w a s
,

not an indication of the nature of the object external to it The logical .

2 66 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

outcome wa s the doctrine of the Sophists which was reinforced by the

general rela tivity of knowledge this being based upon the fact of
,

illusions as well as the assu m ption of contact with the organism as a

condition of knowledge though the contact wa s that of the medi
,

ating motio n and not the object or an eidolon The Sophist still .

assumed the identity of the obj ect and the impression ( thought
and reality ) but he did not locate the object beyond the subj ect in
,

his conception of the thing known The sense of antithesis remained
.

between the external object and the impression but for knowl ,

edge this external object was n i l the real obje ct being the ,

mental state and the other remained merely as a concession to inherited

,

convictions which were hard to eradicate even though the logic of ,

the case at least apparently requires this to be done .

The most important thing to remark at this j uncture of the case is

the fact that later thought never returned to the nai ve conceptions of
Empedocles for the purpose of rendering the pro cess of perception
phenomenally intelligible The inuence of the conception of motio n
.

was too great to permit this reaction The speculative philosopher

.

felt obliged in the eld of vision which was considered as the primary
,

source of knowledge as the statement of Aristotle proves to aban
, ,

don the conception o f contact as an explanation of perception and

consequently had a perpetual puz zle before him in the question
H o w can we perceive what is not consciousness or what is not in ,

the contact with the organis m ! or H o w can objects at a distance be

known at all ! when what is k nown

coincides with the im
pression involving the idea of contact as the conditio n of knowl

edge . P resumably obj ects are not k nown at a distance in tactual
experience which is the most fundamental source of our conception

of sensation according to the usual assumptions while vision is
, ,

predominantly the p er cep t i v e sense as touch is the measure of ,

s en s a t i o n
. In touch the supposed external object and the sensation
have the same locus the sensorium or organism in vision the common
,

assumption is that the obj ect is not in contact with the organism and ,

the very existence of it is presumably an inference from the experience

of touch and other sen ses where contact is the condition of the t eac
tion But as the motion ( vibration in modern parlance ) which is
.

generally supposed to issue from the object does no t represent the

object in kind but does satisfy the principle of contact according to
, ,

the accepted vie w in vision , while tactual experience and the assum p
,

tions associated with it determine the tendency to interpret sensation as

functionally limited to the locus of the sensoriu m the inevitable result ,
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJE C T I VI T Y .
26
7

is to interpret visual phenomena in terms of the principle of touch when

speaking of sensatio n the obj ect in this sense being and acting where
,

it is , so that in sight the object at a distance becomes u nknown a n d

the only thi ng known is t h e
phenomenon or experience .

Apparently we see m forced to interpret vision by touch or touch by

vision and as contact and sensation are the condition of representing
,

its function and distance and perception the conditio n of r ep r e
,

senting the function of vision the only unity of conceptio n betwee n

,

them will be found by accepting one or the other as the type and to ,

the idealist that conceptio n is the contact of to u ch , with the object at a

distance as unknown
If the general visua l process is to be inter
.

p r e t ed by the assumptions of ta ctual experience these being in term s ,

of contact and its causal meaning visual perception has the same
,

limitations on the assumptio n that this process cannot trans cend the
events occurring in the sensorium If touch is to be interpreted by th e
.

analogies of vision where the obj ect either directly or indirectly

,

k nown is supposed not to be in contact w e come into conict with,

the fact that we do not perceive the tactual object at a distance .

The consequence is that we get our unity of conception in the general

idea of sensation which limits its nature and meaning to the area of the

sensorium and the obj ect must be there in order to be known or if ,

it is supposed to be at a distance it is apparently a conjectural thing

,
.

No w as the principle of identity had all along been assumed to deter

mine all intelligibility that is to make things understandable in terms
, ,

of li ke kind this n e w assumption of an antithesis between thought and

,

reality , of di er en ce bet w een sensation and the object causing it and

not a part of the cons ciousness knowing it only availed to ma k e ,

the obj ect unintelligible according to accepted standards of identity .

The conception of it at a distance with motion as the mediating agency

,

for affecting the sensorium and the known thing being presumably
only in the subj ect results in the tendency to interpret vision by the
,

assumptions and conceptions of touch as the standard of judgment and ,

to consciousness the object at a distance is n il or conj ectural O r to .

put the same thought in another way what is not a qualitative part ,

of the impressio n cannot be known if t h e ordina ry criterio n ,

of knowledge from the experience of touch be accepted .

This conclusion as the conception of philosophy brings us to t h e

, ,

doctrine of Berkeley wh o s eems to have been under the inuence of as

sumptio u s which he did not analyz e His whole discussion of space
.

perception was governed by the assumption th a t wh a t was not in

the sensat ion or impression could not be perceived This doctrin e .
2 68 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

was embodied in his formula ess e i s p er cip i The physiologists

.

o f the same time evidently took the same view assumptively though ,

they never exactly formulated it But their conception of the condi

.

t ions of perceiving space a t all involved the idea that what is per
c e iv e d must be represented in kind in the image or impression

w hen space w a s the percept .

The most important fact to note i n Berkeley s positio n is his argu

ment to exclude the nativity of the visual perception of the third

dimension It was in clear accordance with the assumptions which
.

have j ust been indicated The argument used by h im against the o r

.

g a n ic and natural perception of dista nce in vision was t h at the third

d imension was not found in the image on the retina At the very out
.

set of the Tneo ry of Vi s i o n he says It is I think agreed by all

, ,

that distance of itself , and immediately cannot be seen F or distance .

being a line directed endwise to the eye it proj ects only one point in
,

t h e fund of the eye which point remains invariably the same ,

whether the distance be longer or shorter In a later section he says
.

It is plain that distance is in its o w n nature imperceptible .

Again : F rom what hath been premised , it is a manifest consequence

that a man born blind , being made to see would at rst have no idea
,

of distance by sight the su n and stars the remotest objects as well as

,

the nearer would all seem to be in the eye , or rather in h is mind
,
In .

many other passages Berkeley reiterates the same thought B ut these .

quotations sui ce to s how that he thought the presence of the third

dimension or solidity in the visual impression was necessary to its
, ,

immediate perception by that sense The plaus ibility of the as

.

sumption rested upon the fact that plane dimension was found in the
retinal image precisely as conceived wh ile it was clear from the law of
,

o ptics in the transmission of light and the production of images that no

solidity was present in the impression . Though Berkel ey was care

ful to assert over and over again that there was no resemblance between
the percepts of tou ch and vision he assumed in the interpretation
, ,

of vision the principle of c o ntact and identity of representation in that

s ense between object and image as necessary to give solidity and not ,

nding this condition present limited the percept to the optical

phantasm and said es s e i s p er c ip i
. It did not occur to Berkeley
that the as s erted di fference bet ween the t w o senses might involve the

instinctive perception of the third dimension and that there might
be other conditions than a spatial quale in the impression to deter
m ine the naturalness of space p erception in that sense .

But when he ca me to discuss the perception of pla n e dimensio n ,

 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJE C TI VI T Y .
26
9

he denied its nativity on other grounds tha n the absence of it in the

retinal impress ion , and virtually abandoned the assu mption which
w a s so necessary to the validity of his argu m ent regarding solidity .

He based the denial of the nativity of magnitude or plane dimension

upon the relativity of its perception th at is upo n the quantitative
, ,

variations between the dimension of the image and the dimensional

quantity of the o bj ect seen H e noted the fact that the spatial magni
.

tude of Obj ects remained the same for j udgment at any and all dis
tances while the image was smaller for the greater tha n for nearer dis
tances But as his arg u ment against the native perception of soli
.

dity was based u po n the assu mption that to be known directly , it

,

must be in the image he ought to have seen that the admission of plane
,

dimension in the retina whether quantitatively identical and corre

,

sp o n d in g to the dimensional quality of the object or not w a s n ece s ,

sa r ily a guarantee for the nativity of the space

percept in plane
dimension , so th a t the facts to which be appealed to disprove it only
showed a quantitative di fference bet w een the retinal quale and the
spatial quale of the object In fa ct it was logically necessary to admit
.

or assume the nativity of plane dimension in order to m ak e the funda

mental argument good against the nativity o f the third dimension If .

the absence of a dimension in the image prevents its native percep

tion its presence there ought to determine this perception
,
F or .

if this is not true there is nothing to prevent the supposition that solidity
is native in spite of its absence from the retinal image But since the .

assumption of plane dimension in the retinal impression according ,

to the use made of it in regard to solidity enforces a conclusion which

,

is contradicted by the conclusion from the relativity of magnitud e as ,

drawn by Berkeley and since his do ctrine denied the nativity of space
,

perception throughout vision we can only conclude that this denial

,

had to be maintained independently of the question whether the retinal

image contained the dimensional quale perceived or not
The .

abandonment of this point of view however indicates either that his

, ,

fundamental assumption was not valid or that his consistency requ ired
him to admit the nativity of plane dimension in spite of the quantitative
difference between the image and the dimensional quale of the object
For on the assumption of the conditions excluding t h e perception
o f solidity he must admit either the nativity of plane dimension or
,

that its presence in the image does not determine its perception .

The former alternative contradicts his general doctrine and t h e latter

contradicts his assumption necessary to prove the acquired character of
the third dimension in vision No w if the presence of the dimensional
.
2
70 TH E P R O B L E AI S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

uale in the image does not necessitate its natural percep t ion its
q ,

absence from the image cannot prevent the perception of it directly .

This is the necessary consequence of the whole argume n t adopted by

Berkeley and it means that w e cannot assume that the quale known
,

is necessarily a part of the content or nature of the impression .

T his fact once granted the whole Berkeleian doctrine beco mes ground
less It will be apparent from such a result and from the supposition
.

that the percept may not be a part of the impression qualita
t i v e ly that the doctrine of perception
intuitio n or a pp r eh en
, ,

s ion as conceived by the phenomenalist or idealist must be profoundly

, ,

a ffected thereby whether for good or ill

,
Berkeley was unconsciously
.

g overned in his j udgment of the case by the principle of identity as ,

i

s u m i n g that there must be some identity between mpression and

percept to guarantee the nativity of the latter If however we .
, ,

d iscover that this identity between the quale of image a n d the per

cept is not necessary to insure the proper perception of the object
a n d its quale , w e have found a condition of things in which the prin

c ip l e of identity does not supply the only t e rms of which knowledge

o f external reality is assured We saw this to be true in the treatment
.

of judgment and cognitive knowledge of reality and now the same ,

conclusion seems to hol d good in regard to the apprehension of spa ce .

F urther dis cussion may make this cl e arer .

We k now that Berk eley explained the visual perception of S p ace

by association or suggestion from muscular and tactual experience .

But it never occurred to h i m that it w a s quite as easy to raise the

s ceptical question in regard to the nativity of space in touch as in sight .

O f course he was not likely to suspe ct this as h is assu mption of the

, ,

principle of contact and the representation of the quale perceived

in the impression induced him to accept tactual space withou t a na ly
sis o r scepticism It was all very nice for a paradoxical philosophy
.

to beg the question in one of the senses while applying criticism to

'

another How the association of a tactual quale with vision is possible

.

when there is nothing common between t w o senses according to ,

Berkeley is not clear in any sense implying a similar object of a p p r e

,

h en sio n Nothing in vision could be called a spatial quale so t h at the

.
,

a ssociation coul d not involve an identical datum If in spite of the .

,

a ppearance to the contrary a spa ce percept is not natural to visual
,

experience the sceptical question is as easily raised elsewhere as in

,

this sense In fact it seems to me that there is no more reason to

.
, ,

suppose that space is native in touch than in sight Berkeley s argu .

ment may puzz le those who cannot have the last word with a p h i l o so
 P E R CE P TI ON O F S P A CE A ND OBJ E C T I VI T Y . 2
71

pher but it does not disturb the equanimit y of those who feel as capa
,

ble of deciding what they s ee with their eyes whether subjective or ,

objective as they are of de ciding what they f e el with their hands O f

,
.

c ourse we may neither feel nor see anything

,
I shall not here deny .

a consistent scepti c is m But I should not be troubled any more with

.

the phe nomena of vision tha n with those of touch I agree that there .

is a quale i n touch that becomes associated with another in sight ; that

a certain fact in vi sio n will have a certain associated meaning in touch .

But that t hey should be identi ca l is to admit the presentation of the

same datu m in both senses even though there are accompanying dif
,

fer e n c e s that make it dif cult to discover the common qualities But .

it was the obj ect of Berkeley s doctrine to deny this identity and con

sequently to deny the nativity of space in vision but also to deny the ,

view that a quale could be perceived which was not in the im

pression The consequence of this to the theory of idealism ought to
.

be apparent But this is a matter to be exami n ed again Attentio n is

. .

called to it only to remark the meaning that must be attached to the

term perceptio n when w e suppose that the process transcends the
s tate of consciousness which it names .

Now whatever we may think of Kant s doctrine of space and its

perception it is certain that be cleared up a great deal of co nfusion

by asserting the ideality of it though he created as much confusion in
,

another direction as he removed in this H i s general view that space

.

was subjective and ideal as well as a p r i o r i was the most radical limita
tion of perception to what was either in the impression or
in the mind that had been made He put forward no paradoxes
.

like Berkeley to prove his theory He simply asserted its ideality and
.

allowed the logical trend of philosophy to accept it without specic or

experimental proof and it cut up by the roots all motive for any other
perception of space than su ch as can be af rmed of any other quality
of experience Nothing could be seen which was not presented or
.

represented in the sensory impression or in the act of consci ousness .

The nature of things was u nknown
.

This consequence however ,was due less to any appea l to facts or

,

arguments by Kant that clearly proved the subjectivity and ideality of

space as his theory is supposed to conceive it , than to general tenden
,

cies It was the logical necessity of treating all perception in the

.

same w ay that brought about the general manner of regarding the

subj ect among idealists But the student cannot read Kant very far
.

without raising the question whether Kant had any clear idea of his
o w n doctrine or knew the inuences and assumptions that led h i m to
2
72 TH E P R OB L E IV
IS OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

it There is no doubt that he thought he had a perfectly clear idea of

.

the case but when one has tried to penetrate t h e wilderness of co ncep
,

tions by which Kant tried to explain what he meant he must be con ,

fronted with the suspicion that , in spite of certain uniformities of ex

pression on the issue we are dealing with a mind that has no c o n cep
,

tion of clear and consistent thinking Va ih ing er s K o m m en t a r shows .

what a thick et we are in when we undertake to say what Kant thought

of space or any other subj ect on which he spoke to say nothing of the
, ,

differences of opinion among students of the syst e m It is complicated .

with his ideas of E m p n d un g Ans chauung Wahrnehmung Vo r st el , , ,

lung Erscheinung Dinge an sich A p r i o r i F orm Substance

, , , , , ,

Eigenschaft Beschaffenheit Wirklichkeit R ea l it at Erfahrung Empi

, , , , ,

ris ch Begriff Transcendental and perhaps a doz en other terms and

, , ,

conceptions Any attempt to explain his doct rine must r e c k On with

.

all these and one has not to proceed far before discovering that he has
a volume on hand to es cape the denial that he understands Kant Then .

he has in addition to the general confusion of these terms to consider

, ,

that at almost every step the content of those terms is not what it must
be i n order to ma ke the issue what it is supposed to be That is we .
,

are generally made to believe that Kant is discussing the problems of

Hume of scholastic philosophy of idealism and realism of material
, , ,

ism v e r s u s idealism etc But presently w e discover that he is using

, .

many of his terms in wholly new senses which represent only a con
v en i e nt way of running a w ay fro m the issue while he makes his a n

t a go n i st believe that he is still there ghting An old proverb .

presses the situation under another analogy Kant is constantly put .

ting n ew wine into old bottles and as a result they either burst or we
,

nd that the wine is not what w e contracted for In su ch a predica .

ment the discussion of Kant s doctrine must impose he avy obligations

,

if it is to stand criticis m But if we canno t be certain what Kant s

.

doctrine is w e may discuss his more fundamental propositions in a

,

way either to show what that doctrine o ug t to have been in the con
c e pt i o n s of his day and in the light of the philosophies which in u

e n ced his mind or to suggest some considerations which may have

,

inuenced Kant in both his terminology and the asserted ideality of

space P ossibly it would be well to do both of these and I shall enter
.

at some len gth into the examination of his views I shall not pretend .

to give a complete conception of him nor insist that my suggestions are

supercially deducible from Kant s language alone in its isolated or

merely traditional import but I wish in some way to see if we can

,

arrive by criticism at ideas that may show a larger possible consist

 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND OBJE C TI VI T Y
.
2
73

ency with actual hum a n thinking than is a pparent at rst I say .

,

process of criticis m because I mean to test i m portant conceptions

in his system I shall start with the most essential propo s ition in his
.

theory .

I pass by for the present at least his reference to the a p r i o r i nature

, ,

of space perceptio n and his description of it as a form of intui

tion ( F or m der Ans chauung ) and take his more fundamental c o n cep
,

tion of it as subjective This conception of it is added at times to

.

that of a for m of intuition though it is often manifest that Kant i n

,

tends that the t wo phrases shall be identical in their import But I .

wish for the presen t to conne attention rather to the nature of space
as really or apparently conceived by Kant than to enter into dis cussio n

of wh a t he meant by intu ition and for m as a precondition of
understanding him however important they may be in the nal account
,

of hi s theory .

No w what does Kant mean by calling space subj ective Many

of us from t i me immemorial have meant when calling a thing subje c ,

tive that it is not obj ective that it is a purely mental product But
, , .

Kant calls space both ! This is unquestionably his position in the

YE sth et i c though he seems i n the Analytic to think of it only a s

,

subjective . But when he ca l ls it both he certainly does not mean to ,

accept the antithesis that these terms have in the minds of the realists
generally namely the distinction between the external and internal
, , ,

or between the real and ideal as that had ordinarily been conceived
, ,

though there is real or apparent evidence that he wa s not wholly con

sistent on this point But for the time he did not mean to discuss the
.

problems in w hich this antithesis originated .

But then if Kant did not m ean wh a t is supercially suggested by

his language did he mean by it the P rotagorean r el a t i v i ty ! This was
,

simply that it was not universal or that at least we had no evidence ,

w
that it a s universal But we know that Kant was explicit on this
.

point and said denitely that all men had this percept It is inter .

esting however to remark t w o pass a ges in which Kant indicates very

, ,

clearly that his doctrine has to face the suggestion that it implies this rel
a t iv it He alludes to the fact that w can spea k of space only from
y . e

the standpoint of man and that we cannot decide whether other think
,

ing beings have it or not What he meant or supposed by other

.

thinking beings w e are not told But if other thinking

'

might not have it how does Kant k now that all men have it after
, ,
P
calling it subjective H ave we the inuence of Swedenborg here !
Taking this term in its sense of being peculiar to the mind and n o t char
18
'
2
74 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

a c t er ist ic of external objects in the conception of common sense he

creates a position in which he has no evidence but dogmatism for his
contention and it is certa in that Kant simply assumes the fact and
,

offers no evidence whatever that space perception does characteriz e

all men But whether consistent or not in this respect it is apparent
.

that Kant intends to apply the term subj ective consistently with the

conception of universality in man at least and so indicates that he
, ,

has not in mind the doctrine of relativity as w a s so natural to suppose ,

from the description of space as subj ective

But we have still to .

a sk what he does mean if he does not intend relativity by it

,
.

No w again we have been accustomed to use the term subj ective

to imply illusion or hallucination or when not exactly these the limita
, ,

tion of the fact to the subject as an event w ha tever further reference or ,

implication it may have We describe illusio n s and hallucinations as

.

subj ective on the ground that they are mental states only with n o ,

objective reality involved and yet corresponding to the natural or normal

meaning of su ch experiences in response to the proper stimulus They .

have no correlate which we call reality in the usu a l represe n tative i n

t er p r et a t io n of it though t h e person experiencing them actually m i s
,

takes the experience for one implying a denite reality That is to .

say we assume that an illusion or hallucination is subjective and

,

mean to indicate that the terms are m ore or less conve r tible Kant .

was evidently aware of this connot a tion since he denitely protects ,

himself against the implication and says th a t while space is s ubjec

, ,

tive it is not Schein or illusion This is a purely negative de
,
.

scription of it and the further question is whether he i ntends to describe

it positively as real In regard to t i m e he explicitly afrms its reality
.
,

whatever he may m ean by his assertio n O f this , in answer to the .

criticism that his doctrine denies t h e character of time as underst o od

by c o m fno n sense that is its objective reality he says that it is to
, , ,

be co n sidered n o t as an object but as a mode of conception or pres

,

e nt a t io n of the subject
( nicht a l s O bj ect sondern als V orstellungsart,

meiner selbst ) and as having subj ective reality in respect of inner

,

experience ( subjective R ea l it a t in Ansehung der inneren Erfahrung )

In these statements and the whole passage from which they are taken ,

Kant unmistakably shows that he intends to apply the predicate r e

a lity to t i m e in some sense and on the next page of the Cr i t i gu e he
, ,

m akes it equally clear that he intends the same conception to be applied

to sp a ce It is apparent on examination however that he pilfers a n
.
, ,

other meaning into the case than the one which his antagonist assumes
and with which the latter creates his objection Kant gives it empiric a l .
 PE R C E P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND O BJE C T I VI T Y .
2
75

r eality and not trans cendental in any obj ective sense That is
,
.
,

he refuses it the obj ectivity which his critic may mean by reality

a n d then assumes that the term reality means f a ct u a l i ty or e xi s

tence as opposed to n o n existence in perception in order to af rm it
-

of S pace and ti m e This is a subreption of another meaning and an

.

evasion of the issue which is a vice very constant with Kant We should .

perhaps remember however that Kant s conception of real was

'

,
,

d etermined by his relation to the m etaphysical and scholastic realism

against whi ch h e was directing his philosophy The conception of that .

term for E nglish t h ought h a s been determined by the attempts to answer

Berk eley and Hume and not to answer t h e scholastics or Leibnitz ian ,

ism or Wo l a n ism
,
English realism w a s an ep i s t em o l o g i ca l
.

theory : continental realism was an o n t o l o g i ca l theory The Eng .

lish real was the externa l : the continental real was the meta

physical and supersensible Kant s denial of the reality of space

.

and time therefore was not the denial of their externality as facts of
, ,

nature but the denial of their metaphysical reality as things in
,

themselves or as properties of things in themselves

Their em .

p ir i c a l reality which he a f rms may therefore coin cide with the , ,

English conception of the case It is certain that Kant did not come .

to the proble m wit h the same conce ption of it that the critics of Berke
l ey had but w a s a ffected by the a p r i o r i metaphysics of the scholastics
,

a n d Leibnitz and had them to refute

,
This indicates that he was not .

opposing the ordinary realis m but the transcendentalis m of s cholastic

philosophy .

It is interesting to remark , however statements that may be inter ,

p r et ed as contradicting the contention which I have j ust explained as

implying the subj ective ideality of space as against ordinary real
.

ism They occur in the transcendental exposition of space
Here .

while he contends that space is a subj ective intuition Kant still regards
it as giving exte rnal ( aii sser e ) reality in some sense which he is will
ing to consider as an object We may nd on further examinatio n
.

that all this is still subj ect to the modication that all phenomena

( Ers cheinungen ) are or have on ly empirical reality but it is clear ,

both in this part of the d iscussion and in that about time where he ,

d istinctly calls attention to the di fference between space and time per
c ep t i o n in relation to the theory of idealism that he means to assu me ,

a meaning for space more consonant with the doctrine of realism

which he is supposed to deny than perhaps other statements would
s eem to indicate I mean of course the ordinary realis m It would
.
, , .

usually be assu med that the simultaneous a i r m at io n of subjective i n

2
76 TH E PR OB L E M S O F PH I L O S OPH Y .

tuition and external reality for space was a contradiction but there ,

must have been some reason for it in Kant I shall return to this
point of vie wlater and use the distinction thus implied by Kant for an
.

important purpose which I cannot explain fully at present In the .

meantime we are forced to recognize the fact that in spite of this

, ,

appearance of realis m in the system Kant s further statements abou t

,

space in connection with Erscheinung and its nature indi cate that
he has to face the a ccusation of his critic that phenomena ( E r
s ch ei nun g en ) are illusions ( Scheine ) F irst he S peaks of space as a
.

F orm aller Erschei n ungen a ii sse r er Sinne and also as F orm d er ,

Anschauung in which there can be no distinction between E r

sc h e i n u n g and Anschauung . Then again he speaks of the V or

stellung des Raumes after w e are supposed to have di stinguished

between Vorstellung and Ans chauung on the ground that
V orstellung may be convertible with E m p n d u ng and A n

sc h a uung as not so convertible with it A l l this shows confusion
.

worse confounded in the system on the ordinary interpretation of

language But assuming that it can be elucidated by some logica l
.

h ocus pocus we can return to the critical issu e imposed upon him by
his o w n anticipation of the obj ection that Erscheinungen as well a s
space and time are illusions .

No w Kant s answer to this obj ection is the same as th at given in

the reply to the criticism of his idea of time H e denies that E r .

s ch e inu n e n
g imply illusion ( Schein ) by the same subreption as that
which we have remarked in the case of time though the m ere fact ,

that he anticipates this interpretation of Erscheinung shows that it s

meani ng lies close to that of illusion Kant s reply simply substitutes
.

f a ct u a l i t
y for o ec t i v i t
j y as the m eaning of reality ,
a n d thin k s that

he has a nswered his critic s objection H e identies sensory impres

.

sion with
phenomena and calls these V er and er u ng en unsere s

Subj ects qualifying this statement very carefully by the term blos
, ,

which if it has any signicance at all positively emphasizes what the

, ,

nak ed expression clearly implies namely the exclusion of obj ectivity

or external reality fromthem Thus he has to speak of E r s c h ein
, ,

ungen as subjective also and at the same time he de n itely i n di

cates that the E m p n d ungen which are also treated as E r sc h ein
,

ungen that is , as relative in the P rota gorean sense though this in
, ,

connection with the denial of the relativity of space which shows a

conceptual lineage with Erscheinung as its F orm invo l ves some ,

confusion But passing this aside let us conne oursel v es to his atti
.
,

tude toward sensation and phenomena which h e does n o t wish to regard

 PE R CE P TI O N O F S PA CE A ND OBJE C TI VI T Y . 2
77

as illusions The very necessity of dis cussing this question shows that
.

Kant w a s aware of the point of view fro m which he expected to be

criticiz ed and hence a realiz atio n of the nature of the objection He n ce .

the only matter that remains is the query whether he fairly a n swered
t h e obj ection That he s imply distorted the meaning of reality to
.

s uit the necessity of a n a i r m at i v e proposition where he ought to have

had a negative pro v es th a t he did n o t face the issue squarely H e

, .

u sed it in neither the epistemological nor the ontological sense of

s cholastic metaphysics , but only in the sense in which any f a c t is

real even when it is m erely a subjective state But whether he .

d id or did not use the term fairly it is apparent that Kant w a n t e d to

,

u se subj ective in a sense to exclude both relativity and illusion .

Let us look at another set of facts in this connection P hilosophy .

h a d previously admitted the ideality of the secondary qualities of matter ,

a nd had only questioned that of the primary qualities K ant s w h o le .

d octrine denied explicitly or implicitly this distinction between the t w o

, ,

c lasses of properties and idealiz ed both Berkeley had done the same
. .

Kant ought to have se en then exactly why his criti c obj ect ed to the
subjectivity of space and not to have quibbled about the term
reality . The meaning of the ideality of the secondary properties
was clearly enough recognized as indicating their non externality and -

n o n reality as
-
known so that the idealization of the primary quali
,

t ies o ught not to have frightened Kant into apologiz ing for the c o n se

q uen c es by equ ivocating with the term reality However that may .

be we must notice an interesting circumstance in the development of his

,

position In the rst edition of the K r i t ik he said spea k ing of the

.
,

s pace intuition , that this subj ective condition of all external

phenomena can be compared with no other The pleasant taste of a .

wine does not belong to the obj ective propertie s of the wine , that is of
a n object considered as a phenomenon but to the peculiar activity of
,

the subject which enjoys it 1 In this and further remarks he shows

.

beyond question that he mainta ins the subjective ideality of sensory

s tates In passing t h e student should note the peculiar use of the term
.

phenomenon ( Erscheinung ) in this quotation But the important .

thing to be observed is the omission of this passage from later editions

o f the K r i t i k and the substitution of a passage in whi c h he rea f r m s

'

1
D iese
s ubj ect ive Bed i ng ung aller a u sse en Ersche i nun ge n m i t kei ner anderen
r

k ann erg l i chen werd en

v D er Wohlg e schm ack e i n es We i n e s g e h Or t n i cht u
. z

d en o bject i ien B est i m m un ge n de s We i ne s m i th i n e i ne s O bj ects sog ar a l s

v ,

E rsche i nun g betrachtet son d ern u d e be son d e re n Be schaffe nh ei t de s S i nn e s

, z r

an dem S ubj ect wa s i hn g en i ess t .

2
78 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

this subjectivity but denies absolutely t h e ideality of phenomena ,

that is the secondary qualities of matter This is a stra nge inversion
,
.

of the previous conceptions of objectivity and idealism P reviously .

idealism had supposed the ideality of the seco ndary properties and the
reality of the primary space and time H ere in this substituted pas
,
.

sage Kant seems to deny the ideality of the secondary qualities and to
,

a i r m that of space In the Allgemeine A nmerkungen however
.
, ,

he asserts the very opposite of this by maintaining the ideality of

external as well as internal sense perceptions and consequently of a ll ,

objects of sense ( Id ea l itat des a u sser e n sowohl als inneren S innes
'

mithin aller O bjecte der In all this we have apparent a

perfect mesh of equ ivocations and contradi ctions that ma k e it im p o s
sible to determine exactly from Kant s usage what he means by sub

je ct iv e u nless we analyz e the problem in a way to show that he was

not respecting the traditional import of the term This will be found .

in the end I think to be the fact

, , .

In the usual pa rlance of philosophy we have had a nu mber of a nt ith

eses whose me aning has been tolerably clear to most m en ea ch term ,

of the antithesis helping to indicate the import of the other They are .

external and internal subj ective and objective
, universal and ,

particular ,
ideal and real It has been intended by philosophers
.
,

most of them at least that these antitheses should be convertible with

,

each other that is that the distinction between the

, , external a nd
internal should mean the same as that between objective and sub

ject iv e etc
,
But this
. is not always the case They might part ly or .

h
even wholly co i n c id e t at is what is said to be universal migh t
, ,

also be found to be objective and the particular might be found ,

where the subj ective wa s found but the coincidence would not be ,

evidence of identity ; and so on with the several antitheses throughout .

If in any case they are supposed to be convertible or identical the fact

requires proof and should not be assumed Now Kant often regard s .

some of them at least as identi cal and simply assumes that coincidenc e
proves identity F or insta n ce he makes universality convertible
.
,

with objectivity He may be right as a matter of fact but they

.
,

will hardly be the one or the other for the same reasons while their ,

identication more or less violates the historical usage that gave the
terms a differen t import But in spite of this and the accepted a nt ith
.

esis between some of the terms in traditional usage Kant as I h ave , ,

indicated above actually regards , subj ective and obj ective as

coincident in the sa m e fact namely that of S pace and thu s ass ume s
, , ,

that the antithesis does not hold good If objections to a doctrine are .
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S P A CE A IVD O BJE C T I VI T Y . 2
79

to be met by adopting contra dictory statements as describing his posi

tion one can refute anything ! No wonder Hegel could talk with
impunity about the unity of contradictories If you simply steal a n e w.

meaning into the terms of your criti c and surreptitiously eliminate the
conceptions which determine the real problem and the basis of contro
v er sy you can answer any d ii c ult y This was Kant s policy through
, .

out and one is tempted to insist that he ought to ha ve been hanged .

He was never prepared to accept the logical consequences of his real

or apparent position nor to give a clear square answer to critics H e
, .

wanted to say that space was subjective and yet to deny solipsis m .

H e wanted to idealiz e space as well as the secondary qualities of mat

ter and yet to believe in an external reality not admitted of the second
,

ary qualities mentioned and the n to keep possession of the antithesis

,
/

asserted tha t the properties of matter had absolutely no ideality
.

Philosophically he was trying to adopt the language of both idealism

and realism without resorting to so complete an analysis of the case as
both his agreement and di fference with the t wo theories required He .

felt the force of the antith esis between them as historical doctrines but ,

he did not know how to remove it when supposing that there wa s both
a truth and an error in the w ay of stating the actual nature of knowl

edge . H o w then ca n we bring out what Kant is supposed to h ave
intended ! Can we nd the desired unity in his conceptions and if so , ,

h o w can this be a ffected !

In answer to this question , I shall take the t wo positio n s assumed
by Kant and which are so often treated as contradictory and analyz e ,

them as they require Fo r m a lly a n d in terms of the historical and tradi

.

t i o n al use of the terms they are contradictory But can we give an .

analysis of the problem that will elicit conceptions at which Kant may
have aimed when h e did not clearly remove the antithesis mentioned !
This I mean to try and hence the two conceptions with which I start
are the subjectivity and externality of space Whether w e shoul d .

choose these alternatives as necessarily opposed to each other , I S hal l

not decide for the present at least I shall simply recogniz e the fact
,
.

that Kant insisted upon af rming both His relation to the two and .

di fferent types of re a lism may be the cl ue to his confusion as w e shall ,

see later having briey alluded to it above and indicated that the best
,

way to approach him was with the assumption that the dif culties of
the system arise from the conict of his language with epistemological
realism and not with the ontological But that he insisted on the sub
.

ject iv e a p r i o r i and ideal nature of the space is not doubted by any

, ,

one but many insist that he either had no right to admit any a i l ia
,
2 80 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

tion with realism in asserting an external world or that his meaning ,

is not what appears on the surface That he insisted on an external

.

reality in some sense is apparent in several contentions F irst he .

,

constantly uses the expression that the a p r i o r i subj ective nature of

s pace is necessary for the very purpose of conditioning the knowl

e dge of an exte rnal world of sense This frequent mode of expression

.

w ill be found in the sequel to be of great signicance Secondly he .

,

uses the term outer ( ausser ) without any qualication which would ,

s uggest th a t he intended it in the purely objective sense Thirdly .

,

h e distinctly asserts in the Refutation of Idealism ( Widerlegung

d e s Idealismus ) tha t the consciousness of our own existence proves

t h e existence of an ex t ernal world ( D as B ew usst e i n meines eigenen
Daseins be wei set das Dasein der Gegenstande i m Raum ausser mir ) .

We may say all we ple a se against the real or supposed incons i stency
of Kant s attack upon idealism Th a t is indifferent to the question to

.

be discussed here I am dealing rst with the syste m as it is and

.
,

hence am as k ing whether there may not be an interpretation which

may show that Kant was fundamentally and in S pite of appearances to ,

the contrary more consistent than is supposed He h i mself evidently

, .

thought he was consistent and must be examined rst on that a ssu m p

tion That is we must try to explain why he took this position and
.
,

why he thought he w a s justied in denying the idealis m ( material )

w hich he attacked Hence I repeat the Kantian assumptions with
.

which I wish to initiate an examination namely the subjective nature , ,

of space and the existence of an external world which that subjective

spa ce would seem to contradict .

O pposition to solipsism a lways commits a man to some form of

realism , as we have found in earlier discussions if for no other reason ,

than that the subj ect s own states are not the only facts a ccepted in

k nowledge . The idealist admits other conscious subj ects besides

himself which he could not admit if his k nowledge were strictly
,
.

limited to his own states Idealism therefore has to make its peace
.
, ,

with solipsism and the proposition that there are other conscious sub
je ct s is its t r eaty There are t w o types of realism the na i ve of com
.
,

mon sense and the hypothetical of philosophy Ideal ism may con .

t r o v e r t the former but be identical with the latter Na i ve realism .

assumes that t h e sta te of knowledge represents the nature of t h e
object as it is seen , and so supposes m ore or less resemblance bet w een
knowledge and reality Hypothetica l realism assumes more or less
.

of a difference or antithesis between the mental act and the obj ect be
l i ev ed to exist . Hence the only realism which the idealist can oppose
 PE R C E PTI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJ E C TI VI T Y .
281

is that which interprets external reality by the principle of identity ,

not between th e act of knowing and the thing known , but be
tween the presentation and the object ; that is , the realis m which takes
the qualities of r eality to be exactly as they appear Whatever distinct
.

n ames we give to the t wo types of realism , it was t h e latter type that

Kant s positio n would dispute thoug h I rather think that he di d not

,

h ave this alone in m ind , but mainly the metaphysica l realis m of the
scholastics , as p erhaps m ost perso ns will reco gniz e and I state the
,

fact here only to make clear the p o i n t d e r ep er e from which to view

his doctrine This is made apparent by Kant s accusation against the
.

commo n mind ( emp irischer V erstand ) that it takes sensory dat a for
things in themse l ves ( D inge a n s ich ) Assuming then , that Kant
,

was denying wha t I shall call presentative realism , as we ll as the

s cholastic type , and intending to admit a form imp l ied by the denial of

solipsism , which al l idealists of the Kantian type deny , I have a posi

tion which i ndicates one characteristic of consistency in the assertion
o f subjectivity for space and the existence of external reality B ut .

Ka nt , at l east , apparentl y intends to go farther He does not wish to

.

agree with the ordinary realistic conception of space as taken from

Cartesianis m and assu med to be primary and real in the presentative
sense while it wa s considered as the essential property of matter .

Hence he introduced a complication into the problem which philosophy

previous l y wa s not prepared to discuss with its a ccepted termino l ogy .

If he had said that he intended to conceive space in the same w ay that

we re l ate co l or to externa l objects and thus suppose th at there was
,

the same kind of antithesis or difference bet wee n space as an intuition

( An s cha uung ) and tha t which is supposed to condition the very exist
ence of reality , as that between color as a physica l attribute and color
as a psychica l function he would have had a clear position , whether
,

tr ue or not H e would have stated his intention denitely B ut it is

. .

apparent that he has not done so and perhaps many or most persons
,

would contend that it would have been absurd to do it Certainly he .

u ses l anguage whose easiest interpretation seems to imply the total

subj ectivity of space in the solipsistic sense m i n us i ts r el a t i v i ty He .

speaks indifferently of the subjectivity of S pace and of its intuition ,

!

and eve n indicates that they are identical This would seem to indi
.

cate with abso l ute clearness the denial of any and all objectivity to
what is ca ll ed space , or the supposed space of the rea l ist But here .

is a very signi cant form of expression by Kant , and frequentl y given

by h im in pl aces where he evidently i ntends it to be fundamenta l to his
doctrine , that this subjective i ntuition conditioned the very exist
2 82 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

ence of external perception or the perception of external reality

, ,

a statement which he could not have made if he had intended to deny

all objective import to the idea of S pace since he thus de n itely relates
,

it to a reality inconsistent with solipsism We have in this perhaps .

, ,

an explanation of Kant s conceptio n of the simultaneously subjec

tive and objective n ature of space without interpreting o bjec

tive as synonymous with universality That is , suppose that.

Kant meant to assert the purely subjective g e n es i s of space percep

tion as a fu nction qualitati vely determined , with an obj ective i mp l i
ca t i o n o r even
p e r cep t i v e d a t u m whether the realism be presenta
,

tive or non presentative and thus distinguish it from the objective

-

genesis and implications of s e n s a t i o n whether presentative or not , ,

though Kant w ould say that sensation w a s non presentative of o bjec -

tive reality in spite of its objective origin If this is Kant s conception .

w e must remember however that epistemologically he did not intend

, ,

to assume or deny any identity that is presentative character between

, ,

space as intuited and S pace as a supposed objective reality and as con

ce iv ed by the realists whom he actually agreed with , but only as con

c e i v e d by the realists whom he was refuting No w is there any rea .

son to suppose that any such interpretation is possible or ration al !

If the view indicated be possible w e must remember t h e following
facts ( I ) the objective o r ig i n of sensation ; ( 2 ) the obj ective
m ea n i ng of sensation ; ( 3 ) the s u j ec t i v e n a t u r e of sensation ; ( 4 )
the n o n p r es en t a t i v e n a t u r e of external reality
-
This indicates .

Kant s conception of the external world of matter and the way in

which w e know it The conception of space which I conjecture

for examination , possibly Kantian may be represented in a parallel

,

form with that of sensation ( I ) The s u j ec t i v e o r ig i n of space

.

perception
( 2 ) the o j ec t i v e m ea n i ng of space perception ;
( 3 ) the indeterminate question whether it is presentative or non
presentative of its objective reference .

Kantians will admit the rst of these conception s but deny the ,

second in any other sense than an applicatio n to phenomena That is .

,

they will say that Kant did not admit any other obj ectivity for space
than a referen c e to phenomena and its universality in human per

ception not its e xter nalit v He specically descri bes it ( I ) positively
,
.

as the form of phenomena ( Form cl er Erscheinungen ) and ( 2 ) ,

negatively as not a property of things in themselves ( Dinge an
,

sich ) This would seem to mean that its

.

objectivity could not
mean externality , unless phenomena ( Erscheinungen ) could be
treated as external That is we a r e shifted back to the meaning of
.
,
 PE R CE P T I ON OF S P A CE A ND O BJ E C TI VI T Y . 28
3

phe nomeno n for a solutio n of the problem including also that of ,

things in themselves But I shall not pursue that direction in the

.

discussion at present After thus hinting the source of the objectio n

.

to the p o ssibility outlined and the discussion which this obj ection sug
gests I shall start with a questio n or two whic h I have not seen dis
,

cussed in the attempts to solve the problem It arises in conne ction .

with the statement that space is not a Begriff because it is innite ,

and that it is not a property of things in themselves The analysis .

of both with their implications will bring out the conceptions which
may have inuence d Kant in his do ctrine whether they explain it or ,

not.

No w wha t is the implication in Kant s proof that space is a n

intuition ( Anschauung ) and not a concept ( Begri ff ) ! He

assumes in his argument that Begri ffe abstract general concepts , ,

are the result of comparison and abstraction and that the obj ects in

experience from wh ich they are formed are individual objects of a nite
character That is the individual objects of perception ( Wa h r neh
.
,

mung ) are derived from the nite presentations of sense No w if the .

obj ects of sense are nite and if spa ce is innite it ca n not be abstracted ,

from these objects but must be the product or obj ect of functions not
,

constituted by those in either sensation ( E m p nd ung ) or empirical

intuition ( empirische Anschauung ) The function has to be a dis .

tinct one , and so w a s named pure intuition ( reine Anschauung ) ,

whatever that may mean But it is certainly supposed to give what

.

sensation cannot give All that abstraction can e ffect is the deter
.

mination of common qualities which inhere in the subj ects fro m which
they are drawn and it never shows that the quality abstracted exists
,

outside the subj ects co mpared Space being innite therefore cannot
.
, ,

be the object of an act of abstraction The act intuiting it must be of .

the mind s o w n doing In this way we can understand why Kant

.

wishes to maintain persistently that space perception is purely sub

ject i v e It is not
. given in sensation and not derived fro m its
objects by abstra ction and consequently must be an a p r i o r i product
,

of the mind if produ ct is the right word and so a purely subjective

, ,
creation superposed upon experience or in which it is arranged , .

If creation or product wrongly describe the real process as I ,

think they do we may loo k at the act as a subjectively originated one

,

in respect of its content but nevertheless perceptive or r ep r e
,

se nt a t iv e of an external reality without assumi n g that it is causally

instigated by space as an obj ect The only question that remains is .

whether this view of the case has adequate gro unds for its assertion .
28 TH E PR OB LE M S OF P H I L O S O PH Y
4 .

This query must be answered in some such w ay as t h e following .

T h e description of Space as innite apparently implies that it is

o bjective in the realistic sense or that the subj ect itself is innite If .

S pace have n o external reality whatsoever , or is neither a property nor

a relation of things in themselves but a subjective intuition as

, ,

Kant asserts over and over again and if it is innite at the same time
, ,

this quality must be attributed to the subjective act of the mind That .

is all the innity which we have been accustomed to ascribe to the

,

external space of realism must be referred to the mind of the man who
has it No w if a Kantian is not satised with this reduction of the
.

m atter he must admit that space is O bjective as not contained wholly

, ,

i n the subjective act which intu its it even though the act is subj ectively
,

o riginated and not the result of spatial stimulus Consequently it .

,

w ould s e e m that whatever subj ectivity we mean to give it this must ,

be consistent with some for m of obj ectivity implied in realism Can .

s uch a conception be made consonant with Kant s statements else where !

T h e answer to this question will require an elaborate statement of

t h e ideas by which Kant was inuenced both cons ciously and u n co n

s c io u sl
y in the formation of his conceptions on every subj ect in his
s ystem Thi s statement of the ideas affecting his judgment is suggested
.

by the constantly repeated observation of Kant that sp a ce i s n e i t /zer a

p r o p erty n o r a r e l a t i o n of t i ng s i n t em s el v es

It is apparent .

in it that Kant had in mind ideas derived from Descartes and L eibnitz ,

a n d that he was denying something which he thought had been a f rmed .

No w let me rst remark that the signicance of Kant s statement will

depend somewhat at least upon whether the emphasis in the proposi

, ,

tion denyi ng that space is a property of things in themselves is placed
, ,

upon the negative particle a ffecting the copula or upo n the predicate ,

w ord property
That is we may have two judgments in this form
.
,

o f statement ( I ) Space is n o t a property of things in themselves

.
,

a nd ( 2 )
Space is not a p r o p er t of things in themselves
In the

y .

rst of these propositions we deny a l l connection bet w eep space and

things In the second we admit this connection but deny that space is
.

a property of things or as i n ne r i ng in them That is we may con .
,

s c io us ly or unconsciously interpret the concept property as imply

ing inhesion and so d et er m in i ng t be s a m e l i m i t a t i o n s a s t /ze s u j ect
c
.

That is prope rties of a subject do not extend their existence or inhesion

,

beyond the limits of the subj ect itself Now Kant over and over again.

asserts that space does n o t i n lzer e i n things themselves This it will .

,

be noticed is quite consistent with his statement that space is innite

,

and his adhesion to som ething l i ke the atomic theo r y of matter The .
 PE R C E P T I ON OF S PA C E A ND O BJE C T I VI T Y . 28
5

rst interpretation of the proposition or perhaps better the i n t er p r e

, ,

t a t i o n of the rst form of the proposition leads to the B o s c o v it c h i a n

doctrine of p o i n t s of f o r c e as constituting the nature of matter Thi s .

means that m a t t e r p er s e i s Sp a cel es s This view is supposed to fol.

low from the Leibnitz ian theory of mon a ds No w it is noticeable that .

Kant does not say that things in themselves are S paceless but he ,

does say that space is n o t a property of them and leads us to con

elude that it was the second form of the proposition that he had in

mind This w e S hall nd consistent with the idea that matter or

.

reality o ccup ies space while Kant mea n s to deny that the fact
,

makes it a property of reality Now let us examine the possible

.

lineage of this conception .

As w e know Descartes held the following views ( I ) that space

,

w a s the essential property of matter ; ( 2 ) that matter was innite

and lled all space ; ( 3 ) that space was a prim a ry quality of mat
ter and real as perceived Both his sensible and supersensible
.

worlds w ere essentially alike in their nature But he seems to have .

regarded space at the same time as not dependent on matter for it s

existence though considered as its property
,
At any rate the con .
,

tention that matter was innite made it impossible to prove that space
wa s not a property of it in the same sense as all its other inhering
properties Spinoz a simplied things by ma k ing space an a ttribute
.

of matter precisely like all other properties as Descartes conceived

them Extension and thought as we k now were the tw o essential att r i
.
, ,

butes of substance or G od and all others were modes but all of them
, ,

inhered in the Absolute Th is position made substance m atter or God

.
, ,

at least the logical prius of these attributes and so c o n d i t i o n ed t /zei r ,

exi s t e n ce on the Absolute instead of regarding space as in any w a

y con
d it io n in g the existence of matter substance or the Absolute
,
Spinoz a .

in sisted absolutely on monism H e could not tolerate two simultaneous

.

absolutes even if o n e of them was space and the other substance

,
.

H ence we must subordinate the existence of space to this substance

and reverse the ordinary assumptions about it which made it necessary
to the existence of substance though not its creator His positio n
,
.

wa s the logical consequence of the Cartesian do ctrine in its essential

ch aracter and perhaps led to the idea held also by previous scholastic
, , .

philosophers that the Absolute was above space and time and per
, ,

haps could be described as S paceless though there was nothing in thi s

,

Conception to prevent the philosopher from holding that reality the ,

absolute had extension as a property of it and conditioned its existence

,

as it did all properties a view the reverse of that which co m m o n l v

,
2 86 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

conditioned substance by space though not thinking of it as a cau sal

,

condition .

No w Leibnitz could not submit to t h e mon istic materialism of

Spinoz a nor to the atomistic materiali sm of the physicists and hence ,

he proceeds to the constru ction of his monadistic doctrine which is a

singular cross between Spinoz ism and Atomism His primary notion .

was that of substance but he could not endure the monistic pantheism
,

of the one school or the pluralistic materialism of the other and hence ,

he sought to evade both extremes by his peculiar monadism the details ,

of w hi ch it is not necessary to examine here What interests us is his .

theory of space Leibnitz anticipated Kant in the stateme nt tha t space

.

w a s not a
property of matter but he called it a relation of it
,

It appears however that Leibnitz distinguished bet w een extension

, ,

a nd space
. He regarded extension as a property of matter the ,

amount of space which it occupied and which was always the
same and represented its limits In this conception which is the same
.

as that in modern physical dynamics substance is t h e prius of ex

, f

tension precisely as it was in the philosophy of Spinoza O n the
, .

question of space Leibnitz was not perfectly clear though he w a s ,

m ost uniform in h is statement that it was a rel ation At times he .

seems to have regarded it as subj ective in the Kantian sense as h e ,

certainly so conceived time At others h e thinks of it as
. real
though he is careful to deny that it is either substance or a ccident .

This is a most important consideration in determining what he meant

by calling it a relation and also i n estimating the intellectual in
ue n ces affecti n g the conceptions of Kant since it shows what both ,

men had to controvert in the effort to a i r m something of space .

What Leibnitz was clear on was the statement that space w a s not
a property of th e monads and that it was neither a substance nor
a n accident of anything else than matter When he came to say what
it was he could only call it a relation No w , though it is possible
.

that he meant by his view to assert in a n e w form less equivocal as he ,

m ay have supposed than t h e idea of condition the old do ctrine that ,

space was a condition of the existence of matter and to limit the idea

of property to inhesion and the limitations of matter as regards
s pace , nevertheless the tendency of his mode of expression as perhaps ,

a lso various other features of his theory was the reverse S ince a
, ,

relation is usually and most naturally conceived as dependent on the
two or more terms of reality for its existence That is the things .
,

related are the prius of the relation and this can in no way con
,

d ition their existence even though it represents something which
,
 PE R CE P T I ON OF S P A CE A ND OBJE C T I VI T Y . 28
7

encompasses them But it was a mistake to call it a relation if he

.

meant to regard it as in any way conditioning the existence of reality ,

a nd it is evident that Kant sa w the matter in this light when he so

emphatically denied that Space was what Leibnitz a i r m ed it to be .

But as Leibnitz denied that it was a property of matter and a f rmed

that it wa s only a relation his view resulted in the doctrine of
B o sc o v it c h or rather was this , as indicated above namely , that matter
, ,

in its real n ature was constituted by points of force , and so was space
less in every sense of the ter m This was the S ituation when Kant
.

came But before taking his theory up for consideration another

.
,

prob lem must be noticed in conj unction with the Leibnitz ian doctrine
of space It is another fundamental conception in his system namely ,
.
,

the spontaneity of the monads .

The primary obje ct of Leibnitz was to refute materialism This .

t h eo r y , a s we know explained all phenomena on mechanical prin

'

c i p l es. These represent the transmission of force through matter as a

passive medium In this interpretation of mental phenomena we
.

should have the intromissio n into the brain of impressions from

without The mind would be purely receptive of everything fro m the
.

external world after the manner of the transmission of motion and on ,

the assumption that e ffects were like their causes the external world ,

would be properly represented in the internal and perception might ,

well be regarded as giving things as they are and not as they appe a r ,

unless with su ch qualications as attend all transmission of energy .

In brief , materialism makes the mind a passive recipient of sensations

and knowledge from without
P henomena are a p /zy s i c us i n
.

u xus from the external world In other words m a t er i a l causation

.
,

and the principle of identity are the explanation of mental phe

momena .No w Leibnitz thought to refute this position by his theory
of sp o ntaneity in the monads and of pre established harmony This .

spontaneity of the subj ect shut out the p y s i c u s i n u xu s involved in

the materialistic h ypothes is and made the subject an a c t i v e as opposed
to a p a s s i v e reality But Leibnitz did not mean to shut out a real
.

knowledge of the external reality which he said could not transmit

its processes into the m ind It appears to some thinkers that he did
.

not provide any way to insure this external knowledge But his .

doctrine of occasional causes which was virtual ly identical with

,

the idea of e f cient causes and the assumption that all the monads
,

were qualitatively alike differing only in degree of kind provided an

, ,

instigating inuence for inciting mental states while the identity in ,

kind of the monads insured an identity of their action so that a foreign ,

2 88 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

origin for knowledge w a s obtained and a principle of identity in

sure d for adjudging the nature of things Whether he was correct or
.

n o t is not the problem here but only the fact that he provided for the
,

knowledge of external reality consistently with his doctrine of

spontaneity Hence though obj ective reality cou ld not transmit itself
.

into the mind it could be known as more than a sensation or a s
,

something subjective and ideal In other words whatever defects the

.
,

Leibnitzian idealis m had it attempted to establish a subj ectivity whic h

,

was consistent with obj ectivity if it did not actually imply it Is not
, .

this an intimation of the reason why Kant links subj ective and
obj ective together in connection with space !
The logical inuences leading Kant into the denial of both the
Leibnitz ian and other conceptions of Space and the a f rmation of it s
ideality are as clear as they are inevitable H e had at one time a c .

ce t ed the philosophy of Leibnitz with its tende n cies toward the Bos
p
co v it c h ia n points of force as a n explanation of all reality whether ,

material or spiritual But Kant sa w that if k nowledge had to be

.
,

instigated by the causal action of the external world itself spaceles s ,

in so far as space was supposed to be a property of it this relation ,

or fact could not be known in the same w a y that matter w a s

k no w n because it was no part of the causal agent and was not
,

itself an active reality As a consequence , therefore the association

.
,

of space with matter in experience had to be the result of functions not

connected organically with matter not trans mitted to the mind by it in
,

sensation and not caused by the external relation and inactive
, ,

thing or fact bet w een the monads but the produ ct or percept of
,

the mind s own action There was no alternative for Kant to the con

.

e lusion that spaceless things could not produce space perception in

the same wa y that sensation was produ ced and that an inactive thing
could not produce it .

No w Kant did not accept the totality of the Leibnitzia n do ctrine .

He returned to the m a terialisti c conception or assumed the material ,

i st i c point of view in his doctrine of the receptivity of sense ( Re
cept i v it at der Sinnlichkeit ) in which external obj ects ( aussere E r sch
!

e i n un g e n odor Gegenst ande ) were g i v e n ( Gegeben ) and retained

spon taneity explicitly only for the understanding ( V erstand ) and rea
son ( V ernunft ) In this way he obtained an external world of sense
without the spatial accompaniment and made this latter subjective To .

the man who looks at the doctrine that matter consists of spaceless
points of force as absurd there would be no d ii cul ty in accepting the
,

obj ectivity of space as necessary to the knowledge of matter inde ,

 PE R CE P TI ON OF S P A CE A IVD O B JE C TI VI T Y
. 28
9

pendently of the questio n h o w it was effected But to the man who .

accepted the doctrine of Leibnitz and modied it to the extent of a d

mitting receptive functions for the knowledge of an external reality
that was p er s e spaceless there was no alternative to the conception
,

that space was a subjective product or percept added to sensation

and giving matter a phenomenal character or appearance .

Space not being a property of matter nor an active thing could ,

neither affect the sensorium nor be known as su ch a property .

The subjective act would either envelop the empirical reality pre

c i se l
y as the Leibnitz ian relation enveloped the monads without
being a property of them or perceive space without supposing
,

that space had itself produced any effect on the subject but was sim ,

ply incited in the mind without any transmission of causal inuence

from without In declaring it objective Kant sho wed that he took the
.

latter alternative .

This return to the realisti c conception of sensation as opposed to ,

the Leibnitzian idealism thus making it receptive as did materialism

, ,

carried with it the existence of external reality that is the obj ective , ,

g e n es i s of sensation even if it be afterward regarded as subjective in

,

na tu r e
. This is to say that though it has an obj ective origin the
, ,

genesis is not to be interpreted as n ecessarily carrying with it a pres

ent a t i ve conception of the reality known as one form of realism ,

and of materialism maintained but may consist with the idea of ei c ient
,

causes producing eff ects which do not represent their nature This .

view of objective genesis but subj ective nature supposes that reality is
not known by the principle of identity but is Objective nevertheless ,

as implied in the idea of ei c ien t or occasio n al cause Now when .

this conception of the possible relation betwee n knowledge and

reality is once assumed namely that externality may be a f r m abl e or

, ,

known without being m aterially presented in perception w e ,

may ask whether Kant s view of space may not be somewhat similar

minus the conception of external inue nce in producing it He refuse s .

it an obj ective origin and thus seems t o make it subjecti ve in a mor e

radical sense than sensation But the contention here is that he m ay
.

have intended it to have a subj ective origin w ith an obj ective import .

How can this possibility be made clear or plausible ! We might answer

this question with the assumption of the mind s spontaneity in its space

perception ( Raumanschauung ) but Kant does not explicitly per
, .

mit us to make this assumption except as implied in a few statements

, .

He only distinctly and explicitly applies spontaneity to the systematiz ing

function of the understanding ( V ersta n d ) and to the idealiz ing or
I9
2
90 TH E P R OB L E Il/I S OF PH I L O S O PH Y.

speculative function of reason ( V ernunft ) O f course , t a king space .

as neither rea l ( substance or attribute of anything ) nor a rela

tion between things conditioned by these and conceiving it as con ,

d it i o n in g matter of which it was not a property passive or active ,

h e could not suppose that the perception of it w a s e ffected as that

o f matter was produced and so had to make it n il and an illusion or
, ,

a n a pr io r i intuition whether he chose to regard it as in any way
,

presentative or not 1 .

But though Kant does not so explicitly indicate the interpretation

suggested let us see whether it is not forced on us from the very nature
,

of his assumption in regard to the nature and limits of sensation or ,

the objective phenomena of sense We must re m ember that he has .

said that space is innite and not a property of things in them
selves The properties of matter inhere in it and do not extend as
.

attributes beyond its limitations Kant having at least implicitly aban ,

do u ed the Cartesian vie w of m atter a s lling all space and returned

m ore or less to the atomistic or monadistic conception of it as some
thing limited Now this matter or obj ective world made itself
.
, ,

known or produ ced sensations by acting on the subj ect That is
, , .
,

matter acted on us by virtue of its properties which in fact represented

l
T wo references s ugg est i ng that Kant h ad th i s s upp ose d s pontane i ty o f
s en se i n m i nd m ay be q u o ted In t h e rst A llg em e in e A n m erkung en speak
.
,

i n g o f t h e phe nom n n o f t h e r i n bow h e co ncl u d e s

e o S o i s t di e Frag e o n der
a , v

B e zi ehun g d e V orst e llu n g a u f d en Geg en s t a n d t ran s ce n d e n t al u n d n i cht alle i n

r

d i e se T ro pfen s i n d bl o s e E rsche i n u n g e n s n d ern s e l bst i hre run d e G e stalt ja , o ,

so g a d e R au m i n w e lch m
r r , i e falle n s i n d Ni chts an s i ch s e l bst son dern
e s , ,

blos e M o d i at i n en O d er Gru n d lag e n u ns erer s i n l i c h en A nschau un g

c o The .

fact t o be s pec ially rem ark ed i that R au m l ike sen s at i ons i n o n e res pect at
s ,

,

least i s a m o d i c t i on o f t h e m i n d If Kant d o es n o t m ean t o s up pos e a

, a .

d i ffe rence bet wee n s e nsat i on a n d S p ace i n th i p assag e h e h a s n o r i g ht t o h i s s

re i ne A nschauu n g n d he n ce contrad i cts h i m a i n d octr i ne B u t i t can be

a s .

adm i tted t hat h e does n o t i ntend a ny s uch contrad ict i on whi le we call att en t i o n

t o t h e ev i d ent d es i re t o reg ard s p ace p erce p t ion a s so m e k i n d o f t i ve ac

f unct i o n .

T h e n e xt pas s age i s i n t h e s econ d A llg e m e i n e A n m erkun g e n S peak i ng .

d i rectly o f S p ace a n d t i m e n d t he i r p reco n d i t i on o f a ll e x p er i e nce h e say s :

a ,

Nu n ist da s wa s a l s Vo rste ll u n g v o aller H an d lung i rgen d etwas n den ken

, , , r z ,

v orhergehen k an n d ie A nschauu ng w e lche d a s ie Ni chts rst e llt a us er so

, , , vo , s

fern Etwas i m Gem ii t h e g eset zt wi rd Ni chts an dere s se i n kan n a l s d ie A t wie . , r ,

d a s Gem ii t h d urch e i g en e T h at ig k e i t n am l i c h d i e se s S et ze n i ber Vorstellung

, , ,

m i th i n d urch s i ch s elbst a f c i t w ird d i e i n i n n erer S inn s e i n er For m nach

r , . . .

T h e express i o ns e i g e n e T h at i ke i t durch s i ch s e l bst a f c ir t

d
'

g a n a e ex r

p l ic i t reco g n i t i o ns o f s p o n tan e i ty i n s ens e a n d p o ss i bly m any ot her st atem ents ,

m i g ht be fo u n d i m p ly i n g t h e sam e T h e p os i t i on i s certa i nly i m p l i e d i n h is

.

g e neral doct r i n e .
 PE R CE P TI ON OF SPA CE A ZVD OB J E C T I VI T Y .
2
91

that actio n on us and which in physica l parlance would be called

,

forces ( K r afte ) As space is explicitly a f rmed by Kant n o t t o 6g a

.

p r o p e r ty of matter in itself ( D inge an sich ) a fact implied by its ,

in nity if property is made convertible with nite inhesion we

, ,

can readily see that sp a ce cannot on Kant s assumption act on sense ,

,
.

O n ly properties of objects are k nown in that way na mely ,

through the receptivity of sense Hence there is no alternative to .

the assumption that space has a p ur ely subject iv e origin as a percep '

tion and the only question that remains is whether it has an objective
,

import other than as a fact of consciousness which w e can contemplate

a s any other mental state .

Now as space is not a property of things as an intuition it ,

must be a function or property of som ething and its ideality with ,

out objectivity would ma k e i t a function or property of the subj ect .

But as seen its innity must imply either that this subject is innite
, ,

or that space has a n obj ectivity of some k ind one or the other Kant , .

has not a i r m e d the former and cannot do this without supposing a

,

thing in itself w ith a

pro perty whi ch he h a s expressly d enied

of it Hence we are left with H obson s choice of obj ectivity of
.

some type Kant cannot attribute this innity to matter as phe

.

nomenon , since he must limit this to the n it u de of experience or
s ensation and having denied it of

thi ngs in themselves he must
, ,
.

suppose that this objectivity is of a fact which is not a property of

matter nor a relation depending on matter as a prius nor an active
, ,

agent on sense ( Sinnlichkeit ) But for the fear that he would have
.

to suppose it a substance or an attribute of something else than matter ,

Kant might have asserted the obj ectivity more clearly though his Vie w ,

of sensation would require him still to make the perception of it
' '

an a
p r zo r z subj ective act But the interpretation thus indicated puts
.

the conception where it is in s cience generally in which it is con ,

c e ived as a condition of the existence of material reality the only dif ,

ference being that , with Kant it is incapable of causing any impres ,

s ions on sense that is any intuition ( Anschauung ) externally ini

, ,

t i a t ed . The denial that it is a property of things prevents it from

being thus externally initiated according to Kant s limitation of sen ,

sory impressions and thus determines its subjective o r zg zn Its i n

'

, .

n ity prevents it from being purely subj ective in n a t u r e and from being
a property of phenome na w hich ar e limited to the nite and ,

hence in some sense it must have objectivity whether presentative or ,

non presentative
-
We have seen as a fact that Kant speaks of it as
.

both subj ective and objective without feeling that he is describing it in

292 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

contradictory terms and that the Leibnitz ian philosophy apparently

,

ma k es this possible This is intelligible however o nly on the sup

.
, ,

position that he is not assuming the usual antithesis between the two
terms but is thinking of subjective action and objective import
, .

The position just taken is more or less conrmed by i n teresti n g

remarks by Kant on a point not often if ever mentioned by students , ,

and which apparently deny the conclusions above conj ectured The .

rst of these passages occurs in the El aut er ung on Time and ,

the second in the Allgemeine An m erkungen
Kant compla in s .

that the assumption of the absolute reality of space and time ,

whether
subsistent or inherent supposes two eternal and innite ,

Undinge ( Raum u nd Z eit ) which exist without being real ( W irk

lich ) and only for the sak e of i n co m pa ssing all reality ( alles Wirk
liche ) .

I shall not quote the whole of the second instance in which the
same thought is repeated with emphasis but simply refer the reade r ,

to the whole of t h e M i n i Allgemeine Anmerk ung

In this pas .

sage Kant is repudiating t h e accusation that his doctrine results in

making space and time illusions ( Scheine ) and asserts that : If we ,

take space and time as properties that ought to exi st in things them
selves in order to make them possible and the n survey the absur di
, ,

ties i n which we should be involved in having to admit that t wo in

nite things which are not substances nor something inherent in
, ,

substances but nevertheless must be something existing nay t h e

, , ,

necessary condition of the existence of all thin gs would remain eve n , ,

if all existing things w ere removed , we really cannot blame the good

Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion Then Kant .
1

adds that our own existence would fall with such s u ppositions .

I repeat that the rst appearance of these passages is that they are
directly opposed to the contention that I have put forward as a possi
ble interpretation of Kant and they apparently de ny in the cleares t ,

terms the reality of space and time But before admitting t h e .

1 W en n aum u n d d ie Z ei t a l s Beschaffenhei ten ans i eht die ihrer

m a n de n R ,

M g l i ch ke i t n ach i n S achen an s i ch an g etroffen wer den m ii sst en un d u be den kt

o , r

d i e ii n g e e i m t h e i te n i n d i e m a n s i ch a l sd e n n erw i ck elt i n d e m z wei u n en d l i che

r , v ,

D i n g e d i e n i cht S u bstan z en auch n i cht etw as w i rk l i ch d en S u bstan z en I n h a i

, ,
r r

e n d e s d en n och aber E xi s t i e n de s ja d i e n o t h we n d i g e Be d i n g un g d er E x i st ence

, r ,

aller D i n g e s ei n m ii s sen auch ii br ig ble i ben wenn g le i ch alle D ing e a ufg eh o

, ,

be n w erd e n so k ann m n es dem g ut en B e rk e ley wohl n i cht ve rd en ken wenn

, a ,

u bl o se m S che i n hera bs et ze

er d ie K o p e r r z .

I t sho uld be n t i ced that i n thi s p assag e t h e wor d

o D i n ge i s us e d where
i n t h e rst i n s tanc U n di nge e i u sed T h i s throw s l i ght u p o n Kant s co n
s .

ce p t i o n o f t h e p roble m .
 PE R CE P T I ON OF S PA CE A ND OBJE C T I VI T Y .
2
93

force of this , which I grant is at least apparent let me ca ll attention ,

to an interesting circumstance It is the fact that the realist a lways

.

thinks that it is Kant s ideality of space that gives rise to all the ab
.

s urdities ( Ungereimtheiten ) in the problem No one ever seems to .

have dreamed of the absurdities that Kant apparently indicates are

s elf evident on the realistic theory
- They h ave all seemed on the other
.

s ide . Why then has Kant so con dently a ffi rmed them when they have
not been a ppa r e nt a t all to others !
'

I thin k that this question ca n easily be answered Kant has wholly .

misapprehended the contention of epistemological realism H e wa s .

d ealing with metaphysical or ontological realism Whatever p h il o so .

h er s may have supposed that space was a substance or the a tt r i
p
bute of so m e substance other than matter they are certainly not those ,

wh o gave the meaning to epistemological realism Clarke held that .

space wa s the attribute of some substance and Leibnitz evidently k n ew ,

writers wh o did the same B ut epistemological realism as t h e result

.
,

o f nominalism and of the reaction against Berk eley not only used the ,

ter m r eal as denoting anything external to the mind whether sub ,

s t a nt iv e or not but conceived the problem of

, knowledge to concern
t h e way of knowing anything beyond consciousness and was not ,

primarily interested in the nature of the thing k no w n Hence K a nt .

was using language which was intended to deny ontological realis m

when to later English thought it appeared to deny epistemological
,

r ealism I agree that if space and time are to be considered either a s

.

substances or as attributes we fall into all sorts of absurdities

but I maintain that whatever the aberrations in the occasional use of
,

language may be in forgotten thinkers it has not been characteristic of,

historical and epistemological realism to assume that space and time

were substances and possibly only Spinoza Clarke and a few , ,

others had the audacity to declare them attributes What e p ist em o .

logical realism has stood for is the fact that space is no t a n illusion of
the senses nor a subj ective creation of the mind It has supposed
, .

that space exists in some way external to the mind and body Kant .

had simply confused the t wo di fferent types of realism This is evident .

in the fact that he thought he w a s dealing with the same issue in the denial

that space was real and at the same ti m e in the denial that it w a s an
illusion Moreover Kant should have remarked also that realism has
.

n o t identied itself in all cases with the doctrine that all knowledge

is p r es en t a t i v e that is an application of the principle of identity in

, ,

some form to the relation between sensation and the qualities of what
it supposes is external Realis m has committed itself in general onl y
.
2
94 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

to the fact of external existence in order to escape solipsism and divided ,

into tw o schools the one m a k ing knowledge of externality direct

,

and presentative and the other indirect and n o n presentative Where -

.

space and time have been concerned , this latter school which Hamil ,

ton calls the hypothetical realists has perhaps been no more explicit
,

than Kant on the question whether they are presentative or non presen -

t a t i v e of external nature But they would all agree with Kant in

.

accepting the absurdity of the views which were so ridiculous to him .

They simply spo k e of them as conditions of the existence of outer

reality precisely in the sa m e sense in which Kant makes them the
,

conditions of external phenomena ( Bedingungen der au sser en E r

s c h e i n un g e n )
As a second point to be made a critical examination of the passage
,

quoted will show that all the absurdities grow out of Kant s statement

of the case for which epistemological realism of any sort is not r esp o n
sible Kant supposes that the absurdities grow o ut of the assumption s
.

that space and time are active properties ( Beschaffenheiten ) of things

in themselves and are yet neither substances nor attributes in
hering in substances but the necessary condition of the existence of
,

all things I agree as to the absurdity of supposing them properties

.

of that which they condition but it is not the conception of ep i st e m o

,

l ogical realism Kant is confusing the doctrines o f Sp inoz a and Car

.

t e si a n realists and assu ming them to be the same while h e is apparently

,

ignorant of the philosophic movement which was a reply to Berk eley

and Hu m e I doubt whether Kant could have named a single realist
.

who ever stated or conceived space and time to be either active proper
ties or limited static properties of reality It is possible that the phi
.

lo so p h er can be asked to consider such a questio n in the problem of

knowledge as based upon the causal inuence of objects of it But .

as no philosophers except the Leibnitz ia n type have regarded matter

as spacel ess the question did not naturally arise and Kant s problem ,

could hardly suggest itself until that point of view was advanced .

Until Leib n itz put forward h is monadistic system with its dependen ce
upon spontaneity for knowledge of all reality and also for consti ,

tuting the very nature of reality itself the question of sp ace and time
, ,

and of all facts of perception resolved itself into two problems ( 1 )

the o r ig i n of knowledge and ( 2 ) the m ea n i ng of it O r are things
, .

mediately or immediately known P It was not whether the y were

perceived or known by a causal inuence on the subject but

,

whether they could be perceived or kno wn in any way what

ever Epistemological realism supposed a causal agency in the pro
.
 PE R CE P T I O N OF S P A CE A

D O BJE C TI VI T Y .
2
95

duction of s en s a t i o n and not necessarily of p e r c ep t i o n m a t er i a l ly

considered Hence it was not bound either to suppose a causal i n
.

fl uence of S pace on the subj ect a s a condition of being perceived or

to limit perceptio n to the subjective state But Kant assumed that .

no knowledge was possible except through a causal a ction on the
subject , unless it was a p r zo r i and then between the subjecti v e nature
'

of su ch an act and the absence of objective causes for its obj ect had a
confusing situation for both idealism and realism But he should not .

have confused epistemol ogical and ontological realism in such a way

as to suppose that the usual doctrine of space involved the simultaneous

assertion of its being a property and a condition of things Its .

conception of it as a property when this was supposed in any sense ,

at all wa s merely that of a predicate a i r m a bl e of it and not as a fu nc

,

tion of its a ctivity though the dynami c theory of matter may even do
,

this There was no con tradiction between this view of it and the
.

assumption that space is the conditio n of material or even of any ,

other reality We have only to ta k e the form of statement which

, .

Kant adopts for phenomena to show the truth of this position since ,

what is supposed to condition phenomena ought not to suggest an
absurdity when applied to n oumena as the term condition is not ,

supposed to imply causality of an ei c ie n t or creative sort in either

case That is in both the realistic and Kantian theories the rela tion
.
, ,

expressed by condition is st a tic not dynamic whether applied to , ,

noumena or phenome n a But Kant is trying to accuse realism of

.

assuming that space and time are dynamic properties of things as a

condition of being perceived and that they are at the same time the
static prius of the existence of these things This of course is absurd .
, ,

enough but that it is the doctrine of the ordinary epistemological

,

realis m is an illusio n of Kant s or of the Kantian philosophers

, .

There was an apology for Kant s way of putting the case in his

time as there were metaphysical theories of space and time which

,

epistemological realis m since then has not been required to consider .

Consequently I am here providing against the interpretatio n of the

Kantian philosophy as solving the problem whi ch epistemology has
n o w to discuss though I am also end eavo ring to show that the very
,

confusion of Kant grew out of the transition to this point of vie w

and admitted into it conceptions which may have to dominate mod
ern doctrines H e had to mediate between ontological and epis
.

t e m o l o g ic a l realism and if he had distingu ished between them he

, ,

might have indicated more clearly a position that would have been less
puzzling .
2
96 TH E PR O BL EM S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

The real obj ection to this interpretation of Kant implying that his ,

doctrine is a for m of epistemological realism will be found in those ,

s tatements regarding S pace and time in which he seems to deny a bso

l ut ely all obj ectivity to them whatsoever and which seems to be the
logical result of more equivocal assertions I refer to t wo of them as .

clear illustrations The rst is near the beginning of the rst Alle
.

gemeine Anmerk ung He says that If we think away the subj ect
.

or the subjective form of sense all qualities all relations of obj ects in
, ,

S pace and time nay spa ce and time themselves w ould vanish They
,

cannot exist as phenomena in themselves but only in us The , .

second statement to which I call attention is near the beginning of

section twenty three in the Deduction der reinen V erstandesbegriffe
-
.

H e says : Space and time are valid as conditions of the possibility

of obj ects as given to us in experience but they are nothing more : for ,

th e y belo ng only to the sense and have no reality beyond them .
2

There are very many other similar statements though perhaps not so ,

denite and clear in their real or apparent denial of a l l obj ectivity to

S pace and time as presumably a frmed by the realist There are
, .

m a ny that are equivocal because t h eir interpretation is subj ect to all

sorts of ambiguities in such ter m s as Ans chauung Erscheinung , ,

V orstellung ,
Gegenstand A usser etc But taken generally
, , .

with what is understood from the intentio n of the system as re flected

in conceptions that cannot be discussed h ere the impression is over ,

whelming that the interpretation which I have presented as a possible

one is not within the meaning of Kant .

I am not going to dispute the app a r en t force of the facts or state

me nts j ust n oted n o r shall I be so condent that I have penetrated the
,

m ysteries of the Kantian doctrines as to claim more certitude for this

interpreta tion than the possi bilities involve But I think that I can .

reinforce these possibilities by some importa nt qualications of the

passages which have been quoted and which are perhaps the strongest , ,

that Kant h a s used w hile I refer to one or two statements by him a p

,

p a r en t ly contradictory but quite consistent with the view that I am

h ere ta k ing of his probable thought .

1 Wenn w ir uns er S ubj ect oder auch nur d ie subj ect i ve B eschaffenhei t de r

S i nn e i i be h au p t a ufhe be n alle d i e Be schaffenhe i t alle V e h ii l t n i s se de O bj ecte

r , , r r

i m R au m u n d Z e i t ja s e l bst R a um u n d Z e i t ve rschwi n d en w ii d e n u n d al s
, r ,

E rsche i n u n ge n n i cht a n s i ch s e l bst s o n dern n u i n u s ex i st i re m k o mmen

, r .

2
R aum un d Z e i t g e lten a l s B e d i ng u n g en d e m o g l i c h ke i t w ie u n s Geg en
, r ,

s t a n d eg e g ebe n werd en n i cht w e i t er a l s f u G e g e nst an d e d e

, , r S i nn e m i th i n d e r , r

E rfahr un g . U e ber d i ese G re n z en h i n au s ste llen s i e g a Ni chts o ; d enn s i e r v r

s i nd n ur i n d en S i nnen u n d haben au s ser i hne n ke i ne Wi r ck l ic h ke it .

 PE R C E P T I O N OF S P A CE A ND O BJE C T I VI T Y . 29
7

The rst qualication is that they are strong only in their isolation .

We must not forget that Kant s terminology is such that its me a ning

c annot always be determined by the most obtrusive considerations ,

w hich are the common currency of the ideas expressed by the terms .

I think that I have shown this in those passages which I have en d eav
o red to interpret in t h e li g ht of previous and contemporaneous phil

o so p h i c conceptions I apparently relied upon isolated passages for

.

the interpretation which I have given but in fact I chose them only as ,

most favorable to t h e illustration of the method by which I think Kant

m u s t be judged Th ei r paradoxical and apparently contradictory
.

c hara c ter were precisely the statements whose meaning could be made

evide nt only in the light of the philosophy which inuenced the de

Vel o p m e nt of Kant It is the same with isolated statements which
.

s eem to be opposed to the interpretation that I have been presenting .

They must be understood in relation to the whole or at least in rela ,

tion to the ideas that Kant once accepted and was n o w giving up .

Whatever we thin k of Kant s K r i t ik we must treat it as a unied

system or a chaos To assume that it is a chaos is to refuse to study

.

the psychology of a mind that has all the appearances of being syste
matic The fact that Kant whether rationally or not made his sys
.
, ,

tem turn about the distinctions bet w een noumena and phenomena ,

sense and understanding the subjectivity of space and ti m e as oppos ed

,

to their reality not necessarily to their obj ectivity shows some
, ,

kind of unity that is worth ascertaining if for no other reason than as ,

a means of discovering the apparent inconsistencies in it O f course .

,

if we can nd any principle that will give the system a larger u nity
a nd intelligibility than is on the surface or remove the di fficu lties ,

w h i ch m a ny have in the study of it the result may be worth the pains

'

, .

Hence for the reason j ust me ntioned namely the evident existence
, , ,

of some ruling co n ception which determined the whole complicated

d octrine w e must endeavor to ascertain just what unity or co nsistency
,

and contradictions it contains To do this we cannot rely upon iso

.

lated passages alone for either proving or disproving an interpretation

.
.

We must study the system in the l ight of the philosophic conceptions

which certainly determined Kant s fu ndam ental ideas in their content

a n d which will make the interpretation intel ligible and possible .

Following out this method in regard to the passages quoted I ,

wish rst to call attention to a minor matter that may be of some value ,

a t least of a conditional kind in the understanding of the psychological

,

and logical inuences operating unconsciously on Kant s mind This

.

is his use of the terms Wirklich a n d IVir k l i ch k e it

He uses .
298 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O P H y .

them at least apparently as interchangeable with real and r e

,

ality . This convertibility of the terms may be disputed unless by ,

actual denition we clearly indicate their identity Lotze remark s .

that Wirklich in the German language implies a c t i v i ty , whet h er

as e ffect as related to a cause or as action which brings about thi s
,

effect In the history of philosophy

.

real and reality have as ,

often perhaps most generally had the implication of s t a t i c existence

, ,

of some sort This conception would enable us to describe space and

.

time as the realist does and as Kant evidently intends them to be

,

described O the assump ion of his difference between real a n d
n . t

W ir k lich we can well understand Kant s repudiation of the o bje c

,

t iv ity of space and time in su ch statements as I have quoted especially ,

as the only activity that he supposes in knowledge is the activity of

objects in which space does not i nhere as a property but of which ,

it is a condition and also the pure activity of the understanding
,

which unies experience and possibly the pure activity of intuition

,

( reine Anschauung ) as the origin of space perception That is , .

space and time as s t a t i c realities do not and cannot act on sense eve n ,

if we suppose that se n se perceives them as external objects of in

tuition This is clear in one passage in which Kant asks h o w it is
.

possible to have an experience of absolutely empty space ( Denn wer

kann eine Erfahru n g von S c h l ect h in Leeren haben That Kant -

may have had this conception of W irk lich is quite possible when we
observe the unconscious inuence of Leibnitz on his thin k ing as is ,

denitely admitted in his use of spontaneity especially as this general ,

con ception inuences him in a ll but the r ecep t i v i ty of sense and even ,

in his conception of the causal actio n of obj ects on the subj ect which
must be active to produce sensations I shall not urge the case , h o w .

ever solely o n the strength of his pos sible use of W irk lich as thi s
, ,

may savor too much of a l ogomachy and because the real fact which ,

lies behind these isolated pa ssages t hat I h ave quoted and that have
their meaning determined by it is Kant s doctrine of the thing in ,

itself . The whole question of wh at Kant m eans by the ideality o f
space and time a n d of the interpretation which I have here advanced
, ,

as connecting h im more closely with epistemologica l realism than h e

and his defe n ders usually suppose depends on this conception of a ,

thing in itself which lies at the basis of his system I shall have .

to traverse the whole problem again in the light of this idea .

It is impossible to repress a smile as I approach this subj ect of t h e

thing in itself after the oods of commentary and discussion that
,

center about it The subj ect reminds one of the famous passage in the
.
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND O BJE C T I VI T Y
.
2
99

K r itik about truth and the foggy ocean which we must traverse in
search of it with more or less a ssurance of ship wreck a n d failure But .

I am not going to engage in any elaborate philological investigation of

Kant s s tatements to elucidate this perplexing doctrine I shall stat e

.

it in general terms and allow the student to examine and verify the
case for himself .

The rst thing to remark in any attempt to say W h at Kant meant

by Dinge a n sich is in the uctuating conception which he himself
took of them This is most apparent in the modications which were
.

introduced into the second and later editions of his wor k Every stu .

dent will r ecall the discussio n on noumena and phenomena in the rst
edition , omitted in the second and later editions which distinctly indi ,

cate that Kant at one time conceived Dinge an sich as t h e ca u s es

of phenomena The omission of this in later discussions shows greater
.

consistency in his doctrine and intimates at the same time that h e

,

intended to abandon that idea He found that he could not maintain

.

this position namely that they were the causes of phenomena the
, ,

conditio n of their being known and still assert that they were
,
un k nown H e had only gradually moved fro m the metaphysical
.

to the scientic state of his thinking a n d in the transition he carried

the conceptions of the one over to the other when they should hav e
been abandoned H e had been the victim of that philosoph y which
.

had retained the superphysical world a s any explanation of all thing s

after it had admitted the supersensible physical world at the basis of
natural knowledge The superphysical world above space and
.

time was the thing in itself and so at rst the u ltimate cause of
everything But the admission of causality into the physical world a s
.

t h e agency causing sensation against M a l ebr a n c h e s seeing all thing s

,

in God made it necessary to abandon the D ing an sich as the
,

basis of knowl edge and to reconstru ct the whole problem In the
, .

explanation of k nowledge Kant started with the doctrine of th e
subjective n a t u r e of sensation in respect of its character as a menta l
act but with an obj ective origin and with this assumption he sa w
, ,

that he must take the View that it was non presentative of the natur e -

of reality This made the distinction between the nature of things

.

and their appearance necessary so that if we should identify ,

knowledge with the subjective states we shou l d have to say that

we did not know the nature of things but only their appear ,

ance . To escape from any su ch statement we should have to give
that denition of knowledge which extended it beyond mere na v i ng '

m ental states to the

perception or intuition of a trans cendental
300 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

reality Kant never gives us as denite a notion of this as he should

.

have done but whether he did so or not is indi ffere nt to the questio n
,

as to what suggested the limitations of k nowledge to the non pre -

sen ta t iv e realist In this view as with Kant reality w a s co nsidered

.
, ,

as the cause of sensation or phenomena and it w a s quite willing to ,

admit a se n se in which we did not know things This sense was .

that of na v i ng them in consciousness though obj ects of it Fo r .

k nowledge it did not require to go behind this cause for any
thing else deeper unless this cause gave evide n ce o f being an e ffect
, ,

and when it went behind such a cause it did not nd it ne c e s sary
to transcend space and time to obtain what it was pleased to call the
Ab solute It was content to suppose a reality that transcended all
.

d ep e n d e n t reality not any and all reality that might show equally
,

independent character It might or might not stop with God just
.
,

as it pleased But in so far as mediate or immediate kno w ledge

.

was concerned it could stop with a nature of things not given in

,

sensory data simply because these were a ssu med to be non presenta
,
-

tive Anything further depended on the d is covery of relativity to

.

causes in this nature of things It was this tendency in general .

philosophic speculation to seek something more transcendental than the

supersensible object of sensible experience that gave rise to the idea of

a thing in itself above space and time and having once accepted ,

this with the assumption that all else w a s phenomenon mode acci , ,

d ent it was difficult to get away from this habit of thought when the
,

cause became the supersensible obj ect of experience In other words .

,

Kant never distinguished between presentative realism and scholastic

transcendental ism on the one hand nor between non presentative or
, ,
-

hypothetical realism and the ontological realism on the other which , ,

he was combating .

It was the inuence of another philosophy than epistemological

realism whether of the common sense or the hypothetical sort that
, ,

produced Kant s conception of the D ing an sich

It was the .

residuu m left after he had studied Leibnitz a n d Spinoz a and forgot to

abandon after h e had denied their doctrines Spinoza taught him to .

c o nceive the Absolute as a pri us of both physical and mental a tt r i

butes a n d hence a s a prius of space and time Leibnitz at least
, .

apparently taught him to believe in spaceless and timeless points of

force a s the basis of both m ental and physical phenomena These .

phenomena were given in internal and external sense ( innere und

aussere Sinnlichk eit ) and were not representative of things in
,

themselves
Kant thus came to accept realities which not only
.
 PE R CE P TI O N OF S PA CE A ND OBJE C T I VI T Y
.
30 1

transcended sense k n owledge but w h ich also transcended space and

,

time a nd the n identied these realities with the non presentative

,
-

obj ects of the hypothetical realist who had never been i m plicated in
the metaphysics of either Spinoza or Leibnitz When he fi na l ly .

li m ited objective kno wledge to sense , which the assu m ed realis m

of the Spinoz ists and Leibnitz ia ns did not do he ought to have give n ,

up the existence of any thing in itself and he would have had no
trouble in his pr o blem He actuall y did abandon it logically when he
.

said that it wa s unknown but he still clung to things in them

,

selves as facts after he had abandoned the evidence for them namely , ,

their causal action on the subj ect and made his conceptio n of them
,

nevertheless the basis of distinctions that were both u nnecessary and

misleading because they were distinctions between nothing for
,

knowledge and all that it did k now It is curious to call su ch a .

conception a limiting or d e n ing c o n cept ( Grenz begriff ) , and quite as

curious also to call it a begri ff of any kind after he had said that a
Ding a n sich was both unknown and i nd e n abl e l
No w to put this in common English Kant abandoning the vie w of , ,

Leibnitz that all activity originates with the subject and returning to
the materialistic conception of sensation started with the conception ,

that we know things by virtue of their properties which are

activities on sense Then with the view that space and time were
.

conditions not a c t i v e properties of things and that things in

,

themselves are spaceless and timeless while space and time were ,
known as facts in sensory experience or intuition Kant could
,

only say that they were not properties of things in themselves and
hence the last could no t be known space and time bei n g th e con

,

dit io n s of both k nowledge a n d reality Consequently for k no wl .

,

edge these things in themselves could have no properties what

ever This was precisely what Kant had to mean by his D ing an
.

sich , and he indicated as mu ch when he abandoned its causal inuence

on sense F or knowledge it had to be an entirely p r o p e r ty l es s
.

r ea li t
y because on the one hand it was not a n object of se n sory ex
, ,

p er ie n c e and on the other was spaceless and ti m eless

, , This property .

less reality though regarding it as unkno w n in S pite of its a c ce p
, ,

tance as a fact he confused with the non presentative nature of things

,
-

of the epistemological realist which w a s admittedly k n own as an

object of judgment but not of sense That is Kant had t wo sets of .
,
Dinge an sich one a space l ess and timeless reality beyond all
,

sensory knowledge and the other an obj ective reality which h a d

properties capable of a ffecti ng sense but not p r es e n t e d in it His
-
.
302 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

conception was as will be sho wn later in detail that sensory knowl

, ,

e dge was caused ( ef c ien t ly ) by obj ects but that the sensory ideas ,

d id not represent or present the obj ect directly to cons ciousness as

intuition following the Leibnitzian postulate that nothing could be
,

transmitted into the subj ect This latter reality the object of one
.
,

form of realism Kant admitted to be k nown at least i n so m e sense

,
'

though he does ma k e it cle a r how we know it as he did not con ,

s c io u s ly introduce into his K r i t i k the principle of S u i c i e nt Reason

for the purpose of explicating his position after having asserted in the ,

No v a D il u c i a a t i o that it should supplement the Principle of Identity

in the problem of knowledge The P rinciple of Sufcient Reason

.

was taci t ly as sumed and used in the explanation of the origin of sensory

e xperience and the causal inuence of obj ects but it was not ,

a nalyzed and explicitly developed in a way to show the relation between

the subjectiv e and objective aspects of knowledge

.

O n e of these Dinge an sich Kant obtaine d from a p r i o r i meta
p hysics and the other from the psychological interpretation of sensa
t ion and its cause and supposed from the process of abstraction con
,

n ec t e d with both of them that he was dealing with the same reality .

A s the former is a non entity for -
k nowledge it must be thrown out ,

o f all consideration in the problem of epistemology a n d all propositions

,

whose meaning is de t ermined by the assumption of su ch a conception

m ust be treated accordingly This means that the distinctions in
.

Kant s philosophy which are based upo n the assumption of this non

e ntity must be declared useless H ence in order to criticise or under

.

s tand the Kantian doctrine o f space we have neither to defend the prop
,

o s it i o n that space and time are properties or relations or , ,

conditions of things in themselves in this transcendental se n se nor ,

to suppose the existence of su ch things a t all T h e only D i ng an .

s ich ,
if the phrase be tolerated at all which we need assume is the
,

objective reality of the non presentative realists which Kant actu

-

ally admits as the cause o f sensation This makes his position .

,

whether you call it idealism or not convertible with one form of real
,

i sm and the only question that remains is whether he accepts any

, ,

doctrine of the objectivity of space Let us examine this question .

somewhat further .

O wing to the double origin of Kant s conception of D inge an

sich the metaphysical origin of one and the psychological or ep ist e
,

m o l o gi ca l origin of the other t h e denial that space is either a

, prop

er ty , a relation or a condition of things in themselves
,

also has a double import In c onnection with the former it is not

.
,
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJE C TI VI T Y
.
3 03

o nly a tru ism an implication in the very conception of them both as

,

unknown and as spaceless and t imeless but it also implies that

,

these so called properties have a s o l u t ely n o r el a t i o n w/za t e v er t o

-

t /zem. In connection with the latter it does mean that they have no
,

relation to reality that is known but that they are not active ,

properties of it that is , not activities of sense though related to
, ,

objects precisely as realists of all shades of belief have maintained .

That this is the fact is clearly indicated by his calling it a condition

of external phenomena ( Bedingung der ausse r e n Erscheinungen ) ,

and his constant assignment of objective reality to the causes of
sensation even though it was qualied by terms associated with ideal
,

ism There w a s a n equivocation in his use of the term phenom

enon ( Erscheinung ) which I shall notice again and which shows
that he had in mind the conception that I wish to defend But it is .

most noticeable that he does n o t sp eak of space as a property of

external phenomena but only as their form or condition
.
,

There is an apparent exception to this statement It is in the Trans .

c end e nt a l Exposition of Space H e says speaking of it this

.
, ,

predicate is attributed to things in so far as they appear to us that is , ,

as obj ects of sense This however it should be remarked does not
.
, , ,

speak of space as a property but only as something p r e cl zca o l e of
'

,

things as phenomena ( Erscheinungen ) while it is conceived as a ,
condition
of them as obj ects precisely as the realists of the
epistemological type , a nd m a ny of the ontological type have main ,

t a in e d. But though he assigned space this relation did he intend to ,

regard it as obj ective or external i n any sense ! The answer to this

question must combine several considerations and among them must ,

be a careful examination of Ka nt s conception of phenomena
.

The rst answer is the questio n whether any one is willing to

maintain that Kant accepted solipsism If he did not he admitted the .
,
'

externality of something other than his sensations It is apparent in .

his system that he d id hold to objective existe nce other than himself ,

even if he made this objective existence nothing but the personal con
sc io u s n ess of another and any man w h o goes this far has no absolute
,

criterion against the a i r m a t io n of other externa l reality if its c r e d en ,

t ia l s are shown to be as good or the same as that which he believes ,

and which was accepted as a condition of having sense experience

at all.

Having fou nd that Kant does admit an external reality as a datum ,

of sense w e then ask what he mea t by phenomenon ( E r sch ei n
,
n

ung ) and object ( Gegenstand ) Did he regard these as objective ,
3 04 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O P H Y .

or m e r ely subjective mental states in their nature non presentative of -

external reality !
The answer to this is simple and clear ( I ) Kant s use of t h e .

term phenomeno n is equivocal It is very generally identied with

.

sensation ( E m p n d un g ) o n the one hand and w ith object ( Gegen

, ,

stand ) o u the other sensation and object not being intentionally iden
, ,

t i e d at any time Sensation Kant regards as a subjective mental state

.

not lik e the qualities of obj ects and obj ects as the e f cient causes of
sens a tion The idea that his pheno menon was only appearance
.

without anything appearing is a misunderstanding of Kant s real doc

trine as I thin k is quite evident from the next consideration ( 2 )

,
.

Kant constantly identies phenomenon ( Erscheinu ng ) and o b

je c t ( Gegenstand ) and he as constantly refers to obj ects of sense
,

in which he indicates that they are not sensations He is even very .

careful to say that Erscheinungen are not illusions ( S cheine ) as ,

students of him well know He constantly Spea k s of obj ects a ffecting

.

sense so that his conception of them is that of ca u s es of sensation not

, ,

the subj ective states the m selves This gives them objectiv ity in a per
.

fec tly rational sense of the term as external to the subject and as they ,

may be non presentative in nature we have in Erscheinung and
-

Gegenstand precisely the obj ective realities which were the Ding

an sich of the hypothetical or non presentative realists -

( 3 ) Kan t .

actually denes Erscheinung as t h e indenite object of percep

tion ( der unbestimmte Gegenstand der Wahrnehmung ) in which h e ,

both identies Erscheinung and Gegenstand and implies that ,

though Erscheinung is a datu mof sense it is not always used to

,

denote the sensation itself The qualication . unbestimmt indi

cates the abstraction of the subj ective side of sense with the retention
of a supersensible object and implies the same in den it ene ss which the
idealists generally li k e to charge against realists when these do not de
ne their real in terms of the principle of identity T h e trouble .

with Kant was that he forgot the equivocal complexity of sense ( Sinn
l ic h k ei t ) which as representing subj ective states was a combination
, ,

of sensation ( E m p n dung ) and apprehension ( Anschauung ) and as ,

representi ng the knowledge of external obj ects w a s a combination

of sensation and j udgment the latter not being explicitly indicated by
,

Kant O n the contrary while it is Judgment that should have bee n

.
,

his source for reality obj ects of se nse h e admits co n stantly that it is

, ,

se n se ( Sinnlichkeit ) throu g h E m p n du n g and Anschauung o r ,

these together in Wahrnehmung that extern al objects are given

, .

Sensations give or are subjective states and

intuitions which , , ,
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJ E C TI VI T Y .
3 05

though subjective acts represent the perceptio n of obj ects and are
,

not the direct effects of external causes in the same sense that sensa
tions are We may discover in this the k ey to the solution of the
.

problem almost in Ka nt s o w n terms Having found that he admits

.

in Gegenstande an extern a l reality other than mental states and that
he appli es the concept of objectivity to space we have to ask in what

sense he does this .

The answer to this question involves several observations and in the

end a possible qualicatio n with which the objectivity of space is
admitted .
(I) E m p n d u ng gives se n sations which are externally
instigated but subj ective in their nature empirische Anschauung
gives obj ects ( Gegenst ande ) which are obj ective realities acting on
sense reine Anschauung gives space and time and the question ,

remains wh ether these are obj ective also and related to Gegenst ande
as realists suppose without their bei ng properties of objects acting
on the subj ect ( 2 ) No w Gegenstande aff ect sense by virtue of
.

their properties whi ch are dynamically conceived after the L e ibn it

zian ph ilosophy to be activities in some form Through them and the .

sensations they produ ce empirische Anschauung obtains external
rea l ity or objects I would add to this what I think Kant would
.
,

admit namely that it is the category of causality that must be im p li

, ,

ca te d in empirische Anschauung ( 3 ) Space being innite is not
.

a property of matter ( Gegenstande ) and whether innite or not is , , ,

not an active function but a static co n dition or predicate of it and con

, ,

sequently cannot aff ect sense The result is that if we perceive it

.
,

at all we must do so by virtue of an a p r i o r i or spontaneous func
,

tion of sense , not stimulated by external objects but instigated by the

se n sation itself This is Kant s reine Anschauung Does it give
.

.

external reality to its obj ect ! ( 4 ) All intuitions ( Anschauungen )

give objectivity whether representati ve of the real or not and in S pite
,

of their subjective origin and natu re as mental acts O nly E m p n .

dung gives pure subjectivity Anschauung which is considered
.
,

as an a c t of the subject has reference to external re a lity without regard

,

to origin a nd simply because it is intuition Hence the case can be .

su m marized as follows
E m p nd u n g has an o oj ec t i v e o r ig i n but a s u o e c t i v e m ea n i n ;
j g
,

empirische Ans chauu n g h a s an o bj e c t i v e o r ig i n and an o oj ec t i v e

m ea n i ng ; reine Anschauung has a s u oj e c t i v e o r ig i n but an ,

o l e c t i v e m ea n n
j i g as well as a subj ective
,
The consequence is that .

we have two functions here for objectivity instead of the one general

act of sensory perceptio n

as ordinarily conceive d the two bei ng ,

20
3 06 TH E P R OB L E III S OF PH I L O S O PH Y.

made necessary by Kant s conception of the limitations of reality in

respect of its properties and possib ly made necessary on any theory

,

of the external world But the complication of space intuition with

.

the language of subjectivity in its genesis and meaning as such a prod

u et with the same d e scription of sensation which did not represent

reality in any sense made it di f cult to understand a ny obj ecti v e import

in space perception without explicitly remarking that all cognitive
consciousness involved this assumption a View concealed here by the,

fact that it is possible Kant did not want the percept of spa ce to ,

be any more representative of real space than sensations were of

obj ects though it is equally possible that he did wish to admit that the
,

space percept was more or less representative .

The only obj ection that can be brought to this interpretation of

Kant and most readers would no doubt consider this as fatal is the
, ,

fact that Ka n t so persistently speaks of space as n o t /t i ng apart from

phenomena as I have already remarked and that it would vanish
, ,

if it were not for th e subj ective conditions of sense This c o n ce p

tion is supported by his view that space perception may not hold
for other forms of conscious beings and that we do not know certainly
,

whether it holds good for animals but only that it is valid for all men
, .

Such vie w s seem quit e clear though one may ask the s ceptical ques
,

tion h o w Kant knows that all men have an intuition which he so

constantly describes as subj ective when the same ter m is used to
describe sensations which he explicitly indicates may not be u niversal .

The most emphatic statements on his doctrine are in the section on

Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of Cosmological

Dialectics w here it w ould seem that the pure subj ectivity of space
,

was a f rmed and its objectivity wholly denied But in this very dis .

c uss io n he uses language that is atly contradictory unless we explain

it on the assumption of the interpretation which I have proposed He .

rst speaks of all phenomena as modications of sense and then

disputes the right of any one to identify this conception with t h at of
dreams In reply to such an interpretation of his view he then says
.

that his doctrine of transcendental idealism permits that the objects

of external intuition just as they are perceived in space ar e also real
, , ,

and that all changes in time , just a s presented in the internal sense are ,

real F or as space is the form of that intuition which we call external

.

a n d as no empirical conception can occur w ithout obj ects in it so we ,

must suppose extended realities as real in it and so also with time ,
.

Then immediately in the face of this he says This space and time ,

and together with them all phenomena are not t ni ng s in themselves ,

 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND O BJE C T I VI T Y
.
307

b ut nothing except presentations and have no existence outside our

minds These statements are either contradi ctory or they are intel
.

ligible only on the assu m ption that it is the prese ntations that are sub

ject iv e while the real is objective , whether represented by the sub
ject iv e or not As evidence
. of this , on the very nex t page Kant says
that the non s ensible cause of these presentations is totally unknown
-

( Die n ich t sinnl ich e Ursache dieser V orstellunge n ist uns ga nz l ich
unbekannt ) H ere we have his t wo D inge an sich in one its ,

objective existence admitted and its relation to perception asserted

, .

It is evident that Kant s rea l conception of the case is simply that our

experience or sense presentations are regarded as obj ectively
caused ef ciently not materially but are materially what the subject
, ,

makes them j ust as the Leibnitzian point of View would consider them
, .

Whether they represent reality as it is wi l l depend on the vie w w e take

either of the process of perceptio n or of the nature of the subject .

If the subject is suf ciently like the obj ect to act in the same way the
presentatio n may represent the object rightly If it is not lik e it the .

presentation may not represent the obj ect and to secure the proper
,

knowledge of the object as it is we S hould have to endow per

,

c e pt i o n with the function of s eei ng facts as they are without reference

to the mode of its initiat ion or the question as to the nature of sensa
tion thus distinguishing between sensation and perception in this
,

w ay . Unless Kant does mean this in some way , it is perfectly absurd

for him to speak of objects ( Gegenst ande ) affecting sense when
he is as constantly repeating that obj ects are the a ffectio n or modi
c at io n itself H e either assumes what I state of his real position or
.

he does not know what he is talking about in this free use o f equiv o
cations What Kant ought to have seen clearly , and to have admitted
.

as frankly , was that be either could not use the language of subjectivity
about space at all or had to give up the distinction between space
perception and the phenomena of dreams and hall u cinations a ,

distinction which he insisted o n retaining and gave no reason whatever

for it If he had remained on the premises of the Leibnitzian philos
.

0phy he could well have insisted on pure subjectivity of everything

without supposing any obj ectivity w hatever But having returned to .

the position that sensations were caused from the external world he
should have seen that his subjectivity implied objectivity of some kind ,

and indeed he did see it but did not use the fact as he should have
,

done We have found in later knowledge that even illusions h a l lu c i

.
,

nations and dreams have their obj ective import being the resultant or
, ,

effect of secondary stimuli and di ffe ring fro m normal sensations only
30 8 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

in their non coordination with the usual and normal cause With u s
-
.

subj ectivity always implies so m e objectivity even though it be non ,

presentative of it .

The real crux of the case lies in Kant s p o i n t a e r ep e r e for e mploy

ing this language of subj ectivity at all in relatio n to space It wa s h is .

peculiar conception of Ding an sich which involved the double
absurdity ( 1 ) of transcending all kno w n reality and yet deserving

a place in the theory of knowledge and ( 2 ) of limiting k nowl
,

edge to experience while reality or the D ing an sich w a s

the cause of that experience
That is if all that is known
.
,

is sensible and the categories have no objective application he

can neither assert the unknown things in them selves nor sup
pose them the cause o f sensation What Kant should have seen
.

and emphasized was that it is one thing to s en s i bly k now
a fact and it is another to co g n i t i v ely know it This di st in c .

tion w a s im plied in his reference to the

thing in itself as the

cause of sensible experience and was apparently implied in his
,

doctrine of the categories especially that of causation But as his

, .

causality was noth ing but coexistence and sequence made necessary not ,

e f cient , in eye r y th in g but the production of sensation and hence noth ,

ing but the systematization of experience all his grounds for o bjec ,

t i v it y of any sort were baseless though it is cl ear that be asserted the

,

fact of it O ne of his main dif cu l ties was his abstract limitation of

.

sense and understanding H e S poke of them as if they were separate

.

functions and having assumed that sense handed its data over to judg
, .

ment for systematiz atio n h e forgot to note that in addition to synthe ,

t iz i ng
experience t h e j udgment explained it by the category of
causality and thus used the principle of objectivity to make sense and
,

the subjective rational If then we nd that we can reduce the ideal

.

ist to the dilemma between solipsism and the admission of some ex

t er n al ity and S how that Kant is in agreement with that realism which
asserts objective reality witho ut assuming that its nature is presen
t at iv ely give n in sensory states we have a position in which Kant s

,

Anschauung as a purely subj ective act not directly stimulated from
,

without by space because it is not a property of matter but only a

static conditio n of it can have the m ea n i ng which S hould be given to
,

all intuition of whatever origin or nature in his system n amely an ,

o j e ct i v e though possibly not prese n tative or representative , import

, ,

whether that meaning be given by direct perception or only by

causal implication involving the immanency of j u d gment i n sense ex

p er ie n ce explaining it as well a s synthetiz ing different experiences
,
.
 PE R C E P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND O BJE C T I VI T Y .
309

Let me su m marize Kant s doctrine I have shown that he uct u

a tes between the things in themselves of the ontologists which by ,

his o w n denition of the m must be wholly unrelated to knowledge ,

and the real of the epistemologists who suppose a causal relation
.

between reality and consciousness but a relation that w a s n o t the

,

t ransmission of the nature of objects into consciousness not a pres ,

e nt a ti o n of matter by material causes , but an e f cient or occasional

c ause of the sensations without constituting them That is Kant

.
,

uctuated in his conception of
,
things in themselves between a ,

p r o p er ty l ess r ea l i ty which is a bs o l u t ely unknown , and a ca us a l

r ea l i t
y which was r e l a t i v ely kno wn But as there is perhaps gen
.

e ral agreement that the former conception is useless the existence of

,

t h e latter makes Kant a realist in regard to the fact of external or

o bjective existence not p r es en t e d i n consciousness , a n d an idealist in

regard to the n a t u r e of sensation and at least the o r ig i n of space

perception . The only question that remains is whether he con
c eiv e d S pace as externally real in some sense as other than a mere mode

o f consciousness The distinction that he insisted upon between sen

.

s ation
( E m p n dung ) and intuition ( Anschauung ) and the statement
t hat space was objective while sensation was only subj ective would

ma k e it a consistent supposition that this intuition could represent
a content that might be either presentative or non presentative accord -

ing as the facts required us to believe If consciousness could assert

t h e existence of things in themselves which were unknown and

s paceless there should be no d ii cu l ty i n conceiving that

,
intuition
c ould give a re a lity which had no causal relation to the subject but

which was incited on the occasion of sensation The fact that intui .

t ion wa s another function than mere sensation permits the supposition

t hat its capacity extends to the seeing objects that are not presented i n

t h e sensation This is to say that it may be of the very nature of

.
,

perception to intuit or to assert so mething not co n sciousness and
not i n consciousness in any other sense than that it is an object of it
and , in the proper sense of the ter m outside it The reality may
, .

be presentative or non presentative just as we please , the main thing

-

being that all obj ectivity is meaningless unless one or the other is con
c eded and it is within the Kantian system to make it objective in one
,

sense .

With this outcome of the development of the problem of percep

t ion

as a process and especially in connectio nwith t he idea of S pa ce ,

let us see h o w the phenomena of bino cular vision affect both the Berke
l e i a n and the Kantian do ctrines There are just t w o things to discu s s
.
3 10 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

in the problem There are ( x) t h e question of the nativity and ( 2 )

.

the question of the ideality of space perception .

I shall conne the discussion of the rst of these questions to the

problem of solidity or the third dimension in the eld of vision I .

shall assume for the present and for the sake of argument that plane

dimension is in the retinal ima ge and that the fact guarantees the

nativity of space perception for that dimens ion I shall also as .

sume for the sake of arg ument that the absence of the third d i mension

from the image creates a perplexity in the problem of perceiving

it It was all very easy and plausible for Berkeley and his followers
.

to try to explain this perception of the third dimension i n vision by

association of tactual and muscular experiences with certain signs in
vision , since they assumed the necessity of the presence in the image
or impression of the quale to be naturally seen if its perception ,

w a s to be supposed a native function of that sense But they were .

ignorant of important optical facts which indicate an agency for seeing

what is not presented i n the image Brewster s and Wheatstone s .

work in bino cular vision showing that the perce ption of the third
,

dimension was connected with the existence of disparate images on the

diff erent retinas suggested the existence of an organism for the native
,

perception of distance which Berkeley did not suspect , all thi s

w ork having been done after his time and also after that of Kant w h o ,

seems not even to have been aware of the possible signicance o f

Berkeley s theory of vision for his own views We know that t h e

.

work of Bre wster led to the invention of the stereoscope and that thi s
instrument was designed to illustrate precisely this organism for t h e

perception of solidity where it was actually not in the obj ect .

The same effect can be produced by the articial combination of retinal

images in the use of the naked eyes Such experiments represent t h e .

drawing of gures of the same chara cter except with that degree of dis
p a r a t e ness which would be true of images from solid objects in normal
vision and th e fusion of their retinal images by crossing of the eyes or
articial convergence The e ffect is in general the same as with t h e
.

stereoscope except that the perspective by articial convergence and

,

fusion is the reverse of that by the ordinary stereoscope But in both we .

observe the perception of the third dimension when it is not in t h e

obj ect and when it is not in the image I cannot reprodu ce all t h e .

facts and experimental illustrations S ho wing this result and so must

refer the reader to the experiments themselves .

l M i n d , V o l XIII pp 499 5 2 6 ; V o l XI V , pp 3 93 40 1 V o l XV I

pp 5 4
- -
. .
.
, . . . . .
, .

79 . P sy clzo l o g i ca l R ev i ew , V o l L , pp 2 5 7 2 7 3 , 5 8 1 60 1
. .
-
V o l I V , pp . . . 1 42 1 63 ,
 PE R CE P T I ON OF S PA CE A ND O BJ E C TI VI T I .
31 1

The experiments recorded and described in these references exhibit

the fact that geometric g ures can be so draw n as to prod u ce bino cular
parallax similar to that of solid obj ects in the retinal image and that
the e ffect o n the perceptio n of distance or solidity is the same as in
solid bodies The simplest illustration is that of t wo oblique lines
.

drawn suf ciently far apart and more or less in vertical directions so
that either articial or stereoscopic fusion is possible Their obliquity .

m ust be slight so that when the fusion of one end with the same end
,

of the other is e ffected the remaining points in the lines will be near
enough corresponding point s lyi n g in the media n plane to stimulate a
tendency to t h e ir f usio n This will bring out the appearance of a line

.
,

lying not in a plane horizontal to that of the retina but in a plane cutting ,

this the fused sin gle line appearing to lie in the third d imension with
, ,

one point nearer and the other farther from the observer The same effect .

can be produced by concentric circles except that it is a little more com

plex the result being a frustu m of a cone The circles must be drawn
,
.

in t wo sets each of two or more circles not having the same center
and drawn symmetrically so that stereoscopic or articial fusion will

S how the parallax necessary to elicit the perception of solidity .

No w it is noticeable that fusion by convergence of the eye s on a foca l

point between the circles and the eyes results in a frustu m of a cone
with the larger and smaller base in one relation while fusion by focal
convergence beyond the p l ane of the circles reverses this perspective
or relation of the bases showing that the act is a n organic one and not
,

associational These gures can be v a ried in m any ways and forms

.

with the same general results in regard to t h e third dimension , but

they are all simple variations of stereoscopic vision which can be tried
by any one with greater ease than articial convergence A more

striking incident is that of Io caliz ation with reference to the point of

xation in attention rather than the point of physiological convergence .

If two circles are drawn for stereoscopic purposes and then fused by
articial convergence they will as w e know appear to be a single , ,

circle If a pencil point be placed at the focal point of vision it wil l

.

appear to be located in the same plane But if placed beyond the .

f o cal point it will appear double and if attention is no w concentrated ,

on these double images it is noticeable that the circle which before a p

p ea r e d at the focal point n o w will appear to be located beyond the
pencil point and on the plane of the paper on which the real circles

3 7 5 3 89 Le conte S ig /t i S ee li st f Li terature i n H e lm h o lt z s P l y s o l o
'

95
.
, . o a z

Op t ik , I I i t i on work H er i n g A u bert
'

g zsc/ze . ed , pp . 1 2 82 12 . A ls o th e o f , ,

Wun dt , S tum pf , L i p p s an d M art i us .

3I2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

are drawn If then the attention be returned to the circles and with
.

drawn from the pencil points the latter again appear beyond the circle
and this at the focal point again H ere we have a condition in which
.

the position of an object i n the third dimension is determined by t h e

v ariations of attention without any muscular or motor variation of the

e yes . In all there is evidently an organic fu nction for perceiving

t h e third dimension VVh eat s t o n e showed w i th su f cient conclusive
.

ness that the perception of solidity w a s accompanied by the ex is

tence of disparate images from Solid objects and these diagrammatic
e xperi m ents just described show the same fact under conditions favor
,

a ble to the proof of the inuence of this disparateness and with varia

t ions that indicate a native function for th e perception of solidity ,

a function at least apparently distinct from every form of association
and inference Whether it is properly so or not I shall examine pres
.

ently But what I wish to note rst is the fact that this solidity is not
.

present in the image on the retina We may say that it is r ep r es en t ed

.

there by the binocular para llax or disparate images This is true that .

there is something in binocular images different from the merely

monocular but this difference i s n o t identical with the diff erence be
,

tween plane and solid dimension though it elicits the latter in per

cep t i o n The diff erence is purely a matter of parallax in plane
.

dimension or magnitude w hile the perceived quale is the third di

,

m e n s io n In such cases we undoubtedly s e e what is not in the im

pression That is there is n o pres e ntative correspondence b etween
.
,

the sensation and the quality seen The nativity of it is apparent .

in the u niform x ity of the phenome n a and su ch variations as ex

bibit that u nifor m ity in accordance with the alteration of conditions
and not an alteration of e ffects with the same conditions That is the .
,

relation of localization and perspective are determined by the nature of

the parallax and not by inferential considerations Association and .

inference ough t to ma k e the result variable and capricious u nder the

same conditions That is , if asso ciation and inference be the source
.

of the third dimension in su ch cases the perspective of solidity ought

to involve localization as alterable as it is in mono cular vision where
geometrical gures on account of mathematical perspective and pic
, ,

t ures on account of light and shade as well as mathematical p e r sp ec

, ,

t ive can have their form and apparent solidity seen very much as we
,

please Take the case of the geometrical cube as a n illustration We

. .

can see th e cube in more than one p osition if w e think of the way we ,

w ish to see i t Also geometrical gures representing a tube or tunnel

.
,

w hich ca n be made to appear with the small end nearer or farther

 PE R C E P T I ON OF S PA CE A ND O BJE C TI VI T Y
.
SI3

fro m us , a ccording as we
wish to see it the perspective being infer
,

e nt ia lly or a s so c i a t i o na l ly interpretable as we please to see the r e r e

p
s ent a t i o n But this phenomenon does not occur in the experiments
.

of binocular fusion of disparate images The organic character of it .

a n d the variation of solidity a ccording to the la ws of fusion and the

nature of the parallax S how that it is natural and not associational

either in the sense in which it is given or with the data of other
sens es I do not care what may be said of its evolution Anything
. .

may be granted in this eld I a m concerned only with what it is

.

now in the experience of the human ra ce This is s imp ly that there is .

a n organic function in vision for the perception of the third dimeh

sion without having it p r e se nt ed i n the retinal image as a tri d im en -

sio u al quale but only as parallax in plane dimension .

I must call atte ntion to a n interesting difference between the e x p er i

ments with geometrical gures and the facts of perceptio n in nor
mal cases of solid objects I n n ormal binocular vision there are t w o
.

fa cts to be observed in regard to the impression O n e of them is .

the fact of parallax and the other a factor not involving purely g eo m et
r i ca l considerations In geometrical gures there is nothing but simple
.

parallax In the case of solid obj ects this parallax is accompanied by

.

some slight difference insens ibly s light of course , of intensity in the

,

light relative or absolute a nd also mathematical perspective as com

, , ,

pared with the common part of the images This m ight be said to be .

an important factor in the clearness of the third dimension in normal

visual perception While I admit that it may affect the result at
.
,

least uncons ciously either by association or in the perceptive act
, ,

it is evidently not the de cisive factor in the case because in the e xp e r i ,

ments with geometrical gures this difference of inten sity of the light

and mathematical perspective are absent while the perception of
solidity is either quite as clear as in the nor m al vision of solid objects
or exhibits its entire indep e ndence of those associational inuences .

That is to say the perception of the third dimension is apparently

,

not affected by any circu m stances but that of mathematical disparate

ness and parallax s o that inferential factors supposedly associated
, ,

with variations of intensity and mathematical perspective are either ,

excluded fro m vi ew or are merely secondary concomitants and sup

p l em en ta r y ef ci ents in the result the primary bein g binocular paral
,

lax In the experiments , therefore with geometrical gures we have

.
,

the clearest evidence against the claim of Berkeley of the nativity of

, ,

the perception of distance without the presence of that quale in the

image or impression .
3 14 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

The association a l theory is easily disposed of by the remark that

ther e is no reason for denying that tactual and muscular space become
associated with the visual quale which I have been discussing Ex .

p e r ie n ce shows us in each sense certain indications of qualities in the

cause which another sense gives directly But this associability of
.

certain facts in touch and muscular experience with the visual does not
involve any identication of them with the visual in the Berk eleian
sense that the t a ctual is transferred to vision by suggestion What I .

am discussing is the visual quale s e e n directly and not its inferred or

associated correlate in experience foreign to sight and which indicates
the prese n ce in the object of precisely that quale which sight sees .

We may very well discover by experience that a certain visual fact is

associable with a certain tactual or mus cular fact or indicative of its
,

presence in the object and yet not identical with it as a presentative

,

percept though we call it a space cont ent in both senses But this
,
.

does not exclude the nativity of the datum in each case while it admits
that their synthesis is a produ ct of experience Hence I deny the.

associational theory by admitting it so to S peak while refusi ng to

, ,

accept its relevance to the problem before us which is not whether the
,

visual quale has no tactual o r muscular correlate but whether there is

,

not a visual percept that may be called the third dimension in that
sense whether interpretable or not in the equivalents of other types of
,

that experience The visual quale has its correlate in tactual a nd

.

muscular phenomena but it is not constituted by it The reason is

,
.

that vision is our anticipatory and touch our protective sense so to ,

speak V ision anticipates tactual experience and tactual experience is

.

the te st of W hat is and what is not safe This fact always makes it
.

necessary to i nterpret our visual experience in tactual correlates as a

means of regulating our volitional actions a n d adj ustments But this .

utilitarian consideration in the process of development does not inter

fere with the nativity of the visual spa ce quale any more than the
associability of a taste with a color proves the empirical character of
the latter The question is whether there is a quale in sight which
.

can be called S pace as well as one in tou ch to be called by the same

n ame because it has the same meaning for action in both a n d also ,

whether it represents in the impression w hat is actually seen .

The same general conclusion can be shown in plane dimension for

the sense of vision We have assumed that plane dimension is given
.

in t h e retinal image and that this might be the reason for its native
perception but while we cannot escape the supposition that thi s
,

datu m is present there in the sense that the conditions on the retina
,
 PE R C E P TI ON OF S P A CE A ND OBJ E C TI VI T Y .
3 5
1

are the same as external to it yet there are two facts which must be
,

considered in modication of the common idea of the case F irst , the .

condition on t h e retina is not that of a n image as it would be seen by

another eye in so far as we know about the matter We suppose this
, .

only from our visual co nstru ction of what w e see in the ca m er a o b

s c u r a where w e are dealing with purely objective conditions If too .
, ,

we could look at the retina from behind the scenes as w e can in the ,

case of an eye taken from an animal we might see an image But ,

.

this is no indication that the impression represents plane d im en
sion All of pl a n e di m en sio n involved is in the dimension of the
.

retina affected and not in the conditions that evoke the perception
of magnitude The second consideration is an experimental one of
.

some interest It is the variation of apparent magnitude without a

.

corresponding variation of the retinal image I have also des cribed .

this in the papers to which I have referred above ( p 3 1 0 ) The phe .

n o m e n o n represents the variation of magnitude of the frustum of a

cone according to the fo calization of the eyes and without any real
alteration of the retinal impression If the eyes are focussed at a .

point within the plane on which the gures lie the bases of the fused
gures appear smaller than the real circles and if fo cussed beyond that ,

plane they appear larger Any stereoscopic gures will exhibit this
.

effect The image on the retina is su ch cases is not altered in its mag
.

n it ud e and conditions and yet the visual magnitude of the obj ect is
,

modied so that even plane dimension is subj ect to subjective i n u

,

emees precisely as much as the third dimension That is to say there .

,

is even in plane dimension a disparity between what is seen and what

is in the impression thus conrming the general theory that per
,

c ept io n does not requ ire to have its quale i n sensatio n in order to
become aware of it
If exper ience association and motor phenomena are to be
, ,

entitled to any consideration in the case so far as my conception of ,

the problem is concerned , they must be conned to the sense of vision

W hose data alone I am discussing and simply for the reason that a n
,

associable tactual and muscular correlate is admitted in the case but

refused the right to be considered the phenomenon in which we are
interested It is cl ear that within the sense of vision association does
.

not determine t h e result or anything in it except the poss ibility of a ,

tactual equivalent asso ciable with it and this association is irrelevant

,

when true That distance in vision is a motor phenomenon in
.

vision does not alter the contention here made namely t h at the per , ,

ceiv ed quale is not as perceived a part of the retinal impres
, ,
3 16 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y.

s ion We may interpret motor phenomena any w ay we please

. .

I am not concerned with the so called theory of motor phenomena -

in the explanation of space perception The position that there is a .

visual quale for the th ird dimension is wholly independent of that

controversy O n any conception of . motor sensations whether ,

t hey are merely sensory fa cts invol ving the consciousness of motion or

not w hether the function of motor centers is distinguished from

,

t hat of sensory centers or not the quale

perceived as a result of
,

binocular parallax or as a result of variations of xation is not pre ,

s ented in t h e image and this fact is su f cient to prove that the visual
,

percept is not similar to the datum in the sensory i m pression .

Knowledge transcends sensation and extends to objects .

This conclusion is very distinctly conrmed by the phenomena

of upright v ision and in a manner w hich absolutely prohibits the in
,

u e n c e of association with tactual a nd muscular experience We .

k now that the retinal image is inverted and that nevertheless obj ects
a r e seen in their proper position and relations I shall not repeat here .

the evidence of this assertion but shall simp ly refer the reader to the ,
1
proper sources We nd in experiment that the line of reference for
.

the localiz ation of points in objects is in what may be called a line ver
tical to the plane of the retina a fa ct that overcomes the inversion of the ,

image in refraction of the rays of light P hosphenes and P urkinje s .

experiment exhibits this l a w very clearly and conclusively It is appa .

rent i n all of them w h ether w e appeal to association or not an appeal

, ,

that is shown to be false that ther e is no principle of vision re quiring ,

perception to reproduce the relations in the retina in its judgment

of reality We at least apparently see obj ects as they are without any
.

identity betwee nthe image and the reality Whether w e see objects .

as they are or not we do not nd the quale seen in the impression
, .

The act of perception is independent of this condition even though ,

incited by it .

It would thus appear that w e can state a general conclusion against

Berk eley n a mely that we can have obj ects of consciousness which
, ,

are not i n sensation and so no t in consciousness as a state of

the organism Thus perception may transcend the states and a ffec
.

tion of the sensorium I do not mean by this form of statement to .

dispute t h e idea l istic theory of knowledge which may still contend

that t h e cognitive act is a distinct subj ective function as creative of its
object as sensation is a subj ective reaction The w hole doc

.

l Le C onte , S ight , p p 59 7 6 , II E d i
. . t i on . P sy c/zo l o g i ca l R ev zew , Vo l IV . .
,

1 42 1 63
pp
-
. .
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND OB JE C T I VI T Y
.
317

trine of idealism in so far as present contentio n is concerned is

, ,

indifferent to what is mai ntained as the result of binocular e xperiment .

All that I am emphasiz ing at present is the discrepancy between the

retinal or sensorial image and the di m ensional q uale perceived
.

Assuming what we know of O ptics to be true this quale is not in the

impression though perceived and though the whole process be
, ,

ideal or subj ective there is nevertheless the difference betwee n

,

what is in the impression on the sensoriu m and what is per

ceived , a fact which lends at least apparent support to the dictu m that
perception trans cends the subj ective in its determinations , cer
ta inly t h e subj ective of sensation .

It is apparent h o w su ch a conclusion a ffects the whole doctrine of

knowledge as formulated by those idealists who insist upon ex

pressing themselves in language at least apparently implying that we

cannot know anything other than our mental states with a ten ,

den ey to limit it to sensations and their systematiz ation Whatever it .

means it is certain that we can express the phenomena of vision which

are under discussion only in language implying that we s ee what is
not i n the impression or sensory cons ciousness as sensation i s
usually called Apparently the doctrine of realis m is the only one
.

that consists with this view .

But the idealist can put in a most interesting reply at this point .

He can call attention to the fact that this very discrepancy betwee n

the impression and the percept is evidence that the quale is

purely a mental constru ction The phenomen a and experiment s
.

that have been under consideration may be quoted as proving this fact

and as showing the correctness of what is taken for Kant s do ctrine of
idealis m while showing the incorrectness of Berkeley s view of the

case at l east in the assumption with which he conducted the argument .

Thus while it is clear that the quale perceived is not as such i n , ,

the impression the geo metric g ures chosen to bring th is fact into
'

clear relief also show that the quale perceived is n o t i n t be o bj ec t .

Plane figures are seen as solids and lines in plane dimension are seen
,

in the third dimension That is the percept is neither i n the im

.
,

pression n o r i n the obj ect Thus it wou ld see m tha t the mind
.

supplies the quale which is in neither the sensation nor the object ,

and consequently we should seem to have proved ide alis m instead o f

realism The space quale seems to be a constru ction of the mind pure
.

and simple whether treated as a p r i o r i or empirical

,
.

'

It is not easy to refute su ch a claim and at least in so far as mere

,

subj ectivity of action is concerned I am not interested in disputing it

,
.
3 18 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

I am quite willing to admit the ideality of space in the same sense ,

in which the ideality of all mental states must be admitted and if ,

the facts force me to it will admit it in any sense whatever and so

, ,

accept what is supposed to be the doctrine of Kant But I must con .

tend for the possibil ity that this subjectivity of S pace perception
m a y consist with its objectivity in either the presentative or non pre -

sen t a t iv e sense . The perception of it however when it is demon , ,

s t r abl y n o t in the obj ect would seem to S how either that it could not be

presentative or that its objective existence would have to be m ade con

sistent wit h the denial of it as any quality or predicate of matter .

Binocular parallax undoubtedly gives rise to the mental construction

or perception of the third dimension and shows ap pa r en t l v at , ,

least that S pace perception is a synthetic function of sense and not
,

necessarily identied with it in all its forms and conditions but there is ,

nothing in this fact to prevent the supposition that the constru ction cor
r e c tl
y represents a n objective fact especially when it is conceded that
,

the quale is n o t necessarily a predicate of the object which stimulates

the sensory state as there will be no necessity for making its obj ectivity
,

depend upon the consideration that it be su ch a property That is .

to say the ideal construction may have an objective m eaning though

, ,

it has a purely subjective genesis not in the impression and r ep r e

sents a reality neither in the sensation nor a property of the obj ect
n ecessarily . The only thing that the psychologist would have to do
is to S how that there is evidence of that fact Transcendency of any .

s ort having once been established and transcendency of sensation is

,

established in space perception even though it be nothing more
,

than a synthetic function associated with sense these limits must be

. ,

dened before we can dogmatica l ly assert that perception is char

a c t er iz e d by the same subj ective meaning as sensation and if they are ,

n o t equa l ly dened it is only a question of evidence to determine

,

w hether its meaning does not extend beyond the subjectivity of sensa
tions That is m ay it not be possible that the mind is adapted to con
.
,

struct a quale which represents the actual facts or some actually ,

objective facts in the external world though these facts are not pre
, ,

sented in t h e impression and are not properties of matter sen

sible or supersensible !
The rst thing to be noticed in reply to su ch a question is the fact
that the binocular experiments described and dis cussed represent a
somewhat ab n ormal condition of vision resembling in many respects ,

the perception of objects through colored glasses The fact that .

colored glass alters the appearance of things does not interfere with
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND OB J E C TI VI T Y .
3 19

their obj ectivity nor with the objectivity of their color as normally
seen It only alters the conditions under which they can be seen a t
.

all I grant that su ch phenomena suggest important questions but

.
,

they do n o t e l iminate objectivity even of the qualities that are thus dis

t o r t ed The very fact that space perception is an additional func
.

tion to that of sensation and may vary in its percept while that of ,

color sound taste etc , may remain const a nt S hows h o w the actual
, , , .
,

relations of obj ects may be distorted as in a mirror without denying

, ,

their normal relation to perceptio n If space were not possibly a
.

variant with a sensational co ntent it wou ld be otherwise and to those

, ,

who treat space as a property of matter the argument for its ideal
ity might appear more cogent in such facts as I have mentioned in
binocular vision But the very fact that it is a synthetic function
.

superadded to sensation only makes it possible for illusions to arise in

this percept when there are none in sensations .

A further fact is of much importance in this connection We .

should have solipsism to face as I have already shown if w e made

, ,

sensation S pace and obj ects purely subj ective No w Berkeley and
, .

Kant admitted the existence of

obj ective facts of some sort .

Berkel ey denied the existence of matter but admitted that of
spirit Kant adm itted matter or a non sensible cause ( nichtsinn
.
-

liche Ursache ) of sensations and the existence of other individual

,

centers of consciousness , or so cial persons This he did in spite of his .

radical ideality of knowledge though I have tried to S how that his

,

position was that of hypothetical realism which he would not have ,

called this as the real to him would have been a categorical implicate
,

of causality had he formulated the relation of cause to the existence

,

or occurrence of sensations as h e did to their synthesis There is .

,

therefore in his admission the possibility that sp ace constru ction only
,

reproduces the quality of external reality a conception rendered all the ,

more conceivable fro m the discrepancy between sensation and percep

tion , the capacity of the latter for extension beyond the former being
assumed in the very fact that its contents are not limited to the s ensa
tion That matter should be conceded obj ectivity in spite of the sub
.

jec tiv ity of sensatio n would only make it all the more imperative to
recogniz e the tenacity and inexpugnability of space p ercepts for
obj ectivity , especially when they are the data for giving what meaning
objectivity has .

Somewhat suggestive evidence can be drawn fro m the general la w

of evolution In this we nd that there is a tendency of individuals to
.

adjust the m selves to environment i n a w ay to resemble it in their

3 20 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S GP H Y .

functional action In some cases this even ta k es the form of o r ig inat

.

ing the most positive resemblance in t h e subject to qualities in the

object This is especially noticeable in the phenomena of color adap
.

t at io n and even in some cases aspects of form resembling enviro nment

, .

In some cases this m ay require but a short time The hare will chang e .

the color of its fur for summer and winter to suit its surroundings If .

evolution e ffects such adaptations as this it is quite possible that it

might develop in consciousness the capacity of ideal or subj ective
action which would represent correctly the nature of ob j ective reality
and present no other antithesis to it than is necessary to preserve indi
v id u a lity . This ought to be the l ess objectionable that Kant admits ,
as I ha ve said the existence of other persons like himself w hich
, ,

assumes resemblances between subj ect and obj ect and with the Leib ,

n i t z ia n view t h e action of the one simply mirrors that of the other so ,

that the subjective is a true representative of the obj ective I do not .

think that this is a true description of the whole case and because thi s ,

is the fact it is dif cult to S how when the obj ective is correctly a n d
w hen incorrectly represented Besides there are antitheses betwee n
.

subj ect and object and w e have to be able to draw the line betwee n
,

what is subjective and obj ective in each case and that may not always ,

be an easy task But I do not refer to the phenomena of adapta

.

tion to prove the correctness of obj ective perception nor to prove

the resemblance between impression a n d object : for the difference
between these has to be admitted on any theory I refer to the fact .

only to show that evolution may so develop capacities that whether ,

like what they represent or n o t may correctly report reality and it is

,

only a question of evidence to decide whether it has done so or not .

Besides it might even fa il to make the cognition presentative and yet

be correct in the assertio n of obj ectivity All that adjustment require s
.

or may mean is that there is an obj ective reality to be rec k oned with
in k nowledge and action and whether it is presentative or non
,

presentative is a secondary question .

But it is the phenomenon of upright visio n that off ers the most
distinct evidence of this adj ustment and of the possibility even that
perception may represent space rel a tions correctly w ithout being

presentative We have seen that the retinal images of obj ects are i n
.

verted that is the relative positions of points in these images are the
, ,

inverse of what they are in objects producing them and this can be ,

expressed without ass u ming the S pace ideas of perception in so fa r ,

as the argument here is concerned We do not have to go beyond the

.

ideality of these objects to recognize the fact It is a fact on any .

 PE R CE P TI ON OF S P A CE A ND OBJ E C T I VI T Y .
32 1

theory of reality A double interest attaches to it There is the radi

. .

cal difference betwee n the senso ry impression and the percept

and the fact that the percept reproduces the objective relation and not
the subj ective However much ideality we assign the act of per
.

c e t io n
p in this case it reports the external and not the sensory condi
tion What is additionally interesting is the circumstance that the
. .

reproduction of the objective relations conforms to the tactual and

muscular quale , according to the testimony of the associationist so ,

that we might even claim that t h e v isual and tactual data are the same
in kind and thus a n evidence of the nativity of visual space while w e
,

sustain its obj ectivity in spite of its ideal genesis I shall not urge .

this vie w however , as there a r e undoubted differences whatever the

, ,

resemblances between visual and tactual qualia P ossibly a further .

vantage ground could be gained by suggesting that our conception of

the nature of the image or impression is indirectly secured by infer
ence so that the very assumption of what is subj ective may be the
,

wrong po int of view with which to start in the interpretation of the

phenomena as exa minatio n may S how that according to the theory of
,

physics and optics that the impressio n is nothing but a mode of

,

m otion in the retin a whose extended character is itself a matter of

inferential construction so that the perceptive act in transcending
,

the subj ective may correctly report the objective relation as it certainly
does not report immediately the invert ed relation of the image on
the retina But I shall not use this argument too insistently The
. .

important fact is the adapta tion of perception to the obj ective con
dit io n s in so far as they are either comparable with the subjective or
,

determinab le at all It is noticeable in this connectio n also that there

.

are certain insects whose retina is convex instead of concave , according

to the authority of P rofessor Le Conte on which the image is upright ,

and not inverted and the evidence goes that in spite of this convexity
, ,

obj ects are seen precisely as we see them the l a w of reference being ,

in their eyes precisely as it is in the human eye so that the line of ,

direction in a convex surface is the same i n e ffect as that in the con

cave the image being in the one the reverse of the other The adap
, .

t a t i o n of the act of consciousness to the obj ective in this instance seems

anomalous but after all is only according to the same genera l law and
, ,

conrmatory of the fact that objectivity is entitled to as much con

sideration in perception as subj ectivity .

There is a way in which the appare n t force of the binocular ex per i

me nts which I have described as favoring the ide a listic interpretation
of S pace perception may be broken or modi ed It is to note the .

21
322 TI IE PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

fact that the distortion of plane and solid dimensio n in the gures indi
c a t e d not only repre s ents an abnor ma l condition as I have already ,

r emarked involving the incoordination of distinct fu nctions in vision

, ,

b ut also represents the phenomen a of l o ca l i z a t i o n in space rather than

t h e true perception of space This is to imply that the real and
.

true space is given in the properly perceptive act representing ,

e xtension in the abstract if I may so speak and that the specic rela
, ,

t ion of obj ects to it m ay represent what might be called empirical

s pace in Kantian phraseology the sensory ph a nta sm which is the

, ,

s ensational correspondent or correlate of what is essentially non sensory -

in its primary nature Thus in the variations of perspective and magni

.

t ude according to the degree of convergence as described in the e x er i

, p

m ents the space
, percept as a w hole the pure intuition remains , ,

c onstant while it is only the locus of objects in it that exhibits the vari

a nts . We may thus distinguish between loca liz ation and t h e r eal space
perception which represents more than sensory data while the ,

s ynthetic character of this functio n added to the sensory not implicated

,

i n it exposes it to d isto r tion and illusion

, The experiments may .

therefore n o t be so conclusive as they appear against the space quale

or reality of obj ects especially as we have to adm it that the conditions
,

under which the perception takes place are abnormal while t h e ,

normal represent the result of evolutionary adj ustment to t h e obj ective

world This sort of argument and reply m ay not be fully satisfactory
.
,

but it represents a fact which must be considered in the case the more ,

or less abnormal co n ditions under which articial fusion ta k es place ,

even though the functions involved act n ormally the synthetic character ,

of the normal process being proved and l iable to distortion when

conditions change .

But t h e great puzz le for most minds is the real or apparent demand
that we shall treat space as having a wholly i d eal meaning as hav ,

ing a merely subj ective and not an obj ective or external reality ,

while the sensory data of color sound hardness etc if not r ep r esen
, , , .
,

t a t i v e of an external reality have at least a meaning for the existence

,

of something external to the ego O f course Kant might hold to .

that paradoxical view of the world which so idealizes it because of his

Leibnitz ian conceptions involving the entire spontaneity of k nowledge
and the receptivity of nothi ng on the one hand and the spaceless
, ,

nature of matter or real ity on t h e other that is its consistence in

, , ,

spacel ess points of force according to t h e conceptions of some of its

,

e xponents Its nature w a s not imported into consciousness though

.
,

it could arouse in consciousness a cognition of its existence but not in ,

 PE R C E P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJE C T I VI T Y
.
323

i ts real character It thus involved the idea that sensation implied or

.

indicated objectivity even when it did not S imu late or represent it in

its nature . But the derivation of space from subj ective intuition

seemed to leave this percept without an objective meaning simply ,

because it was not evoked by the principle of causality as usually a p

plied to sensory data Sensible qualities were given an objective i m
.

port but space was not , and yet space was so inextricably in terwoven
,

with sense percepts that it seemed absurd or paradoxical to refuse

it a similar obj ective m eaning and involved the strange conception
,

that the external world was spaceless though its spatiality seems a ,

n ecessary implicate of its otherness than the subj ect and that the total ,

s ense percept of consciousness , i nvolving sensory and spatial qualia ,

is a synthesis of functions which are assumed to have different mean

i ngs one of them having a reference to the objective and the other
,

h aving no su ch reference .

F rom one point of view this positio n may be consistent enough .

K ant s doctrine of the receptivity of sense involved him consciously

,

o r unconsciously in the materialistic interpretation of sensat io n at

, ,

l east to some extent whether he interpreted it from the principle of

,

material or ei c ient causation But Kant does not emphasiz e the posi
.

t ion that his knowledge of external reality is based upon the principle

of causality though this conception of it is tacitly assumed in his theory

,

o f sense perception This is where he obtains his obj ective refer
.

e nce of sensatio n that is of the sensible qualities of matter or reality

, , .

B u t the principle of c a usality is j ust as tacitly excluded from space

perception since this is said to be an a p r i o r i intuition of the mind
,

s uperimposed upon the matter of sensation not contained Thus the .

t w o associated functions of sensation and space perception may a p

p ear to be connected without having simil a r meanings for reality .

But t w o things are forgotte n in this view of the case The rst is .

the confused conception of sensation which Kant holds O n the one .

hand h e conceives it as a rec eptive product which when strictly

, , ,

interpreted implies that it is to be explained by the principle of m a t e

,

r i a l causality the principle of identity which would give its objective

, ,

m eaning to be the same as the subj ective This positio n would be .

that of na i ve realism or common sense in which external reality is as

,

it appears a ccording to Kantian and other representations This

, .

f undamental conception of receptivity is a departure from Leib

n i tz ia n ideas which excluded this transmission or i n u xu s
p by s i c u s ,

and involves this nai ve realism which if accepted might account for

, , ,

t h e synthetic relation of space to sensation or sensory qualities by i m

3 24 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

plicating it with the mode of causal action of reality without giving

space any causal action itself Kant however does not accept thi s .
, ,

view of receptivity
After dening sensation as receptive he
.

takes a view which is an abandonment of this receptivity altogethe r

and in every strict meaning of the term Hence the second thing that .

is forgotten is the fact that Kant still clings to the Leibnitz ian notio n

that sensations are phenomenal that they are subjective reaction s ,

against external stimulus that they are not representative si mulacra of

,

reality but modes of mental action u nlike the nature of the occasion
,

ing cause This is an interpret ation of sensation according to the

.

principle of e c i e n t causality and assumes an ae tiological but not an

,

ontological relation between subj ect and object that is a causal rela , ,

tion without implying their identity even though that identity be other ,

wise discovered to be a fact This interpretation of sensation by the

.

conception of e f cient causation and excluding the material is an aband

o n m en t of its true receptivity and a return to the spontaneity o f
Leibnitz in so far as the n a t u r e of sensati o n is concerned though not ,

in so far as its o cc u r r en ce is concerned But in spite of this view a nd .

of the return to the Leibnitzian conception it retains the belief in ex

ternal reality which in the rst conception depended upon the principle
of identity in conjunction with that of ei ci ent causality But having .

eliminated the principle of identity material causation from the case , , ,

he had either to retain the j udgment of objectivity in connection with that

of e f cient causality or to accept solipsism But refusing to accept
, .

solipsism , as Kant s refutation of idealism was meant to indicate and

,

assignin g sensation an obj ective meaning or interpretation through

ef cient causation alone Kant ought to have seen that he could tak e a
,

new conception of knowledge as the recognition of the principle o f ,

Su f cient Reason in the No v a D i l u c i a a t i o implied supplementin g

,

that of Identity and so instead of supposing that consciousness could not

,

transcend itself as it certainly could not do on the principle of identity

, ,

he could hold this transcendence on t h e principle of ef cient causality .

But once grant that it is the function of cons ciousness to tra nscend
itself in knowledge the only limitations which it will possess will be
,

determined by the extent to which w e condition that transcendence by

the principle of efcient causality alone If ef cient causality r ep r e .

sent the sole meaning of obj ectivity it would be impossible to assig n

space any objective reality so long as we denied its causal inuence
upon the subject Space wou ld be a functional action of the subject
.

A cl ar s at
e t em e nt o fK ant
s o wn p o i nt
vi ew app ears i n h is vi ew o f m at
o f
T r a n sce n d e n t a l D ia l ect i c , M a x M uller s translat i on V o l II p p 33 3 33 6

, . .
, .
-
.
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S P A CE A ND OBJ E C TI VI T Y .
3 25

o n non spatial obj ective pheno m ena

-
So far Kant would be con
.

s istent and we could secure obj ective reality to space only by assuming
,

s ome other principle of obj ectivity than e ffi cient causality alone .

But there are certain important facts which his system neglects to
'

n otice. T h e r st is that t h e princip le of ef cient causality does not

necessarily involve the j udgment of external reality in all its functional
a pplications It also determines the existence of the ego or internal
.

reality and shows no tendency in doing so to conceive it objectively .

Consequently existence oth er than the fact to be related may be

,

af rm ed without necessarily involving externality or obj ectivity of a

s patial character H o w then does the mind ever discriminate at all
.

between the internal and external the subj ective and the obj ective as
, ,

Kant did ! Why s h ould not all our j udgments be solipsistic ! The
reply to these questions comes back to the fact that e f cient or other
c ausality is not the sole principle of obj ectivity O bj ective reality has .

more meaning than e f cient causality though this be one of its el e ,

ments when matter is concerned so that the transcendency of con

,

sc io usn ess whi l e it is guaranteed in one relation by the pr in ciple of

,

e f cient causality may involve functions that assert it without apply

,

ing such causation as its sole condition or determinant H o w can .

this be done !
The rst answer to this question is that if space were not an o b ,

ject iv e fact of so me kind there would be no reason whatever for the

,

variations of magnitude and distance which we observe in connection

with sensations There ought to be perfect constancy in our notion of
.

magnitude a nd distance since the nature of the sensory impression is

,

a n d must be regarded in the Kantian view as of a uniform character in

i ts qualitative aspects The Kantian must assume that spatial quali a

.

are no intrinsic part of sensation or of its obj ect and so cannot be any
part of the impression or stimulus but that they are superadded or
,

synthetic additions to sensory phenomena or phantasms additions .

to data not containing them H ence sensations will be conceived as

.

having a uniform quality and w ill vary only in degree of intensity .

But there is no apparent relation whatever betwee n the quantitative

a spect of sensations and the spatial qualia associated with them as ,

there should be if these qualia were expressions or correlates of in t en

s it
y in sensory data The causes of sensation must therefore exist
.
, ,

in some relation that affects the mind in a w a y to call out or occasion

the spatial quale in a particular form and that relation may as well be
,

called objective space as anything else though subjective space ,

be unlike it in character , j ust as physical color and sound are

3 26 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

supposed to be unlike physical color and sound O n any other .

condition all space relations in sensation ought to represent a qualita

,

tive uniformity which they do not do in fact If the mind determine s .

the whole spatial quale without any reference to the conditions of ex

ternal reality it should represent it with some su ch un iformity as the
specic nerve energies represent sensation which are constant in quality
and vary only with variations in the objective reality H ence varia .

tions in the space qualia or relations independent of quantity and

quality in sensations suggest an objective relat io n of some kind other
than the assumed non spatial dynamic activity of matter Magnitude and
-

distance bear no k nown relation or correlation with either the quality or

the quantity the nature or the intensity of sensations according to
, , ,

the necessary conceptions of the Kantian applying non spatial caus ,

-

ality to one and excluding it from the other H ence it would appear .

that the variations of this fundamental product of consciousness are in

some way correlated with variations and relations in reality which are
presumably not a part of the content of sens a tion This would sug .

gest that S patial qualia have some meaning beyond consciousness or

sensory phantasms and evolution of whose signicance Kant could
, ,

take no a ccount comes in with its principle of adjustment to environ

,

m ent a conception excluded from the Leibnitz ian doctrine to render

, ,

probable an obj ective explanation for space qualia even though we do ,

not ma k e them representative in consciousness of that which is implied .

T h e force of the Kantian view as usually conceived and dened

, ,

depends on assumptio n s that are derived from the Leibnitz ian philos
o ph This system made the transmission of impressions fro m with
y .

out impossible That is the external world could not be causally

.
,

admitted into the internal world and hence the phenomenal ,

nature of what was known and the unknown or unknow ,

able was beyond This conception o f the case gave rise to the
.

assumption either implicit or explicit tacit or conscious that we could

, , ,

not perceive what is not in the sensation When therefore the .

, ,

external world is conceived as spaceless in its real nature it cannot ,

produce a spatial quale in the impression by any ontological inuences ,

as these are not even admissible for matter and both the ontological ,

and the aat io l o gi cal agency of space is denied even though it be ,

accorded an obj ective existence Consequently spa ce perception

.

will appear as an a p r i o r i subj ective function and phantasm or intui

tion supposedly not representative of any corresponding obj ective
,

reality for the reason that there is no assumed causal action to evoke
it But if consciousness transcends itself as it were in applying the
.
, ,
 PE R C E P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND O BJE C TI VI T Y .
327

principle of causality as explained so that it is of the nature of con

,

sc i o u sn ess in certain Conditions to a f rm something not in the impres

sion or sensation , and if the principle of causality in its purity does not
necessarily imply what is known as an external world there must be ,

some other function for discriminating between the internal and

external a n d this is in fact the conception of space That this func
,
.

tion of co nsciousness exists is clearly illustrated in the binocular pe r

cept i o n of the third dimension as h as been indicated where we do
, ,

not assume a corresponding or representative relation to causality in

the object or in the contents of the sensation as usually conceived , .

Here the mind perceives what is not in the sensation a n d tran

scends itself as a phenomenal occurrence in positing its object

.
, ,

This is to say that space can be produced or posited without being a

part of the impressions or sensations associated with it that is with , ,

out entering into the material content of t h e impression from without .

But I shall be told that this is precisely what Kant wishes us to

consider it and that we have not secured its obj ectivity until we have
shown that space is a part of the external reality which a cts causally
on the subj ect It is supposed to be purely subj ective only because
.

causal action is denied to space both ae tiological and ontological , and

,

it is said to represent no part of the sensory content imported or occa

s io n e d by material reality .Assuming that the object does not transmit
its properties or appearances to the subject and that space cannot act
on the subject at all as it is not a property of the obj ect according
, ,

to Kant the obj ectivity of space will seem to depend not merely on
, ,

perceiving what is not in the sensation but also in p er c eiv ,

ing what is in the object though not causally active and what is
assumed to envelop and to be independent of the object and yet not
acting causally on the subj ect But if in seeing space we seem to see
.
, ,

what is really or apparently not a property of the object it would ,

appear that the spatial qualia are wholly subj ective and do not refer to
a corresponding obj ective reality .

Now this seems to be the fact in the binocular perception of

solidity or the third dimension especially in articial fusion of images
,

in plane dimension That is objects that are demonstrably not solid

.
,

at all on any theory of space appear to have a third dimension That .

is we seem to see what is not in the obj ect as well as not in the sen
,

sation a fact which would seem to imply that the spatial qualia are
,

subj ective constru ctions only and without objective meaning .

The rst thing to consider i n reply to this View is that in c o n c eiv ,

ing an objective reality for spa ce we are no more obliged to represent

,
3 28 TH E P R OB L E AI S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

it as objectively what it is subj ectively than we are obliged to suppose

subjective color to be the s ame as obj ective color We are n o t
.

any more required to apply the principle of identity to space per

ception than to the perception of sensory qualities We may .

suppose the same sort of differences between subjective and obj ective
,

space that we assume between sensatio n and the qualities or conditions

that give rise to them All that obj ective space requires to be is some
.

relation in which things exist and that will account for the peculiar
way in which they are seen when the sensations will not account for
it and when it cannot explain the variations in the S patial qualia asso
c iat ed w ith sensations .

The second point in reply is that it is easy to misunderstand and to

m isrepresent the import of what is apparent in the bino cular phen om
ena that seem to illustrate the perception of what is not in the

obj ect The perception of solidity when the objects are k now n to
.
,

be geometrically plane gures is properly speak i n g a problem of

,

l o ca l i z a t i o n in a spatial continuu m not wholly determined by the g

ures concerned We do not really see a solid object in su ch cases
.
,

but only two plane fi gures localiz ed in the relative positions which the
sup e r c i es of a solid obj ect would r e present T be r ea l sp a t i a l
.

gu a l i a m ag n i t u d e a n d d i s t a n ce a r e t be s a m e w net /zer t bc g u r es
, ,

a r e s een a s p l a n e o r s o l i d , and the appearance of the latter under cer

tain conditions is only a matter of localization under anomalous and

abnormal circumstances i n a spatial continuu m w hich is not deter
mined by either the function o f lo calization or by the fact of the par
t icu l a r stimulus espec ially when this localiz ation involves the malad
,

j ustment of the functions of sensation and of space perception I .

do not dispute the real or apparent distortion of the supposed spatial

relations of obj ects under these conditions or that they are seen to be
or to appear in a different form from that which is their proper char
acter Nor would I dispute a subj ective character for space quite like
.

the subjective character of all sensory perceptions in so far as they ,

are phenomenal reactions But w hat I am trying to insist upon is
.

the vie w that there is some condition or relation objective to the mind
besides color sound, hardn ess etc which may be treated as the cor
, ,
.
,

relate in reality of what we call space in perception The con .

t inuu m representing the condition for giving any plasticity at all to

appearances and not in any way determined by the limitations of the

physical object involved is that important fact which requires as much
consideration as the distortion of localization We do not absolutely .

require that we should see the spatial quale in the object but that w e ,
 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA C E A ND OBJ E C T I VI T Y .
329

s hould see th e obje ct in the spatial quale This is in fact the way in
.

which Kant conceived the relation even w h en he says that space wa s

purely subjective H e had returned to the physicist s point of vie w in
.

c onceiving space when the Lei bnitz ians had departed from it The .

phys icists had a l ways conceived space as the conditio n of the existence
o f matter but Spinoz a conceived it as a property of matter in h ering in
,

it and though Leibnitz did not exactly take this view at least in so far ,

a s form of statement is concerned he did not treat it as a condition in

,

which matter existed or as necessary for that existence The Spino .

z i st s could say that sp a c e existed in matter and so that matter condi

t io ne d the existence of space The Leibnitz ians might say that matter
.

existed in space , but they had to m ainta in that it was n o t an inherent

property of matter and in no respe ct conditioned its existence or
a ction . Kant departed from Spinoz a w hen he denied that space w a s
a property of matter a nd he departed from both Spinoza and Leibnitz
when he maintained that it was a prior condition of the existence of
matter But Kant did this with a distinction w hich w e must not for
.

get H e held that S pace was not a property of matter

. in itself
( m a t e r i a n o u m e n o n ) while he did not deny that it was a property
,

o f matter as a phenomenon ( m a t er i a p h e n o m e n o n ) But he

o ught to have seen that phenomena could have no properties what
ever i n any sense of the term
, property as he used it to describe
the power of matter to a ffect the subj ect F or it was through its .

properties that it produ ced impressions a nd became known while he

could not consistently say that it was phenomena that affected the
subject since they were the e ffects the thi n gs
, ,
known the subj e e ,

tive reactions of the mind elicited in respo n se to the activities proper ,

ties ( K r afte ) of matter external to us a n d in itsel f not transmissible

'

to the subj ect But if phenomena can have no properties what

.

ever i h any proper sense of the term a ffecting the theory of k nowledge
as Kant implicitly conditions it we should have to exclude t h e sensory
,

qualities as such even as correlate attributes or actions from ex

, ,

ternal matter , and we S hou ld have reality wholly propertyless a con ,

elusio n which would result in solipsism for psychology and vir t ual

nihilism for matter But if we are to suppose that space is a property

.

of phenomena and that it sustains the same relation to them as it sus

tains to matter in the conceptio n of physics generally and if at the same ,

time we assume that phenomena or sensible qualities imply proper

ties in reality affecting the subj ect whether they are as they seem or not
, ,

it would s ee m very anomalous that this which has no obj ective refer
ence should yet condition the existe n ce of that which h a s su ch a refer
330 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

ence I Kant ought to have avoided the conception of conditioning phe

n o m en a by S pace intuition and so not to have imported into the mental
the analogies of the physical unless he meant to carry them out to the full
extent If he was going to exclude space from objective reality in
.

some sense he should also have excluded its conditioning relation t o

phenomen a and to have treated S pace merely as a synthetic a ecom

p a n i m en t of sensory phenomena a nd no more necessary to them
than to reality But having accepted physical analogies for expressin g
.

the relation of space to phenomena in order to set aside the

Spinozistic and Leibnitz ian conceptions that is by saying that phe
, ,

n o m en a are in space instead of saying that space is in phen omena ,

and then giving phenomena an objective reference when their con

dition which is purely s ubj ective by assumption ought not to admit
, ,

their objective reference he ought to have seen that it would be no

,

violation of philosophic principle to admit a relation for reality which

might go by the name of objective space as a condition of our
being affecte d at all by this reality That is reality may exist in t h e
.
,

same relation to objective space that phenomena sustain to sub

je ct iv e space and it S hould do this if space is a condition of phe
, ,

n o m e na instead of a mere synthetic associ a te of them to say nothing ,

of the inconsistency of admitting that space can be a property of phe

nomena while phenomena are conditioned by it that is seen in

, ,

it ! A mental process which can treat space as a condition of phe

nomena which can conceive it at the same time as a property of
phe nomena which denies it is a property of external reality and ,

which gives a constru ctive form to phenomena having an objective

reference while it itself has n o such reference though obliged to accept
,

variations in sensory data not consistent with the co n stru ctive xity
w hich space should have in the theory is certainly very anomalous
, .

But the fa cts of binocular vision seem to indicate that there is no

reason for supposing what Kant assumes namely that space quality
, ,

is a condition of phenomena as the third dimension is not apparent
,

in the sensation with which it becomes associated That is so far .

,

from h aving a S patial quale of the third dimension in it this quale is ,

excluded from it and hence it would appear tha t the v ery co n dition of
,

treating space as subj ective wou ld be its exclusion alike from the
phenomenon and the reality and so its exclusion from the con

dit io n s of sensation .But what Kant sees is the fact that space extend s
beyond the sensible boundaries of reality and is not implicated in the
limitations of reality s causality and hence supposing that space

, ,

perception is not elicited by t h e causal action of an obj ective cor

 PE R CE P TI ON OF S PA CE A ND O B JE C T I VI T Y
.
33 1

relate to matter and its properties he assumes that it has no such real
,

ity external to the mind as the variations of sensation seem to suggest

But when w e come to the fact that obj ective space if perceptible , ,

at all must be perceived , independently of the objects which i t

,

incloses and which cannot , on the Kantian theory , determine its whole
meaning ; when the binocular phe nomena which see m to represent it

as neither i n the sensation nor i n the object are implicated in
.
,

the phenomena of localiz atio n and poss ibly not properly or wholly the

perception of spatial qualia p e r s e ; when we consider that there
is no excuse for the variations of spatial qualia except for certain
peculiar relations of the obj ect apart from its causal action ; and when
the doctrine of evolutionary adjustment is applied as Kant could n o t ,

admit this from his Leibnitz ian af liations environment and its in ,

ue n ce not being admissible in this philosophy as either affecting the

nature of reality or the origin of knowledge when these are con
s i d er ed we may dis cover that there is nothing to oppose but every
, ,

thing to favor eve n when it does not prove the position that in some
, ,

sense space is obj ective though it be mu ch in the same sense in which

,

color sound etc are obje ctive Then remembering that we may not
, , .
,
.

be required to apply either the principle of identity or that of causality

in determining all objective reality but a principle that either a c c o m p a
,

nies or lies at the basis of both of them namely the principle of dif
, ,

ference if only that of nu merical or mathematical difference n u m er o

, ,

a li a
,
we may nd that more fu ndamental function of conscious n ess by
which it transcends itself in its judgments of re a lity That is the ve r y .
,

function which determines when objective causality S hall be di sc r i m i

nat ed from subj ective causality sensations and their obj ective impor t
,

from internal states and their limitation to the subj ect must involve ,

more than abstract ca usation and in making this discrimination while it

, ,

conceives time and space as enveloping phenomena and extendin g

beyond them it will have no reason for denying solipsism except the
,

conception of the spatial exclusion ( a u s ei n a n d er ) of the obj ect from

the subj ect which is all that space need imply in its obj ective aspects
,
.

Consider then that t h e facts of bino cu l ar vision like those of smell

, , ,

and perhaps other sensory experiences may S how that spa ce intui ,

tions do not conditio n phenomena and that we m ay perhaps per

c ei v e what is not in phenomena or any part of their content as
sensation that space perception is a synt h etic function accompany
ing and not conditioning sensation ; th at the variations of spatial qualia
have no denite correlation with certain qualitative and quantitative
variations in sensation ; and that the law of adjustment involves the
33 2 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

conception of objectivity distinct from even though related to causality

, ,

we may have good reasons for assigning spatial qualia some form of
o bjectivity or meaning and reference to it tho u gh we may concede that ,

o bjective S pace

is not causally related directly to perception and
th ough we do not interpret the percept by the principle of identity .

This will depend upon the questio n whether we limit the j udgment of
reality to the application of causation to sensatio n not conta ining spatial
qualia But if w e can perceive spatial qualia not in sensation and not
.

caused either by the sensation or the obj ect there is nothing to interfere
with the perception of space in the obj ect without a corresponding
causal agency especially when taki ng account of the pri n ciple of
,

adjustment to environment in the process of evolution which intends

that the functions of the subj ect shall have a m eaning for reality even
though that meaning involves the assumption of a difference in kind .

In conclusion however two things are clear The rst is that the
, ,
.

perceptive act transcends sensation t h at is

knows more than
, ,

th e impression or what is usually called experience The .

idealistic formula can be accepted only with a qualication and this is ,

t hat knowledge involves or implies more th a n what is in the

sensation not bei n g limited in any such way as Kant asserted except
, ,

in a formal manner The second fact is that obj ect ivity is in some
.

f orm a necessary postulate of rational thin k i n g whether it be the ,

result of Judgment or Intuition or the combin a tion of both O bjec .

t iv it y may be given in the application of the principle of causality as ,

we have already seen but it would not assume a spatial form Space
,
.

perception simply gives it d e n it ene ss and meaning and more ,

e specially the individuality which is necessary in a cosmos of inde

pendent centers o f reference While space is not constituted by points

.
,

t h e mutual exclusiveness and coexistence of points or positio n s in

s pace are the best representation of what space means for us in the

determination of externality as this is the way we think of obj ectivity

,

for obj ects in relation to each other Space thus gives de nit en e ss to
.

t h e caus a l j udgment and completes the n otion of externality But in .

both the cognitive j udgment and in the perceptive a ct there is some

sort of transcending of consciousness in the belief or asse r tion of
reality that is not in the mind .

In this conclusion however I do not nd it ne c essary to maintain

, ,

that the obj ect is what it a ppears to be The presentative .

nature of known things or objectivity is not necessary to the

knowledge of them No doubt . common sense does just as
Kant asserts namely takes the appearance for the reality with
, ,
 P E R CE P TI O I V O F S P A C E A ND OB JE C TI VI T Y .
3 33

out any reection as to what appearance is It is not necessary .

,

however to sustain this na i ve realism as a condition of asserting

,

obj ective reality I am quite willing to concede the idealistic conte m

.

tion that we kno w things only accordi ng to the way we react on
their action upon us Whether they reveal their nature in our
.

sensory p ercepts of them is i m material to the problem of knowl

edge .

This may mean in the last analysis as I have already indicated

, ,

that all that we know of reality is what it d o es and that what it ,

is is what it do es We do n o t require to know more The
. .

desire to kno w wh at it is in any other sense is born of the indo

lent disposition to draw deductive inferences regarding the future
instead of studying nature inductively Besides the non presentative
.
-

nature of things p o ssibl y necessary for preserving the individuality of

,

themselves and th at o f the subject affected may require also that we ,

shou ld know t h an) only by what they do rather than by w h a t

they are .

But h o wever this may be objectivity of some so r t is all
,

that is needed to m ake th ought rational and w e do not require for the
.

theory of knowle dge in its primary stage that this obj ectivity be
more than a cente r o f reference for phenomena that we cannot
explain by the spo ntaneous action of ourselves We can name it .

according to the u nifo r m way in which it acts If it appears as the .

nucleus of properties given in sensation and exhibiting no evidence of

an accompanime nt o f intelligence we may call it matter If there .

be reason to suppo se that one of these realities shows traces of conscious

.

ness and the othe r does not we may call the former S pirit
,
We .

may have to disti ngu is h the t wo only as we disting uish different kinds of
matter and t hus wait for evidence of their ultimate redu ction to the
same kind of re ality But the theory of k nowledge in its primary
.

issue does not re qu ire us to settle th is question if it ever requires it at ,

all It is the metaph ysical task to u n derta k e the denition and investi
.

gat io n of the nature of obj ective reality and its relation in k ind to con
sc i o u sne ss .
Wha t I have wanted to S ho w in the discussion of per

c e t io n is that the very nature of the cognitive consciousness is to
p

know more than itself even though the object kno n have no
,
w
resemblance to the subject or act of k nowledge This is mak ing .

knowledge a process transcending itself in the proper sense of the ,

term and vindicates realism to the extent of justifying the habit of

,

reckoning with the objective i n

knowledge and action quite as
mu ch as with the idealistic view of the subj ective Whether that obj ec .

tive S hall have anything spiritual in it will depend on what it does and
what we can discover scientically in regard to the nature of that action .
 CHA P TER IX .

T H EO RIE S O F ME T A P H Y S IC S .

'

THE classication of the problems of science and ph ilosophy

showed that the determination of the nature of time and space was a
sort of propaedeutic to the metaphysics of other reality but not for the ,

same reason that this conception of the case was maintained by Kant .

The reason advanced here is that which grows out of the acceptance
o f the Comtean principle in the determination of the serial relation be

tween various sciences We found that this placed Mathematics as

.

necessary for the investigation of later problem s in physics and chem

ist r y etc
,
Now the determination of the nature of space and time in
.

the mt io l o gi ca l problems of reection has a similar function to perform

in that eld If we wish to so expres s this function as to imply that
.

o u r system of metaphysics will be determined by our views of space .

and time I have no objection as this is perhaps true in a measure at

,

least But this will not be true , if it is to mean that we cannot engage
.

in metaphysical reection until the problems of space and time have

been fully solved Metaphysical reection is not wholly dependent
.

upon the processes that ma k e the na t ure of space and time known to
us but involve the application of other categories as well and their
, ,

work is only suppl emented and enlarged by our k n o wledge of the na

ture of space and time not wholly conditioned by it H ence I here
, .

treat Kant s real or apparent assumptions in the matter as only partly

tr ue and place investigations into the nature of space and time as

,

prior to the metaphysics of reality mainly because they are simpler in

their contents and condition the m only in the se n se t h a t they determine
'

certain aspects of them not their whole character

, .

In the analysis of metaphysical problems Hylology appears a s the

s cience of the existence and nature of Matter or the metaphysics of,

nature No w to deal with this as such a scheme would imply would

.

require the examination of investigations and discussions which I must

leave to those whose special work it has been to treat the subject
exhaustively I can merely outline the main conceptions lying at the
.

basis of such an endeavor It is the business of the metaphysical side

.

o f P hysics and Chemistry to deal fully with the proble m of matter I .

s hall take it up here only as it is and has been related to the historica l

3 34
 T H E OR I E S OF ME TA PH YS I C S .
3 35

d iscussions of philosophers whose S pecialty has not been phy sical

s cience but reective analysis of conceptions
,
We are here less con .

cerned therefore with the problems of matter as the physicist has to

, ,

d eal with them than as the philosopher so called has to deal with ,
-

them and his problem is to see h o w far matter can be used to explain
,

the world questions not merely to explain the phenomena of physical

,

science as it is usually conceived Consequently I have not to examine

.

here all the subordinate problems of the physical sciences but that ,

part of their eld which is rel ated to cosm ic questions and the question
whether matter can adequately explai n all phenomena whatsoever .

In dening exactly the eld which I mean here to traverse I shall

have recourse to the analysis of the theories of knowledge and reality
(p
. At the close of that analysis I called attention to the fact
that theories which were excluded from each other in that system by
the strict a pplication of the logical principles of divis ion had been
closely asso ciated w ith each other or even identical in the history of
,

s peculative thought . I have to m a ke some note of that fact though ,

the classication was intended to dene the proper territory for the
appropriate theories That classication made Realis m a n d Idealism
.

exclusively epistemological doctrines and in no respect metaphysical ,

that is n o u m e n o l o g ica l theories I mean to insist that in any true sy s

.

tem of philosophy this must be maintained and that there is no direct

a n d deductive highway from epistemology to metaphysics But h o w .

ever true this may be it does not forbid or excuse the philosopher from
,

d iscussing points of view under those heads which have been treated
as metaphysical problems even though this would be regarded as a
,

transgression w h en the theories were properly dened T hough I .

might consider it proper to exclude Realism and Idealism fro m meta

physical d i scussion I cannot exclude discussions which have passed
,

under those names .

The simple reason for refusing to adm i t Idealism and Realism into
m etaphysical problems is the fact that the former is too equivo cal to
s erve for any clear think ing and the latter has never been anything but

a n epistemological theory Idealism is a term that has done duty for

.

o pposition to both Realism and Materialism which have never been ,

identied in all their relations while it has also usually taken a monistic
,

vie w of the world when Materialism has variously been monistic and
p luralistic This fact alone absolutely d isqu a l i es Idealism for service
.

unless it is strictly limited to a denite and unambiguous problem to ,

say nothing of the consequence of the distinction which this work

d raws between epistemological and metaphysical problems E xc l u d .
33 6 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

ing Realism and Idealism from a place in the right conception of

metaphysical issues and as wholly disqualied with the method s ,

usually emplo yed in their name to pronounce upon the question s

,

which w e have to discuss in e tiological and ontological problems we ,

are left with Materialism and Spiritualism as the two antagonistic doc
trines which must come under consideration But there are equ ivo .

cations here also The tabular analysis shows that the theories of
.

reality have been divided into the quantitative and qualitative the former ,

being further subdivided into monistic and the pluralistic and the lat ,

ter into materialistic and spiritualistic But as a matter of fact in the

.
,

hi story of philosophic reection the exclusio n does not ta k e place in

this m anner Monistic theory has sometimes been materialistic and
.

sometimes S piritualistic and pluralistic theory the same as the analysis

, ,

shows or in one form consistent with the admission of a limited eld

,

for material phenomena ( Dualism ) Consequently we may sub .

ordinate quantitative points of v iew to the qualitative and exhaust the

possible ways of discussing the phenomena of existence the material ,

i st ic and the spiritualistic Scepticism is not admissible as a p ositive

.

theory of explanation but only as a method of limiting the assurance

,

which convictions m ay tak e in regard to one or the other of these

theories .

The term Materialism whatever may be said of the theory is

, ,

respectable enough not to require any apology for the use of it to

denominate a metaphysical theory of the world But to many this will .

no t seem to be the case w ith the term Spiritualism I admit the .

objections which apply to its use and lament the preconceptions which
it s uggests in this age especially as not rightly representing the general
,

idea which is intended to dene its meaning in the problems to be dis

cussed here But in spite of these objections I think there are reasons
.
,

which j ustify an attempt either to restore the term to respectable philo

sophic usage or to instate it in that if it is not strictly correct to speak
,

of restoring it There are several adequate reasons for the use of the
.

term I h ave repudiated Idealism a s not qualied to dene both an

.

epistemological and a metaphysical problem and the history of its ,

actual usage shows that even when it opposed Materialism it has not
, ,

opposed always the fundamental implication for which Materialism

stoo d namely the denial of immortality Idealism has usually been
, , .

as sile nt as scepticism on that question or as positive against it as any,

dogm atic materialism Con sequently some term is absolutely necessary

.

to express the direct issues which are raised by the d oct in e of Material
ism in all its relations Christianity took up and dened a position
.
 T H E OR I E S O F M E TA PH YS I CS .
33 7

which is perfectly clear whether it be correct or not , in regard to this

,

issue It antagoniz ed Materialism not on any Su ch grounds as the

.
,

epistemolo gi cal idealist opposes it but on the grou nd th at it did not

,

adequately explai n the cosmos and did not permit what Christianity
thought was a fact evidenced by the resurrection n a mely a future life, ,
.

The air m at io n and denia l of a future life is a clear issue faced and
discussed by the materia l ist The opposin g theory must recogniz e this
.

issue , and the term idealism does not do this No w Christianity

.

was denitely a spiritualistic theory and a s its interests still dene the
,

opposition between the theory that explains all phenomena as fu nctions

of matter and the theory which maintai n s that something else than
,

matter is required to explain both the cosmic order and the phenomena
of consciousness , w e are fully justied in choosing a ter m which
denite l y recogniz es this issue B esides , I may also defend myself by
.

the usa ge of Mr Sully who has restored the term in his P sychology as
.

the tting opposite of Materialism Kant u ses the term Spiritu alism
.

in his argument against Mendelssohn and elsewhere as the proper anti

thesis to materialism L iebm ann and Busse also recently use it for the
.

same purpose In fact it is beco m ing a commonly accepted term among

.

many German writers It concerns the question whether material orga n

.

iz at io n can account for the origin and nature of cons ciousness and for ,

that reason as well as the traditional problem which has dened nearly
t wenty centuries of controversy it is the only proper term to describe
or imply the op p osition to Materialism as a metaphysical theory The .

issue has been between the doctrine that matter and the laws of its
action a re su f cient to account for all the phenomena of nature includ
ing those of cons ciousness and t h e doctrine that there is a soul whi ch
has an immaterial nature a n d which is the subj ect of mental activities
or functions precisely in the same way that matter is supposed to be
the subject of weight , color , density motion , etc If this issue had
, .

been settled both terms might be conned to a historical question , but

it has not been settled and h ence m etaphysics h a s still to face the prob
lem , whatever e l se it may be assumed to include Hence in spite of .
,

associations which the l ast twenty years have created and which ought
never to have determ ined the essential import of the term I decide for ,

the reason above given to empl oy the term Spiritualis m to denote the
proper metaphysica l opposition to what is expressed in the term
Materialism .

The antithesis which h as prevailed since Berkele y and Kant has

been that between I dealis m and Materialism The contro versy which
.

h a s gone on in terms of this antithesis has nothing to do with that

22
3 38 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

which is embodied in the opposition between Materialism and Spirit

u a li s m . The idealists have been quite willing to allow the public to
believe that it was and is the same but a very little intelligence and
,

honesty will expose this illusion The a n imosities w hich have governed
.

the relations between science and religion and the intoleran ce which
religion has al ways shown in regard to freedom of thought have made
it the interest of the philosopher to appropriate either the language of
the religious party or an attitude of hostility toward Materialis m with
out telling clearly what he m eant by it The public is easily duped
.

and the philosopher can escape persecution by tactful indulgence in

the public of its illusio ns There are o f course those who deceive
.
, ,

themselves in an attempt to mediate between the t w o parties to the

controversy and who in their very desire to get and impart the best of
,

human thought and endeavor may compromis e the interests of clear

,

thin k ing by the necessity of yielding so m ething to the intolerance of

the religious m ind The inuence of scientic theories and scepticism
.

in displacing various cherished ideas of theology and the rout of medi

e val religion in matters like P tolemaic astronomy the doctrine of
,

antipodes Cartesian vortices in the explanation of the motion of

,

celestial bodies special creation as against evolution and similar prob

, ,

lems have made it impossible to intelligently ally one s self against

science and the s cientic spirit while it was equally i m possible to

,

apologiz e for the old superstitions and traditions that somehow or ,

other can survive all defeats and in a large measure directly or in

, ,

directly , inuence the policy o f edu cation and limit its freedom It .

has always demanded that the philosopher shall attack Materialism and
it has not always been wise enough to detect the subterfuges by which
this could be done without betraying a ny real sympathy w ith the con
c e pt io n s and problems that interest the S piritualist Ever since Kant
.

the philosopher has been a perfect adept in gymnastics of this sort ,

though he is not to blame for the situation which compels him to play
~

the r o le of apparent hypocrisy , and in fact has no sympathy at heart

with this compromise of his intelligence and honesty But in the .

effort to preserve the intel l ectual and social values of a spiritualistic

philosophy when he could not defend its metaphysics he has been
obliged to put a new meaning into old phrases in order to postpone the
day of j udgment and to keep intolerance at bay long enough to obtain
a m o d u s v i v en d i for more liberal thought H is ethical ideals did not
.

differ from t h o se o f the p r r v a il in g orthodoxy when it ca me to the pra e

tical duties of life and he could preserve and defend these by putting a
moral under the cover of a metaphysical antithesis and so the opposi
,
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA PH YS I C S .
339

tion between Materialism and Idealis m became a distinction half p sy ,

c h o l o g ical and half ethical between what may be called Sensationalism

,

and Intellectualism P sychologically he could rail at the derivatio n of

.

knowledge from sensation and ethically against hedonism while ,

in metaphysics he could either ignore the theories of physical science

as not in his province or take cover in the wonderful truth that w e can
only know reality through consciousness and then escape the other,

half of the problem by converting the terms soul and mind into
equivalents for states of consciousness while nothing is said about the
conversion The language is familiar but the nature of the content is
.

not discovered The voice is that of Jacob but the hands are those of
.

Esau while poor blind Isaac bestows the blessing on Jacob and does
, ,

not know that he is eating kid instead of venison .

I am not here disputing the truth of Idealism but only its relevancy ,

to the problems of metaphysics as expressed in the terms Materialism

and Spiritualism in the history of philosophy I am quite w illing so .
,

far as the discussion at this point is concerned to admit the entire truth
,

of the idealistic Vie w of things Indeed if I am allowed to dene it for

.

myself I would say that I accept it as incontrovertible on either the

solipsistic or non solipsistic conception of it but I s h ould be under no
-

illusions as to its limitations and I should make no profession of its

solvent qualities It is very useful as a for m of radical scepticism a n d
.

as a methodological instrument for puzzling the uneducated and creat

ing trouble in the eld of s cientic dogmatism often as na i ve in critical
,

matters as a peasant , and it preserves an impulse to respect the higher

types of consciousness though only by force of historical association
, .

But it does nothing more It solves absolutely no metaphysical p i o b

.

lems whatever O n the contrary u nless it adj usts itself to the co n cep
.
,

tions of the very s cience which it assumes to supplant it results in

'

doctrines like H egel s theory of the tides ! What the idealist never

seems to learn is that a new S hibboleth does not escape responsibility

for all the problems of hu man reection We may resolve all things
.

into states of cons ciousness or phenomena as much as we like ,

or lay as much stress as we please upon the intellectual as distinguished

from the sensory processes , we do not escape the consideration of all
the old problems in all their essential characteristics and the relations ,

which were su pposed by them to subsist between phenomena

.

This ought to be apparent in the system of H egel with its hideous

paraphernalia of metaphysical language It is the same and always
.

will be the same with any single description of the totality of existence .

We may take any term we please to represent the fundamental data of

3 40 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

knowledge and think that w e have put an end to certa in philosophic

theories but it will not be long until those theories have turned up in
,

a new garb P lato may underta k e to refute materialism by a doc

.

trine of ideas and then dis cover in another generation that his posi
tion is not di fferent from that of Lucretius We may rail at innate .

ideas and accept intuitions We may limit. k nowledge to

experience or phenomena a n d then assert the existence of a
p r i o r i conceptions or laws of thought which are not phenomena

or the products of experience We may start with sensations as
.

our elementary data with the desire to escape metaphysics and land ,

in the systems of Berkeley Hume o r Condillac We may insistently

, .

assert that we know only phenomena and then proceed to give a
vast system of philosophy in terms of matter and motion , or a l a H eg el

ring the same changes on S pirit We may take any term to express
.

the nature of our elementary datum and there will be some So crates
,

about to a sk for a denition and explanation and then we shall either ,

have to tear our hair with poor E ut h y de m u s or calmly spin out a

metaphysics with P lato We may carefully limit knowledge to
.

experience and exclude it from things in themselves in order t o ,

escape a disagreeable system of me ta physics and then produ ce a vast

system of transcendental philosophy which is n either as intelligible a s
experience nor as credible as things in themselves .

The funda m ental conception upon which the idealist bases his view
of things and from which he would deduce far reaching results is his -

notion of phenomena Ever since Kant and also assuming that he
.
,

is equally describi n g the conception of P lato the idealist insists upon ,

dening phenomena as appearances with o r without its natural ,

implication of illusion but certainly with its implication of subje c

,

t iv i ty in some sense at least and its exclusio n of obj ectivity of some

, ,

kind I must dispute the claim that this gives a complete account of
.

either P lato or Ka nt P lato did not mean psychological appear

.

ance by his phenomenon H is antithesis w a s between the trans
.

i en t and the permanent ours between the subj ective and the obj ective
both possibly either transient or permanent P lato s system of meta .

ph ysics drew the distinction between the sensible and supersensible

realities not between the sensible or natural ( physical ) and the super
,

physical o r supernatural ( spiritual ) His supersensible realities were

.

like the Leibnitz ian monads except that he did not describe them as
,

immaterial and li k e the Lucretian atoms except that he did not

, ,

describe them in terms to suggest sensible qualities These ideas .
,
forms manifested their existence by the manner in which they
,
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA PH YS I CS .
34 1

arranged the elements of the material world , a n d thus represe n ted

the emergence of the supersensible into the sensible of the inv isible ,

i nto the visible Appearance thus in describing the P latonic con
.

ce ption does not mean that things must be seen in order to be phe

n o m en a but only that they must take a p o s si bly visible form in order
,

to be this and this form meant that they were transient modes com
, ,

lex obj ects subj ect to dissolutio n while the principle that ar
p
ranged them remai n ed perman e n t The appearance w a s the pas

s age fro m the supersensible to the sensible not from the actually un ,

seen to the actually seen ; fro m the potential to the actual in

t h e Aristo telian phraseology which expresses the real c o nception of

P lato . I n one condition they were supersensible that is not possibly , ,

o bj ects of sensory experience or even of any other form of phe

n o m en a l knowledge In the material conditio n they had assumed
.

a form which made them sensible , that is possible objects of knowl

e dge, not necessarily actually present to cons ciousness P henom .

enon then meant the condition in which the process of evolution or

c reation left reality which wa s in its nature tr ansce ndent or it de
, ,

s cribed the mode of transitio n from the supersensible or t r a n s h e

p
no m e na l condition to that in which it became a possible obj ect of
experie nce Cons equently it represented the notio n of tran s ieney
.
-

as distinct from that of p ermane nce Subj ectivity w a s no part of his .

real meaning in any sense of excluding an obj ective reality causally

,

at the basis of the facts .

The same meaning is characteristic of Kant H e distinctly indi .

cates that phenomena ( Ers chei nungen ) are events or changes

Ver an d er un ge n ) and very frequently he describes them as
,
obj ects
of empirical intuition and in this w ay implies that they are mere i n
ternal states of the mind It is true that he sometimes S pe aks of them
.

as mere presentations ( blose V orstellungen ) but in addition to the ,

elastic import of Vorstellung the subjective import of which
,

Vaihinger admits contradicts other denitions of pheno m ena as

objects of intuition w e must remember that there is perhaps not a
,

S ingle fundamental conception in Kant s system which is not im li

p
ca t ed with v arious equ ivocal imports that enable the reader to put any
,

construction he pleases upon his position It is certain that Kant does .

not say that phenomena are merely states of consciousness a form ,

o f statement which d irectly means to exclude the obj ective from con
.

sideration as a necessary part of k nowledge while presentation , ,

sensation , etc , do not make it clear whether this limitation is implied

.

(
o r not except to those who have denitely indicated this as a part of
,
3 42 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

their denition and conception of the facts But this point of view .

was not so clear at Kant s time as in ours even though it may be the ,

tendency of his thought to produce it The tendency is clear in .

Berkeley and Hume and it was the natural implication of the Kant i an
,

sy stem But Kant did not wholly break away from the philosophic
.

conceptions of his earlier period and he possibly tried to make the

term phenomenon do service for both the idea of purely subjective
states and the obj ective idea of events or change He is certainly not .

prepared for any solipsistic interpretation of the term and in his at ,

tempt to refute Idealism he shows this whether w e regard h im as con ,

sistent or not in this position The ambiguity in Kant s conception is

.

caused by the fact that he lived in a n d in a large measure determined

, ,

the transition from the P latonic to the modern view of reality Thi s .

was effected mainly by the Philosophy of Leibnitz which exercised a

far larger inuence on Kant than either he could control or his readers
can supercially dis cover
His conception of phenomena w a s
.

borrowed partly from the usage of P lato and partly from the ia
ue n c e of the Leibnitz ian philosophy on his way of conceiving things .

Leibnitz had constructed his system with the same motives as P lato ,

namely to refute materialism and to do this he had a system o f
, ,

supersensible realities H is monads were spaceless points of force

.

and hence could not be objects of sensory knowledge

Though .

th ey were supersensible and even possessed in various degrees super

,

physical properties they coul d work changes o r produce e ffects but

, ,

without transmitting them to other monads Their action was thus .

wholly subjective but Leibnitz provided machinery to ma k e this con

,

form to the nature of external reality As the a ction of each monad .

was the same it mirrored or represented in each case the nature
of obj ective monads by virtue of the identity of all of them in
kind The harmonious action of the system was not accounted for
.

as in the mechanica l system n amely by transeunt action i nf l uxus

, , ,

p by s i c u s ca us a m a t er i a li s but by ca us a o cc a s i o n a l i s whatever
, , ,

that meant The point here to be noted is the conception of

.

purely subjective action in the explanation of genesis No w Kant .

returned to the materialistic position in his receptivity of sense
.

This assu med the inuence upon the subject of action external to it .

The legitimacy of this procedure is not the question but only the fact ,
.

Leibnitz could not get beyond the subj ect in his conception of activity .

Kan t whether l egitimately or not did get beyond it and hence he had
, , ,

to admit the existence of phenomena beside those of the internal

world , and these were the objects of intuition something more tha n ,
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA PH YS I C S .
3 43

interna l states or subj ective phenomena N ow as n oumena

.

could not be k nown these being in reality the Leibnitz ian monads
,

incapable of acting as su ch on other monads or subjects by any tra n

s eu n t action Kant pressed on the one hand by the impossibility o f
'

, , , ,

calling the external reality a noumenal fact and , on the other , by th

necessity of supposing this external reality as a condition of m a k ing
sensation and its genesis rational , could only call it a phenomenon
without making it a state of consciousness of the subject , even though
he also considered consciousness a phenomeno n of the subj e ct .

Hence besides states of consciousness he assumed a type of phenom

ena which were events rather than appearances except as modes ,

of reality between noumena and subjective phenomena But .

in spite of this his Leibnitz ian presupposition could not prevent the
,

rise of an equivocation in the conception of phenomena as purely

subj ective events , consciousness being the assumed prius of what is
known . What Kant ought to have made clear was that he wa s

dealing with three worlds so to speak t h eworld of noumena

, ,

the world of external pheno m ena and the world of internal phe
,

n o m e na
. The rst t wo of these were conceived somewhat after the
manner of P lato and Lucretius P lato and Lu cretius had a sup er sen
.

sible world the one of ideas and the othe r of atoms

,
Both also .

had a sensible world which was a compound organic complex or union

,

of the elementary units of the supersensible world and was on that ,

account transient or phenomenal that is perishable The noum
,
.

enal or supersensible world

ideas or atoms w as not perish
, ,

able The antithesis was betwee n the transient and the permanent
. .

But Kant had to start with a later and di fferent antithesis which only ,

partly coincided w ith the old one This was the antithesis betwee n
.

the subjective and the objective the i nternal and the externa l He h a d
,
.

two objective worlds the world of, noumena or monads which , ,

could not act on one another or transmit their actions ( motions ) to other
,

monads and so could not be k n o wn through ca u s a l inuence which

w as the sole condition of sensible knowledge
But assuming that .

sensory experience was occasioned by causal action from without ,

as he distinctly states Kant h a d to have an externa l world beside that

,

of noumena and also in addition to that of internal phenomena ,

as the anthropocentric method of investigation since Des cartes had

forced upon thought the antithesis between subj ect and object No w .

if Kant h a d shown that his external world of phenomena affecting

sense sustained the same relation to the noumenal world that P lato s

world of sense sustained to that of ideas or Lucretius world of
,
3 44 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H v .

compounds sustained to that of atoms we should understand what ,

he might thin k of a causal a ctivity not directly expressing the internal

action of the monads but yet proceeding from without the subject
experiencing its effects and we could still have t h e distinction
,

between internal and extern al phenomena without making them all

alik e in any other aspect than their eventual character But Kant .

never made clear what he meant by his external world except that he ,

called it phenomenal which he also called the internal though he ,

regarded the latter as causally re l ated to the former Consequently .

with the uselessness of his noumenal world and the connotation of

the term phenomenal applying alike to th e internal and e xternal ,

with a tendency of philosophy to return to the Leibnitz ian notion of

subj ective activity subsequent conceptions moved in the direct ion of
,

an absolute ide a lis m in which all things were states of consciousness

and both worlds of Kant s external pheno m ena a n d the world of

noumena were abandoned whilst adoring philosophers trace the

, ,

lineage of idealism to Kant instead of Leibnitz Kant would not de

cide nally which master he would follow Leibnitz or P lato bu t , ,

uctuated between solipsism and dualism in a way that left the inter
p r et at io n of his phenomena d ubious But it is quite apparent that
.

there is as mu ch to say i n favor of their being trans subjective though -

non noumenal as in favor of their subj ective nature with the certi
-

, ,

tude that Kant intended whether consistently or not to assu me an ex

, ,

ternal world other than mental states which he conceived somewhat

after the manner of what Ha m ilton calls hypothetic realism though ,

he did n o t co nceive it as a product of inference H e was too much .

under t h e inuence of Leibnitz intellectual intuition even after he

,

denied it to take the position that the knowledge of external real

,

ity was infere ntial and too thoroughly enslaved by the formal func
,

t ions of the categories and the subjective nature ( not the origin ) of
sensory states to make the cognition of the external world any more
direct and hence he left it a sserted but not explained except in so far
, ,

as the equivocal ter m pheno menon described it .

But grant that one side of Kant s position was the only one namely

,

that which apparently identied phenomena with states of con
sc io u s ness and that subsequent ide a lism rightly represented him would ,

w e by that resource escape the problem of materialism as it has been

conceived from time immemorial ! D oes the statement or even truth , ,

of idealism that all we know are states of cons ciousness put an end
to explanatory processes and metho d s of as certaining or interpreting
the meaning and implications of phenomena By no means .
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA P H YS I C S .
345

States of consciousness , even if they are the only events in the world ,

the only world w e k now are li k ely to call for explanation of some
,

kind They quite as readily start denition and inquiry as any other
.

supposed events or facts and w e have only to look at Kant himself to

,

see that even if he did limit phenomena to subj ective states he

, ,

a ccepted the processes of explanatio n involved in the use of the cate

g o r ie s and employed all the orthodox language of metaphysics in the

a nalysis of causality with the deliberate intention of refuting em

p i i ci s
r m and the scepticism founded upon it But conceding that .

any a d bo m i n em appeal or argument would be a misconception of

idealism there remai ns the fact that states of consciousness do not ex
,

plain themselves and only elicit investigation instead of preventing it .

They have at least to be dened If we dene them as phenomena

.

,

these having pre viously been dened as states of cons ciousness w e ,

commit the c i r cu l u s i n d e n i en d o which clear and rational thinking

will not permit unless w e wish to confes s defeat and if we dene
, ,

them as events activities functions of the subj ect we admit into co n

, , ,

c ep t i o n and knowledge a fact which is not itself a phenomenon

by using the causal principle and thus all the old e tiological points of
,

vie w aga in come into consideration especially if we admit any di st in c

,

tion of kind between one class of mental states and another su ch as ,

memories and sensations associations and sensations or thoughts and

, ,

sensations . If we admit an e tiological or n o u m e no l o g ic a l subject

there is no a p r i o r i obj ection to the possibility of trans cending phe
n o m e na in the other dire ction namely an external object It is only
, , .

a question of the way in wh i ch we feel obliged to explain the genesis

o f se nsation as events whose course we cannot determine wholly at will .

Any thing but circular denition therefore only brings back all the
, ,

modes of inquiry and explanation which the idealist tried to put an end

to by his all we know a mere subterfuge for es caping a problem
,

which only reappears like the clown or juggler who m we thought w e

h a d safely tied and lock ed in a box This fact is quite apparent in the
.

s ystems of F ichte S chelling and Hegel who either dressed up phenom

,

e n a l is m in noumenal terms and passed it o ff for orthodoxy or brought ,

i n at the back door the metaphysics which Kant had put out at the
f ront .

There is a nother way of stating the case Materialis m and Spirit .

u a l is m endeavor to determine the temporal and causal relations of facts

!

t h e one limiting the phenomena of consciousness to material con

n ect i o n s and the other extending it beyond these No w there are at .

l east t wo facts which show that Idealism does not escape the necessity
346 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H y .

of discussing the questions involved in that problem nor when proved ,

does it eliminate the materialistic conception of the case which does ,

not depend upon the denition and conception of matter formed

but upon the relation between it , however dened and conceived and ,

the consciousness in question The idealist will not endure solipsism

.
,

and consequently he admits that there is something that transcends the

individual consciousness which asserts or accepts the existence of either
this trans subjective impersonal obj ect or of personal consciousness other
-

than the one knowing
Whether he admits more than other social
.

units or not he assumes realities which are in some causal relation to

,

his own mental states and the question will be to determine what that
is which is thus the prius of his own functional action and which may
deter m ine t h e value and destiny of his o w n consciousness Again .
,

when he admits as Kant does an extern al world whether phenom

, , ,

enal or noumenal , in causal relation to consciousness and condi
t i o n in g its occurrences even if it do es not determine from without its
,
.

constitution he must face the question of its temporal relation to the

,

group of phenomena with which it is associated and no amou nt of ,

denition or reiteration of the truism that all we k no w is states of

consciousness will solve that problem The silence of the idealist .

upon the questions of God and immortality S how this beyond doubt .

If the existence of God and immortality followed from this admission the
idealist would be quite ready to admit it as his interest lies in a f r m,

ing rather than denying these doctrines But if he limits that temporal.

relat ion on the one hand or admits solipsism on the other his silence
, , , ,

is evidence that he does not accept the existence of God a n d i m m o r

tality while the public will not permit him to positively deny them
, .

The consequence is that we have to dis cuss Idealism as a problem

wi t ni n not prior to subsequent not antecedent to the nature and r e
, , ,

l a t io n s of consciousness The real function of Idealism is to introdu ce

.

scepticism and criticism into the na i ve assumptions of common

sense whether of the scientic or unscientic mind and not to deduce ,

from its postulate about the o r d o co g n it i o n i s any ready made meta -

physics which would make this the o r d o es s en di without further argu

ment than the a p r i o r i assu mptio n of the very consciousness which has
to be accounted for It m ay say what it pleases about the value and
.

teleological meaning of co nsciousness but unless it is frankly solipsistic

,

and accepts the Leibn itz ian statement of its case it must subord in ate its
entire speculations to the conclusions established regarding the causal
relation of its pheno m ena to t h e realities which that causal relation
assumes are the prius of its own existence and certainly its limit if the ,
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA P II YS I C S .
347

Lucretia n conception and that of modern science be the standard of

judgment .

The a ctual p r o bl em s o f history that were embodied in the terms

Materialism and Spiritualis m concerned the origin and destiny of

phenomena , their causes and end whether we interpret that end ,

as a purpose or as a result toward which various movements tended or

converged They c a nnot be evaded by any verbal hocus pocus which
.

tries to make a name like Idealis m as sacred and inviolable as the

ancient name of God Turning up the nose and screaming when some
.

one uses the word materialis m sympathetically will neither elim

inat e the problem indicated nor j ustify and elu cidate the higgledy pig
gledy phrases with which the idealist m y st i es science and p a c i es
religion The problems of causa l origin and destiny still thrust them
.

selves forward as the primary considerations in all estimates of value

and meaning They began i n cosmology and they te rminate in it
. .

The psyc h ological interpretation of the m has been a diversion in every

sense of the term and though it determines an important poi nt of view
,

for disturbing the lethargy and self co m placency of sensational dogma

-

t ism it does not determine the order grounds tendencies and causal , ,

explanation of external nature This proble m of cause and end origin

.
,

and destiny e tiology and teleology conditions and meaning as so me

, , ,

would call it of all facts including the phenomena of conscious
, ,

ness , is not determined by any such antithesis as Sensationalism and

Intellectualism or Realism and Idealism or by exalting the order of
, ,

our knowledge as if w e were determining thereby the order of
.

nature Sensationalism and Intellectualism represent an ethical and

.

psychological distinction of function in regard to values Realis m .

and Idealism represent an epistemological distinction in regard to the

modes by which obj ects are know n and their values determined .

But neither of these methods predetermine conclusion in the cosmo

logical problems o f matter and spirit , or the causal agencies of the
cosmos and the teleological problems of consciousness Materialism .

and Spiritualism as I conceive them represent precisely the antithesis

, ,

which history has determined between the theory which holds that the
organi c world represents the origin and destiny of all phenomena
whatsoever and the theory which tries to make an exception to this
,

origin of the phenomena of consciousness They represent the .

t wo d i fferent ways in which the phenomena of nature and con

sci o usn ess are explained e tiologically and teleolo gicall y the one ,

ai r m i n
g and the other denying transmaterial reality and tel eological

order or meaning The materialist explains all phenomena as the
.
3 48 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

esultant of mechanical action the composition of the forces of

r ,

nature The S piritualist though he admits the existence of a me

.
,
,

c h a n i ca l order and its forces maintains that

, physical phenomena

do not constitute the whole of nature , that mental phenomena

a r e not physical ,
and that they must have an explanation in something

not material in its nature H e accounts for the phenomena of con
.

s c i o us nes s by what he calls the soul a reality which is or is sup

,

posed to be immaterial and whose functional activity however it may ,

be related to matter as an occasional cause of its occurrence is not ,

constituted by material action and in so far independent of it that it

might continue its action without that occasioning cause Imitating .

a n d insisting upon monism there m ight be a theory supposing that all

,

phenomena were spiritual in nature and none in reality material .

This woul d be the absolute contradictory of Materialism But such .

a theory would or might be identical with what is meant by Materialism

and would leave unsolved the problems which are indicated by the
antithesis between materialis m and spiritualism as it is not the name ,

which determines the issue but the facts indicated by it The real
, .

question is not what we S hall call the realities or forces of existence ,

but what are the facts of the case and what things do or h o w do
they act In so far as mere terms are concerned matter is as good
.

as spirit and spirit is no better than matter
We might use .

the term spirit and have the facts that are associated with what is

n o w called matter and the issues would remain as they are The
, .

real question is to account for certain phenomena which w e call

mental and which we nd associated with certain other phenomena

which we call physical and which are presumably the resultant of
composition Are the latter to be classed with the former in origin and
.

k ind or not ! That is the issue .

We observe certain events which result from the composition of

forces say the uidity of water and power to quench r from the
, e
composition of oxygen and hydrogen ; the luminosity of re from the
u nion under certain conditions of two gases that are invisible ; the fall
of an unsupported object under the attraction of gravitation ; t h e
motion of a ball in respo n se to impact or propulsion No w it ma k es .

no diff erence what we call these gases realities f o rces whether

, , ,

matter or spirit . The explanation or meaning of the facts will
be the same in either case , u nless we can prove that t h ere is a radical
d ifference between them and the phenomena of consciousness and

insist that spirit implies co n sciousness But this wou l d leave these .

distinguished phenomena still unexplained because of their as ,
 T H E OR I E S OF M E T A P H y s zc s .
34 9

su med di fference in kind What r eall v interests us is the fact that the
observed phenomena are actually or apparently the contingent

e ffects of a certain combination of what w e choose t o call forces ,

realities atoms substances modes of motion etc The mere name

, , , ,
.

which we give these things whose actions or interactions give rise to

the phenomena in questio n is of no importance wh a tever The .

real questions are whether there are any radical distinctions of kind

between the phenom ena within our knowledge and what the
relations of any o r all of them to the things named If they are a l l .

alike and the resultant of compositio n or interaction or if unlike and ,

still su ch resultants we shall take o ne view of their nature relations

, , ,

and destiny ; but whether alike or unlike if they are not su ch result
,

ants we will take another view of their character If phenomena .

are the e ffe cts of compos ition their existence and value depend wholly
,

upon this composition and disappear with dissolution If they are not .

the resu ltant of this composition their ground and value must be sought
in some other sys tem All this is a xiomatic
. .

No w materialism has stood for the doctrine that al l phenomena

what soever are the resultant of composition fro m elements called mat
ter functions of material compounds still retaining the ter m mat
, ,

ter for the compounds as wel l as for the elements Whether its rea .

sons for calling the elements and their organic co m pounds by the same
n ame are good or not makes no difference to the general question .

The main point is to see that w hatever the n a ture of the elements
, ,

facts appear as the resultant of compositio n that were not existent or

apparent before No w spiritualism does not deny or certainly does
.
,

not need to deny , that this do ctrine applies to forces called mat

ter but it denies that cons ciousness is the resultant of the compositio n
,

of these elements or that it is a function of matter as a compound

, .

It seeks to maintai n that there is some other reality than m ere mat

ter and that consciousness is a function of this immaterial reality ,
,

calling it immaterial because it reveals none of t h e ponderable

l
qua ities of composite matter which is all that we sensibly know
, .

O n this ground if the evidence of the fact i s su f cien t it can suppose

, ,

consciousness to be independent of material compositio n a nd so not to

have its existence and destiny determined by the accidents of change
and composition in matter .

No w it is to be noticed t h at spiritualism gives a m ea n i ng as it is ,

called to consciousness which the materialistic theory cannot do

,

This meaning is that it is th e activity of another subject than the

organism the evide nce for this being va riously stated in terms of t h e
,
350 TH E P R OB L E MS OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

d ifference between physical and mental phenomena or facts prov ,

ing that this subject exists apart from the body Whether it is cor .

rect or not is not the question but only its conception a nd the mode
,

by whi ch it underta k es to dene and prove its claims The material .

i st i c hypothesis can give cons ciousness no other meaning or perma

n e n c e than the organis m with which it is actually associated What .

ever place is assigned it in the group of phenomena connected
with the body whether as their end or as means to their activity
, , ,

or as one of a system of reciprocally related facts it can have no mean ,

ing extendi n g beyond t h e existence of that of which it is assumed to

be a phenomenal function Mak ing it t h e resu ltant of composition
.
,

as it does other functions of the organism digestive circulative respira , , ,

tory secretive motor etc the materialistic theory must regard it as

, , , .
,

equally transitory But spiritualism if it has satisfactory evidence as to

.
,

the facts claimed has a philosophic basis on behalf of the claim for the
,

permanence of consciousness beyond the dissolution of the organism in

the conception that consciousness is not a functio n of the body that is , ,

is not a resultant of composition of material elements If it is not such .

a resultant it cannot be a ffected by the decomposition of the organism ,

no matter what other account of it m ay be demanded What its .

meaning would be in su ch a view of it w o uld have to be settled by

other considerations than those of the present physical sciences This .

again is a truism but requires statement in order to use it as a major

premise for certain further animadversions .

No w w hat I wish to contend for here is that all teleological and

e thical interpretations of cons cious n ess as well as all other facts and ,

phenomena must depend wholly upon the conclusions in regard

,

to their causes That is to say the teleological view of things is con

.
,

d it i o n e d and wholly conditioned by the e tiological It is not inde .

pendent of it as the idealist would have us believe at times We

, .

cannot say that whatever the cause any given end or consequence
, ,

will h o l d t r ue because that end is determined by the nature of the

,

c a uses that lead to it If t h e causes cease acting the e ffect ceases to

.

exist if the effect is a mere phenomenon
,
The purpose value and .
, ,

persistence of any fact is dependent upon the conditions that deter

m ine its nature F unctional activity ca nnot persist beyond the exist
.

e n ce of the subject of which it is an activity A subj ect once formed .

,

create d or orga niz ed may subsist indenitely or even permanently

, , ,

if nothing occurs to d isturb its integrity but if this subject be either ,

by accident or by nature a transitory one its property and functions ,

are equally so .
 T H E OR IE S OF M E TA PH YS I C S .
35 1

I have a lighted candle before m e I do not say that I have m yself .

l ighted it but that the burning candle in some way is an object of

,

consciousness This bare knowledge m a y not suggest that the light or

.

luminosity is an incident with any less persistence than the materials

o ut of which the taper is made T h e luminosity might seem to be as
.

permanent and as essential a property of the taper as the color or hard

ness of it so far as my p resent consciousness is concerned But sup
, .

pose that the wind blows the ame out and I nd myself with the taper
showing no luminosity but having the same color and resistance as
before I have conclusive evidence that the lu minos ity is not a n e ces
.

sary accompaniment or consequence of the remaining properties as ,

well as not a part of them a s they appear I nd that in S pite of their

, .

appearance as before the light had disappeared as a consequence of

, ,

the causal actio n of the wind and will be treated as an incidental con
,

dition or state of the taper , certainly n o t an e ffect of what remains to

consciousness But n o w if some one comes along with a burning
.

match and relights it the taper shows its luminosity again and I have ,

the same pheno menon as before But what I chiey observe i n su ch .

a case is that the ame this time has a beginning in time j ust as its ,

disappearance by the wind indicated that it h a d an end Before this .

disappearance it might n o t have had a beginning in so far as my ex

p er i en ce was concerned and after its extinction it might permanently
,

cease to exist In the for m er case it might have had an indenite or

.

innite past existence and in the latter it m ight never again have a
,

future existence in spite of its past Also in so far as m y ex p er i

, .
,

e n ce is concerned once existing it might have a permanent existence

, ,

in S pite of its actual origin in time if the l aw of inertia be true I can , .

tell nothing about one or the other alternative without further investi
ga t io n if at all
, No w it is the reappearance of the light that gives me
.

proof that t h e lu minosity has a beginning in that particular case and ,

it suggests at least the suspicion that it had a beginning in the rst

place But whether it implies this or not is indifferent to the suggestion
.

that arises fro m the p erception of its origin in the second instanc e .

This origin suggests that there is some other cause than the static
qualities of color and resistance that have persisted through the
changes involved in the appearance disappearance and reappearance ,

of the light We are at once set to work to inquire what the real
.

cause of the light is This cannot be the lighted match alone ca u s a

.
,

o c ca s i o n a l i s because that has gone out by supposition while the taper

,

continues to burn Hence I seek in some conditions of the material

.

taper an explanation of the luminosity F inally I discover that the .

,
35 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

candle is composed of carbon in a ce rtain form and the air of oxygen ,

and that the union of carbon and oxygen under the proper condition s
will produ ce a light The luminosity is thus explai n ed as an incident
.

of composition a process involving the atomization of the carbon and

,

the union with it of the oxygen to form carbonic acid The light is .

thus found to be a phenomenon a fa ct that b egins and ends with

,

the act of the decomposition of the taper It continues only so long a s

.

this proc e ss continues When the organism known as the taper has
.

been dissolved , that is separated into its elements the phenom

, ,

enon comes to an end It no more exists Its destiny is determined

. .

by the termination of the organism of which it was a function in that

act of decomposition It has no other m eaning or end than that
.

which is determined by the nature a n d destiny of the organism of

which it is an incident At the same time the properties of color and
.

resistance have also disappeared from all sensible knowledge an d ,

for all that we shou l d k now except for the proof of the i n dest r uct i
,

bil ity of matter in the gravity of the elements the very substance of ,

the taper has also disappeared or been annihilated Its phenom .

enal modes have certa inly been annihilated never to reappear , ,

unless some accident or creative act or l a w of nature may reinstate

the combination of elements and circumstances that will reproduce the
phenomena that we have been describing .

we have in this detailed illustration an application i n p a r v o of th e , ,

whole materialistic h ypothesis as it is conceived and applied to all th e

problems of cosmolo gy in physics , chemistry astronomy biology , , ,

physiology and psychology All the phenomena of matter are

,
.

treated as resu ltants of the composition of atoms or elements without

regard to m ore than the fact that there are constituent or elementary
elements of some kind to determine the organizations involved We .

call them matter for certain reasons whether good or bad it is not
,

n ecessary to decide though it would not in the least alter the nature
,

and estimate of the phenomena if we called the elements spirits .

The one question to answer is w h ether the phenomena observed are

modes or functions of the complex wholes so formed If they are such .

resulta nts and are not properties or function s of the elements their ,

existence and meaning or end are exhausted with that of the

organism of which they are the conti n gent effects .

T h e important fact to be noticed and emphasized aft er this elabo

rate illustration o f the materialistic method is that we decide by it not ,

because it is m aterialistic but because of the causal principles in

,

v olved the question of the value and existence of the
, phenomena
 T H E OR I E S OF III E TA P H YS I C S .
3 53

concerned This means that the question of value is subordinate to

.

that of cause in so far as the problem of persistence is con cerned The

,
.

illustration sho ws that it matters not what value we give the light ,

small or great whether it is the purpose or end of all other functions

,

of the organism , o r itself subordinate to them or even subordinate to ,

some end outside the taper or whether the light w a s intended by

,

some outside intelligent cause for an end of the other functions of the
taper , or for a n end outside the candle o u any supposition , the light
,

regarded as a function of chemical composition has no more perma

nent existence than the taper or the process of its co mbustion We .

may exalt th e value of light all we please ; we may regard it as the

.

convergent resultant and end of any number of either mechanical

or spiritual forces or agencies conscious or uncons cious realities
, ,

neverthe l ess though all things be for it yet the light does not per
, ,

sist beyond t h e d isappearance of the taper Whatever end the .

light has it must be w i t /zi n the existence of the taper and not without

it a s l n t . The e tiology of the phenomeno n decides its tele
ology If the taper be imperis h able the light will be a permanent real
.

ity or possibility But depending upon the accidents of compositio n

.

and decomposition , or u p on the external creation and dissolution of

the compound whether this creation be by an intelligent agent or not its
, ,

nature and destiny are li m ited to the origin and end of that body If .

the phenomeno n have any value or teleological meaning in co m

parison with the other incidents really or apparently subordinate to it ,
this must be determined w i t ki n the e tiological conditions that deter
mine the existen ce o f the organism and these whatever their external
,

i n it iu m may be a ccident internal or external ,

, , l a w of nature d eus ,

ex m a c li i n a or other cause , are the material components of the organ

,

ism and their interaction If the light be supposed to have an end

.

beyond the existence of the candle this end must either be its o w n
,

continuance which is not shown to be a fact or some other reality

, ,

to which its o w n existence is subordinated The latter alternative .

subjects the value of the phenomenon to some other fact than itself
and contradi cts the supposition that the light is the superordinat e
end in the case and forces us to assign wh atever teleolo gy it may
,

have to the limits of the organis m of which it appears as a function .

This is what materialism means and does It explains why and how .

the phenomenon comes into existence and wh y and h o w it cannot
be supposed to continue beyond the conditions which give rise to it ,

and it is not necessarily concerned with a ny s p ec ia l view of these con

dit io n s which may have any name w e please though as a fact it h a s ,
3 54 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

always specied them in terms of matter a n d motion Its funda .

mental point is that the world as sensibly known is a complex of , ,

elements with properties that are incidents of this complexity and not
o f the elements and it can appeal to an enormous mass of facts in its
,

s upport .

But to illustrate the spiritualistic vie w let us extend our case , .

S uppose the light which I have observed to actually continu e after the
candle has been dissolved The situation in this instance would be a
.

very different one The fact would settle bey o nd all doubt or cavil , if
.

the application of causality has any legitimacy at all , that the lumi
n o s it
, y whether a phenomenon or not was not a function of the ,

body concerned nor of its combustion , We should have to seek some .

c ause or ground for the fact outside the taper It would not matter .

what that cause wa s or whether we chose to regard it as material or

i mmaterial it would certainly not be the resultant of the composition
,

a n d decomposition of the candle Its nature and destiny would be in

.

d ependent o f that organism whatever they might be If we found on

,
.

i nvestigation that the light was the function of another complex and
d ecomposable organism we should expect it to have a life or persist
ence no longer than this compound If the complex organism be .

indecomposable in spite of its organic n ature we might expect the

, ,

phenomenon c e t e r i s p a r ibu s to be equally perdurable potentially
, , ,

or actually But it is usually the assumption whether valid or not we

.
,

need not determine that all complex wholes are by nature dissolvable
,

and actually decompose in time Hence if the light actually does sur .

vive any process of decomposition the most natural supposition would

be and is that it is t h e fun ction of a s i mp l e element If this ground .

or simple element be indivisible and indestru ctible we may expect or

suppose the continuance of its phe n omena the indestru ctibility of ,

the phenomena The settlement of this question li k e all others
.
, ,

would be a question of fact We should have to determine , after the

.

d issolution of the taper and the d iscovered fact that the light still con

t i n u es to exist whether the cause or subject of the
,
phenomenon
was composite or simple and if composite w hether it was in d isso lv
,

a ble o r not If the settlement of su ch a problem be possib l e it would

.

be the task of science a nd philosophy to determine it If it is not pos .

s ible we should have to let it alone But it may be quite as possible .

a s the settlement of the many problems of science which we do solve

a n d it would only devolve upon us to try as we do in t h e various

s ciences .We shoul d only have to look for the evidence if any be dis ,

c overable that the subje ct of the light was either complex or S imple
, ,
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA P II YS I C S .
3 55

knowing that as a fact or phenomenon it actu a lly survives the dis

a ppearance o f the candle ,
a ccording to our imaginary case All that .

this su r vival establishes is the light s independence of the taper not

,

its dependence upon either a simple or complex reality If the evi .

dence became accessible that the light w a s a function of a comp lex

whole other than the taper we should have before us the additional
,

problem of its perdurability unless we had already decided the nature

,

of such complexes as transient by nature in w h ich case the d estiny of ,

the light would also be decided as in the assumption of its functional

,

relation to the taper in the case where we supposed it to have d isap

p ea r ed with its decomposition But if evidence were forthcoming
.

on investigatio n that the subj ect w a s as simple as an atom is sup

posed to be indestru ctible we should have the problem of its persist
,

ence explained in terms of the assumptions that regulated our inquiries .

But in any case we S hould have to look for additional facts to decide
the matter But it is noticeable that the solution is independent of the
.

way in which we shall speak and think of the elements though not ,

independent of the way in which w e Shall speak and think of the rela
tion between elements and compounds If the essential attribute of .

matter be composition or complexity then the elements would not ,

be matter If the light then persisted beyond the existence of the

.

candle it would be an immaterial event not a function of matter
, , ,

whatever view we might choose to take of it in other respects But if the .

term matter be consistent with ideas of complexity and simplicity ,

divisibility and indivisibility the persistence of the light beyond the

,

organism represented by the taper might still be a material event ,

a function of matter , though organism could no longer be regarded

a s necessary to its occurrence if the subject of it after the dissolution
,

of the taper be a S imple element The whole problem is to show rst

.

that the light does or does not survive any given set of associated
phenomena , and this wi l l settle the causal re l ation of it to a given
r eality while its relation to any others will remain to be determined
,

equally by the facts and not by the consistency of our hypotheses just ,

as wa s the case in the rst form of our illustration where the light wa s
supposed to be perishable with the candle .

This illustration is an attempt to represent the method by which the

spiritualistic theory has approached and tried to solve its problems ,

though I have perhaps exaggerated the amount of actual respe ct which

it has had for the necessarily inductive nature of its inquiries It .

claims however , to have reasons to believe that consciousness is not a

,

function of the bodily organism and on this ground it consistently

,
3 56 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

asserts the possibility of its continuance beyond the dissolution of that

organism Whether it be correct or n o t is not now the question but
.
,

only the matter of dening its problem a n d the method of dealing with
it But if it have good reasons for its belief that consciousness is a
.

function of some other reality than the brain or orga nism with which
it is asso ciated it is entitled to a f rm not n ecessa r il v that it persists
, ,

through all time but that its existence is not wholly conditioned by
,

the organism which dissolves to our knowledge and that it has a ,

meaning for an order which has still to be determined after the real or
supposed disappearance of the body and this a i r m a t io n or hope will
,

have the strength and weakness of the evidence nothing more What , .

the reasons are for supposing that consciousness cannot be a function

of the material organism is indi fferent to the denition of the prob
lem and I am not at p resent concerned with the question of the l eg it i
macy or illegitimacy of those grounds but only with the conceptions
,

which are necessary to make the question a problem at all We must .

at least suppose with or without grounds in fact that consciousness is

, ,

not a function of the body to have even the pos sibility of believing or
asserting that it continues independently of it and to assume a t el eo ,

logical import beyond the life of the organism The reader has only .

to substitute the term consciousness for light with appropriate

a lteration of other terms to carry out t h e illustrations as the S piritualist

would apply it to the soul in all its details .

I have now indicated what the issue is between materialism and

spiritualism as m etaphysical theories and as they have been conceived
in the traditional problems which constitute the eld of philosophical
reection O nly as men dared not express their real convictions on
.

one side or the oth er of the issue h as discussion in clear terms taken
place upon it Idealis m and Realism simply abandon it and cover up
.

the prob l em by a wilderness of unintelligible phrases in relation to this

question however intelligible they may or may not be in relation to
,

the problems w i t ki n the eld of pheno m enal facts But the meta .

physical problem has been between conceptions that are best denom
ina t e d materialistic and spiritualistic and not ,
materialistic a nd

idealistic The question is whether matter or spirit is the ulti
.

mate background o f phenomena in the cosmological problem and ,

whether human consciousness whatever eld has to be granted to

,

material phenomena survives the organism with which it is actually
,

associated That is a problem which philosophy has to face and not

.

to evade by the specious use of orthodox language with a heterodox

content It is simply the question whether the e tiological conditions
.
 T H E OR I E S OF M E TA PH YS I C S .
357

of cosmi c order require spirit to account either for its origin or for
the nature of its phenomena and whether the teleological meaning
,

o f consciousness can extend beyond that of the bodily organism Let .

me then su m mariz e the results of our reections in dening the problem

involved in the controversy between m aterialism and spiritualism .

Both theories have to agree that the meaning and value of phe
n o m ena are determined by the e tiological conditions that a ffect their
o rigin or their occurren ce and persistence It matters not whether
.

those e tiological co nditions be transcendental or imm a nental a personal ,

i ntelligence creating the world and sustaining it or an impersonal order

o f cosmic forces temporarily or eternally i n motion the continu
, ,

a nce and discontinuance of a

phenomeno n is dependent upon the
c ontinuance and dis continuance of the acting causes and the value , ,

end or meaning of the facts is conditioned accordingly The only
, .

question in any case is What particular cause is operative i n the pro

,

d uction of any given set of phenomena or is the phenomenon

,

independent of organization ! But in all cases th e e tiological deter

mines the teleological interpretation o f the order .

The questio n of monism dualism and pluralism has a secondary

, ,

place in the solution of the problem Whether the kind of reality in

.

e xistence is of o n ly one kind or more than one kind whether it is one ,

i nnite reality either material or spiritual or t w o kinds material a n d

,

s piritual, or many kinds material or spiritual is not the primary prob

,

l em , but the nature and perdurability of the

phenomena which
interest us as functional activities of this reality We should have .

to settle the ulti m ate nature of this reality in its numerical aspects
independently of the problem of the nature and persistence of its

phenomena . Even o n the supposition that all reality is an innite
c ontinuum and homogeneous in kind there is the fact that different

phenomenal modes of its real or supposed activities have relatively
more or less permanence in comparison with each other and w e have
the problem of the reasons for this difference and it does not matter ,

w hether w e S peak and think in terms of monadic and atomic realities ,

a pparently independent of this one absolute being or not as appropriate ,

c enters of reference for them .The reasons for meaning and p er dur
ability are one thing and the reasons for unity of kind are another and ,

possibly represent a problem whose solutio n cannot be attempted u ntil

we know more about the facts of the cosmos than we now do At least .

it is certain that science went very far in the interpretation of cos mic
phenomena before it obtained any adequate evidence that would

even suggest a deriv ation of the elements , some seventy of them from ,
358 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O P H Y
.

a single form of energy But whether such a conclusion is possible

.

or not it is certainly not the prior question in the determination of the

,

meaning and persistence of all phenomena .

There is a fact of some importance in the consideration of all theo

ries designed to interpret phenomena and to render them int ell i
g ibl e
. It is that every theory scientic or philosophical has t wo
, ,

aspects which I shall call the exp l a n a t o r y and the e v i d en t i a l To

, .

be legitimate and acceptable , tha t is valid and believable every theory

, ,

must actually explain the phenomena whi ch it endeavors to make

intelligible and it must have evidence tha t the hypothesis is a fact If a
, .

theory does nothing more than explain an event it shows nothi n g more
than the fact that the phenomenon m ig ni have come into existence
in this particular way not that it actually did so The explanation alone
, .

shows what is p o ss i bl e not wha t is a f a c t To show that it is a fact

,
.

requires evidence O ften enough the explanation and the evidence

.

are so closely associated that the discovery of one is accompanied by

the discovery of the other But we often enough nd ourselves in the
.

situation where a possible explanati o n offers itself while w e are want

ing in the evidence which would prove our conj ecture or possibility
to be a fact Hence w e must distinguish between the conditions which
.

suggest the p o ss i bl e and those which suggest the a c t u a l explanation of

phenomena Antiquity specially and philosophers generally have
.

paid less attention to the evidential than to the explanatory functions

of theories The growth of the demand for evidence has been the
.

fruit of scepticis m and the application of scientic method which is

almost entirely the study of evidence to prove hypotheses which w ere
admitted only to be possible at the outset what are called working ,

hypotheses and so requiring additional evidence over and above what
,

suggested them in order to prove that they were true as well as pos
sible But antiquity was satised with consistency in the extension of
.

hypotheses It started with observed facts , as all thought must do

.
,

and was content if its theories explained the phenomena which it

wished to appear intelligible , and did little or nothing to veri fy its
assumptions The evidential problem did not present itself as nearly
.

so urgent as the explanatory The consequence was that it too often

.

mistook possibility for fact especially as the dogmatic spirit prevailed

,

over the s ceptical The slightest observations and analogies suf ced
.

to start and j ustify the widest and wildest speculations wh en the ev i

dential question was not respe cted The rise of the l att er problem
.

into consideration as well as the rise of indu ctive metho d s and exper i
,

mentation which were not applied by antiquity has resulted in the ,

 T H E OR I E S O F [ME T A PH YS I C S .
359

distinctio n between p bzl o s o p by and s ci en c e which did not exist for the
'

Greeks and hence with the absence of inductive and experimental

, ,

methods their reectio n took only the form of what w e s h ould cal l
,

philosophy the Speculative explanatio n of phenomena without
,

much regard to evidential considerations exemplifying verication .

B ut the moment that scientic method came into prominence and be

came the prevailing means of dis covering extending and verifying ,

truth , philosophy w a s left with the heritage of speculating in p o s

s ibil i t i es not in proving hypotheses by the investigation of facts
, Thi s .

wa s the condition in w hich Kant found and left it Philosophy after .

him could only determine what was a p r i o r i possible on su ch themes

as God F reedom and Immortality problems which it had started out

, ,

to settle and n o w abandons as insoluble by philosop h ic methods while ,

science was willing and glad to escape responsibility for either their

existence or solution The curious function of practical reason
.

,

which gave neither science nor philosophy to supply a satisfactory ,

argument for assertions which neither science nor philosophy could

justify by argu ments of any kind was a useful sop to appease the
,

appetite of Cerberus and allay the hungry instinct for persecution .

If therefore philosophy can not solve the prob lems assu med to be
, ,

appropriate to its methods and inquiries and amenable to everybody s

practical reason the legitimate power to settle su ch questions with
,

out a n appeal to rational procedure of any kind we must expect the ,

return of dogmatis m again on the ruins of rational thinking and t he

natural aba n donment of all philosophy as useless O nly science and .

superstition can remain in its place the one for the study of external
,

nature and the other for ignorance in regard to it while the contempla ,

t iv ely inclined man can only sit as a beggar on the desert waste of his

o wn theories and feed those hungry minds who have no sense of

humor with the husks of the past But human nature will not regu
.

late its conduct by mere possibilities especially when the pros and ,

cons are equally divided It will seek for evidence of wh at is a fact

.
,

and unless the possibilities of philosophy can give some credentials

for probable or certain re a lity they can not be respected and if they
, ,

do not they are naturally treated as so much ction Consequentl y

, .

science takes the place of philosophic reection and Hecuba forlorn , ,

a nd desolate on a lonely i sland still mourns the loss of her children .

,

Ancient thought could speculate but did less with the evidential
,

problem than its theories required Modern thought respects ev ide n

.

tial considerations where it is scientic and not philosophic and eschews ,

metaphysical poetizing In this it proceeds upon safe ground and

.
3 00 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

insists that all assertions shall substantiate their probabilities by facts

or conformity to facts This will make it necessary to examine meta
.

physical theories by this criterion at least to the extent of determining

,

their strength if not their legitimacy I mean therefore to investi

,
.
, ,

gate the controversy between materialis m and spiritualism in t h e light

of these t wo tests not to determine their truth but their strength as
, ,

theories of existence They do not have any interest for their mere
.

possibility to the modern mind but for their measure of conformity to

,

the facts H ence I S hall examine them in the light of both their ex
.

p l a n a t o r y and evidential claims w ithout pretending to dogmatiz e upo n

one S ide or the other as I am more interested in having their problems
,

frank ly recognized than to presume to solve them .

 CHA P TER X .

M AT E RIA L I S M .

I HA V E de n ed materialism in terms of its relation to spirituali s m ,

a nd so indicated t hat it undertakes to explain all phenomena as r e

s ul t a n t s of composition The elements which enter into this compo
s itiou it calls
matter as well as the compounds The questions
, .

r aised by the fact or assumption of change fro m the elementary to the

c omposite condition do not yet come into court but only the fact that ,

i t s conception of all things involved this transition and the rise of

phenomenal facts as the resultant of it But materialism has .

t aken two general forms The rst I have called pan materialism
.
-

a n d the second psychological materialism P sychological materialism

.

is convertible with the statement that consciousness is a function of the

b rai n or animal organism This denition and type of the general

t heory m eans to explain the origin and ground of m ental phenom

e na without assuming that the general cosmic problem requ ires to
h ave been solved in order to determin e the relation a n d meaning of
c onsciousness . Its truth is supposed to be compatible with the belief
t hat there may be other forms of reality in the world besides m atter .

In other words psychological materialism is conceived as compatible

,

w ith the denial of pan materialism -

It approaches the problem from
.

the narrower eld of human facts than that of cosmic facts on a larger
s cale. P an material i s m may have two forms the m onistic and the
-

pluralistic The monistic type is best represented historically by the

.

s ystems of Spinoza and the Eleatics , though there are aspects and
conceptions in these systems which might suggest an inj ustice in the
ex e m p l i c a t i o n The p luralistic type is best represented in the sys
.

tems of Democritus Epicurus and Lu cretius though there m a y be

, ,

reasons for disputing the puri ty of the m aterialistic conceptions of

some of them But granting the concess ions in each case they are
.
, ,

the best concrete examples of the different modes of thought that can
be selected The monistic type of the pan m aterialistic theory assumes
.
-

o n e homogeneous substance throughout all space which simply phe

n o m e n a liz es in the produ ction of the facts as we observe them and ,

n o other form of

substance exists The pluralistic type of this
.

theory assumes an indenite nu mber of substances which it calls atoms

36 r
362 TH E P R OB L E JII S OF PH IL O S OP H Y .

and accounts for all phenomena which are represented in t wo type s

of transient facts substances that are compounds of these primary
,

atoms or elements and their modal activities or properties But there

,
.

are several reasons for not discussing each type by itself In the rst .

place , the values of facts depend a s we have seen upon their ae tiology
, ,

and their degree of permanence In the second place all theories.

, ,

W hether monistic or pluralistic have to ta k e account of relative differ

,

e n ce s of permanence in phenomena without regard to question of

ultimate causes monistic or pluralistic
,
In the third place bot h.
,

monistic and pluralistic theories have taken the same position with
regard to the meaning and persistence of consciousness the pantheistic ,

View denying personal immortality quite as emphatically as atomi c

materialism We should only have to cha n ge our mode of expressio n
.

slightly in discussing the monistic theories instead of the pluralistic .

Consequently since the atomic doctrine of modern science perpetuate s

,

the historical conception of materialism we may best discuss the nature

and strength of the materialistic theory in terms that wil l be more easily
intelligible to the scientic man The statement ca n be modied l ater
.

for the monistic type .

Materialism developed into fairly denite form in the doctrines of

Democritus and Epicurus There were tendencies toward it fro m the
.

time of Thales in the material ca uses to which philosophers appealed

for the explanation of the cosmic arrangement about them But .

materialism did not get clear expression and detailed treatment until
Epicurus and Lucretius What distinguishes their doctrine is the
.

explicit a i r m at io n of the eternity of matter and motion and the atomic

nature of matter as a substance in its elementary form These may be .

said to be the fundamental assumptions of materialism in all its later

history There was one more that was fundamental to the Greek form
.

of the doctrine This w a s that which regarded the direction of thi s

.

assumed motion Both Democritus and Epicurus held that this motion
.

w a s downward De m ocritus however held that there wa s a differ

.
, ,

ence of velocity due to differences of weight and hence the atoms could ,

meet to form aggregates and compound wholes H is system required .

no additional force to accomplish union of the atoms But E p i .

c u r u s held that the downward motion of all atoms W a s the same in

velocity and introduced the free and spontaneous power of the atoms
,

to swerve aside and come into contact with oth er falling atoms to
produce the necessary union and composition which constituted the
nature of the sensible cosmos In the course of time owing to the
.
,

c ontradiction in the system which this assumption of Epicurus involved

,
 M A TE R I A L I S M .
3 63

this free a ction of the atoms was dropped out as also the downward ,

motio n of the elements owi ng to the doctrine of gravitation leaving

, ,

as the fundamental assumptions of the t h eory the permanence of mat

ter and motion with which to start in the explanation of cosmi c

phenomena .

I shall not at present concern myself with the question of t h e

legitimacy of this assumption but with its naturalness to the Gree k
,

mind and its explanatory power Whether rightly or wrongly the

.
,

Greek admitted the eternity of something , though he did not alway s

explicitly assume or assert the eternity of motion B ut he sa w abou t .

him the fact of change the fact which had produced the p hilos ophy of
,

H eraclitus , and the fact of union or composition of substances t o

produce the sensible realities about him , a fact which gave rise to all
the systems of cosmology All agreed as to the permanence of sub
.

stance whether they took the monistic or pluralistic conception of it
, ,

but differed in regard to the manner in which cosm ic arrangement s

were effected Empedo cles introd uced love and hate o r attra e
.
,

tion and repulsion ; An xagoras reason ; Aristotle , the prime

a
,

mover or God , a d eus ex m a c/557m as causes of motion and change ,
.

But the materialists assume the e qual eternity of motion or change

with that of substance or matter But how could D emocritus and .

Epicurus ma k e this assumption ! The answer is that the Gree k min d

had no conception of the attraction of gravitatio n and henc e it ex
plained the motion of fa lling bodies by their weight just as the untu ,

tored man does to day thus explicitly or implicitly assuming an i n

-

t er n a l
force instead of the apparently external force of gravita
tion to initiate movement If bodies fall because of their Weight and
.

there is an innite space in which to exist and fall they must be eter ,

nally in motion downward Whether true or false we thus see that

.
,

the assumption was a natural one for the Greek mind to make and
was in entire keeping an d consistency with the ideas of the time The .

same assumpti o n also led to the Epicurean do ctrine of the spon

t a n e o u s swerving of the atoms We see that the supposition tha t
.

bodies moved themselves by their weight involved the idea of self mo -

tion or internal action It was only another application of this idea t o

.

have the atoms move themselves laterally The conception w a s famil .

iar enough in the Greek notion of various moving obj ects such as the ,

running streams which came under the general idea of motion by

,

weight All motion was in fact conceived as self m otion where the
.
-

cause of it from without w a s not observed Hence the idea that all .

nature was animated by life Living water came fro m the self
.
3 64 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

motion of the water in t h e rivers and rills Hence it was quite natu .

ral for the materialist to a ssume t h e possibility of self motion in the -

a toms ,
not only downward but also laterally But natural as this con .
,

c e t io n was to the Gree k mind the doctrines of inertia and gravitation

p ,

eliminated it along with the causal inuence of weight from the as

s u m t i o n s of the materialistic theory and left only the permanence of
p
matter and motio n as the basal ideas of the do ctrine .

Now there was another set of ideas associated with the theory which
it is important to remar k The doctrine assu med both an identity and
.

a difference between the facts to be explaine d and the fa cts with which
the explanation w a s e ffected The facts to be explained were the cos
.

mos as sensibly known and the facts with which the explanation
,

was e ffected were the atoms or elements out of which the sensible cos

mos was formed We may call the two worlds the sensible and
.

the supersensible facts I call the atoms a supersensible reality because

.
,

however they were described they were not perceptible to sense ex ,

p e r i en c e They were described by qualities which could not be actually

.

perceived but which were the same in k i n d conceptually as some of

,

those that were actually perceived , namely , hardness shape size , , ,

weight etc Both the sensible and supersensible realities were called
, .

matter The natural reason for this w a s of course the Greek pre
.
, ,

disposition to monistic thought even when its philosophy was pluralistic ,

and also its na i ve view of perception which neither realized the dist in c
tion between the subjective and the objective governi n g all modern
thought except perhaps in the Sophists whose point of view was soon
, ,

abandoned nor assumed any antithesis between sensory and intellectual

,

k nowledge with the tendency to the method of abstraction from the

s ensory in the determination of the nature of things not actually
sensible Sense a nd intellect with them usually gave the same ki n d
.

of knowledge at least in its essential characteristics and hence with
, ,

a predisposition to monism as against dualism it was only natural to

the Greek to apply the same term to the complex and elementary for m
o f substance in spite of the sensible form of the one and the super
sensible form of the other The modern theory of gravity and the ih
.

d estructibility of m atter as scientically proved by means of gravity

gives scientic justication to the assumption of the identity between
the two conditions of this reality a justication which the Greek could ,

not make so clear though he was probably inuenced by it in his

,

estimation of the material causes that entered into the formation of

ordinary co mpounds Modern experi ment however has been able to
.
, ,

isolate the invisible and supersensible condition of matter and fro m the ,
 M A T E R IAL I S M .
3 65

e ffect which gravity indirectly produces i n the sensible world ( exp er i

ment of weighing gases after combustion ) we infer the identity of the
supersensible condition with the sensible in respect to its fundamental
nature The Greek however could not qu ite so e ffectively support
.
, ,

his assumption and hence had fewer facts and means at his command
,

to dispute any a ttempt to question the right to call his elementary units

or atoms matter
. But he made the assumption whether with or ,

without good reasons which we are not n o w investigating and our prob ,

lem is to see its e ffect upon the conceptions which governed the e xpl a
nation o f phenomena .

We can understand the real or supposed e xplanatory power of the

materialistic theory in antiquity only by observing the relation be
tween its assu mptions and others associated with the same stage of
reection The modern scientist will remark m uch that is exceed
in gl y na i ve in the materialism of Epicurus and Lu cretius and rec
o g n iz e certain fundamental weaknesses but he will also a c kn o w l
,

edge the lineage o f his o w n speculative view of the world The .

atomic doctrine and the theory of ev olution are but extensions and
improvements of the materialism of the Greeks which began in n a i ve ,

attempts to explain the cosmos G reek speculations were so satu

.

rated w ith the assu mption that the cosmos was a collective whole o r
ga n iz e d out of elements tha t it was quite ready for the atomic theory
when it was proposed and they had been forced by various inuences
,

to abandon the older anthropomorphic conceptions of the world s

evolution or creation and began in the recognition of the four ele

ments to admit the plurality of the substances which composed the
world All substance appeared to the Gree k s to be permanent in it s
.

non apparent nat ure at least and H eraclitu s in his conception of per
-

p et u al ux in the cos mos prepared the w a y to place the eternity of motion

alongside that of substance and there wer e minds like that of P lato
, ,

even w h o were quite ready to accept this eternity of motion or cha n ge ,

,

provided we could also accept the existence and permanence of the

substratum of which motion was a mode of action This was the .

last most important step in the evolution of the idea of f a t e out of

mythology into the l a w of nature a conception which represented
,

a xed order not admitting of any alternative courses in its tendencies

and e e ct s and which was extended so mu ch further by making mo
,

tion or the process of forming collective wholes in nature as xed

, ,

a s the materials used in the process and whose changes ,

collo cations , ,

and combinations had presumably been reg ul a ted by some intelligence

according to Anaxagoras P lato Aristotle and even the Stoics
, , .
3 66 TH E P R OB L E ZI/I S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

T hese could well concede the unchangeability of the materia l s of the

c osmos if you would grant them the causal initiation of motion and

c hange in the collocation of the elements But the materialistic .

t heory m a de motion and apparently on good grounds

, equally xed ,

a s the mat er ials involved in cosmic evolution and as a consequence ,

t here appeared no reason or occasion for the intervention of s u per

n atural forces in the regulation of things Hence the gods that were a l
.

l owed by grace to exist w ere placed in the int er m u n d ia and m ade to serve
a function li k e that of Kant s
Ding an Sich
They could be known .

but they did nothing They might w a tch events but they could not
.
,

m ake the m Now once having gotten the eternity of motion admitted
.

there wa s a clear eld for at least a plausib ly mecha n ical explanation

o f t h e cosmos Certain subsidiary assumptions h a d to be ma de in a d
.

d ition to the two fundamental facts and these subs i diary hypotheses
were drawn from empirical observation and the persistence of ,

matter and motion through all conditions was not a direct object of
e xperience ,
though assumed to be implied by it The permanence of .

m otion was supposed to be a consequence of the fact of weight in the

e lements w hich existed in empty space As these were made to fall .

by their weight the problem to be solved by subsidiary hypotheses

was that of collocation Weight being the cause of motion in empty
.

s pace differences of weight would naturally give rise to differences of

,

v elocity in t h e falling atoms and thus contact and aggregation might

f ollow . This w a s the view of Democritus as we have seen Also , .

w e have see n that Epicurus in view of the equal velocity of all atoms
,

downward had to provide for free lateral m ovement in order to

,
'

e ffect a union But neither philosophy loo k ed beyond t h e fact of

.

mechanical aggregation and did n o t provide for any persistence even

t emporally of the colloc ation which they wished to show was possib l e

in accordance with n atural laws The doctrine of chemical ai n

.

i ty in mo d ern times compensated for this imperfection Neither did .

the ol der materialist tell us why the evolution should proceed from
c haos to order fro m separated to collocated conditions
,
He was con .

tent to explain if only plausibly in terms of actua l facts the existing

, ,

c osmic order without raising questio n s as to the nature of the pre

,

vio n s condition though it is cl ear that he assu med it to be a chaos just

, ,

a s all philosophers of that time d id whether the assumption were ,

warranted or not It was easy to conceive that collo cation could take
.

place after the ma n ner suppo sed if no questions were asked about,

the reasons for the p a r t i cu l a r order observed and if the problem of ,

i nter n a l and chemical action were disregarded The G reek m ind was .
 M A TE R I A L I S M 367

s atised with mechanical collocation for explanation and it remained

o nly to explain why a p a r t i c u l a r order was the result of the pro cess .

This was boldly said to be a mere matter of ck a n ce a conception that ,

was supp o sed t o excl u de purpose but to admit necessary causality

'

The t heory thus stood for the exclusion of intelligence from the proc
e ss of cosmic evolution and for its explanatio n by mechanical forces

a lone . No w mechanical action meant not necessarily the initiation ,

o f motion from without as it does with modern application of ma

,

chinery but uniform action according to a xed l a w or set of con
,

dit i o n s which were purp oseless and which ad m itted no freedom vari ,

ation , or alternatives i n t h e production of cosmic order F inding .

matter and motion xed in their nature and amount according to the ,
' ' '

maxim ex m kzl o m k zl t and the modes of collocation and union de

'

pendent upon actions that no one presumed to regard as intelligently

directed the do ctrine of mechanical creation or evolution only com
,

bi ne d them in a way to suggest either the sup er uo u s n es s of the

supernatural , or the necessity of transferring its functions to condi
tions antecedent to those which were supposed to be existing facts and

the recognizable cause of the phenomenal world But as these .

a ntecedent conditions were the eternity of matter and motion and the ,

suf ciency of certain forces , eventually assumed to be internal to ,

account for changes of direction and collocation no supernatural ,

antecedent was necessary even if supposable as a possible explana

,

tion Hence the original assumptions excluded the usefulness and

.

necessity of intelligence from the cause of phenomena whatever ,

r elation to the order intelligence might be supposed to have when

gra nted to exist The materi a list tacitly assu med that purposeful
.

action must either be coincident with all motion whatsoever or be

evidenced in the initiation of some change or modied direction of
e xisting movements toward an end or result not naturally indicated in

the existing order but as the aetiological and teleological order in the
,

rst instance coincided there was no evidence of the teleological and .

,

a s there was no external initiation of motion in the system there could ,

o n the second alternative , b e neither teleological act ion nor the evi

d ence of it Consequently the materialist was satised with the a ti

.

o logical explanation in m echanical terms that is in showing h o w a , ,

fact came into existence and could not recogniz e any purpose in v o l v
,

i ng the supposition of an initial cause other than existing motion and

the natural properties of the elements The cru cial weakness of .

the theory was its exclusive application to the proble m and explana
tion of collocation and not the dissolution of organic compounds and ,
3 68 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O P H Y
.

the admission of chance to slur over the appearance of teleological

order which the assumption of chance whatever it meant a c , ,

t u a l l y presupposed .

The materialistic theory has less dif culties for the modern ph il o so
pher than for the ancient because w e have assumed or proved the exist
ence of forces which are supposed to explain what the ancient
materialists either ignored or did not know We shall come to thes e .

when the modern view is more specically described and dened But .

it w a s an attempt to correct the older View which had various weak

ness Among these the rst to be noted h a s just been mentioned
.
, ,

namely the tendency only to explain the s t a t u s ga o of things t h e

, ,

present condition and not the future order which w a s a result of a

,

dissolution of the present It had a means to explain h o w the present

.

collocations of matter were effected but it ignored the explanation of

,

change back into the elementary state again though this was quite as ,

much an observed fact as any combination of elements H o w the atoms .

could be separated after they once got together was not indicated It .

su i ce d the materialist of that time thought if he could explain h o w

, ,

elements got together without extraneous a n d intelligent agency But .

,

though it was j ust as incumbent to explain the fa ct of dissolution rather

than dogmatically state that it was a universal fact he had no forces ,

in sight to make it intelligible .

But a m ost important weakness of a positive kind in the ancien t

materia lism was its theory of the soul not because it was false but
, ,

because it w a s neithe r consistent with the me c hanical theory nor n eces

sary to the conclusion which was drawn in regard to its destiny This .

weak ness was not remark ed so far as I know by ancient philosophers

, , .

The Epicurean theory of the soul was not that it was a bodily function
,

as it should have been regarded but that it was a nely organiz ed form
,

of m atter To have made the mechanical theory complete it should

.

have explained a l l mental activities and phenomena as functions of the

collocations of matter represented by the bodily organism But it con .

c e iv e d the soul a s a material organism other than the body and hence

mental activities as functions of a nother subject than the body proper .

What the reasons were for admitting this view of the case is not a '

matter of importance but only the fact that the admission was an
,

inconsistency in the theory No doubt the harmony of the supposi

.

tion as a fact with preexisting and existing beliefs availed to conceal

the sup er uo usn ess and contradictory nature of the admission as it ,

was in entire agreement with previous philosophic conceptions of the

soul human or divine, as a rened form of material reality but
, ,
 M A TE R IA L I S M .
3 69

this acceptability did not make it any more compatible with mech anical
theories intended to subordi nate all intelligence to organis m s with
which it was associated and to exclude the possibility of teleological
action from the cosmos .

No less striking in the system was the Epicurean denial of the

immortality of the soul after refusing to treat it as a function or phe
no m e n a l activity of the bodily organism It wa s quite consistent .

with the prevailing belief that all collocations of matter were transient
,

and perishable to deny immortality but it w a s not necessary to go out

, ,

of the way of the the o ry to assert the fact If the soul was a rened .

form of organized matter existing beside and in the body there is ,

nothing in the dissolution of this body to necessitate the disappearance

or disappearance of the soul from existence If it had been treated as .

a phenomenal resultant of composition or bodily collocatio ns of

matter its consequent disappeara n ce at death would be a matter of
,

course But conceived as a form of matter a substantive collocation

.
,

of ne material elements there is no inherent reason in this fact why it

,

should be dissolved with it even if it be intrinsically perishable as an

,

organism ; especially as Epicurean materialism was not advanced to

explain dissolution but the composition o f matter It was the belief
, .

in the transitory nature of all complex organisms that prompted the

denial of persistence after death but there was nothing in the co n cep
,

tion of the soul s relation to the organism as it was u nderstood by

,

ancient materialism to necessita te its annihilation at the decomposition

,

of the body whatever might happen to it later owi ng to other a ssum p

,

tions Hence Epicurus and Lucretius simply went out of their w ay to

.

deny a doctrine which it was irre l evant to deny in a theory explaining

the origin of things unless mental functions w ere assumed to be an
,

incident only in the composition explained Modern thought would .

not suppose that d eath necessarily ended consciousness if it conceived

it as the function of another than the bodily organism It would have .

to suppose a second death or a coincidental death with the bodily

organism on other grounds than that of bodily death to acco mplish
that end So evident is this that the materialistic theory of the ancients
.

would probably not have created any opposition but for this irrelevant
den ial of a religiou s belief It was all the more unnecessary to make
.

the denial because the materialist admitted the existence of the gods as
a concession to religion though he gave them no duties or privileges
,

in the government of the cosmos and he might have been as prudent ,

or concessive in m a intaining silence on the destiny of the soul when ,

its disappearance was not necessarily involved in the process dissolving

24
3 70 TII E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

the body H e should have specied the cause for the simu ltaneous
.

dissolution of the t wo realities the physical body and the soul

, .

The point of possible attac k on the theory I shall notice again when I
come to consider t h e development of spiritualism But the assumption .

that all organisms were transient w a s so prevalent so axiomatic as it ,

were that the philosophic defect of the theory was concealed and only
,

its attitude against the religious position recogniz ed Its causal weak .

ness remained undetected H ence what consistency it obtained with

.

the assumption of the transient nature of all composite organisms it

lost in its neglect of the principle of causality which was the more
fundamental of its postulates and which required that the coincidence

of the soul s disappearance with the body should be explained and not
merely asserted .

Another important weakness in the mechanical theory was the

assumption of free agency in the atoms to swerve laterally from their
vertical motion in order to effect union with each other The supposi .

tion was compatible enough with the idea of internal forces but it was ,

more gratuitous than that of weight to explain downward motion ,

because no sensible facts could be produced to ma k e the hypothesis

plausible It was a pure fabrication to explain the fact of collocation
.

which was impossible o n the other assumptions of his doctrine Nor .

could any excuse be sought as Epicurus did seek it in the necessity

, ,

of defending the freedom of the human will as his doctrine required ,

him to explain away that freedom not assume or defend it If he was

, .

to accept the truth of free will that is the j udgment of the mind as to
, ,

that truth it might be just as easy to accept its opinions on other funda
,

mental conceptions opposed to his o w n It is probable however that

.
, ,

Epicurus and the materialists of the time conceived freedom of will

after the manner of many persons of that age namely as implying , ,

Ga / v i c e or the capacity to act lawlessly and in irregular unpredictable

g

w ays . T h is was consistent with the chance which he admitted
into the interpretation of phenomena but it was incompatible with the
,

exclusion of purpose which it was the obj ect of chance to exclude

, .

F ree will involves purpose no matter h o w capricious its action may

,

be so that the materialists of the older type would either have to sur
,

render the free agency of the atoms or so change their idea of chance
a s to m ake it as consistent with teleology as they supposed it wa s with

causality or ae tiology .

There were several elements of strength in the theory The rst .

of these lay in the appeal to known facts The empirical tendency .

of Aristotle to stu dy the facts of nature in a way quite di fferent from

 M A TE R I A L I S M .
37r

P lato resulted in the attempt to nd ca uses and exp l an ations in actua l

experience as well as the phenomena to be exp l ained , a procedure
w hi ch was n o t completely effected by Aristotle , owin g to the fact tha t
h is
p rime mover or G od was placed outside the system But he
.

s et the example of a ccepting se ns e perception as a more reliable source

of knowledge than Pl ato , and it was only fo ll owing hi s method to look

f o r causal principles i n experien ce . No w the materi alists t e
m ained i n the system , and in it as sensibly o bserved , for their causes ,
a n d coul d al l the more co nsistently do this , because Greek thought

g enerally had this conception of causal action i n spite of the appearance

t o the contra r y. Even when it accepted panpsychis m , creative intell i
gence , reaso n or rst causes , these agencies were not only conceived as
i mm a n e n t b ut were a l so conceived as di ffering only in degree of n e
,

ness from ordinary reality , no t abs olutely di fferent in kind nor t r a n s ,

c en d en t in existen ce. Aristotle h a d thus departed from the prevalent

c onception of c ausa l ity in G reek speculation when be conceived hi s

prime mover as outside the system only to start it and then ever
a fte r ward to merely watch it in contemplative idleness though he w as
,

consistent enough with the doctrine of inertia an d the as sumption tha t

change must have a be ginning and external cause B ut the material
.

i st s had not acted on any clear assumption of inertia and hence returned
to dis cover their causes i n the system of facts and realities whose col
l ocations and changes were to be explained , thus remaining by the
m ost natural traditions of Greek philosophic reection .

I have not exp l ained why the fundamental assumption t h at matter

w as etern al or indestructi ble was a feature of strength to the theory and
w h y it was so readi l y acceptable to Greek thought The na i ve con '

c ep t i o n of matter previous to the pe r iod of p hi losophic reection

was t hat of th e sensib le world To this point of view matter was
.

phenomenal or transient , perhaps without reference to its expl an a
tion in terms of composition but simply as a fact B ut however this
.

may have been , 1t was soon abandoned for the idea of age n cies or sub
stances that were not phenomenal at all , but eterna l This w as .

brought about by the further observation that this phen o menal

matter trans ient reality , was also composite and tha t its transiency was
,

i n some way connected with its composite nature . Hence the cha nge
which demonstrated its trans iency and dissolved its complexity r e
quired some explanation The appeal r st ma de was of cours e to
.

c i en t causes to explain the collocations and c h an es , but the Greek

e
g

m ind also wa nted to know w hat the m a t er i a l causes of sensible
r eality were and these it conceived as some sort of stuff or substance
372 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OP H Y .

which might constitute the nature of composite things rather tha n ex

plain h o w they became composite Now material causes ha ve
.

always been associated with the idea of m ore or less identity between
antecedent and consequent so that the most natural assumption for the
,

Greek mind to mak e in proposing the material cause of reality was

to suppose that the essential characteristics of the compounds would be
found in the elements and this fact could well be taken as a just i ca
,

tion for the extensio n of the meaning of the term applied to composite
wholes to that of the elements In this manner the term matter w as
.

naturally extended from the sensible to the supersensible world of atoms .

Now while the conception matter was before applied exclusively

to the sensible and phenomenal world it no w applied in differ ,

ently to the transient and permanent reality both the phenomenal ,

an d the non phenomenal condition of substance , and without any

-

cons ciousness of contradiction or paradox Becoming applicable t o .

the persistent o r permanent elements out of which sensible reality wa s

formed , it denoted a fact w h ich did not require explanation as did th e

sensible material world of previous thought , and all that was left
to account for was the transition from one condition to another not th e ,

passage from nothing to reality as the theory of creative causality

,

was afterw a rds conceived We shall dis cover later another and simi
.

lar extensio n of the meaning of the term matter as conceived i n
modern times But in ancient materialism the inclusion of the idea o f
.

m atter in the supersensible availed to evade a problem which is
most naturally suggested by the distinction between sensible and super
sensible reality This is the question o f the right to denominate by
.

the same term implying their identity facts whose distincti o n as sen
sible and supersensible implies a difference They may be partly .

identical a n d partly different or wholly di fferent They could not be

, .

wholly identical without being exposed to the accusation that they

really explained nothing in that they only substituted one phenom

enal reality as the antecedent of another when it was phenomenal
reality that asked for causal explanation Hence the choice had to be
.

between the t w o alternatives partial identity and di fference or total

,

di fference The former was the position of materialism and the latter
.

of spiritualis m as developed later But ancient materialism in taking

.

the course which it adopted did not discover clearly if at all the prob , ,

l em involved in this extension of the concept matter to denote a
world of reality which it had to distin guish so radical ly from the sen
sible worl d If it had been content with phenome n al causation it
.

might have been different but instead of this it insisted upon th e

,
 M A TE R I A L I S M .
3 73

s upersensible explanation of sensible reality and it was a grave question

whether it did not either evade an issue or beg the question in calling
t his non-
phenomenal
world matter
P lato faced this problem
.

a n d had his solution and it refused to extend the conceptio n of matter

,

to include both realities He retained matter for the

. phe
n o m en al world of change and adopted ideas for the supersensible
w orld , by whi ch he meant the formative active , permanent and t el eo
,

l ogical p rinciples determining the sensible cosmic order whose origin ,

m eaning and tenden c ies had to be made intelligib le by them But the .

Epicureans did not see that it was the differences between the sensible
a n d supersensible worlds that rem a ined unexplained by their co n cep

tion of the pro cess of evolution as with all theories that rest wholly
,

s atised with the pri n ciple of identity or material cause s alone in the

explanation of things They had started to explain the world by a n

.

application of the principle of material causation based upon identity

in all its details and were consistent e nough both in their admission
,

o f a soul other than the organism and in the assumption of the persist

e nce of motion ,
but they did not see or explain the rise of phe

n omena , functions modes o f activity properties etc in conne ction
, , , .
,

with organis ms or composite wholes that is modes which were not

, ,

present in the elements The principle of identity which lay at the

.

basis of their whole causal procedure generally did not account for
these increments to the totality of existence These modes were not .

found in the antecedents and must according to the standard of exp la n

a tion adopted be independen t facts of some kind Now what were the .

causes of these additional facts ! A step in the dire ction of the

a dmission of e f cient in addition to material causes was made in the .

recognition of the initiative agency of free movement later a lly in the

a toms to produce compounds but w e have found this inconsistent with
,

the system on other grounds and without it or some equivalent

, ,

ei cie nt causal agency the increments cannot be accounted for on the

assumptions of th e ancient materialis m .

Ancient materialism did not survive Grae co Roman civilization -

having been supplanted by the spiritualism of Christia n ity until the ,

Renaissance and modern science revived it with improve ments and

changes effected by conceptions and facts of which the Greek knew
,

very little and in some cases did not suspect What is implied by .

Chemistry on the one hand and the g reat doctrines of Copernica n

,

astronomy and Newtonian gr a v it at io n o n the other to say nothing of

, ,

the immense mas s of fa cts which led to and conrmed these hypotheses ,

wa s not suspected by the G reek To the ancients nature was much

.
3 74 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

more mysterio us than to the modern scientist and general observer of

its course Though we nd the consciousness of a xed order of
.

things even in the mythological conceptions belonging to the anthropo

morphic period of reection namely the idea of f a t e , and that of in
, ,

variable mechanical la w in the late period of speculation character

iz ed by the materialists and a substitute for
fate yet this la w
,

was a very abstract one and not worked out in concrete phenomena by
the use of seco ndary causes as modern science does it The con
, .

c ep t i o n was the vague general one that came from the observation of

the most general phenomena of nature and was the reex of the con
,

s c io u s n e ss of a po wer to which all nite things were subordinated and ,

subordinated in a way that made no room for intelligent and moral

action in the system which was always conceived by antiquity a s
,

capricious But there was mystery enough left in nature after this
.

universal l a w w a s admitted to make room for all sorts of super
natural hypotheses especially that the mode of collo cating the falling
,

atoms in the Epicurean system appeared too simple and na i ve to satisfy

all questions H ence in spite of the recognition of universal law
.

there was room for such hypotheses as Aristotle s doctrine that the

stars were divine the Christian interposition of God to create the
,

supersensible realities which might form themselves into worlds in

various ways the later direct action of God to sustain the celestial
,

bodies in their places or their motions and various types of miracle s

,

to explain the phenomena that were apparent exceptions to this
universal l a w .

But modern science improved the atomic doctrine so that it could

really or apparently solve problems which the ancients if they had ,

fully realiz ed them would have been obliged to aba ndon as i n exp l ic
,

able by their assumptions F or instance after admitting that impact

.
,

due to the lateral swerving of the atoms resulted in rebounding h o w ,

could the ancient materialist either obtain a reunion or assu re any x

ture to his collocations Even his mechanical union could not rema in
.

with any permanence whatever on his own principles Hence he .

needed chemical af nity to both prevent immediate separation after

swerving had produced contact Again I have called attention to the
.

fact that ancient atomism could not account for the appearance of n ew
qualities in the compounds that were not found in the elements by any
application of the principle of identity especially that it took a mon
,

i st ic view of the nature of the atoms These were supposed to be all

.

of the same kind and di ffered only in shape siz e weight etc that is , , , .
,

quantit atively , not qualitatively Nothing was said about their pos
.
 M A TE R I A L I S M 3 75

sessing individually all the qualities as in the Leibnitz ian monads

, ,

which mig ht account for the variable and multip l e qualities of sensible
reality Anaxagoras solved this question by supposing that the origina l
.

elements , h o m o io m er iw di ffered in kind but represented in nature the

,

quality which appeared in the compound That is , the ele m ents car
.

ried over into their compound the qualities which it possessed , so that
the doctrine of materia causation was consistently adjusted in his
syste m ei cient causality having been invoked in the activity of reason
,

disposing the cosmic order of composition or collocation The h o m o io .

meri ze differed in kind in compari son with each o ther but not in com ,

parison with their compounds except as these compounds represented

,

different collocations or combinations of elemen ts and esta blished ,

an identity between the elementary and the composite condition of

matter inte l ligence being the agent of the combination But the .
,

Epicureans could not take this vie w of the case for the reason that ,

they admitted no intel ligent disposing agent and there were no differ
en c es of kind bet w een t h e atoms so that the principle of identity em

,

bodied i n their material causality had a variation before it which it
could not exp l ain even thou gh its mechanical conception of ef cient
,

causality in the lateral swervin g of the ato ms be admitted either as a

fact or as suf cient to account for the combination of them .

But the modern atomic doctrine got rid of all these dif culties
attendin g the applica tion of the principle of identity to t wo worlds an d
of a superintending o r disposing creator by afrming frank ly the dif
ference in kind of the atoms and the instal l ation of a system of internal
forces which wou ld supplant the necessity of an appeal to external
agencies like intelligence The assumptions of qualitative di fferences
.

in the atoms and of internal forces were complementary of each
other as the modern view of the atomic and supersensible real ity was
,

a sort of compromise betw een the conceptions of Anaxa goras a n d

Democritus While it a ssumes qualita tive differen ces in the element s
.

it does not assume nu merically as many kinds of elements as t h e

Ana xa gorean theory has to do in order to explain al l the di fference s
,

in the sensible world but intr oduces t h e conception of internal m o d i

,

catio ns o r the evolutio n of actual qualities from latent or potential

capacities in the combination of the elements thus not making the ,

number of elements equal to all the observable qualities of sensible

'

reality On the other hand , while assumi n g th e capacity of m o di c a

.

tions internal ly initiated to account for qualitative differences in com

pounds tha t were not found in the elements this conception was lim
,

ite d by the admission of a limited qualitative difference among the

3 76 TH E PR OB L E M S OF p ix
/ 02
9 OP H 17 .

atoms It was possible to have been content with one or the other of
.

the assumptions either the Anaxagorean involving its conception of

,

differences equal to those of sensible reality with internal forces only ,

to combine them or the Democritean involving absolute identity and

,

s implicity in the atoms with in t ernal forces to modify the modes of

,

a ctivity represented by the qualitative diff erences i n sensible reality .

But modern atomism h a s adopted both hypotheses with limitations and

qualication possibly for greater security fro m dif culties But what
, .

ever the inuence that led to it the assu mption is as described The
, .

Leibnitz ian monads , which are essentially atomic in their nature were ,

a sort of combination o f all conceptions inas m u ch as each individual

possessed all the complexity qualitative l y that the sensib le world pos
sesses wit h only quantitative di fferences in the qu al ities possessed as
compared with other mona ds and without any mechanical or chem
,

i cal inuence upon each other The general scientic neglect of this
.

c onceptio n , however ma k es it u nnecessary to more than men tion it in

,

this connection and only to show its logical lineage The actual de .

v el o
p m e n t of the materialistic theory Leibnitz claiming that his w a s
,

not materialistic was in the direction of the assumptions just outlined

,

previous to the observations about Leibnitz But recently in the .

,

speculation of S ir O liver Lodge Sir William Crookes and others, ,

there has been a reversion to the ancient assumption that all the atoms
were qualitative ly alik e with a tendency to believe that even the
,

atoms are no t perfectly simple but compou nds of some still more
,

simple and ultimate realities though they may still surmount the dif
,

c ul t i e s of the ancient theory by the supposition of internal forces ,

or latent capacities for variation of activity to account fo r the di ffer ,

e n ces of sensible reality H o w these assumptions a ffect their expla na

.

tion may be a matter of doubt With that question I have nothing to

.

do at present I am only indicating in what m anner modern atomic

.

materialism endeavors to eliminate the dif culties encountered by the

ancient The development of the modern doctrine is as follows
.
.

F irst we have Copernican astronomy which destroyed the ancient

conception that the earth was the center of things , or the point toward
which all things moved or at least the point from which all things had
,

to be explained and estimated The whole nai ve sensible idea of the

'

u niverse was com pletely altered by it forcing speculative thought to,

reconstruct its theories of t h e formation of the cosmos in many respects .

Then came Newtonian gravitation which placed i n matter instead ,

o f the direct intervention of God the power to inuence the behavior

,

o f the planetary and celestial system and to balance the motions whose
 M A TE R IA L I S M .
377

c onception Copernicus had modied It was quite natural that Ne wton

.

s hould be attac k ed for materialis m and at h eism , as there can be no

force in spite of his actual quali
d oubt that his use of an attractive ,

ca t i o n of the principle by the st atement that it wa s a mathematical

r epresentation of the relations r a ther tha n an indication of e fficient

c auses ,
suggested an origin i n matter instead of outside it of the
inuence that regulated the motions and positions of cosmic bodies .

Then came the nebular hypotheses of Laplace which did for time in
the cosmos what Ne wton had done for space It used the dissipation .

o f heat and attendant or concomitant consequences to explain the

gradual formation of the present collocations of matter in the universe

instead of appealing to supernatural action F inally D a rwinian evo
.

lut i o n did for the organic world in time what Laplace had done for the
inorganic and Newton did for space in both the organic and inorganic .

Nothing w a s left for appeal to i m material forces in any of these
great hypotheses In addition to these out of alchemy came Chemistry
.
,

with its doctrine of ai n ity between atoms to explain their combina

tions and with the assumption that the elements differed qualitatively
,

from each other The conception of internal forces became so ex

.

tended as to wholly supplant that of supernatural interference or action

as conceived by the perio d intervening between the decay of Gr ae co
Roman civilization and the revival of modern learning The atomic .

doctrine was so conceived as to account for all the real or supposed

di fferences and identities between the sensible and supersensible worlds
and to leave no room for external ef cient causes as previously con
c e i v ed .

Ancient materialism if called upon to account for the sensible d if

,

f er e n c es in things with its principle of identity material causality , ,

a nd only quantitative differences in the a toms and no creative function

in su ch e f cient causes as it imagined would have to say that all quali

,

t at i v e differences were illusions and not representative of reality

,
It .

would very well seek j ustication for this view in the psychology of
the Sophists who maintained the subj ectivity and relativity of all

sensory appearances .

In this wa y the superse nsible world could

very well be supposed to retain its identity in the phenomenal in
,

so far as its real nature was concerned while the appearance of their
,

d ifferences qualitatively would be an illusion The illusory nature of

.

some of the sense judgme nts was actually admitted by some of the
materialists But there w a s a Nemesis in this concession to what m ay
.

be called the idealistic criteria of truth not because the subj ective point
,

of view in any w a y displaces the problem of transiency and permanence ,

3 78 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

but because the original basis of the materialistic judgment was what
was supposed to ta k e place in the sensible world The ground for .

the persistence of motion was the sensory observation of what weight

effected in causing bodies to fall in empty space or a non resisting -

medium But we cannot play fast and loose with sense perception
.
,

a ccepting it when it favors our assumptions and rejecting it w hen we

get into di f culties with it We can ha rdly accept sensory criteria for
.

the identities and rej ect the m for the differences in the sensible world .

O u r judgments must be consistent and drawn from the same source .

But the modern reconstruction of the theory eliminates these di f culties

partly by the supposition of qualitative di fferences in the atoms and
partly by its conception of internal forces
What the qualitative
.

differences might not explain the internal activities might and v i ce

v er sa O n the one hand t h e d iscovery of a limitation in the number
,

of elements made it necessary to likewise limit the inuence of quali

t a t i ve di fferences w hich did not correspond to the rich variety of

nature and on the other the evident limitations to variation and pro
,

duction of qualitative d ifferences in the various elements was very well

complemented by the actual variety of qualitative distinction in the
atoms so that between the two assumptions almost any di f culty could
,

be surmounted In addition to this the subjective point of vie w was

.
,

admitted to explain certain facts without asserting that they were illu

sions even though the sensory presentation d id not represent or
,

show any features of identity between itself and its cause The .

principle of e f cient causality could be invoked to eliminate the a ssu m p

tion of illusion while subjectivity could be invo k ed to suggest the place
of non sensory j udgment in the determination of the nature of the
-

reality which was to be explained by the atomic theory But even .

with all its advantages in this complex adjustment to the needs of the
materialisti c doctrine the recognition of the subj ective limitation o f
,

knowledge or the non representative nature of sensory judg
-

ments so to S peak carries with it the suggestion of revolutionary

, ,

methods and postulates It insinuates that the idealistic method is

.

the proper one and if we accept the position that idealism is in all its
,

aspects O pposed to materialism there is in this admission of the ideal

,

i st ic postulate the beginning of the end of materialism But distin .

gu i sh ing as I do here between the epistemological question of the

, ,

source of knowledge in which the idealist may be correct and the
,

metaphysical question of the nature and action of the real whatever ,

t h source of our
e

kno wledge of it , the materialist may still be con
sistent if he abides by the position that intellectual instead of sensory
 M A TE R J A L I S M .
3 79

processes shall be the determinants of his j udgments and if he main ,

ta i n s that whatever the nature of any reality assumed the relations

,

between it and its phenomena remain the sa m e and that it is his
proble m to deter m ine those relation s in terms of the conception of
xed law or uniformities of coexistence and sequence whic h better
,

consist with the fact of observation than ideas that at least apparently
imply their arbitrary variability .

But omitting the point of attack by idealism for the present , the
circumstance to be remar k ed about the change from the view that all
qualitative differences in the sensible world were represented in the
supersensible world only by quantitative differences to the view that,

there were qualitative differences in the supersensible as well as in

the sensible world even though the conception of qualitative and
,

quantitative had changed in the meanwhile was a step in the di

,

rection of abandoning the simplicity of ancient materialism It sup .

posed the self existence of various ki n d s of matter or reality whic h

-

nevertheless are so harmo n iously adj usted to each other in their rela
tions and interactions as to suggest the same questions that are pro
posed by the various relations interactions and similarities and dif
, ,
~

t erences in the sensible world questions that ought not to be as k ed of

,

a world supposed to be inexplicable in every respect In ancient ma

.

t er i a l i s m the only query possible would regard the matter of number ,

that is why the atoms should be plural at all The modern query
,
.

would have to concern qualitative di fferences as well as numerical

plurality in the ultim a te elements of reality This increases the c o m
.

p l e xit y of the modern theory That it proposed a speculative question

.

beyond the assu med fact of qualitative di fferences is shown by the

circumstances that the atomic ele m ents became subj ect to classication
by Mendelejeff with the result that the doctrine of e volution apparently
became applicable to the very atoms ! O riginally th e atomic theory
assumed that the elements were underivable ultimate and eternal but
, ,

this explanation of the m from some more ultimate and simple form
of matter subjected the very elements to a derivation which Greek
materialism intended to stop with the sensib l e cosmos This conclu .

sion is an abandonment of the atomic theory of matter and if ma ,

t e r ia l i sm remains at all after it the conception of matter has c h anged

to the Spinoz istic , and only internal forces whatever these mean
,

after this change are left to explain the qualitative di fferences of

,

matter as it is sensibly known .

There is another consideration which gave ancient materialism

some advantages Inertia played a very small part in it The initial
. .
3 80 TH E P R OB L E AI S OF PH I L OS O P H Y .

i mpulse to the doctrine of falling bodies did not suggest it as a funda

m ental property o f matter nor was it required to k eep bodies in
,

m otion when this was once initiated Anaxagoras and Aristotle .

a ssumed it whether consciously or unconsciously

, O therwise there .

was nothing to j ustify the supposition of reaso n or the prime mover
which was postulated to originate the motion and cosmic order about
them But neither they nor the m aterialists worked out the doctrine
.

o f inertia ex p licitly It would in fact most probably have given the

.
, ,

m aterialists some trouble as its primary conception was that of the

,

n atural and essential inactivity of matter being having always been ,

c onceived as naturally at rest and so requiring either external or self

,

a ctivity to start it in motion To have assu med inertia as the essen

.

tial condition of matter in the former sense and in the sense that all
being was naturally at rest wou ld be for the materialist suicidal , ,

a s it w a s the external supernatural agencies which he wished to banish

f ro m the government of things But fortunate ly he could rely upon

.

c ertain sensible facts to suggest a natural and internal inuence to orig

i n a t e and continue motion in bodies This as we have seen was .

, ,

w eight We shall see again what use the spiritualistic movement

.

m ade of the ancient conception of inertia where it was assumed or

a dmitted at all But it had not always retained the meaning which
.

it rst had As I have said above , and repeat for emphasis and
.

cle a rness it rst meant the original and natural inactivity of being
,

o r matter
( substance ) There were two alternatives before the mind
.

in the explanation of motion or change under this assumption of the

n atural inactivity of matter The rst is self activity a conceptio n
.
-

which u ltimately too t h e form of internal

k
forces wherever the
materialistic theory prevailed or inuenced the mode of thought The .

s econd was external agency which was the direction ta k en by Aris

,

t o tl e and Christian spiritualism This latter position also assumed that

.

matte r was i n capable of initiating its own motion so that the a ssu m p ,

tion of in ertia implied by it involved two conceptions the idea of orig ,

inal rest or i nactivity and the idea of inability of m a tter to initiate activity
o r motion of itself or in itself But the materialist of that time had no
.

occasion as he thought , to take either of these conceptions of the case

,

which would force him to accept a supernatural agency to originate

motion because he h a d a p er p et u u m m o bil e in weight , which be con
,

c e iv e d as an interna l agent This he did not imagine to have initiated

.

motion once fo r all and then leave it to inertia to explain its continu
ance but he made it a c r ea t i a co n t i n u a of motion and hence he had
,

no use at all for the modern idea of inertia Why then does modern .
 M A T E R /AL I S M .
38I

thought make it so i mportant a property of matter ! Why has the

materialist introduced it and retained it i n his system !
The answer to this question is that he has borrowed or stolen it
from the spiritualistic philosophy which he aimed to refute a nd doe s
not ack nowledge its pedigree nor see its contradiction with his own
system , if interpreted in its old implications H ence he had to partly .

change its import to make it consist with his assu mption of the per
p etui ty of motion and to escape its contradictio n with t h e idea of i n

ternal forces
.Having abandoned the assumption that rest wa s the
original and natural condition of things since he had in weight a cause ,

of perpetual motion an internal agency he could introduce the idea of

, ,

inertia into his system only on the condition that he changed its mean
ing This he proceeded to do He dropped its implicatio n of orig
. .

inal rest as he was compelled to do and conceived it as the negation

, ,

of causality of any kind and hence dened it as the incapab ility of

,

producing either motion or re st This conception leaves open the

.

question whether motion or rest is the original condition of being

or matter and simply implies th a t either of them will be the perpetual
,

condition of reality if it is the original one unless some cause inter ,

venes to change this condition Whether this cause shall be internal

.

or external ,natural or supernatural is not implied or deter
mined The conception implies only that matter is unable to effect
.

any change either of motion or rest But even thi s had to be carefully
.

limited to consist with the assumption of internal forces which w a s ,

made to es cape the necessity of admitting the external Inertia had to .

be limited to the idea of incapacity to alter the co n dition of motion or

rest in the subj ect of it and not necessarily to deny the power to i n u
,

ence change in the condition of obj ects or other realities than the sub

j c et of internal forces
The di f culties involved in this tight rope
.
-

process of escaping a precipice will be considered again But it cer .

t a i nly o ffered an advantage to the theory in the chance to assume t h e

action of internal causes acting on external objects while it retained all ,

the older implications denying the possibility of self motion This of -

.
,

course involved the distinctio n bet ween self motion and self a ctivity
,
- -

the o n e being denied and the other a f rmed at least tacitly The a d , .

vantage o f this position to materialism lay in the use of a term which

denied by implication and historical association any assumption of free
spontaneous motion laterally or vertically as i t had been granted lat ,

er a ll
y by Epicurus and which at the same time assumed a condition of
,

things that j ustied an appeal to external causality to explain change

when it w a s desirable to resort to this and also in the use of a c o n ce p
,
382 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

tion to co n sist under proper denition , with internal causes which

,

might be assumed at pleasure provided they did not explain the sub
,

je ct s own motion to escape the resort to anything like supernatural and

,

self initiation of motion in the subj ect In other words the advantage
-
.
,

lay in the free use of assumptions which w ere contradictory in the ,

old view if you could succeed either in concealing the contradiction

,

or in producing any real or apparent consistency of the idea of inertia

with that of internal forces
This latter alternative was e ffected
.

by permitting the invention of any number of in ternal forces pro ,

v i d e d th ey had no analogies with intellige nt volition which involves

self motion and by limiting the conception of inertia to the inability

-

of the subject to move itself or to preve n t self motion a position which -

left wholly indeterminate the question whether motion or rest was the
prior natural condition of matter In other words t h e materialist a d
.
,

m it te d j ust so mu ch of the spiritualist s conception of the problem as

would enable him to escape the assumption of self initiative for every -

thing and j ust enough of the materialist s to exclude intelligence from the

i nternal forces which even the S piritualist wa s quite rea dy to grant .

The logical advantage of this position is apparently invulnerable As .

a ll explanation was occupied with change from one condition to another ,

this position enabled the materialist to agree with the spiritualist in

t wo assumptions while he confused one with the other The rst was .

the doctrine that all initiation and cessation of motion or alteration in ,

the direction of motion involved causation outside the subj ect of the
,

m otion and t h e second w a s the doctrine that all ch ange of the s t a t u s

,

gu o in matter must have a cause The latter axiom is compatible

.

with any cause of phenomena internal or external free or deter
, ,

mined the former excludes motion from the category of internal

causes The se cond or general maxim enabled the materialist if he
.
,

chose or the facts permitted to a ssign internal causes for all changes
,

but the motion of the subj ect of it and the rst limiting inertia enabled
, , ,

him to concede a eld for external causality without committing him

s elf to the admission that motion p e r s e was n ecessarily phenom
enal or h a d a beginning whatever might be thought about alterations
,

in its direction or its cessation This external cause or cause external

.
,

to the subject of the motion to be explained by t h e very nature of the ,

case as a consequence of accepting causality of any kind implies the ,

idea of internal causality in the agent initiating the phenomenon ,

i t change as a fact in the cosmos is ad m itted at all but with the pro ,

viso that the internal causation for the produced change is not in the
s ubj ect of that change Now if that cause can be put in other atoms
.
 M A TE R I A L I S M 3 83

than the one affected , or whose motion is to be explained the limited ,

liabilities of inertia are satised while the supernatural is either

'

really or apparently eliminated , as we are supposed not to transcend

matter for our necessary causes the origin of motion being no
,

l onger implied by the do ctrine of inertia and the existence of internal

causes of some kind in matter being assumed or admitted In the last .

conception of the problem therefore having gotten a conception of

, ,

inertia which d id not commit him to any assumption regarding the

primary condition of matter whether of motion or rest and which
, ,

enabled him to use external caus al ity for the explanation of changes in
the dire ction of empirically observed motion without going beyond the
phenomenal antecedent before him this being external the mate, ,

r i al i st could abando n the r eg r es s a s a d i n n i t u m which rst causes

apparently demand and consistently with the limited liability of inertia
,

throw the whol e responsibility for the explanation of events of all

kinds upon the interpretation of internal causes and their mode of in
ue n c ing external obj ects and which , though they coul d n
, o t originate

motion in the subject of it might cause it i n the object This brings

, .

the problem right to t h e threshold of the controversy between the

mechanical theory of materialis m and the philosophy of Leibnitz .

But of this in its place The point to be emphasiz ed at present is the

.

a dvantage which materialism had gained by accepting the general idea

of inertia while modifying it to suit assumptions which the doctrine of
inertia did not originally make while it could suborn the idea of in
,

ternal causes under cover of empirical facts which took the problem
out of the supersensible world and transferred it to the sensible though ,

it seemed still to be discussing a theory of creation that could only begin

in the supersensible world .

To look a t the historical steps in this development we have the

-

philosophy of Anaxagoras and Aristotle and at least to some extent ,

that of Plato assuming the inertia of matter in their resort to creative

,

or formative intelligence and the same idea had prevailed in the com
,

mon mind more generally in its religious and mythological views , while
it wa s probably tacitly assumed by the materialists in the practical
affairs of life when they were deali ng with phenomenal matter
.

But in their metaphysics th ey ignored the assumption consistently with ,

their disrespect for mythological and religious postulates though they

did not object to calling the supersensible world matter and obtai n
ing the double advantage in the explanatory function of their theory
, ,

of ignoring common sense conceptions of inertia when they inter

f er ed with the integrity of the ir metaphysics and of eliminating the
3 84 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

conception of an immaterial reality by describing the supersensible a s

matter .But in the attempt to refute materialism in antiqu ity t h e
doctrine of inertia came to the front It was a strategic point in theism
.

to urge the fact of inertia in order to justify the appeal to the v i s a

t e r g o principle of creative intervention to start the motion or change
wh i ch the philosopher was called upon to explain and he could use t h e
,

assumed identity between the sensible and supersensible worlds in thei r ,

essential characteristics to enforce the possibility or probability of his

,

claim But once assumed as an essential property of
. matter ,
phenomenal or nou menal sensible or supersensible it create d
, ,

at least an apparent di f culty in the materialistic theory wherever any

change from the s t a t u s gu o of things required an explanation unles s ,

the theory could be modied in some way As soon , therefore as the

.
,

doctrine of inertia was made a limited instead of a universal postulate

to explain change the need of causes to take the place of what ancient
,

materialism had to abandon after Copernican astronomy was adopted

b
was supplied y the internal forces of chemical a i n ity and of
gravitation F or , although the attraction of gravitation assumed that
.

matter could not move itself it was adapted to the n ew conception o f

,

inertia in the ide a that it could inuence the motion or condition of

other matter He nce the conceptions of inertia and internal forces
.

were so adjusted to each other that the origin of motion was not a part
of the problem and chemical afnity and gravitation were convenient
substitutes for causes that had once been conceived as related to i nt el l i
gent volition In other words the adjustment brought materialism
.
, ,

reciprocity without freedom and all the advantages th a t belonged to

both The limitation of the area for the application of inertia w a s
.

supplemented by a corresponding extention of the area for internal

forces having no special evidence of being intelligent or purposive .
,

There was an important inuence which fo rtied this tendency a n d

which is seldom remarked by the student of philosophy in its psycho
logical development It is the inuence of experimental science on
.

the ideas which we enterta in on t h e capa cities of matter A ntiquity .

simply observed the course of events as they occurred taking the part of ,

m ere spectators of t h e drama of nature a series of phenomena

,

which occurred without human intervention All p h iIOS Op h ic r eec

.

tion was contemplative not experi m ental No elaborate attempt was

, .

made to study nature as it might be modied in its action by the human

will thou gh men were familiar enough with the common inuence of
,

human volition on events But it did not occur to men to take seri
.

o u sly the point of view which might have suggested itself to them ,
 M A TE R IA L I S M .
3 85

especially after the subjective psychology of the Sophists and the

idealistic philosophy of P lato with its anthropocentric point of

view Ancient thought however w a s so dominated by the conscious

.
, ,

ness of man s subordination to nature that it could not muster up suf

cient courage to defy it except in z E sch y lus and the sense of depend
,

,

ence was so strong that it trembled at nature and fa te instead of trying to

master them Consequently between contemplative or introspective
.

methods and the consciousness of subjection to nature it could only ,

regard events as the e ffects either of nature or of the gods Either .

conception encouraged the idea of limitations to the powers of na

ture and the latter view required no assumption of late n t powers in
,

matter to ac count fo r variation of eff ects as these could be attributed

,

to t h e caprices of divine power Consequently there was little to sug

.

gest latent or potential capacities in matter But men being mere .

,

observers of an order that might originate either spontaneously by

some internal forces or by external creative energy t h ey divi d ed o n ,

the question of the nature of that antecedent according to various intel

lectual and other interests some making it intelligence and others
,

force or inherent properties of matter If the cosmos showed sat

.

i sfa ct o r y evidence of purpose in its collocations and organic creations ,

and the conceptions of the u ntutored are easily satised on this ques
tion there wou ld be a tendency to make this cause other than matter
,
.

If the evidence of purpose be wanting then the explanation will elim

,

i na t e intelligent initiation No w as both the series of events and the

.

alternative causes imaginable were objective and independent of human

action this being presumably free was caused by neither divine nor
, , ,

material agency But natural events being the same to all observers
.
,

left the choice of cause to prejudice or the amount of intelligence dis

played by the observer But when man bega n to reect on the effect
.

of his own volitions and to experiment with nature he found a created ,

order of facts initiated by himself and not spontaneously created either

by nature or by providence
H e had to recognize h owever
.
, ,

the li m itations of h is o w n causal power in t h e determination of events .

He could not well ascribe the limiting inuence directly to divin e

action as his conception of that inuence was not such as to reduce its
,

providential plans to the c a prices of human volition He found in h is .

experiments that he could not produ ce gold or silver by wishing them ,

nor by combi ning element s a d l i i t u m but he did discover that he

,

could produ ce chemical compounds and make collocations of matter

which did not occur independently of his volitions They see m ed too .

trivial however for explanation by so a ugust a reality as God w h o

, , ,

25
3 86 TH E P R OB L E IlI S OF PH I L OS O PH Y
.

could hardly be supposed to conform at any time to the w hims of

m an s fancy , scientic or practical to institute an order of events

,

w h ich man would hardly ha ve supposed to have been in the divine

p lan if his own experimental v olitions themselves presumably free ,
,

h a d not occurred . The consequence was that it seemed to comport

m ore easily with the idea of internal forces in matter to acco un t for
t h e limitations of experimental e ffort and this Vie w was favored by the
,

absence of clear evidence for any purposive end in any assu med inter
v e nt io n of divine power to affect the results w hich could not be
directly traced to hu man action Besides there was universal tendency
.

to save divine action by supposing that matter had no powers whatever

to produce effects under the initial agency of its own forces Many .
,

on the other hand assumed limitations to divine power in the n atur e

,

of matter Hence men were quite ready to admit that the explanation
.

of events might divide its causal agencies between G od nature an d ,

man But in proportion as the divine i ntervention was either not sup
.

p orted by evidences o f its teleology or w a s not deemed necessary to

,

explain the facts of human experiment the idea of internal forces

,

in matter grew in strength with a corresponding favor for the mate

r ia l ist i c theory
,
and when man hi m s elf was conceived as a mechanical
produ ct of the cosmic order and hence his action simply a little more
,

complex form of m echanical forces the materialistic point of view
,

became universal having the simplicity and unity apparently at least

, , ,

for which the philosopher has always been in search The concession .

of internal forces for producing effects and the changes which

human volition could effect in the order of things predisp o sed s p ec u
lative minds to ta k e that course i n their explanations of phenomena
which would at least seem to reduce the source of events to as fe w
centers as possible and matter had come in for such a large sh a re of
,

the forces which affect events that it was an easy step for the m ind
to universalize its causal agency especially as there were dif culties in
,

reducing the cosmic order to any clear a n d evident teleology , even

within the do m ain of the sensible world to say nothing of the agnos
,

t i c ism necessary with regard to it i n the supersensible world .

A most important step in the conrmation of the materialistic

theory was the establishment of the essential identity between the
sensible and supersensible realities It might have been suggested
.

by the variable li mits of sensible experience

But the normal
.

l imits of this were so xed apparently that no one but the philosopher
would suspect the speculative importance of the variations actually
observed , and even this class was either too much addicted to respect
 M A TE R I A L I S M 387

for sense j udgments and too much interested in the a cceptance and

defe nse of this criterio n of knowledge to be spontaneously susc ep
tible of sceptical inuences in this direction or had too few facts to
,

make any s uccessf ul incursions against the conservative ideas of

common sense in its convictio n s about those limits Conseq u ently
.

i t took the help of the microscope and telescope to bring home the
,

relativity of sense perception and its variable limits showing that the
,

d istinction between the sensible and supersens ible worlds ,
when any questio n of facts and experience was invo l ved was not ,

n ecessarily qualit a tive but merely quantitative if the latter term may
,

be employed to express a condition indicated by the variable limits of

s ense perception . They simply showed that it was merely a ques
tion of sensible capacity that determined the distinctio n between
t h e various conditions of matter whic h had been assumed to be radi

c al
,
but whi ch no w appears to represent an essential identity in nature
t hough not always represented in a sensible e ffect on knowledge
.

B ut it was the experimental proof of the indestructibility of matter

t hat operated as the most decisive defence of the application of the

t er m matter to the sensible and supersensible worlds a li k e It .

s howed that

matter may disappear fro m sensible experience

altogether in its normal forms and yet through its gravity give indi
rect testimony to its continued existence after it has apparently been
d estroyed . Ancient thought was confronted with mu ch more xed
limits to sensib ility than modern investigation and also had not
exact means for determining concl usively the survi val of material
substance in all its changes and hence in these changes certai n phi los
,

o
p h er s m ight claim with considerable impunity that matter was de
s tr u c t ibl e
. But this contention can no longer be made in modern
times , except for those trans cendental conditions which are not acces
sible to either observation or experiment , and it is not necessary to
h ave an opinion one way or the other on such questions whe n we
m ay insist that we are not dealing with matter beyond its evidential
phenomena . All th at is meant by the modern doctrine is that in
both the sensible and supersensible worlds of past philosophic thought
matter is indestru ctible and that it shows itself identical in its essential
c haracteristi cs in both. This is empirical or experi m e ntal proof
o f its continuity and persistence in time where ancient thought co uld

only arrive at it in an a p r i o r i manner a method which had proved itself

,

so precarious that any intellectual interest might appeal to it with i m

p u n ity until experiment decided whether any of its claims were true
o r not. But the experimental proof of the indestructibility of matter
3 88 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

established the right of the materialist to assert at least a presu mption

for the eternity of matter H e has de nite proof that it is i ndest r uc
.

tible for all huma n effort and can only speculate for conditions tran
scending his power s and amenable to some real or supposed absolute .

B u t the i m portant fact to remark is its conrmation of the assumption

that there is an identity between the various conditions of matter a s
the ancient materialism supposed and no less instructive is the equally
,

established fact that certain modes or functions of matter are transient

or phenomenal The application of this truth to psychological
.

events will be made presently and after w e have noticed the various
,

wa ys in which this general truth is illustrated in the meta morphose s

of material substance involving the appearance and disappearance o f
,
phenomenal qualities O ne of the best illustrations of this reten
.

tion of identity of material with diff erent qualitative manifestation s

,

is the fact of allotropism in which the same substance for example , ,

sulphur or carbon under different conditions will show di fferent

,

qualities , the diff erence being so great that it requires special evidence
to dis cover that they are not distinct substances Co m pare c harcoal .

and the diamond We might a l so rank H 0 in the same class for it

.
2

may appear in one condition as invisible vapor in another as clou d ,

or visible vapor in another as water in a uid state both visible a n d

, ,

tangible and nally in a solid state as ice O nly a change of tempera

,
.

ture is requ ired to e ffect these qualitative modications and but fo r

special means to determine the fact no one would suspect the identity
of the substance in these changes of functional manifestation A still .

more strik ing illustration is that of isomerism Allotropism shows t h e.

qualitative alteratio n of the same element or atom isomerism a quali

t a t iv e alteration of the same quantitative combination of elements unde r
special conditions the change of conditions being so slight in some case s
,

that it need be nothing more than the source fro m which one of t h e
elements in the combination is obtained We have in this isomerism
.

an exa m ple of variation from the general l a w that identity of element s

in the co mbination produces identity of compounds Experiment .
,

therefore shows that both elements and compounds may exhibit

,

qualitative m edi ca t io ns in spite of their identity in substance whe n

the proper causal conditions are supplied The same general fact is
.

shown on a wide scale i n the various conditions of gaseous , liquid

and solid bodies un d er the appropriate circumstances .

The deep signicance of all this for materialism is not the mere fact
of such ch anges in the material world but its bearing upon the question
of what is transient and what is permanent The facts prove a double .
 M A TE R I /1L I S M .
3 89

co nclusion The rst is the permanence of substance and the second

.

is the transiency of certain qualitative manifestations or functional

activities of either elements or compounds What is the resulta n t of
.

co m po s ition is invariably destroyed by decomposition except weight

, ,

which is not a resultant of composition and possibly some ordinarily

,

concealed pro perties The qualities that appear in composition are

.

the resultant of f unctional a ctivities elicited by the conditions that

enable the composition to take place and disappear with the dissolution
,

of the organis m so e ffected The instant bearing of all this upon the
.

pheno m ena of consciousness is apparent If we suppose that con
.

sci o u s ness is an incident i n the functional activities of the bodily

organism which is a compoun d of ma ny elements we can see that all

the evidence everywhere else is in favor of its transiency and d isa p
p ear a n ce at the dissolution of the body Such a conception of the
.

case had less to support itself in antiquity than at present There was .

little or no scientic evidence that the supposition of identity between

the sensible and supersensible worlds was a fact and as little to make
clear the rich capacity of matter to modify its qualitative activities in
the various conditions of existe nce and hence the ancient philosopher
,

could not so easily specify the evidence for a phenomenon which

he wished to use in explanation of mental functions But the moment
.

that investigatio n revealed the enormous extent to which qualitative

change in matter is possible in spite of its substantial identity the fact ,

opened the way to sustain some probability that this c a pacity might
extend to the exp l anatio n of consciousness , and this independently of
all questions whether mental activities were to be regarded as modes of
motio n or not It is not necessary to reduce all the qua l ities of matter
.

to modes of motion There may b e any number of its functions that

.

are not motion of any kind Besides even if they must be so reduced
.

our knowledge of what consciousness is is so limited that it might be

anything But this questio n aside for the present the important thing
.

to be emphasiz ed is the fact that the evidence of qualitative change in

identical substance is n o w so extensive and these changes so numerous
and representative of apparently unli m ited capacities that a strong pre
sumption is created for any supposition that wishes to make conscious
ness a modal functio n of material organizatio n and dissolvable with it .

Ancient materialis m had less to enforce its truth or prob a bility In .

fact its habit was to ignore the evidential question in all but the most
supercial matters and so to indulge hypotheses w here they could be
made with the most impunity and hence to be satised with the im p o s
,

sibil i t
y of denial by opponents .But this is no longer t h e case with
3 90 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

the modern application of the materialistic theory Its conquests have .

shown the existence of j ust the facts to suggest capacities in matter at

least apparently equal to the production of consciousness especially ,

as there is no evidence whatever outside the alleged phenomena of

psychic research that consciousness has any connections or association s
independent of the bodily organisms with which we nd it and these ,

are admittedly transient o r phenomenal Matter has been proved t o

.

be capable of much that was never before suspected as possible and ,

the fact puts decided limits to dogmatic opposition to the materialistic

explanation of consciousness .

We have found that materialism has nally succeeded in establish

ing empirically the assumption with which it started and this was the ,

persistence of matter in all its changes and also the transiency of its

phenomenal modes when anything interfered to disturb the integ
,

rity of its organic compounds But there is one more step in its de
.

v el o
p m e nt which really or apparently establishes its second postulate ,

namely the persistence of motion or the quantity of energy in existence

, .

This was effected through the do ctrine of the Conser vation of

Energy . This doctrine gets its clear conception and value sc ient i
cally and philosophically from the empirical proof which science has
given it but it was practically involved in the assumption that the
,

essential basis of existence must be eternal The Greeks said being .

was eternal and when this being came to be denitely interpreted

,

it turned out to be matter though the predicate of perpetuity had

,

to be conned to its supersensible form Christian thought conceded

.

the principle when it assumed the ephemeral or phenomenal nature
of matter and af rmed the eternity of God All agreed that some .

thing was permanent and eternal , whatever the evidence for the as
sumption But they did not all agree that motion w a s eternal as we
.
,

have seen in the Aristotelian and other forms of philosophy especially ,

that of Christianity whi c h sought to justify the existence of all trans

physical reality by the universality of inertia and the essentially nite
and temporal character of motion The materialists however assumed
.
, ,

the coeternity of motion with matter and required only the initiating
agency of internal forces to explain the phenomena of change ,

whi ch it conned to the modication of the d i r ect i o n of motion and

the qualitative modication of properties It remained to discover .

facts th at really or apparently support the materialists conception of

the persistence of motion or force and which added to the explana
,

tory power of the materialistic theory .

It was Descartes who suggested the modern conception of material

 M A TE R I A L I S M .
391

is m in its mechanical interpretation as implying the tra nslation of

motion from object to subj ect He e ffected this result in spite of the
.

idealistic impulse in his metaphysics on the spiritualistic side His .

mechanical philosophy was held however in subordination to his ,

,

spiritualistic theory , whether consistently or not though he no doubt ,

thought it consistent But his physical speculation s are usually ignored

.

by all but physi cists because idealism has taught us the bad example
,

of ignoring all discussions of physical phenomena in any other

terms than states of consciousness and hence succeeds by various
,

subreptions in cultivating an opposition which its own redu ction of

fa cts m akes impossible and as we shall see later falls into the same
, , ,

pit as the materialism whi ch it a ffects to despise Its monism prevents .

its oppositio n to the essential features of materialis m j ust as much as

the monism of materialism in its later development prevents its opposi

tion to spiritualism or idealism But we shall not u nderstand even
.

the idealistic side of Descartes unless w e conceive it in its relation

to the materialistic H is dualism was not that of realities equally coor
.

di n a t e w ith each other but as funda m entally different in nature while

,

the spiritual occupied the priority of value and causal initiation This .

position enabled Descartes to concede one half the universe of phe

nomenal reality to materialistic explanation His conception of it .

gave a technical meaning to the description of m odern materialism as

mechanical and which went so far as to wholly transform the d e
,

n it io n of it in t h e minds of many philosophers who forget its prior

historical lineage in the notion of atomic combinations Descartes .

made a technical denial of t h e older atomic doctrine but set up a con

cept io n which was in e ffect a reinstatement of it with the notion of a

vacuum omitted He accepted the doctrine that matter was divisible

.

i nto primary unities but they were in contact so that motion could be
, ,

transferred from one to the other and a c t i o i n d i s t a n s was denied .

Accepting either tacitly or by implication the tradit ional conception of

inertia as implying that all motion must have a primitive in it iu m he
, ,

derived the primary motion of the physical uni v erse fro m an act of
God but after this be accounted for the occurrence of all material
,

phenomena by the t r a n s m i s s i o n of t nts m o t i o n f r o m o n e Oo dy t o

a n o t/ ze r ,and chose mechanical impact a n d transfer of energy as his
analogy for the whole process .

I shall not trace the development of this ide a through Descarte s

successors in any historical way , as various modications of details

occurred in men like Gassendi Hobbes and H uyghens but shall
, ,

only call attention to the simple mode by which the conception of

3 92 TH E P R O B L E III S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

Descartes can be illustrated as well as the process which he was con

sid er in g .F or example a steam engine well illustrates this transmis
,

sion of motion from one point to another in the impulsion w hich its
action gives to machinery Whatever origin we give to the motion
.

which t h e steam engine exhibits the motion which it causes in what

it impels is a transmission or translation from one point to another
through bodies or matter in contact P erhaps a simpler ill ustration .

would be a series of billiard balls set in motion by the impact of a cue .

The motion is conceivably transferred from the cue to the rst ball
and from this to the second ball and so on All complexi ty of
, .

action in a system of connecte d machines consisting of levers cranks , , ,

pulleys etc only exhibits the variations of direction in this trans

, .
,

m it t e d motion This conception of mechanical action as the trans
.

mission o f energy became the accepted one in all elds of physics

after D escartes and when it w a s discovered that the various forces
, ,

or energy dened as the capacity to do work which was measured in ,

terms of motion and mass were so correlated that n one seemed lost,

and none gained in the process of transla tion when friction was ,

allowed for as even the simple experiment with elastic balls will
,

show the fact was generaliz ed to express the p er s is t e n ce of f o r c e

,

o r mo tio n and this only extended to motion what was already a d

,

m it t e d of m a tter its indestructibility

,
Experiments with the various .

mechanical forces such as heat electricity steam water power

, , , , ,

and expansible vapors with the assu m ed co n vertibility and
,

inconvertibility of some of them resulted in the formulation of

,

the doctrine of the conservation of energy which meant that in ,

all its ch anges and modications the quantity of force or motion

represented by the total effects was neither increased nor decreased .

As force or
energy w a s expressed in 111 V it involved the 2

idea of motion and as this 111 V never exhib ited itself sensibly except
,
2

in terms of motion this reality became the fact conserved But in

, .

spite of the fact that the doctrine of the conservation of energy was
de fi ned as indicating the quantitative identity of motion or force in
all its modications various circumstances availed to create the im p l i
cation o f qualitative identity at the same time This means th a t the .

antecedent and consequent conditions of motion or f orce in the

process of transmission or ch ange we re the same in k i nd though the ,

proper intent of the doctrine was or mu st be to speak of quantitative

identity in the various states involved The inevitable tendency to this .

conception of the case is found in speaking at a ll of their identity in

a u v sense of the term Besides in the usual measurements of t h e o r et i
.
 M ATE R I A L I S M 3 93

cal and practical life we cannot assume or assert any quantitative

identity without implying the qualitative identity in some respect at
l eas t .The notion of equality inevitably insinuates itself into compari
s ons o f this kind and equality must imply q ualitative resemblance
,

enough to make the comparison of this kind All mensurati on implies .

qualitative identity in so m e form P robably the concrete facts which

.

led to this conception of the qualitative identity of the terms in the

s eries of
mechanical
phe n omena were ideas most naturally
formed of the process of transmission of energy or motion in the sim
p l e st cases chosen for illustration , and of which all complicated
,

machinery was but a complex illustration In the translation of mo .

tion from one ball to another the theoretical rule is elasticity being ,

suf cient that the antecedent ball stops and the consequent ball receives
,

and co ntinues the motion so received repeating the process cet er is , ,

p a r i us of the rst ball if it comes into contact with a third while it

, ,

is itself in motion Here , as the motion of each ball is so identical ,

.

or a pparently identical in kind w it h that of the preceding incidental ,

effects like sou nd etc being ignored as in a complete theory they

, .
, ,

should not be we conceive the e ffect as identical in k ind with the

,

cause as qualitatively identical whatever we think of their quantitative

,

relations When we have generaliz ed the conception of conservation

.

a n d represent these simple cases of its exhibition as qualitatively the

!

s ame as the more complex illustrations of the phenomenon w every

,

n aturally transfer the conception of the simple case presumably r e r e

p ,

s enting the qualitative identity of cause and effect , to the more complex

instances of the transmission of force and come thus to conceive ,

the conservation of energy as necessarily implying the qualitat ive as

!

well as the quantitative identity of the cause and the effect .

Whether this conception of the doctrine of the conservation of

energy is the correct one or not or the one always held by scientic
,

men is not the question to be decided but only the fact tha t many men
, ,

have actually discussed the doctrine with the implications indicated ,

even when they knew in their clearer moments that the true conception
of it was very different from that which the language most naturally
implied Hence I am concerned with the effect of the assumption
.
,

whether true or fa lse of qualitative identity betwee n cause a nd effect

,

upon the conception of the materialistic theory and with the various ,

inuences that tended to make the mind conceive and represent the t w o
terms as i d entical whatever meani n g a more critical and cautious state
,

m ent of the doctrine might give it I have always felt that Grove s
.

formulation of the doctrine as the co r r e l a t i o n of t h ephysical forces

3 94 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

wa s by far the better expression for the doctrine as being less cal eu ,

lated to suggest equivocation It satised all the facts of harmoniou s

.

relation and quantitative considerations rightly considered and leave s ,

open the question of universal qualitative identity in the transforma

tions of energy and may not imply that transmission is the only way
to conceive the process of change in mechanical causation But .

conservatio n is a term that in its very impo rt implies some sort o f

continuity and identity so that cases in which this identity may be
,

apparent become the norm by w hich cases are interpreted , which in ,

fact do not show this identity of kind but whi ch at the same tim e
, ,

have the appropriate correlation of cause and e ffect to suggest that

energy is n either increased nor decreased in the process of change ,

though the change m ay not involve transmission or translation at

all But whatever may be the best term to describe the doctrine a o
.

cep t e d as the

conservatio n of energy it is certain that this formula
,

tion of it tends to encourage the conception of identity between cause

and effect The simplest illustration of it is evidence of this In t h e
. .

case of the billiard balls the cessation of motion in the rst as the ,

theory must represent it and the appearance of this motion in t h e

,

others representing perfect continuity in time and mechanical impact ,

,

is explained by the mere taking up by one ball of the antecedent motion

impa rted to it by the one that has lost its motion If the uniform effect .

had been the continuance of the motion in the antecedent and the ris e
of motion in the consequent instances it is possible that the conception
,

of the problem of mechanics would ha ve been less convincing of the

identity between the two terms But the cessation of the motion in the
.

antecedent and its genesis in the consequent suggests that the only
way to escape an anomalous situation and measurement conrms it i s
, ,

to conceive the motion as simply transferred and identical in kind with

that which was initial in the case This is apparent in the simpl e
.

illustration of the balls The identity of the effect in kind with the
.

cause or antecedent motion and the fact that the two stages of it ar e
m easurably the same in quantity one ceasing and the other beginning
, ,

carries with it a conception of qualitative identity throughout which

cannot easily be resisted In fa ct t h e difference between the variou s
.

moments of the transmission are l ess apparent if observable at all , ,

th an th e resemblances and we neglect them ent i rely in our a pp r e c ia

,

tion of the identities and as the principle of identity is the one by

,

which we render the universe an intelligible cosmos for ou r minds ,

we m ost natural ly put the ictus of thought and explanation on these

identities a n d o ur estimate a nd conception of the cause a n d e ffect in
 M A TE R I A L I S M .
3 95

su ch cases as the simplest instances of the transmission of motion ta ke

on the coloring of the chief factor in them namely the identity in , ,

kind No w when we experiment with the other mechanical forces

.

,

such as heat and electric ity we nd a denite correlation between

,

them which leads to the conception that they are related in the s a me
way Thus they show unmista k able evidence of some sort of quanti
.

ta t iv e relations involving the alternative and convertible disappearanc e

,

and reappearance of antecedent or consequent as the c o nversion of ,

heat into electricity and again of electricity ba ck into heat and con ,

sequently appear to indicate their identity in view of the fact tha t

energy is neither created nor destroyed by the process of change .

The eff ect of this is to place the two sets of phenomena in t h e

same class and to des cribe them by the same law which is said to be
the conservation of energy and to represent them as involving thei r

mechanical equivalence their convertibility and in some case s
, ,

their interconvertibility I n this language cause and e ffect are de

.

scribed as equal to ea ch other and this implies their qualitative identity ,

even though the facts and our intentions represent them as only quan
t ita t i v e ly related The whole doctrine in spite of precautions a nd
.
,

occasional limitations suggested by various controversies takes the ,

form of a qualitative identity between the several stages of phenom

enal transformations owing to the original simple conception which
deter m ined the generaliz ation .

The main direct consequen ce of this result is in the application o f

the same principle to motion that had been applied by the earlie r
m a t er a l ism to matter namely its p e r s i s t e n c e i n c /za ng e
, ,
The inde .

s t r u c t ibilit
y of matter had been experimentally proved justifying the ,

assumption in antiquity of identity between the sensible and sup e r sen si

ble worlds in respect to substance and n o w experiment has equally
,

appeared to establish that identity of m otion in all its transformation s

or changes I n other words the l a w of identity now appli e s to both
.
,

matter and motion Consequently considerin g the fact regressively

.
,

in time as in t h e case of matter it implies that motion no more h a d

, ,

an origin in time than matter and the Aristotelian and Christian doc
,

trines implying an original in it iu m for all motion seems to have m et

, ,

with a refutation Hence with the persistence of both matter and

.

motion as an established fact as a truth that is no longer a mere as

,

sumption or conjecture which obtained its plausibility or acceptance

on the ground that it could n o t be denied w e not only have the old ,

m ateriali stic pre conceptions conrmed and the anti materialistic posi -

tion disabled but there is also nothing left for explanation except
,
3 96 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

c h a nges i n the direction of motion and the qualitative modications of

su bstance that are not reducible to motio n at all The latter of these .

a r e presumably the consequence of internal forces and the former ,

of conicting motions which might be as original as the qualitative

diff erences of the atoms There can certa inly be no more dii c ulty in
.

a ssuming an eternal variation in kind of motion than the variation in

kind of the atoms especially as we have not the reason to suppose any
,

s uch p er p et u u m m o O il e to cause only the downward motion of the

atoms with the necessity of endo wing them with free will to produce
lateral motion With su ch conceptions supported by actual exp e r i
.
,

ment the materialistic theory beco m es apparently ir r efr a gibl e In do

, .

ing so also it has made so extensive a use of the principle of identity

, ,

or material causation , as to appear not to need any other for the explana
tion of phenomena of any k ind , and wherever it interprets qualita
tive differences as modes of motion its principle of id e nt ity a pp a r e nt ly
,

s u f ces to cover the whole eld and it remains master .

The indirect consequence of the doctrine of the conservation of

energy or material causation is its application to the phenomena
, ,

of consciousness The re adiness with which this application could be

.

made and was made was determined by t h e universality of the belief

that there was a causal nexus between mental and physical phenom
ena . That there had to be such a ne xus assumed was an unquestion
able n ecessity i n the theistic theory of creation and the primary insti
g a t io n of motion Spiritualism in its acceptance of the theistic origin
.

.
,

of things obtained its excuse for existence as a theory from the

,

assu mption of a causal inu ence both in the creation of matter and in
the collocat i on of it by means of the initiation of motion so that in one ,

d irection at least the possible inuen ce of mind on matter had to be a

necessary postu l ate O n the other hand the theory of knowledge
.
,

had ass u med or asserted the complementary nex us between mind and
matter as necessary to the produ ction of consciousness ; that is the ,

causal action of matter upon the mind in instigating the occurrence of

mental states Moreover common observation also presented the a l
.
,

t er n a t iv e coexistence and sequence of mental and p h ysical phenom

ena physical events now being the antecedent o f the mental as in
, ,

s ensation and knowledge of the external world and again mental , ,

phenomena being the antecedent of the physical as in conscious ,

'

volition initiating physical events In other words mental and phys

.
,

ical phenomena represent a concurrent and recurrent series of

events with a relative import for cause and effect exactly like that evi
d e nt ia l ly in the physical series alone where ce t e r i s p a r iOu s an ante
, , ,
 M A TE R I A L I S M .
39 7

ce dent is a cause in relation to the consequent and m a y be an e ffect in ,

relation to a prior antecedent or the effect a cause in relation to a pos

,

t er io r consequent This is only to sa y that the relatio n between the

.

menta l and physical is most naturally interpreted causally j ust as the ,

relation between the members of the physical series is interpreted .

Now as this causal relatio n between the mental and physical has been
universally accepted , that is by both s chools of thought with perha ps
, ,

only individual exceptions and as the causal nexus bet ween the terms
,

of the physical series has been presumably proved to be material ,

that is representing the principle of identity it was only n atural and

, ,

scientic to suppose that the same interpretation should be put upon

the nexus between the mental and physical ; that the mental is only a
conversion or transmission of the physical into it and so identical with
it in kind It matters not whether such a result h a s been proved or
.

not All that I am asserting is that , with the causal nexus between
.

mental and physical generally accepted and the acceptance of the con
,

servation of energy as the norm of physical causation involving the

identity of antecedent and consequent in the physical series , the p roper
procedure is to extend this latter conclusion at least as a most probable ,

hypothesis to cover the relation between the m ental and physical

,
.

The necessary u n ity of explanation requ ires this if the materialistic ,

theory is supposed to explai n anything at all and nds no proble m s in ,

the material world not solved by this application of material causation .

In this application of the principle of identity to the relation bet ween

the men ta l and physical materialism thus obtains a perfect unity
,

throughout the phenomen a of existence and cons ciousness is r e ,

duce d to a mode of motion which had to be the original hypoth
,

esis of materialism but which now seems to be veried by the doctrine

,

of the conservation of energy and the accepted causal relation be

!

twee n the mental and the physical Materialism thus becomes t h e

.

one simple theory which is apparently capable of explaining all

phenomena whatever and the principle of material causation or
,

identity the agency to interpret t h e nature of all events whatsoever .

This outcome of the materialistic doctrine since Descartes has

modied the conception of materialism which once prevailed The .

idea of atomic composition still remains as a fundamental tenet in it ,

but the mechani cal theory of nature as based upon the conserva ,

tion of energy and the conceptions that have determined our way of
representing it has resulted in the interpretati o n of materialism as con
,

ce t ua ll
p y convertible with the identity of mental and physical phe
no m e n a in addition to the idea of atomic co m position But the latter
, .
3 98 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

conception has retreated into the back ground as a means for expla i n i ng
mental events since the assumption of an absolutely qualitative differ
,

e nce between mental and physical whi ch was supposably explicable ,

a s a resultant of composition an internal

force analogous to chemi
,

cal a f n ity is necessarily abandoned by the new materialism and con

,

s c i o u sn e ss becomes a moment in the transmission of motion The old .

idea that the nexus between the mental and physical was only that of
e c i e n t causation was exchanged for that of m a t er i a l causation and ,

the mechanical philosophy from being dened and conceived in ,

terms of a mechanical prius or efficient cause as mechanical
, ,

c ausation originally meant beca me convertible with the idea of

,

e quivalence between ca use and e ffect and hence implied identity .

T his idea of identity is clearly indicated in su ch phrases as the me

c h a n i ca l equivalent of he a t etc even though menta l reservations are
, .
,

made for a different interpreta tion of the facts and for a limitation of
t h e doctrine of conservation of energy to quantit a tive and excluding

q ualitative problems But its conception of material causation in its

.

a ssert ion or assumption of the identity of matter and motion in all

t heir real or apparent c h anges and transformations carried with it the

implication that materialism was to be dened by this conception and ,

t h e older doctrine based upon the admission of priority for efcient

c ausality in the problem w a s exchanged for the priority of material

c ausality as the interpreti n g instrument in the explanation of

phe

n omena . The consequence was that the exposition and criticism of
m odern m aterialism has primarily to consider this reduction of the
theory to the application of the principle of material causation to all

events .

The modern attack upon this materialism or mechanical phi ,

l o so p h y as it is called , is based upon the assumption that the doctrine

is denable as indicated by the af rmation of the identity or conve rti
, ,

bil ity of mental and physical phenomena The doctrine that has .

been brought for ward to controvert it has been called P arallelism It .

originates in the conception with which philosophy has b een ino c u

lated by the dualism of Descartes in connection with t h e monism of
Leibnitz and which does not disappear even after men have ad
,

opted monism ! D escartes insisted upon the radical difference between

menta l and physical phenomena and the impossibility of mechan
i cal or material causation between them a l though he admitted a r e ,

lation of ef cient causation The idea sur ived in the phenomenal
v
.

d ualism or difference between though t and extension in the philosophy

of Spinoz a in which consciousness and motion or all phenomena
 M A TE R I A L I S M .
3 99

in extensio n remained inconve r tible with each other though they were ,

attri butes of the same substance a position at least very near the doc
,

trine of materialism though not assu ming an atomic basis In fact

,
.

Spinoz a conceived substance as material in all the essential implication s

involved in the interpretation of nature and accepted the m a terial
i st i c constru ction of phenomena i n a monisti c for m with a provision
for a spiritualistic aspect in one of its modes parallel with extension ,

making his syste m as consistent with one system as the other a ,

double faced u nity and preparing the way for the conception of the
-

Leibnitz ian monads which u nited in themselves in various degrees the

attributes of matter and mind But Leibnitz worked out the co n cep
.

tion of parallelism into its most consistent form in the attempt to

displace the mechanical interpretation of mental phenomena
.

Accepting the dictu m of Des cartes at this point namely that a material
, ,

causal nexus between mind and matter did not exist be shut his monads ,

up from all external inuence and from all inuence upon t h e external

world in term s of the mechanical transmission of energy or motion
from one monad to the other The unity coincidence and actual
.
, ,

relation or connective appearance of interaction was explained by his

doctrine of occasional causes , or preestablished harmony an ex ,

pression which was perhaps an unfortunate one for the correct under
standing o f his real conception and intentions But apart from .

either the truth or falsity of his conception it asserted what has been
,

called a parallelism bet w een internal and external action of all

kinds This parallelism m eant that there was no real transmission
.

or translation of motion from one thing to another and that when t w o

coexistent or sequent events took place under the appeara nce of a
material causal nexus all that could be said of them was that they had

a parallel or coincide ntal origin in two different centers of refer
ence This was the most radical position possible against the existing
.

conception of materialism It w a s as total a denial of material causa

.

tion bet w een different realities as materi alism was an a i r m a t io n of it .

The materialist explained a l l phenomena of causation bv mate

rial causation alone Leibnitz denied i n t o t o the existence of any
.

such causation and whether true or false in his View threw down the
,

gauntlet to materialism in the boldest w ay and challenged the existence

of its conceptions even in the material world Applied to the relation
.

bet ween the mental and physical it meant that they were not converti
ble ; that there was no i n u xu s p /zy s i c u s into the ment a l and no
i n u xu s m e n t a l i s into the physical world No w as I have said
.
,

Leibnitz intended this position to be a refutation of the prevailing

4 00 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

materialism or mecha n ical philosophy of his time with which he was

co n fronted But neither he nor Descartes knew anything of the ex
.

p er i m e n t a l facts which since their time have proved the quantitative

, ,

relations and presumably the qualitative identity bet w een cause and
e ffect in the physical world though it is possible that Leibnitz would
,

adapt his views to present facts They were contending on a p r i o r i

.

grou n ds against an a p r i o r i assumption and were perhaps equally

justied with their opponents in the assumption of int r a n s m is sibility of
motion between mind and matter But h owever this may be the
.
, ,

proof that the quantity of energy remains the same in all phy sical
changes and m odications of motion and the assumption or proof that
,

its quality is also the same have really or apparently conrmed the
,

materialistic theory within the domain o f physics at large and leaves t o

the p a ra llelist and anti materialist the necessity of denying its applica
-

tion to the relation between matter and mind whatever may be true of ,

matter alone thus resumin g the position of D escartes in the case

, .

But unless the opponent of materialism wishes to insist upon Cartesia n

dualism h is monis m and the acceptance of a causal nexus between
,

mental and physical phenomena whether progressively or retro,

gr essi v e ly concei v ed will suggest the possibility that the l aw of

,

mechanical causality will apply to the relation between matter and

mind quite as well as between the separate terms in either of the serie s

a l one As the phenomenal order of events in the physical serie s
.

and in the mental and physical series together is the same the evidential ,

situation for a causal nexus of some kind is as apparent in one case as

the other and hence the opponent of materialism must either deny a
causal relation in both and resort to a doctrine of pre established har
mony which philosophy has agreed to reject or accept the plausibility
, ,

of the extension of the materi a l causality to the relation between the

mental and physical after it is ad m itted in the phys ical series unles s ,

he is prepared for an analysis of the causality problem which will meet

the conditions of the case This last course would require a dist in c
.

tion of at least t wo kinds of causes in the general problem of explana

tion .

The course suggested is probably the real meaning and intention of

the parallelist when denying the causal relation between mental and

physical phenomena though he too frequently dis cusses the prob
,

lem in a w ay to indicate that he has e f cient causality in m ind as well

as m aterial when denying th e relation which has as mu ch empirical
evidence in the mental and physical series together as in the physica l
alone where the causal nexus is admitted by t h e parallelist in the ma
,
 TIA TE R I A L I S M .
40 1

t er ia l sense , as perhaps Leibnitz would not have done If then in stead .

,

of carrying on the controversy in terms that apparently deny a ll causal

relation whatever betwee n mental and physical events we insist upon the ,

distinction between e c i en t and m a t er i a l causes bet wee n what may be

-

,

called occasional and constitutive causes we may have a legitimate ,

resource speculatively at least for combatting the much dreaded ma

, ,

ter i a li sm
. This distinctio n would enable us to deny the application of
the principle of identity and material causation to the relation between

the t wo types of phenomena as the parallelist really does , while
,

we af rm a causal relation of genesis or instigation which will ,

satisfy the natural conclusio n dra w n from their coexistence and sequence ,

as this relation is the evidential characteristic in the physical series of

a
causal nexus of some kind The distinction can accept the
.

natural judgment of a qualitative difference between mental and phys

ical and even between the various terms of a physical series while it
, ,

maintains that t he problem and conclusion represented in the conserva

tion of energy is mere ly quantitative and not qualitative so that ma ,

t er i a l causality is excluded fro m the nexus between the mental and the
physical while the nexus of ei c ien t causation may remain intact It .

would then be in a position to impose a dilemma upo n materialism .

Dropping for the present the question whether the conservation of

energy is merely quantitative and not qualitative the point to be noted ,

is that the distinction between the problems of ei c i en t and those of

material causes is adapted to the denial of a material identity of m ent a l
and physical while it concedes an ef cient causal nexus between them
as an occasioning inue n ce in the genesis of one or the ot h er

phenomenon as the case m ay require This will be equal to the
, .

demand that materialism either change its denition and concepti o n of

its problem as essentially occupied with the principle of identity and
material causation betwee n phenomena especially in the connection
,

between matter and mind or obtain its evidence for this material nexus
,

in mental phenomena and physical together in some other fact tha n

the relation of coexistence or sequen c e since this can be presumably
,

explained as an occurrence by ef cient or occasional causes without

admitting a material nexus at all The advantage which the materialist
.

has had in the argu ment arises from the general admission of a causal
nexus between mental and physical phenomena without any de ni
tion of its limitations and meaning and the fact that parall elism has
had no special recognition until philosophy was confronted with the
materialistic application of the principle of identity or m a terial causes
in t h e relations between mind and m a tter His contention w a s good
.
402 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

for a d no m i n em purposes as long as the distinction between e f cient

and material causes was not known or explicitly urged as an argu ment
against him so that he could consistently and effectively maintain that
,

the explanation was valid for the connection between mind and matter .

wherever an undistinguished causality was ad m itted in the case But .

once insist upon the distinction mentio ned a n d the a d lzo m i n em argu
ment would not be valid and a d r em facts would have to be produ ced
,

to show that material causality applied to the case as well as ef cient

or occasional causes The anti materialist would be invulnerable
.
-

with his distinction until the distinction itself was either disproved in
general or shown to be indi fferent to the materialist s problem
.

But the strange part of the controversy at this point is that the pro
ce d u r e of the parallelist and materialist alike wa s a n abandonment of

the position which each should have taken If the m aterialist had .

accepted the conclusion of the spiritual ist as he should have don e and
, ,

if the spiritualist had a ccepted the materialist s theory of conservat ion

both would have come to an agreement and left nothing but a differ
ence of terms to distinguish between their views The spiritualist .

ought to have seen that his argument against materialism as a denial ,

of the persistence of consc iousness depended for its e ffectiveness upon

,

the acceptance of the materialist s doctrine of the conservation of
energy and that the materialist was wholly inconsequent when he
,
.

insisted upon the integrity of his traditional theory after assum ing the
identity of the mental and physical or a material causal nexus between
,

them If the physical is convertible with the mental as this material

.
-

causal nexus assumes then motion and consciousness are identical and
, ,

the persistence of the one implies the equal persistence of the other .

The eternity of matter and m otion must imply the eternity of con
s c io u sn es s because there can be no distinction by hypothesis betw een
, ,

it and motion We cannot redu ce them to identity without admitting

.

the force of what is meant by consciousness as well as motion .

What the materialist thought he could do with impunity w a s to iden

,

t ify the two things and deny the previous implications of conscious

n ess altogether or a f rm their identity by assuming t h e falsity of
,

their difference and yet retain the implica tions of universaliz ing mo
tion without recognizing consciousness at all I But he ca nnot do
this on any theory of material causation alone He m u st accept .

consciousness in the system with all that it means and consider that
motion abstracted from consciousness no more exists inde p en d

e ntly than consciousness without motion The materialist .

ought to h ave seen that his application of the conservation had in

 M A TE P I AL I S M .
40 3

volved a total abandonment of the position for w h ich his theory had
traditionally stood The anti materialist should have taken advantage
.
-

of the a d no m i n em argument as j ust shown , and as absolutely inv ul

,

ner a bl e without a reconstructio n of the proble m on his own terms and ,

not have placed himself on the defensive by advocating the paradoxical

theory of parallelism which can be accepted a pparently as rational
,

only o n the condition that it is convertible with the distinction between

e fcient and material causes By insisting upon the logi cal co u se
.

qu e n ces of the materialist s own theory of causation the spiritualist

could have forced the materialist either to accept the permanence and
non phenomenal nature of cons ciousness , that is the immortality of
-

,

the soul on a physical basis which it had been the purpose of that
,

doctrine all along to deny or to modify the doctrine of the conserva

,

tion of energy and to concede that there are qualitative problems of

causality which quantitative methods do not decide ; that qualitative
changes are not accounte d for by material causation with its regulating
principle of identity and that mechanical principles assu ming this
, ,

identity cannot explain or make intelligibl e more than one half the
,

universe of science and philosophy The materialist is clearly in a

.

fatal dilemma here He must either reconstruct his method or concede

.

the limitations of the conservatio n of energy if he is to insist any ,

longer on the denial of immortality and on any terms he is in the

,

hands of the spiritualist who accepts the co nservation of energy and ,

such mercy as he may display will depend upon the assurance that he
can hold the materialist to the conclusions which he has drawn from
his observations and experiments without retracing his steps to the dis
tinct ion between ef cient and materia l causes .

It is evident therefore that the materialist had d eparted from the

, ,

original conception of his theory in discrediting the permanence of

consciousness after identifying it with motion and then declaring this
to have been proved to be eternal by experimentation and retained ,

nothing but the word m aterialism for his position , relying upon
association and the ignorance of the student to accept the inconsequent
conclusion drawn from it O n the othe r hand the spiritualist or anti
.
,

materialist took up the old assumptions of the materialist as to the

distinction be t ween ei c ient and material causes and tried to force a
conclusion the opposite of what actually may follow from it Instead .

of imposing the above mentioned dilemma upon his opponent he ao

cep t e d the older position of materialism with a denial of its necessary

consequence ! He chose for his weapon of o ffense and refutation the

very fact that made possible the purely phenomenal nature of c o n
40 4 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

and too k to ghting against the doctrine which proved h is

s c i o u sn es s

own co n tentions ! This is truly a humorous situation Both parties .

performed the impossible feat for which Hegel has been so roundly
abused namely that of actually holding that the truth is the unity and
, ,

identity of contradictories for while the materialist was bent on deny

,

ing the permanence of cons ciousness his doctrine af rmed it and the ,
'

spiritualist while he was bent on denying that consciousness is a func

,

tion of the organism he placed his argument on a position which

,

a i r m ed it or made that a f rmation possible

, Each party in his haste .
,

and z eal to refute the other assuming that he must not admit the major
,

premises of his opponent adopted conceptions which should have been

,

the premises and had been the original premises of his antagonist and
then argued against do ctrines which he should have accepted on his
own proper premises ! Mutual absorption is not always the result of
philosophic controversies but this one reminds us of the Kilkenny
,

cats .

There is a nother inconsequence which the materialist has been guilty

of and which must be noticed I have called attention to his original
extension of the term matter to cover the s upersensible as well as
the sensible world of reality and shown that it might have been ques
t io n e d until the sci e ntic proof of the indestructibility of matter

j ustied this extension B ut this was in dealing with the problem

.

involved in distinctions between sensible and supersensible facts The .

inconsequence to be noticed ca n n ot p lead in its defence any such dis

tinction It concerns the extension of the term matter in the s a m e
.

world whether sensible or supersensible it matters not and where the

, ,

qualities are not pres ent to give it its proper connotation This exten .

sion is sh o wn i n the modern speculations about the nature of matter
'

V arious facts and intellectual tendencies one of the l a tter being per,

haps the same instinct that prompted theistic speculation to assume the
created nature of matter namely to ask the cause of every possible
,

reality have induced scientic men to explain how matter may have
,

come into existence Granting the assumption that it was or m ight be

.

a dependent reality instead of supposing it the creation of intelligence

, ,

the scientic man either from m otives of evolution or from the desire
,

to obtain some ultimate monistic reality has explained matter to ,

have been formed from vortex atoms of ether N o w the ether had .

been dened by qualities which are t h e negation of eve r ything by

which
matter is known to be matter and this redu ction of ,

m aterial substance to a modication of ether which is not matter at

all is a virtual admission that the ultimate reality is immaterial But
, .
 M A TE R I AL I S M .
4 05

if you ask these same s cientists what ether is they will tell you that

it is a form of matter
This is a contradiction in terms We can .

not redu ce matter to a creation or evolution from the immaterial and

yet dene the u ltimate reality as material without forfeiting the
r ight to distinguish against the anti materialistic point of view as the
-

generaliz ation of the term matter in this extension of it covers both

t h e positive and negative qualities of the old conception ! Another
u nion of contradictories ! Reasoning is imposs ible on any side of any
question if this proce d ure is permitted to go on with impunity I do .

not deny that matt er may be formed from vortex atoms of ether ,

but this cannot be true at the same time that ether is to be regarded

as a for m of matter O ne or the other alternative will have to be
.

sacriced if the materialistic hypothesis is to have any logical fulcrum

,

against spiritualism If the distinction made in the case and the exten
.

s ion of the meaning of the term matter involved that between a sen
s ible and supersensible world this contention just put forward would not

h el d true . The alternatives would not be so clear But the extension .

c overs facts of distinction and opposition in the same world the super ,

s ensible and all rational procedure requires some respect for di st in c .

tions of fact when giving names to the results If we insist upon .

g eneraliz ing a concept to cover such distinct obj ects as the present
q ualities of matter and the negation of them w e must not carry with it
e ither the conception or implications of the older use of the term .

This duty however is not so often observed as it should be The

, , .

i nterests of controversy indu ce us to evade it .

The defence of the materialist against both of these inconsequences

a bove should have been the consistent limitation of the term matter ,

on the one hand and the frank abandonment of material causation as

,

t h e only method of explaining the origin and nature of phenomena ,

a nd to have cultivated the advantage which he possessed in the hypoth

e sis of internal causes or forces to account for qualitative changes

a n d diff erences . The fundamental error of the materialist was his
a bandonment and evasion of the c a t e o r
g y of d if er e n ce if I may adopt ,

a remark of Sterling and in using only the category of identity where

, ,

t h e other is quite as evident a fact in phenomena

as identity and
a lready admitted in the non phenomenal world of atoms which were not
-

all qualitatively alike If the materialist would only remain by the dis
.

t inction between ef cient and material causation he could treat all dif

fe r e n c es variations from the
,
uniformity of n ature or qualitative ,

changes attached to quantitative identity as epipheno mena or inci

,

d ental effects o f causes that guarantee no necessary permanence for

4 06 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OP H Y
.

their effects which on that account may be transient and phenom

,

enal . That is to say whatever account we may or may not be able to
,

give of efcient causes , the materialist should have recogn iz ed from

the very conception of differences between causes and e ffects where qual
i tat iv e changes are facts that his assu mption of internal causation had

provided for an explanation of certain phenomena incompatible
with their causation by the transmission of motion from an external
source , and hence a modal modication not traceable to material
causality In this way it might well admit the qualitative difference
.

between consciousness and e x ternal motion refusing to apply me ,

chanical causality as implying equivalence to them so as to make ,

consciousness an incidental eff ect of the process of ef cient causation ,

either of exter n al motion mo d ied by the subj ect to which it is trans

m itt ed or of the internal nature and action of the subject to which the
,

motion is transmitted There could then be no answer to its position

.

but the production of facts which would prove that w hatever relation ,

consciousness as an event might have t o the efcient action of external

stimulus it was and is not a function of the material organism with
,

which it is associated in its known manifestations usually that is not , ,

a merely phenomenal incident of composition but a mode of action ,

which has a persistence equal to the integrity of the subj ect of which
it is a function independent o f the organism and not dissolvable with
it The evidence w hich will satisfy any such terms must be of t h e
.

kind which will prove the identity of any given consciousness after t h e
dissolution of the organism Unless this is unde r taken materialism
.

will have the advantage of the distinction between ef cient and mate

rial causes assuming that it abandons its conception of mechanical
,

causes and also of the uniform association of consciousness with t h e

,

material organis m and no accepted evidence of its isolation from it .

S U MM A R Y .

Greek genius showed itself in its art and this was imitated in R 0 ,

man tastes and manners This reected a sensuous Vie w of life and it
.

infected its whole rel igious cult Philosophy was more free from the
.

infection but did not wholly escape it a nd in the Epicurean system

, ,

returned to the natural taste and conceptions of the race In its revolt .

against materialism Christianity carried its spiritual tendencies into the

,

entire eld of human interests and so embodied its conceptions in a

,

xed antipathy to philosophic materialism , art and idolatry Nothing .

w as m ore uncompromisi n g than its opposition to the last Its view of .

spiritual life w a s wholly internal and it turned away from sense as

from evi l It wa s many centuries before the reaction came and thi s
.
,
 M A TE R I A L I S M 40 7

was announced by the revival of pictorial art , whi ch did not become
dominant a t once .

.1 The rst indication of a materi a listi c revival was the rise and
prominence of painting in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries It wa s .

religious in form but represented a sensuous instead of a spiritual con

,

cept io n of religious life. The inner and reective life had lost its
force and beauty and the religious consciousness sought satisfaction in
,

reviving the contemplation of sensuous embodiment for its ideals .

The church had for centuries refus ed to recogniz e this interest and n o w
it sprang agai n into existence and initiated a taste for the real as dis
tinct from the ideal world .

.2 The next step in the same directio n w as the Renaissance or the

revival of ancient literature and an enthusiasm for a nat ural life This .

wa s the feature of the fourteenth and fteenth centuries Greek and

.

Roman ideals began to supplant the Christian and the mind had its
momentu m toward material life and civiliz ation increased .

.
3 The P rotestant Reformatio n extended the same impulse to
religious authority and originated freedom of conscience and belief .

This occupied the fteenth and sixteenth centur i es a nd eviscerated the

,

power of the church to interfere successfully with the progress of

science which had begu n to show its conquests over traditional views of
nature and terminated in the higher criticism which wa s the logi ca l
consequence of raising the questio nof authority in human belief .

.
4 In the w h ole history of Christi a nity there was a eld of reality

consigned to natural agencies and this meant originally p lty s i ca l
forces P rovidential and D ivine agency applied wherever the physical
.

did not seem to explain things This eld of physical powers was a
.

comparatively limited one and as long as the belief in miracles endured

,

there was no dif culty in nding a cause for any apparent exception

to the domain of natural la w General cosmic action w a s referre d
.

to providential agency eith e r directly or indirectly Hence w ith t h e

.

predominance of religious co nceptions and an insistence on a religiou s

view of the cosmos the P tolemaic system became a dogma whose in
t e gr i ty could not be disturbed without a ffecting religion and without
creating a presu mption in favor of the opposing vie w Copernican .

astronomy set aside the P tolemaic and encouraged condence in the

scientic w ay of looking at things though it did not alter the eld of
,

supposed direct Divine action i n the regulation of the cosmos But .

Newtonian gravitation followed with its conception of natural
a ttraction and still more limited the eld of miraculous interference .

The n came D a rwinism and extended n a tural action to the formation
40 8 TH E P R OB L E IlI S OF PI /I L O S O P H Y .

of species and did for time what Newtonian gravitation did for space
, ,

namely applied natural agencies to the eld of organic creation as

,

g ravitation explains the collocations of matter The last fortress of .

creationism had been the beginning of things in time when some out
side agency was required to initiate t h em But gravitation and ev o l u
.

tio n transferred this i n it i um into so remote a period that any thing could
be said with impunity about it The increase of material agencies in
.

the explanatio n of phenomena left no assure d eld for the sup er na t

ural and the materialistic theory obtained the victory
, .

5 The rst denite admission of the su f ciency of a mechanical

.

t heory of nature was that of Descartes He allowed natural .

causes to prevail in the eld of matter though he admitted the Divine

,

a s an initiating agency But mechanical causes were deemed adequate

.

t o the explanation of all material phenomena Spinoza followed and .

r educed mental phenomena which Descartes had excepted from

,

material inuences , to functional events in a material substance or

Absolute Dalton came with a restatement of the atomic theory and
.

used a system of internal forces to explain the combinations of matter

and thus applied materialism to all compounds Thus it seemed that .

both the monistic and the pluralistic view of nature were consistent

with materialism .

6 Christianity had organized a theory of creation as against the

.

Greek doctrine of evolution and so placed spirit at the basis of things ,

matter being phenomenal and evanescent But the discovery of the .

indestructibility of matter reversed this order and tended to make

mental phenomena incidental and transient P hilosophy had been so .

saturated with the conviction that there w a s but one ultimate basis for
existence that the eternal nature of matter simply dispossessed the
priority of mind unless it could be assigned a function in the movement
of matter a n d there this idea prevailed to account for the changes of
,

the cosmic order u ntil the conservation of energy seemed to reinstate

the same eternity for motion that indestru ctibility applied to m atter .

The m aterialistic theory thus seemed to prevail over the whole king
dom of nature Mental phenomena became transient accidents of
.

organization and disappeared as many other functions of matter with

the dissolution of the compounds with which they were associated .

7 P hysiology and pathology added their acquisitions to the same con

.

c l u si o n In them the inte g rity of consciousness seemed wholly depend

.

ent upon the organism and its conditions , so that it appears to be a func
tion of this organism and not of some other and associated reality such
as a soul There thus seemed no eld for the independence of m ind
. .
 CHAP TER XI .

S P IR IT U A L I S M .

IT will be nece s sary here to examine somewhat closely the meaning

of spiritualism though it has been dened previously with a view to
,

establishing its antithesis to materialism This relation w a s considered

.

briey in the classication of the theories of knowledge and reality ( p .

but it will require to be reconsidered here in order to ma k e per

f ect ly clear the complicated problem with which we have to deal in an
exposition of it a n d of the arguments by which it is supported
, .

Materialis m has alw ays been a comparatively simple theory in that it ,

applied the same for ula to cosmic and psychological phenomena
m ,

explaining absolutely all events in the same general way and consti ,

tuting in one sense at least a system of monism whether of the Spin

, , ,

o z ist ic or the Lu cretian type But spiritualism has not al ways insisted
.

upon describing and explaining cosmi c phenomena by the sa m e

general principle It has sometimes accepted a eld for material

.

phenomena distinct from the mental as in Cartesian dualism and ,

the various conceptions of common sense In this form it is a .

theo r y opposed only to what is here called psychological materialism ,

a nd might be conceived as consistent with pan materialism O nly o c -

.

c a si o na l ly has it assumed the for m of pan spiritualism a claim often -

made for the system of Spinoza by those who feel that they cannot
escape its m eshes a nd who wish therefore to delude themselves and
others with the illusion that idealism is a good substitute for religion .

I have already indicated that this pan spiritualism does not escape the
-

necessity of considering the proble m which has been so hotly discussed

bet ween psychological materialism and psychological spiritualism ,

namely that regarding the value and persistence of consciousness

, ,

whose value depends upon its persistence Consequently as this .

,

problem would take the form of determining the relation between the
different modes of a spiritual absolute and as materialism has usually
, ,

taken the form of an ato m ic doctrine it will be best to discuss the

problem in the form in which its historical setting has been determined .

But even in its conception of an antithesis to psychologi cal m aterialism

it has indirectly complicated itself with cosmic problems without be
coming a monistic theory itself O n this a ccount I have divided the
.

doctrine into three types the t neo l o g i ca l the p lail o s o p i ca l and the
, ,

4 09
410 TH E P R OB L E JII S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

s c i en t c , according to the method adopted for its solution and accord

i ,

ing as it is or is not complicated with speculations that are extr a n e

o u s or only indirectly connected with its main object , the permanence
,

of consciousness Theological spiritualism bases its support for the

.

persistence and value of consciousness upon a divine revelation ; philo

sophic spiritualism upon rationalistic interpretations of the nature o f
things ; and s cientic spiritualis m upo n inductive and experimental
evidence These several points of view ofte n interpenetrate so that
.
,

the exposition of the doctrine of spiritualis m generally will bring us

into contact with all of them in the course of its history and I shal l ,

leave to the reader the detection of the specic type that is under dis
c u ss io n at any time , the main point to be remembered being that they

are all designed to refute materialism in one or all its forms .

There is another c o m pl i ca t i o n in which spiritualism and its co n tro

o

v e r sy with materialism is involved Spiritualis m has a d es t r u c t i v e

.

and a co n s t r u c t i v e function to perform The rst necessity of its exist .

ence is the denial and refutation of materialism a negative or sceptica l ,

function which does not commit it to any constructive work in the

argument The result of stopping with the refutatio n of materialis m
.

would only be that this theory would not explain t h e nature and mean
ing of consciousness , but it would not necessarily determine any reality

that did explain the phenomena of mind Immaterialism so t o .
,

speak would be the result with liberty to give it any interpretatio n

, ,

that other interests m ight d etermine The constru ctive effort might .

take the direction of either pan spiritualism or of psychological spirit

-

u a l is m whether of the theological the philosophical or the scienti c

, , ,

type But it is rare that it denies the existence of matter u n equ i v

.

o c a ll It may and often enough does deny the indepe ndent

y .
, ,

existence of matter that is a self existent material reality capable

, ,
-

of explaining phenomena of any kind or in any way but when it ,

.

comes to characteriz e reality constructively which will explain ,

the theory which ta k es this course is not always z ealous to call thi s
reality God or to imply that it is consciousness of any intelligible
sort It is idealism in the garb of spiritualism while those who are
.
,

willing to describe the reality which in some way creates what

,

ordinarily passes for matter in the mind of the idealist as God , ,

adopt the theological type of spiritualism But as the majority of men .

admit the existence of matter as something capable of producing

effects whether directly or in directly and whether it is conceived as
, ,

a self existent or an independent reality the usual antithesis implie d

-

between materialism and spiritualism is that in which spiritualis m

 S PI R I T UA L I S M 41 I

loes not deny the existence of matter in some sense of the term but ,

denies the a d equ a cy of matter to explain all the phenomena of the

cosmos and especially the
, phenomena of consciousness The .

materialistic theory is not primarily occupied with provin g the exist

ence of matter but with its explanatory power It simply takes the .

existence of matter for granted and undertakes to expla in phe

nomena by the use of its functions Of course it would be a ne

.

controversial advanta ge to d eny the materialist s assumption of the

existence of mat ter as it would throw upon him the burden of provi n g
what he assumes as evident But when we recogniz e that the anti
.

materialist w h o appears to be denying so valiantly the very existence

of matter is not denying either the f a cts which the materialist has in
h is possession or the relations between phenomena which are equally
evident facts , w e nd that the denial is a mere subterfuge to avoid

using the word materialism where it would be extremely in co n
v en ien t to do so But , as I have previously remarke d t h e quest ion is
.
,

not whether we shall use the terms matter or spirit but whether ,

the relatio n between cons ciousness and other events in respect of con
ne ct i o n or causality and permanence is or is not what the material
'

ist claims it is a s t h is problem would only involve a slight change

,

of terms whether we assu me the mo n istic or the plur a listic point of

,

view Hence the primary question is not the existence of anything

.

called matter but the adequacy of the explanation which embodie s
,

itself in the term m aterialism whether considered as a phenomenal
, .

or a noumenal theory that is to say whether it deals with m ere
, ,

coexistences and sequence of events or involves the assumption of real

substances or atoms monistic or plu ralistic , .

The consequence of these facts is that I shall dene spiritualis m as

the theory which denies that consciousness is a function of organization
in matter but a frms that it is a function of some other reality This
, .

general point of view has been suf ciently indicated before and is o n ly
renewed here to have it present in the recognition of the circumstance
that the arguments in behalf of the doctrine are partly negative of ma
t er ia li sm and partly positive in support of spiritualism Some avail only .

to create di fculties in the materialistic view and some avail to suggest

or dema n d in the name of the principle of causality which material
,

ism respects a source for mental phenomena other than anything called
,

matter at least as long as that conception is limited to the accepted

,

denition of it I shall not classify the negative and positive argu

.

ments but discus s the problem in its historical development and

,

changes with the arguments for and against and leave t h e student to
4 12 TH E P R OB L E Il/I S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

d etermine when I am d eali n g with destructive and when with con

s tructive considerations The negative arguments can not prove
.

s piritualism , but if valid at all only that the m aterialistic theory is

, ,

i nsu f cient to account for all the phenomena of observatio n They .

c a n suggest or prove nothing more than the fact that an immaterial

reality is necessary to meet the demands of explanation But to prove .

s piritualism we shou ld have to show that this immaterial reality is

a ctually conscious or that there is a type of immaterial reality

,

that is conscious Spiritualism must imply consciousness or it is

.

n o t different from materialism in regard to the fundamental problem

before us namely , the value meaning and persistence of consciousness

, , .

H ere is where Berkeley made his failure H i s abstraction fro m the .

s ensible did n o t give him spirit not even an escape from the h is ,

t o r ic a l materialism whose conception of matter was a supersensible r e

a lity but only a negation of s e n s a t i o n a l m aterialism or the

,
common ,

s ense conception of matter which assumes that sensation gives us the

true nature of it But even if the abstraction of the sensible did
.

r ightly displace materialism the existence of spirit did n o t follow as
the reality whi ch he placed at t h e basis of the cosmos because his dis ,

junction was not correct Assuming the dualistic position of Descartes

.

the argument was sound enough But that reality must be limited to .

the t wo kinds mind and matter is a purely arbitrary assumption There

, , .

may be any number of realities neither mental nor material in the uni
verse so that the only conclusion w hich Berk eley could dra w even
, ,

a dmitting that he had escaped the historical materialism was that the ,

ult i mate basis o f things was i m m a t e r i a l and he shou ld have presented ,

s pecial and additional evidence that this reality was conscious T he .

positive asse r tion of spiritualism if it is to have any denite meaning , ,

must imply t h e presence of consciousness I do not say that it must .

be true That is the que stion to be decided But the only doctrine
. .

that can satisfy the demand for the persistence of consciousness or

the survival of personal identity beyond the dissolution of the

organism is that which denes spirit or soul as implying the

fact If we prefer w e may say that spirit should technically mean
.
,

dis carnate soul and soul i n carn ate spirit but in so far as the ,

general theory of spiritualism is concerned either ter m will satisfy the

denition Unless idealism is synonymous with this conception it can
.
,

only mean immaterialism and remain agnostic or dogmatica l ly opposed

to su rvival after death It is u sually one or the other of these alter
.

natives Its opposition to materialism is only technical and conceives

.

it as a sensational theory of things while it intends to be an intellectual

 S PI R I T UA L [S M 413

doctrine , as I have already shown above The negative arguments .

for spiritualism if valid do not take us beyond the refutation of

, ,

materialism but do not establish positively the persistence of con

,

sc i o u sn e ss though at least suggesting its possibility Whether a n y

,
.

such result be possib le is not the proble m that is before us but only ,

the conception of the theory that mus t be denitely and clearly oppose d
to materialism and satisfy the assertion th at consciousness is not a
function of the bodily organis m .

The doctrine of spiritualism was not clearly dened until Chris

t ia n i ty asserted it and worked out the theory with a philosophy The .

anti materialism of the Greeks was largely a denial o f the sensa

-

t io n a li s m of the earlier period of reection and an assertion of intel

l ec t u a l is m the distinction involving nothing more ethically and philo

,

sophically than the superior value of the intellectual life the importance ,

of recogniz ing the true the beautiful and the good as they were e m
, , ,

bodied in nature art and politics This general characteriz ation of

, .

Greek thought ho w ever may do an injustice to some of its r ep r esen

, ,

t a t i v es and to the actual beliefs of common people of who m we have

heard little or nothing directly Indicating as I have done that t h e .

, ,

main tendency of Greek speculatio n was a distinctio n between realities

of the same kind and only between the sensible and supersensible form s
of this r ea lit v which w a s monistically conceived whether as in ato mis m ,

or in the pantheistic view the test W hether spiritualism describes a ny

,

conceptions philosophically entertained by that race must be found in

their doctrine of immortality because there is no way whatever to show
, ,

that consciousness is not a functio n of the organism but to maintain a

theory which asserts its survival of bodily death No w P lato main .

t a in e d with much positiveness and argument that the soul w a s i m

mortal Aristotle admitted it for the ratio n al soul and t h e Stoics
, ,

held it in a rather vague form With Socrates it was a pious belief .

not work ed out philosophically It is probable that some sort of .

personal survival was ac cepted by the c ommon people at one time at

least for there is evidence from stateme n ts of Homer and later writer s
,

that H ades the land of ghosts and shadows was the place of discar
, ,

nate souls whose life was a more or less conscious one but less inter ,

esting and perfect than their incarnate existence But the philosophers .

evaded responsibility for any such na i ve views and if their silence is

evidence they seem to have shied at ghost stories quite as the m a teria
,

list o f to day does Whatever conception they took of immortality w a s

-
.

colored a s was quite natural and is perhaps al ways the case by their
, ,

general philosophy of nature as they considered the soul su ch a
,
 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

part of natu r e as to be involved in its process and tendencies But .

their conception of it be this what it may must be the test of what is

, ,

meant by the application of a spiritualistic doctrine to them and must

also describe the nature and limits of the idealism that is attributed
to them We have seen enough in the discussion of materialism to
.

learn that it is n o t the words used that determines the meaning of a

theory but the synthetic implications of it in a wide range of facts and
beliefs This same consideration must be taken into account in dis
.

cussing the relation o f Greek thought to the problems which center about
the nature and persistence of consciousness The fact that they use the
.

words soul and immortality d oes not imply of itself that they
had conceptions of them the s a me as ours in any respect This is even .

a pp a rent in the phenomenal use of the term soul by the entire
empirical schoo l of phenomen a lists in modern times where it is ,

conceived as the name for mental states not for the subject of them or
,

for a reality other than the brain the last supposition not being enter
,

t a i n e d by them
. The Greek philosophers did not make clear whether

they viewed the soul as a substance or as an attribute if I may use ,

a modern distinction which enables us to distin guish bet w een the sub
jec t and the phenomena of consciousness This modern distinction .

enables us to assume a permanent fact different from its action which ,

may be variously interrupted or ephemeral The substance remains .

permanent while its actions as functions may be phenomenal if in ,

an
y way the resu ltant of its combination with another substance The .

Gree k of course had a conception of substance but until materialism

, , ,

in the atomic form modied philosophic conceptions he conceived sub

stance i n action as a process of m e t a m o r p no s i s after the analogy of
,

evolutionary growt h and not of co m bi n a t i o n after the analogy of

, ,

the composition of forces though in fa ct we nd a very frequent com

,

promise o r union of both points of view during the process of develop

ment into clearer views which were realiz ed in t h e materialistic theory
an d the reaction in Christian thought clearer because the development
brought out the distinctions necessary to show the nature of the i m p l i
cations involved But in spite of the fact that the idea of substance
.

wa s as clear to G reek thought as to any other it s failure to distinguish

,

between kinds of substance as radically as later t h ought of every type ,

prevented it from distinguishing as clearly between its modal m a nifes

t a t i o n s and as the
, soul was conceived in the form of a rened m a t
ter its functions were inevitably implicated in preconceptions of the
same nature so that the permanence that the mental would get must
,

be ana l ogous to the permanence which was asserted or believed of the

 S PIR I T UA L I S M 415

material This tendency would determine the meaning of the term

.

immortality which is consistent with either the indestructibility of
,

matter or the permanence of consciousness , or with either a doctrine

of metamorphosis , metempsychosis or with personal survival after
,

death Whi c h vie w the Greeks had must be determined in order to

.

interpret the meaning of either idealism or spiritualism as applied

to their speculative position in philosophy generally .

It is Plato that subsequent generations have selected to represent

the anti materialistic theory of Greek philosophy The reason for t h is
-
.
,

of course , was his af rmation of immortality Had not his s tatements

.

been denitely on the a i r m a t iv e of this doctrine less sympathy with

his philosophy by later times would have been declared This is appa .

rent i n the comparative indifference shown to Aristotle on this same

point as he was less explicit in the defence of the doctrine though
, ,

admitting it for the rational part of man Aristotle was the .

authority for conceptions and arguments in behalf of a theistic origin

of the cosmos a doctrine which wa s worked out to indirectly support
,

immortality after direct evidence was more or less discredited But

,
.

P lato has left us an explicit defence of a doctrine of immortality and

later Christian thought did not ask any discri m inating questions in the
interpretation of it when an af rmative do ctrine could be used at least
for a d lzo m i n em purposes w ith Greek a n d philosophic thinkers who
did not k now enough of P latonic philosophy to discover its inherent
variation from the personal immortality which w a s the subj ect of pur
s uit in Christian thought It wa s the ne ethical spirit of P lato that cap
.

t iva ted the earlier Christian thinkers an ethical spirit that coincided with
,

theirs except that it w a s more denitely limited in its applications to

,

aesthetic and political life than among Christians P lato had connected
.

morality with his doctrine of immortality and in this way it wa s easy

,

to assume that his view of the order of things was identical with the
Christian doctrine of probation and persona l immortality but a care ,

ful study of P lato such as modern philosophy enables us to make will

, ,

reveal the fact that it is j ust as easy to misrepresent the identity of the
two positions as it was for the ancients to misunderstand P lato when
the fundamental postu l ates of the Greek philosophy of nature had been
forgotten The psychological and metaphysical points of view in the
.

t w o movements must be carefully distinguished in any estimation of

their relations to the problem which w e are here dis cussing Their .

psychological and metaphysical antitheses were expressed in the same

terms but did not have the same conce ptions or implications The
,
.

psychological antithesis in both cases was between sense and rea
41 6 TH E P R OB L E AI S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

son with perhaps compa rative identity of meaning But correspond .

ing to this was their antithesis between matter and spirit in t h e

metaphysical eld But with the Gree k this antithesis was between a
.

sensible and a supersensible reality w i t ki n the physical world alone ,

while with the Christian the distinction between the sensible and

supersensible worlds was an antithesis between the physical and th e

superphysical , involving the idea that the spiritual was essentially
immaterial , while that of the Greeks was only a rened materia l real
ity This fact must be perpetually k ept in mind when estimating the
.

meaning of Greek thought and in the interpretation of the do ctrine of

P l at o w h o only apparently transcended the conceptions of his time and
race simp l y because he did not clearly break with them , though he
,

certainly brin gs us to the point where that break is na tura l , and sug
g ests that he had a glimpse of what he could not make clear either to
h imself or others .

I sh all not assert without qualication that P lato had no conceptio n

whatever of a personal immortality of some k ind , because we must
always remember two things in regard to his philosophy First it .
,

was cosmopolitan and represented more or less the convergence o f

every stream of thought previous to his own time embellished with an ,

art that no other Greek could give it Secondly his own doctrines
.
,

were never worked out with complete consistency nor into a systemati c
whole like the doctrines of Aristotle P lato was too mu ch enamore d
.

w ith dialectic as an art and with the dramatiz ation of ph ilosophic dis
co urse and a l so too conscious of the sceptical dif culties involve d
,

in any dogmatic system to intrust himself with any nal conclu

,
-

sions on one side only of a problem H e was forever l ooking at

.

both sides of the shield of H ercu l es trying to get a unity which h e

,

never found in what was essentially double faced to his point of view,
and he n ce could not cut himself free from the monism w hich co or di
n a t ed mind and matter to adopt either a dualism that co br d ina t ed them

in a higher unity of mind or a monism that s u bo r d i n a t ed matter t o

,

mind He accepted as nal the monistic postulates of his race which

.

assumed that the individual mind had the same destiny as matter , a nd
was not swerved from it by any antith esis between sense and reason ,
or between t h e sensible a n d supersensible worlds any more than were ,

the materialists But on the other ha n d he assi gned an ethica l valu e

. .
,

to the intellectual functions of experience or to all the higher form s

of consciousness without discovering that it mi ght point to a meta
physical theory inconsistent with o r at least quite different from , th e
,

conception that th e soul was only a rened for m of matter with char
a ct er ist i cs that associ a ted its action and destiny with all organisms of
whatever sort Between the t w o conceptions he remained in det er
.

minate n o w tending toward one and n o w toward the other with no

,

nal decision of c h ara cter and the m any sided convergence in him of
,
-

all Greek thought had to diverge into later schools to discover the
potentialities of his complicated conceptions H ence the real or a p
,
.

parent contradictions o f his system There were many things in his

.

doctrine that connected him with later Christian thought both in ,

for m s of expression and in the moral purity of his ideas But in real .

ity this connection is often more formal than material when carefully ,

examined , and consequently his spiritualistic metaphysics can receive

that name only Wi th the qualication that t h e spiritual consists of the
intellectual renements of art and culture rather than the brutalities of
sense and passion .

It is impossible to u nderstand P lato s p osition without some expo

si ti o n of what it w a s i n his o w n terms with a complete translation of

,

it into the ter m s and conceptions of later thoug h t H is fu n damental .

conception w a s a union of the Eleatic and H e raclitic philosophies and ,

began with a denial of the Sophistic doctrine of the relativity of a ll

knowledge while admitting th 1 s of sense He started from the anthro
.

p o ce nt r i c point of view with a psychology that based the origin of all

knowledge from tw o separate sources sense perception and reason
, ,

and for each of these he had a corresponding object The object of .

sense wa s change or phenomena the Heracl itic ux ; th e obj ect of
,
reason was the real or the permanent the Eleatic being
, .

The antithesis bet ween sense perception and intellectual intuition was
parallel with the antithes i s between the sen s1bl e worl d of change and
the supersensible world of the per m anent and eternal The obj ects of .

sense w ere called phenomena the obj ects of reason were called
ideas . With this machinery at his command there began a philo
sophic play with the facts of the cosmic and human order which has
no equal i n the annals of thought for the combined interests of litera
,

ture science ethics politics and metaphysics Nothing but a trans

, , , .

lation of its ights into modern terms will make it intelligible .

With P lato the ter m idea w a s the ope n sesame for all phi l o
sophi c problems It d i d duty for at least v e distinct things : ( I )
.

abstra ct general concepts ; ( 2 ) the conferential or u n iversal qua l ities

of things which correspond to these concepts ; ( 3 ) substance or reality
which was the subj ect of these attributes or qualities ; ( 4 ) the good or
ideal ends of conduct ; ( 5 ) the formative or active p r m c ip l e in the
production of the cosmic order of things which with the doctrine that
, ,

27
 418 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH I L O S GP H Y .

niversal qualities were the essence of reality did not dist inguish
u ,

b etween the e f cient and material cause of what w a s intellectually seen

~ i n the s e ns ible world A conception so rich in content as this and
.

c omprehending su ch widely different facts and realities was sure to

g ive trouble when any of the concrete problems of thought were

b rought to it for explanation The idea was the permanent and .

s ensation w a s the transient as also wa s the latter s obj ect Applied

,

.

t o the sou l the question of its permanence would depend rst upon its

a s a sensible pheno m enon

p lace in this scheme If it w . it was '

transient ; if it w a s a supersensible fact it was permanent But even .

after this latter question was decided there w a s still the more important
issue to be determined namely whether this permanence represented
, ,

the con ception which modern life takes of it when spea k ing of the
i m mortality of the soul This permanent reality of Plato w hen care
.
,

fully dened turned out to be in one of its widest and most important
,

applications nam ely nothing but the u n i v er s a l properties of objects the

, , ,

common qualities which enabled us to classify them in k ind and no t to

predetermi ne their destiny as this destiny wa s predetermined by the
,

a toms of the materialists these being realities which were i n d i v i d u a l

,

and having some determinate qualities that persisted through all their
change s But P lato s permanent or idea was not individual as the
.

atoms were conceived except in one case but was a mode or quality of
, ,

things representing the metamorphosis of some ultimate reality into the

ph e n omenal world of sense without altering its essential identity ,

and hence was not the result of composition among a number of unities
independent of each other Consequ ently the conception of individu
.

a lity with P lato represented the transient or ephem e ral and not the

etern al unities represented by the atoms His permanent the uni .

,

versal conceived as a mode of reality was the transfused identity o f

,

species that were forever changing appearing and disappearing with , ,

such si m ilarity as would show the persistence of the same kind of

material in the metamorphoses a n d cre a tions of nat ure but this per ,

m a n e n ce of the universal qualities was not the xed permanence of the

substance of the atomists as a unitary reality but the permanence of a ,

material essence which had lost its previous individuality in each in

carnation The dif cul ty with P lato lay in his simple classication of
.

reality into the accidental or individual and the necessary or univers a l

without ta k ing account of the further and important distinction between
simple substance a n d its permanent attributes on the one hand and , ,

bet w een composite rea l ity and its resultant phenomenal a ttributes
o r modes on the other This w a s clear to the materialists who also
, .
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
419

s implied the whole problem by reducing it to a question of matter

and form , inverting the uses of these terms in P lato This was .

rst done by Aristotle w h o employed m atter to denote , not the
s ensible world merely , but the stu ff or substance out of which the

s ensible world was made and

for m for the mode in which it was
made In this he s implied the P latonic conception and removed its
.

confusion With P lato matter was the transient fact , the sensible
.

world of phenomenal forms which represented the materialist s

complex wholes and the idea or form was the permanent fact or
,

reality the essence of things a conception which was taken to

, ,

denote indifferently the substance which constituted the obj ect and the
q uality which determined its nature in comparison with oth ers and
distinguished the conferential from the diff erential q ualities of the indi
vidual the last being the evanescent fact of existence Thus the
,
.

u n iv er sa l p r o p e r t ie s and the substance of things were the same so that ,

the material and formal causes were identical in the conceptio n

of P lato and when we ob s erve also that he attributed to this formal
,

cause the idea the formative or active power of determining the
, ,

transition fro m the supersensible to the sensible condition , the evol a

t io n ar y metamorphosis or change from one form of reality to another ,

we discover a very complex problem before us in estimating the phi

l o so p h y of P lato at large and in u nderstanding exactly w hat he meant
by the immortality of the soul , if it is anything mor e than the persist
ence of force A term which does not distinguish between substance
.

a n d attribute for ou r w a
y of thin k ing will not make clear the distin o
tio n between the permanence of the substance with the phenomenal ,

and transient chara cter of sensible properties , and the persistence of a

property or mode of action through a ll the changes and transforma
t ions of the substance This is indispensable to modern thought which
.

a ccepts the phe no menal n at ure of organisms and the noumenal

o r substa nt ive nature of the elements that compose them and wants to
,

kn ow what properties or functions remain to the elements after their

s eparation fro m a given relation or synthesis in time and space As .

s um ing that certain properties are the resultant of organization it ,

concedes their ephemeral character as a consequence , but assumes

their persistence if the subject of them is not dissolved with the d ec o m
positio n o f the organism a conception granted in the very notio n of
,

the atoms Whatever conception of the case P lato may have had he
.
,

did not present it in a way to suggest any such view of persistence as

i s here indicated He was aware that it w a s the simple that was
.

imperishable but in his appeal for evidence he chose the point of view
,
420 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

of universal qualities which described the identity of coexistent and

successive species without necessarily implying the identity of the
in dividual and hence its permanence when dened became merely , ,

the permanent likeness of kind , not the permanence of the same

quality in an individual in spite of its separation from a given synthesis .

P lato was dealing with a process of evolution , a pro cess whi ch he

conceived as the metamorphosis of a plastic reality into evanescent
forms after the doctrine of Heraclitus and not as the combination of
, ,

atomic elements with t h e appearance of qualities as inci dents of tha t

composition though he spo k e and thought of the simple and com
,

pound in sympathy with an atomic theory without perceiving any real

or apparent inconsistency with his prima ry view and hence in his ,

conception of the process as a transition chameleon or P rotean like , ,

from one condition to another of a per manent substance instead of ,

original resultants of changing combinations he could never decide ,

clearly between a do ctrine of m et emp sy c/zo s i s and a doctrine of c r ea

t i o n if I may distinguish in this way between the modal modications of
,

a s i ngle reality and the modal resultant of a multiple of realities P lato .

and Epicurus agreed in the permanent identity of subs tance and they
agreed in the phenomenal nature of the individual or differential
facts of existence But they differed in their con ception of what this
.

substance w a s P lato thin k ing it one and Epicurus thinking it many

, .

P lato w a s uno monistic Epicurus was p l ur o monistic The appear

-

,
-
.

ance of individual or di fferential qualitie s in P lato was conceived as a

modal change of the s a m e substance ; in Epicurus it was a modal
change due to the union of d i e r e n t though similar substances
'

.
, ,

With P lato there was no chance for the persistence of the individual
quality but only of the identity in kind of the separate s tates in which
,

r eality found itself ; with Epicurus there was a chance for persistence

of some one or more qualities , while those incidental to union were

transient Applied to consciousness P lato s doctrine could only m ain
.
,

tain its identity in kind between different individuals in either space or

time but not the persistence of the individual which w a s only a
, ,

moment in the process of metempsychosis ; with Epicurus unless ,

it was made an inherent function of the atom which it was not it , ,

could only be a moment in the unio n of elements which were per ,

sistent without it To put the same thought in Aristotelian terms

.

which represent modern ways of expression more nearly than P lato ,

t h e permanent substance was a plastic matter capable of indenite

modication and could be made to assume any form desired by the
creative master or causal principle Hence the identity or perma
.
 S PI R I T U A L I S M 42 1

n en c e was in this plastic substance and not of the individual types into
which it was evolved except that there could be an identity of kind
,

without a pers istence of the differential essence of the indiv idual a ,

point quite in agreement with the m aterialists who had only to make
consciousness a differential essence or accident of union to accept
the doctrine of P lato With P lato the
.

material or constitutive
element was permanent and this the idea or form was trans
, ,

m i tt e d from indivi d ual to individua l , while the functional variant the ,

Heraclitean modal change or phenomenal matter of the sensible
,

world , itself the individual , was ephemeral B ut by taking matter .

to represent the substance of both the sensible and supersensible the

phenomenal and the noumenal worlds and the idea or ,

form to represent the modal di fferentiations of the primitive sub

sta nce into the types of the phenomenal world , we nd that the
Platonic permanence meant only the constant reappearance of the same
s pecies ,
not the continuance of the individual .

Plato approached the problem of existence from two points of view

which he never completely reconciled and perhaps could not easily
have re conciled in his time , if he had tried H e sa w bot h the facts .

of change and the facts of permanence and he emphasiz ed only the

principle of identity in the explanation of all things , that is the ,

principle of material cause though he resorted to e f cient causes at

,

one or t wo points without working out this n ew principle even to

account for the fact of change , which w a s the one that ought to have
attracted his scientic and philosophic interest H is primary method .
,

the application of the principle of identity which he u nderstood better ,

than any other principle of philosophy was that of observing the ,

actual unity of things in which he found a hierarchy of types reducible

to logical classication He sa w that obj ects could be classied by
.

their properties into genera and species and these reduced to the ,

s u m m u m g e n u s and the i nf i m a sp ec i es The former was r ep r e .

sented by be i ng or the universal which was regarded as one a
, ,

conception which did not distinguish between mathematical unity or

singleness and logical identity or similarity of kind which involved
mathematical plurality of individuals T h e la tter were the i n di v id u a ls
.

that made up the real obj ects of the sensible world these being con

c ei ve d in an equivocal manner n o w as constituted by a synthesis of

,

conferential and differential or u n iversal and accidental qualities and

, ,

n o w as a differential accident a phenomenal change atta ched to a
, ,

permanent supersensible reality evidentially indicated by its identical

,

modes in the transmutations of species O f this again The ideas .

.
42 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

or forms were the common properties the conferential or universa l ,

qualities of things and the di fferential constituted the individual or par

,

t i c u l a r qualities But his chief interest lay in the common or u niversal

.

qualities which he could des cribe as the essence of reality on the

assumption that they represented the perdurable in the cosmic evolution ,

that is the identical element in change while that which changed was
,

individual and transient H e supposed that the ideas or universal

.

qualities were all evolved from an ultimate reality being which stood , ,

as the one reality or substance capable of giving rise materially to al l

that was found in the individuals except the evanescent , that is the ,

conferential qualities which showed a perdurable essence makin g
them the same in kind either co exist ent ly in space or su ccessively in time .

Thus to take an illustration , el m s and o a ks are each a species of t r ee

, .

Elms and oa k s have certai n differential properties which do not belong

to all trees and w hich distingui sh each from the other In fact we .
,

might say that the real meaning of the terms is the differences w hich
make the ter m t r ee in capable of indicating all that is meant by either
term These differenti ate are the individual transient or accidental
.
, ,

qualities in P latonic parlance which , if the case is an individual in

, ,

the proper sense of the term can never be repeated But the commo n
, .

properties which are expressed by the term t r ee do not represent

for P lato merely a quality of the species but also the material which
existed and may exist independe ntly of the species or individual in
which they are found It does not mean that there is an independent
.

individual tree apart from oaks and e l ms which forms their character
, , ,

but a material w hich is drawn upon and is permanently of the kind to

determine their similarity and unity H ere is found P lato s close .

af liation with the atomic doctrine w hich was only another form of
the general Greek conception that all things were formed out of
o r material
stuff causes The universal p roperties were from
.

eternal stuff the a ccidental properties from transient material
,
.

We should say th at tree is an abstract term not representing a ny

other reality than a modal one a quality of the individual subj ect or
,

organis m in which it appeared But Plato seeing that there was a .

resemblance in kind between coexistent and sequent species and

individuals sought a material cau se for this identity and persistent
fact , and not using ef cient ca uses to account for any thing like a
quality and not being ab l e to explain the contingent a n d evanescent
phenomena materially had to treat them as transient But the .
,

universal qualities were constituted out of preexistent a n d post

existential material , in which they pa rticipated as a substance o r

 S PI R I T UA L I S M 42 3

essence out of which they were made n They are supersensible reali
ties though there is sensi ble evidence o f them But here P lato meets
, .

a fundamental di f culty H e h a s to recognize the evi dence in the

.

sensible for that which is supposed to survive the sensible and whe n ,

this eviden ce is produ ced it is the identity in kind of the t wo sensible

individuals and this identity is the b a sis of what persists through the
,

changes or transmutations of species so tha t after all some sort of

,

identity between the sensib le and the supersensible is assumed and ,

this apparently contradicts the assumptio n of an antithesis bet wee n

them This would explain Aristotle s accusation against the P latonic
.

ideas that they si mply etern alized th e things of sense when they
should have recogniz ed the antithesis which the main principle of his
philosophy represented Aristotle claried the matter by frankly rep
.

resenting the ideas or forms as sensible propert ies along with

the Pl atonic matter or contingent and differential qualities and by ,

extending the ter m matter to express the supersensible reality or sub

stance whose evolution produced both the transient and the permanent ,

or the accident a l and universal qualities the difference bet ween the
,

t wo being one of relative permanence or relative tra nsiency P lato .

seems to have been governed by assumptions analogous to that of

Anaxagoras whose h o m o io m er iaa supersensible realities or atoms ,
,

represented the material source from which the qualities of the sensi
ble world were drawn The qualitative identities and di fferences
.

were due to the fact that the respective qualities were found in the
original el ements forming the composition and variations in the ,

totalities were due to variations in the numerical character of the

units composing the wholes But P lato ab a ndoned the conception of
.

a union of this k ind while be retained the idea that the identity of k ind
in the sensible world was deducible from an identity or persistence of
the same material in t h e sup er se n sibl e world In other words he sub
.

stituted transition from the supers ensible to the sensible for elemental
composition and holds to an identity in the process in spite of the fact
of change P lato considered that this substance which gave unity a n d
.

permanence to reality was more essenti a l than other things and hence
he had a ground for a kind of unity which was not so apparent in the
conception of An a xagoras w h o explained the o r d er of the cosmos by
his e f cient cause and its variety by the qualit a tive di fferences of the
elements these being a material cause But while he also had a m a
, .

ter ia l cause for all t h e qualitative characteristics of t h e sensible world ,

he had no principle which exhibited the kind of unity a nd identity

which so fas cinated the mind of Pl a to With Anax a goras the unity
.
43 4 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

was rather teleological tha n ontological and hence material causes

,

were incidental to the ef cient With P lato the ontological cause was
.

the most important and the e fcient in the end identied with it No w .

the ideas of Plato supplied the want and served as both the ef cient
and the material cause for things thus bringing P lato into close har
,

mo n y with the atomists in his exclusion of a d eu s ex m a c/zi n a from

his system .

But it is precisely this fail ure to disti nguish adequately or con

sc i o u sl
y between ef cient and material causes that creates the trouble in
his syste m when it com e s to dealing with the problem of immortality ,

or the permanence of any fact conceived as a property of things as ,

known The phenomenal required a cause and could not have a
.

material cause or idea and ought to have had an ei c ien t cause
to make its appearance intelligible while the permanent involved no
,

distinction between the two kinds of causes and implied no essential

change in its manifold forms though we sometimes suspect a uctua t
,

ing conception n o w of identity and now of antithesis between the

supersensible and the sensible condition of the ideas or material
causes of the individual realities The inconsistency here and the

.

failure to accou nt for the individual or phenomenal reality by

material causes suggests the possibility of either see k ing a material cause
for this or demanding that the universal shall have an e f cient cause
which might indicate an antith esis bet ween it and its subj ect as was

that between the phenomenal and the reality of which it was an
effect But P lato took the former alternative as w e shall see presently
.
, ,

and thus showed clearly the logical tendency of his system This was .

the conception of metamorphosis which assumes a change of modal

action on the part of the real rather th a n the persistence of the condi
tion or subject in change With P lato the subj ect disappeared while
.

the attribute remained without retaining any identity of an individual

kind Its identity was genera l and abstract H is process of evolution
. .

involved a metamorphosis of re lity into phenomenal forms and
a

the identity was that of resemblance in these forms from generation to

generation so that the permanence was not that of the indiv idu a l but
,

of the type or race He might consider consciousness as an idea

.

or universal and secu re its immortality but this immortality was not
,

a n d wou l d not be of the individual consciousness as l a ter conceived ,

but would only be that of the persistence of type or of the supersensible

reality whi ch metamorphosed itself into the ephemeral forms His .

conception would be somewhat like T H Green s . eternal con

.

sc i o u sn e ss which when it was dene d had to be described in term s

, , ,
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
42 5

that were the negative of the individual consciousne ss ! Had it n o t

been for the conception of meta m orp h osis involved in the passage from
the supersensible to the sensible for m of reality , even whe n he w a s
dealing with universals the notion of identity mig h t have been differ
,

ent from what it actually was But P lato was unconsciously playing
.

a double game with his universals the common properties of th i ngs

,
.

O n the one hand , they were contrasted with the individual or differen
tial properties which were accidental and evanescent , and so were the
perdurable facts of existence and , on the other th ey appeared as sensi
, ,

ble properties qu ite similar to each other i n relation to the complex

wholes in which they were found the idea of metamorphosis being
,

used to suggest their continuance in change while that idea was not
used to explain the phenomenal except as will be sho w n presently
,
.

Thus the opposition bet ween the individual and the universal the ,

differential and the conferential was not made complete but kept in
, ,

that confusing condition which is shown in modern logi c in the use of

the terms genus and species , o n the one hand and genus
,

and differentia , on the other In one of the pairs
. genus ,

includes the other ,
species and in the second it excludes the other
, , ,

differentia
.

No w as d i er en t ia is included in the species as its
essential characteristi c w e have the apparent contradictio n that the
,

genus simultaneously includes and excludes the di fferentia The

illusion is explained easily by showing that in one case genus r ep r e
sents the co ncept ex t e n s i v e ly , in which the species is numerically
or quantitatively contained in the class and in the other represents the
,

concept i n t e n s i v ely in which the

differenti a is excluded quali
,

t at iv e ly from the co n f er e n t ia Now P lato s ideas or universals

.

uctuated between two conceptions of them now including the sensi

ble properties which shared ,
participated in the reality which was
,

metamorphosed in the process of evolution , and n o w excluding the

sensible propert ies w h ich were evanescen t and did not participate
in the permanent In other words the universals were now con
.
,

c eiv e d as sensible properties of the individual on a par with the differ

enties as properties , and now as the permanent realities which survived

the disappearance of the sensible forms without retaining any o f the
identity observable in sense except as this reappeared in subsequent
forms of the process of metamorphosis Consequently when Plato .
,

conceived any idea as a universal property he represented it not ,

as a perma n ent thing for the individual in which it appeared for the
time and which was ephemeral but as a permanent substance fro m
,

which this material quality could be drawn for other individuals in

42 6 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

space and time and which had to change its form in the process o f
evolution , while the sensible qualities appearing as conferential cou l d

only participate in this permanent and hence no individual m an ifes
t a t io n of it exhausted its nature When applied to consciousness thi s
.

conception of persistence could only mean the persistence of the gen

eral or abstract consciousness for the race , and not the persistence of
wh at we mean by the individual consciousness or personal identity , .

There is another way to reach the same conclusion and this is

through his conception of matter which we have seen represents
,

the transient or ephemeral as embodied i n t h e sensible world The .

sensible world was the metamorphosis of the supersens ib l e , the ap

peara nc e of the transcendenta l or transphen omenal in forms which
simply participated in reality No w in his determination of t h e

.

unity and identity of things about him by his l o gical classica tion ,
P lato was confronted by the fact of variety and difference quite as
emphatic and signicant as the u nity and harmony of the world .

This is the crux of his system and unless he can solve this he has a
,

dualism that contradicts the evident monistic sympathies of his genera l

thou ght F or everything else he had a material cause , a permanent
.

identical reality which survived all chan ge B ut this transient world .

of sense disappeared and apparently had no material cause to explain

its existence but only a l atent and undeveloped recognition of effi cient
,

cause which had no permanence But the fact is that P lato gave as
.

clear an explanation of diff erence as of identity though he did it as a ,

sort of after thought and w ithout any specic recognition of ef cient

cause as distinct from material causes All s cholars will remark that ,
.

when pushed to account for m atter variety , difference or phe , ,

no m ena l change on the basis of his principle P lato nally asserted ,

that matter h a d an idea of its o w n This conc l usion involved .

an irreso lvable dualis m in his system opposed to its monism , but it

was the only course that he could take without admitting efcient
cau ses as distinct fro m the material But this adm ission of a material
.

cause , or i dea of its o w n , for matter or d ifferen ce and variety

in nature assumed something inde nite or even innite in quan tity at
,

the basis of phenomenal real ity , while the su preme idea bein g, ,

which lay at the basis of all unity and identity w as o n e The contra .

diction i n his syste m is thus quite apparent But it is not a co ntr a di c

.

tion on the ground that it is an explanation of matter by a materia l

cause but because it is an admission of an eternal principle at the
,

basis of chan ge In its applicatio n of the principle of material caus

.

ality , even to phenomena it w a s consistent enou gh , but the inc o n

,
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
42 7

sistency lay in the recognition of an eternal or per m anent where h is

original co nceptio n excluded it The original antithesis betwee n the
.

transient and the permanent the pheno m enal and the noumenal
, ,

matter a nd

idea implied that the former had no substantiv e
,

basis and that t h e only per m anent reality w a s that which constitute d
,

the universal qualities in changing individuals while he was left t o

,

explain difference or phenomenal change either as the atomists
did , namely as the co ntingent e ffect of a union of elements no matter
, ,

what conception of the elements was m ainta ined or as a sort of epi

,

phenomenon attached to the main current of the evolutionary pro cess .

But having set u p a permanent basis for the phenomenal as well a s
the universal properties of things h e simply had to choose between a n
,

unintelligible dualism and a monis m which treated both the confer

e nt ia l and the differential facts of existence as functions of the indi

vidual both of them as modes which permitted the disapp e arance of the
,

form while the subst a nce remained persistent As he admitte d meta

.

morphosis for the uni v ersal properties and this doctrine of an idea
or substantive material cause at the basis of phenomena permits t h e
same conception to be applied to di fferences the only way to get any
,

unity in the syste m is to assume that t h e only real difference betwee n

matter and ideas or between the phenomenal and the perma
,

nent is the possibility of reappearance or repetition in the one and

,

the impossibility of the appearance of the other a position which coul d

,

only be proved by the facts and not by any principle of the system .

When di fference and change h a d an eternal principle which was n o t

identical either with the permanent or with the individual as a whol e
there was only one course open to secure unity in the system and that
was the course taken by Aristotle w h o assumed that both the tran
,
.

sient and the permanent were modes of substance which be conceived

,

as monistic while the atomists assumed the same relation bet w ee n

,

attributes whi l e they substituted pluralism for dualism P lato tending

,

toward the latter by virtue of his idea for di fference But the .

moment that he suggested an eternal principle for change and admitted

metamorphosis or phenomenal change for sensible universals be
exhi bited in all its clearness the fact that there was no m a t er i a l dif
ference betwee n t h e transient a n d the perma n ent and the identity so
strongly a f rmed of the permanent in its tra nsmutations was not that
of the individual bu t only of the genus As applied to consciousness
.

or the soul this only meant the immutability of the type and not of ,

persona l identity.

This con clusion is again reinforced lo g ically wh en w e come to con

42 8 TH E P R OB L E III S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

sider that the P latonic system all inter m ediate species between the
in
s u m mu m
g e n u s and the i n m a sp ec i es had to be distingu i shed by
properties that were relatively either differenti ae or co nfer en t ize as we ,

pleas e A s di fferenti ae they had no absolute permanen ce and they were

.
,

c o n fer e nt iaa only for the species in which t h ey were found whi l e they

w ere differenti a: for the genus or higher species The consequence wa s .

that the system had to be tested by the conceptions at the basis of the
two extremes the s u m m u m g en u s and the i n m a sp e ci es the for m er
, ,

representing bei ng or one u niversal and the latter individ uals or

, , ,

many This involve d the supposition that all individuals were the
.

metamorphosed types of the one ultima te reality the emergence in the ,

sensible of one supersensible reality the di fferences and phenomenal

,

modes predominating numerically over the perma nent In this every .

thing but the one became evanescent To this only one predicate was .

a pplicable and that w a s being or existence and as the individual
, ,

was wholly sensible in spite of its relative universals nothing in it

, ,

s urvived but substance All its modes were changeable though there
.
,

were relative degrees of permanence between the m .

In this opposition between the one and the many it was

o nly a question as to which of the t w o should be decla red substance and

which mode The atomists seiz ed upon mu ltiplici ty to assert that it

.

w a s this which was permanent and substantial ma k ing the atom the ,

conception of individuality and that the universal was a modal quality

,

o f thi n gs ,
transient in composite forms and permanent in elementary
r ealities wh e re it was not a resultant of composition O n the other .

h and the Neo P latonists seized upon u nity to declare t h at only the
,
-

a bsolute or one universal was eternal and the individual a modal ,

change in it was transient and evanescent Thus P lato s complicated
,
.

s ystem was capable of development int o t w o opposite schools in neither

o f which was consciousness a permanent fact In both nothing but .

the substance of the soul was permanent and at no point was the ,

u niversal a n d the individual united in a way to preserve the permanence

of the latter with the permanence of the former u ntil the individual ,

w a s m ade a s i mp l e being instead of composite and phenomenal ,

change denie d of it except as modal action The atomists assumed

,
.

that weight and motion were the universal and permanent propert ies
o f t h eir elementary substances and made consciousness a contingent
,

a n d accidental property of composition so that it was evanescent,

.

Any system whi ch showed that consciousness was not a resultant of

organization whatever might be s a id about atoms prepared the way
, ,

t o dispute the inference which atomism draws regarding consciousness

 S PI R I T UA L I S M 429

and its disappearance with the body We sh a ll m eet with this con
.

c e t i o n of the case later in the re construction of the philosophic prob

p
le m . But P lato could not propose it with his doctrine of m eta m o r ph o
sis which applied equally to the transient and the permanent whe ther ,

he wa s dualistic or monistic and which allowed no individual identity

,

for universal modes an d no universal identity in modal ch a nges .

But side by side with P lato s do ctrine of metamorphosis existed

another conceptio n which was not exactly consonant with it and which
tended toward a different philosophic system This reappearance in .

other successive individuals of the same kind of properties as were

noticed in their antecedent individuals suggests a point of view quite
different from that of simple metamorphosis In the rst p lace he .
,

needed to distinguish bet w een the spatial and the temporal univer
sal. The spatial universal was similar qualities in coexistent
species and so represented in their substantive source di fferent par ts
,

of the same whole The temporal universal was similar qualities

.

in successive species but represented the s a m e part of the same whole

,

in different stages of its evolution If the temporal universal had
.

represented d z e r e n t parts of the same whole appearing at different

'

moments of time even though t hey were similar in kind the d isa p
, ,

p ea r a n ce of the individual would have been no m y stery and there

would have been no reason to suppose the continuance of even the
universal by any form of transmission to successive individuals of the
material which had constituted their antecedents but only the appear ,

ance of phenomena s imilar to the past pro cess of evolution No w .

Plato assumed this latter conception of the case while he assumed the
former idea of the temporal u niversal H e had a chance to main
.

tain the persistence of personal identity by supposing that the trans

m itt ed property fro m one individual in time to another was the same as
in the antecedent and hence to maintain the doctrine of metempsychosis
,

in a form similar to a theory of resurrection allowing identity of modal

,

action with change of embodiment as in the transmission of motion

,
.

The atomists might have done this if they had admitted that conscious
ness was a function of the elements and not a resultant of composition ,

as we nd s o me of the modern atomists actually forced by their logic

to do But they a nd Plato were near enough together in their con
.

c e t io n s of the case to m ake consciousness an accident of composition

p
while its identity in different species was logical and not real With .

Plato the transmission of the permanent from individual to individual

was too closely a f liated with the conception of metamorphosis at the
same time to enable him to see how he might have advocated a doc
43 0 TH E P R O B L E AI S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

trine of immortality which would not be subject to the obj ectio n that
it involved nothing more than the immutability of species He simply .

c ombined the conceptions of meta m orphosis and transmission in a w a

y
to obtai n change at the expense of identity and identity at the expense
o f individual permanence wh e re that individual was not the absolute .

It is possible to unite transmission a n d metamorphosis in a way to

a d m it a function for both as modern atomis m does
,
but P lato allo wed ,

the transmission and metamorphosis to be simultaneously applied to

the universal when his doctrine of tra nsmigration required him to

a pply transm i ssion to the universal and metamorphosis to the
individual .

But as h is ultimate principle was both u niversal

a nd

individual that is permanent substance and m athematically
, ,

one this unity of the universal and the individual was not the
,

s ame as that system which made the individual a substance and the

universal a quality of it Consequently while one conception of

.
,

P lato might imply the continuance of certain properties beyond the

moment of the present the other denied it and P lato chose the alter
, ,

n ative which led directly to the denial of personal identity in the trans

mutation o f reality while an abstract identity remained .

H a d Plato s idea been less abstract less elastic and equivocal so

, ,

many tendencies in his system would not have shown themselves .

But a term which did duty for abstract general co n cepts which had n o
corresponding i n dividual reality ; for the qualities of phenomenal
r eality which were mere simulacra of absolute reality ; for t h e super

s ensible material out of which the essential qualities of things were

m ade and which was not phenomenal at all ; for the formative or
a ctive principle of things as well as the material and for the t er m i n us
a
gu o or end of either things or conduct the t el o s to w ard which e v o
,

l u t io n moved such a conception was well qualied to give rise to as

many systems of metaphysics as there are distinctions necessary to
ma k e its import consistent and useful This of course was what .
, ,

subsequent philosophy did in various ways Aristotle simply extended .

to the supersensible the concept of matter which even in P lato as , ,

we have seen h a d to have an eternal principle and accepting ev o l u

, ,

t i o n ar y metamorphosis as the process of change and the modal ch ar ,

a cter of universal properties considered individual wh o les as the

,

forms of this ultimate reality in its activities T h e m aterial cause .

was not the ideas but the matter the i nd enite substance whose
,

m odes constituted the forms of things a s we perceive them in sens ible

experience these latter being t h e tr ansient and the former the per
,

manent fact of reality T h e conceptio n was not clearly applied or

.
 S P I E I T UA L I S M .
43 1

developed in conne ction w ith such problems as the soul though the ,

rational element of this was said to be imperishable What this .

meant no one k nows All that is clear is that Aristotle had no denite
.

tendencies toward the atomic doctrine in its conception of plural a bso

lutes , though his conception of universals prepared th e w ay for the
treatment of them as ephemeral just as in the atomic theory But ,
.

there w a s an indenite or latent suggestion of an atomic doctrine i n

his system in that the matter or ind enite reality which constituted the
material cause of the sensible world depended upon some e f cient
cause to effect its initiation in cosmic evolution and systemati c arrange
ment so that this p r i m u m m o bil e as a cause outside the reality which
, ,

it moved started the speculative i mpulse a way fro m the idea of

,

evolutionary metamorphosis toward that of evolutionary composition , or

the synthesis of multiform elements instead of modal manifestations
of a single absolute and atomic theories are the immediate consequence
, ,

especially that the p r i m u m m o bi l e is not necessary to sustain the pro

cess once initiated Plato s view of one and the many led equally
.

to Epicurea n ato mism N e o P latonic pantheism and Christian theism

,
-
.

Taking the Anaxagorean conception he could have a single principle

that ordered a cosmos of elements that were permanent a point of view ,

at least partly reproduced in Aristotle s p r i m u m m o bil e and the sen

sible world Then assuming that the one was the only eternal
.

principle he could ma e the m any its transient and ephemeral
k
modes as in Neo P latonism Closely rela ted to this and yet uniting
,
-
.

in it some of the elements of the atomic theory we could have the

Christian s God as creator of the many whether atoms or functional

,

modes a conception combining m ore or less of the Anaxagorean

, ,

Aristotelian and Epicurean principles The persistence of conscious

,
.

ness could be obtained either as a conditional resultant of the divine

will or as the natural consequence of an order once established by that
will in accordance with the law of inertia
, .

I have dwelt upon the various tendencies after P lato to show the
indeter m inate nature of his fundamental conceptions and to indicate
that those who were nearest him were less li k ely to misunderstand his
conceptions than t h ose w h o had adopted a philosophy of the soul and
its immortality upon diff erent grounds and w h o were likely to appro
,

p r i ate facts and a i r m a t i v e l anguage wherever the inuence of author

'

ity could be utilized without troubling themselves to interpret it

according to conceptions actually at variance with their wa y of think
i fi g about the cosmos That is the h istorical setti n g of the P latoni c
.
,

problem and the nature of his a rguments and conception of the soul
43 2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

are easily m isu n derstood by all who do not interpret them by the gen
eral spirit and conceptions of Gree k philosophy instead of the very
different points of view accepted in a later period The practical .

evasion of the problem by Aristotle the obscurity of the Stoic View

, ,

and the deni a l of immortality by the Epicureans show that Plato s

position had not a ffected conceptions and convictions to any extent ,

except we suppose that successors understood it to mean what it d id

m ean namely a doctrine something like our doctrine of the conser v a
, ,

tion of energy .

I shall not deny the existence in P lato of m omenta looking toward

the very doctrine which is not logically deducible fro m the conceptions
which philosophers have agreed to regard as more fundamental in the
system than those which either suggest or sustain the Christian theory .

The de s cription of the j oys and perfections belonging to an existence

independent of the body the consequences of vice and the rewards of
,

v irtue and all t h ose variou s conceptions of ethics which represented

,

moral condu ct as pointing to a future existen ce for which the present

was conceived as a probation quite as denitely as Christian thought
, ,

are characteristics w hich make it almost impossible for a layman to

distinguish between P lato and Christianity in these respects and it is ,

quite possible also that P lato did not realize the inconsequence of his
conceptions and arguments for a view actually held but not supportable
by his philosophy But it was certainly natural for the early church
.

to ma k e an exception of P lato in the common fate which was assigned

to the pagan world We forget t w o t h ings however in our enthusiasm
.
, ,

and applause for the orthodoxy of P lato There is rst the fact that he
.

does not look upon the ethics of the incarnate life as in any way differ
ent from that which is supposed to prepare for the future He would .

not disti n guish between morality and religion He was not disposed .

to regulate t h e present life by any denite conception of the hereafter ,

but solely by the demands of the present existence for the highest cul
ture He loved life and nature as the Christian despised them He
.
,
.

w a s no despiser of art and social l ife no ascetic beyond the demands

,

of temperance and self control His ethics and religion whatever

,
-
.
,

place they have in preparation for another existence are essentially ,

terrestrial and do not savor of imaginary ideals in some trans cendental

world not inte l ligib l e to us They keep the eye of conscience on the
.

present life th ough they do not refuse anoth er a n d grant this other
,
-
,

life as a natural consequence of the present But above all we forget .

t h e second fact t h at this other life was conceived as a rei n carnation a ,

transmigration of the soul into another em bodiment while he als o ,

 S P I R I T U A L I S IP
I . 4 33

extends this doctrine of reincarnation to the interpretation of the present

bodily existence He does not hold that the soul is per m anent or
.

immortal by virtue of th e will of a cre a tor but that it is naturally ,

immortal in the past as well as the future H e accepts its eternity

,
.

in both directions H e would not ad m it a future life for any cr eated

.

thing Christianity was forced to constru ct its conceptio n of the case

.

by its doctrine of the created nature of the body and soul Having .

ad m itted that they were creations it had to shape its philosophy so that
the soul should not perish and it took t wo directions in this The
,
.

rst was what is called co nditional immortality depending solely upo n ,

the will of the creator in accordance with the character of the individ
u al s conduct The second was accepted upon the Aristotelian con

.

ce t i o n of creation , which w a sthat an act of initiation was necessary

p
to account for the existing or der and that after this its course was
natural and th is position w a s supported by the doctrine of inertia
,
.

But P lato assumed that whatever h ad a beginning would have an end

and thus agreed with the materialists All composites were perishable
.

and ephemeral P lato could understand immortality only on the con

.

dition that it applied to the past as well as the future But right at .

this point arises the cru x of his whole doctrine on this question He .

admitted th at there was no conscious m emory of this past and it was ,

evidently the unanswerable cogency of this fact which forced Christian

ity to reconcile its conception of survival with the acceptance of an
origin for the soul But as P lato could not a i r m a consciousness of a
.

past incarnation he had to assume that the same was true of future
reincarnations and in this way his doctrine denied a p e r s o n a l i m m o r
,

tality in quite as eff ective a m anner as his theory of ideas or uni

versals The transmigration of the soul fro m embodiment to e m bo d i
.

ment did not ca rry with it that essential characteristic which wou ld
give continuity to consciousness but assumed that this functio n w a s a
,

contingent e ffect of its in carnation a view identical with that of the

,

materialists except that P lato had provided for the conservation of

,

energy as the m aterialist h a d not done It is probable that P lato

.

accepted personal immortality w hen he wrote t h e Ap o l o gy under the

stress of those powerful emotions which the admiration of all great
and noble men m ust feel in contemplation of the character a n d death
of Socrates But when these had cooled and his philosophic genius
.

had returned to the m ore s cientic spirit he came under the inuence
,

of the pre vailing conceptions of permanence a n d chan ge which made

substance eternal and its modes ephemeral In spite of a ll that is sai d.
,

therefore the P latonic conception of t h e soul is th at of a function

,

28
43 4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

of the organism in so far as its differential essence is concerned , and

,

this is personal consciousness involving me m ory and unity of modal

persistence Unless this characteristic can survive with integrity
.

enough to have some conscious relation and connection with its past

in the material world there is no such soul and no such immorta l
ity as later specul a tion maintained .

There was another and singular feature of P lato s system which

pointed in his estimation toward the discovery of the truth in regard

to nature the truth that the sensible world was not its real and only
,

form P lato recogniz ed that it was not the common man that could
.

discover the nature of things It w a s only the extraordinary man the

.
,

man with special gifts the seer the prophet the genius that could
, , , ,

gai n entrance into the secrets of the universe or discover and follow ,

Ariadne s thread out of the labyrinth and in assigning these endo w

,

ments to the philosopher P lato was not unmindful of the reputatio n

w hich that class had with the generality of mankind Gree k history .

laughed at Thales for falling into a well while gazing at the stars and
meant by this legend to characteriz e the philosophic class as i m pr a c t i
cal cran k s Plato could not escape the consideration of a man like
.

Socrates in making up the conditions of insight Here was an Athe n .

ian bore and a tramp out of all harmony with the beauty loving Greeks
,
-

in his phy sical characteristics and habits pestering his neighbors and ,

fellow citizens with questions and arg u ments on all sorts of subjects
and in a way that would induce our less tolerant civilization to arrest
him and send him to the woodyard but with a power of insight and ,

dialectic that could confuse wit and humble pride a s mu ch as it dis

cerned the truth without asserting it H ere P lato sa w that the man .

who discovered the truth must be su f ciently divested of the prejudices ,

foibles fads a n d follies of his age to disregard them in his estimate of

, ,

reality and must permit himself to be ranked with the castaways of

,

manki n d if h e expected to escape the petried traditions a n d illusions

,

of the common man H ence P lato thought to nd the conditions of

.

t h e most far reaching insight in some form of

-
madness or abnormal
m ental qualications Hence he was disposed to classify genius m ad
.
,

n ess a n d cran k ism together nding in deviation from ordinary illusions

the path to wisdom P lato k ne w that Socrates had consulted the

.

oracle at Delphi a phenomenon probably mu ch like the consultation

,

of spiritistic mediums in modern times and as often a mixture of shrewd

wit delusion secondary personality insanity and fraud with occasional
, , , ,

cases of supernormal suggestion and this knowledge on Plato s part ,

might well suggest to him the conception that the truth of thi ngs would
 S PI R I T U A L I S M .
43 5

be discovered m a borderland condition beyond the sensuous experience

of the multitude He also knew that Socrates wa s governed by a
.

voice which directed his action s or rather abstention fro m action , ,

in certain instances an abnormal phenomenon with which modern

,

psychology is perfectly familiar as a utomatism and that it was possibly ,

the object of Socrates in his co n sultation of the Delphian oracle to test

its pretensions in comparison with his own powers so that it w a s no ,

wonder that P lato with encyclopedic interests shou ld turn a curious

,

attention to madness Even Aristotle admitted facts that suggested

.

s ome sort of supernormal insight and a ccepted them as deserving of

his scientic attention The N eo P latonists followed these examples

.
-

into magic and trance phenomena and Epicurus admitted the existence,

o f the gods on the evidence of dreams and only denied them a causal ,

inuence on the order of nature assigning them as blissful an existence

,

in the int er m un dia as Aristotle gave to God outside the world watching
it go and as the Christian world gave to discarnate souls in a paradise
independent of material embodiment and complications Even Kant .

paused long enough on the threshold of this awful wilderness to

seriously study the phenomena of Swedenborg and came a way from them
with h is distinction between n oumena and phenomena and the
frank admissio n after his exposition of the antinomies that the spirit
, ,

ua l i st s claims could not be disproved by the phenomena of ex

perience . But philosophy has never been able to endure intellectual
debauchery and whenever it could recover its natural calm and feel the
necessity of controlling life by normal conceptions it has sought to nd ,

t h e explanatio n of phenomena i n normal experience instead of
discrediting this for the abnormal even though w e must ultimately nd
,

a unity for both and might discover in the abnormal wandering and
sporadic facts that afford a n imperfect glimpse of a cosmos larger than

o rdinary experience Antiq u ity h a d no instru ments for its guidance
.

in this eld and hence it was well that the saner p h ilosophic specula
tions avoiding its quicksands and quagmires conned its reections
, ,

and ideals to normal life At any rate before the scientic spirit of
.
,

Aristotle could be developed Greek civilization w a s on its way to the

,

grave and a n other and religious im p ulse revived specu l ation regarding
,

the soul and its destiny with a ll the passions of barbaris m in its wake
,

to reinforce its convictions and interests .

When C h ristianity too k up the problem it was not as a subordinate

part or a coro l lary of a larger philosophy of the cosmos though it ,

nally became th i s but as the conclusion from an alleged fact

,
There .

was no dominant intellectual movement of the metaphysical type in

43 6 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

the co untry in which the doctrine of immortality was revived in a new

form but only the aftermaths of Gree k culture more particularly of
, ,

Neo P latonism and Epicureanism T h e He brews were pre eminently

-
.

a n ethical and religious and not a philosophical race if we may take

, ,

Gree k thought as the standard o f measurement They had neither .

absorbed with any enthusiasm the philosophic ideas of their neighbors

nor created any of their own having a similar purpose There wa s .

just enough of Greek culture to divide such as were willing to depart ,

from purely H ebrew tradition into t w o tendencies those in sympathy ,

with Neo P latonism and those in sy m pathy with Epicureanism and

-

even these came just as ancient civiliz ation was setting in thunder
clouds Pal estine had been subjugated by Rome a civilization that
.
,

carried n o philosophy or culture in its wake and here amid the ruin s ,

of its own civiliz ation and the de cline of the Roman empire there ,

arose a conception of the soul and its survival of death that soon made
the conquest of t h e world against the whole inuence of Greece and
Rome the ph ilosophy of the one having ended in materialis m or de
,

spair and the morals of the other in the debau cheries of power and
conquest Whatever moral and social impulses may have inspired
.

the or i gin of what is known as Christianity or gave it a mission in that

critical period of social disruption it is a matter of history that it soon
,

concentrated in a religion based upon a doctrine of personal immortality

or survival after death We need not examine all the motives that led
.

to this consummation a s we are co n cerned only with the one that

,

terminated in the necessity of a metaphysics This motive was not a .

theory of the cosmos to start with nor even a theory of the nature of
the soul but a simple appeal to an alleged fact which requ i red an
,

explanation This alleged fact w a s the resurrection of Christ h is

.
,

personal reappearance after death .

I am not concerned with the origin of this story nor with either it s
truth or its falsity but with the fact that the allegation was made a nd
,

believed This was quite sui c ie nt to start a philosophy j ust as th e

.
,

alleged inuence of weight on downward motion was su f cient to serve

as a basis for materialis m A philosophy may follow as readily from
.

a false assumption as from a fact Now it is to be especially remarked

.

that the story of the resurrection did not bring with it any p r e co n cep

tions of th e material or immaterial n ature of the soul All that it .

implied was that personality or personal consciousness survived the

change called death and we were left free to denominate its subj ect a s
we pleased Hence on any conception of t h e substantial nature of the
.

sou l it denied the assertion of the materialists that personality dis
'

,
 S P I IEI T U A L I S M .
43 7

a ppe a red with the body Here was a direct issue with that schoo l
.

based upo n alleged fact and a regressive inductive inference rather

than a progressive dedu ctive inference f rom a pre conceived notion of

the nature of the soul . The conclusion was not founded upon a

d enial of the materialist s metaphysics but upo n the allegation of a
,

fact which contradicted the conclusion from that system , or if not the
natural conclusio n from it the opinion maintained by the school in
,

regard to survival after death Materialism was thus made to choose

.

between the denial of the fact of a resurrection and the implication of

its doctrine that consciousness was a function of the bodily organism .

Christianity simply presented an alleged case of actual survival after

d eat h against the asserted impossibility of it by the materialist P hi .

l o so p h y w a s challenged to explain away the fact or to accept its s ig n i

cance .Accepting its truth and signicance the next task wa s to create ,

a system of which this possibility of survival was a necessary co n se

qu en ce or a part of a cosmic scheme .

The allegatio n of Christ s resurrection appears , supercially at

least to have represented a wholly n e w co nception and it im pre sse d

,

later philosophers of every s chool w ith the conviction that it was a

totally supernatural conception and that it violated every principle of
Gree k philosophy But whatever can be said about the authenticity
.

of the story it is an illusion to suppose that the idea w as wholly n ew

,

or that it was in total c ontradiction with any of the Gree k philosophies

except P lato ! It w a s a conception that grew right out of materialism

itself and was a very natural inference fro m its doctrine of the soul .

All that it contradicte d in that system was its assertion not supported ,

by its conception of the soul , that survival was not a fact while it ,

appropriated the do ctrine that the

soul was an organis m of very
ne matter or atoms complementary to the physical body which sug
gested that its integrity might not be dependent upon the bodily organi
z a tio n . Thus the n ew spiritua lism instead of following in the wake
,

o f P lato , Aristotle , and the Stoi cs or the pantheistic nihilism of the

,

Neo P latonists as later philosophy did si mply grew out of Greek

-

, ,

materialism ! That this materialistic theory had to some extent per

meated Judaistic thought is apparent in the controversy between the
Saddu cees and Ph arisees on this point These sects had apparently
.

discussed the immortality of the soul and divided upon it before

Christianity arose the former denying and the latter a f rming not
,
.
,

only its persistence but also a doctrine of resurrection The Sad

,
.

d ucees a ssu med that the soul perish ed with the body and did not

rise again ; the Pharisees ass um ed that it survived death and so
43 8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

arose from the grave The one accepted the negative and the
.
,

other the positive conception of the materialists in regard to the nature

and desti ny of the soul T h e reader w ill remember that I called
.

attention when dis cussing it ( p

,
to an inconsistency in Greek
.

materialism in its doctrine of the soul It a ctually admitted t h at
.

the soul was a ne material ( in later parlance immaterial ) organism

,

inhabiting the body and did not explicitly assert that it was a modal
,

function of the physical bo dy that perished I remarked tha t this con .

cession was inconsistent with the dogmatic denial of survival and that
the do ctrine might be converted into a basis for immortality rather
than an argument against it This was all the easier for the reason
.

that ancient thought did not make any clear distinction between the
supersensible an d the superphysical and it made no di fference in the
,

case whether it did or did not so distinguish them because all agreed
,

that the substance of anything was permanent and only the

functions of composite organism were transient and perishable so ,

that materialism could escape a fatal a d k o m i n em argument only by

giving up the conception whi ch it had maintained regarding the soul
and by treating it as a function of a perishable organism This latter .

wa s the alternative which the later and modern m aterialis m too k .

No w in this connection there w a s another conceptual development

of some interest Ancient thought of all kinds assumed the P tolemaic
.

conception of the universe This made the earth the center of it the
.
,

point towa rd which all heavier and coarser matter gravitated and the ,

ner matter arose heavenward The Epicureans were the exception

.

to this and made al l matter gravitate do w nward with the same velocity .

We know what a prominent place this doctrine of the down ward

tendency of heavy matter and the upward tendency of lighter m atter
had in earlier Greek philosophy and that in Aristotle and others it
,

took the for m of assertin g that t h e stars were divine beings We .

h ave then the conception that m a tter of the heavier or grosser sort
tended downward and matter of the ner and ethereal sort tended up
,

ward When this distinction took the form of matter and spirit
.
,

it was clear what the natural tendencies of th ought wou ld be in connec

tion with the general doctrine of H ades or the underworld and the
materialistic theory of an ethereal organism espe cially when the idea w a s
,

combined with an ethica l and probative scheme of the cosmos Both .

Greek and H ebrew thought of the common type ad mitted t h e existence

of an underworld which w as a sort of undened deposi tary residence
for departed bodies and spirits alike the bodies ultimately di sa p
, .

pearing But it was a natural and logical sequence of the conception of

.
 S PI R I T UA L I S M 43 9

the body as gross matter and the soul as ethereal matter , that either
at death or some time later when fully released fro m material associa
tions , the sou l should r i s e upward and we shou ld have a doctrine ,

of the resurrection All that was necessary to e ffect this result was to
.

frankly accept the materialist s conception of the sou l and to apply

the assu med fact of the gravitation of heavier matter and the levitation
of the l ighter matter to represent a complete conception of a r e sur r ec
tion as the natural inference fro m materialis m ! Then if w e add to
this the distinction between good and bad souls , the virtuous and the
wicked along with the P latonic idea that the sensuous souls were so
,

attracted to grosser matter in modern spiritistic parlan ce

, earth ,

bound spirits and that the ner souls were attracted to a more
,

spiritual or ethereal environment we can understand the evolution ,

of the ideas of Hell and Heaven as simply modications of Hades or

,

Tartarus on the one hand and of celestial space on the other The
, , , .

w h ole scheme of rewards and punishments arose naturally out of this

idea of a connection with the gravitation of the body and the levitation
of the soul as soon as it w a s connected with ethics But the important
, .

point to keep in mind for metaphysics is the naturalness of a doctrine

of the resurrection as a logical consequence of the admission of Greek
,

materialism in c o n n e ct io n w it h the accepted gravitation of gross matter

o

and the levitation of ethereal matter or the soul There is in it a .

perfectly clear opportunity fo r the conceptio n of a spiritual body
su ch as is evidently suggested in the doctrine of St Paul , who was .

acquainted with the sect of the Epicureans as he chose to rebuke ,
'

some of the early Christians for their dispo sition to run after the
rudime n ts of the world ( o o ey i o o /m o ) atomic specu lations about
r e a z

the origin of things and in his assumption of the spiritual body

,

he might have granted any materialistic theory of this matter as

long as the spiritual body inhabiting the physical organism was
conceded .

It is thus quite apparent that there were denite philosophic ante

cedents for a doctrine of the resurrection and t his of the physical ,

type before any allegation of its being a fact h a d been made There .

was nothing in the materialistic and religious theories of the time a s ,

we have just seen to render one type of a physical resurrectio n

,

antecedently impossible O nly the resurrection of the ordinary phys

.

ical body w a s calculated to arouse scepticism We have als o f ound .

actual traces in the division between the Saddu cees and P harisees of a
belief in th e resurrection a n d it only remains to remark the circum
,

stances which might easily give rise to the story of Christ s actual res
440 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H y .

u r r e ct io n witho ut any conict with the materialistic philosophy as then

conceived but only with the u niform human experience that the sensi
,

b l e physical body perished and the absence of common reappearances

,

a fter death The primary circumstance of course is the fact that

.
, , ,

w ith no clearly drawn distinction between supersensible matter and

s uperphysic a l reality there would be no dii c u lt
, y in accepting a phys

i ca l resurrection o f the ethereal type and in giving cr e dence to the
s tory about the mode of Christ s triumph over death The conception

.

d id not represent an entire break in the continuity of hu m an thought ,

but was in some of its feat ures at least an effective a d k o m i n em con

, ,

struction of m aterialism a necessary consequence of admitting th e

,

existence of a spiritual body and denying by implication that con

sc i o us n e ss w a s a function of the grosser physica l organism The story .

thus simply tted into the preconceptions of the prevailing philosophy

of the time and claimed to give an empirical fact requiring e x p la
nation and a consequence or illustration of that theory a fact which ,

every one might verify by aski ng for the testimony of comp etent wit
nesses In other words the ground was already prepared for the doc
.
,

trine of the resurrection as suppose d ly proved by an instance of it in

, ,

the antecedent p h iIQ SOp h ic system of the time which it both developed
and overthrew e ffecting the result however only by forcing material
, ,

is m to choose between one or the other of i t s claims and to ma k e its

system consistent that is between accepting the denial of survival with
, ,

the implication that consciousness was a function of the bodily organ

ism and holding to the conception of a spiritual body with its im p li
cation o f personal cont i nuance after death It was precisely this co n .

formity to philosophic conceptio n s of a crude sort that explains both

t h e acceptance of the story of the resurrection in the genesis of a n ew

religion and the liability to a misinterpretation of what m ight act ually

have occurred It is quite easy to suppose that an apparition of Christ
.

was experienced by some of his disciples after his de a th and w hether ,

we treat it with Renan as a subjective ha l lucination due to excitemen t

or with others as a veridical hallucination su ch a phenomenon would ,

n aturally appe a r to t in with the materialistic theory of t h e spiritual

body with all wh o were inclined to assume a real signicance in the
experience while the wide acceptance of it and the manner and con
,

d en ce with which the n e w sect concentrated upon i t as a b a sis for a

new theory of things go far to suggest the possibility that something
,

occurred to make the application of the exist ing theory of a resurrection

plausible in terms of actual fact But it wou l d not affect the case to
.

suppose that the whole story was l egendary because there ca n be no ,

 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
44 1

d oubt that at one stage of the development of Christianity it was

, ,

believed and it does not matter in what for m it wa s believed to have

,

bee n a fa ct It was the belief in the real or alleged fact that determined
.

the development of the Chri stian doctrine and not the actual occur ,

r ence of the event as described though it might be claimed with so m e

,

s how of reaso n that su ch a story would not likely take such a hold of

men at the time unless something unusual had actually occurred to

give an explanation of the genesis of the story But with that w e .

have nothing to do as the inuence of the doctrine depends upon its be

,

lief and not on the authenticity of the incidents But the later we place .

the origin of the story which was believed the more probable it is that ,

it represents a misinterpretation of what actually occurred and where ,

t h e materialistic theory of the soul was not known or was forgotten ,

t h e more likely was the doctrine of the resurrection to take the form of
a pplication to the ordinary physical body and to invite s cepticis m and

opposition fro m the standpoint of both philosophy and ordinary exp er i

ence It required acquaintance with the real conceptions of philo
.

s ophical m aterialism to detect the possible meaning of a story like the

r esurrection but as common people were the v ehicles of its preserva

,

tion and communication it would easily undergo the modications to

which all second hand narratives are exposed This is apparent in the
-
.

doctrine of St Paul w h o u nderstanding Epicureanism in so m e of its

.
, ,

features at least evidently had a theory of the spiritual body not
,

wholly conson a nt with later theories of the bodily resurrection

I need not repeat at length h o w the fact of a resurrection whether ,

of the actual physical body or of the ethereal organism in the form of

a veridical hallucination and whether proved or believed would nec
, ,

e ssa r i ly a ffect the materialistic doctrine i n terpreted as a denial of per

s onal survival after death This is apparent on the face of it But

. .

the conception of it is most interesting as an a ctual development of one

s ide of materialis m involving a conception of an ethereal organis m that

was a standing temptation to interpret unusual experiences in the d ir ec

tion of a belief the very contradictory of its intentions But the moment .

that materialis m changed its base and regarded co n sciousness as the

f unction of the bodily o g n is
r a m a n d not of a spiritual organism
'

, ,

t his a d k o m i n e m argument against it would have no cogency and the ,

whole issue would the n depend as it came to do upon the nature the
, , ,

a uthenticity , and the accuracy of the story of the resurrection .

There were at least two general inuences that diverted Christianity

i n the direction of an anti materialistic philosophy for a solutio n of its
-

p roblem after being obliged to surrender the a d k o m in e m appeal on

'

,
44 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

the consequences of the materialist s doctrine of a spiritual body

.

T h e rst was St P aul s conception of Christianity as a part of a cosmic

.

dispensation initiated and sustained for the personal salvation of man ,

and the second wa s the isolated and ind ividual character of the alleged
fact upon which so much was m ade to depend together with its with
,

dr a w a l beyond the boundaries of personal knowledge and verication .

These two inuences are combined in the necessity of reliance upon a

personal Deity to full the promises of a future life implanted in huma n
instincts after the individual instance of its alleged proof had faded into
the twilight of fable As time passed on the di f culties of believing
.

any story of a resurrection increased and it seemed too small a piece

of evidence to support so large a doctrine and hence the necessity of
,

proving that the universe was created and sustained by a personal divin
ity with a view to the spiritual development and immortality of man .

This result could not be trusted to the caprices of a mechan ical system
supposed by materialism to be domi n ated by chance Any security .

that could be obtained for the beliefs in a perso n al providence would

redound to the credibility of the belief th at his cre a tures would hardly
have ideals and duties that were not realizable in their incarnate exist
ence and in fact Kant mak es this disparity between merit and duty an
,

argument for immortality and t h e necessity of a cause to establish a

relation of this kind between duty and happiness an argument for the
existence of God What could not be vin d icated therefore by reliance
.
, ,

upon a story which was so isolated as the resurrection as u nderstood , ,

and which had l ost its setting in the economy of things had to be ,

sought in t h e theistic doctrine of a personal God whose ch aracter

would appear inconsistent if he permitted the annihilation of beings ,

his own creatures whose moral ideals pointed to conditions which the
,

present existence did not realiz e and where duty without this hope , ,

seemed to have su ch limitations tha t its validity might be questioned

and its powe r inevitably wea k ene d .

When Christian philosophy found it necessary to underta k e a r e

construction o f metaphysics in reply to materialism as it was con ,

c e i v e d in opposition to the ex i stence of an immaterial soul and its

survival of death it had to arrange for a cos mological as well as a

,

psychological problem The a ssumptions which it developed in t h e

.

completion of its t a sk extending over many centuries and for meeting

, ,

its emergencies can be summed up in the follo w ing conceptions as

, ,

representing loans from the pre existing systems of specul a tion They .

a r e co n ceptions which we shall require to const a ntly k eep in mind

when estimating the efforts and accompl ishments of medi ae val thought .
 S PI R I T UA L I S M 443

( 1 ) Christian philosophy accepted t h e Aristotelian conception of a

prime mover giving it P lato s conception of a De m iourgos or crea
,

tor o f the cos mic order that is , a doctrine of theism ( 2 ) It accepted

,
.

P lato s conception of the transient nature of matter both sensible and

,

supersensible , and with it the notion of creation as opposed to ev o l u

tion and the eternity of matter ( 3 ) It accepted the conception of
.

individuality which was represented in the materialist s indivisible

and indestructible atom To what it borrowed it added the c o n cep

.

tion of the soul as an immaterial substance of which consciousness

was a function or attribute a n d its imperishable nature followed as a
,

consequence of its distinction from the phenomenal character of

matter and its o w n indivisible or indecomposable nature , where the

theory did not make survival a result of grace The phen o menal .

nature of the cosmos was admitted with P lato and the soul made a
substance not subject to the vicissitudes of material changes in any
form but only of separation from the body The concep tion of it as
.

immaterial and hence as superphysical rather t h a n s up er sen s ibl e matter

'

was a distinct break with the m onis m of Greek philosophy and initiated
a dualism which completed itself in the philosophy of Descartes and
tended to the conception and de n ition of the soul in terms of a bstr a c
tions and negations of matter , because speculatio n constantly forgot
the existence of the supersensible in the material world and undertoo k
to make sense perception the me a sure of the material substance and
abstraction of sense the criterio n of the spiritual , resulting in the nega
tion of all that is apparently real for the determination of the ideal or
spiritual .

It was the biblical theory of creatio n reasserted by St P aul that

, .
,

forced Christianity to undertake a cosmology This view asserted .

that the world had a beginning in time and was at least in apparent
contradiction wi th the materialistic doctrine of that period A ccept .

ing with Aristotle , therefore , that all motion or change had a beginning
and that matter w a s incapable of initiating its o w n motion there was ,

no trouble in seeking the cause of it and of the cosmic order in an

immaterial power : Hence it w a s a short step to theism which simply
added the Judaistic co n ception of a personal deity to the Aristotelian
idea of p r i m u m m o bi l e and which came in to explain the origin and
develop ment of the system which w a s to culminate in man s personal

salvation and im m ortality B ut Aristotle admitted the independent

.

existence of matter and required his p r i m u m m o bi l e only to initiat e its

motion a n d after that things went on pretty mu ch as the materialists
conceived it , except that the Aristotelian proces s of evolution w as
4 44 TH E P R OB L E MS OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

more closely allied to metamorphosis than composition of atomic

e lements A s a more complete overthrow of materialism whatever its
.
,

mechanical principles might explain after the existence of matter h a d

o nce been admitted Christianity went further to declare that even
,

e lementary matter as w ell as the cosmic order or sensible world was a

creation of the divine power Atoms also had a beginning in time
.

and might be destru ctible The wh ole cosmic system p h enomenal

.
,

and noumenal w a s conceived as a dependent reality obedient to a
, ,

p ersonal intelligence of an immaterial or spiritual nature so that in ,

the nal outcome there would be no di f culty in assigning conscious

ness in man a possible place not so easily proved on materialistic
assu m ptions Accepting this position philosophy had no ultimate
.

'

dualism to contend with while it excluded the possibility o f u lt im a t ely

,

explaining even mechanical phenomena independently of intell i

gence But whatever consistency or conceivability this vie w may
.

have it has to ru n the gauntlet of the evidential problem and in Hume

,

and Kant it reached a sceptical result .

The adoption of the atomic conce ption of individuality and of sub

s tance that is simple and indivisible w a s a concession to materialism ,

e ven though it made this substance ultimately dependent in as much ,

a s this individuality served as a basis for the attachment of persistent

qualities which might survive cha n ge and decomposition It was .

qualied to apply an a d k o m i n e m argument in favor of the immortality

o f the soul by making it a simple substance It is apparent here that
.

t h e whole P latonic point of view was abandoned except in so fa r as ,

P lato admitted that the

soul w a s simp le P lato was trying to .

s ecure immortality after he conceived the soul as a m o d e of reality an ,

a ctivity of substance and never reached the position by which he

,

could make this tenable or easily co nceivable In his vacillation .

between pantheistic monism with a do ctrine of metamorphosis and a

d octrine of atomism he never brought himself clearly to recogniz e
simple persistent substances with attributes remaining through cha nge ,

t hough it is possible to say that the clarication of his conceptions

leads to this result and hence Christianity gained a logical advantage

,

a n d a more intelligible point of view by supposing with the materialists

a n d emphasiz ing the fact that certain qualities may persist through

c hanges of composition i n the elementary substan c es which ser ved as

the centers of reference for various phenomena
It a ppropriated .

the Aristotelian and Epicurean conception of substance as the perma

n ent base of phenome na but gave it the individual ity of Epicurus
,

s o that it had a center of reference to which it could attach conscious

 S P I P I T U AL I S M .
44 5

ness or personality as an activity without implicating it in the v ic issi

tudes of matter simple or compound If Christian philosophy had
.

con c eived th is u nitary being represented as mind and immaterial sub

,

stance a s the subj ect o f metamorphic changes or modal modications

, ,

it might have gotten only the permanence of substance and not the
persistence of its modes through changes of relation But as in t h e .

case of consciousness the moral interest lay in the preservation of this

functional activity , Christian philosophy abandoned the idea of meta
morphosis for that of a substance with a xed set of attributes t h e ,

notion of the materialists , and supposed that personality once in exist ,

enc e , could persist through the changes e ffected by d eath wh ile it ,

could allow for all sor ts of incidenta l e ffects from composition Here .

again there is no di f culty in the conception because it conforms to

every requirement of the materialistic theory in its representation but ,

however possible and consistent the doctrine may be it has to face the
evidential criterion .

The purest form of this adoption of th e materialistic conception of

permanent reality is found in Tertullian who u ndertoo k a curiou s ,

defense of immortality by appropriating the atomic doctrine in favor

of the sou l He so felt the di ffi culty of maintaining an immaterial
.

basis for cons ciousness as a persistent functio n probably inuenced by ,

the perpl exities of the P latonic conception that he simply abandoned ,

all efforts to dislodge materialism bv supposing a spiritual sub

stratum and boldly asserted that the soul had to be material in order t o
be immortal He accepted the indestructibility of matter at least
.
,

subject to the divine will in the atomic form and appropriated the
, .

conception to assu me that the soul was a material atom and so imperish
able H e had no dif culty with the past as the reincarnationist must
.
,

have because he conceived all matter as created It was its simplicity

,
.

that guaranteed it f u ture permanence when once create d even though ,

in the nal analysis this persistence might be conditioned as dependent

upon the will of the creator But the conception of the soul as a
.

material atom whatever we may think of it as an alleged fact in order

, ,

to secure its persistence aft er death w a s an a d bo m i n e m argument of

an irresistible kind Its weakness however lay in the character of
.
, ,

all philosophic arguments at that time It w a s only an a p r i o r i possi

.

bility deducible from assu mptions which themselves might be brought

into court and there was no way of proving by observation or e x p er i
ment that the substratu m of consciousness was a material atom Th e .

test for this would be nothing more or less than an adequate pair of
sca l es applied before and after death with allowance for various dit
,
446 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OP H Y.

c ul t ie swhich m odern science would qu ickly show were fatal aga inst
a nything co n clusive Moreover the cogency of his claim for an atomic
.

s ubject for consciousness depended upon the assumption of such a

d i fference bet ween mental and physi cal functions that the demand for
a n immaterial subject would be as rational as that for a material atom .

But the evidence for both was lacking , while the tendency of specula
tion was toward an antithesis between mind and matter in the attempt
to expl ain the phenomena of consciousness , and however e ffective
T er t u llia n s position m ight prove in an a p r i o r i argu ment the natural

a n d lo ical tend ency of most minds is to refute materialism by denying

g
its major premise , that is by disputing the possibility th at conscious
,

n ess c a n in a ny way be a function of matter whether simple or com ,

pou n d This was the course taken by philosophical development and

.

it terminated in the dualism of Descartes who worked out the medi aeval
a ntithesis into its clearest expression .

I do not care anything about the motives of Cartesianism nor about

its details The point of interest to our present problem is the manner
.

in which the original antithesis between the material and the spiritual
worked itself out into radical denition This D es cartes indicated by
.

maintaining that the matter was qualied by extension as its essential

property without any consciousness and mind as qualied by conscious
ness as its essential function without any extension Matter was .

extended ; mind was not extended but spaceless The opposition , .

bet ween th em was so radical that a causal relation between their func
tions has seemed impossible and the consequence was the intellectual
movement which t e rminated in materialism on the one hand and , ,

i dealism on the other

,
Both endeavored to escape the dualism of
.

D escartes M aterialism either accepted the extension of matter and

.

made consciousness one of its fun ctions or as in Spinoza ma d e exten , ,

sion and consciousness non convertible functions of matter Idealism

-
.

ended either in denying extension of both matter and mind as in Leib ,

nitz or in making space a form of perception without saying

,

whether it was to be conceived as a property of either matter or mind ,

a curious and mongrel evasion of the problem which the ordinary

h uman thinker must conceive as denying extension to m atter and a f r m

ing it of mind ! This of course w a s not the intention of the system
, , ,

but the attempt to conceive what it means leads to something very

like this d escription of it and represents something actually very
close to it unless t h e obj ectivity of space be admitted in some
,

s ense of the term But whatever it me a nt the system was simply

.
,

o n e of those whose specul atio n s were determined by the impor

 S PI R I T UA L I S M 44 7

tance which Cartesianism gave to extension as a determinant factor

i n metaphysics .

In his treatment of the problem Descartes assumed as a foregone

conclusion that c onsciousness must h ave a di fferent subject from ma
t er ia l phenomena .This conception w a s so ingrained in the course
7

a nd results of scholastic thought and perhaps so articulated with the

,

moral and religious prej udices or interests of the time that he either ,

s a w no reason to question the assumption or no safety in disputing it ,

if he did see it H owever this m ay have been he did not dispute it ,

.

but accepted the real or apparent distin c tio n between mental a n d

physical phenomena whether from motives of prudence or phi
,

l o so ph i c necessity , as demanding a corresponding distinction between

their grounds or subj ects But he stated this distinction bet ween
.

the m in su ch terms excluding extension from m ind and cons ciousness

,

from matter that the philosophers interpreted it as implying t h e i m

,

possibility of any causal relation between the m while Descartes admitted

that this relation was a fact The attempt to explain bo w they could
.

be related or inuence each other as they were dened resulted either

, ,

in the denial of Cartesian dualism or in the denial of a causal nexus

between them The former was the position of materialism and the
.

la tter the position of Leibnitzi a n idealism with varia tions betwee n

,

m o nism and pluralism in other systems B ut in all of them there was

.

the consciousness of the real or apparent necessity for either explain

ing or denying a supposed causal nexus between mental and physical
events .

But it seems to the present writer that there w a s a fundamental

misconception at the basis of this development toward the idealistic
denial of a causal relation between matter and mind in order to solve
the problem and this misconception was the r e sult of ignoring the
,

proper issue The philosophers involved in this development p r esup

.

posed that there were adequate re a sons for separating the subject of
consciousness fro m matter in some form Their rst problem should .

have been to ascertain whether there were any reasons in fact to assert
a subject for mental states that w a s other th a n the physical organism
,

assuming of course that matter was an accepted fact It was possi

, , .

ble to attack the question as did Berkeley and to determine w h ether

there w a s any material existence over against the assumed existence of
mi n d But the existence of m atter whether created or uncreated w a s
.
, ,

so thoroughly established in human conviction at the time of D escartes

and his followers that the application of doubt to it would have r e
c e iv e d no general attention and would not even have seemed plausible
44 8 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

to the ph i losophers themselves so that the problem which presente d

,

itself as the most natural w a s the existence and nature of the soul that ,

of matter not being questioned and the issue being whether matte r
w a s or was not adequate to the explanation of consciousness We .

must remember too that even Berkeley made concessions to what

the term m atter actually stood for a circumstance which indicate s ,

that his idealism like his belief in the miraculous virtues of tar water ,
,

had to be ta k en c u m g r a n o s a l i s .

It will be said of course that the philosopher did approach thi s

, ,

primary problem and gave his reasons in fact for asserting a subject
for consciousness other than the organism and that this reason in ,

fact was the difference between mental and physical phenomena .

This defence at least in respect to method is u nquestionably correct

, , ,

though the argument along this line of investigation was not expli
c it ly developed into a scientic issue which was a question of evi

dence It was only when pressed to justif y the assumption of distinct

.

subjects that the argument would take the form of the distinction
between m ental and physical events while the real problem as then , ,

conceived was not so much the separateness of the subj ects of mental
,

and physical phenomena as it was their n a t u r e after their indi ,

v id ua lit
y was admitted There were t w o distinct problems before t h e
.

philosopher The rst was the question whether consciousness w a s

.

a function of the organism that is whether it had a subject other tha n

, ,

the brain no matter what that subj ect w a s and the second problem
, ,

was to determine what the n a t u r e of that assumed separate subject

was The rst was presumably solved by the appeal to the difference s
.

between m ental and physical phenomena But the dif culty o f .

basing any argument for a distinction of subj ects upon the di fference
between the nature of the phenomena is twofold : rst our ign o ,

rance as to the absoluteness of the distinction and second the fact that , ,

a unity of subject is quite compatible with very great differences o f

-

attributes The latter position is illustrated by a l l physical substance s

.

and on a large philosophic scale by the system of Spinoza w h o

, ,

appears to have had no di f culty in supposing that both exte nsion and
consciousness could be attributes of t h e same subject The former is .

illustrated by the limitations of dogmatic introspectio n in su ch matters

as physical sound and color This di f culty was not discussed by the
.

C a rtesia n s and was probably not even appreciated They simply .

assumed that it did not exist and simpl y relied upo n the accepted dif
ference between mental and ph ysical events to prove both the exi s t en ce
a n d the n a t u r e of a distinct subject for consciousness though p r a ct i ,
 S P I R I T UA L I S I V .
44 9

cally unconscious of the rst of these problems as distinct from the

second since they were chiey interested in the n a ture of mind and
,

matter The reason for this w as in the traditional conceptions of phi

.

l o so p h i ca l and theological thought The time had passed when t h e .

most important issue w a s whether consc iousness could be a functio n

of the organis m or not It wa s not enough to secure its immortality
.

that consciousness should be proved to have another subj ect than the
brain as this conclusion would have suf ced to refute the older
,

materialis m or an y materialism supposing the permanence of matter .

But it was no w necessary to prove that cons cio u sness was the func
tion not only of something other than the organism but also of some
, ,

thing that w a s not matter The reason for this necessity w a s the fact
.

that Christianity had contended for the created and perishable nature
of matter so th a t if we accepted the supposition that cons ciousness
, , ,

was an attribute of matter in any for m wh a tever whether simple or ,

compound we would be compelled to admit its liability to disappear

,

ance or annihilation If the indestructibility of matter h a d been as

.

clearly recognized and its real or apparent signicance as keenly felt

as in later times the necessity for demanding an immaterial basis for
,

the persistence of cons ciousness would not have seemed so imperative ,

since philosophy could either have returned to the position of T er t u l

lian or have accepted something like that of Epicurus But as long as .

it conceived matter sensible and supersensible as created and ep h em

, ,

eral it could only see k in the immaterial a basis for an i m mortality

which it would not yield to s cepticis m Hence it was the interest in .

obtaining and dening a reality for the subject of consciousness which

could survive change that prompted Cartesian speculation to describe
mind as it did and to concentrate philosophy upon the proble m of the
,

nature of the soul rather than the question o f its existence This latter .

problem was rather ignored until t h e later materialists took it up It w a s .

at botto m the question whether any conception could be obtained tha t

would guarantee the possibility of survival of death and as this could n o t ,

be found in matter which h a d come to be conceived a s created and perish

able it had to be found in the immaterial the denition of which h a d ,

to exclude the material as the Cartesians thought to the exte nt of no t

, ,

permitting any participation in extension The primary problem .

,

however which was not properly appreciated by the philosophers

, ,

wa s the existence of a subj ect other than the brain and this is a ,

question of f a ct while the one attacked by them was se condary and is

,

a question of n a t u r e and the right to entertain it is depe n dent upon

,

the adequate solution of the former O f course the philosophers .

,

29
45 0 TH E P R OB L E IV
IS OF P H I L O S O PH Y .

would contend that they had satisfactorily answered the rst question ,

but they allowed themselves to be governed by the necessities of a

m erely traditional conception of matter in the denition of mind and ,

by the manner in which they discussed their dualism carrying into ,

t h e problem the conception of materi al rather than ef cient causation .

T hey thus created another and larger problem than ever whose attempted ,

solution led to a denial of their claims for the independent existence of

mind ! This is apparent in the result of the attempt to explain the
admitted relation between mind and matter after t h e distinction of
their nature was asserted A causal relation or inuence between
.

them was admitted but it appeared to be a question how this was

,

p ossible between things so opposed to each other as extended matter

a n d unextended mind , es e c i a ll a s the tendency at that time was to
p y
c onceive the causal nexus as a constitutive and material one The .

m anner of solving the n ew problem dened very sharply the alternatives

b etween which the philosopher apparently had to choose H e had .

a pparently to decide between the separate existence of mind and a causal

nexus between it and matter T h e failure to show h o w this causal nexus

.

was possible was taken to prove either that the Cartesian conception
of mind was not tenable or if tenable that the causal relation was
, , ,

not a fact .

It is possible to consider this conclusion as an inconsequence .

There is no reason to undertak e the explanation of such a causal rela

tion except upon the assumed validity of the fact and once granted as ,

a fact the failure to show k o w this relation is possible does not con
,

t r a d i c t the fact but only leaves that problem unsolved

,
It is not ex .

planation that validates a fact but evidence Explanation follows the

, .

admission of a fact and does n o t precede it and is not legitimate until

,

the fact is accepted D escartes supposed that he had e v idence of the

.

fact But scholasticism had so saturated the human mind with the
.

assumption that explanation is so necessary to the acceptance of facts

and that failure at explanation discredits the premises that an u nex ,

plai ned causal relation between mind and m atter was taken as tanta
mount to a denial of the fact of that relation or to an implication of the
truth of materialism To me the rst problem is to prove or disprove
.

the fact of a causa l nexus between phenomena or mind and matter , ,

and to explain it after w ard and not to condition the fact or existence
,

of the relation upon the possibility or success of making it intelligible

i n terms of a given assu mption Making it intelligible in such a man
.

n er may expl ain its n a t u r e and make it unnecessary to dispute its

credibility , but it does not determine that it is a fact Hence the .

 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
45 I

failure to explain an alleged circumstance by reference to the known

or assumed does not disprove its claim to be a fact , though it may
j ustify some S uspense of j udg m ent out of respect to the fact that unity
,

a n d consistency will enable us to escape contra diction even whe n they

a r e not the evidence of truth .

But if the case is as I have indicated w h y did the course of phi ,

l o so p h y take the direction that it assu med and why did it seem i m p o s
sible to suppose a causal relation between mind and matter on the
assumption of Descartes regarding the nature of the t wo subj ects ! If
the nature of mind and matter as facts is one thing and the causal rela
tion between them as a fact is another the evidence in each case being
,

d ifferent h o w can they contradict and why should philosophy have

,

a rgued as if they did contradict ! It is a fact that men have generally

t hought that either Cartesian dualism or the causal relation between

m ind and matter had to be surre n dered But if both are facts deter
.

mined by independent evidence w h y should men think so ! The

,

a nswer to this question is simple enough This answer is the fact .

t hat it was not the antithesis or dualis mbetween mind and matter , the
assumed inextension of mind and extension of matter , that gave the
t rouble but it was the assumptio n that the causal relation had to be a
,

m a t e r i a l one if admitted at a l l and this conceived it as an application

, ,

of the principle of the transmission of inuence from subject to sub

je ct as causality wa s interpreted in the mechanical world , inv o l v
,

ing the principle of identity while the denition of the t w o realities

,

involved the principle of difference or contradiction in the most denite

f orm far more rad i cal than the ancient distinction between the sensi
,

ble a n d supersensible worlds of matter This conceptio n of causality

.

was that of a mechanical i njl u xu s p ky s i c u s as proved by the w a y ,

that Leibnitz and others understood it and which was conceived in ,

t erms of motion or the translation of force This implied extension .

,

while the very denition of mind excluded extension from it , so that a

r elation of material causation w as rendered impossible H ence it w a s .

not the extended nature of matter and the unextended nature of mind
t hat created the dif culty but the assumption of extension in the con
,

c e t i o n of the causal nexus accepted as a fact , that contradicted the

p
s upposed nature of one of the subj ects If the conception of e f cient
.

o r occasional causality had been developed free from the paradoxes of ,

preestablished harmony the conception of dualism , as representing

b oth extended and unextended realities would have o ffered no insu ,

e r abl e logical di f culties whatever might have bee n the result of

p ,

i nvestigation as to the facts The contradiction w as between the

.
45 2 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OP H Y .

assu mptions regarding the qualitative nature of the two s ubjects and
the nature of the causal nexus and not between the nature of the sub
,

e ct s and the fact that there wa s s o m e kind of a causal relation

j .

I am however not defending dualism in this analysis of the prob

, ,

lem for I am indifferent to either its truth or falsity because the con ,

ce t i o n is so elastic that it can be made either true or false according

p
to denition and ought not to give the philosophers any more di f culties
than atomic pluralism which is little more than dualism multiplied
,
.

But with this remark against misunderstanding the m otive and tendency
of my argument I may simply add the obser vation that the wide enter
,

t a i n m e n t of a doctrine of dualism in some form even among philos

,

o
p h e r s requires explanation and apology quite as much as the philo
,

sophic tendency in some minds to regard it as inconceivable But the .

position that the d ii c ul ty is not in the dualism p er s e as a doctrine ,

of difference between mind and matter but in the assumption of a

,

causal relation incompatible with its conception while some rational ,

and intelligible relation has to be admitted as a fact if clear think ing,

is possible is an apolo gy for both sides while the fact may suggest
, ,

that the theory might be as mu ch misunderstood by its critics as it h a s

been misrepresented by its advocates The rst question is whether
.

t h e nature of mental and physical phenomena is such as to require

different subjects fer them together with the qualities which deter
,

mined their nature as realities and the next and independent question
,

is whether there is any inuential conne ction between them and not ,

whether that connection is of a kind to contradict the distinction which

the facts require us to make between them The conception of an
.

e i c ie n t causal nexus between them is qu ite compatible with a differ

ence of their nature and may be necessary to accept the unity of action
with that difference which we actually observe .

This brings us to the theory of parallelism again and the problem ,

which it undertakes to solve or the conclusion which it endeavors to

establish . We sa w in discussing materialism ( p 3 9 1 ) that t h e .

mechanical conceptions of Descartes and his follo w ers in the eld

of physical science tended to interpret the idea of causality in terms of
the transmission of force or the principle of material as distinct from
ef cient causes and that the nal proof of the theory of the conserva
,

tion of energy tended to place the Cartesian conception beyond disput e

and to interpret mechanical causation in terms of qualitative identit y
betw een antecedent and consequent We then showed that Leibnitz
.

tried his doctrine of monadism with its denial of an i n u xus p ky s i c us

and with its a f rmation of pre established harmony against materi
 S PI R I T UA L I S M 45 3

a l is m and its mechanical conceptions and so gave rise to pa r

,

allelism which has again been revived among philosophers as an

a rgument against the materialistic theory in re cent years What .

parallelism tries to s how is that consciousness and physica l e vents

a re not convertible as the doctrine of the conservation of energy
assumes w hen qualitatively interpreted Its object is to show that they
.

a r e so di fferent in kind that we cannot conceive their transmutation

into each other or any relations of material identity as materialis m is

s upposed to require of this causal relation It assu mes that if this
.

material causal rela tion is denied of the m the materialistic theory must
abandon its claim to explaining cons ciousness by a mechanical

theory We have granted that this argument is conclusive against

.

materialism if it is m ade denitive ly convertible with the idea of

,

material causatio n or the absolute identity of mental and physical

phenomena , and that materialism would have to resort to the con
c ept i o n of ef cie n t causation to escape refutation I also called atten .

tion to the fact that the spiritualist if he had a ccepted the materialist s
,

position and principle of material causation wou ld have had a fatal

,

a d bo m i n e m argument against his denial of the persistence of con

sc io u s n e s s and i n favor of at leas t the concomitance of consciou sness

with all physi cal phenomena and poss ibly the identity of physical
and mental events m aking the physical o n ly the obj ective side of the
,

mental But instead of taking this positio n the spiritualist went o ff to

.

parallelism to prove the difference between mental and physical on the

assumption that he might thus defend the distinction of their subjects ,

when as a matter of fact the doctrine of the conservation as interpreted , ,

made it unnecessary to have di fferent subjects in order to preserve

identity through change But the instinct for co n tradicting an oppo
.

n ent s conception of the case w a s too strong to permit the suggestion of

a n o n s egu i t u r in the materialist s deduction and the argument took

the form of insisting on the difference between the mental and physical
as a ground for a distinction of subjects The inconsequence of this
.

position is perfectly clear A difference in kind of qualities is not a

.

decisive evidence of a difference of subjects unless w e assume that a ,

simple subj ect can have only one attribute If we assume H er ba rt s

.

real as the true conception of ultimate reality w e should have a

,

conception in which the presence of t wo different properties in the

same apparent individual would have to be treated as evidence of two
reals in the same space or time and even physical scientists have
,

occasionally maintained that true simplicity of atomic structure

r equires absolute singleness of the quality determining the subject .
45 4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

But it is usual to suppose that a synthesis or complexus of qualities is

consistent with simplicity of subject This is unquestionably correct
.

for sensible individuality and continuity within the limits of that indi
v id u a l i t
, y and whether it is true or not for the s u persensible is not a
question dis cussed by the spiritualist He virtually concedes that a .

simple subject may have a synthesis of qualities which may be different

in ki nd and does not see that this concession deprives his parallelisti c
argument against materialism of its cogency All that his parallelism .

can even profess to do is to refute the ide ntity of mental and physical
phenomena or the application of material causation to their relation ,

whi l e the fact tha t qualitatively different attributes may inhere in the
same subject defeats the inference which he wishes to have drawn in
favor of the substantive separation between mind and matter F or if: .

a complexus of di fferential qualities can inhere in the same subject

what is to hinder the m aterialist after correcting the conce ption
,

of th e conservation of energy to mean identity of quantity and not

identity o f quality in change from still adhering to the c o nten
,

tion t hat consciousness may inhere in matter side by side with

other material qualities reducible if you like to modes of motion !
, ,

If the non convertible properties of extension density color so

-

, , ,

n o r o usn es s
,
hardness , elasticity etc may inhere in the same sub
,
.
,

je c t there can be no reason to deny the simultaneous inhesion of

c onsciousness in it except the assu m ptions that all the properties
,

of matter must be modes of motion and that consciousness is n o t

a mode of motion Both assumptions however are not proved and
.
, ,

may not be provable All that we kno w is that there is a differ

.

ence between mental and physical phenomena as observ ed not ,

that this difference is the difference between motional and non

motional facts The idealist is perfectly helpless here In his doc
. .

trine that all things are states of consciousness or that all things ,

can be known only in terms of consciousness if this langu a ge is to ,

have any rational meaning whatever he must contend that motion is a

,

state of consciousness and so identify the mental and physical in kind

and deprive himself of logical grounds of opposition to materialism .

In fact the strongest possible proof of the m aterialist s contention
,

would be the theory of idealism identifying the mental and physical ,

so that idealism woul d either have to accept t h e materialist s con
c l u si o n against the persistence of consciousnes s or insist that its per

sistence is co n sistent with materialism The identity between the .

mental and phys ical involved in the t wo theorie s can have no othe r
outcome and opposition between them is securable only on the con
 S P IR I T U A L I S M 45 5

dition that they divide o n the question of survival after death while they
.

maintain the identity of the mental and physical ! Hence it is only

the man who insists upo n the validity of the t wo assumptions that

material phenomena are all modes of motion and that menta l
phenomena are never this that can consistently maintain the ex
,

i st en c e of an independent subj e ct for mental states The materialist .

,

after the contention of Hobbes and others that all physical phe
nomena were reducible to modes of motion had applied the prin ,

ci p le of material causa tion or the transmission of energy to explain

ment a l phenomen a and so had to imply that they were c o nse
quently modes of motion Against this position parallelism might
.

well contend if it su c c eeded in showing that mental and physical

phenomena were not interconvertible But there are t w o co n cep
.

tions of materialism either of which parallelism does not e ffectively

,

meet The rst is that which assumes that the causal nexus between
.

the menta l and physical is e f cient and not necessarily or wholly ma

t er i a l
. The second is that which insists upon our introspective in
ability to determine a p r i o r i the nature of consciousness beyond the
most supercial di fferences bet ween it and physical phenomena in
respect of their relation to motion In the rst of these positions ma
.

t er i a l is m does not have to decide anything one w a y or the other about

the nature of consciousness whether it is or is not a mode of motion
, .

All that it n eed maintain is that motion or any other material action as
an occasioning cause can elicit or instigate the occurre n ce of con
s c i o u sne ss which may be treated as a fu nction of the organism in

which it occurs just as physical activities may instigate the occur

,

rence of Other and non identical activities in independent material sub

-

je ct s without being convertible with them especially in the light of the

,

internal forces which in chemistry are supposed to account for
, ,

qualitative manifestations that are not transmutations of the inciting

agent Thus I may light a candle or set o ff a powder m agaz ine by a
.

match and the effect is not the same in both cases nor is it the mere ,

transmission or transmutation of the energy in the match The sub .

e c t in which the event occurs and the force that it contributes to

j
the effect is an important factor in the result so that to carry out the
, ,

analogy t h e occasioning inuence of an exte rnal physical cause may

,

instigate the occurrence of consciousness in t h e organism without con

st it u t i ng it either qualitatively or quantitatively and the organism ,

might be the agent determining the nature of the qualitative reaction .

This view is not answered by parallelis m Neither is the second con

.

c e t io n of materialism any better refuted All th a t introspection can

p .
45 6 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

do is to a f rm that there is a difference between the mental and physi

cal i n their sensible forms and not that they are ultimately opposed in
nature The assumption of the m aterialist when he conceives all
.
,

physical phenomena to be modes of motion is that this identity is ,

supersensible H e concedes the apparent differences H e may be

. .

wrong in his assumption of this reduction ! Vith that I have nothing .

to do because any disposition to question it must rob the parallelist of

,

his weapon against materialism since the assumption that absolute dif
,

fe r e n ces of qualities in a material subj ect will logically defeat the argu
m ent for a separate subject for consciousness Hence the parallelist .

must accept the materialist s terms in regard to the identity at the basis

of physical qualities in order to gain a fulcrum of any kind a gainst

,

the assumption that consciousness is a mode of motion while this con ,

cession sim ply opens the way for the materialist to contend that the
apparent distinction between the m ental a n d physical is not real and
that their identity ultimately is quite as consistent as the ultimate
identity of di fferent material qualities which the parallelist has to con
,

cede in order to secure his o w n premises But when these are secured .

he may be confronted with the rst concepti on of materialism whi ch

can concede that consciousness is not a mode of motion and yet main

tain that it is the resultant of composition and intern a l forces which
are not the transmuted e ffect of stimulus .

Th ere are t w o things to be remembered here though they have ,

their logical value and cogency determined by their relation to existing

assumptio n s in the atomic theory of matter The present general con .

c ep t io n of the atomic theory is that the elements are qualitatively dif

fe r en t a n d yet may be the subj ects of different qualities That is to .

say it is assumed that simplicity of substance is not incompatible with

,

co mplexity of attributes If it were assumed that simplicity of sub

e c t required corresponding simplicity , or singleness of qualities the

j ,

t w o things to which at tention is to be called would be subj ect to quali

cat io n But as the case of atomic conceptions n o w stands they

.

represe n t fundamental postulates which determine the manner of

stating the t w o criteria of j udgment on the question of single and
plural realities The rst th ing however to be remembered is that a
.
, ,

general diversity in kind of qualities is not evidence of a plurality of

subjects a nd the second is that a general similarity in kind of qualities
,

is not evidence of a unity of subject Now it is to be noticed that this

.

latter statement is admitted to be a truism while the former d oes not ,

appear to be so truistic although it actuall y is such in the light of

,

present atomic conceptions The simple re a son for this is that in the
.
 S PI R I T UA L I S M 45 7

very conceptio n of similarity ( of table of categories p 1 2 7 ) .

,
.

plurality of subj ects is involved and no one would think of supposing

that a unity or singleness of subject w a s possible where plurality w a s ,

the co ndition of similarity and did not imply mathematical identity .

But the habit of relying upon differences in physical science for t h e

s uggestion of complexity and therefore of other than the m ost apparent

s ubj ect of the phenomenon leads to the tacit assumptio n that d i fferences

imply plurality of subj ects But the ad mission that an elementary unit
.

o r atom may be the subj ect of a variety of properties in n o special

respect similar to ea ch other deprives the fact of difference of its evi
d ential po w er in favor of plural subjects Hence plurality of centers
.

of reference must be determined by some other criterion That is to .

say in the present status of a sSum p t io n s characteriz ing the atomic doc
,

trine or any doctrine of elements plurality of realities has rst to be

, ,

established i n order to make the application of diversity of qualities

even suggestive of plural subjects and u ntil that plurality has bee n
,

established diversity of qualities is quite consistent with unity of sub

ject The evidence of p lurality lies not in diversity of qualities but
.
, ,

in i n d i v i d u a l i ty or independent existe n ce in space and time The

, .

only conceptio n that can dispute this contentio n is that of Herbart and
of such atomists as may identify simplicity of substance with simplicity
or singleness of qualities O n that assumption alone can the plurality
.

of subjects be proved by di fference of qualities F rom this point of .

View materialism would be forced to choose between making all atoms

'

qualitatively alike and modal di fferences th e effects of composition ,

and making the m qualitatively di fferent to the extent of the qualitative

differences of phenomena Now recently S ir O liver Lodge Sir
.
,

William Crookes and others have declared for the possibility of the
former alternative in which all differences in k nowledge

and

reality are modal and not evidence of di fferent kinds of subj ects .

That is to say they declare for the absolute identity in k ind of the
,

atoms The l a w of Mendeleje ff and other phenomena in the
.
,

classication of the elements seem to favor the same view because

, ,

they point to the a pplication of evolution to the very elements and sug
gest this evolution from a single form of energy But it does n o t .

matter whether this ultimate is one or many whether our view be ,

pluralistic or monistic ( uno monistic ) as long as the physicist main

-

tains that su ch elements relative or absolute as we assume to the

, ,

plural are alike in kind instead of bei n g qualitatively different A ll

,
.

qualitative differences would have to be explained as the resultants of

composition That is clear We have seen however that on either
. .
, ,
45 8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

the monistic or pluralistic view the persistence of a particular mode or

phenomenon will depend on the persistence of the compound ,

assuming the pluralistic position or on the absence of change or meta

,

morphosis on the monistic view The circumstance that change is a

,
.

recogniz ed fact for both points of vie w shuts out spiritualism from
adopting either of the m for the defence of the persistence of conscious
ness unless it could qualify metamorphosis in some mysterious way t o
,

suit its requirements and without this persistence it does not require
,

to controvert the materialistic theory for any practical purposes O n .

the other h and if spiritualism should drive atomic materialism into the
,

position that independent subj ects must be coextensive with the differ
en t ia l qualities of things it would be obliged to a dopt a qualitative
,

difference between the atoms which would be far greater than our
present atomic theory nds necessary in limiting it to the seventy o r
more elements and ma k e each atom the subject of a single quality ,

wheth er simil ar or diverse from others This would necessita te t h e .

adoption of a separate subj ect for each species of mental state showing
radically differential features and the spiritualist would be no better
,

o ff than befo re as the consciousness representing his personality w ould

,

have been dissolved into its elements and have no identity of the k ind
found in the bodily existence while he would have to face the problem
,

of evolution and metamorphosis for each individual subject in the

result even w hen he assu med that consciousness was simple and not
,

analyz able into specic elements constituting a class or collective com

plex It will not help to say that the fundamental di fference is
.

between the phenomena of motion and those of conscious n ess ,

assuming that the subordina te species of each genus of mental state ,

intellection emotion and volition can be reduced to one conferential

, , ,

fu nction ; for I do not see that the distinction betw ee n intellect feel ,

ing and will or between the several types of mental states in infell ec
, ,

tion sensation perception and reasoning invo l ves any more u n ity of
, , ,

k ind than the severa l functions of m atter That is I do not see that .
,

the distinction between consciousness and motion is a ny greater than

that between density and col or both of which are assumed to be mode s
,

of motion and on the conception of atomism u n d er consideration are

, ,

assumed to justify a separation of subj ects for e a ch differential quality .

If this suggestion of qu a litatively different atoms caused by the differ ,

e n ce s of attributes in matter in spite of their classic a tion under motion ,

be either necessary or possible equal specic differences for mental

,

phenomena must point to the same conclusion and the assumption ,

of separate s imple subj ects for each functio nal aspect of t h e organi c
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
45 9

complex called consciousness would leave the spiritualist without any

advantage even on the conception of Tertullian as the persistence of
, ,

each individual subject would not preserve personal identity unles s ,

this persistence took the form of the spiritual body when the ques ,

tion would be whether this persisted or not If it did not the cas e .

would stand as it does with materialis m Besides the conception that .

all qualitative differences postulated to secure a major premise for t h e

,

independence of a mental subject and to deprive materialism of it s

appeal to resultants of composition for the explanation of phe

nomena require corresponding diff erences or individuality of subj ects
, ,

forbids the un ication of differences in the material world as well a s

in the mental so that we should have to place motion on a par wit h
,

other qualities of matter and as a distinct function of an individua l

type of atoms so that so me ato ms would have no motion whatever
, .

This would be a r ed u ct i o a d a bs u r d u m of both atomism and material

ism O n the other hand the admission that su ch radical di fference s
.
,

as density and color or a f nity and taste were inhesive qualities of the
, ,

same subject would at least suggest a doubt about the right to dog
matiz e on the ultimate di fferences between cons ciousness and motion .

But when the controversy between materialism and spiritualism is

reduced to the question which I have j ust been discussing namely , ,

whether it is possible to conceive that consciousness is a mode of

motion we should dis cover either that the problem is insoluble or that
,

materialism would prove itself elastic enou gh to change its contentio n

and ta k e some other assumption for its base We must not forge t .

that the whole force of the demand for a mental subject other than the
organism as made by parallelism depends wholly upon the a ssu m p
, ,

tions that a ll phenomena of matter are modes of motion a positio n ,

often taken by materialism as in Hobbes and that consciousness is not a

, ,

m ode of motion the position taken by paral lelism

,
The rst of these .

assumptions is conceded by the parallelist if only for the sake of argu ,

ment and the second assumption a ffirmed in order to escape materialis m

,

which assumes that consciousness is a mode of motion But there is .

no more evidence for the materialist s assumption than there is for the

parallelist s Both can be disputed as is shown by the various posi
.
,

tions and th eories concerning the simplicity or complexity of atoms ,

where the possibility of classifying qualities does not affect t h e opinions

of specu lators and where di fference rather than identity contro l s the
'

intell ectual tendency Besides there is no rigid ne cessity for materialism

.

to suppose that a ll phenomena of matter are modes of motio n It .

had differences to account for in some w ay even when supposing tha t

46 0 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

all material phenomena are reducible to motion of some kind and ,

it cannot treat these diff erences as motion which is the c o nfer ent ia ,

but as either a concomitant fact or as something attached to motion ,

which is the identical element in the phenomenon Consequently .

,

we have attached to its assumption of unity a distinction that prevents

this unity from being u n iversal or absolute This once recognized
.

simply leads to the result that there are functions of physical realities
that are not modes of motions thoug h we admit that all which pro
,

duce e ffects may be modes of motion and if o nce the admission of

,

functions that are not motion be admitted there would be no dif culty
in supposing cons ciousness to be among the m Parallelism would .

then be reduced to the choice between supposing that the qualitative

differences of phenomena indicated required the existence of atoms
coextensive with the differences asso ciated with motion in a complex
organis m to save the persistence of consciousness and supposing that
, ,

similar differences between mental states demand equ a lly different

subjects an assumption that would require us to maintain the integ
,

rity o f a spiritual organis m in order to sustain the u nity and multi
p l i c it y of consciousness as we know it H o w he would sustain the
.

integrity of such an organism any more than he can that of the ma

t e r i al organism no one can see If he could insist that consciousness
.

wa s an absolutely simple thing , a view clear enough in its intension

or abstract qualitative import only one indivisible atom would be
,

r equired to support it . But the term denotes a whole genus of

specic states in the extensive or concrete quantitative import and
would have to be treated a s similar terms in the conception of material
phenomena have to be treated But grant that consciousness is
.

s imple and not a generic concept with differential associations that

,

m ight be used to demand the existence of H e r ba r t s reals for each

di fference the case would not be altered since the reducibility of dif
, ,

f er e nt ia l qualities in material
phenomena to modes of motion is
supposably compatible with very radical apparent differences that
might admit the same re duction of consciousness as the motion which
,

u nies the sensible di fferences in the material world is quite as super

s e nsible a thing to conception or imagination as consciousness can be .

Moreover if materialism were pushed by the logic of th e case to

,

a bandon its assumption that a l

phenomena of matter from the
very n a ture of the case must be modes of motion a position which has
,

a ll along been purely a p r i o r i and without evidence as a condition of ,

denying the persistence of consciousness after death it would be found ,

qu ite equal to t h e emergency as philosophic theories are capable of

,
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
46 1

almost anything for the sake of maintaining the consistency of their

traditio nal phraseology It is easy to shift one s position and to main
.

tain the same phrases without the discovery of our conversion P l u s .

i l eba ng e p l u s il es t l a m e m e c k o s e is a m a xim that well expresses

many of the intellectual movements in the history of philosophy The .

success of parallelism depends upon accepting the materialist s a ssu m p

tion that all physical phenomena are modes of motion and deny
ing this redu ction of consciousness while the materialist might at any
,

time have the courage to give up his unnecessary assumption and

leave the whole a d r e m argument to the parallelist who se duty it
would be to prove both assu mptions as a condition of having any
pre m ise t o begin with against the extension of materialism to explain
'

all differential phenomena without handicapping itself wit h their

reduction to the modes of motion but si mply a ssuming that it has
,

differences to account for in any case .

I have gone thus into the analysis a nd discussion of parallelism and

the ramications of materialistic controversy and theory because paral
l e l is m has been the last resort and defence of the spiritualistic vie w in
recent years , and because I regard it as w holly i n adequate and i r r el e
vant to the problem It obtains its whole force from its a p r i o r i as
.

su m p t io n s and its a d k o m i n em argument both of which are liable to

,

overthrow at any time the rst by the demand for evidence which has
,

not been and cannot be furnished and the second by the materialist s
abandonment of his maj or premise and the adoption of another with
the same concl usion as before Hence I do not regard parallelism as
.

an adequate defence of spiritualism in any form It is no doubt quite .

true that if mind and matter are different kinds of substance or di ffer
ent kin d s of subjects as they would have to be in order to j ustify the
,

use of t w o terms assumed not to be synonymous in any sense their ,

qualities would be different But the fact that qualities are different
.

from each other is not a conclusive evidence of a difference of subj ects ,

and we might show as much as we please that ph ysical phenomena
were no t convertible with the mental unless we at the same time
,

showed a complete interconvertibility of phy sical phenomena with

each other there would be nothing to prevent materialism from denying
the universality of material conversion and extending its principle to
the rel ation bet w ee n t h e mental and physical making them both func
,

tions of the same subject without reciprocal or other convertibility .

The existence of non convertible phenomena in the material world

-

representing qualitative changes not explained by the conservation of

energy which when properly dene d applies onl y to quantit ative
, , ,
4 62 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

identity in change and the compatibility of thi s non convertibility of

,
-

a ttributes with the unity and identity of subject ma ke it equally p o s

,

s i bl e that mental events might be functions of the organism without

contradi cting the conse r vation of energy and in this case parallelism
,

would have no claims against materialism The possibilities being .

e qual for and against a plurality of subjects there is no other course

open than to endeavor to solve the problem by ascertaining whether it

is a f a ct that consciousness exists independently of the bodily organism ,

as the attempt to decide it by determining its n a t u r e only results in a

p r i o r i S peculations which are as good on one side as o n the other and ,

being mutually opposed simply nullify each other .

I am not disputing the natural impressiveness of the appeal to the

d i fference between mental and physical phenomena as we k now ,

them for evidence of plural or dual subjects I am only disputing

, .

the right to depend upon it as in any way conclusive or to connect it

w ith the denial of material causality between the mental and physical
a s the sole source of reliance for its conclusion when the supposition of

e f cient causal nexus between them has not been met and w h ich is all

that m aterialism needs for its vindication It is the possibility of this

.

last conception that of e f cient causes and th e ir connection with the

, ,

inuence of internal a ction of the organism which modern s cience con

c e iv e s very differently fro m antiquity that opens a way for the ma
,

t er i a l ist i c theory which parallelism cannot meet It S imply accepts .

t his parallelism and converts it into a defence of m aterialism We .

have the whole eld of chemistry and physiology and what they have
e stablished to deal with in the problem The marvelous m eta m o r
.

p h o se s of matter exhibited by chemistry illustrating the appearance of

n e w qualities due to composition or even due only to variations of
,

c onditions without composition , as in allotropism and without new ,

e lements in a co m pound , as in isomer i sm or metals in liquid air and

,

the equal ly ma r velous functions of a ph y siological organism which are

n o t consciousness within the accepted meaning of that term all these ,

s how that we h ave before u s a problem qu ite d i e r e nt fro m that of

e arl y Christianity .

The tradi tional relation betw een the soul and

t h e body was that of a tenant and w a s as old a s P lato and was even ,

t hat of Epic u rus and the materialists This relation was conceived as
.

a mechanical

relation according to the terms of chemical usage ,
,

one that would not involve any change of character or m etamo r phosis
either in the proximity of another element or in th e separation from it .

With such an articial conception before it the most natural tendency

,

o f the human m ind would be to determine a diff erence of subjects by

 SPIR I T U A L ISM 463

a difference of phenomena associated in the same collective whole ,

especially if any speci a l moral or religious idea s a n d hopes were inter

est e d in the result . But the moment tha t chemistry and physiology
came in with th eir co n ception of an o r g a n i c as distinct from tha t of a
c o l l ec t i v e whole
, a vie w mu ch less nearly allied to the old m e c h a n i

cal composition of the ancient materialists whic h was apparently i n ,

su f c ie nt to explain all the

phenomena the case w a s altered In .
,

the entire organic world of living beings and the inorganic world of
chemical compounds science has fo und a system of metamorphoses
,

due to chemical laws th a t exhibit almost any capacity to exercise func

tions or manifest attributes not found in the elements This is a con .

c ep t i o n that is W holly independent of the doctrine of the conservation

of energy because the facts represent qualitative changes for which

,

there is no pretense of explanation by that doctrine It is not thought .

for one mo m ent that material causation applies to these qualitati ve

modications of matter and the limitations whic h the fact imposes
,

upon the theory of conservation conne it to the quantitative identity

of the mechanical forces a n d qualitative or m eta morphic changes
remain outside its purview and action involving conceptions that no
,

amount of refutation di rected against material causation can reach .

No w parallelis m cannot pretend to meet the objections created by this

conception of causal change involving as it does the idea of external
,

ef cient action and internal reaction or metamorphosis All that it .

could question was the alleged material identity bet w een m e ntal and
physical phenomena
It is true that as already admitted this
.
, ,

wou ld be an overthrow of the mecha n ical philosophy which a f

rmed that identity but only in so far as that philosophy was made
,

convertible with material causation Since materialism however in

.
, ,

its last analysis does not depend wholly upon a material causal nexus
bet ween mental and physical events the S piritualist has to meet the
,

n ew conception which is founded upon qualitative m etamorphosis and

which is presu m ably not the result of transmission or conservation .

This new position assumes that conscious n ess might as easily be an i n

e ident or resultant
epiphenomenon of composition as any other
, ,

q ualitative modicatio n , espe cially if materialism should abando n the

reduction of physical phenome n a to modes of motion and suppose
that matter is capable of functions not conceived as motion in any
form .

Parallelis m thus fails to achieve its desired victory simply because

m aterialis m depends upon more than one assumption As has already
.

been remarked when discussing materialism ( p the proper

.
464 TH E PR OBL EM S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

course of parallelism was not to have denied the materialist s applica

tion of mechanica l or materi a l causation but to have pressed its ,

a a lzo m zn e m value for logical dedu ctions which were j ust the contrary
'

of what the materialist supposed instead of conceding an assumption

,

about the reducibili y of all physical phenomena to modes of motion

t

whic h ought never to have been granted and instead of accepting r espo n
sibilit y fo r an a d r e m argum e nt to prove that consciousness w a s not suc h

a mode a negative proposition which can never be proved In other

, .

words the parallelist ought to have exposed the contradiction between

the materialist s principle and his conclusion the rst being different

from and the second being the same as the old materialism T he meta .

morphosis of the old materialis m having been abandoned in the con

c e t io n of the conservation of energy the same conclusio n should not
p
have been drawn The parallelist should have accepted the challenge
.

which the conservation of energy presented and instead of trying to

limit it he should have pressed its necessary consequences applying ,

it with the universality which was claimed for it and thus insisted that
the qualitative cha nges i nvolved in the process of evolution involved no
loss of identity whatever on the theory , and hence that consciousness was
as much an element of the antecedent as the antecedent motion was , ,

an element of cons ciousness The assumption of material causation

.

with its implication of identity between the t w o terms of the series

would h ave obliged the materialist to admit in the antecedent the same
fact that he found in the consequent There would have been abso.

l u t ely no escape from this conclusion short of an abandonment of the

qualitative interpretation of the conservation of energy The materi .

alist cannot apply material causation or identity to the relation between

physical and mental phenomena or motion and consciousness
, ,

without accepting in it the full meaning of consciousness the second ,

term of the series as well as the physical the rst term that is without
, , , ,

admitti n g that the physical is as mu ch of the nature of consciousness as

the m ental is of the nature of motion The last term in the series of ev o
.

l ut i o n on the theory of conservation has at least as mu ch signicance as

, ,

the rst a n d actually m ust be said to have been contained in it so that ,

the materialist cannot admit a qu a litative difference of any kind between

the terms of this series without givi n g up the universality of his ex
p l a n a t o r y principle He cannot on the theory of conservation inter
.
,

p r et e d as implying qu a litative identity between the antecedent and

consequent exclu de consciousness from motion and introduce it as
,

a ne w m oment i n the s e ries H e must make as much of con

.

sc i o u sne ss as motion and treat their identity as his principle r e

 S PI R I T UA L I S M 4 65

quires instead of implying their identity in o n e breath and denying

,

it in another .

But when materialism was pressed wit h the di f culties of its do c

trine its advocates fra nkly limited its application to the qu a n t i t a t i v e
identity of antecede n t and conseque n t and admitted that it did not
,

explain qu a l i t a t i v e change or imply qualitative identity between the

terms of t h e series cau sally related P ara llelism is thus eviscerated of

.

its e nt ir e co g e n cy As soon as this concession was made and materi

.

a l i sm based upon the possibility of the qualitative changes to internal

forces in composition it was not refutable by any denial of the

,

universality of the co n servatio n of energy or m a terial causation The .

parallelist had taken precisely the course opposite to that calculated to

defend the theory he was opposing It was simply because the con .

servation of energy did not apply qualitatively to antecedent and

consequent that consciousness might be a function of the physical o r
ga n i s m as the subj ect in which alone it occurred at least in so far as ,

the evidence was concerned If it had been merely the transferred

.

phenomenon of the external agent retaining its identity in its ,

transitions it would require no identical subj ect for its own nature
,

and persistence but would be an eternal mode of action without regard

,

to a c hange of subjects through which it was transmitted A doctrine .

of reincarnation m igh t be conceivable on this ass umption though it ,

might be unlike the systems a ctually adopted Of course this trans .

mission from subj ect to subj ect w ould i mply a n eternal past for the
individual consciousness and so would be confronted with the fact that
there is no m nemonic u nity or connection between consequent and a n
t e ce d e n t a fact which ought not to exist on the supposition of qualita
,

tive identity and whi ch actually disproves that identity reinstating the ,

old proble m of qualitative change and admitting no other type of iden

tity and persistence than P lato s transmigration or reincarnation with

metempsychosis a conclusion which a bandons both the qualitat ive con

,

servation of energy and the permanence of perso n al identity .

The real force a n d meaning of the doctrine of the conservation of

e n ergy whether qualitatively or quantitative ly interpreted was due to
, ,

its con troversion of t h e theory of cr ea t i o n applied to matter and motion ,

and not to its co n troversio n of either th e existence or t h e persistence of

mind other than the orga n ism I h ave just indicated that the logical
.

co n se qu en ee of a thoroughgoing doctrine of co n servation results in the

a f rmation of an eternal consciousness in the past as well as future but ,

that apparently agreeable as this might seem to the spiritualist s desire
,

to protect the persistence of consciousness it was in conict with the ,

30
4 66 TH E PR O BL EM S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

fact that there was no mnemonic connection between the past and
prese nt and no promise of any between the present and future so that ,

what the spiritualist m ight gain by a n a d Izo m i n em argument with the

materialist he lost by consideration of the facts and simply created an
issue which both parties had to face in the consideration of a doctrine
that did not meet the demand made upo n it What the parallelist .

ought to have seen was that the materialist s theory of the conservation

of energy controverted the creation of matter and motion without neces

sa r ily controverting the persistence of consciousness which followed as a

n ecessary consequence of the doctrine All that the facts would prove
.

was the inconsistency of this conclusion with them and the error of the
materialist s assu mption about material causation nullifying the univer

,

sa l it y of his theory of conservation and simply opening the way for s eep

t i c i s m regarding the persistence of consciousness The business of the .

parallelist was to refute materialism by its consequences not by a denial ,

of its premises The spiritualist s problem is the persistence of con

.

sc i o u s n e ss without regard to the question of creation and he has the doc ,

trine of inertia in his favor this doctrine being one form of conservation
, .

T h e doctrine of inertia is that a body remains in its present condition

whether of motion or rest unless exposed to external interference
, .

There is no necessity on this ass u mption of an eternal past in order to

secure immortality but only of a present existence and assurance that
,

there is nothing to interfere with the continuance of it The authors of .

the Un s e e n U n i v e r s e m aintained that what had a beginning must

necessarily have an end but this is atly in contradiction with their
,

doctrine of inertia which does not deny a beginning but admits the pos
s ibilit
y of a permanence after a beginni n g if there is no external inter
,

ference to prevent it It avails nothing to say that there is always an

.

external interference because this is a questio n of fact and not necessity

, .

It is simply a question of fact whether a cause interferes with the present

order to discontinue it so that spiritualism is independent of the for

,

tunes o f a theory of creation which involves a beginning but not

,

necessarily an end unless the doctrine of inert ia is abandoned Its

, .

position had to be consistent with the fact that there is no mnemonic

unity of consciousness with a past presupposed by the assumptions of
t h e conservation of energy and it h a d only to use the doctrine of inertia
,

to prevent an absolute denial of its possibility in spite of creati on while ,

it could also use t h e absen ce of this mnemonic u nity with the past to
,

c ontrovert the implications of the materialist s doctrine of material

causation though he has no interest but this fact in controverting it

, .

I t was the extension of the idea of indestructibility to m otion after it

 S P I TI T U A L I S M 46 7

had been proved of matter that gave the theory of conservation its
meaning against the notion of creation As long as s cience had proved
.

only the indestru ctibility of matter the w ay was open to maintain at

, ,

least a p r i o r i that motion h a d a beginning and in this way sustain the

'

theistic origin of the pheno m enal world , according to the A r isto t e

l ian conception of the case in the orderly adjus tment and collocation
,

of cosmi c realities B ut the conservation of energy even on its merely

.
,

quantitative interpretation at least appeared to contradict all c o n c ep

,

tions of a creation and if it assumed that qualitative changes were d ue

,

to the action of internal forces it required no such creation as the
,

theist maintained as the quantity of energy was eternal and the quali
,

t at iv e changes assumed were not due to a foreign initial act with the
supposition of inertia afterward to sustain an unchanged order The .

materialist s imply appropriated a kind of cr ea t i o co n t i n u a which the

theist should never have permitted him to assume But having dis .

covered the indestructibility of matter and motion in some sense of the ,

term this resul t seemed to make the spiritualistic theory of absolute

,

genesis in its theistic assumptions unnecessary and as the materialistic

, , ,

theory was the only alternative all the implications associated with it
, ,

both theistic and psychological were assumed w ithout reection to fol

,

low These implications were a purely mechanical interpretation of
.

physical phenomena and the subordination of consciousness to the

m aterial organis m as a function of it In accepting this conclusio n
.

several things were forgotten ( I ) that the only reason for assuming a
perma n ent i m m a t er i a l reality was the assumption that both the sensible
and supersensible worl ds of matter were transient ; 2 ) that the reason
for assuming a n immaterial reality for t h e support of cons ciousness was
the interest in preserving its persistence while matter was made a created
and perishable thing ; ( 3 ) that the doctrine of inertia made the per
sistence of consciousness consistent with the idea of creation or a begin
n ing in time and rendered it u n nece s sary to postulate the eternity of the

subj ect of con s ciousness in the past as a conditio n of its persistence in

the future ; ( 4 ) that when matter and motion were discovered through ,

the conservation of energy to be permanent there was n o reas o n for

, ,

insisting upon the existence of an immaterial mind or substance as a

condition of the persistence of conscious n ess and that either the posi
,

tion of Tertullian or that of the spiritual body afforded as good a n

a p r i o r i basis for the philosophic doctrine as the one of an immaterial

psychical substance actually adopted Spiritualism ought to have shown

.

itself quite as elastic as its opponent has been but when defeated at one
,

point it has simply invented some n ew hypothesis worse than the rst
4 68 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
'

and kept up a controversy w hen it m ight have deftly applied the logic
of materialism to its own assumptions and either to have gotten spiritual
i st i c conclusions within materialistic doctrines or to have shown that
these consequences were incompatible with the facts and thus to have ,

thrown upon materialism the burde n of proof instead of accepting this

unenviable task itself .

But it was precisely because qualitative changes and modications

were not explained by the conservation of energy and the principle of
identity at the basis of the indestructibility of matter and motion that ,

some theory of genesis whether cosmic or psychological was made

, ,

logically possible and imperative Whether a cosmic creation was

.

probable or not there were but two alternatives open in the case after
, ,

the necessary admission that personal ide n tity had no past existence .

They were ( I ) the creation of the soul by God as something not

self existent and ( 2 ) the explanation of consciousness as a function of
-

organization The rst with the assumption of inertia permitted a

.
,

natural i m mortality and the second would not permit it on any suppo
,

sitio u but a theory of a physical resurrection Both points of view .

made the result wholly contingent and provisional , either of them per
f e c tly consistent with its annihilation , so that the last resort for sur
v iv a l after death was proof of the
f a c t and not its necessity from
,

premises which were either extremely dubious or inconclusive if true , .

That is to say qualitative changes either from internal forces of the

,

organism or from the immediate action of God offered suggestions of

transiency either from necessity or the will of the creator so that a ,

natural immo r tality consonant with a theory of creation would have to

prove a subj ect other than the brain to obtain its conclusion a super ,

natural theory o f a resurrection being required upo n the materialistic

assumption that consciousness was a function of the organism And .

hence the only way to prove the existence of this independent subject
would be to prove the f a c t that cons ciousness survived death allowing ,

the independence of its subject to go as a matter of consequence and ,

not to insist merely upon the phenomenal di fference be tween m en
tal and physical qualities both of which might be the resultant of
,

organization whether natural or supernatural and without qualitative

, ,

identity in causal changes the transmission of co nsciousness intact to

other subjects would not occur .

In another connection I shall raise the question whether the doc

trine of the conservation is even quantitatively true in the sense of
identity between the terms of the causal series and whether the meta ,

physics o f m odern science can even maintain that even matter and
 SPIR I TU A L ISM 4 69

m otion are indestructible It will sui c e here however keeping this

.
, ,

sceptical question in abeyance or in reservation to call attention to the

,

f act that its advocates had to concede its incapacity for explaining
q ualitative changes and then mere l y to suggest that its quantitative i n
,

t er p r et a t i o n may be subj ect t o revision and modication It will be .

a pparent , therefore that if the whole theory of conservation be ques

,

t io n a bl e the materialistic theory gains everything provided that it

,

r emains by the theory of e i c ie nt causation and qualitative subj ective

c hanges and metamorphoses except that it will be exposed to theistic

,

a ttack , on the ground that inertia will admit no increase of energy or

r esu l t in a mechanical system But with no necessity for main tain
.

i ng the conservation of energy either quantitatively or qualitatively and

w ith an elastic interpretation of e f cient causation it might limit the
a pplication of inertia to the
phenomena of motion while the the ,

i st i c position wou ld throw the whole responsibility for the outcome of

t h e process of evolution upon the character and the plan of the creator .

It is especially noticeable however that parallelism has not exer

, ,

c ise d itself vigorously in behalf of a theistic solution of the problem .

I t was concerned with a naturalistic theory of it and so based its ,

a rgument upon a decision regarding the nature of consciousness and

i t s relation to phys ical causation The reaso n for taking this course
.

is a simple o ne Any other View required it to assume that con

.

s c io usn ess was a function of the organism a n d perish e d with it unless ,

a theory of a physi cal resurrection could be maintained This latter

.

v iew involved the proof of a theistic theory of the cosmos or at least

,

o f t h e organism
, and the intervention of the creator to reproduce at
s ome time after death the conditions which would render possible r e

o ccurrence of the consciousness that has been suspended during the

interval more or less prolonged This view might recommend itself

.

t o an age which believed in cycles of existence repeating the past

i n all its details but it could not be very acceptable to an age in which
,

progress and evolution with their implication of increments of gain

and advance were the primary assumptions H ence there was no
.

r ecourse but to try some vie w which made the survival of conscious

n ess a natural consequence of the dissolution of the organism whe n its

s ubject was spiritual and either not material or not a composite dis

s olvable organism . But I h ave indicated enough to show that I do

not regard the method of parallelism as either adequate or l egitimate
for p r o vi ng the existence of a mental subject other than the organism
and that at best it can have but a n a d Izo m i n em value for pressing
a ssu mptions which are n o t proved It will require more evidence
.
4 70 TH E PR O BL EM S O F P H I L O S OP H Y .

than the a p r i o r i and introspective assertion that consciousness is

neither a mode of motion nor possibly a resultant of organic composi
tion to settle this problem I grant that the differences which it o b
.

serves a n d emphasizes between mental and physical phenomena

are entitled to some weight in the formation of convictions because ,

the contrast between the t wo kinds of events is so great I am no t at .

all impressed with any such relation betwee n them as the identity of their
subject might seem to imply If I were asked whether I believed that
.

consciousness wa s a mode of motion I w o uld say that I did not believe it

and that I could not conceive h o w it should be But I should also .

say that I did not k now what it might be I have to remind myself
.

that it was not long ago in h istory when men though t that it was im
possible that sound and color were subjective events and that it w a s
absurd to suppose that obj ectively considered they were mere vibra
, ,

tions But it has turned out that what was assumed to be absurd and
.

false is a fact and not absurd at all at least as n o w understood B e

, .

sides if the parallelist can conceive with the physicist that all physical
phenomena are redu cible to modes of motion in spite of the radi ,

cal differences between them , he might have some humility in regard

to the nature of consciousness , after the experience of a p r i o r i and
introspective O pinion with sound a nd color The sensible is tran .

scended in one case and may be possible in the other so that the sen
sible conception of consciousness as a phenomenon may not be the
nal one H ence I do not see adequate reasons for being dogmatic in
.

my interpretation of the nature of consciousness I am even willing .

to concede that such differences as we actually obse r ve may incline

toward the belief of an independent subject for mental states or sug

gest it but I dispute the supposition that they prove it in any
,

cogent way until we k now more about the nature of supersensible

phenomena and consciousness in pa r ticular than w e do now
, , .

If the problem is solvable at all ; if there is any rational procedure

that will determine the balance one way or the other as against the ,

more or less equal possibilities left in the discussions of philosophic

materialism and spiritualism it must come from science or scientic
,

m ethod in the addu ction of ne w facts This method whether it have

.
,

promise of su ccess or not would investigate to see if there were any

,

evidence that cons ciousness actually did sur v ive the dissolution of the
organism or not instead of speculating about the nature of it in dubious
,

terms It would apply to psychological phenomena the same

.

method of isolation or difference which has been so fruitful a nd suc

c essfu l in the physical s ciences and which is t h e u lti mate source of
 S PI R I T UA L I S M . 47 I

proof i n that eld If it were once proved that co n sciousness actually

.

did survive death we should kno w nothing more about its nature than
we do now and w e might not even req u ire to discuss the question
,

whether it had a subject at all If it actually survived the questio n

.

whether it was a pure phenomenon or the function of a n imma ,

t er ia l subj ect or some spiritual body material or i m material simple

, ,

or complex would be a proble m relegated to the s a me li mbo as the

,

scholastic question about the number of angels on a needle point The .

trouble with the usual philosophic method is that it does n o t recogniz e

it s o w n limitations Sometimes it can do nothing more than examine
.

the existing body of real or apparent knowledge without adding
anything to it and usually it ca n only establish the possibility of cer
,

tain truths as against the dogmatic denial of the contrary At no ti m e .

has it been able to give any assurance on the fundamental problems

which excite the most intense human interest simply because it lacked ,

the de nite facts to prove its c a se Its va lue I a m not questioning

.
,

but only its clai m to a certitude which it does not possess Its limita .

tions in the special problem before us are determined by the circum

stance that the phenomena whose nature is suppo sed to require an
,

independent subj ect are alwa y s associated with a physical organism of

,

a transient character and the limits of whose capaci ties for functional
action have not been exactly determined Hence the conclusion which .

it draws fro m the distinction between mental a n d physical events should

be held with the reservations that are attached to all uncertain induc
tions especially when there are no positive facts on the other side
, .

P roof can be obtained only by isolating mental phenomena from
this physical environment which must always be treated as a possible
cause of them until thus elimina ted fro m a determining inuence on
the produ ction of consciousness .

The strength of the materialistic position is determined by t wo gen

eral considerations The rst is the general evidential situation whic h
.
,

is simply the fact that not having attempted to deal with the residua l
,

phenomena that profess to isolate conscious n ess science observe s ,

that mental and physical events in the individual have always been as
so c ia t ed and never disso ciated from the relation of coexistence and se

quen ce . . The second consideration is the explanatory one and consists

of the mass of facts which show the indenite possibilities of organic

functions for explainin g the genesis of phenomena associated with
the body a nd terminating with it These two considerations show
.

that materialism conforms at least provisionally and generally to the

, ,

two fundamental conditions of a theory namely that it should ex , ,

47 2 TH E PR O BL EM S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

p lain i n terms of the known and that it should have evidence I Shall .

t ake u p each of these in its order .

Men have a choice i n the adoption of their convictions They may .

r ely upon personal experience or upon authority ; that is . upon their ,

o w n re a son or upon the reason of others In the last analysis these.

a lternatives reduce themselves to the o ne personal experience as the

, ,

i ndividual has himself to decide what authority he shall accept and he

d oes this on the basis of some k ind of rational grounds weak or strong .

T h e widest standard which any one can adopt and which will ultimately
r e gulate cautious and reective intelligence when not determined by ,

the general rationale of things is that whic h reduces to the simple

,

question of human experience and the uniform way in which convi e

tions of an assured nature are accepted and established in every day
life This briey dened is simply the method of association and
.
, ,

dissociation Things that are always associated and never disso ciated
.

are treated as necessarily connected If I nd in my experience that I

.

always require a door or a windo w through which to pass as an en

trance o r ex it of my house and that I cannot m ake this entrance or exit
through the solid w all I am careful to see that a us a ble house has doors
,

and windows When it co m es to the problem of immortality or the

.

existence of a soul other than the organis m the question will be de

cided by the same principle that decides the most common beliefs .

Thus if I believe that the clouds are a cause of rain it is because I have
always seen the m w hen it is raining and I h ave not seen rain when
they or the proper cond e nsible vapor are absent If I found it rain .

ing at times when there were no condensible vapors suspended in the

air I S hou ld not be in haste to attribute the cause to clouds and appro
,

p r ia t e thermal conditions It is the uniform a ssociation of rain with

.

condensible vapor that forms and conrms my convictions regarding

the cause of it The same general process can be illustrated by the
.

relation between death and organic growth ; by the relation between

carbon and oxygen in ordinary combustion and by hundreds of similar ,

examples They all illustrate the general formula that when B follows
.

A a n d does not follow the absence of A , c e t e r i s p a r io n s A is the ,

cause of B and B must disappear with the disappearance of A pro

, ,

v id ed that it is a function of A If B is an organis m brought into

.

existence by A it may remain after A has disappeared but if it is a ,

modal act or phenomenal function of A an attribute of it in its ,

sensible form then B must disappear with the disappearance of A

, .

The redness of an apple disappears with the chemical deco m position

o f the organic whole The luminosity of a l ight disappears with the
.
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
4 73

c e ss ation of combustion I n all the affa irs of life this criterion is the
.

natural and necessary standard for rational belief and our assurance in ,

e very case is proportioned to the degree of isolation that has bee n o h

t a in ed for the cause and effect .

No w if this principle of conviction is applied to consciousness it

means simply that we have always known cons ciousness in connection
w ith a physical organis m and apart from t h e claims based upon a
,

l arge mass of generally discredited phenomena we have never known ,

consciousness to exist in isolation fro m the organis m Consequently .

there seems to be n o natural inference in such a case but that conscious

n ess is a function of the organism and perishable with it The fact is .

so u niversal and without exception that argument on the other side

s eems impossible .

This hypothesis , so overwhelmingly supported by the evidential

situation is variously co nrmed by the manifold facts of physiology
,

which serve to supply the explanatory agents in the case The vari .

ous effects of lesion of accident of disease and of experiment with

, , ,

narcotics and a n a st h et i cs or vivisection S ho w us t h at both the existence

a nd integrity of our mental states are so conditioned by physical causes

that we seem compelled to regard the m as functions of the body The .

whole eld of abnormal psychology and especially of insanity which ,

is so generally accompanied by denite lesions in the nervous system ,

a ppears overwhelmingly in favor of materialism The specic stru e .

ture of the nervous system which will not admit states of consciousness
unless denitely correlated with physical stimuli of a specic kind
points in the sa m e direction The supposed soul ca n have no visual
.

experiences without a S pecially constructed nerve for them It is the .

same with the tactual auditory an d other senses Still further the fact
, .

of sleep is a most signicant phenom enon suggesting this purely

functional relation of consciousness to the organism It is presumably .

the suspension and disappearance of consciousness right in the midst ,

of life indicating the cessation of functions which may be resu med

, ,

under the proper physical conditions O n no theory whatever in this

.

phenomenon can we suppose that consciousness as w e k now it is , ,

u ninterrupt e d by S leep The disappearance of consciousness by sleep

.
,

but for its recurrence is as complete as it can be supposed to be at

,

d eath. The only apparent difference between them is that the vital
f unctions continue in the one and are discontinued in the other No .

one questions the total disappearance of the vital functions at death ;

a nd as it is not easy to suppose that the soul leaves the body like a ,

tenant during sleep and returns afterw ard especially as there are no
, ,
4 74 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I LOS O PH Y .

mnemonic data indicating an extra bodily experience of consciousness

-

during the interval the most natural interpretation of sleep is that it is

,

merely suspended physical function which si m ply becomes permanent

,

in death The absence of a mnemonic connection between the bodily

.

consciousness and what a n y one m ight suppose to be continued mental

action during sleep rather indicates that the evidential consideration s
are in favor of sleep being nothing but suspended functions of the
brain H ence it would not alter the case to suppose that the sou l
.

S imply leaves the body during sleep to return at its pleasure or when

the bodily functions will permit because there is no consciousness of

,

such a removal and no k nown continuance of personal cons ciousnes s

during any assumed extra bodily existence as should be the case if
-

sleep were not a suspended function Consequently there is no ev i

.
,

dence in nor m al experience of continued existence independent of the

body in either sleep or death that is of the fact which would be the
, ,

only possib l e phenomenon suggesting a non material subj ect or con -

tin n ed existence in spite of the suspended vita l functions Rather .

the absence of any consciousness of this continued existence as sup

posed possible is evidence against the assumption This consciousness .

is as much suspended by S leep when the soul is supposed to leave t h e

body on this theory as when it is supposed to be connected with the
, ,

organis m and consequently personal identity in the characteristic that

, ,

interests us most and ma k es existence important is as mu ch lost by this ,

assumed emigration as by the mere cessation of function so that the ,

survival of the soul on the supposition that it simply departs from the
body during sleep has no value for us whatever and might suggest
that the same result o ccurs at death personal identity in its only im
,

porta nt feature being lost and the mere substance surviving as with
the indestructibility of matter We should only be holding fast to the
.

S hell while w e abandoned the k ernel in thus maintaining the persistence

of the soul without a ny conscious lin k with the past The real question .

th at interests us is whether consc iousness as we know it in our personal

identity survives death If it is temporarily suspended by sleep and
.

accide n t or disintegrated by disease the probability wo uld seem to be

,

that it was permanently suspended by death .

T h e whole history of organic life and of the phenomena of

chemistry and physiology fu rnishes illustration of what composition
can explain in the cause and suspension of functions It is not as it .
,

was with the Greeks a question whether a ll matter was animated but
, ,

the question whether we require to suppose more than the actions and
reactions of elements in composition to explain the di fference between
 S PI R I T U A L I S M .
475

inorganic and organic bodies Chemistry shows us that we do not

.

require to suppose that specic functions can or must characterize

matter in all its conditions in order to explain the appearance and dis
appearance o f certain properties and hence that phenomena may
,

occur which cannot be traced to a material cause in the antecedent in

any sense that it is identical in kind with the effect as produced and ,

that there are limitations to the capacities of matter to produce effects ,

S howing that variant functions may arise with v ariation of composi

tion All these facts apparently sho w that matter has capacities in
.

composition to su f ciently account for the n a ture and occurrence of

consciousness without supposing a special subj ect atom or system of , ,

atoms other than the organism No fa cts but the residual phenom
.

ena of a debatable province clearly contradict either the evi dential or

the expla n atory maxims which I have laid down as conditioning r a
t io na l conviction on the subj ect .

Now t h e question is whether spiritualis m can present any sa t isfa c

tory counter claims to evidence that seems so overwhelming against it .

As presented above materialis m has appeared to have no competitor

, .

But in spite of this I think it must be confessed by a l l candid persons

that there are some things to be said on the other side even thoug h ,

they may not have mu ch force things too that cannot be attributed to
,

the obstinacy of personal interest as this is so constantly charged to

,

spiritualism There is no doubt that the trouble with spiritualism has

.

too often been that it was ope n to the charge of constructing its theory
out of deference to a personal interest in immortality and of evading
the cogency of facts in contravention of this doctrine while it was ,

assumed that materialis m had no su ch personal interest in support of

its claims The materialist could always play the r o le of a stoic in the
.

face of nature when he had a moral character and felt the impulses of
an idealism that wanted to look beyond it but had not the facts to ,

assure itself This courage in connection with a ne morality is always

.

attractive and the spiritualist wants the virtue while he maintains a

philosophy which ma k es it superuous But if t h e materialist is a
.

hero and the spiritu a list is a coward it is easy to predict which way
admiration and proselytism will go H ence in th e situation which
.

accrues to the virtue of a courageous submission to facts , the spiritu

alist has always been exposed to the suspicion of timidity and personal
interest in the advocacy of h i s theory a disposition which science r e
,

quires to have eliminated before the truth can be seen and rightly a p
p r e c ia t e d
. S cience is supposed to be impersonal to depend upon ,

those qualities of mind and will which the Christian has exalted in the
476 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

v irtues of patience fait h and submission to an order not his own

, .

This disposition appears to contradict the intense personal interest

which is in such danger of governing the belief in spiritual realities ,

especially when it is exercised in behalf of one s o w n survival after

d eath . Consequently until the spiritualist ca n coo ly face the scientic

o bjections to his theory frankly admit the strength of the materialistic
,

d octrine and S h ow himself ready to sacri ce the persona l and moral

,

c onsiderations that so often move to controversy with the materialist ,

h e is not likely to obtain respect for his position Moreover the ma

.
,

t er ia l ist should not forget t h at personal interests h ave often as much

d ominated his speculations as those of his antagonist t h ough they ,

w ere not of the same kind The force of his imputa tion lay in the
.

a ssumption that the lo ve of life and its continuance beyond death is not

only the strongest of instincts , but is such as to rob the individual of

coura ge in facing the facts of experience while he posed as a stoic and
,

h ero . But it is possible to be as devoted to an incarnate life as th e

r e l igious man is enamored of the future If a belief in a dis carnate
.

e xistence should put limitations to the instincts of libertinism or serve

to suggest a check to temptations which a ne conscience must scorn ,

it is easy to see that the predominance of what the Christian call s

carnal desires m ight constitute a personal interest worse than the

spiritualist s desire to continue consciousness beyo n d the grave in a

sublimated and ethereal happiness Hence it is not well to indulge in

.

criminations when creatin g the temper which h a s to j udge facts It .

is possible for materialism to be as much handicapped by prejudice as

s piritualism T h e tw o theories have been closely identied with dif
.

fere a t moral ideals and this fact may prejudice one as much as the
other The bad reputation which Epicurea n ism h as possessed in the
.

estimation of many good people was due to the later development of

that s chool into the debaucheries which were associated rightly or ,

wrongly with the denia l of immortality an d sho wed that this

, ,

worl dliness might be even as bad as other world l iness -

The sci .

e n t i c positi on must be an impersonal one in re l ation to both sides

though I think it true that spiritual ism must have a h arder time el im
in a t ing the possibility of prejudic ial criminations against itself than the
materia l istic theory , because the love of existence separated from cer ,

tain speci c theol o gical theories is so stron g and diverting in its moral
,

effects on true condu ct that it woul d seem to be an evidence of sound

,

jud gment that it had been eradicated in th e acceptance of materialism

and a source of error eliminated .

B ut in S pite of all rea l or apparent dif cu l ties sugg ested by the

 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
47 7

possibility of illegitimate motives in the formation of belief on thi s

matter we cannot dis credit facts by ridiculing the believer for cowardice
nor afford to display any more bigotry and dog m atism on the nega tive
side of the question than on the a i r m a t i v e and there are facts which
,

can be urged in favor of the spiritualistic theory that consciousnes s

has a subj ect other than the brain I shall not say that these fact s
.

prove the survival of this personal consciousness as muc h as they fa vo r

the supposition of an energy other than the organism Spiritualis m .

has a double proble m to solve F irst it has to explai n the presen t

.
,

phenomena of cons ciousness and it might require a soul to do

this whether it be regarded as simple or complex Seco ndly if it is
, .
,

practically or morally different from materialism it has to sho w tha t ,

consciousness as well as the soul survives death It may be that it .

can e ffect nothing more than to produce inductive evidence that t h e

brain or organis m is not the subj ect of consciousness But whether .

it can effect more or not it is certain that apart from evidence of the
, ,

actual survival of cons ciousness the only possible course O pen to

,

philosophy is to ascertain whether there are any facts which suggest

as rational the belief that cons ciousness is not a fu nction of the organ
ism but an activity of so me other subject The following considera
, .

tions certainly have their weight in this direction alt h ough they are ,

merely negative and depend upon certain apparent weaknesses of the

materialistic theory .

I The rst fa ct is the consistency of a spiritualistic theory with al l

the facts of normal and abnormal psychology the latter of which are
supposed to dispute it The existence of a soul is not incompatible
.

with disturbances in its o w n normal functions by its relation to ir r egu

lar conditions in its material organis m and environment I n any sort .

of relation betwee n t w o different realities whether of the same or dif

,

fer en t kinds it would be quite natu ral that the functional action of the
,

one shou ld be affected by that of the other This is a universal fact

.

in material compounds or even in mechanical mixtures and hence it

, ,

is not a conclusive argument against the existence of a given reality

that it does not act in a normal way if the c onditions are disturbed
,

under which it u sually acts in a particular w a y F orcible a s the a rgu .

ment fro m abnormal psychology is in favor of materialism suggestin g ,

an organic re l ation between consciousness and the brain it is not con ,

c l u s iv e for the simple reason that t h e phenomena would be nearly o r

exactly the same if a soul existed in the organism as any theory o f

, ,

causation w h atever would involve reciprocal disturbances in eithe r

subject when the other was out of harmony The only fact th at pre .
4 78 TH E P I EOB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

sents denite logical cogency at this point against spiritualism is the

phenomenon of sleep Sleep bears against the survival of per
.

sonal consciousness if it has any force at all and against the existence
, ,

of a subject other than the brain to account for present cons ciousness .

If a subject other than the brain be admitted at all there is no more ,

dif culty in supposing the suspension of consciousness and its revival

after death than there is of its suspens ion and revival i n the organism .

Sleep i s not an objection to spiritualism if once a subj ect other than ,

the brain is conceded It can only create a suspicion that consciousness

.

is a function of the brain and not of an ext r abo dily substance or

subject .

2. The materialist except when he presses to the last extremity the

,

principle of material or mechanical causation the conservation of ,

energy qualitatively considered does not assume or concede the pres

,

ence of consciousness in all matter or material combina tions It is .

presumably absent from the atomic elements and all inorganic com
pounds That is consciousness is not a universal function of matter
.
, .

It is possible to give this concessio n a turn in favor of spiritualism i n

dependently o f the question whether the residuum of organic phenom
ena might not be accounted for on the pri nciple of e f cient cause s or ,

internal forces The materialist assumes and concedes the la w of
.

inertia and he concedes this beyond the mere inability to produce or

,

desist from motion and to the extent that matter cannot originate its
own action E xt e r n a l as distinct from i n t e r n a l e f cient causation
.

is the principle of initiation in the materialistic theory when it is ,

forced to abandon material causation as an expla n ation of even

subjective reactions In this position it is confronted by the a p
.

p a r e nt ly radical distinction between inorganic and organic actions .

It accepts the doctrine that there is no self motion in the inor -

g a n i c world and no action in it without foreign incitement In the .

organic world the di fference is apparently radical O rganic beings .

are apparently capable of self activity wholly in opposition to the

-

fundamental assumption of inertia supposed to characteriz e the na

ture of matter as most convincingly exhi bited in conscious and self
,

conscious beings This capacity is usually called freedom or free will

.
,

denoting either spontaneity mere self origination or velleity whe n it

,
-

denotes alternative choice O f course the reply is that freedom is an

.
,

illusion and that what we mistake for free volition is only a more com
plicated
mechanical action But there are several facts whi ch
.

prevent the materialist from condent dogmatism at this point The .

rst and most ap parent is the fact that the spontaneou s actions of o r
 S PI R I T U A L I S M 479

gani e beings bear no external resemblance to the mechanical actions

of inorganic matter where the transmission of energy is the type of

activity except in chemical phenomena
,
There is no denite
.

c o r d i na t i o n or teleological adj ustment in purely mechanical

actions while the actions of organic beings show that adaptation which
,

dees p roof of anything l ike the simple transmission of energy There .

is no xed relation between the external stimuli and the intelligent c o

ordinations and adj ustments of living beings The only safety of the.

determinist here is to say that we do not know h o w complex the

mechanical activities of the o rganism may be But ignorance is .

no incident in favor of determinis m while the positive evidence on

, ,

any conception of nature even the materialistic is overwhelmingly in

, ,

favor of freedom as the purely mechanical doctrine of energy is not
,

the universal one The very strength of the materialist s theory lies in
.

getting internal forces to a ccount for phenomena which he is

compelled to concede are not accounted for by the external whether ,

e f cient or material and he must be at a loss to limit and de ne these

,

internal forces so as not to include the free initiation of conscious

actions It was pre cisely the qualitative difference between cause
.

and e ffect that his theory of e fcient causation if worked out which ,

it wa s not was calculated to explain so that he cannot return to the

, ,

mechanical conception to escape freedom These internal forces

.

may include self activity so that he must either abandon them as an

-

explanation of consciousness or accept the possibility of self activity as -

either denyi n g or limiting the doctrine of inertia Just so long as ma .

t e r ia li sm leaves inertia u nqualied and cannot explain everything by

material causation so long will it be confronted by the facts of
,

qualitative change not transmitted fro m without as overwhelmingly

against mechanical determination while the denial of self activity
,
-

is consistent with nothing else The m aterialist cannot insist at the

.

same time upon the identity and the di fference between mental and

physical phenomena without dening the relation between them
more consistently than the doctrine of inertia and internal forces
will permit in the attempt to reduce real or apparent self activity to -

mechanical action which is not conceived as self initiative -

.

I am not here reproducing the difference between physical a nd

mental events exhibited in the distinction between inorganic and organic
nature as an evidence of spiritualism but as a means of S howing the
, ,

relation of this difference to the doctrine of inertia That is I am not .

,

using their di fference as events or effects but their di fference in rela

,

tion to inertia which is the absence of initial causation supposed to

48 0 PR OB LE M S PH I L O S OPH Y

TH E OF .

characterize the nature of a l l matter Incapacity for self action is

.
-

what inertia and mechanical causatio n mean so that the materialist ,

has to identify the actions of organic beings with those of the inorganic
in order to m aintain the universality of his principle If the doctrin e .

of inertia were revised or conceived so as to be consistent with self

activity the argument j ust presented would lose its force But it is
,
.

precisely because materialism assumes the do ctrine of inertia and the

uncreated and indestructible nature of motion that its argument f o r ,

mechanical determinism has its cogency and the red u ction of voli
,

tion to this t v pe of action would n o t permit of any real difference

between the mental and physical in this respect This conclusion of .

the materialist however is not consistent w ith the important d istin c

, ,

tion betwee n the actions of the inorganic and those of organic com
pounds of the animal type the latter of which are indubitably capabl e
,

of self activity in a manner not denable or conceivable in terms o f

-

impact and transmission The difference between cons cious volitio n

.

and mechanical action is so gr eat that t h eir identity can be assume d
only by charging illusion against both immediate consciousness and
reasoning a policy which can only discredit the judgment that adopt s
,

it as this premise m ust imply that consciousness can no more be trusted

,

to declare for their identity than it can be a ccepted in its deliverance

for freedom If freedom is an illusion so must be all convictions a s
.
,

to determinism especially when we recall the general principle of

,

kn owledge enunciated in this w ork that ratiocinative processes are

,

exposed to such a host of fallacies that the condence of the determinist

in his logical method is as amusing as it is c a p t io n s This is espe .

c ia l l y true when we remark that determinism never boasts of direct ev i

dence in its favor but only of ratiocinative argument without any

,

accompanying sense of humor in regard to its liabilities To discredi t .

the nal court of appeal in such m atters is to invoke a more thorough

scepticism than is bargained for in the controversy namely that of t h e , ,

co nditions which supply the premises of all proof a nd the process of

reasoni n g itself Besides the materialist cannot admit the difference
.

between the mental and physical without exposing the argument of

determinism to annihilation and to appeal to internal e f cient causa
,

tion to expl ain that difference is to open the way to the acceptance of
the testimony of consciousness to the fact of free action Now the .

progress of complexity in the functions of both inorganic and organic

compounds is accompanied usually by a corresponding complexity of
constitut ive elements so that the substantive basis for n ew fu n ctions
,

enerally involves something adequate to the phenomena to be

g
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
48 1

explained When we reach the organic world of spontaneous and free

.

actions w e have facts at least app a rently at variance with inertia to the

extent that the conception of mechanical causation will have either
to submit to li m itations or be universaliz ed at the expense of its a nt it h
esis to freedom As long howe v er as materialis m antagoniz es free
.
, ,

dom and tries to evade the manifest di fference between s imple

mechanical actions and the conscious volitions of organic beings it
is exposed to th e argument based upon the widespread and radical dis
tinction mentioned and it will be natura l to believe in a soul to account
,

for volition If he can appropr iate a doctrine of e f cient cause and

.

the idea of internal forces to suggest the possibility of free volitions

as functions of organism he may still redeem his positio n from defeat
, ,

but he will not relieve his theory from obj ections short of that policy .

He must choose betwee n the limitation of inertia with the admission of

freedo m and the maintenance of for m ulas whose cogency lies in their
verbal associations and not in the fact which they are intended to
cover .

3 I have alluded to the localization of brain functions as a fact in

.

favor of the materialisti c theory But there has recently arisen a vie w
.

of this localization which creates a di f culty for m a terialis m right

where it w a s supposed to be strongest The old theory of brain func
.

tions , in the form which localiz ed specic activities sensory and motor , ,

at denite points in the brain conceived these functions as organic

actions of these particular centers vision in the occipital lobe auditio n
, ,

in the temporal lobe and motor functions about the ssure of Rolando
, ,

etc The old phrenological theory w a s abandoned in its psychological

.

analysis and specic physiological centers but its general conception ,

of specic localities for specic functions w a s retained But after this .

new theory had prevailed for a short period the histological discoveries
involving a n ew conception of neural structure and centers and the ,

improvement of experiments in vivisection and the removal of variou s

portions of the spinal cord and the cerebrum with the retention intact ,

or the recovery of formerly exercise d functions resulted in th a t con ,

ce p t i o n of vicarious functions which proves that localized actions w ere

empirical and not organic that is the result of habit not of true
, , ,

functional genesis i n that specic center Recent experiments in the

.

excision of important centers involving the restoration of normal func

tions in spite of the excision experiments that have been numerous and
,

widely extended over the nervous system have led to the view that the
,

various centers of the brain are merely c/za n n els through which energy
is transmitted , not organs for their g en es i s This conception suggests
.
 48 2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

the view that the brain is a medium for the transmission of energy to
t h e motor sys tem a nd not the organ proper for menta l functions whether
i ntellectual or volitional It of course still remains possible for
.

m aterialis m to claim that the bra i n functions as a whole in sensory

and motor activities , and tha t though the individual centers do not
.
,

o riginate them they may be the channels for the distribution of energy
, .

T his position has to be g ranted its evidential security until it can be

s hown with equal clearness that consciousness can exist who ll y apart

from a nervous system But the discovery that the various centers are
.

mere media is a su ggestion that the whole brain may be the same ,

though there is no nally conclusive e v idence to prove it .

4 The next consideration negatively in favor of spiritualism is the

.

impossibility O f scientically p r o v i ng materialism Scientic proof.

of the absolutely assured sort is the verication of an hypothesis by

the Method of Difference or the isolation of the phenomenon and
,

its cause In the case O f materialism which denies the survival of

.

consciousness this method would involve the eviden ce that conscious

ness has actually disappeared with the dissolution of the organism I .

need hardly allude to the impossibility of proving the ne gative in such

a case as that ought to be apparent to the merest tyro in ph il O SO p h ic
,

thought but the fact may require to be asserted as a challenge of tha t

,

dogmatism which so condently parades denial and contempt for the

O pposite possibility without accepti n g responsibility for the evi
dence d emanded In view of such dogmatism also it may be useful
.

to examine some elementary problems in science .

If materialism of that sort which maintains t ha t conscious ness is a

functi on of a composite organism be true the extinction of conscious
,

ness by death must be a fact and it remains for its advocates to prove
the fact , to verify the logical consequences of their theory if they in ,

tend to insist that belief in its survival shall be evidently supported .

We cannot say that the coincidence of con sciousness with organism is

absolute proof that it is only a function of that organism as the ,

method of difference must always be the nal court of appeal when

s cepticism is presented against less cogent evidence I agree that the.

Method of Agree ment is for the theory of mater ialism , and that if the
method of difference or isolation cannot be applied to prove spirit
ual ism that the positive argument must remain for materi a lism
, This .

means that al l the evidence that we actually have , apart from resid
ual phenomena which s cience hesitates to accept as import ant in the
problem , represents consciousness and its integrity as denitely asso
ci a ted with the physica l organism a n d as never dissociated from it .
 S PI R I T U A L I S M .
4 83

T his is to say that the method of agree m ent represents the known
c onditions and relations of consciousness while the method of differ

e nce , for either proof or disproof has not been satised Expressed
, .

in u ntechnical language this means only that the evidence su ch as it is , ,

a n d that is strong is of an inductive character and favors materialism

, ,

which even if actually false is the only rational one to hold on the
, ,

basis of the scientic evidence at command Introspective and analyt

.

ical results may suggest and support scepticis m of dogmatic assurance

o n this evidence but they do not supplant or displace the force of the
,

evidential criterion employed by science in the determination of con

v i c t i o n on all such questions In the last analysis the fundamental
.

s tandards of s cience have to be satised or the case abandoned These .

s tandards involve the limitation of our knowledge at present so f a r as ,

a ccepted evidence goes to the asso ciation of consciousness with the

,

o rganis m and total ignorance of its e xistence as dissociated with it so ,

t hat materialism has the balance of possibility or probability in its

f avor until something cogent on t h e oth er S ide can be produced .

But if materialism is to be anything more than a work ing hypoth

e sis
,
imposing the burden of proof upon S piritualism it shou l d be ,

a ble to verify its contention by the method of isolation It can multi .

p ly facts o u the side of agree ment as mu ch as it pleases but it only ,

leaves the effectual proof of the hypothesis untou ched It should .

prove that consciousness is annihilated with the dissolution of the

body and not merely that within our knowledge it is always asso ciated
with it This association is freely ad m itted by the spiritualist and his
.

d emand is that its disappearance be proved as well as its known con

n ec t i o n s and modications under physical causes If the materialist .

c annot prove that consciousness disappears with the body his
t heory is only a working hypothesis and nothing more I do not deny .

t h e corr ectness of it on the evidence w e have It may be the only .

r ational position possible without tra ces of a dissociated consciousnes s .

B ut until denite proof of this disappearance is presented the attitude

o f the materialist must be that of an agnostic and not of the dogmatist , .

T his of course was the conclusion of Kant established in his o w n w ay

, ,

a n d w ithout formulating his do ctrine in terms of scientic method .

A most important consideration in estimating the d ii cu l t ie s and

l imitations of materialism is the very signica n t fact that we have no
direct or immediate evidence of any consciousness in the universe ex
cept our o wn All that we directly know is certain physical phe
.

nomena
organic o r inorganic and the e xistence of consciousness
, ,

c onnecte d with O bjective realities is an inference from physical facts

4 84 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H 17 .

w hich , in ourselves , we kno w directly are associated with conscious

ness External consci o usness is abso l utely concealed from us except
.

as we can infer it fro m its physical effects This is o nly to say that .

the subject can dis cover consciousness in the object only by the t el eo
logical argument after abandoning the ontological and we have seen ,

that the materialist cannot abide by the ontological interpretation of the

relation between the mental and physical without proving too much .

He would prove the persistence of cons ciousness and convert his theory
into spiritualism A S long as there is no transmission of inuence
.

from object to subj ect the character of the causal agencies in the obj ect ,

if allied to consciousness at all must be indirectly determined by a tel

,

e o lo
g i cal argument by the interpretation of physical movements a s
,

initiated or not initiated by intelligence This means that our evi .

dence for the existence of consciousness in others is limited to physical

movements of a certai n denitely coordinated kind in the last analysis ,

analogous to our own But it is important to remark that if these

.
,

movements are absent this absence is not proof of the discontinu ance
,

of an obj ective person s consciousness All that is proved by this

.

defect of evidence is that consciousness h a s ceased to produce effects

in the organism and the physical world not that the consciousness has
,

ceased to exist This is nely illustrated and proved by those cases of

.

paralys i s which recover su f ciently to attest the continuance of con

sc io u sn ess during the entire absence of the physical evidence for its

existence As consciousness in others thus depends absolutely upon

.

the possibility of producing a physical eff ect in or through the organism

with which it is associated as evidence of its existence the interruptio n ,

of that effect by death or sleep is no proof of its decease or discon

t i nu a n ce
. It may still subsist and yet be unable to give any obj ective
evidence of this fact Consequently the materi a list is absolutely cut
.

off from t h e proof of his theory by the apparent disappearance Of

a d e c t i v e consciousness A ll that he can claim is that the evidence of
j .

its continuance is wanting But he cannot positively deny its persist

.

ence in the case of others than himself He can only suspend h is .

judgment and say that he does not know .

But if the disap p earance of consciousness in others cannot be proved ,

how does it fare with the subject s o wn consciousness ! It will be clear

tha t he is equally helpless here F or no m a n can attest even to him

.

self the decease or discontinuance of his o wn consciousness To be .

aware of his own annihilation is a contrad i ction All that a man can .

be aware of is either the facts of consciousness that attest his o w n ex

i sten c e or those that attest the existence of external obj ects physical or
 S PI R I T UA L I S M 485

mental He cannot d irectly or indirectly prove his own annihilation

. .

We are never even directly aware of the suspense of cons ciousness by

sleep or accident in our bodily life We can only infer from circum
.

stances that some unusual cha n ge has o ccurred and the testimony of
others may enable us to form a conception of sleep and syncope and ,

what we observe obj ectively in their experience may a fford a further

clue to what is meant by the lapse of cons ciousness in ourselves which ,

m a y actually o ccur without any sense of temporal loss It must be .

the same in the case of death if we are actually annihilated There

, .

could thus be no evidence to either ourselve s or others of our existence

in this case ; not to ourselves because we S hould be extinct and not to ,

others because we could not produce the necessary evidence It will .

thus appear that the only theory which can have any hope or possibility
of proof is the spiritualistic as actual survival would supply the s u
,

j ect i v e attestatio n and circumstances m ig /zt arise in which it could

objectively attest personal identity But the materialist cannot pro
.

duce either subj ective or objective evidence of annihilation He is .

hopelessly excluded from the proof of his theory .

The proof that consciousness h ad a subject other than the brain or

organism would clearly establish the possibility of a surviving con
sci o u sn e ss beyond a doubt but it would not di ffer practically from ma
,

t er ia l i sm unless it did carry this implication with it This possi .

bility as we have seen is involved in the admissions of ancient mate

, ,

r ia li s m regarding what may be called a S piritual body But this .

granted it would still remain to be proved that the consciousness

,

which we kno w in our bodily existence had any continuity or revival

after the dissolution of the organism , a n d without this revival there
would be no practical interest in either adopting or refuting material
ism while there would be no nal disproof of it until the survival of per
,

sonal and indivi dual consciousness had been proved or rendered proba
ble All that the proof of the existence of a soul or subject oth er tha n
.

the brain would establish would be the condition on which the p o s s i

ili ty of a surviving consciousness might rest not the f a c t of it,
The .

suspense of consciousness , as in sleep might be perpetual or the altera

, ,

tion of personality as in a ccident disease or secondary consciousness

, ,

might supplant the normal self and all but the substantive or sub
j ect identity lost . In this way the soul m ight cha n ge its functional

activity so mu ch if it ever resumed any at all that nothing would be

, ,

gained for our personal consciousness and its ideals The P latonic .

doctrine might be realized The consciousness which actually inter

.

ests us might still be the resultant of the composition of the soul with
486 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

the organism while the sou l might function in some other manner after
,

the separation without any mnemonic connection between the incarnate

and the discarnate condition The real question that concerns the man
.

who wishes the problem solved is whether our personally known con
sc io u sn ess in any way survives and exhibits that mnemonic connection

between the present and future condition of the soul which may be
called personal identity .

That the case rests upon showing the fact of personal survival or
the continuity of personal consciousness ought to be apparent from the
difference bet w een the doctrines of the indestructibility of matter and
the conservation of energy though they are closely related to each
,

other and their relation to the materialistic theory

, .

The indestru ctibility of matter depends for its proof upon the reten
tion of some identity in all its changes Some property must remain .

the same in the resolution of a compound into its elements in order to

suppose that the resultant is identical with the antecedent material sub
stance The property o n which physicists rely on determining this
.

doctrine is weight Matter retains its weight in all its metamorphic

.

changes and so we infer that it is indestructible There may be other .

properties persistent in this way but it is not necessary to ta k e any a o

,

count o f them That of weight is su f cient to prove the persistence

.

of matter O n e element of identity sui ces to make out the case a n d

.

without it we should have no reason to believe in the indestructibility

of matter The view that was so long held would be quite a rational
.

one namely that matter was a phenomenal and transient substance

, ,

and the w ay would thus be ope n ed for a theory of its creation .

If then we could S how with the proof of the indestructibility of mat

ter and that of all substantive reality that consciousness was the at
,

tribute either o f some elementary matter or of some reality simple or ,

complex other than matter w e should have probably an invulnerable

, ,

argument for its personal survival Its a d no m i n em importance could

.

not be denied But the d ii culty of showing that an independent sub

.

ject of any kind is necessary to account for the fact of consciousness

makes it imperative to prove the fact of conscious survival as a con
dition of saying anything about its subject .

But this necessity is still more apparent from the doctrine of the
conservation of energy If we were assured of a perfect qualitative
.

identity and convertibility bet ween antecedent and consequent either in

material phenomena or in mental and physical phenomena as already ,

shown we might hope to have an effective a rgument for the continu

,

ance of personal consciousness u nder any supposition of its ground .

 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
48 7

It would not affect the case if it s ground were m aterial or i m material ,

.

simple or complex or whether reincarna tion or individual existence

,

were supposed But the fact that the qualitative interpretation of the
.

conservation of energy is either doubtful or all but abandoned indicates

that we have no positive assurance that the requisite identity exists
between the d i er e nt members of the phenome nal series A ll that .

seems to be established is that certain denite uniformities are manifest

in the causal interactions of realities Some remain satised with an
.

ai r m a t io n of the quantitative identity of the members but fail to ,

realiz e that even this modi fication of the doctrine must carry with it
so m e assumption of qualitative identity in order to j ustify the theory
of quantitative ide n tity in its true conception Hence the utmost that
.

seems assured is the fact of uniformity of phenomenal relation w ithout

supposing that ide ntity in the terms has been established though each ,

term may retain its quantitative or qualita tive identity in time and
space Such a qualication of the doctrine implies the possibility that
.

qualitative manifestations m a y arise and disappear as they certainly do,

in the composition and dissolution of organisms and it remains to ,

S how what qualities remain intact in the phenomenal series as weight

remains in substantive transformations In this situation we S hall

.

have to prove the fa ct of personal continuity in order to elimina te or

qualify the sceptical interpretation of the conservation of energy .

When the origin and disappearance of certain qualitative phenomena

are certain in S pite of the do ctrine of conservation it must be a ques ,

tion of fact to decide whether any particular quality or activity is con

si st ent ly persistent with the general application of conservation whic h

is in fact an abstraction .

.
5 But if materialism cannot prove itself by an application of the
method of di fference does the situation fare any better for spiritualis m !
,

All that can be said philosophically in a n swer to this question is that

the negative evi d ence afforded in the dif culties of the materialistic
hypothesis do not sui ce for any proof of the spiritualistic theory But .

the demonstration of the inability of materialism to establish its o w n

claims indicates j ust what the problem is and suggests w hat has to be
don e if the rival doctrine is to be maintained I grant that there is.

n o scientic disproof of materialism possible except by the isolation of

individual consciousness and the evidence of its persona l identity in

survival of death Whether this be either possible or a fact it is not my
.

purpose to assert Bul I may indicate the co n ditions under which su ch

.

proof is conceivable .

Si n ce w e have no direct evidence of the existence of external co n

4 88 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS O P H Y
.

and no evidence direct or indirect of its extinction and since

s c i o u s n ess ,

we cannot attest our own decease eit h er to ourselves or others the only ,

hope of proving any survival at all must be through the inductive

interpretatio n by the living of effects produced in the physical world
by discarnate spirits if they exist and if su ch effects be possible If
, , .

they are not possible assuming the possibility of survival no living

, ,

person can obtain evidence of survival and deceased persons if they , ,

actually survived could only directly attest to themselves thei r own

,

survival Their only hope of proving their continuance after death to

.

the living would be some e ffect in the physical universe that was suf
c i e nt to estab lish perso n al i d e nt ty The evidence of their survival
.

must be j ust these p h ysical effects however determined, .

The d ii c u l ty of e ffecting such a result is quite apparent What .

we k now of consciousness and its action on matter is connected with

organic bodies and all evidence is lacking for the direct action of con
sc io u sn ess on inorganic matter Unless this action is possible there is
.

no hope that a discarnate consciousness if it existed should reveal , ,

itself through inorganic physical eff ects Even if it could produce .

effects on dead matter they would have no evidential value unless they
were more than simple mechanical movement and were teleological
coordinations indicating intelligence But mere intelligence would n o t
.

suf ce It must be evidence of a particular intelligence representing

.

the identity of a given deceased person and there is no denite stan ,

d ard to determine h o w mu ch evidence m a y be re quired under such

circumstances Even if mechanical effects through inorganic matter
.

were possible for a discarn ate soul the task of proving its identity with
the past would be extremely dii c u l t in the face of what we k now about
the relation of consciousness to matter or even the relation of mind to ,

m ind . The more natural direction for e ffort and effect would be
through organic matter as most nearly related to impressions from con
,

s c io u s n ess and if the brain be a mere channel for the trans mission of
,

energy to the motor system it would seem possible to hope for such a
m ediation But here the discarnate soul would be confronted w ith the
.

f act that the organism is already in possession of a nother and living

soul and this agent would either have to be dispossessed or the eff ect
,

in the physical world would have to be produced through its inter

m ediation Whet h er su ch a thing is either possible or a fact it is not
.
,

y e t time to assert with condence But there are some facts which
.

point toward its possibility There is the fact of sublimina l h y p er ae s

.

t h esi a which represents the accessibility of the subject to impressions

f a r more delicate and rened than those in our normal sensibility a n d

 S PIR I T U A L I S M 48 9

perception . This is not the place to quote evidences of this fact ,

but any work that S hows a study of psychopathology will exhibit them
i n abund a nce This hyperaesthesia may extend even to the capacity
.

for receiving supernormal information not amenable to the normal

action of sense This reception of hyper ae sthesic impression w e nd
.

associated with what is called subliminal mental action a process ,

a pparently duplicating all that w e know of consciousness except the ,

n o r mal mnemonic recognition Now it is admitted that when the con

.
,

trol of the motor system by the normal consciousness is relaxed the ,

s ubliminal mental functions may assume sovereignty and give expres

s ion t o ideas below the threshold of the normal perception or not
observable by the normal consciousness Sometimes the normal state
.

may be aware of the motor action and its result after it is effected but ,

has no knowledge of the inuence effecting the result That is , it may .

be a w are of what is going on but not aware of any cons cious causation
in the case Sometimes it is n o t aware of even this much and cannot
.

c ontemplate the results with any other feeling than that with which it

o bserves the movements of foreign objects Sometimes the n ormal

.

consciousness may be totally suspended and automatic or subliminal

results are produced which , but for the testimony of others would ,

n ever be connected with the same organic mechanism There are thus.

various types of subliminal actio n supplanting the normal control of

the organism If n o w any favorable rapport of this subliminal with a
.

transcendental consciousness should be established by means of its

hyper ae sthesic condition especially if anything li k e telepathic percip
,

i en c e is possible and control of the motor system should remain

,

intact a discarnate soul might effect results in the sensible world lead
,

ing to its identication though this had to be produced by subliminal

,

intermediation In any case the facts would have to represent some

.

thin g transcending the mnemonic experience o f the subj ect through

w hich they were communicated O n the other h and both the sub
.
,

liminal and the normal mental control of the motor system might be
d ispossessed and o n ly the automatic conditions of the organism left
intact if the vital functions a r e fortunate enough not to be suspended
,

or deranged by the process of dispossession as they are by the dispos ,

s ession of death The ca pacity and habits of this automatic system for
.

responding to me n tal action whether n ormal or subliminal S hows a

, ,

delicate set of conditions and with the dispossession of both n ormal and
subliminal control over them its hyperaesthes ia or supernorm al con
,

d ition might expose it to the inuence of an outside mind If such a .

situation should arise , and if an individual consciousness did have the

4 90 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

fortune to survive death rapport with that auto matic condition might
,

enable a discarnate consciousness to impress its inuence upon it sui

c i en t l
y to prove identity or continuance after death This woul d .

depend wholly upon the character of the effects produ ced in the sen
sible world They must be of that nature which will prove persona l
.

identity and which transcend explanation by the normal processes of

experience and they must represent a mnemonic connection with an
,

incarnate past as memory is the condition of persona l identity in all

,

conditions that is such personal identity as can have any moral value
, ,

for consciousness In any case whether through subliminal inter

.
,

mediation or the dispossession of both subliminal and normal contro l

of the motor system the results would be affected by the limitations of
,

t h e mediu m through which they were produ ced and the abnorma l

conditions physiological or psychological under which they were

, ,

realiz ed
.

The condition which we have here conceived as necessary for a

surviving consciousness to prod u ce effects in the sensible physical
w orld indicate an abnormal situation That is to say we have to as
.

sume abnormal mental and physical conditions as a requisite for any

other inuence in the physical w o rld than that which is exerc ised by
the normal and subliminal action of the subject There will be no .

question about the impossibility of obtaining these e ffects in an

evidential for m unless the production of them should exclude explana
tion by normal and subliminal action and if they are conceived as pos
,

sible at all there is no alternative to the admission that such conditions

,

must be abnormal with all the difculties and limitations involved .

The disintegration of the normal personality and the disorganization ,

of the regular chan n els of motor impu lses and actions and the liability
to all sorts of abnormal interjections of physiological and psychologica l
automatisms and even ha l lucinations would be the most natural exp ec
, ,

t a t io n in such cases so that one might even suppose a p r i o r i that

,

there would be little chance of adequate evidence ever coming thr ough
from a supersensible existence to indicate the survival of any r ational
consciousness in a way to mak e its integrity respectable This w a s .

appar ent to Kant who had been greatly impressed by the apparently
supernormal phenomena of Swedenborg but saw at the same time ,

that many of his experiences were subjective produ ctions of his own
mind and to be classed accordingl y though the conception of sec ,

o n da r
y personality was not then known and has only S hown its s ign i
cance in the limitations of Spiritualistic theory in recent times The .

i nuence of Leibnitz on Kant s conception of all subjective action

 S PIR I T UA L I S M .
49 1

would lead h im to hold that whatever came into the mind fro m
without would most naturally undergo a modication determined by
the nature of thi s subject and its laws of actio n and reaction and he ,

would even not admit the existence of any external reality at all u nles s
some compulsory data of consciousness made it insane to accept any
other alternative The scient ic and philosophic assumptio n remains
.

the same to day reinforced by many thousands of facts which limit the
-

o v er c o n d e nt manners in our des cription of the external world ev e n of

the sensible type , to say nothing of our limitations in regard to the

supersensible though the consciousness that sensation does not exhaust
,

the meaning of even the sensible world might teach us hum i li t y when
tempted by dogmatic tendencies in regard to the supersensible and
wh at it m ig nt e ffect through ab normal conditions But whatever the
'

inuences that determined Kant s conception he expressly indicated

,

in a genera l way the conditions of any denite relation with a super

sensible world o f spirit Caird in calling attention to t h e fact
.
, ,

enlarge s upon it more explicitly Speaking of the conditions which

.

obtain in the commerce and reciprocity of ideas bet ween living beings

constituting a moral and spiritual community in actual life Wher e
physical conditions of a common character a ffect the possibility of this
communion Caird represents Kant s view in the following terms
,

Supposing this view to be true ( the actual inuence of the spir

it unl world ) it would follow that even n o w in the present world the
, , ,

spiritual subje ct must take the place among the spiritual substances of
the universe which is appropriate for it according to moral laws and
it must ta k e that place with the same necessity with which material
bodies determine t h eir respective p laces according to the laws of
motion And if in a future state the community between the soul and
.

the material worl d should be broken o ff the moral laws that already
,

determine its relations in this world woul d continue to operate without

a break The only dii culty that remains unexplained is h o w we are
. ,

to reconcile the existence of such a S piritual community with the fact that
we are so seldom conscious of it F or the spiritual world is present to
.

man if at all o n ly in o ccasional gl impses , which besides have often

, , , ,

a somewhat uncertain a nd even irrational character This however .

, ,

is already explai n ed by what has been said of the n ature of t h e con

s c i o u s ne ss of man as contraste d with that of purely spiritual bei gs
n .

F or what we experience as spirits will not naturally enter into tha t

cons ciousness which we have of ourselves as men ; or if it does so enter
at all it will o n ly be under abnorm al conditions and even then the inti
, ,

mations from the spirit world will necessarily take the form of the con
49 2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

s c i o usn ess into whic h they intrude Spiritual realities will be pictured
.

as objects and events in the natural world and all the imperfections of ,

the medium will affect the vision F or men in general such percep
.

tions will have something of the character of disease ; and if there are
a few exceptional individuals who are so constituted as to be continu
o usly cons cious of S piritual inuences their minds will be so much
,

drawn out of proper balance as to the things of this world by the con
fusing presence o f another that they will often be regarded by other
,

men as insane In this way it only needs a little ingenuity to explain

.

all the facts of ghost seeing in a ccordance with our primary a ssu m p
-

tions as to the relations of the two worlds F or metaphysical hypoth

.

eses have wonderful pliancy ; and it would S how great want of inge
n ui t
y not to be able to adapt t /zi s hypothesis to every story of
supernatural visitations and that without taking any trouble to i nv es
,

t i ga t e its truth whi ch in many cases it would be impossible and in yet

, ,

more would be dis courteous to attempt .

In the A nt ica ba l a Kant points to an alternative explanation of phe

n o m e n a pretendi n g to be effects of a trans cendental mind in the phys

ical world and between the two alternative possibilities does not decide
as to the facts Dreams and hallu cination s he think s explain so much
.
, ,

of the pretentious claims for S piritualistic communion that there is

no evidence for any other more reliable facts and he woul d have added ,

secondary personality to the list of dii cul t i es had he known it as we

do In later chapters of his Dreams of a Gh ost seer he speak s r e
.
-

s ec t fu ll
p y of the possibility of such an interaction between the physical
and S piritual worlds though dubious of its evidence and saving his
,

reputation for sanity by appropriating some of the materialist s useful

ridicule of the case But he nevertheless frankly admits that materi

.

a li s m cannot be dogmati c on the matter and points to phenomena and

s uppositions based thereon which must be re ckoned with before any

form of spiritualism can prove itself and conditions all evidential ,

matter indicating its truth upon abnormal m e ntal conditions He .

simply indicates that philosophi cally one side of the question is as

possible as the other Such a thin g as collecting data or evidence to
.

prove one or the other of the alternatives did not oc cur to him or if it ,

did he was not disposed to undertake the task He was content to .

deal with the problem in a speculative and not a s cientic manner ,

and this w as probably all that was eithe r possible or called for at his
time The extent to which his general philosophical point of view
.

with that of L eibnitz has been accepted in regard t o the form which
all knowledge must take shows clearly enough that the conditions
 S PI R I T U A L I S M .
493

must be very exceptional if any inuence from a trans cendental world

could be transmissible , and that representing either a normal or an
,

abnormal situation the inuence must undergo the modications which

,

the nature of the subject inevitably produces The proof of personal .

identity in such circumstances will be dif cult and must depend upon
that fortunate set of circumstances which will enable the memory of
the past to retain its inte grity in the transmission suf ciently to be
recognized .

The dif culties of the problem will be better appreciated if w e will

examine the limitations of communicatio n between living beings right
here in the physical world We usually assu me that this is quite easy
. .

It is such a common matter of social life that we forget the real con
dit i o n s and limitations of all co m munication whatsoever between mind
and mind The ancient Greeks after scepticism had shown the rela
.
,

t iv i ty of knowledge raised the question whether virtue and knowl
,

edge could be taught a question apparently absurd to most men but

, ,

perfectly rational to all w h o reect for a m oment upon human e xp e r i

ence We ta k e it in common life as an axiom that knowledge can
.

be taught and that ideas can be communicated with ease from mind to
mind But there is no more mistake n doctrine The fact is that
. .

nothing ca n be taught Everything has to be learned We cannot

. .

communicate ideas at all wecan only make signs or produce sounds

.
,

and in the process of experience we have managed to agree upon the

symbols of what is in our minds and the use of signs eff e cts a con
dition in the physical world that is interp reted by the mind to who m
we are supposed to communicate ideas We ha ve only to meet a sav .

age or foreigner to see our helplessness in the matter of c o m m un i cat

ing ideas unless we can use signs and even whe n we have agreed
, ,

upon our symbols in general , a common experience and personal in

sight are the indispensable qualications to intellectual commerce .

This is perfectly clear when w e reect for a moment but we forget it ,

when passing judgment upon the problem of communication betwee n

a spiritual and a material world When the dii c ul t ies are so great in
.

the physical world requiring long experience to both qualify us for

,

understanding signs when used and to control the motor organism i n

the expression of our o w n thoughts w e must not wonder at the limi
,

ta t io ns under which dis carnate cons ciousness woul d have to labor in

the production of e ffects in the physical world adequate to the estab
lish m e nt of its ide ntity .

In this dis cuss ion of the conditions for proving spiritualism I ,

am not concerned with the question whether the theory is provable in

4 94 TH E PR OB L E M S OF P H IL OS O PH Y
.

f a ct or not I have only been showing that in the contest between

.
,

materialism and spiritualism the former stands no chance whatever

,

of proof and that only the latter can offer a situation or possible
conditions for it in k nown facts , if the soul should actually survive and
retain cons ciousness a possibility that cannot be denied by the ma
,

t e r i a l i st with any S how of dogmatism because the only evidence for his

theory is in the method of agreement which never proves a case .

It can only decide the direction of rational belief until the method of
di fference has decided whether one term of the coexistent facts is or is
not absolutely dependent upon the other for its existence Whether .

S piritualism can actually prove itself scientically I am not compe

tent to decide , but I think the phenomena of abnormal psychology
s how that it is possible if consciousness actually su r vives death and
, ,

we should only have to consider the evidence that may be put in for
the alleged fact of this persistence accepting it if satisfactory and t e
,

jecti ng it if it is not There is certainly a larger and better qualied

.

body of alleged facts for consideration in this direction than any that
Kant was called upon to estimate and if Kant found it as dif cult to
,

d oubt as to believe the conclusion there is a justiable malice in t e

minding his dis ciples o f his fairness It is certain ly strange in this
.

m a tter however that the idealist who pretends to sneer s o co n t emp t u

, , ,

o usl
y at materialism and all its children should outdo the materialists
,

i n his scepticism of such a possibility as survival and even reiterate

with more than dogmatic fervor all the facts of the materialistic theory
w ithout permitting himself to be called by the right n ame H e has .

s imply forgotten the cosmopolitan and philosophic temper of his mas

ter Kant who sa w the possibility but had not sui c ien t evidence at
, ,

h is command to decide the question while he recognized it as a l egi ti

,

mate problem though i nsoluble at his time .

However this may be I am dis cussing the philosophic no t the ,

s cientic S ide of the question The s cientic consideration of the

.

problem requires us to as certain and analyze alleged facts purporting

to prove the truth of survival rather than its possibility and co u sis
teney with other accepted facts assumed to antagonize it It is not my .

purpose to undertake this task but only to estimate the relative strengt h
of the two theories in terms of undisputed facts and the assumptions
that are made in all attempts at explanation .

6 It may be importa nt in this connection to examine briey Kant s

.

position on the subject of the soul as dis cussed in the K r i t i k and ,

from the result of this examination we may nd additional negative

evidence for the spiritualistic theory I do so however for no other
.
, ,
 S PI R I 7 U A L I S M .
49 5

r e a so n th a n the fact that ideal ists generally have supposed that Kant s

a rgument has put an end to the dis cussion of the subje ct in the philo

s o phic eld Whether this is true or not it is a fact that Kantian

'

.
,

idealists have usually abandoned the discussion and virtually grant that
t here is nothing to be said on the a f rmative of it and philosophers ,

generally acquiesce in the negative verdict It is interesting to remark

.
,

however that in doing so they have actually assume d the validity of a

,

point of view for discussing the subject which Kant explicitly denied
a n d repudiated while they maintain silence on the a rgument which he
,

regarded as valid ! What Kant regarded as futile w a s the arg ument

from what he called rational psychology When S ifted down to its
.

proper import this w as the appli cation of forma l logic to conceptions

introspectively determined This criticism is unquestionably tr ue and
.

e ffe ctive His contention w as , in his own phraseology that cons cious
.
,

ness could not immediately determine the simpli city of the ego and as ,

the fact of this S implicity w as presumably necessary to the proof of i m

m ortal ity there could be no evidence in cons cious ness introspectively
,

d etermined for this survival The force of this argument lies in the
.

f act that the assumed simpli city of cons ciousness as a function was not
e vidence of the simplicity of the subject The s ubject might be com
.

plex or composite and the function simple as the resultant in the com ,

position o f forces This is conclusive enough on the assumptions and

.
,

conceptions generally prev a lent in the metaphys ical physics of that

time and I think is true on any philosophi c assumption but one
, ,

n amely the H erbartian notion of the
,
real and that view of the
atom which holds that it can have but one simple property and v i ce , ,

v er s a ,that the presence of a simp le quality is evidence of a simple

s ubje ct This view was not prevalent at Kant s time and he can
.

hardly be hel d responsible for not cons idering and refuting it But I .

t hink that he either misconceived or misrepresented the dogmati sts in

t h e matter Their tendency was to argue precisely as if they assumed

.

t h e convertibili ty evidentially of the simple in the phenomenon

with the simple in the subject This woul d mean that the real point
.

o f d ifference with the contention of Kant turned precisely on the

po
s it i o n that simplicity of cons ciousness d i d imply simplicity of subject ,

a conception that grew explicitly into the doctrine of H erbart and rep

resents the implicit view o f the rationalists Kant s argument was.

t hus only a refutation based upon the force of assumptions which did

n o t represent the o n l
y cont ention made by the rationalists though ,

t hey had not explicitly developed as clearly as they might have done

t h e real import of their position What the rationalists ai m ed to

.
49 6 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

do was to present an a d lzo m i n em possibility for the existence of the

soul as something other than the organis m and they assu me d what the ,

materialists had to admit on their O w n philosophy namely that a , ,

simple individual atom survived all its combinations No w if the soul .

could be shown to be an indivisible simple substance it too must be

imperishable and su rvive its tenan cy of the body So much was i n .

evitable on the materialist s premises , though the rationalist with

his theistic position was not obliged to commit his fortunes to the i n
destructibility of the atom H e might make consciousness and its sub
.

je c t what he please d But in order to supply a positive empirical
.

content for the argument in behalf of the simplicity of the soul he

went on to use the assumed simplicity of consciousness as evidence of
it the conclusion being true on the assumption that all material phe
,

no m en a and functions being resultants of composition must be com

, ,

plex and transient and that there is satisfactory evidence for the sim
,

p l i c i ty of consciousness That is to say on the assumption that only

.
,

simple subjects can have simple functions and v i ce v e r s a only simple , ,

functions can be evidence of a simple s ubject the appeal to conscious ,

n es s and its simplicity as a fact would be conclusive provided that we ,

can trust the deliverance of consciousness o n the matter of its sim

p l i ci t
y . But Kant says nothing about this possible s cepti cism of the
mind s capacity to introspect the simplicity of its functio n perhaps be

,

cause it was not necessary to his argument though it is quite as pos ,

sible to question this capacity of cons ciousness to determine its sim

p l i c ity a s it may be to vitiate the inference from that S implicity once ,

granted to the simpli city of the subject

,
.

T hat Kant probab l y misunderstood the real position and contention

of the rationalists is apparent from his treatment of Mendelssohn s

doctrine or rather argument which is accepted as the representative

, ,

of the rational psychology
In his reply to Mendelssohn Kant s
.

,

position is so manifestly absurd as to raise the serious question whether

he ever understood the problem at all and whether he has not so mis
represented the whole conception of it as both to cause all the con
fusion in philosophy since his time and to divert the human mind from
the conception of what it is n o w and was before his time The con .

c e t i o n of the soul as an intensive qu a ntity ( intensive Grosse )
p
that might g r a d u a l ly vanish ( vers chwinden ) as a reply to Mendelssoh n
is so absolutely absurd as an implied representation of the case that
, ,

we wonder that Kant ever got within gunshot of a philosophic prob

lem Intensive quantity applies to phenomena and not to sub
.

stance i n
its elementary conception The term soul was a name
.
 S P I R I T U A L / S IM .

for an indivisible s u bs t a n ce and not for a phenomenon of any kind .

It was simply beggin g the question to suppose the possi bility that the
so ul should be an intensive quantity a n d simply betrayed e n

tire ignorance o f what the fundamental conceptions of p revious p hi

l o so p h y had been I am not saying or implying in this argument
.

that the soul cannot be an intensive quantity as well as its p h e

nomena That may very well be as a fact so far as the contention
.
,

here made is concerned though I think it absurd and untrue but it is

, ,

no refutation of the assumption of its simplicity to assume that con

sc i o u sn e s s may be an
intensive quantity
Mendelssohn s s i mp l e .

subst an ce was indestru ctible because it was i n d i v i s i l e and indivisible ,

things c ould not vanish In fact indivisibility indestru ctibility and

.
, ,

simplicity were convertible terms and no simple substance could ,

gradually disappear if the indestructibility of the atom and the con

,

servation of energy were to be accepted a s either proved beyond

question or as a p r i o r i truths I am not saying that there are any
.

such substances F or all that I know or care even atoms may be

.
,

destructible or gradually vanish But it was the denition of a S imple

.

indivisible substance that it should n o t be destru ctible so that if the ,

soul were once admitted to comply with those terms the conception
of gradual disappearance would no more apply than that of abrupt
annihilation Gra dual disappearance can apply to the divisible to
.
,

complex substance but to si m ple substance never Mendelssohn is

, .

invulnerable on this point Whether t h e soul exi sts a n d is S imple

.

are di fferent questions which may be disputed but that it persists if , ,

it exists and is simple cannot be disput ed on materialistic assumptio ns

,
.

That Kant shows his misconception of the case is evident in his state
ment about the intensive nature of co n s c i o u s n es s which may gradually
vanish He shows t w o fatal errors here The rst is the virtual
. .

identicatio n of the soul and cons cious ness which is absurd and , ,

inexcusable even on his own philosophy Soul is the subject and .

consciousness is the name for a function and the question was not ,

pr marily whether consciousness would vanish but whether the

i
,

sou l vanished It w as clear in the

phenomenon of sleep
.

that conscio us ness did vanish but that it w a s revivable and the ques
, ,

tion was whether anything survived death that made cons ciousness r e
vivable not whether it vanished in such a change The second error
,
.

was that Mendelssohn and the rationalists were not talking about
consciousness but the subject of it They might well admit and did
, .

admit that cons ciousness va n ished in sleep while the subject did not , ,

and they might admit that cons ciousness permanently vanished at death
32
49 8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

while the soul survived There might be no personal interest in

.

such a survival any more than in P lato s immortality but that is not
,

the question The primary point is whether the subject survives as

.

the condition of any reoccu rrence of cons ciousness and Mendelsso h n ,

could have an a p r i o r i possibility of that reoccurrence after death if he ,

could be assured that the subject was n o t dissolved by it But whether .

he could prove either this survival or the simplicity of the subject or

not the assumptio n of a simple indivisible and therefore inv a nis h a ble
,

subject on the simplicity of consciousness whether it be an intensive

, ,

quantity or not was cons istent and rational Inv a ni sh a bility , being
,
.

convertible with indivisibility in the philosophic parlance of the time ,

guaranteed su rvival if the doctrine of the persistence of simple sub

,

stance were true and so woul d be a refutation of the allegation that

,

cons ciousness w as a function of the organism provide d that you could ,

show that consciousness w as a simple function and implied a simple

subject What the evidence of this simplicity is w as another q uestion
. .

But the simplicity once granted there was no es cape from his conclusion .

Moreover insupposing that because consciousness might gradually

, ,

vanish the s oul might gradually vanish also Kant practi cally
, ,

admitted that the simplicity of consciousness which he actually ,

accepted implied the S implicity of its subject H e here applied

, .

'

the principle of identity in his argument and ought to have seen that
the same principle held true in the assumption of the simplicity of con
s c i o u s n es s as he supposed it in the case of its intensive quantity

.

That is to say if the intensive qu a ntity of consciousness would

,

prove that the subject also w a s a n intensive quantity the simplicity of ,

conscious ness w oul d prove the simplicity of the subject and Kant a d ,

m itt e d that consciousness w a s simple The c o nt r a v ers e of this will al so

.

be true And again if the simplicity of consciousness is compatible with

.

the complexity of its subject a s Kant maintains t h e i n va nish able nature

, ,

of the soul is quite compatible with the v a nish abl e chara cter of con
sc i o usn ess as we can prove this by the empirical phenomena of
,

sleep without any reference to the nature of the subject whether ,

material or spiritual simple or complex Here the subject persists

, .

after consciousness vanishes But there is the possibility of its recur

.

rence which would not occur if the subject dissolved and hence the
, ,

problem is rst to as certain the philosophic conception which will

o ffer the m aterialist an a d lzo m i n e m alternative to his conclusion .

T his is supplied in the conception of the soul as simple The evi .

d ence of this S implicity as a fact may be imperfect or worthl ess as it ,

is certainly not supplied by the introspective testimony of cons ciousness .

 S PI R I T UA L I S M 499

B ut it is no attack upon the position of Mendelssoh n to resort to the

intensive quantity of cons ciousness , as this is simp ly running away
from the issue .

A further point i n Kant s argument is in contradiction with his do c

trine in physics which assumed the persistence of substance which he ,

a f rms in the K r i t ik He a ctually dened substance as the per

.

m anent in cha nge

. No w if the soul
can possibly vanish gr adually
a fter assumin g that it is a substance , it is possible for any other sub

stance to vanish in the same way He could apply his idea of elan
.

guescen c e to the sou l only on the assumption tha t it was not a

substa nce , but a phenomenon and thus by begging the question
,

with his oppo n ents who hel d that the subject w a s a spiritua l substa n ce
and consciousness its fun ction Ka nt was pe r fectly familiar with the
.

doctr ine that the sou l w as a substa n ce and ou ght to have known
that th is idea was so p reva l ent in his time ( actually reco gnized in the
K r i t ik ) that it was a n evasio n of the issue to thus ta l k about
elanguescen ce .

B ut after arguin g a gainst M en delssohn s spiritualism , Kant turns

'

around to disprove the materialistic theory by the followin g argument .

He asserts that nothin g real in space is simple , and then assu mes
that co n scious ness is simple and while looking at matter as complex
,

he denies the possibility of expl aining cons ciousness by this matter on

the grou nd that it is simple and cannot have a complex subject , after
having said that the simplicity of consciousness was compatible with a
complex subject as an argument against the rationalistic psycho logy 1
O r to put his argument in another w ay whi ch he does , All the real .

in space is complex , and constitutes matte r P oints which are the
.

only simp l e data in spa ce are no part of it Consequently m aterialis m

.

ca nnot exp l ain cons ciousness O n e wonders what conception of l ogic

.

Kant had to see any rational therefore in this connection , especiall y

that he had just said that the intuited simplicity of consciousness did
no t imply simplicity O f subject O f course it mi ght not imply its com
.

pl exity , but his position did imply the cons istency of the fact with
either simplicity or complexity Cons equently h e co ul d not l egiti
.
'

mately af rm the
impossibility of explaining conscious nes s by
materia l ism for his very argument previously implied that we could .

Of course , what Kant had in mind w a s a l ot of unwarranted assum p

tions borrowed from the philosophy of Leibnitz , some of which he
apparent l y ac cepts and s ome of which he apparently rejects Thus in .

m aking matter complex and the real in space he abando ns the co n
ceptio n of Leibnitz wh o accepted a supersensib l e matter and did
5 00 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O P H Y .

no t limit his conception of it to sense Then in supposing cons cious

.

ness to be spaceless because it was simple he made a perfectly absurd

and unwarranted assumption for which there is n o ground but his
imagination But granted that it was well supported the contention
.
,

that we could not intuit the simplicity of the subject while we could
that of consciousness left this simplicity of cons cious ness compatible
with the complexity of the subject and mate rialism stands sustained
,

instead of refuted To repeat a point the whole trouble with Kant

.
,

lay in his playing fast and l oose with conceptions that were partly
Leibnitzian and partly non Leibnitzian The force of his remark
-
.

about the re a l in space as complex comes from the assumption of

Leibnitz that the simple real is spaceless or a point and by natural ,

inference that the phenomenal is extended and divisible the ,

unextended being indivisible Now after having thus made cons cious
.

ness spaceless h o w can he speak of it as gradually vanishing ! More

over when he talks of points as not constitut ing space while this
, ,

is unquestionably true he goes on to argue for the impossibility of con

,

s c i o u sn e ss being a function of the extended because it is unextended ,

assuming that the complex cannot have a simple function after having
previously argued that it was possible Leibnitz s very conception of

matter was that of the unextended space envelop ing it but not
,

b eing a property of it Hence Kant simply begs the question as to the

.

nature of matter by dogmati cally mak ing it complex when the
whole history of materialis m shows that it was regarded as S imple in

its ultimate nature But even this change of meaning for matter
.

to the S patially and sensibly real does not help his case unless he grants
that the nature of the function or phenomenon determines the nature
of the subject in which case Kant would escape materialism but would
, ,

at the same time be absolutely force d to regard S piritualism as proved ,

since the admitted simplicity of consciousness would carry with it the

si m p li ci ty of the subject and hence the conclusion of Mendelssohn
, .

Kant assumes that m a t nem a t i ca l and p /zy s i ca l divisi bility are the
ame or mutually implicative This can be denied Innite mathe
. .

m a t i ca l divisibi l ity does not imply any physical divisibility whatever .

Matter might occupy all the sp ace you please and be absolutely indi
visible physically without its annihilation Kant ought to have seen .

this with his doctrine of spa ce which was not only subjective but so
distinct from the nature of matter that you could not argue from one
to the other Besides having said that space is not constituted by
.

points how could he even make S pace divisible in any wa y eve r

to reach points at all The material ist s divisibility w as not
.

 S P I R I T U AL I S M .
50 1

c o n cerned with this mathemati cal p roblem and wa s no t eve n condi

t i o n e d by the elementary nature of the constituents of its compounds .

What it meant by divisibility was resolution into parts in a manner

which destroyed certain functions in the process Kant misses this .

oint i n the hairsplitting arguments upo n whic h he relies while char

p
a ct er iz i n g the m by this very defect .

But the most interesting fact is that Ka n t insists that there are
a rguments for the existe n ce and co n tinuance of the soul that are valid

T hese , however , are said to be the products of the practical reason ,

w hose meaning no man has ever yet discovered clearly u nless it is ,

i dentical with the

intuition of common sense which it is the
d elight of the i dealists and Kantians to despise They are as full of
.

p aralogisms as the arguments of the dogmatists , and have no value

u nless reducible to logical form Kant was simply throwing a sop to
.

C erberus in the m and since his time every one who has felt the force
,

o f his criticism of rationalis m has also felt the fatal weakness of the

p ra ctical arguments because
,
no one takes his pra ctical arguments
s eriously when accepting the cogency of the others in the negative

result Every intelligent man sees their worthlessness as proof and

.

f o r the same reasons that he assumes the failure of dogmatis m P hi .

l o s o p h er s are rather ashamed to use such arguments I grant that w e

.

c annot see h o w life and its ideals and morality can be completely

r ational without survival after death But then things may not be com
.

p l e t e ly rational at all P roof of su rvival may be the condition of show

.

ing that things are rational in the dire ction of that ideal whose integ
r ity is interested in the issue and if that is not proved or provable w e
'

, ,

c ertainly do not have the evidence of a n

y rationality apparent in the

course of things that extends beyo n d the phenomenal existence of
t h e present . The whole movement in thought since Kant has been in
this direction and refuses to measure the value and meaning of the
,

present by the future even though it nds in the persistence and unity
,

of cons ciousness at present a fact which materialism has trouble in ex

plaining In this development philosophy has been more consistent
.

t han Kant . I do not deny that Kant was right in his estimate of the
relation between the moral l a w and a future existence as I think the ,

argument certainly appeals to men who have felt the springs of that
l a w and who yet had n o quarrel with nature for apparent injustice .

But I must contend that the argument is wo rthless unless it is r econ

c ila bl e with the me taphysical questions which insist upon haunting

o ur reections and scientic theories of present facts It is the absurd

.

d ualism between the

theoretical and the practical reason that
50 2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

creates offence There is no more rational ground for following

.

practical reason than there is for a ccepting the conclusions of the

theoretical O ur duty is to purge
. rationalism of it s real or sup
posed fallacies not to repudiate the process especially when we can
, ,

not show its weakness without adcep t in g the logical processes which it
w a s the real or apparent obje ct of Kant to discredit This appeal .

to the practical reason only took the matter of belief out of the
hands of sane and reective thinking and simply handed it over to the
caprices of the individual emotions where the will to disbelieve

would be as valid as the will to believe What Ka nt should have
.

recognized was the fact that criticism must be applicable to all argu

m ents or none and that the methods of speculative reason are as
legitimate as those of the practical and that error arises in the failure
to investigate fallacies and not in the use of reason as an instrument .

7 There is a s ceptical dii c u lty with materialism which I have

.

reserved for consideration in this connection and which the materialist

,

seems never to have suspected and for which he has never provided
,

any adequate prote ction of himself though in many instances he h a s

,

admitted the facts which suggest a dii c u lty in his system It is an .

objection which characterizes the idealist s point of View and come s

,

from conclusions established or supposed to have been established by

epistemology It is the general antithesis between the subjective and
.

objective Idealism in almost every form has carried this distinction

.

to the whole eld of reality insisting that we do not know its nature
, ,

but only its appearance or the way in which we are a ffected by it
, .

O ccasionally the idealist awa k ens to the fa ct that this antithesis dis
solves itself into unity if I may use that expression by the very exclu
, ,

sion from knowledge of that which is said to determine its limits

a n d which becomes nothing in the problem leaving thought where i t
,

was before and reinstating obje ctive reality in n ew terms But usually
,
.

the temptation is to k eep up a passionate warfare against m a te rialism ,

partly as an excuse for existence partly as a blind refuge for religion

, ,

and mainly as an escape from the accusation of having common sense .

Nevertheless whatever the embarrassments it su ffers in the struggl e

,

between doubt and belief it enjoys the protection of facts which t h e

,

materialist does no t always face as fearlessly as he should I dealism .

has abstracted sensible properties from the nature of things a nd
limited our right to claim knowledge for anything but this sensible
experience insisting that which trans cends this fact cannot be
,

called by the same name as the sensible reality if nameable at all , .

When the idealist dis covered the subjectivity of certain signicant fa cts
 S PI R I T U A L I S M .
5 03

he at once set about examining its consequences His opponent never .

did so The materialist has not been careful of the conceptions which
.

he used in the construction of his theory When certain facts have .

pressed upon him the relativity and phenome nality of his experience
he has accepted this view without asking any questions about the
remainder of the facts in the same eld Thus Epicurus admitted the
.

subjectivity of colo r perception meaning that color as we perceive it

, , ,

did not correctly represent the qualitative nature of the O bject that
acted on the organis m but was the effect of the subject in reaction
, .

All this w as familiar to P lato an d the Sophists but it did not occur to ,

the materialists that the same treatment might be accorded to the

perception of m o t i o n After dis covering that sensible qualities
.

were phenomenal or relative to the subject they still went on with ,

the assumption that motio n w as not pheno m enal and materi a lists ,

ever since have failed to see that their conception of motion wa s

chargeable with being subjective quite a s mu ch as color or sound and ,

that , if the abstraction of su ch facts from the nature of objective

reality necessitates the description of that reality in terms of what had
been supposed before then the materialistic point of view has to
,

surrender to the i mmaterialistic This is to say that the antithesis

.
,

between the subjective and obje ctive if granted at all must be extended
, ,

to the whole el d of sensory determinations and if the materialistic ,

view is to be conceived as convertible with sensible conceptions of

reality the supersensible if distinguishable fro m it must be treated
, , ,

as immaterialistic This of course is precisely the contention of

.
, ,

idealism which insists implicitly or explicitly that there is no identity

, ,

between the subjective and the objective as apparent no transmission ,

or i n u xu s p ny s i cus of the external into the internal and hence ex ,

c l udes the right to des cribe them in terms implying their identity .

The materialist identies them and ma y consistently identify them ,

provide d that he constructs a theory of the relation between the sub

jec tiv e and objective that either makes that identity intelli gi ble o r
qualies the antithesis by limitations which will permit the applica
tion of so me of our terms and co n ceptions to a reality which is n o t
sensible The materialist m akes this application of concepts to t h e
.

supersensible but h e forgets that in doing so he often has to admit the

, , ,

sa m e difference betwee n the supersensible and the sensible which the

idealist insists upon as a ground for applying terms implying an a n t it h
esis That is to say the materialist is forced to accept the antithesis
.
,

between the sensible and the supersensible the difference between the ,

a bstract reality accepted as the ground of events and the concrete

 5 04 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

phenomenon which is regarded as the symbol of its presence and

o ught to see when he accepts the fa ct that the O pposition between
, ,

h i s position and that of the idealist is not what it was supposed to

b e and that a little critical analysis of his concept of m otion might
,

pro ve that he has

dematerializ ed this conception and that it no

l onger represents the sensible fact which he assumes in his argu

m ent and theories H e starts with the sensible fact calle d
.
motion ,

w hich he denes as a change in place and then turns up at the e n d,

w ith the same term applied to real or alleged facts such as the ,

undulations of heat light and electricity w h ich can have no sen

, ,

sible meaning whatever and which are quite as supersensible as the

atoms and molecules which they are especially careful to des cri be as

excluding all sensible verication a n d perception
,
The sup er sen .

s ible nature of their reality whether of substance and its acti vities
, ,

whether of matter or motion especially in the dynamic theory of

,

matter is concealed by t h e fact that its concepts are never exposed to

,

the criticism and analysis which are supposed to characterize the func
t ions of philosophy and not of s cience so that all sorts of co nt r a di c
,

tions are held together in scientic systems partly because s cience is ,

not made a dequately responsible for consistency in the crude meta

physics assumed a t its basis and partly because idealism has been too
haughty to discuss the problems of philosophy in any terms but those
which could not be understood by science and that would not offend
any more than they would enlighten religion But the moment that .

materialistic s cience required to give an explanation of a fact in terms

of the known it seized upon the concept of motion generalized it
, , ,

thus making it abstract a n d then des cribed it as representing the

,

nature of supersensible conditions where almost anything can be

,

said with impunity because it can neither be veried nor disproved

, ,

unless the antithesis with which it starts is modied The materialist .

has unconsciously performed the same abstraction as the idealist and

landed in precisely the same position t h e only di fference being that
,

he clings for dear life to a terminolo gy associated with sensory ex

p er i e n c e , while the idealist adopts the language of intellectualism and
evades the suspicion of agreement with materialism only because of his
l anguage which still carries with it the implications of the dualism
which he strenuous ly denies .

I must remind the reader however that the di f culty with ma

, ,

t e r ia lis m which I have just dis cussed is not fatal to all forms of the

theory I have only been showing that when its position with regard
.
,

t o fundamental conceptions has been critically examined it is not fou nd ,

 S PI R I T U A L I S M .
5 05

to be di fferent from idealis m which so rigorously opposes it The ma .

t e r ia li s m which cannot be so easily atta c k ed is that which fran k ly uses

the term matter to denote supersensible reality and explains phe ,

n o m en a as functional resultants of composition while it does not care ,

what we choose to call this reality I have alrea dy shown that it .

would not alter the problem of the nature and limits of consciousness

in the slightest if we called this supersensible reality spirits and
,

yet treated al l qualities as fun ctional resultants of their composition .

The problem is not effected by the name that we shall give to ulti mate
reality but by the relation of phenomena to i t whatever its name
, , .

Hence materialis m i n all its real import will n o t be refuted by dia le c

tical criticis m of its conception of motion or of its sensible ter ,

m in o l o gy but only by showing that cons ciousness is not a functional

,

consequence of composition But nevertheless it is a step in the dirc e

.
,

tion of either harmony or of its refutation if we show that it accepts ,

an antithesis between the subjective or objective in its estimation of the

sensible world and does n o t carry out this antithesis consistently If .

we can S how that there is much the same di fference perhaps abso ,

l ut e ly the same di fference between its s e nsible

,
matter and its super
sensible matter that the idealist , on the one ha nd supposes between ,
appearance
and reality and that the spiritualist on the other
, , ,

supposes between matter and spirit we shall d o much to open

,

the w ay not only to conciliation but also to some rational reconstru e

, ,

tion of philosophy consistently with the achievements of s cience . The

materialist s advantage lies in his use of terms which he does not c r iti

cise and his appeal to the concrete an d sensible while he neglects to ,

notice or to point out that his real world of existe n ce causal ,

agency etc is not sensible at all but something quite as supersensible

,
.
, ,

as the reality of his O pponents though he goes on ma k ing a i r m a

,

tions that are intelligible only on the assumption that he is dealing

with a sensible worl d whos e antithesis with the supers e nsible is con
,

c ea l e d by an identity of ter m s a n d yet resorted to whenever he gets

into trouble with any co nscious conception of their identity But if in .

reality there is an antithesis betwee n the sensible facts which he is ex

plaining and the reality supposed to explain them ; if for instance to , ,

be concrete there is an antithesis or difference in kind between sen

,

sible motion and the m otion to which the materialist appeals for
ex planation of facts and which is purely supersensible the distinction ,

here involved between the t w o facts the visible and invisib l e the , ,

tangible and intangible the audible and inaudible etc may possibly
, , .
,

be treated as implying that we have no more right to describe both of

50 6 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O P H y .

them in terms of motion than we have to apply the ter m color with
an identical import to the sens ation and to the vibrations suppose d to

instigate it Supersensible motion is therefore not motion at
.

all when measured in terms of the sensible fact , or if we so deno m i

,

nate it we cannot apply the term to the sensible fa ct unless we ca n

, ,

qualify the antithesis with which we start In either case we have .

transcended the sensible phenomenon in a way that identies the
materialist s conception of the case with that of his opponents The

.

ultimate nature of phenomenal reality is not motion as w e

know it sensibly even though it may prove to have elements of simi
,

l a r ity in it with what we know s o that the materialist ought n o t to
,

have any trouble in supposing the possibility that it is cons ciousness .

T h e materialist is in a dilemma here If motion is a purely sensible .

determination cons cious ness and motion are ide ntical and reality is
,

in antithesis to both If it is supersensible there is no way to exclude

.
,

the possibility that it is cons ciousness and he has to con ceive it pre ,

c isel y as the idealist and spiritualist wish to c onceive it namely as not , ,

motional in the sensible implications of the term O n the one hand .

,

therefore this possibility of identity between the two con ceptions

,

would indicate tha t we might call cons ciousness a mode of motion ,

provided that we kept clear the fact that we conceive d it as super

sensible and not a sensible phenomenon and on the other the , ,

antithesis if granted puts consciousness beyond the materialist s e x p l a

, ,

nation The only di f culty that we should have to meet in the i dent i
.

c a t i o n of the supersensible with motion would be that of getting thos e

who have not re cognized this supersensible applicatio n of the term t o
eliminate the a ssociations and implications of the term in sensible
experience But apart from this purely verbal dii c ul ty the ma
.

t er ia l i st is in fact too nearly in a g reement with his opponents to justify

the animosities of his position .

.8 There is another fact whi ch results in a complete annihilation of

the old materialistic theory and leaves nothing behind it but the name .

It is the vortex atom theory and possibly also the n ew theo r y that the
-

previously assumed atom is not simple at all but a very highly comp l ex ,

thing a compound of ions
,
electrons etc whatever these mys
, , .
,

t er i o u s entities are But the vortex atom theory of matter was and is
.
-

an attempt to redu ce matter to a differentiated form of ether The sup .

position o f the existence of ether has been demande d on the ground

that various phenomena li k e heat l ight magnetism and e l ectricity , ,

require some such reality distinct from the solid universe for the p r o pa
ga t i o n of their vibrations This ether has been described in terms that
.
 S P I R I T UA L I S M .
7

are completely the negative of m a t t er It has not a single property by

.

which we dene material existence except extension and this is not

, ,

properly a p roperty of matter It is universally distributed through

.

space not subject to the la w of gravitation perfectly penetrable super

, , ,

sensible in all its conditions and so without a si n gle indication of

,

identity even with supersensible matter It can be des cribed only in

.

negative terms Sir O liver Lodge distinctly a f rmed that this reality
.

was different from matter No w w e are as ked to regard matter as

.

constituted by vortex atoms of this ether units of that which is not

-

,

matter at all 1 At other times the materialist contradicts this posi
tion by dening ether as a form of ma tter in which the generic con ,

c ep t i o n is not ether , while i n the former case this conception is ether .

But in any case the term matter has to be so generalized and the
abstraction of such qualities a s we know in matter carried so far that
the conception has no controversial capa city in the dis cussion of prob
lems li k e the nature and destiny of mind Such a conception of .

matter can oppose neither idealis m nor S piritualism We nd in .

this conception an actual return to the do ctrine that matter is a cre

ated and phenomenal thing even in its atomic form and something
, ,

transcending its nature is assumed at the background of the universe ,

so that there is nothing left of the old materialism but the name while ,

disputants on both sides imitate the heroes of Valhalla who are for
ever hewing down S hadows that only spring up agai n to renew their

ceaseless and bloodless conict .

The elasti city of materialism in the use of language and in illus

,

t r a t i o n fro m fact is so great that no man without the sense of humor

,

will easily dis cover the weak points in its armor F ortunately for it .

the progress of knowledge in rening the conception of matter has

associated with it su ch a wonderful range of capacity and function for
produ cing delicate e ffects rivaling the mysteries of mind that it may ,

easily retain the apparent consistency of its philosophy with every

change of its mask But if the antagonistic theory could restrain the
.

traditional habit of contradiction and seize the opportunities O ffered by

the appropriation of the materialist s own conceptions it might bring

,

the enemy in a captive on its o w n terms even if its only weapon is,

faith since the elastic possibilities of the material world trans cend all
,

that theology could ever have concretely imagined i n the world of

spirit But it is extremely unfortunate that the enmity is so hered
.

it a r y , that it conceals the actual commerce of supersensible reality

which determines the legitimate province of both world views I .

cannot however enter into any positive defense of the spiritualistic

, ,
5 08 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

theory as there can be only one conclusive proof of it in the face of the
,

m aterialistic elasticity indicated and the simple nature of the evidential

problem and this is the proof of a ctual surv iva l after deat h That is
,
.

a s cientic and not what is usually c al led a philosophic problem

,
.

P hilosophy w i ll have to learn humility and to admit its li mitations ,

a n d that its assuran ces are bounded by the achievements of the exp er i

mental s ciences All that a work of this kind can effect is a critic of
.

materialistic do gmatism with an indication of the direction which in

,

v est i g a t i o n and reection must ta k e in the hope of a solution of the

q uestion and the realization of its ideals .

S U MM A R Y .

I may briey su mmarize the facts which make a spiritual view of

man s consciousness and its survival possible The facts indicated will

.

n o t prove it but they will S how that tendency of phy sical s cience whi ch
,

unmistakably indicates a conception of matter quite consistent with

the ancient notion of spirit instead of excludi ng it , an d makes it merely
a question of the k ind of facts in our possession whether we have not
evidence of discarnate existence Whether we have any such evidence
.

is not the claim in this work , but only that physi cal s cience n o t only
has nothing to contradict the acquisition of such evidence but actually ,

provides a condition of things that implies its possibility .

I The rst thing to remark is the fact that the whole super
.

s truct ure O f modern physical science rests upon a s upersensible world .

Thi s was even true of ancient G reek thought in spite of i ts opposition

t o the Christian S piritual system The atomic doctrine represented the
.

elements a s wholly supersensible and its advocates called it matter

simply because G reek thought was based upon materi al causation or
the p rinciple of identity i n the explan ation of things In so far as the .

manner of conceiving the atoms in relation to sense was concerned it

might as well have called its elements spirit as to have called them
matter But this would have troubled its imagination in the use of its
.

favorite maxim of causation H ence the supersensible world was

.

called matter in spite of its non sensory character Spirit there

-
.
,

fore if it comprehended any facts not expli cable by either sensible or

,

supersensible matter h a d to des cribe itse l f as immaterial as we
, ,

nd was actually the case in the speculative philosophy of Christianity .

But at rst it w as practically identica l with the supers ensible of

materialism as is apparent in the Epicurean doctrine of the soul and
,

the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the spiritual body .

2 The modern conception of matter is still more a departure from

.
 S PI R I T U A LI S M .
5 09

the ancient theory and in some sense also a departure fro m that whic h
was held for several previous centuries The doctrine of the inde .

st r u ct ibi l ity of matter was a return to the ancient view that matter
was the one eternal reality and all else was its phenomenon Matter .

took the place of God in the Christian scheme But the red u ction of .

matter to vortex atoms of ether and later to a form of electrical energy

,

co mposed of electrons and ions a r e conceptions that assume it

to be evanes cent and perishable or at least creatable No application
,
.

of the term matter to these ultimates out of which it i s presumably

created or evolved can be made without abandoning the antithesis
between matter a n d spirit as they were anciently conceived or ,

even down to very recent times .

.
3 The existence of ether as a substance or reality whic h exhibit s
none of the sensible or other properties of matter save exte nsion is , ,

also a renement of the con ceptions of metaphysics that either assumes

something immaterial o r extends the idea of matter so generally
that it again offers no important opposition to that of S pirit as

merely the immaterial .

Besides the fact that not even gravity or
weight is predica ted of the ether is one th at j usties obj ection to calling

it matter unless we abandon the old implications of antithesis t o
,

S pirit as on ce understood .

4 The supersensible world of X rays radioactive energies Hert

-

, ,
.

zian waves ,and perhaps N rays is the admission of a vast cosmos o f

-

energies that do not exhibit any direct eviden ce of their existence but ,

that prove this by their effects in the sensible world The establish .

ment of this supersensible world simply bre a k s down the old sensa
t i o n al materialis m na lly though it may have survived the catastroph e
,

of the dii c ul t ies previously mentioned The possibility of spirit
.

in any sense cannot be denied after t h e admission of these supersensible

agencies b ecause they extend the limits of the material so far b eyond
,

what they have previously been supposed that the immaterial will be
but a question of the word employed to describe the real nature of
things .

.
5 The supposed in convertibility of physical and mental phe
n o m en a though consistent with the materialistic theory in one con
,

c e t i o n of causality
p ,
namely , that of ei c ient causality is not con ,

sistent with that of material causality and if materialis m were con

,

vertible with this latter view it would be wholly incompatible with t h e

view that consciousness is a functional epiphenomenon In any case .

this assu m ed inconvertibility of the physi cal and mental ma kes it pos
sible to suppose another subject for the mental than the physi ca l o r
5 10 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H y .

g a n is m , and would ma k e it necessa ry were we to deny an ef cient

causal nexus between the t wo series .

6 If such a thing as the soul a ctually exist s either as a ne ma

.

t er i a l organism after the conception of the Epicureans , or as an

,

ethereal organism , or as the theosophists a stral body we might
,

well use the principle involved in the i ndestructibility of matter to

s uggest the survival of the soul after death The only question that .

would remain is whether its identity that is , personal identity also , ,

s u rvived .It is assumed in the indestructibility of matter that it under

goes various tra nsformations in its changes and multiform compo
sit i o ns and syntheses Two facts however seem to show that matte r
.
, ,

retains its identity in all its metamorphoses and compositions The .

rst is that it never loses any weight or gravity in any of its changes of
form Whatever change of other properties or function o ccurs this
.

o n e property remains unaltered and if it did not remain s o there

, ,

w ould be no evidence of indestructibility This retention of its abso .

l ute ide n tity in one respe ct or in one essential characteristic is a bso

l utel y necessa r y to the proof of indestructibility an d is the fac t that
constitutes its identity in change O n this assumption and analogy
.

the soul might retain its function of consciousness w ithout being a f

fe c t e d by the change called death There is no proof of it in the mere
.

fact of in destructibility especially that many properties and functions

,

s eem to be destroyed by dissolution of compounds and it must be a ,

q uestion of evidence to determine whether any particular function is

evanescent The second fact is that the elements retain their identity
.
,

a ccording to physical s cientists throughout all their changes and are

,

a pparently modied only in combination But even here isomorphism .

and the similar effects of an element in various co mpounds suggests

s ome characteristic of identity in combinations And further the i m .

portant fact that in the l a w of Mendelejeff the elements are classied

,

according to relations of specic gravity and other associated proper

ties which suggest a n origin from some ultimate single substance is
, ,

one that indicates an identity of some kind at the basi s of all phe
n o m en a l action The existence and survival of a s oul would thus
.

carry t h e presumption of possible identity in its migration from the

o rganism All that would be wanting to prove it woul d be evidence
.

of this identity in fact Even in allotropism and isomerism some ele

.

ments of identity remain so that eve ry where that indestructibility ex

,

h ibit s itself there is the possibility of some functional identity remain

ing independent of change and accident .

7 The history of the localization of brain functions ra ther suggests

.
 S PI R I T UA L I S M .
51 I

the existence of an age n cy other than the brain to account for the phe
h omena of cons cio us ness Some of the Greeks na i vely believed that
.

the soul was situated in the stomach others in the heart But later ,
.

men came to believe that it was situated in the brain The older view .

conceived its particular seat as its organ That is , the stomach or .

heart was supposed to be the instrument by which it revealed its ex

i st en ce and so assumed that the soul was not a function of that parti e n
,

lar center But the moment that modern physiology lo cated the soul
.

i n the brain and made other centers dependent upon it the consequence ,

was that whateve r functions were exercised by other centers they were
, ,

initiated from without The stomach and heart in this n e w view do

.
, ,

n o t originate their functional a ctivities but derive their impulses from

,

the brain centers This is i n accorda nce with the general doctrine of
.

inertia But it w as still assu med that the brain could originate func
.

t i o n al action as a center wherever the theory of materialis m existe d

and which supposed that all consciousness was a function o f the brain
and not a function of some other agent associated w ith the brain This .

general conception of brain functio n w a s worked out in detail first by

phrenology and later in a different w ay by the physiology of b rain
functions denitely and S pecically lo calized but in a manner nullify ,

ing the opinions of phrenology Later however this doctrine of

.
, ,

localization has been so modie d as to indicate that the brain as a

whole functions in cons ciousness But this view is followed by a later
.

doctrine that the brain and its centers are merely points through which
energy ows in the manifestation of cons ciousness This is an aban .

d o n m ent of the idea that the b rai n originates the functional activities
manifested in co nsciousness and extends the doctrine of inertia still
,

farther so that consciousness as a fun ction seems to arise from with

, , ,

out the brain and simply manifests its existence by its effects in the
physical organis m or the physical universe This assumes that in all .
,

organisms action is initiated fro m without and so implies the exist

, ,

ence of an agent foreign to the body All that has to be done after .

this is to apply the doctrine of the indestructibility of matter or energy

to maintain the possibility that this agent can exist independently of
the or ganism and after its dissolution We should only have to seek .

evidence of personal identit y to indicate that it was a fact and not

merely a possibility I do not sav that the latest theory of brain func
.

tions is correct It may not be so I only indicate that the p h y s io l o

. .

gist who adopts it has to face a conclusion which was not consistent
with the earlier conceptions of his science .

. 8 That the whole question turns upon the evidence for the con
51 2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

t i n u i ty of cons ciousness or functional personal identity will be appar

ent from several fa cts .
( a ) In the dissolution o f all compounds some
-

characteristic is apparently wholly lost F or instance the power of

.
,

water to quench re is not retained in its elements Hence the inde .

s t r u c t ibi lity of matter leaves open the question whether cons ciousnes s

is an accident of composition or a fundamental attribute of an organ

ism o r monad that survives change ( 6) The evidence for the reten
.

tion of identity i n phenomenal changes as represented by the conserva

tion of energy is not so clear as in the indestructibility of matter T h e .

retention o f gravity is the evide n ce of this in the doctrine of the in

destructibility of matter but i n the phenomena illustrating the conser
,

vation ( correlation as shown above is the better conception for the

,

facts ) of energy there is not always the evidence if it ever exists that one
, ,

of the terms is converted i nto the other in any w ay to involve identity

of k ind in functional action Hence qualitatively the conservation of
.

energy is an undecided doctrine and is so undetermined that some will

,

tell us that it is only the quantity of energy that remains the same .

Assuming therefore that qualitatively there is a change w e nd that

, ,

the fa ct s w o ul d seem to imply that consciousness if any attempt were

,

made to bring it under the conse r vation of energy would not retain its
,

identity in any transformation of which it might be conceived as capa

ble If the conservation of energy be true qualitatively the retentio n
.

of its identity would follow as a necessity and the problem of a future

life solved within the domain of physics But it is the doubt about
.

this continu ity in k ind that makes it necessa ry to prove personal iden
tity as a f a c t to assure ourselves either that the conservation of energy
favors the belief or that it is true independently of that doctrine T h e .

problem thus beco mes scientic rather than p h ilosophic .

 CHA P TER XII .

T HE E X I S T E NC E O F G O D .

THE layman never fully realizes the vastness of his problem when
he begins to discuss the ex istence of God He is not even aware of
.

the various inuences that make it a problem for him ; but between a
semi philosophi c m ood on the nature of thi ngs and a moral interest i n
-

the dispensation of a system forcing upo n him the sense of dependence

and inviting curiosity in regard to his destiny he invo k es a conception ,

that hovers about the horizon of history an d hope with all the haz e
and majesty of both poetry and religion seeking a justication at the
,

hands of p h il o so ph v . He only discovers h i s exposu re to illusion when

he begins to criticize what poetry never understands and never pre
tends to tak e as real The progress of intelligence involves him in
.

questions of doubt and assertion which are not on the surface of his
.

ree ctions while both his poetry and religion have only followed the
,

lead of fancy after s cience had formed systematic and supersensible con
c e t i o ns of the world The unity of n ature was the precursor of a revo
p .

l uti o n in other ideas. The original impulses of mankind seem not to have
troubled the im a gination with any si n gle sovereignty over the processes
of nature e xcept that of F ate The gods were as numerous as the
.

elements and it was only whe n the unity of the cosmos forced itself
upon convictio n th a t the divine also assumed a monotheistic c o n c ep
tion In Greek thought this did not take the form of a creator of the
.

world but only of its providential ordering Matter was conceived as

,
.

coeternal with God but subject to his pl a stic hand a s a disposer except
,

in the Epi curean system where the gods had to be relegated to the i n
t er m u n d i a i n order to elimin a te their caprices from disturbing the
proper order of nature and for the purpose of rendering them harmless ,

so that there could be no motive for the interference of divine power .

O nly in some of the best poets did the conception of Jupiter take on char
a c t er i st i c s inviting to respect and reverence The minor gods and all
.

conceptions of the divine in general parlance represented a system of

tyrannical and irresponsible agencies without moral character or human
intere st an d no better or even worse than the order of nature This
, , .

could be reckoned with for regularity but the gods never This u n
, .

ide a l character of the divine exhibited itself wherever polytheism pre

33
 5 14 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS O P H Y .

vailed and it was the moralization of man beyond and above the con
c e p t i o n of the gods that gave scepticism its sting when it attacked

their existence P ower without mora lity was the conception which
.

d es cribed them , as this immunity was t h e ideal of Greek life , and it

r eected itself even in the monotheistic conception , save as this was

tm o di e d by the higher idea of E s c h l us and others But at no time

y .

d i d the conception of God as primarily interested in man for man s

o wn sake become a prevalent idea of Greek thought

j ustice and not
.

m ercy w a s his chi ef attribute But , as I have already remarked ,

.

Christian ity gave the idea a new content and relation It made God .

the creator of the cosmos both sensib l e and supersensible conceived ,

his relation to it as predetermining its order in behalf of the present

a n d future interest of man , insiste d upon his personality and esta b
,

l ish e d such a social relation between himself and his creatures as t e

d o un ded equally to the honor of the divine as bestower and to the
b enet of man as the recipient Mercy was added to justice as his
.

a ttribute.

f I n the manifol d exigencies of medi aeval civilization a n d specu l ation

th ese various conceptions , associated with many detai ls in a p r o v i den
tial s cheme , worked themselves out into a dogma ti c system a nd h e
came implicated in the nature and validity of many dialectical and
metaphysica l doctrines of an exceedingly dubious character It woul d .

be no light task merely to trace the development of this movement ,

and though it would not be wholly tha nkless , it is not necessary fo r
the purposes of this work to rethresh a ny barren straw for the small
amount of wheat to be found in its cha ff It is possible to traverse
.

the great ideas associated with the name of God and to examine one
of the immemorial problems of philosophy without any elaborate his
t o r i ca l analysis of medi ae val thought We cann ot however , wholl y
.
,

ignore the settin g whi ch it received in the dis cussions of Kant That .

phi l osopher is supposed to have put an end to legitimate dis cussion of

the problem along the lines of traditional argument and to have left the
idea to the irresponsible deliverances of faith and intuition , which no
one any longer trusts I do not think , however that it was the dia
.
,

l ecti o treatment of the question by Kant that placed the existence of

God among the re l ics in the museu m of antiquities or jeopardized its
validity a nd power This was only the excuse for inuences that no
.

more embodied themselves in l ogical forms like the antinomies tha n

did Kant s practical reasons for the val idity of the belief , though

they ar e capable of that organization The chief factor in the d ecline

.

. o f the conception and be l ief has been the progress of s cien ce and it ,
 TH E E X I S TE N CE OF G OD .
5 15

was only when the philosopher had to seek some plausible excuse for
h is indi fference to the que s tion or for his incompetence in t h e discus
,

s ion of it that he sought a defence in the diale cti cs of Kant

,
The idea .

s imply died the natural death of miracles and for the same reason
,

n a m ely its incompatibility with the facts of s cience

,
Mr Lec ky has . .

c orrectly shown that it was not philosophic argument that w a s the

chief agency in causing the dec line of the belief in the supernatural ,

but it was the gradual el a ng ue s cen ee of it owing to the slow saturation

of the public mind with the ideas of s cience an d physi cal l aw It wa s .

t h e same with the belief in the existence of God and the tribute paid ,

t o Kant s antinomies is either an afterthought or ignoran ce of the real

i nuences at work The t w o con ceptions which it w as d ii c ul t t o

.

w ithstand were the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of

e nergy ,
as dispens ing with the necessity of creation in any form As .

l ong as it was assumed that matter and motion were created that is , ,

had a beginning in time the conception of God w a s a necessa r y com

,

p lement of it It w a s not a question of ontological cosmological
.
, ,

o r teleological arguments but of necessary implication in the real or

,

s upposed facts with which reection started All the rest w a s a mat.

t e r of detail rendering intelligible a cosmic order once initiated But .

t h e moment that s cience proved the persistence of matter in all its

c hange s of form and the conservation of energy in all its transforma

t ions a pe r fectly denite evasion of the old implication w a s made pos

,

s ible and from that time the traditional conception of God wa s doomed
,

e ither to extinction or revision The facts afforded a substitute idea

.

f o r the explanation of the cosmos if explanation it be and the l a w of

, ,

parsimony in human thought will n o t tolerate t w o rival contestants for

t h e explanation of the same phenomena The consequence has been
.

t hat in proportio n as the new conception could work itself into the de

t ails o f cos mic events extending our ignorance of its pla n as much as
,

our knowledge of its laws just in that proportion has the scholastic
,

i dea of God suffered eclipse or gradually retired into that limbo of for

g otten intellectual furniture which can no longer excite any but a n a n

t iq uarian interest In its place has appeared the conception of Na
.

t ure and its l aws Personality and providence have disappeared
.

b ehind the clouds of s cience and a n impersonal order substituted for

divine be ne c en ce The conception of Nature as a substitute will
.
, ,

n o t bear analysis because it is a n a me for a fact not for a cause

,
B ut ,
.

it is convenient for limiting the pretensions of knowledge where the

temptations of its devotees would be to try the revelation of a rational
o rder for which the evidence is insu f cient .
5 16 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H y .

As l ong as any xed order is admitted by man it will check the ,

presumption that desires too readily to personify it ; not because that

personication is impossible but because it is either evidentially weak
,

or supports no perso nality inconsistent with the stability of the cosmi c

order If the whole system can be des cribed as an undeviating one no
.

demands can be made on its charity which are inconsistent with t h e

general plan Hence the idea of Nature is a useful one for check
.

ing sp ir itual pride and arroga nce and teaching man that whatever
, ,

ideals he cherishes he must conform his life to an inexible order

, .

But he is never satised with such a system unless he can believe that
it is personal The Greeks were so prepossessed with the idea that
.

p ersonality was capricious and lawless and that nature represented a

fateful mechanical order that the Christian obtained his footing by a
doctrine of personal creation making t h e Divine benevolent to com
pensate for the apparently tragic xity of nature Man has had t o .

qualify personality with mercy as a limitation to capriciousness .

He can submit with patience and hope to an unch a ngeable mechanis m

and to the disappointment of many of his ideals if he can venture t o ,

believe that somehow the process of evolution will respect the chie f
values which it has itself created The con ception of God w as
.

the last effort of philosophy to secure a basis for such hopes , and
suffers only because the evidence for them seems less cogent tha n is
desired In addition to being the supposed cause of the order in which
.

we live and have our bei n g God is also the idealization of all that m an
,

can conceive of the true the beautiful and the good This can be said
,
.

in S pite of the hideous dogmas that have been associated with the
scheme of Christian belief in some of its forms If it had not been fo r .

this idealization of the concept man would not have felt so keenly t h e
,

loss of it attributed to the progress of s cience and the dialectics o f

Kant The progress in his civilization involving the humanizing o f
.
,

all his instincts and his rising above nature while he obeyed it left ,

behind it that reverence for personality which can never be bestowed

upon a mechanical system whatever source of pleasure and admiratio n
,

it may represent and the consequence is that he may never willingly

,

abandon the effort to see in the cours e of things which extorts fro m ,

him so imperiously the feeling of dependence that rational movement ,

of intelligence and hope which must always color with its own hues
his little S pan of toil and care .

But it is pre cisely because of this rich perso n al content that th e

conception is exposed to the cruelties of criticis m In the order which .

man himself m a k es he is a master and his creations form the standard

 TH E E X I S TE NC E OF G OD . 5I7

by which he is wont to judge n ature that marks with a shadow

whatever ben e ce n ce it exhibits Man s moral nature is accustomed
.

to think that it cannot look on that Medusa head and live The ush .

of conquest which he feels i n his triumphs over physical nature

will not easily in s pire respe ct for the object that is so plastic to his
own will though the reserve of unconquered power that it shows can
,

still invoke his fear , and he turns , Psyche like to indulge his curiosity ,

and hope in uncovering P andora s box only to nd that the earth

,

green as she looks rests everywhere on dread foundations were w e

,

further down and P an to whose musi c the nymphs dance has a cry
, ,

in him that can drive all men distracted The beautiful vision of
.

poetry and religion in that discovery turns into a waste and criticis m ,

leaves an inheritance of ignorance which it conceals in the name of

Nature. Whether we sh a ll ever get beyond this condition of mind
depends as much upo n our revision of the traditional conception of
Nature as up o n t h e revisio n of that of God The arguments remain .

a s they always have been , only awaiting the con ception and the facts

which are to determine the measure of their applicability .

P hilosophy has generally conceded the forcefulness of the Kantia n

antinomies , and in most cases their conclusive inuence in favor of
agnosticism which in actual convi ctions has amounted to a denial
, .

These antinomies were conceived as dividing the arguments equally

f o r and against the innity of the world in time and S pace the freedo m ,

of the will and the existence of God But I mean here to challenge
,
.
,

the solidity of this position I do not think that any such antinomies
.

exist as Kant afrms I shall not deny a ce rtain k ind of formal dii c ul t y
.

in the discussion of the questions proposed but it is a perplexity that ,

is created by a total mis conception of what the problem of explanation

is and of the source of the alleged antinomies That the antinomies are .

not so clear can be shown I think in the simple fact that an analysis
, ,

of the concepts which gave Kant his trouble would have dissolved
the antinomies into air They grow wholly out of equivo cations in
.

the terms that suggest them Take the instance of the controversy
.

regarding the n it ud e and the in n it ude of the world In stating his .

case Kant should have given us a preliminary conception of what he

m eant by the world . The whole force of the antithesis between
the t w o views and the dii cul t y of obtaining Conviction for one side or

the other is the equivocal import of the term world That term is .

s ometimes use d to denote the physical universe i n space and ti m e and

not including space and time themselves At other times it includes

-
.

these and consequently alters the right to apply various predicates to it

, .
5 18 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

Again the term is often convertible with the s en s i l e physical world as

distinct both from space and time and from the s up er s en s iOZe physical
world whether distinct from space and time or not Now whether .

n it u de or i n n it u de is predicable of this world will depend wholly
upon which conception of the term is adopted If it den otes the sen .

sible universe to the exclusion of space and time there can be no ques ,

tion whatever of its n it ude an d the assertion of the possibility of the

opposite is preposterous and simply contrary to fact Space and time
, .

are our sole measures of innit ude and of whatever obje cts we suppose
this attribute w e must at the sa m e t im e assume them coterminous with
'

space or time The admitted inn it u de of space and time from which
.

the sensible world is supposedly excluded in the conception just men

t i o n e d settles the question o f its n it u d e once for all O n the other hand .
,

if space and time are included in the conception of the worl d or uni
verse there can equally be no question of its in n it ude as this character
, ,

is imposed upon it by the inclusion of space and time in the thing

named Now Kant admits the in n it ude of space and time and should
.

have obse r ved that the whole problem of n it ude and i n nit ude w as
determined solely by the question of their inclusion or exclusion in the
conception of the world or un iv e i se
The dif culty of course
'
.
, ,

arose from the Cartesian and Spinozistic conception of matter which

applied to a supersensible reality and was supposed to occupy all space ,

the sensible worl d being that modication of it apparent to sense .

The question that Kant really raised was whether this supersensible
world was nite or innite and he coul d well resolve that into
,

insoluble alternatives while he omitted to recognize that it was the

,

sensible world that had created the entire p roblem of philosophy .

The same remarks apply to the question of its beginning in time .

If time is a part of the world co n cerned its beginning is an absurd ,

assumption ; if it is not part of the world it is not absurd to sup ,

pose a begin ning for it but a question of evidence If assuming that

, .
,

time is not i n cluded in the conception the world is conceived as ,

the se n sible worl d of time its nite character and its beginni n g in
,

time is a given fact and nothing can be more cl ear than this view on
,

the premises of Kant s own system F or space and time not being
.
,

properties of reality p er s e and only forms of perception subjective ,

produ cts of the mind the material worl d of sense had to be both
,

nite and to have a beginning in time But this way of looking at it

.

as more or less unnecessary as well as unintelligible the main point ,

is that the exclusion of time from the sensible world involves its
beginning in that time The whol e of physical s cience is based upon
.
 TH E E X I S T E NCE OF G OD .
519

the assumptio n that t h e sensible world had s uch a beginning .

O the rwise its attempt to explain it by a n antecedent cause is mani

fest ly absurd The conception that gives trouble in supposing a begin
.

ning is either that w hich is an abstraction of the various conditions of

reality representing a series of phenomena in which the conceptio n ,

of the world woul d have no meaning , if w e made it innite or that ,

which tries to comprehend both t h e sensible and the supersensible !

worlds in its embrace The phenomenal world has a beginning

.

in time or it is not phenomenal The permanent element in it if

.
,

we may use that expression has no beginning implied by what i s

,

manifestly temporal except as its cause We should have to seek

,
.

independent evidence of its beginning Kant simply forgot that he was.

dealing with highly rened abstra ctions of which nothing can really
be said one w ay or the other It is only the concrete that is open to
.

determination The concrete world of whi ch w e a f rm a begi n
.

ning is that which bears evidence on its face of its being phenomenal .

This evidence may be immediate or inferential but one or the other , ,

it is the conditio n for see k ing any a ntecedent fact or cause whatever .

If the world is the cause its character phenomenal or nou
, ,

menal cannot be assumed withou t dening the se nse in which cause

,

is taken If it be phenomenal the word is a name for only what is

.

known and that is nite and has a beginning If it is a name for the .

noumenal it is a word for the permanent element in concrete members

,

of a series or congeries of events each of which has a beginning But .

in no case can w e discuss the problem without recognizing the equiv

ocal nature of ou r terms .

That Kant did not discover the source of his logical dif culties is
all the more remark able when we examine his observations on some
p aradoxical statements of the Eleatic Z eno P lato had chided that .

philosopher for saying that God ( the world was neither nite nor
innite in motion or at rest or like or unlik e anything else Kant
, ,
.

defends Z eno by rst inclu ding space in the conception of the worl d ,

a position which enables him to say corr e ctly enough that this left no
reality o utside of it for comparison To be li k e or unlike another
.

requires that at least t w o should be given that there shoul d be this ,

other given for comparison and such could not be assumed when
,

space and its total contents described all possible reality as the whole
to which predicates were attachable O f course if there is only one
.
,

thing i n existence it cannot be said to be either like or unlike another .

But Kant and Z eno secure the correctness of their position only by
assuming a conception of their terms which is not in the minds of their
5 20 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

O pponents The world o f usual parlance is what is in spa ce and

.
'

time and generally is only the sens ible in them We can very well
,
.

ascribe certain denite predicates to this in comparison with such things

as space and time It can be said to be either like or unlike these
. , .

Assumi n g again that the world is the known sensible world

a comparison with the k nown s upersensible world would be
possible apart from their relation to spa c e and time This becomes .

pe r fectly a pparent from Kant s isolation of the question of this
world s n it ude or in n itu de from that of its qualitative compari

son with other things He distinctly and deliberately postpones this

.

question to ta k e up that of the possible comparison of the world

with something else H e thus obtains the advantage of impressing
.

the reader with his initial correctness and the rest will be supposed to
follow But when he comes to take up the question of the world s
.

i n n it u d e he excludes space from it as a part of the necessary conception

involved , which he has no right to do if he still intends to defend ,

Z eno .

The supposed antinomy between determinis m and freedom is a

palpable absurdity when we consider that Kant nally asserts the fact

of free will His distinction between phenomenal and noumenal
.

causation or empirical determinism and transcendental freedom
,

fools no one but those who love unintelligible phrases There is no .

possible antithesis between phenomenal and noumenal causa

tion The simple observation that he w as dealing with different orders

.

of events or facts , as his own theory of consciousness required h i m to

do would have eliminated all antithesis between the causality of
,

n ature and the causality of volitions and in fa ct the force of his,

contention for freedom w a s actually based consciously or unc o n ,

s c i o us l
y upon this distinction which removed all excuse for supposing
,

any antinomy in the problem of free will Moreover his empirical .

,

or phenomenal causation is not causatio n at all but mere coexist ,

ence and sequence with causal efciency left out His advocacy of .

free action no matter h o w it was qualied involved an absolute begin

, ,

ning of certain phenomena in direct opposition to the claims made

in dis cussing the rst antinomy If any events in the system of phe
.

momena have a beginning it is only a question of evidence whether

all antecedents are not in the same class .

The antinomy about the existence of God is no bett er than the

others There is a certain impressiveness in both its strength and
.

wea k ness as seen in the cosmologi cal argument though this is due to ,

questions not discussed by Kant at all Its stren gth appears in the .
 TH E E X I S TE N C E OF G OD .
521

accepted fact that some things do actually begin in time a nd that the ir
cause is sought in an antecedent fact Its wea k ness lies in the sup.

position that if any phenomena are caused by antecedent phe

,

h omena , there is no possibility of a n absolute beginning in time , and

that all causation necessarily involves ante cedent phenomena The .

a ctual procedure of s cience is a r e r ess us to anterior conditions which

g
it treats as t h e cause of the consequent but whose further origin it may
,

n o t investigate or be able to dis cover and hence it simply int e l p r e t s

,

the events which come within the range of experience as links m a

chain without end if it assu m es that all antecedents must be phe
,

nomena . It never reaches the prius or in it i u m which the cosmo
logical argument is supposed to demand But what I shall contend is .

t hat the cosmological argument misconceives the whole problem and ,

that any attempt to redu ce the principle of causation to its type must
result in givi n g up ca usation of any and all kinds whatever What .

can be disputed at the o utset is the assumption that causation n e ces

s a r ily involves antecedent

phenomena and it is this assumption
a lone that gives the cosmological argument all the force which it
a ppears to have Ev e ry cause may be antecedent to its effect but it
.
,

is not n ecessarily an antecedent phenomenon Kant shows rather .

clearly that he would have a ccepted the claims of the cosmological

point of view if he could have done so free from the logical dif c u l
,

ties which incumber it ; for he returns to it again and again and accu
m ul a t e s upon it all the objections that it has to meet But it is his .

false conceptio n of causality that creates his di f culties at this point and
his failure to realize the immovable importa n ce of the fact that there
ar e
.
phenomena representing an absolute beginning in time a fact ,

that would be impossible on the cosmological conception as it is

abstra ctly represented Such a fact certainly indicates some limits to
.

the assertion that a nite r eg r ess us of phenomena is necessary to the

supposition of original causation If Kant had realized that the.

principle of causation was not phenomenal at all he could have ,

admitted any r e gr ess us that s cien ce might require whether nite or ,

innite and have remained undisturbed by the cosmological conception

,

o f the problem .In fact his very conception of free causation required
,

h i m to place the notion of cause in the transphenomenal as well as the ,

conception of the reality that was assumed to produce sensation with !

out being sensation Had he had any right on his system to have a
.

thing in itself which he said existed and yet we did not know
, ,

we might effectively eradicate the dii c ult ie s which he felt in the cos
m o l o gi ca l argument ; for w e have here a conce p tion that dees the
523 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

limitations of a nite r egr ess us and which was yet the primary stage

and type of causality in the early development of Kant s philosophy .

A t rst his thing in itself wa s the cause of sensations but this w a s ,

nally thrown out as a reality u nknown and objects retained in its

place but never made clear enough to know what they were or meant
, .

A reformed thing in itself that is a subject of some kind as t h e
,

bas is of functional action is what is necessary in the case one which

, ,

can exercise the function of causality without being itself a phe

nomenon Had Kant seen this his cos mologi cal argument woul d
.

have remained in the el d of mere science where it belongs , this

department of investigati o n being concerned with the l a ws of phe
n o m en a and their asso ciation in antecedence and sequen ce not with ,

causal problems primarily or ultimately It seeks antecedents but .

,

does not require to determine that all antecedents shall be phe

n o m en a l or whether any of them may be noumenal or not that ,

is whether they may be subjects giving rise to their own modes o f

,

action such as free wills Leib nitzian monads individual centers o f

, , ,

reference and action as creations of the Absolute or as modal m a nifes

t a t i o n s of it or Carlyle s light sparkles oating in the ether o f
,

Deity O n such assumption the cos mological argument would have
.

ta k en a subordinate place in his system .

I do not criticise his treatment of the ontolo gi cal argu ment a s ,

that is conclusive enough from the denition and conception of it a d

v a n ce d Nothing can be clearer than the fact that the idea of a
.

thing is no guarantee of its objective reality The denition and con .

c e t i o n of God no more carries with it his e xistence or the proof of i t

p
than the denition and conceptio n of a Centaur guarantees its existence .

No sort of logi cal legerdemain can construe the doctrine in any othe r
way except by giving a certain specic meaning to the term idea
, .

I thin k that it is quite true that Kant s and the usual w a y of represent

ing this ontological argument may not be wholly just to its actual
import in the minds of some philosophers It may rightly characterize .

the positions of Anselm and Abelard and some of the Wo li a ns but it ,

does not correctly represent that of Des cartes This last philosopher .

did not rest the argument on the mere fact that we have an idea of

God such as the idea of a Centaur or of a Thale r in one s
, ,

pocket but upon the peculiar character of that idea

It was the
, .

necessity of the idea whi ch determined the necessity of supposin g

its Objective and existential nature or reference The idea of a .

Centa ur he would say could not claim this character Descarte s

, , .

was therefore quite consistent a n d invulnerable to Kant s criticism ,

, ,

 TH E E X I S TE N CE OF G 00 .
523

as remarked by Kuno F ischer in his discussio n of Des cartes though ,

we may still have t h e privilege of disputing the correctness of Descartes

representation of the case Hence I do not say or imply that D es ca r

.

tes was right in his position but only that he does not seem to be
,

amenable to Kantia n criticism We m ay question his View of what

.

the idea of God is namely a n ecessary idea but once grant i ts

, , ,

unique character distinct from other ideas and the major premis e

of Kant s representation does not apply But we may also say or .
,

have said against us that the Cartesian position is not properly onto
,

l ogical . Descartes may beg the question but his position is not ,

refutable by premises founded upon empirical con ceptions I .

think I would quite agree that t h e basis of the argument is in reality

-

changed by Des cartes in his conception of it It is not strictly .

ontological as that notion is usually dened Kuno F is cher calls .

it the anthropological argument conditioning the application of ,

the ontological afterward to a necessary idea It is des cribed .

in a way to show that the principle at t h e basis of it and of the prob

lem of the divine existence is in reality what I shoul d call e tiological .

This View of it I conceive to represent the true conception of the

Cartesian position and also the correct w a y to regard the problem a s ,

well as the form of all dis cus sion of reality not merely the problem of ,

the existence of God but also that of matter and all other real or sup
,

posed substance The real and primary troub l e with the problem as
.

it Wa s conceived by Kant and by many other doubters and believers

,

alike was the system of d ualis m which would not permit the a pp l i
,

cation o f causality without distinguishing between that which ac

co unted for physical phenomena and that which was necessary t o
explain mental facts or between that which justie d the belief in the
,

existence of matter and that which would give something else so v e r

g y over nature
ei nt . To have conceived the proble m of the existence
of God and that of matter as the same would have put the problem on
a better foundation and to have relieved it of its exposure to the real

or imaginary dii c ul t ies involved in scepticis m generally even though ,

the solution of the problem was not any more apparent than it was be
fore su ch an ana lysis or con ception of it was suggested .

The main criticism however which can be dire cted against Kant s
, ,

treatment of the problem is the fact that he h as failed to recognize two

d istinct questions in it The rst is the synthetic n ature of the argu
.

ment if I may call it such and the second is the distinction between
, ,

the legitimacy of various m et /zo d s of argument and the actual su ccess

o r failure of their application By the rst of these considerations I
.
5 24 TH E PR OBL EM S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

mean that Ka nt failed to properly analyze the conception of God in its

relation to the methods of argument affe cting different moments in it .

He did recognize that the conception of God stood for more than a single
predicate or characteristic , but in applying the various arguments for
the proof of his existence he failed to note that they were not applica
ble one and all separately to the same particular result He criticised .

the ontological argument as if it were suf cient to prove the whole
case if it were legitimate at all It was the same with the co sm o l o g
,
.

ical and teleological arguments H e assumed tha t they shoul d prove .

everything or nothing But I must maintain that they h ave not been
.

fairly treated The cos mological argument if legitimate is adapted

.
, ,

only to the idea of the bare Absolute and not to intelligence or moral ,

qualities The teleological argument will not prove an Absolute but

.
,

n othing more tha n intelligence and morality if the d a ta are present for ,

its successful application I grant that their we ak ness as apparent to

.
,

the ordinary ma n lies in n o t being sufcient to prove the whole ca se

,

alone Nor do I mean to i mply by this that if they have any legit
.
,

i m a c y at all they can in combination effect this end

,
While I grant .

that they h ave a value as methods and wo uld have a different sign i
cance if they could severally support distinct aspects of the conception
before us and thus e ffect a combination that might be useful to philo
,

s ophical reection there are conditions ne cessary to make them suc

,

c essf ul which are dependent upon more important considerations than

mere legitimacy of method .

What I mean by this last remark can be explained only by an a na ly

sis o f the conception of God as it has been e m ployed for many cen,

t ur i es .This I shall express by the characteristics of c a u s a l i ty i n t el ,

l ige n c e a n d m o r a l i ty
,
Whether they are correctly attributable to
.

such a being is not n o w the question but whether they do or do not ,

constitute the historical conception with which we are dealing Kant .

was aware of its complexity and recognized that the idea stood for both

an e n s r e a l zss zm u m and a highest intelligence But he made
' '

no e ffort to relate these ch a racteristics to different methods of proof .

Moreover he had to do his thinking in an atmosphere which on one ,

s ide was saturated with the monis m of Spinoza and on the other with
, , ,

the dualis m of Descartes Kant never appre ciated the monis m of the
.

one and could not accept the dualis m of the other The arguments .

and conceptions that were adapted to the dualistic views and needs of
Christianity had tried to nd an adjust m ent to the physical monis m of
Spinoza which had been the result of that scientic movement begun
,

w ith the indestructibility of matter and motion In this monistic con .

 TH E E X I S TE NCE OF G OD .
5 25

ce p t i o nand situation the idea of God had to share in th at of matter and

spirit combined or be reduced to that of matter alone in some sense
of the term and hence to represent in either case an absolute substance
,

whose modes were its o wn evolutio n an d not independent realities in

some other center of action even though created by this absolute
,
.

Kant however was too m uch infected with the pluralistic vie w of
, ,

things a s represented by Leibnitz to see clearly where the dif culty

arose and too much impressed with the strength of the mechanical View
of nature to es cape these dif culties and hence his trouble with the
,

cos mological argu m ent Besides the pla ce whi ch the conception of a
.

ne cessary be i ng occupie d in Ka nt s dis cussion of the problem as

,

well as his infatuation for necessary and a p r i o r i truths shows ,

h o w he w a s infected with the Spinoz istic conception which had be

come W holly divested of the facts and assumptions which had origi
nally given rise to it namely the phenomen al universe and its demand
, ,

for a causal ground The n ecessity for believing in this ground as

.
,

determined by the assumption of its phenomenal nature came to be ,

applied to its temporal and phenomenal origin rather than to the

obligation to suppose it as the complement of a phenomenal order
.

The o n ly necessity in the case is epistemologica l not metaphysical , ,

as that has ofte n been conceived a n d hence is wholly conditioned upon

,

the assumption of phenomena that imply it but do not determine it

But at the time of Kant philosophy had lost the conception of nature
which necessitated the notion of a Creator and it was of course quite
natural to ra ise the question of his existence The n e w position of .

s cience divided the eternal between matter and spirit with no evidence
o f t he latter and left no room for the unity which the philosophic
,

mind demanded except in materialism and the consequence was that

, ,

Kant h a d to choo s e between the persistence of force and a reality which

could clai m nothing but ontological evidence in lieu of the ae t io
logical which fell to matter .

I shall not go into any minute historical criticism to establish this

point against Kant I intend to content myself with the general o b
.

servation that the conception of this transition period w a s not qualied

to represent rightly the problem which the question rega rding the ex
i st e n ce of God pre s ents It was burdened with a heritage which had
.

not made itself clear in its relation to the n ew scientic movement It .

was the traditional conception of cos mi c views that were asso ciated
with a theory of creatio n and that appeared irretrievably shattered by
the indestru ctibility of matter and m otion that originate d the p er p l ex i
,

ties felt Dualis m still persisted after the excuse for its existence had
.
5 26 TIi E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OP H Y
.

been removed and the conception of God seemed to be as superuous

,

a s the Epicurean divinities in the in t er m u n d i a Kant s perplexity in.

this situation was certainly pardonable But I think that we shall .

wholly miss the proper point of view in t h e questio n if w e either accept

his statemen t of it or treat his Vie w as anything more than the co nfusion
of a transitional stage a period infe cted with the antithesis between mat
,

ter and spirit and the contradictions of a providential s ch eme whic h

made the cosmos divine while it repudiated matter as a moral contami
nation a blotch on the otherwise fair features of existence H aving
,
.

accepted the a e n s ex m a cki n a theis m of Aristotle which allowed for

the self evolution of a material system once created the theistic doc
-

trine wa s n o w face to face with a material and mechanical order that

had nally dispensed with the need of a speci c creation by means of
the persistence of matter and motion and the existence of a whole sys

tem of internal forces a position that forced either the abandon
,

ment or the reconstruction of the conception of the divine The .

Aristotelian rst cause seemed no longer ne cessa r y as the prius in a

nite series of r eg r ess us or events and speculation was left with an
,

inert eternal in matter and motio n to struggle with the problem of evo
l ut i o n and cha n ge as best it could Science did not kn ow what it had
.

to meet in this relation between inertia and change and philosophy

was reluctant to put its nger on a cr o a t i a co n t i n u a doctrine because
it w a s frightened at the bugbear of Pantheism H ence Kant and p hi .

IOS O p h y were confronted with that condition which m ade the existence
of an extra material cause unnecessary for the initiation of a series that
-

never began and as they did not feel suf ciently the signicance of the
,

fact of change they were not disposed because of the traditional con
,

c e t i o ns of trans cendental reality to place the initia tion i n the system

p ,

with which it was dealing since the immemorial doctrine of inertia

,

stood in the way with all the force of both an axiom and a tradition .

The Aristotelian and schola sti c doctrines required only a r s t cause ,

a prime mover of a system that needed no further regulation or inter

ference after its creation or disposition but t h e nal success of material
,

ism made it necessary either to abandon all hope of the divine or to nd

it immanent in the system F inding the divine as prevalently conceived
.
,

to be unnecessary Kant had to make it a thing in itself and place

,

it li ke the Epicurean gods outside the material system in order to

, ,

avoid denying it altogether It did not occur to him that he could r e

.

construct the problem so that its rst motive would n o t be the cos
m o l o g i ca l conception and its rst argument the ontological but a ,

principle which would account for the co n s t a n cy of change not the ,

 TH E E X I S T E N CE OF G OD .
5 27

p rimordial initiation of a system which was abando n ed to an inertia

a ctually incompatible with evolution .

This last remark indi cates the point of view from which the prob
l em has to be considered It is the modern conception of evolution
.

and change whi ch are perpetual , not o ccasio n al , and the still more i m
portant conception of un it i ng t h e caus es of phenomena in the same
subject or same kind of subject , that predetermines the manner of dis
cussing the existence o f Go d The place of cosmological conceptions
.

in this s cheme will be considered again but it must be remarked here,

that they take a secondary a nd not the primary place in it .

I have said that t h e conception of God represents the ideas of

cause of intelligence and of morality as the basis of cosmic action
, ,

and the question next is whether there are adequate reasons for sup
posing any such agency responsible for the order whi ch we obse r ve .

But I can neither give a direct answer to this question nor enter upon
its discussion u ntil I know whether I a m asked to prove or deny some
t hing else than a supersensible physical reality The crux of all dii.

c u l ti es in this perplexing p roble m is not in the conceptions which I

have said dene the idea of Go d for us but it is the far more impor ,

tant question of their relation to the body of scientic k nowledge in

our possession This was a question which hardly had any existence
.

in early Christian thought owing to that imperfect k nowledge of

nature which still left so large a eld to possible miracle or irreg
ul a r it y and the generally accepted dualism of the time
,
As long as .

t h e material universe sensible and supersensible w a s regarded as an

, ,

a bsolutely created thing the conception of God added

,
as necessary to ,

it the notion of immateriality to those which I have mentioned and

, ,

hence the evidence for God s existence would have to be found in

considerations which implied his distinction from the universe as wel l

a s displaying the qualities of causality , intelligence and moral char

a cter. The existence of some such power was necessarily implicated in

the assumptio n t h at the cos mos was an effect a phenomenal and ,

o bedient thing This assumption may not have been well founded

. .

With that I have nothing to do when estimating the consequences of it

,

o nce made . The assumption made n o other argument necessary and ,

i f the term
o ntological could be adapted to such a situation the
a rgument by that name would be valid and conclusive still I woul d .

prefer to call it wt i o l o gi ca l as w e shall observe later But the situa

,
.

t ion which commanded the inference or implication was completely

a ltered by the re turn to the s cientic conception of the indestructibility

o f matter without any alteration of the con ception of the divine it s elf ,
5 28 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

only a necessary implicatio n of the destru ctibility of matter If we .

could discuss the question i n terms of matter askin g whether person ,

ality might not be a function of the supersensible background which

s cience assumes for its material p h enomena , the problem would
offer fewer a p r i o r i dif cu lties But the situation , as dened by the
.

present condition of science and the pers istence of dualistic assum p

tions about God requires us to suppose a material substratum for the
,

cosmos th at is divested of personality and in addition the assumption

of a personal reality for w hom there was supposed to be no need in
s cience but for whom we have been taught a mora l need that appa
,

r en t l
y has no intimate connection with the physical order
. What .

proof is possible of such an independent bein g must be a matter of de

bate especially as the newer views of the cos mos make that proof dif
,

fer ent from tha t of antiquity The absence of evi dence for a causal
.

relation to the ori gin of the cosmos and the moral demand for a tele c
logical meaning in the system of things woul d place the l atter co n c ep
tion at the mercy of the former , as it did in Kant , an d the s cientic
requirement for causality as p rior to purposive relations is too stron g
to permit t h e moral argument any weight in the absence of tha t caus
ality which has to be initiative T h e choice thus seems to l ie between
.

materialis m w ith its supposed atheis m and the defense of theis m on the
ground of trans cendency Theology has not permitted any recon
. ~

struction by noting the tendency of speculation to dematerial ize

m att er tha t is , rene the old conceptions unti l ther e is practically no
,

distinction between m atter and spirit as once conceived but persists ,

in making the causal intelligence , which it calls God , an agent disti nct
from all matter wha tsoever and so conceived it is impossible to mak e
,

it intelligible or to suppose it capable of representin g any causal action

in the cosmos When th erefore any man is called upon to express
.
, ,

his convictions about the existence of God , he is confronte d with the

assu m ption that this causal agent can in no case be identied w ith any
reality lik e matter It is not enough to believe that there is intelligent
.

cau sality in the cos m ic system but it is demanded that we place that
,

intelligent cause outside the system which it did not create and w hich
we a r e simultaneous ly told neither shows evidence of intelligence and
morality nor re quires a creative force to make its existence and action
intelli g ible This simply results in what might be ca lled an i r r et r i ev
.

able dualism There is no objection to a dualism of realities that show

.

some recipro city of action and relation to ea ch other B ut a dualism .

which both connects and separates distinct real ities is either absu rd or
represents a paradox and must give exceptionally good reas ons for that
 TH E E X I S TE NC E OF G OD .
5 29

mode of S peech There could hardly be anythin g more than a me

.

c h an i c a l relation between two eternal and independent realities if they ,

can be gotten into relation at all and the very theory of creation r e
,

quires it to be more than mechanical The evidence of the divine .

existence might be more apparent if the relation were merely mechan

,

ical but assuming the divine as the creator of the system , the r esp o n
, ,

sibi l it
y for its outcome would be greater whi le the dy n amic cha racter
,

of its worki ng would more effectually conceal the motives that govern
it , a fact which is su f ciently concealed i n the mechanical system .

But in a cos mos which found God only a disposer of its order and not
necessarily the only a gent concerned in its a ctivity the only argument ,

that could discover his presence in it wou l d be the te l eological and ,

cosmolo gi cal conside r ations of the s cholastic type would have no pla ce
in the evidence That is , efcient and material causes in the system
.

and supposed to dispense with the idea of a creator of anythi ng what

ever might suf ce to a ccount for all but its teleolo gy , and the c o n se
,

que n c e would be that nature would have nothing divine i n it but

only outside its real m, while the unity of the system would be sacri
c e d to the necessity of nding the divine outside the machinery by
which it accomplishe s its purpose and reveals itself , and so would
prevent the determination of its character by excluding fro m its nature
the expression of what we actually observe and admire without tracing
its causality there This is to say that the fundamental dif culty of
.

the ordinary theism is that it i n sis ts so radically upon the t r a n s c en ~

den ey of God in its cosmological conception of creation while it a d ,

mits the action of seconda r y causes that between what nature ,

is supposed to do of her self and what is left for providence the oppo ,

sitio u between matter and spirit becomes that between good and evil ,

as determined by the abstractio n of the divine from the order whi ch he

is assumed to have made .

In regard to this conception that the world was created by God and
then left to itse l f , Lotze makes a clear statement He says I will .

not urge the obje ction that this view provides only a limited sa t isfa c
tion to our feelings ; in its s cientic aspect it is u nintelligible to me .

I do not unde r st and what is meant by the picture of God withdrawing

from the worl d that he has created , and leavin g it to follow its own
cours e Tha t is inte l ligible in a human ar t ic er , who leaves his work
.

when it is nished and trusts for its maintenan ce to the universal laws
of nature l aws which he did not make himself an d which not he , but
, ,

another for h i m , maintains in O peration But in the case of God I .

cannot conceive what this cunningly contrived creation of a self

34
5 30 TH E PR O B LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

sustaining order of nature could be ; nor do I see what distinction

there can be between this View and the View that God at each moment
wills the same order and prese rves it by this very identity of will
,
.

The immanence of God in the course of n ature could not therefore ,

be escaped from by this theo ry ; if nature follows m echanical laws it ,

is the divine action itself whi ch as we are accustomed to say o bey s

, , ,

those laws but which really at each moment creates them F or they
, .

could not have existed prior to God as a code to which he a c co m m o

dated himself ; they can only be the expression to us of the mode of

his work .

H aving decided that the question of the existence of God involves

an insistence upon the condition that ultimately the causality of the
cos m os shall be one eith er as a creator of material substance or ident i
,

cal with it we come to the consideration of the three subordinate issues

,

that arise and which were mentioned as implied by the term God ,

namely causality intelligence and morality But t h e argument which

, ,
.

w ill prove each of these characteristics is not materially the same .

The process is what I shall call a syntheti c one This means that .

each p r edicate must be ad d ed on to the preceding one so that the ,

proof of the p rior characteristic will not involve a deductive inference

to the latter qualities Different concrete facts are involved in the a t
.

t a in m e n t of the complex result But the primary point to be observed

.

in the process is that it must not begin with the assumpti on of any

radical severance of the ide a of God in its rst moment from that , ,

of the immediate back ground of nature

I mean to insist upon a .

closer relation between the supersensible of Gree k thought and the

superphysical or imm a terial if you li k e the supernatural of Christian
, , ,

thought If the argument requires it I woul d interpose no objections

.
,

to their absolute identication This would not mean however that.

, ,

we shoul d adopt the Greek conceptions historically understood but ,

that we may eliminate the triple distinction between the sensible and
the supersensible between the supersensible and the superphysical
, ,

and between the sensible and the superphysic a l I shall not assume a .

p r i o r i however that this identication is the qu ae situm with which

, ,

we must start our inquiries even though the necessity of it is a fact

, .

The investigation is too compli ca ted to justify the anti cipation of too
much in our major premise It may be that we should be justied in
.

assuming that there is more in the background of nature than ma

t e r i a l reality but the most obtrusive evidence of this view m a
, y not
guarantee more than the simplest of predicates and we may require ,

m ore complicated evidence for thos e whi ch give renement and moral
 TH E E A I S TE N C E G OD

OF .
53 1

importance to what is represented by the idealized conceptio n of God .

T h ough I mean to abolish th a t unfortunate dualism between the super

sensible and the superphysical , as it has been historically conceived I ,

do no t mean to eliminate the possible meaning which that dualism

represented All that I wish to do is to obtain a point of view by
.

which the common conceptions incident to traditionally antagonistic

s chools may be brought forward and the follies of their hereditary r e
li gio us feuds exposed The only way to do this is to show the elas
.

t i c ity of the conceptions which have served as competitors of the r e

l i g io us idea in the past and whi ch have appropriated its territory and
forced it into a region where it is without the facts in the suppo rt that
it once had Conciliation is possible only o n the condition that the
.

opposition between the two s chools of thought is not what it seems

supercially .

I have said nothing about the conception of God as a rst cause .

I have purposely evaded this matter in the dis cussion thus far because
the primary question is whether there is any cause of phenomena
at all and because the cos mological conception of the problem mis
apprehends its primary nature in that the idea of cause with which it

starts is that of phenomenal antecedence and consequence and tries
to get a rst cause in this way when it is impossible I have .

already indi cated h o w this notion arises when dis cussing the e tiologica l
,

and ontological problems ( p 3 7 ) that constitute the province of nou

.

menology I may now refer to that dis cussion as forecasting the way
.

in which w e have to View the application of causality to the problem

of God s existence I do not dispute the existence of a cosmological

.

problem in this connection but it is not the prior question of specula

,

tion It arises only when we have a world of at least numerically

.

different realities in interaction with each other and when w e assume

the doctrine of inertia as applied to the realities in this i nteraction .

O utside these assumption s the conception of a rst cause has no

such claim to prior importa nce as that which Kant gave it The .

existence of a subject initiating its o w n actions is not only prior to the

!

idea of that involved in external initiation but it does not require us

,

to assume the nit u de of the series of events concerned as the condi

tion of obtaining a cause or rst cause It is only when there is a
.

plurality of realities of an inert type and dependent upon external

action for the occurrence of events in the subje ct acte d on that we get

the idea of phenomenal ante cedence and consequence as represent
ing causality But even when the cos mological conception w as a c
.

cep te d as temporally ne cessary its value lay wholly in the real or

53 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

apparent denial of an innite series of phenomena in sequential form

O f course if the series is nite and causality has to be assumed the

,

antecedent is not a phenomenon so that the whole value of t h e

,

cosmological argument depended upon the ability to prove t hat the

series was nite But in addition to the dif culty of sustai n ing thi s
.

n it u de of the serie s those who so strenuously urged the necessity of

,

a cosmological in it iu m fo r the cosmic order concede d unwittingly o ne

half of their opponent s View and this concession w a s either that of a

subsequent eternity of what was once created or the self persiste n c e ,

-

of what was initiated until anot h er act of will terminated the creation
dependent upon this will It was readily granted by the theist and
.

the spiritualist that when a cause once acted to i n itiate an event t h e

subsequen t eve n ts in the same series were the effect of this antecedent
as a cause In other words an event once in existence as an eff ect
.

became a cause and so on indenitely all but the rst member in t h e

,

series representing what is k nown as a mechanical cause a n d

effect which is interpreted a s n o t i n v o l v i ng a ny t ni ng n ew i n exis t
,

e n ce a s t k e
r s t t er m i s s upp o s ed t o d o This assumption was sup
.

ported by all those facts that are represented in the mechanical trans
mission o f energy and so by the doctrine of its conservation But it .

was not true for all those aspects of the members in the series that
embodied actual changes of actual mode and most especially all the ,

qualitative changes not materially traceable to the nature of the ante

cedent But in spite of this false assumption the doctrine lived on to
.

embarrass the theist the moment that any serious doubt was raised
against the nite character of the series What should have been done
.

was to have shown that the whole case was independent of the ques
tion whether the seri e s was nite or innite and that there was n o ,

such qua l it a tiv e iden t ity and freedom from initial change in the system
'

as the mechanical theory conceived it Besides the abstraction involved

.

in conceiving what the identity is throughout the series leaves nothing

but the name of causality for describing t h e case without its content .

The pri m ary conception of causality as has already been pointed out
, ,

is modal change of a subje ct not the initiation of a mechanical serie s

,

in a cosm ic system of units or different centers of reference The .

rst appeal for explanation is to the subject in which an event occurs

and we should never trans cend it except for such reasons as are imp l ied
in the inertia of the subject in action In fact there are only t wo con
.

siderations that will ever justify this trans cendency and they can be ,

reduced to one They are the incapacity of t h e subject to explain certain

.

facts and the do ctrine of inertia The former reason is nothi n g more
.
 TH E E A I S TE N C E G OD 5 33

OF .

t ha n what is implied by inertia as there can be n o w ay of proving

,

f oreign cau s ality without the assumption of inertia The existence of .

i nertia denes the limits of subjective capacity and if it is made uni

.

versal all phenomena in a subject must seek their cause in an

e xternal source If the fact external to the subject in any given case and
.

considered as a cause itself be an eff ect and inertia again be assumed

, , ,

the further cause must be transferred again to another foreign center

o f reference and so on indenitely as long as any given antecedent is
,

c onceived as an effect or phenomenon as well as a condition of its

c onsequent . We should have an innite p r o gr essus of events as well
a s an innite r e g r ess us of them No w neither a r eg r essus nor a pro
.

gr ess us of events could take place according to the doctrine of inertia

, ,

u nless w e have a system of intera cting centers of reference and even ,

with these absolutely no qualitative changes in the transmission of

e nergy or interaction could occur if inertia were absolute The fact .

o f change in the series shows that we have to deal with a subjective

c ausality that is distinct from the cosmo l ogical conception of s erial

relations.

It is in the conception of inertia and of nothing but a serial relation

between events that the cosmologi cal argument for the existence of
G o d arises and its capacity for giving trouble to the theistic View lies
,

p recisely in the di f culty of nding the beginning which the argument is

s u posed to require
p Its nity would of course , imply a cause differ
.
,

e nt from t h e members of the series but with the conception of ,

phe
no m ena l causation it w as impossible to make clear this nity Both .

t h e theist and the s cepti c assumed that causality primarily represented

.antecedence a n d consequence between phenomena that is both a , ,

d istinction i n time and trans cendency of origin for the effect But the .

t heist maintained and according to the historical conception of his

,

t heory must m aintain that the series h as an absolute beginning , while

,

t h e s ceptic either denies this or nds no satisfa ctory evidence for its

b eing a fact It is clear that the theist s conception in spite of the

.
,

concession to the idea of phenomenal causation assumes that the ,

ultimate cause of the series is non phenomenal while the s ceptic s i m

-

plies that it is phenomenal and hence that the series has no beginning .

But w e may ask the theist why he accepts antecedence a n d c o nse -

que n c e as the n orm of causality when he trans cends the phenom

enal for his ultimate and the sceptic wh y he supposes any cause at
,

all when he assumes the innity of the series Apparently therefore .

, ,

t h e controversy i s carried on under a misunderstanding The t wo .

p arties have not altogether the same conception of cause throughout

5 34 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

the problem They agree only in so far as they accept a pheno m ena]
.

series of antecedents and consequents and separate when the assu m p ,

tion of one that the series is nite necessitates the transphenomenal

that may not be antecedent at all and when the assumption of the other
would not permit any antecedent to the innite series and hen ce n o
ultimate cause The theist s assumption that his rst cause is only
.

at the beginning of the series instead of continuous or coterminou s

with it that is the init i u m of each member in it involving a change
, , ,

exposed him to that conceptio n of the series in all but its initial cause
which places him at the mercy of his critic His theis m is that of .

Aristotle if we may call Aristotle s conception by that na me since his

,

,

rst cause or prime mover merely started things which went on after
ward of their own momentum or forces Consequently to the s ceptic .
, ,

it appeared a rather a p r i o r i position to determine where and when

the series began and the theist has to rely upon the assumption tha t
,

the innite is never a sum of the nite to assure himself of any phe
n o m en a l beginning at all The fact that we cannot sho w any de
.

n ite evidence that the be ginning occurred at any specic point and tha t

the empirical law of causality , that of phenomenal antecedence
and consequence involves the denial of any beginn ing seems to el i m i
, ,

nate the very condition on which a rst cause is demanded namely , ,

that the series shall begin without an antecedent phenomenon .

The whole trouble is due to confusion in the conception of ca usal

ity The theist starts with the admission that in the nite seri e s
.
,

which he assumes the cause is an antecedent phenomenon in a ll

,

but the cause of the rst member of the series where he ca nn ot sup

pose it to be a ph enomenon It may be either an antecedent tha t
.
,

is a temporal prius or a coexistent reality not antecedent at all He

, ,
.

thus shows that his conception of a rst cause is quite different

from any event in the series Starting with a phenomenal c o n cep
.

tion of cause though it be only hypothetical he has to en d with t h e

, ,

transphenomenal conception of it and makes himself independent of t h e

idea of antecedent phenomena There is nothing logically il legit i
.

mate in this as long as the idea of causality is assumed and the nite
nature of the series a dmitted to be a fact But there is a tendency in .

the concession for the sake of argument that the causal agency in t h e
, ,

series is not the same as at the beginning , to forget the causal agency
necessitated by changes in the series His opponent starts with the .

conception of pheno m enal antecedence for cause and with the sup
position that the series is o r may be innite ends with a situation in

which he can have no rst cause as antecedent and must either
 TH E E X I S TE NCE OF G OD .
S3 5

forego all causes or accept the do ctrine which contradicts the ass u m p
tion with which he started namely , that a cause must be an antecedent
,

phenomenon .
Both however it will thus be seen if they are to use
3
, , ,

the conception of cause at all have to end with the notio n that it is
,

transphenomenal in its primary and most important sense .

It will be i m portant at this point to present some proof that the

primary conception of causality must be no n phenomenal I start -
.

with the s imple fact that the demand for a cause of any kind is created

by the exigency that there are events or phenomena That is to .

say when w e recognize that a given fact is an event w e seek a cause

,

for it O therwise there is no need for inquiry No w what is an

. .

event ! It is a fact which has a beginni n g in time The very term .

implies this We must suppose a beginning in time for all events

.

whatever or the facts cannot be called events It is on the ground of

,
.

this beginning in time that we look for a cause Now the cause must .

be either an ante cedent event or s omething which is not an event If .

an event is caused by an antecedent event the re must be a series of

such events more or less comprehensive This series must be either .

nite or innite If the series be nite it has a beginning in time and

.

the rst event in it must be caused by something not an event whether ,

antecedent or coexistent with it Otherwise the series would not be

.

nite but innite Its n ity and its caused nature by supposition as
.
, ,

s ume that the cause is not an event unless causality be denied for the ,

rst member of the series a position dispensing with the necessity of

,

causality elsewhere and contradicting the assumption with which we

,

started But whether antecedent or coexistent it would no t be an

.

event O n the other hand if the series be innite it has no beginn ing
.
, ,

in time a nd there is neither a rst event in the series nor an ante

cedent event fo r its cause A n innite series cann ot have an ante
.

cedent event or antecedent of a ny kind for its cause but must be con ,

dit i o n e d by something which is not an event if it is caused at all I ,

. .

do not require to say anything about the impossibility of an innite

series composed of nite units or events This may be assumed as a: .

vantage ground for dis cuss ion to prove that the series must be nite ,

and so caused by something transcending it and not an event , the same

conclusion being true if it is innite and causality is supposed at all .

But we can assume for the sake of argument that an innite series is
possible in order to measure it against the conception of causality .

We must remark however that if w e apply the category of cause to

, , ,

it , the suppositio n of this causality will be possible on the ground that

it is n o t an event or an antecedent phenomenon because as r e , ,
5 36 TH E P I EO B L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H y .

marked above there can be no antecedent to that which has no be

,

ginning in time H ence the series whether nite or innite cannot

.
, ,

have an event for its cause We may maintain that it has no cause if
.
,

w e so wish to believe or assert But this would be to surrender the.

rationality of al l s cience that insists upon the recognition of causality .

Its search is not exhausted with mere coexistence a nd sequen ce though ,

this has to be the rst step in the ascertainment of cosmological causes .

The extent of the connection is the evidence of its ne cessity whi ch ,

even the s cientic m a n seek s as w e ll as its f a ctual character The de .

n ial of any causality whatever other than the uniformity of coexistence

a n d sequence may be correct in so far as we a r e at

p resent concern ed
, ,

but human nature is hardly constituted so as to take a course like that .

In fa ct events have no meaning unless they are interpreted or ex

,

plained by causes whether these events be treated individually or col

,

l e c t iv ely A nite series of events does not differ essentially from an

.

individual event in so far as it represents a beginning in time as this

, ,

is the characteristic that brings it under explanation by causality We .

a r e therefore not li k ely to es cape the admission that there is a cause

, ,

o f some kind which will be more than the spontaneous origin of events

a n d which will be a subject or ground of them The only question .

that remains after that is whether that cause is ultimately an event .

We have found that it cannot be such in either a nite or innite series ,

and this conclusion means that the primary notion of cause is not that

of a rst event nor even necessarily a rst or temporally ante
,

cedent reality not an event though this might be the fact but of a
, ,

reality whether antecedent or coexistent with its acts , which is not

,

broken up into units of time .

I have assumed as the student usually does that an innite series

, ,

may be caused But this assumption requires qualication That

. .

which has no beginning in time can have no temporal or antecedent

cause as we have already seen since we never seek for a cause except
, ,

for that which begins in time The advo cate of cosmological in n i .

tude in the temporal series forgets that this i dea contradicts his con

c e t i o n of cause as an ante cedent phenomenon which is impossible
p
in a ny such series as a w hole and it is t h e whole about which he
s peaks . O therwise he has no innite series His cause if cause .
,

there be mu st be coincident with the facts that he possesses an i m

, ,

manent principle inhabiting not excluded from t h e phenomena ,

that come to him for explanation In no case can w e es cape the sup .

position o f an Absolute whether w e choose to regard it as nou menal

,

o r phenomenal while any recognition of causality at a ll will drive
,
 TH E E A I S TE N CE G OD 53 7

OF .

us into the nou m enal This absolute is forced upon us beca use a
.
,

nite series must be originated by that which is not an event as a con ,

dition of being a nite series of events or e ffects at all and becau se an ,

innite series can have no antecedent in ti m e This of course r e .

, ,

s ul t s in the con clu s ion that a true primary cause is not an antecedent

phenomenon but a subject which whether coincident or ante cedent

, ,

to it s attributes and functional action is the proper center of reference ,

for all phenomena and their true cause the temporal relation between ,

phenomena being only the index of the la w of action not its ,

ef cient determinant .

Another matter in t h is question shoul d be re m arked It is com .

mo u ly conceded where there is any serious reection on the proble m

, ,

that no s um of the nite c an ever co n stitute the innite This is un .

questionably true whenever the innite is conceived a s qualitatively

,

different from the nite We can have no denominatio n in the sum

.

which is not in the units or parts It is quite possible that the same
.

will hold true wh en the difference is supposed to be only quantitative .

Assuming the fact in either case we should have denite proof that the
,

cos mologica l series is nite and that it is impossible to conceive it as

innite With this result Kant s antinomy would be an illusion But
.

.

it is not ne cessary to push a dii c ul ty here in the form that the sum of

the nite can never produce the innite as the thought ca n be best ,

expressed by showing that the talk of an innite series confuses the dis
tinct notions of innite time and innite number Innite time is .

homogeneous and continuous and so without beginning In n ite

,
.

number represents the heterogeneous and the dis crete , or quantities as

units A series of events whether nite or innite represents two

.
, ,

things the time element and the number element When it is con
, .

c e i v e d as nite both the collective series and the individual members

represent a beginning in time But in the so called innite series the

.
-

collective whole h a s no beginning while each member has a begi nning

,
.

In the former case we can suppose both to be temporally caused ; i n

the latter the whole has no antecedent cause while all the individual ,

members con ceivably have an ante cedent cause and admittedly h ave a
coexistent cause if cause at all and if not caused by an ante cedent It
, ,
.

is thus t h e time element that is innite and not caused while the fact
o f change always calls for it no matter how we conceive the series
,
.

Ha v ing shown that the rst cause is always t r a n 5 p h e n o m enal ,

it is incumbent upon me to ask why it is so universal to regard caus

ality as necessarily implying antecedence and co n sequence The a n .

s wer to this question is that this conceptio n is the only form in which
538 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

it can ever present sensible evidence of a relation implying the di ffer

ence of some k ind which is necessary in the idea of cause and effect ,

though it may not be one of time and space There woul d be no way .

of distinguishi n g between cause and effect concretely if it were not for

the fact that in a cosmological system the distinction between centers
, ,

of reference and between their actions and rea ctions on each other c o
i n c i de d with the idea of cause and e ffect su f ciently to make phenom
enal relations in time an index of a fact which is not necessarily con
stituted by antec e dence and co n sequence at all In the interaction .

between two subjects say the impact of two balls we as cribe the
, ,

causal act to the mo v ing subject whose action is perceptibly antecedent

to the motion in the subject a cted on The antecedent subject is the
.

cause and it is distinct from the subje ct acted on in space while the ,

motion in one is antecedent in time to that of the other Hence the .

e v i d e n ce of what the cause is must be found in antecedence of the

action of the impelling subject with the assumption of inertia in the

affected subject But in fact the causal action does not involve ante
.
, ,

c e de n ce at all . The e f ciency occurs co e xist ent ly with the effect in the
s ubject acted on .But if it were not for the assumption of inertia and
the time relation of phenomena uniformly associated the cause could
always be placed in the subject affe cted as well as in the subject sup
posed to in uence the result However the cause in any case is a
.
,

subject acting and the events indicating it are in a cosmological ,

system ante cedent and consequent Moreover in the communication

,
.
,

of knowledge regarding causes it is necessary to have experiential

data for ma k ing intelligible the causal relation implying a d istinction
not clearly evident in the unity of time and space and the only condi ,

tion under which empirical evidence of such a relation can appear

is in the fact of phenome n al anteceden ce and consequence This will .

demand an independence o f the subjects even though the moment in

whi ch the actual causal agency produces its effect represents a co in c i
dence as that between subject and function This is only to say t h at .

the r a t i o co g n o s ce n d i not the r a t i o ess e n d i of causality is p h eno m e

, ,

na l antecede n ce and consequ e n c e a ssociated with the assumption o f

inertia O n any other view of the case it will not apply Hence w e
. .

must always expect the representative formula for causality to take the
empirical form and to expose us to t h e cosmological illusion un

,

less we can free ourselves from it by proper reection .

Assuming then the transphenomenal nature of causality in its rs t

power and its ultimate independence of a ntecedence and consequence
in time we are prepared to apply the conception to the prob l em of th e
,
 TH E E X I S TE N CE OF G OD .
539

existence of G od I shall have a threefold argument w hi ch I shall

.

distinguish by the ae tiological the ontological a n d teleological What

, , . .

I have called the ontological is distinct from the old one by that name
and is determined by the signicance of that term i n the classication
of the s ciences But in the appli cation of these methods I must em
.

p h a si z e t w o very important considerations The rst is that they do

.

not severally or distinctly illustrate or prove the same thing The .

aetiological argument will prove n othing more than the fact of an Abso

lute and this without regard to the question whether it is plural or singu
lar matter or spirit No chara cteristics but its causal function or com
,
.

p l i m e nt a ry relation to phenomena ca n be established by this method .

The o ntological argument is designed to determine its unity and its

nature The teleological argument is a sort of combined ae tiologi cal and
.

ontological process , though applicable only to cos mological relations

for determining the conjunction of intelligence and moral purpose in
connection with ei cient causality The second consideration is t h at the
.

argument shall be conducted on the assumption that there can be and

ought to be a reconciliation between the G reek supersensible and the
Christian superphysical realities Such an assumption will not readily
.

commend itself to minds bre d in the dualis m which has possessed

civilization for so many centuries and which has embodied itself in the
more or less petried antithesi s between religion and science , or God
and nature But whether it commends itself or not I am convinced
.
,

that there is no salvation for the religious sentiment in any other r e

source The antagonisms that have been cultivated betwee n the poetic
.

and the scientic views of the cos mos have dened themselve s so

clearly and work ed out their embodiment in language with su ch stub

born and consistently conicting ideas and associations that the revo ,

l ut io n must be great which will bring them into harmony Nev er t h e .

less I a m rmly convinced that , unless philosophy can succeed in

uniting divorced tendencies in a way to preserve the best elements of
both there can be nothing but a wasteful controversy between truth and
,

beauty between a passionless study of nature and a sentimental wor

,

ship o f the unreal The antagonism was rational enough in the last
.

days of Greece and Rome with the rise of Christianity when material
ism w a s sensuous and immoral and the reli gious cons ciousness was
endeavoring to revive the spiritual ideals of P lato and Judaism It .

was also excusable as long as the assu mption prevailed that the whole
cosmos s ensible a n d supersensible was ephemeral so that the spirit
, , ,

ual had to be sought in the immaterial But after science has disco v
.

ered a whole innite universe of supersensible forces and reduced the

5 40 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

s ensible cos mos to an insignicant affair while its conception of mat

,

t e r can hardly be di stinguished from spirit , and when ethics has meas

u r a bl
y triumphed over the purely sensuous l ife there is less reason , ,

a n d perhaps none at all for persisting in holding the conception of

,

God so far apart from our extremely etherealized ideas of matter

, ,

e specially that the progress of knowledge forces more and more upon

o ur convi ctions the essential unity of things which was not so apparent

t o antiquity as to us though it was as rmly believed

,
In the atomic .

d octrine of the ancients there was of course little to make the unity
, ,

o f the cosmos intelligible and it was the demand for this unity and i n
,

t elli gibilit y that led to the postulation of the divine being to a ccount

f o r facts not naturally traceable in the action of the elements But in .

m odern times w e have very much simplied the atomic theory by r e

du c i n g the elements to a nite number some seventy or more and by
, ,

t h e discove r y that possibly these are reduci ble to one form of energy .

T h e ancient do ctrine had no mean s to account for their composition

bu t a m e chanical system while the multiplicity of the elements allowed
,

f o r any number of combinations suitable to qualitative di ffer e nces in

t h e compounds . But the modern theory not only assumes qualitative
di fferences in the atoms except a recent View and owing to their
, ,

limited number has to endow them with internal forces that take the
purely mechanical conception of composition out of the eld of ex
p lanation or limits its application But the tendency to either accept
.

t h e ether as the ultimate for m of energy or to reduce all atomic ele

,

ments to one form of reality far more supersensible than the Greeks

conception of non sensible matter provides in the eld of nat ural

-

s cience that unity of regulative agency in the cosmos which m o n o t h e

ism afforded when reducing the polytheistic stage of reection to

o rder ,
and consequently with the l a w of parsimony operative on
,

human thought brings every conception of G od that is dualistically

,

transcendental into dangerous competition with that unity of forces

which offers so attractive a solution to the problem of cosmic com
p l e x it ie s having no supercial evide nces of personality at its basis The .

choice in such a situation must be between the abandonment of the

divine and its unication with cosmic energy .

This position is reinforced by the ve ry important consideration that

the conception of matter has become so elastic and rened that it i s
impossib l e to distinguish it from the ancient conception of spirit I .

have already called attention to this fa ct when dis cussing spi ritualism ,

and the fact must come up here again for further remark If we .

l imited the term matter entirely to the sensible world to what we ,
 TH E E X I S TE NC E OF GOD .
S4 I

actually see and touch with the limited ca pacities represented by t h e

,

properties so manifested we should n d it necessary li k e the o l d

, ,

Greeks in the rst stages of their reection to call t h e supersensibl e

,

reality ether as a means of disting u ishing the ner elements o f
,

nature from the coarser It w a s a long time before Gre co Roma n

. -

thought could bring itself nally to regard even the air as matter .

Students of philosophy will recall the elaborate arguments of Lu cretiu s

to prove that the air i s matter and not some form of ethere a l substance .

But eve n the materialists did not venture upon su ch a conclusion unti l
they had already become familiar with the conceptio n of supersensible
matter quite as rened as the abounding ether a nd pro bably dis
t in gu i s h e d from it only by its tendency to gravity The ether h o w .
,

ever was soon abandoned after all reality was redu ced to matter and
,

the void and all supersensible reality classied also with matter T h e
, .

monistic tendency was too strong to tolerate a multiplicity of elements

qualitatively different from ea ch other The reduction of the air and
.

all supersensible or ethe real reality to matter whether of the atomic or

,

non atomi c form was a unication of multiple forces even though it

-

, ,

was obtained by an extension of t h e meaning of the term matter

where it was supposed that we were exorcising spirit while in fact w e
were but rening matter to include it This movement of Gree k .

thought was not cons c ious of itself except in P lato where the philo
sophic and the poetic instinct joined hands to take a n ethereal ight o n
the wings of fa ncy and hope Plato was quite willing to limit t h e
.

conception of matter to the sensible and the ephemera l world bu t ,

a consideration which must always operate with the human mind

prompted later philosophers to the extension of the term m a tter t o
cover all the facts of human experience This was the instinct for
.

unity together with the habit of naming a reality in terms of w hat it is

supposed to d o rather than in terms of what we imagine is d es i r a l e .

I have already called attention to the fact that ultimately we know the
nature of a thing by what it does and that terms denoting sub
,

stance will always be chosen to name the back ground of phenomen a

even though the reality so named has to be distinguished by antithesis
with its eff ect The moment that the sensible world which the na i ve
.
,

understanding h a d taken for a xed substance became a mere phe ,

n o m en o n ,
the modal appearance of a supersensible reality it h a d to ,

be conceived as too closely related to its cause to receive any othe r

name for it than the current name and hence matter from being a
,

sensible fact alone came to be a name for the supersensible condition

of a re a lity that could at a n y time manifest itself to the senses We a t .
542 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

rst name a thing for what it i s and when we dis cover that we either
,

d o not know what it is at all or know what it is only in what it d o es

, ,

we still continue to name it as before , though the n e w position involves

an antithesis in conception of that which it was at rst In becoming .

thus generalized the term matter is exceedingly equivocal no w ,

identical with what we see and feel and n o w identical with what can
be neither seen nor felt a term equally adapted to matter or spirit
, .

Before this conception obtaine d a footing there was but one thi n g to
know and name and this was the sensible worl d But the dis covery
, .

that there was a phenomenal world attached if that conception is ,

permissible , to some unchangeable reality led to that double faced

,
-

unity which gave the same name to both aspects of it while their
n atures were conceive d more or less in an antithe s is Plato saw this .

clearly when he endeavored to apply the notion of matter to the
s ensible world and that of idea to the supersensible world while ,

the materialists adopted matter for the supersensible without any

cons ciousness of the change of conceptions involved in their action .

It was impossible thus to generalize the term without one of two

consequences either the weak ening of the evidences for the immaterial
,

or the association of the mechanical idea with the supersensible In .

this wider generalization of the term it must represent that generic

meaning whi ch covers the qualities of both a sensible and a s up er sen
s ible reality with all the abstraction that this involves as it must apply
, ,

to facts conceived in an antithesis If applied only to the s up er sen

.

s ible,
it may be less confusing but none the less distinguished from the
sensible world In either of them it ta kes on all the negative coloring
.

t h at would be expected from a conception that opposed what h a d

passed for gross matter even though the associations and implications
,

of the latter have not been wholly es caped It wa s a misfortune for.

human thought th at this rened conception of matter was lost in the

conict whi ch perpetuated the hostility between materialism and spirit
u a li sm ; for there is the possibility of conciliation as long as th e mys

f erio n s plasticity and power of matter approaches all the ethereal

images of the divine whi ch are hardly more negative in relation to
,

s ensible matter than is the supersensible of materialis m It was only .

the coldly mechanical view of things which still clung to this co n ce p

tion of matter after it had been etherealized that drove the human mind
into the immaterial as a resource for a personal view of reality at the
basis of things for the sustentation of its hopes and ideals that it

thought inconsistent with nature and it has persistently held to that
,

policy amid every change in the conception of matter and all ev i

 TH E E X I S T E NC E OF G OD .
5 43

dence of a unity of things not easily dis c overable in dua l is m But .

there has been no suf cient reason for this persistence after the enemy
had conceded half the eld of philosophy to the claims that placed the
foundation of things beyond the reach of sense .

It is not necessary to rehearse at length the motives that prevented

the unicatio n of Greek and Christian conceptions after the dis covery
of the indestructibility of matter and motion They are all summa .

r iz e d in the petrifaction of religious ideas into abstract and anthropo

morphic formulas which permitted no such elasticity of conception and

nature as the propositions of physical science Ancient thought could .

most easily have made concessions from the side of religion because

there was so much mystery left in natu re after all the unity which
,

philosophy had given it that m e n should still resort to the s up e r sen

,

sible as they resorted to the superphysical for ultimate explanation .

DAS W U ND E R IST DE S GLAU B E N S LI E B S TE S KIN D .

Miracles are faith s favorite child

The idea of the mechanical
.

s eemed to have its limitations as clearly shown in the slow death of

,

the belief that the stars were divine But modern s cience while it has
.
,

s till more rened the conception of matter than the Greeks did even ,

to the extent of describing the ether in its terms has under the aegis , ,

of Copernican astronomy Newtonian gravitation and Darwinian evo

, ,

l ut i o n reduced the totality of existence to such a mechanical c o n cep

,

tion t w o of them doing for space what the third does for time that
, ,

the concessions which may be made to the ideas of the immaterial still
remain free fro m the eviden ce of intelligent purpose which is so essen
tial and insistent in the conception of God In spite of its representa
.

tion of God as unchangeable and incomprehensible religion has never

been properly willing to admit the idea of mechanical action i n to its
conception of the divine a n d consequently it has a lw a vs been fright
ened at the uniformity of nature as if its life depended on mystery i n
stead o f faith and condence in the co s mic order All that it needs to .

learn is that intelligence is quite as compatible with the ba ckground

of the phenomenal world as it is with materially organized beings ,

and having seen this to adjust its ethical life to th e present situation and
,

leave the outcome to the future It is clear that t h e amazing disc o v

.

eries of recent science and metaphysical speculations in the eld of

physical s cience in regard to the properties of matter the con ,

sc i o us n ess that the theories of it must be revised and modied and the ,

hypothesis of ether with properties as far beyond those of ordinary

matter as any theological i

spir t could be are considerations ,
5 44 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

that leave only one thing for poetry and religion to do and this is t o ,

em a ncipate themselves from the associations that haunt mechanica l

formulas and seriously ask whether all this supersensuous background
of the universe with its display of forces almost as different from t h e
, ,

simplest conception of the mechanical as an orderly purpose might not ,

be qualied by functions that merely conceal intelligence of a very

comprehensive type behind the mask of mechanism The ether with .

out any o f the positive properties that dene matter as we know it ,

except extension might be the receptacle of processes that un ite tel c o
,

logical with ae tiologi cal tendencies All that is required is to show

.

that there is nothing to prevent the possibility that the ether is con
scious The omnipresence of gravitation and electro magnetic force s
.
-

with any number of unknown agencies in the cosmos ma k e this quite

as possible as any that we know more clearly We might remembe r .

too in our laudation of the Kantian philosophy that his agnosticism

was as much directed toward our ignorance of what m ight be as wel l
as what might not be and hence that Kant insisted as much on t h e
,

possibility of an intelligent basis for the universe as he did for the de

fe e t of evidence Whatever limitations we ascribe to grosser matte r
.

in this respect and materialis m cannot exclude the capacity of int e lli
,

gence from some of its forms we should have less reason for excl ud
,

ing it from the ether than from dead matter if its properties o r , ,

capacities like S pirit are to be described as immaterial The ques

, ,
.

tion of its relation to space is irrelevant The repugnan ce to mak in g

.

the spiritual extended is a consequence of the illusions of idealism

which gets away from dualis m on ly by making consciousness a func
tion of matter and then disavowing materialis m while it adopted a
doctrine whi ch could n o t be distinguished from it Idealism has been .

the heir to the antagonism between materialism and S piritualism and ,

has developed it to that degree of logical completeness which prevents

all sanity of thought independently of a return to the unity of matter
and spirit which perhaps it often intends but expects to acco m plish
,

only by making spirit spaceless or by making both matter and spirit

,

spaceless Nothing but the ret e ntion of the dualistic conceptions of

.

Cartesianis m after t hat system has been abandoned induces p h ilo so

p h er s to insist that spirit must be unextended This superstition once .

eradicated we may hope to nd some unity in things compatible with

what we k n ow of matter .

Wer n i cht kennte

s ie Wh o d oes no t k now
D ie E lem ente , The lnts
e em e ,

Ihre K raft The i r p ower

 TH E E A I S TE rVC E OF G OD

.

U n d E i g ensch aft ,
ware ke i n M e i s ter
U eber d ie Ge i st er .

Assuming the possibility and the propriety of demanding a return

to co n ceptions which offer a hope of uniting hereditary enemies of ,

divesting the prejudices against matter of their sting by insisting that

it h a s long since lost all connotation that justies any fear of it , and
of bringing the immaterial into close enough juxtaposition with the
material to make its existence useful and effective , if provable we ,

may take up the s everal arguments that a ffect the problem of a spiritual
reality that has been embodied in the name of God whether we regard ,

it as a substance at the basis of matter or as a function of such as

we do recognize at the basis of cosmic action I repe at that I refuse to
.

start with any necessity for supposing it either material or immaterial

as a condition of making the argument e ffective It is the usual .

assumption w hether the argument be fo r or against the existence of

,

God , that if he exists at all , he must be immaterial I shall neither

,
.

assume nor deny this conception to start with The rst question .

after determining that of causality o r a ground for phenomena is
.
,

whether there is evidence of intelligence and then the further questio n

may or may not arise as to the nature of the substratum that displays
it this having been immaterial only in response to the assumption
,

about the origin of matter both sensible and superse n sible I am .

aware of the presumption against identifying conceptions so mutually

exclusive in both popular and philosophic parlance , and it is not m y
purpose to insist that we can either call matter God or God matter , ,

with entire impunity These opposing conceptions with all their

.

ramications and associations in connection with the antagonisms

of s cience and religion fact and poetry nature and art philosophy
, , ,

and common sense , realism and idealis m , coincident with the dist in c
tion between intellectual and emotional temperaments mark o ff natural

,

and articial antipathies that are of too long standing and of too
coherent a chara cter to yield to the rst touch of revolutionary change
which may take as many cent u ries to dissolve as it took to form t h e
antithesis But the philosopher does not depend on an imm ediate
.

p a c i cat io n of the plebs in the enunciation of his doctrine even though ,

he con demns the fatuity and blindness of a policy which treats nature
as the work of God and will nevertheless not concede that it is an ex
pression of his character Time is o n the side of the philosopher if
.

only he de clares the truth He can at least call attention to the possi
.

bili ty of conciliation and state the terms on which it can be effected ,

35
 5 46 TH E P R OB L E AI S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

and then leave the result to the slow process of evolution The idealist .

must concede the reconciliation of the supersensible of science and the

immaterial of religion , as his fundamental distinction is between the
s ensible and the supersens ib l e a lways being chary of any supernatural
,

t ha t is more than the background of the se nsible order , or reecti ng

i n tha t its truth its beauty and its goodness

,
The argument there
.
,

f ore which will rescue what is imperisha ble in the reli gious cons cious
,

n ess must proceed upon the assumption tha t wha tever we choose to

c all the divine must represent some unication with what passes as

nature though the synthetic character of the argument may nally
,

t ake us beyond the purely mechanical vie w of that order .

T ne z E t i o l o g i c a l A rg u m e n t . This argument is merely that of

nding a cause for facts which do not explain themsel ves and which
i mperatively demand explanation . I have already indicated what pla ce
i t has in determining the n o um e n o l o gi ca l problem wh ich is the rst
s tep in the solution of the present question It is no t neces sary to
.

r epeat here the more fundamental and elementa ry uses of the principle ,

a s I can suppose this to have been accepted at this stage of the dis cus

sion Nor a m I concerned at present with the question whether such

.

a cause or ground is one or many I am dealing only with the con

.

dition whi ch prompts to the supposition of any cause at all This is .

preliminary to the search for its nature single or plural material or

, ,

spiritual If the phenomena are so conne cted or related as to pre

.

determine the u nity of the ca use the ze t io l o gi ca l method will apply to

them But the rst thing to recognize is the fact that phenomena
.

demand a cause and tha t the primary conception of a cause is tha t of a

subje ct or substan ce , not an antecedent phenomenon We may call
.

this the no um eno l o gi cal point of view in contrast with the cos mo
lo gic al wh ich endeavors to look at the prob l em from the sta n dpoint of
a series of phenomena mechanically initiated This position as I have
.
,

already shown , I mean to treat as secondary as it is not adapted to the

,

explanation of change But it is the n o umen o l o gi cal conceptio n of

.

cause as distinct from the cosmological that has impo r tance here It
represents the necessity of s ome reality other than phenomena at
the basis of thin gs Its application may not take us beyond the atomic
.

theory which is a form of pluralism or beyond a uno monistic theory

,
-

of reality of a material sort but it assumes or proves that events must

,

have a cause or center of reference other tha n themselves subjects of ,

w hich the events are functions modes or attributes

, T h e only remain
.

ing ques tion is whether the individual subjects thus supposed in the
pluralistic view are independent of each other or are themselves de
 TH E E X I S TE N CE OF G OD .
5 47

n i t e ly related ae tiologically to a unitary reality trans cending them The .

o ntological argument must answer this question But the ae tiological .

p roblem is the rst to be solved .

The n o u m en o l o gi cal result in an implicate or correlate of the fact

o f change ; the cos mological a correlate of the doctrine of inertia in

c ombinatio n with the fact of change and a pluralistic system of inter

a cting realities . Man insists on a ccounting for change He may do .

this in two ways He may suppose it the effect of the subject in which
.

the phenome n on occurs or he may suppose it the effect of an object

,

on the subject in which the event tak es place In any case the subject .

o f the event is taken for granted This is primary and the relation of
.

e vents in ante cedence and consequence is secondary and does not rep

r esent the actual causal agent The existence o f Go d or of any back

.

ground to nature either as the evolutionary process of a single sub
,

s t a nt iv e reality or as a pluralistic system of ato m s having a further than

a cos mological unity is involved in this primary fact No w this is

, .

a ctually granted in the very conception of matter or ether They are .

bot h s ubstrata for the explanation or reference of certain phenomena

a s modes of existence Either of them will stand for an Absolute as
.

l ong as no evidence is dis coverable for their relation or dependence

upon a more ultimate reality and this is all that any system of e xp l a
,

n ation requires . But of this in the o ntolo gical argu ment since matter
-

i s a generalize d concept derived fro m a cosmological system of at least

r elatively independent and permanent centers of reference and the ,

e ther is as yet an indeterminate reality required only by the limitations

o f matter as known or as the ultimate source of matter We are n o w

, .

dealing with the conditions of change or of causes of events prior to

t h e question of their ontological unity This primary condition is a .

reality of which events are actions Sometimes it is characterized as .

t h e permanent substratum whi ch makes it possible for us to conceive

c hange . But I do not assert or assume the n eces s i ty of any eternal

b as is for phenomena as this term ne ce s sity is a misleading one and as
, ,

t h e only proper import of the term is the inevitableness of an event

t hat is caused not the inevitableness of its cause

,
We may be n eces .

s i t a t e d to believe the existence of a cause while the cause may not be

n ecessitated . Hence I am not at present concerned with any nature of

a substance but only with its ca usal relation to its modes and this ,
,

s eems to be demanded instinctively by the fact or assumptio n that

change does not account for itself Whatever the i nit ium assigned to .

any fact or phenomenon whether a cos mological series or not it is

, ,

a lways concerned as taking pl ace in a subject and as having its char

548 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y
.

acter determined by that subject A n Absolute of some kind is thus

.

necessarily given in the ve ry conception of the facts of experience or ,

if not given i n them is necessarily implied by them The Absolute .

,

however as a substance is a very meager substitute for the conceptio n

, ,

of God as that is dened and understood thou gh tha t much has rst
, ,

to be gained as a condition of obtaining more The existence of one .

or many absolutes is given with the fact of the relative and the number
of them will be determined wholly by the n umber of relatives not con
ne c t e d in a way to suggest unity A syste m of interrelated relatives
.

will suggest a single Absolute , while a system of independent relative s

must suggest plural ab s olutes In either case however we have a
.
, ,

substantive background for phenomen a while pluralism can hardly

be conceived as a rational system without a bond of connection to give
it the name of a system at all and this inevitably leads toward a u n ity
,

at the basis of any and all systems that are not a chaos even though ,

that unity be nothing more than teleological .

But the point at which the conception of the Absolute be gi ns to

coincide with the idea of God is that where the question of its in iti

ating agency arises The co nception of God as dened for us by

.
,

history is of course mu ch more than that of an Absolute though it

, , , ,

includes it The Absolute might be nothing more than a static reality

.

without the power to be more than a passive subject of its attributes a ,

dead inactive thing But the conception of God stands for at least t w o
.

functions which must be found in the Absolute as a condition of givi ng

it ph ilosophic and religious power They are the capacity for i nit i
.

ating change and the exhibition of intelligent action The rst of .

these is an aetiologica l and the second a teleological problem .

The place which any initiating agency shall have in the world will
d epend upon the compass and limitations of inertia It is pe r fectly .

possible to imagine a completely dead and changeless universe T h e .

apparently barren and unchanging condition of the earth s satellite is a

good illustration of what is quite possible in the whole cosmic system .

The doctrine of inertia seems to require the constancy and stab ility o f
any condition in which reality may be found at any moment of its
existence But what we nd in fact is a perpetual variation from any
.

such xity and the question is raised at once in regard to the limits of
,

inertia in explaining the facts or at least as dispensing with causal

,

agency Ancient materialis m especially in Epicurus saw clearly

.
, ,

enough that it could not get along with the absoluteness of inertia a nd ,

implanted spontaneity or free will in the very atoms as an initiating

a gen cy in cosmic collocations A self active principle seemed abso
.
-
 TH E EX IS TENCE OF G OD .
5 49

l ute ly indispensable to it to make any progress at all in explaining ,

a n d there seemed no o ffe n ce for reason to put this in matter as a n en

dowment quite compatib l e with its other functions and properties It .

was only when the human mind insisted on deni ng matter by inertia
as one or as the most essential of its properties , if property it is and ,

on distinguishing it radically from spirit which was endowed with

s elf activity that spontaneity wa s excluded from the atom
-

, and a bso ,

lute inertia too k its pla ce in matter Under this co n ception no change
.

from any given conditions whether of motio n or rest was possible

, ,

from within If change occurred as a fa ct it was traced to foreign

.

i nitiative , and any motion o nce instigated was supposed by the doc
tri n e of inertia to remain as it was started and its variation in dir e c
,

tion or the cessation of it was referable to a similar cause In this .

way the cosmological argument for an absolute beginning of a series

arose and neglected the consideration o f the changes that were co n
,

t a in ed within the series .

Now it is apparent that the universality or absoluteness of inertia

break s down with the fact of change wh ere ver the subject in which it
occurs counts for a cause modifying the direction or mode of what it
receives and the only question after that is whether the self activity
,
-

supposed to explai n change is to be found in matter or outside it ,

whether the Absolute is material or immaterial Nor does it make .

any difference in which we nd it if the result actually explains our

,

phenomena and opens the way to all those ideals which have sought
in various ways to obtain a support that was s upposedly n o t dis cover
able i n dea d matter Taki n g inertia to mean the inability of a sub
.

ject to change its condition whether of motion or rest a nd nothing ,

more th an this it is apparently if not unquestionably true that all

,

changes involving increase or decrease of motion must be cause d from

without an d as long as the explanation of all collo cations of matter
,

was made a mecha n ical process of motional change after the simplest

type of that phenomenon the cause had to be external and it w as
, ,

n atural to nd ultimate initiating causes outside matter while the amount

of existing motion in it remained the same this being once supposed to

,

exist But when chemi cal and organic action came to be considered
.

and when intern a l changes from a i n ity and similar forces were

recognized inertia either had to change its import or to admit that there
,

w as no necessity for transcending matter for the explanation of certain

changes , and the conseque nce has been that modern thought has p r a ct i

cally abandoned the idea that matter is dead I do not say that this
.

is the correct tendency That is another question But when it has

. .
550 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OP H Y
.

done so it shoul d not be so strenuous and irreco n cilable when it hears

,

the name of God mentioned as it has only adopted the attributes ex

,

pressed by that term for its substratum matter The renement through .

which the conception of matter has passed sustains this view of in diff er
ence in regard to what shall be as cribed to it , and the ether comes to our
speculative vision with such immaterial properties and with nothing
but the laboratory methods and associations of s cience to prevent us
from calling it God But starting with the fact of change incessant
.

and multiplied in every direction as the evidence that there is some ,

limitation to the la w inertia we may examine the several indications

,

of the extent of that limitation .

A mechanica l system works itself out beautifully on the doctrine

of inertia provided you have either eternal motion to start with or a
,

p r i m n m m o bil e to start the motion which would remain in dest r uc

tible and provided also that your one fa ct to bemade intelligible was
,

o n ly motion with a well articulated system of media for the trans

mission o f energy But this assumes that there is no change in the
.

direction or mode of motion which is not what we nd But h o w .

to get change of any kind whether of motion or other type of ,

action is the problem Continuous or intermittent ei cie n cy of the

,
.

p r i m n m m o i l e woul d solve this question and where any dissi ,

patio u or increase of energy is conceded would seem to be a n eces ,

si ty if an orderly unity is manifest in the system

, O f course Epicurus .

assumed this p r i m n m m o i l e in the spontaneity of the elements ,

but when this was eliminated there was no escape from at least a a e n s

ex m a c / zi n a where change was an accepted fact This change also .

involved a n it ude of the series of phenomena ] fa cts a position

-

assuredly granted in regard to m atter by the vortex atom theory which

virtually abandons the ultimate indestructibility of matter by assuming
its created nature The cosmological conception of the material system
.

as having an absolute be ginning seems thus to have scientic credentials

in its support notwithstanding the a p r i o r i inconceivabilities of Kant
,

and Hamilton But grant tha t the series has no beginning the exist
.
,

ence of initial changes in it is assumed and must involve the same

variation s from the strict interpretation of inertia a s any absolute
beginning of the series Moreover a strictly mechanical philosophy
.

has to answer the question about change in the system as a whole .

As a collective who l e no change would ever originate in it on t h e

doctrine of inertia but it seems from the doctrine of evolution that
, ,

the whole as well as the parts represents the initiation of change and
it is hard to conceive it to exist in all the parts without supposing
 TH E E X I S T E N CE OF G OD .
55I

that the collective whole was involve d Assu m ing that the whole
.

w as involved it is certain that no mechanical principle will account

for it a n d this independently of any question as to the eternity of
,

motion It would be the same with the parts where any change is
.

involved and the dissipation of energy admitted The so called .

-

equivalence of actual and potential energy is not relevant as this ,

depends on an equivocal import for the term energy The only way .

that one can evade the idea of change in the sup posed dissipation of
energy is to equate the dynamic condition of it with the static or
potential But in fact potential energy is not ener gy at all It is a
. .

static condition antecedent or subsequent to an active conditio n and

either the static or the dyn amic condition involves a change according ,

to which is the antecedent .

But the t wo important points against the universality and absolute

ness of the doctrine of inertia as the primary characteristic of the
Absolute are ( I ) the qualitative modications of subjective activity in
connection with the action of ef cient or mechanical causes and ( 2 ) ,

apparently the behavior of radioactive substances We have already .

seen h o w the qualitative changes involved in chemical a ctio n a n d the

qualitative modications of energy in its trans mission through different
media or subjects lead to a qualied interpretation of the conservation
of force We found that whatever the foreign instigation of an
.
,

effect the nature of it w a s determined by the character of the subject

,

in which it occurred If any other subject than the given one were
.

involved the effect would be correspondingly different A match .

applied to a bar of iron only modies its temperature and volume

slightly ; applied to a powder magazine it results in much dest r uc
tion The subject counts for as much as the object in the effect and
.
,

though this subject might not have acted without instigation from an
external source the way in whi ch it shall act is determined by its o w n
nature and not the nature of the external stimulus The chemical .

action of substances has no equivalent in the merely mechanical

agencies which produce the proper relation betwee n combining ele
ments and this is especi a lly to be remarked in the cessation of that
,

chemical act ion at a g iven stage of its cou rse .

The radioactive substances li k e u ranium and radiu m illustrate in

a specially clear manner this activity against a narrow theory of
inertia perhaps more fully t h a n any other m aterial agencies though
'

, ,

it is tra ceable i n many other forms and conditions of matter and is

possibly a more general phenomenon of matter than is com m only
supposed They show the radiation of energy from them of great
.
55 2 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

relative intensity with the minimum of material depreciation No .

ordinary mechanical theory , it seems is adequate as an explanation

,
.

But the most important and effective limitation of the application

of inertia as any intelligible mechanical idea , is fo und in the sp o nt a
,

n e o us actions of organic and conscious life This argument i s all the

.

more effective from the fact that I am not u s ing it here to refute ma
t e r ia lis m but as representing a fact which the materialist must ma k e
,

consistent with his system or give it up There is no use to dene

.

spontaneous and fre eactions as more complicated mechanical e ffects ,

because this view of them is purely a p r i o r i and without one iota of

empirical evidence All the evidence that is produced is the

.

assumption that m echanical action is universal and that alleged free

actions must be of that type I am not supposing these actions to
.

be responsible as there is a radical distinction between free and t e

,

sponsible acts which has not been suf ciently recognized by p h ilo so
p h e rs
. I a m speaking of a ctions subjectively originated whether r e
garded as responsible or not They show no such correlation with
.

external stimuli as true mechanical actions show and should show ,

while the complication of which the materialist speaks only illus
trates those subjective m odications which he must admit in both the
mechanic a l and chemical elds outside the organic world and serves as ,

a mere subterfuge for ignorance or for principles that are euphuisms

for something anti mechanical Moreover there is the direct testi
-
.

mony of cons ciousness that they are self originated and this evidence
-

is better than any testimony to t h e existence of their mechanical a ctions

and as good as any in favor of the existence of any mechanical actions
whatever The testimony to their self origination does not mean that
.
-

they are free a cts of a soul other than the organis m With that ques .

tion I have nothing to do A ll that cons ciousness attests is their sub

.

ject iv e origin and it matters not whether we adopt the materialistic

theory of mental functions or not All that is involved is the fact that
.

certain actions called free are subj e ctively initiated and not m echanically
produced in the manner of ordinary simple a cts of material motion .

The reason that this testimony of cons cious ness has to be a ccepted is
that its impeachment in the case of free a cts involves its impea chment
for all acts whatever I do no t say that consciousness directly and
.

intuitively attests the nature o f the acts but only that they originate in
,

the subject a n d not by the object in any such simple way as the trans
mission o f motion by impact or momentum But apart from argu .

ments of this kind the fact is so evident that even pronounced mate
r i a l i s t s have felt obliged to assume that the primordial atom possesses a
 TH E EX IS TENCE OF G OD .
55 3

germ of consciousness attached to it as one of its properties It was

only the old view of inertia that prevented and prevents men fro m sup
posing ele m ental matter to be self active and hence the de nial of evi
-

dence for its freedom when that evidence was presented But as nearly .

a l l scientic m en have come to believe that matter is not the dea d

inert thing it was once s upposed to be there is perfect readiness to
,

a dmit into materialis m postulates that were once denied It is tr ue .

that its advocates do not see the abandonment of their traditional vie w
and the adoption of p ro pefties that h a d been previously admitted to
properly characterize the immaterial and the divine T h e facts were .

denie d bec ause the imm aterial and the divine were denied But the .

later materialis m simply appropriates the facts and conceptions of

theis m under its own name and is not ashamed of the th e ft Material .

is m h as simply been abandoned without calling the result spiritualis m

or theis m the advocate of it forgetting that the admission of facts and
,

p roperties into the conception of matter which had all along either
been denied or assumed to contradict materialis m only generalized his
conception of matter to more or less identify it with the spiritual The .

fact of organi c spontaneity is all the more e ffective from the considera
tion that the absoluteness of inertia eve n below the organic world is
, ,

d enied and hence is much less prob able in a eld where the distinction
from the ordinary mechanical phenomena is innitely more marked ;
and the renement of the conception of matter is carried so far that
there are no clear criteria of its distinction from the traditional imma
t er i al reality or of its incapacity fo r all the functions supposed to be
,

the pe culiar characteristi c of the divine .

The e tiological argu ment th us results i n the exposure of the defects

in the older materialism and the conrmation of the position which
w as a necessary consequence of these defects namely the recognition , ,

of limitation to the doctrine of i n ertia and of a self activity in things a -

position that either demands an im m aterial Absolute or converts the

term m atter into a practical equivalent of the immaterial as often
enough conceived In either case the conclusion is the same and the
.

old antitheses and controversies have no excuse for their persistence ,

except the stupid incapability of both sides to see that they agree But .

there is gained for the system of belief that in some form or another, ,

s elf activity has to be conceded as a function of reality and one of the

-

most important characteristics of the Absolute beyond its mere sub

st ant i v e n ature thus becomes a rational object of belief .

z. Tli e On t o l o g i ca l A rg u m e n t.This is the argument from

material causes as the e tiological was from ef cient causes This o n
,
.
5 54 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

to l o gi ca l argument also divides into two forms which I may distin

guish as before the n o um eno l o gic al and the cosmological and turnin g
, ,

more or less upon the same class of facts though viewed somewhat
differently By the n o um en o lo gi c al point of view I mean the proces s
.

of reducing reality to unity of k ind reducing the Absolute from mul

,

t i p l i c ity to simplicity This is done by comparison and classication

. .

It matters not whether the comparison and classication is of sub

stances o r attributes If we start with the latter as we may very well
.
,

do we should only apply the e tiologi cal a rgument to the resultant and
,

obtain a smaller number of types of substances than with unclassied

attributes But assuming that similar attributes imply similarity o f
.

sub stances and different attributes different substances we may start t o ,

simplify the multiplicity of nature by nding that its realities are t e

d u c ibl e to a small number of kinds or even ultimately to one all per
,
-

vading energy The earliest systems of philosophy a dmitted tha t the

.

elements were qualitatively different and usually limite d in their n u m

ber Ancient materialism of the D em o cr it ic and Epicurean type as
.
,

we have seen postulated a n indenite number of Absolutes , though

,

they w ere all of the same kind But modern atomism h a s again a c
.

c ep t e d a qualitative difference in the elements and limited them t o

some seventy or m ore More recent speculations however more

.
, ,

especially in the law and classication of the elements by Mendelejeff ,

have inclined to reduce these seventy or more elements to a single

form of ultimate reality which has d i er ent iat ed itself by evolution
into the various kinds whatever that way of describing the change
,

m ay mean This result permits of the supposition that all a ctivity

.

may originate in the ether and ows thro ugh matter as its cha n nel
after m atter is once formed and the do ctrine of inertia is saved by
,

putting the origin of cha nge outside of matter This general move .

ment is exactly parallel with that from polytheism to monotheis m in

an cient thought or perhaps better duplicates it It is simply the r e
, ,
.

duction of the Absolute to one instead of many But I shall not in .

d ul ge in speculations of this kind further than to remark the important

point that the tendency of science is a way from an ultimate pluralism
an d tow a rd a n ultimate moni sm which is decidedly away from the old

mechanical materialism and toward the theistic conception of things .

This s cientic and philosophic monism exhibits reality as far remove d

from m atter as spirit can be conceive d to be The ontology of the .

problem reduces it s e tiology to a single active principle at the basis of

things with a tendency to describe it in terms that are the negative of
,

the sensible physical world All that is required to complete the

.
 TH E E X I S TE IvCE OF G OD .
5 55

spiritualizing process is to prove that this nal reality whatever ,

name we give it , is intelligent or acts along rational line s .

The cosmological side of the ontological argument is the applica

tion of the conserv atio n of energy to ante cede nt and consequent or t o ,

the series of phenomena whi ch are supposed to constitute the world .

In dis cussing the materialistic theory of the soul I calle d attention to

the fact that this do ctrine of conservation had tende d in the minds of ,

many of its advocates to identify antecedent and co n sequent qualita

,

t ively ; that is , to identify in ki n d and in spite of all supercial d i er

en c es the phenomena of the world whi ch were supposed to be an

expressio n of its nature The previous materialism had kept up the

.

antithesis betwe en the subjective and objective between the internal ,

and the external between antecedent and consequent owing to the

, ,

fact of an exclusive reliance upon the conception of ef cient causes in

the explanation of phenomena and consequently its phenomena as

,

eff ects were no m a t e r i a l attestation of the character of the cause other

than as a n agent capable of producing a n effect But the materialism .

that found expression in the conse r vatio n of energy had either to r e

duce the effect to the more circumscribed nature of its ef cient cause ,

treating the apparent di fferences as allusions , or to admit into the

cause what is observed in the effect O f course it tried the policy of
.
,

maintaining the identity of antecedent and consequent while it pre

served the implication drawn from the assumption of their diff erence ,

a task that is impossible Nothing is clearer than the fact that if

.
,

cause and effect are identical in kind we cannot eliminate the recog
,

n iz e d nature of the effect from that of the cause According to the .

conservation of energy qualitatively interpreted the difference between ,

antecedent and consequent need not be greater than that between t wo

personal conscious n esses The obje ctive cons cious ness of another per
.

son does not appear to be a cons ciousness to me except through telc o

logical evidence All that I perceive is a system of what are called
.

physic a l phenomena or move ments from which I infer the existence of

consciou sness antecedent to them and by them producing an e ffect upon
,

my own sensoriu m When I assume that consciousness is behind those

.

movements I identify it in kind with my o w n but its nature is no more

,

directly apparent to me than the nature of a cause is to its e ffect It is .

quite possible to explain the distinction and apparent differences between

all causes and effects in this w ay if we insist on applying the conse r va
,

tion of energy to them qualitatively making the effect as much the

,

standard for determi n ing the character of the cause as any direct study
of the cause itself So long therefore as the conservation of energy is
. .
, ,
5 56 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

interpreted to m ean an identity between the products of cosmic action

and the source of them so long must it fa ce the necessity o f seeing in
,

the consequent the nature of the antecedent The illusion can in fact be.

turned completely around and charged to the materialist for supposing

that the cosmos is mecha nical The effe ct is what is more directly
.

k nown as a datum of experience and the cause often indirectly and

inferentially in so far as its empirical nature is concerned If
, .

illusion is chargeable to our interpretation of the case it can as well be

thrown upon our assumption of the nature of the cause as well as upon
that of the e ect In this problem illus ion is a two edged sword It
.
-
.

cuts both ways The duty of the human intellect when it is dealing
.
,

with material causes is to recognize the nature of the e ffe ct as fully as

,

the cause The highest product of nature demands as much con
.

s ideration as the
lowest In the animal and human worlds we have
.

cons cious ness as the nal result of the process of evolution and the ,

conservation of energy which is assumed to be the basal principle of

,

evolution if interpreted to imply qualitative identity of the various

,

steps in this process must nd cons ciousness in some form in the

,

s tages preceding the highest and supposed to exclude this phe

nomenon . There is no es cape from this but to return to some form
of antithesis in k ind betw een cause and e ffect But we cannot sup .

port evolution upon the conser vation o f energy or persistence of force

q ualitatively interpreted and at the same time assume the old antithesis
which was based upon the notion of ei cient as distinct from material
causes Ei ci en t causes were supposed to produce eff ects unlike them
.

selves so that conscious ness appeared as a n epiphenomenon irredu cible

,

to the materially functional while it was assumed that the material was
,

clearly understood But evolution has insisted that there is a stream of

.

identity running throughout the cosmic process and whatever func ,

tion it assigns to ei cie nt causation must modify the old interpretation

o f the antithesis between cause and effect or surrender the usual con

c ep t i o n of its evolutionary process The assumption of the identity

.

of cause and effect must involve a denite proof of the personality of

the Absolute even though it m ay not be the type w e most wish and
, ,

also as comp lete a disproof of the ultimately dead and inert character
o f cosmic reality If the theist wants to win his victo ry without
.

effort he has only to prove and press the conservation of energy as it

is so often conceived and he will have every form of impersonal
m aterialis m at his mercy .

But it is the doubt about any such interpretation of the conserva

tion of energy that prevents this argument from being perfectly con
 TH E E X I S TE NC E OF G OD .
55 7

e lusive In the rst ush of enthusiasm over a positio n that see m ed

.

to sustain the persistence of motion and to deny its creation the a dv o

cates of the conservation of energy ran off into assertio ns that left no
room for the differences betwee n cause and effect but which were a p ,

parent enough to make a resort to illusion necessary , if the difference

were pressed against conservation as a condition of sustaining a unity
,

and ide ntity in things not supercially evident But the more the .

phenomena were dispassionately studie d the more evident it be
came that the conservation of energy was a doctrine subject to decided
limitations It was obliged to conne its identity of cause an d effect
.

to quantitative and not to extend it to qualitative aspects of phenomen a .

Correlation became the better expression for the facts that were once
supposed to be clearly reducible to the ordinary mechanical c o n c ep
tion as des cribed in the common transmission of motion Tha t
, .

abandonment of the qualitative identity between antecedent and co nse

quent is a return to the principle of ef cient causation as distinct from
material and may assume that the effect is diff erent in kind from the
,
.

cause and a creation of it This enables us to remain by the material

.

ist i c assumption that cons cious ness may be a function of an organism

that is composed of units whose a ctivities may not contain any con
sc i o usn ess or capa city for it independently of their combination in an

organism But the moment that we assume an identity of kind be

.

tween t h e motion that is supposed to instigate cons ciousness in an

organism we have to admit that the consequent is quite as much an
expression of the nature o f things as motion and the only position
-

that will escape this conclusion is the abandonment of the qualitative

interpretation of the conservation of energy .

It is true that there are many facts which point to some measure of
identity between antecedent and consequent in certain cases It would .

indeed be strange if it were not so when the ontological consideration

,

of material causes in the subs trata of phenomena leads to a perfect

identity of k ind in the various forms of matter and to the singleness of
the A bsolute in spite of the differences that we observe in things
,
.

Subje cts revealing likeness of kind should show likeness of function ,

so that their interactions whether represent i ng causal relations of a

,

purely trans mi ssive and mechanical sort or not would manifest some
,

measure of identity between the members of the series and only differ ,

e n ces enough to give and sustain individua l ity The fact that the ele
.

ments with a l l their differences can be cl a ssied in the l a w of Mendele

je ff and appear to be ultimate l y reducible to one form of reality is suf
c ie ntl y near the Leib nitzian doctrine to suggest that i n spite of the ,
 558 TH E P H OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

d ifferences , their actions will resemble each other enough to suppose

s ome identity between antecedent and consequent though it may not be ,

d et ermined by any principle of transmission but by ef cient causation

without this transmission and without assuming that the ef cient cause
has to be di fferent from the effect in all its aspects The t wo subj ects .
,

putting ourselves at Leibnitz point of view may be su f ciently alike

,

with some di fferences to account for the i dentity of cause and eff ect
without assuming transmission The fact that any language of inde
.

s t r uc t ibili t
y and convertibility at all could be applied to the relation
between cause and effect rather favors some modicum of identity be
tween them i n the eld either Of phenomena or of reality and ,

perhaps both and one can even ask how that identity could be spoken
,

of as quantitative without involving more or less of the qualitative

with it .

There is a good analogy which can be obtained from psychology .

-
It has become necessary in recent years to distinguish between what are
called subliminal and supraliminal mental operations as apparently dis
tinct from the merely mechanical actions of the brain and conscious
ness as introspectively known The time was however and this was
.
, ,

in the s chools of Des cartes when the contrast was between cons cious
,

ness and cerebral a ctivity and this was drawn so sharply as to pre
,

c l u de all elements of identity But the study of psychology has shown

.

a eld of functional activity that cannot easily be identied or confused

with either of these extremes There is a large class of s o called sub
.
- -f

liminal actions which sho w intelligence enough to require distinctio n

from the purely mechanical actions of the brain and are yet so foreign
to the direct apprehension of the supraliminal or normal cons ciousness
a s to be quite as inaccessible to it immediate ly as any molecular a ction

of the brain It will at times just merge into this supraliminal and
.

hardly preserve its integrity s ui c ient ly to deserve a d istinction At .

other times its cleavage from the normal consciousness is so clear and
apparently so absolute that it would seem to be a totally different per
son At all times as exhibited i n reproductio n and association it
.
, ,

may be supposed to be the substratum of activity that determines the

normal consciousness and emerges into it only by virtue of increased
intensity or the sudden arousing of the mind from a sleep as it were , ,

to the cognition of conditions that can be met and coped with only by
fun ctions less lethargic than the subliminal This subliminal while it
.

serves as the background of much or all that appears in the supraliminal

shows such marked evidences of being intelligent and conscious in some
sense of the term that it is impossible to distinguish it from the no r
 TH E E A I S TE N CE G OD 5 59

OF .

m al by any characteristi c except the normal m nen o ni c link or normal

i ntrospe ction All th e co o rdinations adjustments and displays of
'

.
, ,

mind , a hypere sthesia at times memory judg m ent of its own and
, , ,

reasoning are there to distinguish it from the xed and mechanical

,

a ction of the brain in the same w a

y that the nor m al consciousness is
distinguished The least that can be said of it is that it stands between
.

c erebral action and cons cious ness unless we cut the knot as the ma
, ,

t er ia list do e s , by identifying consciousness and cerebral action But in .

f act subliminal mental action can be distinguished from the normal

consciousness only by the fact that it cannot be introspected by the nor
mal stream while every othe r characteristic absolutely identies it with
the best that we know of intelligence If then we should concede the .

elastic nature of cerebral and molecular action and break down the line
of demarcation between it and subliminal action so as to identify the m ,

a s some do we should have a ce rtain continuity of k ind in all the phe

,

n o m en a excluded from consciousness as most familiarly known a ,

r esult that would create a presu mption in favor of applying this con

t in uity to the relation between the subliminal and supraliminal and ,

consequently the substantial identity of m ental and cerebral action .

Scientic men w h o use the co nception of the subli m inal so freely are
n o t always if ever aware of the signicance attaching to the c o n ce
, , p
tio n of cons ciousness for describing what is a s fully excluded from the
normal state as the external world which has so long been absolutely
d isti n guished from the mind Subliminal cons ciousness exclu ding what
.
,

we really know of cons ciousness introspectively is so closely related to ,

the wholly uncons cious of brain action as to be apparently identiable

with it and yet the description of it in terms of the mental implies its
,

i dentity with that also It is certain however that the distinction so

.
, ,

s harply drawn by the Cartesians can no longer be sustained so clearly ,

a n d the fa ct that it cannot be so dogmatically assumed or asserted as

then leaves the question of their relation open to consideration on the

l ines of their substantial identity through the connecting link of s ub
l iminal action Such a pro cedure carries with it the necessity of esti
.

mating the n ature o f things as much by the highest as by the
lowest as already remarked It is certain then that on a ny
,
.
, , ,

p rinciple of the conservation of energy involving the qualitative iden

t ity of the mechanical with the subliminal and of the subliminal with ,

t h e supraliminal this view leads inevitably to the identication of the

,

e xtremes and w e shall be obliged to interpret the antecedent by the nature

of the consequent in order to save our doctrine In fact on any princi .

p l e of cause and e ffect even that of ei cient as distinct from materi al

,
5 60 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH IL OS OP H y .

cause whether we interpret the conse r vation of e nergy as merely quan

,

t i t at iv e or no t the e ect or consequent is entitled to as mu ch consider

,

ation in the interpretation of the nature of the cosmic Absolute as the

antecedent especially when that antecedent h as to be regarded as quit e
,

as mu ch an effect or phenomenon as anything supposed to be i ts con

sequent With consciousness at the top of thi n gs it will be har d to
.

exclude it from the bottom on any ontological interpretation of the

relation between cause and effect when any other concep tion of causal
,

ity involves the necessity of valuing cons ciousness as highly as a ny

other phenomenon in the determination of the nature of things The .

continuity that reigns throughout the physical universe a nd the process

of evolution , in spite of the variations of kind manifest on the su rface ,

are indications that we may yet nd complete evidence of intelligence

in the Absolute , though we may not be able to g ive it the anthro
p o m o r ph i c form which appears most intelli gi ble to us All that pre.

vents us fro m doin g thi s is the actual w eak ness of the theory of con
servation which , in encountering qualitative differences s uf cient t o
preserve individual ity , p rovides a dii c ul ty in the ontolo gi cal argument .

T e T el eo l o g i c a l A rg u m e n t Kant as we know , estimated this

.
,

more highly than any other argument With his conception of the .

problem as dis cussed in the cos mologi cal and ontological methods
this judgment was correct enough But I cannot help thinking that
.

it is less important and cogent than the e tiological and ontological

argu ments as I have dened them Of course the ontological argu
.

m ent as based upon the con servation of energy qualita tively inter
,

p r et e d is purely a d o m i n em and the teleolo gi cal method comes in to

, ,

utilize the conditi ons left by the reinstatement of ef cient causation

after the limitation of the material It is clear tha t there w a s a close
.

connection between Kan t s conception of the problem as found in the
cosmological and the teleological methods Both started u pon the .

me chanical conception of the cosmos as not to be questioned within

certain limits a view drive n into his mind by his interest in physical
,

s cience and his deviation from the monadism of Leibnitz which thi s
interest enforced The manner in which Kant returns again an d again
.

to the cosmol ogical conception of the prob l em shows that he sympa

t h iz e d with that way of stating it an d of representin g the facts and the ,

only dif culty th at he felt with the theistic interpretation of it grew out
of his inabili ty to prove that the cosmic order h ad any such necessary
beginning in time as the theisti c position seemed to require In th e .

earliest stage of h is thinkin g Kant accepted as a foregone con clusio n

the purely mechanica l view of the world and the interaction of its part s .
 TH E E X I S TE N C E OF G OD .
56 I

and elements and did not realize fully the problem that he had to deal
,

with until he came to write the Cr i t i qu e of j u dg m e n t Here he came .

upon the conception of organic teleology which gave the teleological

argu ment all the force that it had But until he came to this view the
.

mechanical conception whic h seemed to demand a cosmological begin

ning in time a s a condition for all initiation of change apparently left
the theistic doctrine to the mercy of agnosticism The force of the .

teleologica l argument in organic nature came not from its i n co ns is ,

t e n cy with a cosmological origin of motion but from the assumption ,

that the series of events in the cosmos was not one simple s u ccession

of phenomena , but many lines of series co o perating and converging
toward a common end or result when each series taken alone would
,

offer no natural tendency toward this end A simple succession of .

events having a mechanical invariability and not being selective toward

the consequences towar d whi ch it moves will betray little or no evi
dence of purpose or intelligence no matter h o w much of that char
,

a c t er i st ic may a ctually be present If we see the initiation of a sim p le

.

mechanical series as the throwing of a ball w e h ave evidence of its

, ,

purpose not in its result or in the motion toward it but only in the
, ,

knowledge of intelligence antecedent to it The intelligence may be .

there in the one case as the o ther but without the direct knowledge of
,

its purposive initiation tha t intelligence is not easily if at all discover , ,

able The same would be true of a number of parallel series of dif

.

fer e nt phenomena not co o perating for a co mmon result and if at any ,

point they should actually come into conict the effect might even be a
positive d ii c u lty to the supposition of intelligence and an evidence of
mere chance But it is hardly so with convergent series of events not
.

naturally connected by me chanical considerations and a p r i o r i antici

p at io n of their relation to each other The convergent inuence of
.

many different conditions to one harmonious whole seems so beyond

chance which was suppose d to rule the mechanical order that it sug
,
'

gests intelligence as well as causality behind the process though all the ,

individual series of events be conceived as mechanical and without

evide nce of purpose .

Now it was the me chanical con ception of nature which showed to

Kant the weakness of the cosmological argument and it was the as ,

su mptio us of idealis m perpetuating the antithesis between thought and

reality that exposed the weakness of the ontological argume nt ,

while it w as the evident orderliness of nature a n d the consistency of

intelligence with a mechanical system its necessity perhaps if that
, , ,

sy ste m were compl ex enough that saved the teleological method when
,

36
56 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OP H y .

the others were surrendered When we add to this the demonstrable

.

fact of p urpose in animal and human actions with at least a decided ,

simulation of it in the tropisms of the organic vegetable kingdom we ,

dis c o ver a situation from which it is hard to exclude the idea of pur
pose when looking a t a mechanical order on which the whole is built .

A ccepting the positive k nowledge t h at cons cious purpose O perates in

ourselves we have only to press the materialist on his own theory with
,

the organi c nature and connection of man with the cosmic order with ,

the la w of evolution and the continuity in nature and with the conser ,

vation of energy as frequently interpreted in order to insist that pur

, ,

pose will be found a t the ve ry basis of the system We have in our .

o w n mechanical productions analogies that are of some value both in

regard to the strength of the argument and the evidential weakness

with which it may at times be associated We can easily distinguish
.

a machine from a produ ct of nature in most cases and w e distinguish

it by the evidence of design in the co o rdination and articulation of the
parts and it is most interesting to remark that we can often be assured
,

of design with perfect condence although w e are powerless to specify

the particular purpose of the machine It is important to note this
.

fact because the objection against design in nature might be advanced

,

that we could not indicate just what its purpose is While it may be .

granted that we cannot specify exactly what the meaning of nature is ,

it may nevertheless give evidences li ke a machine of s o m e design

, , .

Before we can estimate its character we m ust k now t h e particular pur

pose it displays but our ignorance of this desirable trait does not pre
,

vent the formation o f a perfectly legitimate conviction that there is

some purpose in it if the evidence is present to suggest and establish
,

it The general argument is the complication and co o rdination of

.

various apparently inde p endent organs to an end not attainable by any

one of them alone The appearance of this condition of things in
.

nature o ffers some excuse for the application of teleolo gy to nature as ,

in the interpretation of the actions of organic life whatever the d ii ,

c ul t ies involved in the problem Nor does the fact of natural selection
.

and the survival of the ttest alter the case as they are often supposed
,

to do They only increase our respect for an order that might be

.

worse than it is If w e knew the exact outcome of the cosmic ten

.

den ey in regard to the weak we might apologize more clearly for the
process of natural selection and the survival of the ttest but wanting ,

this information we can only note the fact that they indicate nothing
more than the fact or possibility of defects in the causal regulation of
the cos mic o r de r but they do not e xclude purpose by proving that it
,

 TH E E X I S TE NC E OF G OD .
56 3

is nite if there at a ll The trouble with most thi nkers is that they
, .

expe ct the process to be innite and perfect or nothing , one party

having the courage to air m tha t it is a fact and the other denying it
a ltogether be cause of its ni t u d e It is on ly our sympathy with the
.

weak a spirit created by Christian civilization , that i n duces us to

,

q ua r rel with the surviva l of the ttest a policy that would be quite
,

justied if the i m mortality of the soul coul d be es tabl ished , or if not

justied , ve ry much miti gated .

There are various dif cu lties with the te l eo l ogica l argument which
have to be removed in order to dis cover what cogency it actually has ,

a s well as its weakness .The rst is found in the antithesis between

n ature a nd art , as it may be called , the l atter furnishing us with all

the positive evidence we have of objective desi gn independent of na

ture The reaso n tha t our mechani cal inven tions and devices supply
.

u s with the absolute l y conclusive evide n ce fo r desi n i n their coo rdina

g
t ion of multiple independent agents to an end is found in our con
s c i o us ness of the ends whi ch we have in view when making them .

We are in di rect know l edge of their purpose by actua ll y constructing

them for a given end , and any constr uction Of a mechanical complex
resembling what we know is teleological will su ggest this even when
the S pecic p urpose is not known Moreover all human conquests
.

over nature have represented what often or always passes for some
thing superior to the natural order of thi ngs The very survival of .

the S pecies depends upon achievements tha t me an more or less man s

s uperiorit
y to n ature and certainly h is appreciation of those
achievements representin g what nature wi ll no t spontaneous ly a c
complish Thes e arti cia l a rr angements certa in l y S how more decided
.

ev i d e n c e of purpose tha n the order of bare nature The constru cti o n.

of a park leaves no doubt about the existence of a purpose eve n ,

though we might not be ab l e to name it , whi l e the growth of a forest

or the formation of a mountain would possib l y concea l its design alto
gether if it had any at a ll All the articial triu mphs of civilization
,
.
,

i nve ntion ma n ufacture , art government show so mu ch that is wrung

, ,

from nature , no t spontaneous l y give n us , that they inevitably de

termine the sta ndard by which we measure its character A l l the .

nest appreciations and a chievements come from a str uggle against

nature , not from its benevo l ence A life amid the perpetual results of
.

this struggle and their contrast with the real and the shadows which ,

idealis m discovers on reality p r ovide the criteria by which we esti m ate

,

the purposive or purposeless nature of thin gs Des ign and benev o .

l en ce are pate nt in our o wn achievements and the co ntrast with the

564 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

order from which they a re wrung inevitably reects a scepti cal suSp i
cion upon the clai m s of providence in what seems to be nothing but a
mechanica l system Of course it is a n adequate defence against all
.
,

this to say that the purpose of nature may be very different from that
which is so apparent in the creation of art But this logical defence .

does not remove the moral embarrassment of the situation Civiliza .

tion is so dependent upon the virtues which determine all the achieve
ments of art against nature that we have hardly any other criterion of
morality in the ordina ry consciousness but the duty to rise above na
ture O ur ideals are so complicated with the advances that we have
.

made against the struggle for existence and the effort of nature to keep
us down so to speak that whatever purpose is possible in it is not
, , , ,

likely to be attractive enough to secure our worship .

Let us understand once for all says Mr H uxley in his Romanes
,
.
,

Lecture that the ethical progress of society depends not on imitating

, ,

the cosmic process still less in running away from it but in combat
, ,

ing it It m ay thus seem an audacious proposal thus to pit t h e mi

.

c r o c o sm against the macrocosm and to set man to subdue nature to h i s

h igher ends , but I venture to think that the great intellectual diff erence
between ancient times with which we have been o ccupied and our day ,

lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such a n
enterprise may meet with a certain measure of success .

The history of civilization details the steps by which men have

s ucceeded in building up an articial world within the cos mos Fra .

gile reed as he may be m a n as Pascal says is a thin k ing reed ; there

, , ,

lies within him a fund of energy opera ting intelligently and so far
,

akin to that which pe r va des the universe that it is competent to in u ,

ence and modify the cosmic process In virtue of his intelligence the.
,

dwarf bends the Titan to his wi ll In every family in every polity .

,

that has been established the cosmic process in man has been r e
,

strained and otherwise modied by law and custom ; in su r rounding

nature it has been S imilarly inuenced by the art of t h e shepherd the
, ,

agriculturist the artisan As civilization has a dvanced so has the

, .
,

extent of this interference incre ased ; until the organized and highly
developed s ciences and arts of the present day have endowed man with
a command over the course of non human nature greater tha n that -

once attributed to the ma gi cians .

Consequently art obtains all our admiration and enthusiasm and

, ,

i n default of clear evidence of even so high a design much less a ,

higher desi gn than this in the cosmic order we are in da n ger of so ,

extolling our own superiority to it that we may fo rget the virtues of

 T HE EX IS TENCE OF G OD .
565

o bedience and humility But the formation of ideals from a teleo lo g

.

i cal order that is won against nature inevitably tends to da rken t h e

vision for any other form of i ntelligence or virtue .

The second dif culty comes fro m the long standing assumption of
a unity of plan in nature that converged all forces in the welfare and

destiny of man Man naturally places himself at the head of creation

.
,

a nd his own ideals , as we have j ust seen tend to obscure the r eco
gn i ,

t io n of anything else while aristocratic instincts prompt him to t reat

,

a ll else as subservient to his aims and to adjudge it accordingly , .

Besides Christianity started out in the teaching of St Paul at least, .

,

a s already remarked with the conception that the whole creation was
,

o rganize d with refe rence to the existence and salvation of m a n .

O n e Go d , o ne l
l aw ,t o n e e em en

A n d o n e far o ff d i v i ne event
T o wh i ch t h e whole creat i on m oves .

But I must contend that this conception whatever we might say of ,

its tendency to encourage too mu ch self importance in man is exposed -

t o the very serious attack the moment that we endeavor to make it

c onsist with the totality of cosmic fa cts now within the range of s c i en

t i c knowledge Man may be the highest development of the known

.

universe but this fact does not prove the convergence in him of its
,

f orces and plans There may be manifold richer purposes The fact
. .

is that s ingleness of plan is not necessarily the mark of the highest intel
l ige n ce . The division of labor in nite beings may often make an ap
p arent singleness and imperfection of purpose the only pos s ible course
for a man to adopt as the complex work of civilization can be a c co m
,

p lish e d most e conomically and with the best results by using the indi
v i d ua l s time and energy at one subordinate end in himself But the

.

ideal life hardly admits so one s ided a development of the individual ,

and there is probably not any s uch singleness of plan in the life of any
man no matter h o w his activities may be limited by the struggl e for ex
,

ist en ce and the division of labor It is certain that there are plenty of
.

men w h o cultivate a variety of independent and disconnected ends It .

is no doubt t rue that e conomy of energy is better effected by concentra

tion of it as the whole process of intellectual and moral development
,

has shown But the fact that men can and do cultivate a variety of
.

independent ends in life not always subordi nating one as a means to

,

another is evidence that there is no absolute neces sity fo r the cos mos
,

to exhibit a S ingle plan as a condition of being r egarded as intelligent .

It might be the contrary of this It has only to be consistent in the .

v ariety of ends which it pursues No doubt an apparent or real single

.
566 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

ness of plan would make it easier for man to discover or to understand

the intelligence pervading it especially if that plan involved the possi
,

bil ity of realizing his own moral ideals But the price at which he
.

would gain that intelligibility would be the sacrice of all that give s
richness and wonder to the s cene in which his lot is cast O n any theory .

of the cosmos it is a congeries of plans which cannot be made int ell i

g ibl e to us by pressing them into one mold or by attempting to sub
ordinate some to ends with which they do no t naturally articulate , and
this is true even though ultimate knowledge of things might discover
more unity of plan than is n o w apparent O f cou rse whatever .
,

variety of purposes may exist either in nature or man it will have some
sort of unity , as this would follow from the unity of the intelligence
that held them But it is not necessary to formulate this unity by an
.

abstraction embracing the whole or by selecting one to which the

others are subordinated The u nity does not require to be one of
.

convergence of manifold actions to one end though that is possible ,

and intelligent , but it m ay be one of divergence into a variety of con

sistent though different actions and ends It may be better for man .
,

and we might say tha t his duty lies in this to select some one apparent ,

design that commends itself as worthy to aim at and to reinforce the

efforts of nature to realize it while he occupies a respectful attitude
,

of mind toward what he does n o t know Man s morality too like h is .

,

art is so often a conventional product that it prevents his seeing the

,

cosmos in its proper light It leads him to make demands on na ture

.

which if granted would only poison the best springs of character

, .
,
.

H i s most S pontaneous demand for instance is exemption from labor

, , .

But those who have studied life know that character is never ne unles s
tempered by struggle and effort The ease and liberty which wealth
.

gives are not always assurance of moral worth but more frequently of ,

vice and libertinism in some form Wealth if it is an a ristocratic pos

.

session won from the inadequately requited efforts of the dull million s
that toil foredone at the wheel of labor may only con ceal behind the
mask of culture and good manners the most inhuman indifference to
the rights of man ; if it means nothing more tha n provision against
struggle with nature and is not accompanied by voluntary se r vice t o
m a n which its possession offers the o p p o r t un it v to pe r form , it is
effeminating and demoralizing This will be true of any ideal which
.

relieves man of a struggle with nature and any th at involves the entire
,

subordination of the world to his benet alone tends to obscure that

s cientic vision which can see other values in the cosmos than those
whi ch seem so important to our conventional conscience Nature is .
 TH E E X I S TE NC E OF G OD .
567

more bountiful in her provision for truth , beauty , and goodness th a n

man would be , an d our estim ate of its teleology must be made on t h at
as sumption .

T h e er fo oted barb v -

T hat p oun d s t h e p am pas a n d t h e l i ly bells

,

T hat han g above t h e brook s pre s ent t h e world ,

Wi th n o ap ology fo r bei ng there ,

A n d n o attem p t t o j ust i fy the m se l es v

I n us e lessn ess It i s en o ug h f o G o d
. r

T hat th ey a e beaut i ful a n d h o ld h i s tho ught

r ,

I n n e em bo d i m ent .

But the multiplicity of the resources and the apparent purposes of

nature especially when they fall below the ideals which man forms for
,

the regulation of his own conduct is precisely the fact which depre
,

ciates the value of the teleological argument for th e existence of any

divine agent that is represented in human i nterests while it conceal s ,

the unity of purpose and moral con ceptions which might make for the
e ffe ctiveness of it If we could stop with the prese n t order in esti
.

mating the t eleology o f nature an order whi ch represents no other

,

apparent xed purpose than the continuity of organic species there ,

might be no intellectual dii c ul ties though we might feel a moral r e

'

v ul sio n toward it
. But an end or purpose which ceases with the evo
l ut io n of values that have less persistence than the lowest is not one
which lends itself with ease to idealization It is inevitable that man .
,

at leas t the best of his kind should put consciousness in the rst rank
,

of the ideals to be prese r ve d O therwise he would not care to make

.

nature rational in any respect and with this acquisition as one of the
,

highest products of its evolution he can but measure the character of

,

nature by its attitude toward this result If he c ould have any assur .

a nce that the legitimate ideals whi ch are planted in him could have
any hope of realization beyond the range of the present where the ,

conict between duty and possibility prevents much he would have ,

at least one fulcru m against the burden of doubt that comes from t h e
struggle between fact and hope It is the absence of clear evidenc e
.

in s cientic times that the highest a chievements of evolution shall hav e

preservation in the only subject or being who can rightly enjoy them o r
use them in the servi ce of high action and thought that gives the
sting to reason when asking for a purpose in the world I can easily .

conceive goo d grounds for concealing it in certain stages of civiliza

tio n but these do not affect those w h o want a reasonable motive for
,

aspiration and power to idealize life If only man could be sure of

.

the purpose whi ch he thinks ought to animate a providential system

5 68 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

when it teaches him to value the highest form of consciousness as

above all other facts he could well thrust aside curiosity about many
,

o ther plans of the cosmos and devote his energies to further conquest s

i n the struggle for existence and would have a fulcr u m of great power
f o r inuencing the tendencies of his nature But n o t being certain
.

t hat nature intends to respect his ideals beyond the present life he has ,

no motive but the stoical instinct of duty with its range of c o m m a n d

,

extending to unlimited time while its a cni ev em en t is conned to the

present to preserve his intellectual and moral life Let him feel
, .
,

however , that nature is on the side of his best moral ideals not real ,

iz abl e under the physical di f culties of human life and he will not ,

have a motive for quarreling with it for its merciless order and he
.

will be in a temper of mind as well as in possession of data to make a

t eleological argum e nt effective at least in so far as his o w n duties and
,

a spirations are concerned It is simply because he thinks nature does

.

not appear to r eveal any intention to preserve its best creations that
t h e doubt about its intelligence and morality arises I am willing to con
.

c ede that any attempt to place the ideal o n ly outside the system in which

we at present move and have our being is to threaten its proper devel
o
p m . ent There is a sense in which the idea l should be found only in
the real and that those normal natures are the best which t their
,

motives and a chievements into the present content to let the future
,

reveal its own pu rposes But that is neither to recognize the actual
.

possibility of using a high ideal for civilizing man nor to solve an i n

t e l l ec t u a l problem except as the reex of an actually moral life creates
,

either faith or insight enough to clear away doubt which too often
arises from the indolence and lack of courage to make what w e fear
nature will not give when we have not earn ed its princely guerdon .

I shall not say that these dii cul t ies in the teleologi cal argument
are insuperable The force which they will have may be largely a
.

matter of temperament But for the man who seeks a nything li k e

.

certitude for intelligent causality in the cosmos the inability to clearly

,

name a fact whi ch wou l d show any tendency to realize the highest
ideals a man can form and that he feels are an imperative measure for
the meaning of things is a circumstance of some weight not against ,

t h e method of the teleological argument but against its successful a p

,

plication That is to my mind its only weakness Logically it is the

. .

proper means for provi n g intelligence in a system which whatever ,

else it may be certainly represents a vast mechanical order though the

, ,

r ecognition of more than the old mechanical interpretation of nature

d iminishes the responsibility o f teleology in the argu m ent and shares

 TH E E X I S TE N C E OF G OD .
5 69

it with ontology as I have dened this method All that is wanting

,
.

to make it completely e ffective is the data in facts which will show

nature as careful of the individual and the ideals it creates as it is of
the race and of the relative value which it attaches to consciousness in
the present If that be once xed whether by faith or reason by hope
.
, ,

o r s cience
,
all other purposes of the cos m os may await solution with
out any tortures from doubt as that so often paralyzes action in ne
,

minds And it is not because there is any s uperi or i m

. portance at
taching to a future life for consciousness but because the fact of it ,

would be evidence that the value placed upon it in our present life as ,

compared with mere material existence w as a ctually respected by the

,

policy of the cosmos Materialis m of almost every form would dis

.

appear before the fact not because that termis so dangerous but be
, ,

cause the form which it has ta ke n has associated the impossibility of

the su r vival of consciousness with it and with this syste m and its i m
,

plications out of the way the pervasive care shown by nature in the
preservation of individual consciousness would suggest very clearly if ,

it did not prove a wider signicance for intelligence in the course of

,

things at large than would appear in the assumption of it as a mere

function of the organism or of composition .

In the teleology of human art there is always the clear conscious

ness that nature will not produce the arra n gements that so palpably
show design But in the phys ical world it is the very spontaneity of
.

its creations the condition which gave the e tiological argument its
,

weight a gainst a mechanical m a t er al is m that deprives us of tha t inert

,

incapacity of nature to dispose its own works an incapacity which ,

supplies a standard for its o wn li m itations when a question of design

is raised that involves co o rdinations that do not spontaneously a p
pear in wh a t usually passes for a mechanical system in human art .

The consequence is that the regularity of the cos mic order leaves us
without any such variation from the natural l a w of physical phenom
ena as is so nece s sary for the manifes t proof of purpose It may be .

there in all system s but its presence is not necessarily its proof The
,
.

o rganic order merges so insensibly into the mechanical that the design

i s not perfectly a pparent when there while the inability to point out
,

o n e clear and unmistakable fact exhibiting respect for moral ideas ex

tending their reach and obligations into the future for realization ma k es
s uch a purpose as may appear on t h e s urface a satire on the i nt el l i

gence and moral chara cter which we wish to attribute to the system .

It is easy to apply the teleological argument to the discovery of human

i ntelligence be cause the man who ap plies it has both the conscious
,
5 70 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

ness of purpose in his own acts and the standard in those acts by which
he measures the existence of intelligence in others The principle of .

identity involving the similarity of human acts and the similarity of

,

men in other respects , assumes the validity of our inference to con

s c i o us n ess and purpose in others But when external a ctions diverge
.

in their cha racter from those which are sure marks of such intelligence
as we k now it the teleolo gical argument is all at sea This is t h e
, .

reason that philosophers resort to instin ct to account for adjustments

that appear to be neither mechanical nor ratio nally in telligent C o br .

di na t io n s and adjustments in perfect simulation of intelligence take

place without any experience or education in the idea of ends or idea s ,

of the complex means and results toward which the acts tend and we ,

have no way to des cribe them in terms of rational purpose since t h e ,

funda m ental element of tha t conception is absent namely the idea of , ,

the means and end , as we recognize them in our experience at least i n ,

so far as our knowledge and t h e evidence goes Hence with all our .

condence in it , instinct is but a name for our ignorance Teleology .

seems to be limited to adjustments that more or less simulate the acts

in which we ourselves are directly co nscious of purpose and these ,

represent that variation from a mechanical order whi ch we expect and

observe in human acts All other elds of obse r vation fade insensibly
.

into ignorance .

There is a dif cutly with the theistic argument whi ch is not con
n e c t e d particularly with any of the methods involved in the previou s

discussion It arises from the relation of the subject to the k nowledge

.

which is prior to it and which is represented in the appli cation of

e tiological and ontolo ical methods to more genera l facts than t h e
g
spiritualistic .

The classication of the sciences showed tha t they might exist in a

relation which implied that the results in one might more or less con
dition t h e results in another Thus we found that the progress made
.

in physiology more or less conditioned the amount of progress made

in psycholo gy and sociology The same relation and inuence w as
.

extended throughout the system In the e l d of the no um en o l o gi ca l

.

science s this rel ation obtained between the various problems r ep r e

sented by metrology hyl ology bio ogy , pneumatology a n d the
,
l , ,

ology The achievements of metrology affect t h e views and results of

.

hylolo gy and these in tu rn affect those of biolo gy the last being
, ,

related in the same way to pneumatolo gy , an d pneumatology to the

olo gy The meaning of this Comtean relation of prior to l ater kn owl
.

edge as applied to the problem of theolo gy is that the progress in

, ,
 THE E X I S T E IVC E OF G OD . 57 1

theologica l problems wil l be i nuenced by the condition of pne uma

t o l o gy at any given time This is apparent in the history of philosophy
.
,

though the assumption is often made that theology h a d conditioned

pneumatology But the fact is that it was a problem in pneumatology
.

that determine d the course of theological thought and its nature in as ,

much as the very idea of the spiritual had to be suggested in the pneu
m a t o l o gi ca l problem while it was the object of theological thought
, ,

namely the existence of God , that was used to explain the existence
,

of those fa cts which give rise to the problem of pneumatology There .

is no contra diction in this fact It is but the difference between the

.

order of existence and the order of knowledge the o r d o co g n i t i o n i s

,

bei ng pneumatology theology and the o r d o n a t u r ce being God soul

, , ,
.

The point which I wish to emphasize is the fact that the solution of the
theologi cal pro blem depends in some respects at least evidentially , ,

upon the progress made in solving the pneumatological problem Thi s .

is to say that the dis cover y of a n ything like spiri t in man as a ,

condition of explaining the phenomena of consciousness as function s

of something else than the bra in , would create the strongest of pre

sumptio us in favor of spirit at the basis of cosmic action , and it
would only remain to se cure li ke evidence for the fact .

I have ca lled attention to the fact that the sole reason for su pposi n g
separate territories of investigation or separate s ciences is the fact
, ,

that we have to deal with different types of phenomena

These .

di fferences suggest differences of causal ground and create a tendency

to distinguish ultimate reality accordingly We found that the anti
.

materialist wants a soul other than m atter to a ccount for mental events
and that he bases his belief in its existence on the difference between
mental and physical p h enomena But w e also found that the la w of
.

parsi mony will not permit the assumption of any such hetero realities -

as long as the facts can be explained rationally by t h e e xist ing and a c

c e pt e d reality of matter It may be rational to suppose a soul but if
.
,

it is so , it is be cause matter cannot explain the phenomena of c o n

s ci o u s n ess
. The facts of cons ciousness may require a soul to explain
them but if they do the s cienti c criterion in the case will exact more
, ,

stringent evidence than the introspective and analytical examination of

consciousness This co n cl usio n h o w ev er it is gotten and while it may
.
,

not be the sole condition for suggesting the existence of a spiritual back
ground to nature , deprives scepticism of the strongest of its p r esum p
tions and prepares the wa y for raising the questio n as to the n a t u r e
of the Absolute or God in relation to intelligence not his existence in ,

relatio n to causality which has to be determined as we have shown , ,

5 72 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

by e tiological considerations T hat existence as w e have seen

.
, ,

might not extend beyond the supersensible form of matter so that the ,

remaining question would be whether there was any direct or indirect

.

e vidence of h i s consciousness The existence of a sou l other than the

.

organism w hether w e choose to regard that s oul as rened matter or

,

as S pirit would quite evidently establish a position of advantage to the

,

theistic argument as it would widen our conception of the nature of

,

things to admit t h e possibility of much that is not dreamt of in our

o rdinary philosophy This widening process is shown in the c la ssi
.

cation o f the sciences where the serial order of dependence shows phe
n o m e n a bearing evidence as the s ciences progress of greater and greater

s upersensible signicance But the last steps are limited by the a mount
.

of progress made in the preceding The dif culties with theis m there .
,

fore are directly proportioned to the doubts regarding the existence

,

of the soul .

In the p a st h ist o r y has shown us that the existence of Go d as an

, ,

immaterial reality obtained as a belief its evidential cogency primarily

, ,

from the assumption that a ll matter sensible and supersensible was , ,

created , that is had a beginning in time If this be once assumed

, .

there is no es cape from the belief in the existence of such an imma

t er i a l substratum whatever other attributes can or cannot be ascribed
,

to it The strength or wea k ness of the belief is that of the assumption

.

that all matter is created O n the other hand if the assumption of

.
,

the created and transient nature of supersensible matter is not made ,

there is no reason for going beyond it for a belief in the existence of

God unless there are facts requiring it and we insist upon dualism
,
.

The supersensible mi ght be treated as this reality as we have indi ,

c a t e d being necessitated by the assu m ption that sensible matter is the

,

result of ca u sal action This supersensible matter might be the per

.

manent cause o f things and the only question remaining would be as

to h o w consciousness in the individual is related to it whether ( a as ,

a fu nction of a supersensible reality other than the physical organism

or ( 6 ) as a function only of the sensible reality itself dissolvable .

The former conclusion would strengthen the belief that the s up er sen
sible world had larger possibilities than are usually assumed by s ci
ence and the latter would leave materia l is m an undisputed master
,

of the eld It is quite apparent therefore to what extent theism

.

awaits the conclusion of pneumatolo gy .

I shall have occasion in the last chapter to make some nal o bser
v at i o ns on this problem At present I can only summarize the dis cus
.

sion that has already taken form In d oing this I must emphasiz e a .
 TH E E X I S TE NCE OF G OD .
5 73

remark previously m ade It is that no one of the methods here em

.

ployed to justi fy the belief in the existen ce of God or some reality ,

a ctive and intelligent in the cosmic pro cess is sui c i e nt alone to estab
,

lish the full content of that idea unless w e can assum e that t he t eleo
,

logi cal argument as a n embodiment or combination of the other two

, ,

can do so The e tiological method h a s its limitations and can go n o

.

further than guaranteeing some sort of Absolute other than mere phe
n o m e na
. The ontologi cal argument shows the unity of the Absolute
as the background of the multiple realities that are either its mo des ,

its creations or its modications while it supplies the probable source

, ,

for estimating its attributes i n t h e same wa y th a t w e deter min e the

'

nature of phenomena by the conse r vation of energy It applies the

_
.

principle of identity or material causation to the determination of the

nature of reality by inclu ding the highest i n our data where before w e ,

had only the principle of ei c i en t causation as ou r measure and thi s ,

does not require the antecedent to be li k e the consequent If a soul .

other tha n the organism were once established as a fact beyond ques
tion we should not nd the ontological argument in the for m presented
so useful as it is n o w in an a d no m i n e m way with the believer of the

conservation of ener gy qualitatively u nderstood Consciousness would

.

quite possibly be an attribute of the supersensible reality after su ch a

thing as the soul was admitted a n d it would be only a matter of evi
dence to show that the sou l existed But as long as the pneumato
.

logical problem is not solved to satisfaction the ontological argument

will be a source of greater reliance whether any more conclusive or
,

not. The teleological argument uses the organic adjustments of

nature which seem too complex for mechanical explanation and with ,

the application of both e tiological and ontological considerations has

mu ch force in suggesting the possibility of intelligence transcending o r
immanent in mechanism To ea ch of the methods I concede some force
.

for their respective objects while the fact that all of them together
,

coi n cide in supporting a t least the possib i l i ty of the divine is that ,

much more in favor of their legitimacy in both method and result .

The only li mitation to t heir e ffectiveness is the anthropomorphi c con

c e t i o n of God whic h we have f o r m ed and which is ha rdly i f at all
p , ,

su p ported by the data upon which the argument has to be based fo r

its material result There is little d ii c ul ty in s upposing some kind
.

of intelligence initiating and pervading cosmic change and evolution ,

but it IS the spec i c kind of that i ntelligence and its evident variation
from the type of personality which we must naturally revere th at give s
all the trouble The act ual facts of observation in the order of the
.
5 74 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

cosmos do not reect any other apparent purpose in it than the crea
tion and temporary preservation of organic species The h ighest .

ideals of man seem to have no part in its destinies The permanent .

feature of its order seems to be the mechanical one and no recognized

scientic evidence of interference with it is apparent It may n o t be . ~

necessary that any variation from such an order should be present ,

except as evidence of intelligence But as long as man conceives a

.

mechanical order as possible without intelligent initiation he will be

sceptica l of theistic claims unless the results of the mechanical order
,

coincide with the moral ideals which his n ature and ethical impulses
compel him to recognize To suppose that the process stops with the
.

production of organic species assu m es that its best achievements are

transient and that its lowest order is the more permanent Some point .

of view in facts must be shown which makes species a means to a

remoter end and which widens the conception of things beyond the
present apparent mechanical order if we are to secure the p r es um p
,

tions needed and these facts must reconcile the mechanical and the
,

organic view of the cosmos When we can soften the immemorial

.

antithesis between God and nature the problem will be n earer solution ,

and that can hardly be attained until there is some denite assurance
that the conscious ness of the individual survives death a fact that ,

would indicate that the cosmic system had some respect for the ideals
that it has implanted and that its o w n nature w as richer than the
materialist supposed It remains for the future to furnish the facts
.

that may justify any such expectation .

 C HAP TE R X III .

C O NC L U S I O N .

IN the con clusion of this work I wish to u n dertake a various task I .

s hall not enter into any tech n ical dis cussion or argument for or against

any special philosophic doctrine I wish only to make some co n fes

.

sions with general reections on the problems of this volume that ha ve

to be separated from critical investigations A ll the questions that .

have already been the subje ct of remarks will come up for general
review but not for either o ffensive or defensive criticism the object
, ,

here being the examination of their strength and weakness in the gen
eral culture of history What I wish to do then is to indulge some
.
, , ,

what dogmatically observations that may point the w ay partly to me

,

d ia t i o n and partly to the correction of misunderstandings which have

unfortunately petried into animosities that ought not to characterize
the claims of so high a civilization as w e possess In the manifold .

temperaments and interests of the world philosophy can hardly afford

,

to be so sele ctive in its favors as to neglect one half the facts whi ch its
cosmo politan genius and functions are called upon to respect Its duty .

may invite the hostility of both parties in the world s conict of intel

lect and sentiment but its course is nevertheless clear whether the
, ,

i deals whi ch it marks out for itself have a ny p r o sp ec t of realization or

not Misunderstanding may be the penalty for its mediating sympa

.

thies when it does n o t choose to identify its fortunes with either party
to controversy but the other alternative party warfare is in danger of
, , ,

encouraging in the intellectual movement of history that ghastly spec

tacle which ma k es the struggle for existence in the material world so
fateful to beauty and goodness while the truth remains only half dis
,

covered There are moments in its progress however when p a ci

.
, ,

cation may not be it s duty but a mark of weakness These are

, .

exigencies when it must assume the leadership of human thought and

direct instead of modify passionate convictions Unfortunate l y it .

seldom has the freedom to carry any message to the race except those
meager truths which the passions of controversy will permit as either
harmless or unintelligible to both parties Its inspiration is too often
.

checked by the necessity of being dispassionate in the estimation of

truth while it has to evade the precipices of sectarian dispute and just
,

whe n it is calle d to gu ide and animate both the mind and the will .
576 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH IL O S OPH Y
.

The s ciences , once its wards , have gained their independence and r e ,

li g io n , once its protector , will n o longer ack nowledge its offspring a n d ,

both in mortal combat wit h each other a gree i n the neglect of a

guardian But if it choose wisely between mediation and mission ary
.

zeal , it will have fewer occasions to mourn the loss of its children .

The rst problem to come u nder review in this concl usion is that
of realism and ideal ism I have already indicated that the di stincti o n
.

betwee n them is not always what it seems P artisans on both sides .

like to caricature their opponents as the only way to proselytize or t o

obtain a heari ng Idealists adopt a conception of realism which give s
.

them a cheap and easy victory and realists evade the dif culti es of
,

sense perceptio n in a way that makes idealism appear ridiculous Both .

schools do not a lways face the facts of huma n nature with equal frank
ness or recognize the dif culties of asserting the position of one or the
other party without qualica tion Too many associated interests are
.

at sta ke to make the truth so attractive as it should be The attitude .

which I have assumed in this work will be clearly classed by most

rea ders as rea listic although I have been careful not to so denominate
,

myself I must warn the student however , that I am likely to protest

.
,

against any su ch characterization It can be made only on ve r y de

.

nite conditions , and these are that the term shall be elastic enough t o
include much that is covered by idealism and that the measure of it s
m eaning shall no t be the untutored m ind I would resent equally the
.

accusation that I was an i dealist as perhaps the genera l spirit o f pre

,

v i o u s discussion suf ciently indicates though not because there is no

,

truth in it but because it is quite as liable to illusions as its rival theory

, .

V erbal tags of this kind are worse than useless u nless their limitations
are fully recognized and clearly stated The truth is too complicated .

and too comprehensive to be concentrated in a S hibboleth no matter ,

whethe r the denomination be realis m or idealism Neither is the .

combination of these terms a n v better except to prove the more cos ,

m 0p o l it a n spirit of the man who concedes it If we could insist as I .

,

think we can that there is no reasonable differen ce between the t w o

,

theories whe n we ignore the u nedu cated mind which has no theories ,
,

we could be independent of narrowing terms l ike these , a s the p roblem

of k nowled ge shou l d be cosmopolitan There is n othing more con .

d uc i v e to narrow mindedness in philosoph y a qua l ity that goes by the

-
,

name of bigotry in reli gion , than the persistent attempt to exhaust the

ri ches in the p r ob l em of knowledge by dialectic play with these
te r ms The meaning of the universe cannot be compressed into either
.

of these conceptions as they must be conceived co n crete ly Thei r

, .
 C OIvCL U S I ON .
577

content cannot be nally or exhaustively determined by a denitio n or

a single illustrative con cept Whatever meaning they possess can be
.

obtained and understood only at the end , not the beginning of our
reections and it is useless to attempt the inoculation of a ny student s
,

mind with the assumption that he must direct his thought to either goal
as the condition of intel ligent reection The consequence is that .

idealis m and realism are mere playthings for minds that have
become lost in abstraction s and do not know h o w to nd their way in
facts unless they try to pre empt their riches by question begging
,
-

epithets I concede them an i mportant convenience for minds that

.

have once conquered the labyrinthian mazes of speculative thought and

that can command all its ramications in exposition of the p roblem .

In this situation they will always take the colori n g of their environment
and lose that inexible cast which do gmatis m and scholastic logic tend
to give them Away from the facts that illustrate them and make
.

them i ntelligible they are only barren abstractions like the distinctions
,

of s cholasticis m Hence as conceptions for philosophic conjuring

.
,

they are too bare to conceal the trick s which try to mask knowledge in
learned dialectic while a bold insight and a rich judgment equipped
,

with facts of experience can penetrate all disguises and exhibit a more
splendid vision than any formal logic working o n abstractions The .

literature whi ch does not pass technically as philosophy but which ,

a ctually deals with philosophic problems is an evidence of this It is .

intelligible and inspiring It is not ashamed to use the vernacular to

.

express its thoughts It has patience and is willing to tak e time in the
.

communication of its ideas It appeals to the imagination It rea ches

. .

far beyo nd the colder analysi s of s cientic criticis m and appeals to that
wide experience whi ch is not ashamed to admit the inuence of poetry
into philosophic reection There are of course limits to the legit
.
, ,

i m at e use of such inuences as truth is clearer when it is divested of

,

emotional color though it may have less power But if philosop h y

,
.

h a d retained its old human interests it might enjoy the advantages of

su ch a connectio n in its theories But it has taken on the criti cal an d
.

exacting temper of s cience and eschews embellishment as it woul d

,

poison Its realism has become doubly realistic in its tendencie s

.

to materi a listic conception and even its idealism has lost the warmth
,

of feeling and enthusiasm that chara cterized P latonic speculation a n d

has adopted the frigid passionless metho d and matter of the Kantia n
,

theo ry of knowledge It is all a part of the reaction against the

.

emotional view of things that had associated itself with the poetic and
religiou s theories of the world and has a most healthy inuence in so
,

37
5 78 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

far as it has conduced to profounder and truer thought But there is .

n o reason why both the poetic and the s cientic side of philosophy

could not nd shelter under the same covering Truth has power in .

proportion to the passion w ith which it is held and in proportion to

t h e success with which i t a l l i es itself with art and morality
.
.

It is often said that realism is the natural theory of the common

mind and that reection invariably supplants it by idealism But this
, .

is not exactly the w ay to sta te the facts of the case The common .

mind in reality does not have any theory whatever that can be ca lled
by the n ame Its conceptions may be what they are represented to
.

be by the idealist but in spite of its acceptance of certain form s of

,

s tatement without criticis m or analysis its position is not to be taken

as something deserving a philosophic na m e and refutation What .

c alls itself idealism is the outcome of cons cious investigation and c r it i

c ism and of the dis covery that the na i ve judgments of common

,

s ense possess ce r tain perplexities which demand study and explan a

tion . The type of thought which this n ai ve position represents
accepts the denomination of realism f r Om those who undertak e its

refutation A s a theory of kn owledge therefore realism is subse
.
, ,

quent to what calls i t self idealism though the conception denomi na ted
,

by it is not thus subsequent Its place and function in thought must

.

therefore be determined relatively to the purposes of idealism Now .

idealism whatever excursions it makes into metaphysics and ethics

, ,

comes back in epistemolo gy to the propositions which are attempts to

give some consistent meaning to the illusions and normal phenomena
of sens e experience in conn ection with our natural judgments Its .

reaction against common sense leads it into forms of statement

which must appear paradoxical when they apparently or really deny

the existence of an external world Realism is nothing more than a .

protest agai nst su ch a denial or language that apparently and naturally

,

implies it It stands for a clear and denite assertion of more than

.

the subject s own states of consciousness and hence denies solipsi s m

which appears to be the most logical interpretation of the ideal istic

theory of knowledge
It is not necessary to review here at any
.

length this old question further tha n to remark that both realism and
idealism are reconcilable in the position that external reality is a fact
whether experience or sensation is a measure of its nature or
not F ormulas which aim to correct the ignorant by conceptions
.

quite as anomalous as the uncritical ideas of common sense are
perplexing are sure to elicit cou nter corre ctions since men are not ,

a n y more likely to remain patient and content with the paradoxes of

 C ON CL U S I ON .
579

i dealis m tha n with the perplexities of realism The weaknes s o f r e

.

a li s m has always been its allia n ce with dogmatism and its unwilling

ness to admit as frankly and as fully as it might the need of critical

investigation into the judgments of the na i ve mind Its strength lies
.

i n the es cape from such s cep ticism as disturbs the practical judgment
when it supposes that idealism really inte r feres with t h e integrity of
convictions a ffecting condu ct Idealism on the other hand has both
.
, ,

its strength and weakness in the scepticism whi ch it fosters Its .

s tren th lies in the capacity to question the dogmatic accuracy of

g

common sense and its weakness in the appearance of denying the
,

plain matters of fact , and so of confusing the practical maxims of life

by statements that see m to dispense with the necessity of reckoni ng
with an external world at all But whe n it is found that the idealist
.

regulates his actions o n the same assumptions as the realist : that his
theory only conceals a sceptical purpose under a more respectable
name and that it is mainly for philosophic parade it will be seen
, ,

that the real diff erence between the t w o s chools of thought is little or
nothing more than the distinction between the aristocratic and the
d emocratic mind the idealist being the former and the realist the latter
, .

The philosophic distinction is only another form of the social chasm

between those w h o do and those who do not correct their primitive
i deas intelligent criticism and s cepti cism being on the side of idealis m
,

a n d a tendency to faith and d ogmatism on the side of realism There .

is no other reason however for the persistent hostility between t h e

,

t w o modes of thought .

It is in the ethical eld that the general conception of idealism has

the advantage not as a s ceptica l doctrine but as a name for the i m
, ,

portance of ideals against subservience to sense experience This is .

caused not by the unquestioned truth of its epistemological theory but

, ,

by the good fortune that scepticism and idealism are embodied in the
s ame term for there is no special connection between the critical s cep
ti c is m of idealism against realism and ethical idealism except that any
,

re construction of ethics will involve attention to subjective considera

tions Ideals however are quite compatible with the most nai ve real
.
, ,

ism o f the epistemological type Realism in this comparison comes to

.

mean fact or things as they a r e and idealism the thi ngs as they a ug nt to
,

be There is no ne cessa r y relation between these two points of view

.

and the epistemological antitheses under the same terms It has been .

usual , of course to connect them by implication ; to regard ethi cal

,

rea l is m as a logical consequence of the epistemological and ethical ,

i dealis m as the co nsequence of the epistemological But I must co n

.
5 80 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

sider this an illusion I con cede the fact of this historical association
.
,

which inevitably gives the meaning to the term s that this logi cal con
n e ct i o n implies and I might even go farther and concede tha t the rela
,

tion has many natural a f liations But they are not of that sort which
.

has a logical necessity as one of them concerns no w we know and

,

the other the relative va l u es of w li a t we know The problem of .

epistemology is such that the opposition between the af rmation and

denial of na i ve conceptions of external reality does not imply a
similar antithesis between facts and ideals or what is a nd what ought
,

to be It must be remembered also that the traditions and teaching of

.

idealism lin k it with one notion of obje ctive reality though it abstracts
.

from sense conceptions i n the formation of that idea , and this fact of
its relation to a supersensible reality shows that it h a s not wholly e s
cape d the real which it is supposed to antagonize and critical exa m i ,

nation o f it will reveal the fact that it does not even es cape the ugly
features of that r eal which it appears so much to fear Ethical ideal .

is m may n o t require any objective reality at all It may represent .

nothing more than a discrimi n ation of values within the area of sub
je ct iv e experience in whi ch the higher culture of intelligence and
,

cons cience is sharply drawn off against the inferior phenomena of

sense But there is also nothing i n this that necessarily antagoniz es
.

the boldest metaphysics of common sense realism or the coarsest ,

materialism The temperate and rational habits of Epicurus are proof

.

of this It is the m a n that d etermines the ideal and not a metaphysical

.

or epistemological theory We may admire and obey all the higher

.

spiritual ideals and impulses but consider that they are mere a t
,

t a ch m ent s to a nucleus of matter and its functions There is no philo .

sophic m onopoly of the inuences that make for progress O ur theo .

ries are afte r thoughts of our ideals to defend the m and do not ma k e
-

them Idealism is not the only shelter for metaphysics and morality
.

nor is realism unexposed to similar limitations Both doctrines are .

good eno u gh for a certain kind of logic chopping where we have once

learned the abstractions that they embody but they never serve to ,

make intelligible the rich content of life to any who have not ex p e r i
e n ce d it in all its exuberance and fas cinating wealth They are rather .

mere devices for saving inexperienced minds from the trouble of thin k
in g
. Inspiration and education cannot be produced by dialectic varia
tio ns upon rened abstractions like these The full measure of exp e r i
.

ence and contact with facts are the o n ly resource for obtaining what
philosoph y without any due sense of humor has allowed to petrify into
, ,

these mere f o ssils of truth Skeletons may be testimony to the exis

.
 C O N C L U S I ON .
58 1

tence of life that on ce was and only the genius of men like Agassiz or
,

Cuvier can reproduce from such relics even an outline of the tissues and
functions that played their drama there in the past and in the same w ay ,

it will require genius in literature to dis cover any evidence of former

l ife in philosophic theories like idealism and realism These are only .

names for dead issues if they are made any more comprehensive than
,

the necessity one of them for inoculating dogmatism with a healthy

, ,

s cepticism when this dogmatism attaches itself to realism , a n d the other ,

for tempering scepticism with a healthy faith in human faculty when it is

tempted by extravagances in the eld of idealis m But even to do this .

they must be in master ha nds They will not effect it by any process
.

o f
p a r o tt i n g p h iIOS Op h i c phraseology but only by living throu g h all
,

their details the facts which happen to get a concentrated for m in

these terms .

F or this reason I feel n o temptations to share in the universal p r eju

d i c e of this age for declaring that whatever one s philosophy may be ,

,

it shall be called idealistic The nauseating habit of assuming that

.

one m u s t make his peace with the complacent dogmatis m of Kanto

Hegelian idealis m by protesting that he appreciates it when in fact he ,

either does n o t understand it or must perforce atta ck it as an evidence

of mental virility is a spe ctacle that tempts one to rebellion if only to
, ,

save philosophy from stagnation in phraseology wholly u nadapted to

the wants of the age If the fashion for realism were as prevalent and
.

as dogmatic the same duty would exist as the condition of saving phi
l o so p h y frpm another and perhaps more unintelligible s cholasti cism .

Intellectual dry rot can be p revented only by liberal infusions from the
spirit of contradiction der Geist der stets verneint When phi
, .

l o so p h y can only mouth its doctrines in stereotyped phrases having no

adaptability to changing experience it can be appreciated only by ,

those who have rst been initiated and its inuence does not extend
beyond that inner circle The value of abstractions to this body of the
.

faithful for economy and abbreviation need not be disputed Su ch .

economy and a te chnical mode of expression are needed in all the pro
founder work of the sciences no matter how inaccessible to the p o p u
,

lar mind But s cience always contrives to explain its meaning in the
.

vernacular whe n it is ne cessary to instruct the public But whatever .

defense philosophy may have for obs curity within the society of its
devotees it is recreant to a wider duty when it connes its humane o b
,

e c t s to the few especially in a democracy In aristo c rati c civiliza

j ,
.

tions the demand on its condescension is not so great The citizens of .

such a society are among its votaries or at l east its intelligent auditors ,
,
5 82 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

and the area of its inuence and usefulness is correspondingly circum

s cribed The rest of the c ommunity is governed not reasoned with
.
, .

The general ideas that determine the thought and action of the whole
are in possession of the rulers and they have the freedom to give them
effectiveness while the ruled are not asked or required to understand ,
,

but to obey Their action is regulated by faith or fear not by reason

.
, ,

and the duty of philosophy to construct does not extend beyond the few
who hold the reins of power except as it is at liberty to perform a
,

work of gra ce to the many and strengthen the inuences that limit the
abuses of power In aristocrati c communities it requires only to
.

moderate the temptations and licenses of authority by inculcating all

those ideas that make for prudence culture , and humanity in the
.
, ,

e r c i s e and application of it But in democratic civilizations it is

.

neither secure in its recognition nor equal to its responsibilities if it s ,

oracles are obscure or unintelligible since as always it must appeal , , ,

to the rulers for effect and these are no w the multitude A wide area .

of inuence is demanded of it It has to persuade those whom a n

.

aristocrati c s ociety may govern Science has condes cended to do thi s

.

while it preser ves its technical work for the initiated But if phi .

IO S Op h y retires as it seems to have done in our day , into the narrow

,

circle of the few it loses its power to control the trend of thought
,

which governs and must govern a democratic people Epistemology .

a n d technical metaphysics have neither interest nor inuence for thi s

class unless adapted to the common understa n ding and the deepest in
,

t erest s affecting life and action In such a state the whole eld that
.

was once the province of divine philosophy is turned over to litera
ture which never fails to make itself intelligible in plain speech or to
es chew the language of mere diale ctic and logic chopping when it en
deav o r s to convey its thoughts Circumlocution and elasticity of style
.

are better than technical shibboleths Philosophy must condescend t o .

make its idealism or realism accessible to the gener al c onsciousness ,

if it expects to su r vive in demo cratic times as a moral and S piritual

leaven in the world Its formula cannot stop with a scholasti c c o nf es
.

sion of faith but must be exp l icable and intelligible in forms cl ea r

,

enough to determine the ideas that animate the commo n mind a n d

will Loss of place and inuen ce will be the price paid for any fail
.

ure to accomplish thi s result Even Kant in his time had to complain
.

that it was neglected and it is much worse in this age m ainly because
, ,

it has no message to man k ind at large It is more the function of .

ph ilosophy tha n any other discipline except literature to cultivate , ,

adaptability to the intellectual and moral wants of man It may be .

 C ON C L U S I ON .
5 83

a ccorded perfect liberty among its adepts for abbreviatio n and technical
dis cussion just as a r e chemistry a n d higher physics But this is no
, .

reason why its oracles cannot be interpreted in the vernacular whe n

the justication for its existence demands this It s decline i n the .

university life of modern democra cy is the consequence of thi s failure

to have a mission for the majority who do the governing The fault .
,

of course may be as much in those who have to be taught as in those

,

who te a ch There may be no willingness to accept a philosophic

.

gospel of any kind and this is certainly the disposition of the present
,

general public But the philosopher may a lso have no gospel to teach
.
,

as seems to be the case since Kant who banishe d a ll interesting i n

t e ll e c t u a l problems from legitimate S pe culation and reection leaving ,

everlasting talk about experience and consciousness as the only

subject left for the queen of the sciences The mission which it can
.

perform depend s partly upon its character and mostly upon the genu
i n e ly human interests that pervade and inspire its work It will r e .

main forever obscure and useless unless it can touch the world s heart
,

with some sympathy and its mind with some vision of general truth and
duty It cannot rely solely upon controversial dialectic dividing sp ec u
.

lation into t w o sharpl y dened theories one of which is to be atta ck ed

and the other defended with no reconstruction of truth within the
,

reach of practical life Unless it su cceeds in e ffecting this it will r e

.

tain no pla ce or function in a democrati c C i vilization which h a s to be

moved from within instead of from without .

It is the tyrannical inuence of our earlier and unr eect iv e co nce p

tions upon our later development that is the primary source of all our
trouble in philosophy and the controversy between realis m and ideal
,

ism is only one illustration o f the feud that extends o ver the whole eld
of speculation regarding the cosmos In our earlier experience we
.

mak e no attempt to give unity a n d consistency to our ideas We tak e .

them as they come and ask no questions T h e accident of a confusing

.

and misunderstood situation may wholly distort what the larger e xp er i

ence of the race has reduced to a common datu m Thus Locke and
Berkeley cha n ged the meaning of the term idea and confused the
general drift of phi l osophi c thought Epicurus adopted the concept of
.

matter for the permanent in the cosmos while Plato had used it for ,

the transient And subsequent thought has followed the materialists

.

in all their essential conceptions of it as a substance The attempt to .

correct these distortions after they have become xed in ou r habits of

,

thought and when the i r inconsistency with the general view of lan
,

guage has been discovered causes a wrench in our feelings because the
, ,
5 84 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

relation between conceptions and language is so xed by a ssociation that

the stream of thought is a victim of it and we can suppress its causal
,

inuence only by adopting terms that do n o t r ec al l up a rejected idea

.

against the truth that is wanted We have to overcome the automatic

.

habits of our rst conceptions by the formation of others out of data

whi ch will not instigate the occurrence of the earlier series and it ,

often seems as if the attitude of oppos ition to the past was the only
security against its domination O ur progress away from this past
.

depends upon our ability to res cue our minds from the thralls of mere
habit and the association of ideas In many perhaps most cases this
.
, ,

control can be effected only by changing the terms of our thought .

O nly a few can disenchant the old phrases of their illusions and trans
form them by t r a ns gur atio n into the embodiment of n e w achieve
ments It is this situation that always gives the charm to idealism
. .

It is the mind s liberation from the na i ve possession of u n critical ideas

.

Realism is the natural conviction of the untrained soul whether it ,

rises or not to the dignity of a theory and when it is necessary to cor

,

rect the aberratio ns of that stage of culture it is not easy to give the
,

earlier ideas and their expression the color and tone of a new rapture .

The discovery that our minds are as important agencies in thought

and action as the real world especially when we have to conquer the
,

latter for our own ends an d the enthusiasm which the dis covery
,

awakens may naturally enough obscure the truth of realism for the
moment while we emphasize the functions of thought in culture and
achievement But the time comes when idealism also gets so far
.

away from reality that its dreaming can be checked only by a return
to objective fa cts .

There is a feature in commo n between epistemological a n d ethical

idealism which was passed by in the consideration of their points of
di ffere n ce and indifference It is the fact that they both represent the
.

subj ective or psychological point of view in the study of the world .

They are both anthropocentric as O pposed to the c o sm o ce nt r ic position

-

for estimating experience The co sm o c ent r i c represented the domi

.

n a nt tendency of Greek thought an d gen e rally a f liates m ost easily

with what passes for realism The anthropocentric point of view is

.

the mo d ern and to some extent the Christian position The Greek .

felt himself under the restraints of a remorseles s power th a t he could

not love and w a s reluctantly forced to obey He was always sighing .

for a freedom that he could not possess and h a d not the courage to
extort The contemplative life was his paradise whether in h is
.
,

mythology he placed it in the past of man or in his philosophy he ,

 C ONC L U S I ON .
5 85

placed it in the l ife of the gods Exemptio n from toil and pain wa s
.

his principal desire and the fear of the inexorable power of fa te kept
him either perpetually co mplaining against nature or cultivating the
v irtues of a Stoic as a refuge from despair and as affording him his
only hope of meriting the character of a soldier and a man He .

dreaded power that restrained him and he could not learn , as in the
,

prayer of Cleanthes to reverence it for any bi n ig n it ies but bestowed

, ,

upon it a resigned and melancholy respect The ugly spectre of fact .

w a s S imply the consciousness of an u nbending la w that gave him no

room for the play of freedom His l ove of the aristocratic and con
.

t e m p l a t i ve life kept him crying for a free bounty fro m the universe ,

and work to win his blessings only appeared to o ffe n d the dignity of
his nature It took a democratic civiliz ation to supplant the contem
.

p la t iv e by the active life though this does not al ways clear away the
,

realistic sense of nature s po wer to ma k e submission a disagreeable

virtue It only equaliz es the struggle while it offers less stimulus to

.

r ise above it But the oppression of external restraint upon a beauty

.

loving Greek also more passionately desirous of freedom than any

,

modern man and as fond of nature as he was conscious of its l imita

,

tions and forbidding aspects could only foster that temper of mind
,

which lies between deance and obedience a conditio n which is partly ,

pathos partly courage and partly despair and u ncolored by a ny of the

, ,

features of hope and faith The revolt against my thology had carried
.

a way every vestige of the human in the cosmo s and it required Chris ,

t ia n ity to restore it in any form whatever But to the G reek there was.

no hope of gaining anything by a struggle against nature though a ,

resigned obedience might lessen the pain he feared and w i n as mu ch

virtue as w a s possible in a condition O f S lavery .

But idealism which turns the mind away from the tyranny of
,

nature to the condence of man in his own power to x limits to the

restraints about him to conquer nature while he obeys it puts a n e w
, ,

face on things Man discovers by it wh a t is in himself to produce the

.

very results which in his laz ier moods he as k s as a n unearned bounty

, ,

of providence The attention is turned from the outer world of i n

.

exible power to the in ner world of consciousness and the freedom of

the will to turn nature to account as well as to practice submission .

Man can thu s come to respect himself whether h e does nature or n o t, ,

and to secure his happiness by conquest instead of by mere good for

tune Ethical idealis m is hardly possible until consciousness is turned
.

upon itself and nds there the will a nd the way to overcome all ex
ternal o bsta cles and to ma k e co s mic l a w serve his o w n ends What .
5 86 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

ought to be can h a r d l v be the result of idle loo k ing at things T h e .

spectator of the cosmos can only enj oy what it casually brings him .

The man of action may force it to serve him The consciousness o f .

one s power to ma ke his fortune is the revelation of introspection and

the victory is t h e fruit of courage to triumph over the inuences that

tend to despair or that repress self co n d en ce Idealism thus , in so fa r
-
.

as it gives a man command of himself and discovers a freedom which

he does not dream of securing in his habit of passive obedience to in
exorable laws , shows that happiness is made not found and to that , ,

extent marks both a superiority and a n advance on that realis m which

is content to be the slave of circumstance Idealism may be subject t o .

abuse li k e all other impulses that originate in weak human nature It .

may be followed by pride and rebelliousness where humility and r e sig

nation were the characteristics before But whatever restraints e xp e .

r ie n ce may put upon its aspirations it is the rst step in man s dis
,

co v er y of his superiority over nature and of his prospect for liberation ,

while realis m is the check that would keep Icarus from losing h is
wi ngs in an inglorious ight toward the sun and away from the earth .

De nn m it Go tt ern Fo r wi th t h e g od s
S oll s i ch n i cht m e s s e n hou ld n o m an
S
Irg en d e i n M ensch . M easure h i m s lf e .

H e bt e s i ch au f wa t s If h e reach upwar d
'

r r

U n d ber ii h r t A n d t o uche s t h e stars

M ie de m S che i tel d ie S terne , W i th h i s h i g h head ,

Nirge nd s haf t en dann Ne er w i ll h e x

v

D i e u n s i ch e n S ohlen
r , H i s i ns ecure feet ,

U n d m i t i h m s p i e le n A n d w i th h i m w i ll p lay
Wolke n u n d Wi n de . T h e clou d s a n d t h e w i n d s .

S t eh t er fes ten
m it tan d s h e wi t h xed
S
M ark i ge n Knoche n B o ld a n d m foot r

A u f d er wo h l geg r ii n det e n O n t h e we ll base d

r
D a uer en d e n E d e , S ol i d o l d earth ,

R e i cht e n i cht a uf
r ,
Reache s n o t up ward ,

Nu m it der E i che
r O nly with t h e o ak
O d er d e R e ber O t h e weak i n e
r v

S i ch u ergl ei chen
z v . H i m s elf t o com p are .

I n the epistemological eld idealism performs the service which

scepticism must always give to progress It disturbs the equanimity .

of indolent and unprogressive temperaments and offers a rational ex

cuse for ignoring tra d ition and prejudice It is not often that scept i .

c i sm can receive any credit for merit e ual to t h at of faith but it de

q ,

serves this consideration and the fact should not be ignored It will .
,

of course not be respected by those who are afraid of change a nd

,
 C O N CL U S I ON .
537

progressive development But when history comes to cast up its a c

.

counts scepticis m will have a place assigned it in the moral salvatio n

,

of the race , if it does nothing more than to clear man of his ill usions .

Though it m ay not supply or prove any positive doctri n e it is an e ffe c ,

tive solvent of all the dogmatisms that base themselves upon an uncritical
condence i n our sense perceptions But t h e fundamental wea k nes s
.

of idealism as a system of scepti cis m resting on the phenomenal limit s

of knowledge is that it expects to draw positive conclusions from these
limita t ions This ca n not be done Conclusions are an extension of
. .

knowledge when they are fruitful of positive results never a curtail ,

ment of it Scepticism clips the wings of fancy a n d ho lds reason t o

.

experience and where idealism coincides with the sceptical limitation s

,

of knowledge without allowing for any elasticity and progress in the

,

d a t a of it and without admitting some a fliation with the postulate s

,

of realism it forfeits the right to suggest any spiritual r eco n st r uc

,

tion of the universe .It c a n only play the part of an iconoclast

against dogmatism and o v er co n d e n ce in nai ve views of things But .

until it ma k es its peace with the fundamental assumptions of realism ,

which it is too ready to treat as a mortal enemy it can o ffer no gospe l ,

but doubt to either metaphysics or religion though the men that adopt ,

its position may still show allegiance to ethical and e sthetic inspira
tion for ideals reaching beyond the pleasures of sense But the idealist .

can effect even this mu ch only by aba n doning mere logical play and
dogmas qu ite as absurd and unintelligible as the qu idit ies of scholastic
theology even though their hidden meaning be true and making it s
, ,

message as clear a n d concrete as the facts on which it rests imbue the ,

general consciousness that rules a democracy with some realiz abl e

ideal which can have the scientic strength of a philosophy and the
motive power of a religion Instead of this those w h o might be the
.

oracles of truth are hunting about the cerements of Kant and H egel
for life
.

D wellers i n d ream lan d ,

D r i n k i n g d elus i on
O ut o f th e em pty
S k u ll o f th e p ast .

Whatever philosophy we have must be the product of science if I ,

may distinguish between them for the moment whether we choose to ,

call it idealism or realism or both or neither We shall not discove r .

it in the perpetual exposition of past systems any m ore than religion

will nd its truth in tradition and mythology It is a perpetual con .

struction of present experience incorporating only so mu ch of the past

,
5 88 TH E PR OBL EM S OF PH IL O S OPH Y .

as is perennial and recasting the formulas that gather about them , like
a ship its barnacles the growths of false interpretation and associ
,
'

a tion The days of a p r zo r z specu lation are gone not because it is

'

.
,

wholly false or useless but because we have adopted a standard of

,

truth which places more value on inductive than upon d eductive

methods and because the li mits of a p r zo r z speculation are so quickly
' '

reached that the only hope for further progress lies in experience with
its discovery of the data for whatever exte nsion of knowledge is pos
sible The mistake of the Kantian lies in placing so much stress upon
.

' '

the necessity of a p r zo r z truth of some kind that can never be more

than abstract and in emphasiz ing so much the limits of knowledge to
experience that he creates the impression that experience has as de
c ided limits for its matter that is its facts as it has for its form ,
, , ,

namely the sensory mode of obtaini n g it It is not the f o r m but the

, .

c o n t e n t or matter of knowledge that has the chief interest for man .

The idealist sho uld reme m ber that their great protagonist recogniz ed

that experience had a content as well as a form and that he did not
d enitely indicate any limits to this conte nt but only to the for m
which it should take though he was silent on the actual elasticity of
,

this content No w if the matter of ex p erience have no limits but those

.

of the actual facts up to date what is there to prevent the accumula ,

tion of data that will necessitate more than can be deduced from the
formal conditions of experie n ce or from any previous experience not
implicating this n ew result ! It is in this discovery of ne w data that
science d oes its work and supplies both the m otive and the m a tter for all
philosophy except dogmatism and tradition O ur progress lies more .

i n the way we conceive the truth than it does in the formulas for em
bodying it and hence in the experience that makes abstractions intel
,

ligible rather than in the verbal consistency of our present w ith the
past There is a great value in having truths that survive revolution
.

a r y change and such truths are easily stated and understood but it is ,
,

n o t so easy to adapt the changes of time and progress to them a pro ,

c e dur e extre m ely n ecessary in order to utilize what is permanent in

practical life Philosop h y must therefore be the expression of the

.

genera l results of knowledge in each age with the increments that have
been won by n ew d iscovery An idealism or realism that cannot ex .

tend its meaning to these new conditions and wants is destined to

perish in the bogs of illusion and obscurity .

The same general attitude that has been shown toward the contro
v er s
y between idealism and realism can be taken in regard to that be
tween spiritualism and materialism The reader may ha ve observed .
 C O NC L U S I ON .
55 9

that I did not conclude t h e chapters on t h ese t wo metaphy sical theories

with any decisive verdict for or against either of the m There were .

several reasons for this reservation They all grow however , out of
.
,

one fact This is t h e c ircumstance that there is no huma n interest in

.

the controversy betwee n the t wo theories except the question of sur

v i v a l after death. The di f cu lties of any assured convictio n on this
issue creates indifference to the merely scientic or p h ilo s0p h ic prob
l e m that may n o t guarantee or exclude survival Besides the question
.

of the existence of a soul has been so complicat ed with assumptions

about it s nature that the matter of its survival , in addition to doubts
fro m the wa nt of evidence is aff ected by all the doubts connected with
,

the proble m of the soul s nature which might not guarantee survival

of personal identity w hen that nature was decided This means that .

there are al w ays t wo problems before investigation ; the one concerns

the existence of a subject other than the brain to explain conscious
ness and the other concerns the persistence of this p ers ona l conscious
,

ness after the dissolution of the bodily organism This situation .

makes it prudent not to press a conclusion too urgently until the one
'

question is separated fro m the other and as the decisive settlement of

,

it cannot be determined short of the proof of survival which mere ,

philosophy cannot sup ply the only proper co urse in philosophic dis
,

cu ssio n is to leave the issue where that method must leave it namely , ,

in the balance between arguments whose value is dependent wholly

upon the discovery of facts to gi v e them cogency and conclusiveness .

Morever from what has been said about matter and spirit
,

in the discussion about materialism and spiritualis m and in the chapter ,

on the existence of God it ought to be apparent that I have no such

,

animosities toward materialis m as would lead me to neglect the force

of the facts in its favor and no such allegiance to the term spirit
,

or spiritualism as would lead me to expect any better salvation from a

bad philosophy tha n I might get from matter We cannot presume
.

that one of the theories shall be defended and the n seek for the evi
dence without also admitting the dif culties on either side of the issue .

Apart from that conception of matter which is formed from its sen
sible manifestations and the test of it by gravity there is no reason for
,

using the term spirit even when we have demonstrated that the
brain cannot explain consciousness In its widest import the co n cep
.

tion of matter has been so rened and the capacities represented by it

have been so extended beyond anything supposed by ancient materi
a lis m ,
that there can be no objection to as s uming so far as mere s ci en
,

t i c explanation i s concerned that the subj ect of consciousness is the

,
5 90 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH IL O S O P H Y
.

brain i f the evidence j usties it or that it is some form of rened

, ,

matter or ether if the evide n ce is against the organism In fact

,
.
,

the ter m matter is so abstract that it is useless for any purposes that
c ould not as well be served by any other conception except that ,

matter with its associations can best perpetuate the scientic

, ,

spirit and a rational continuity with the past saner efforts of man to
understand the universe But in so far as metaphysics and science are
.

concerned it makes no difference w hether w e adopt materiali s m or

,

spiritualism unless w e mean to declare an attitude o n the immortality of

,

the soul O n the one hand the spiritualist has so long insisted that the
.
,

soul is spaceless and has kept philosophy thereby in su ch an im
possible world for science and common sense that it would be easy ,

t o lead a revolt to the Epicurean conception of it with our ethereal con

c e t i o n of matter before us , and so leave to the
p p roblem of evidence
the solution of its survival and not the question of what the soul
s hall be called O n the other hand the materialist not disguising
.
, ,

f rom himself the absence of evid ence for either survival as he esti ,

m ated this evidence o r for any subj ect but the organis m has not o b
, ,

s erved the process o f extension and renement that have gone on in his

conception of matter until it might make a good substitute fo r

spirit The only thing that has remained untouched by change is
.

the opposition between the two schools on the question of immortality

o r survival o f death O n that question the materialist h a s shown most
.

o f the science and most of the courage and the spiritualist most of the ,

sentiment and most of the fear T hey have divided intolerance of each
.

o ther about equally between them But on the mere metaphysica l

.

q uestion as to the nature of the mental subject when it is agreed that ,

i t is not the organism there is no longer any but reasons of association

,

for using the term spirit at all All the problems of philosophy .

and religion can be solved by the proper use of the term matter .

The only objection to this position is the obstinacy of the materialist ,

who does not often examine his conceptions critically and w h o in spite ,

of his changes in the idea of matter still passionately insists that ,

his doctrine is the same as ever when it is only in the psychological

,

eld that this consistency remains and even this only in th a t co n c ep

,

tion of the problem which denies a future life for cons ciousness But .

apart from this question of f a ct o r of facts that necessitate the a ssu m p

,

tion there are none but verbal and associative reasons for continuing
,

the antithesis between the conceptions of matter and spirit
.

The real opposition between materialism and spiritualism turns on

a matter of fact a n d not of metaphysics It was of course originally a .
, ,
 C O NCL U S I ON . S9 I

r esort to metaphysics by both parties to prove a real or supposed fact in

regard to survival but the rise of scientic method discredited a p r i o r y:
,

metaphysics as a means of proving any future facts whatever except ,

hypothetically on the same conditions and left philosophy only the

,

power to systematize the knowledge we have and not to predict the

future on any other grounds tha n present experience of facts that j ustify
it S cience drew clearly the distinction between the evidential problem
.

i n regard to a future life and the metaphysical proble m of identical or

di fferent subjects for physical and mental eve nts Both problem s may .

be treated evidentially as they must be , but the evidence in each case ,

,

if it is to have the most effective cogency and if it goes beyond support

,

ing a m ere possibility for independent subj ects , must be of a different

k ind in each case the conclusion apart from the actual isolation of an
, ,

individual consciousnes s fro m the organism being fairly well balanced

,

between the t w o views , while any conclusion in favor of an immaterial

s ubject for consciousness would leave wholly u ndecided the question of

personal survival after death All this shows that there is no adequate
.

reason for passionate controversy between the t wo school s on the

metaphysical but only on the religious question of fact The passions
, .

associated with this belief in a future life could well attach themselves
to the metaphysical theories as long as they were the only means of
,

a rriving at the desired conclusion But when the problem became a

.

m atter of fact distinct from the mere existence of a t r a ns ce r ebr a l subject

for consciousness to be settled either before the metaphysical question
,

c ould be answered or as a condition of any m etaphysics other tha n

materialism in some sense of that term the continuance of the philo

,

s ophic controversy was an anachronis m and had no excuse except that

of intellectual inertia or the desire to evade n e w issues or the old issue ,

in a new form F or the problem of immortality is perennial persisting

.
,

wi th every change of intellectual development and divides human nature

,

far more deeply in respect of temperament than in argument These .

temperaments may be called the emotional and the scientic The one .

will not surrender and the other does not apparently need the belief .

Their relation to the doctrine and the various interests in life as a ffected
by it needs a carefu l analysis .

The belief in i m mortality has always been more of a passio n than a

philosophy There have been attempts enough to give it a philos o phic
.

s tatus but only when this met h od was considered the criterion of truth
,
.

The inuences which have k ept it alive have in reality been stronger
than any philosophy The belief originates in impulses which make
.

the d o ctrine one of immeasurable tenacity and also one of great power
592 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

whether for good or ill because it lends itself so easily to the imagi
,

nation for coloring it with whatever ideals our caprices m a y form as ,

both ancient and medi ae val conceptions abundantly prove It may arise .

from either of t wo instincts ; from the persona l desire to live and pro
lo ng the pleasures of existence or from the philanthropic and social in
,

ue n ce s that center in human sympathy and love The one is purely .

egoistic and the other is altruistic These inuences may even be.

variously mixed according to the character of the individual But .

neither of them though it keeps the passion alive is anything like a

, ,

s cientic or p h ilo so Ph ic argument but only a moral force to be reck

,

o n ed with in the adjustment of our attitude toward others O ne of .

them the egoistic is exposed to all the immoralities which a purely

, ,

personal interest in life can inict upon freedom of thought and the ,

other the altruistic to all the sentimentalities that concentrate about

, ,

ne cha racters which ofte n have less vigor than the struggle for exist
ence requires The belief h as not been an unmixed good It did not
.
.

save the middle ages from the most frightful orgies in fact it might ,

be said to have been the primary cause of those religious persecutions

which rivalled the most sanguinary cruelties of savage life The trac .

ing of the belief to the most gentle and divine of beings was not suf
cient to restrain the most extraordinary passion for inicting pain .

No i n tolerance w a s too intense for its hatred of scepticism and liberty

of thought and worship As if the tortures for eternity in a m arl
.

of burning sulphur were not enough for the failure to assent to false
proposition s men must needs add the same tortures to the present life
,

on the pretext of saving a man s soul against his own will and po wer

which were taught by a doctrine of predestination to be helpless No

doubt there were often other and associated inuences at work but ,

the saving of the soul was the pretext for the policy of the state and
the church and ordi n ary history sees no other inuence to record than
,

the sacrice of humanity for a belief without scientic o r otherwise

adequate credentia ls Its benecial e ffect on the race can be secured
.

only w h en it is tempered by the morality which is founded on the

brotherhood of man and which is indi fferent to the personal interest
of the man who feels that brotherhood This would indicate that .

common terrestrial morality is the most important impulse of the two

and the condition of the other having any value at all for life I do .

not deny its mora l value for the man whose humanity is the rst im
pulse o f his nature But he is in no need of s cience or philosophy to
.

awa ken his moral instincts or to support a belief that gets all its beauty
from the worth of virtue in a world where its achievement is not
 C ONC L U S I O N .
5 93

al ways the e ffect but the cause of a belief in a future life It give s .

the moral an d humane man po wer to arouse higher ideals in others but ,

it does not insure the strengt h to realize the m It is not the mere .

belief in survival that can guarantee morality but the kind of existence ,

offered us w ith a conception of the relation bet ween the present a n d

the future This is appare nt in the whole history of philosop h i c a n d
.

religious thought on the subject H ence while I do not deny immens e

.

capacities for good in the doctrine of immortality these are subj ect t o
qua l ication and I doubt whether we have in history whe n t a ke n
, ,

alone and apart from moral ideals not always created by it any satis ,

factory evidence o f its ben ecial inuence on conduct M ost men a n d .

wo m en as we can see in the history of the church , regulate their live s

,

by impulses that they regard as n atural and see k to form that co n cep
tion of the future which these impulses suggest The chief impor .

tance of the belief lies i n its support of the relative values that o u r
moral and intellectual development place upon consciousness and mat
ter But the personal equation and the selsh motives which deter
.

mine o r may determine our present lives may always associate coward
ice and wea k ness with the belief This is specially true of large classe s
.

of believers But the s cientic man whatever his defects of motive

.
,

and ch a racter has a healthier courage and judgment H e may feel

,
.

for man and he may not li k e the ugly order of nature and sufferin g
any more than the religious mind but he takes an impersonal view o f
,

the case will not cry over spilled mil k or go about like a pulin g
, ,

child because he cannot obtain from nature all he would like H e .

grimly faces facts and whatever bargain has been made for h i m with
the universe he keeps faithfully and without resentment He m ay .

sometimes or often display n one of those humane interests which a r e

better than science or knowledge : he may be am bitious for fame o r
so cial standing and may trample r em o r sely upo n those feelings
,

in ne natures whose moral sympathy with man is stronger tha n

t h e intellect or the w ill to face ugly facts But he is not trouble d .

with the circu mstance that he cannot have his own way with
nature though this spirit may be as bad as it can be good H e
, .

s wa l lows his pride and emotions strengthens his will and trusts h is
, ,

conscience where h e has these qualities while he pursues farthe r

, ,

inquiries to wrest from the universe its secrets which whether i n ,

tended for good or not by the investigator may result in the welfare ,

of the hu man race without regard to the question whether this result
is for present human culture or for advantage to an indenite life
be vo n d the grave .

38
5 94 TH E P ] ! OB L E M S OF PH I L OS O PH Y .

M it g ier g er H an d

n ach S ch t zen g rabt
a ,

U nd fro h i st wenn er R eg e n wii m e n det r r .

The stoical spirit will hunt after treasures but will be content if ,

it nds only eart h wor m s .

There is an important wea k ness in the position of m any believers

in immo rt ality which ought to be noticed There is a wide tendency .

to come to the belief on one ground and to defend it on another The .

inuence which ma k es our arguments respectable is determined by the

spirit of the age rather than by the actual basis on which they rest .

We may actually accept a doctrine on faith and attempt to sustain it

on reason or we may allow our general view of the cosmos and its
,

rationality to decide the matter for us against pessimistic beliefs if it ,

cannot be regarded as rational and then resort to something else to

,

sustain our contention There is no obj ection to reliance on faith or

.

emoti o nal considerations if w e do not pretend to give them a w eight

,

and cogency which they do not possess They can have no more .

power than the slightest inductions based upon nothing more than our
feeling that the cosmos has no rational meaning to us without the be
lief If we state it so and adopt no policy of intolerance toward
.

those who either do not feel this View or demand stronger credentials
for belief there can be criticism of this attitude But scientic and
,
.

philosophic arguments where accessible may be and I think are the

, , , ,

proper means of assuring conviction in this age when the standard of

b elief is so high on all qu estions But there is no use to convince
.

ourselves even with these unless they have all the power claimed for
them It is the real or boasted merit of the rational philosopher that
.

he subordinates his beliefs and the degree of tenacity with which he

holds to them to the character of his logic and facts and will not allow ,

erroneous reasoning to prove what is in fact a mere general moral

j udgment acco mpanied by various emotions As I have alrea dy indi .

ca t e d
,
the belief or the hope of survival where it tends to have any ,

general tenacity at all and is not a mere personal wish to live is a r e

, ,

ex o f a pure a nd lofty moral nature assuming that it has n o other

,

cre dentials I do not deny this inuence a certain worth perhaps

.
,

of much importance though the right to persist in it is subordinate

,

to philosophic and scientic considerations What gives it the weight .

that I concede will be remark ed after indicating why I do not attach

much weight to the m oral argument of Kant in favor of immortality .

This was based upon the disparity between virtue and happiness in
the present life Duty demanded thought Kant more than it w a s
.
, ,

possible for man to realize in the present and t h e nat ur a l relation be

,

 C ONCL U S I ON
.
5 95

tween virtue and happiness its proper reward being unrealiz ed in the
, ,

present required a future life to e ffect it I concede at least some

, .

plausibility to this arg ument as reected in the consciousness that a

rational world demands such a relation between virtue and happiness .

B ut Kant assumes what his philosophy d oes not provide but rather
discredits namely the rational nature of the world But the fact may
, , .

be that the world has no other rationality tha n that which favors the
conquest of happiness by virtue in the present order and not complain
ing if w e do not win Kant was too mu ch inuenced in his judgment
.

of the argu ment by the conceptions of rewards and punishments enter

t a i n ed at his time in relatio n to a who l e system of alleged virtues
which in fa ct have no such importance as was claimed for them
, , .

The connection between virtue and happiness as conceived at that ,

time , was infected with the a r t i ciality of the theological temper of the
age and there was less room to recogniz e both the true ethical ideas
a n d the consequent natural relation which should exist between the

t w o things named Kant inevitably exaggerates the disparity between

.

t he m by implying that there is more virtue and less happiness in actual

life than may be the fact We ne ed to estimate the relatio n between
.

conduct and consequences in the pre sent world less fro m the point of
View of rewards and punishments and more from that of natural causes
and effects recognizing that often the result is the same for a mistake
,

as for a sin This paradox in the system may be due only to the fal
.

s it y of mu ch of our ethics Many of our assumed duties are merely

.

s o cial and conventional not cosmic a ffairs while many of the cosmic
, ,

pertain so far as we kno w only to the conditions o f the incarnate life

, , .

In social and conventional matters rewards and punishments have to

be more or less articial and in cos m ic matters they are natural con
,

s equences o f action In our conceptions of ethics the t w o types of

.

facts become confused and many of our moral inequalities of which

we complain are due to this confusion When the one type is distin.

g uish ed from the other there may remain the mistakes and their con
sequences as dii c ul t ie s in the way of supposing nature rational but ,

this would only shut Kant out of expecting things any better in another
existence under the same general governance It is useless for him to .

put the rational connection in the next life if he expects us to accept ,

that as any better accredited than the present If the rationality of the .

present life is discredited by the in equality between merit and deserts

there is no reason in experience which was Kant s standard for meas
,

u ring truth for supposing that the next w ill be any more rational
,

t han this one The next might be better but we could hardly ex
.
,
5 96 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH IL O S OP H Y .

pe o t it to be framed on any radically different principles than the

present .

I am quite willing to a dmit that there are inequalities in the present

life that need righting according to standards of ethics not co nv en
,

t io na l but I do not see that their existence is an evidence of a future

,

life to right them as this assumes that the cosmos is more rational than
,

we have any evidence in experience to believe I rather think that .

Kant did not analyze and state the moral argu ment correctly I do not .

think that it should be based upon the inequalities between virtue and
happiness , but on the inequalities between the moral l a w and natural
law , that is between what we are compelled to value and what nature
,

actually seems to value We are obliged by our very nature to pla ce

.

consciousness involving intelligence and moral ity above mere matter

, ,

in our action toward progress Every achievement which w e insist

.

upon as necessary to any and a l l progress is conditioned by conscious

ness in some way or the phenomena of consciousness are those which
,

we wish to keep persistent That is to say we estimate the existence

.
,

of consciousness and its achievements in intelligence and morality as

s u perior to matter and its phenomena and we have to do this if we make
,

any progress No w we also esti mate the permanent more highly than
.

the transient We depend upon it for our development Ever since

. .

P lato it has been the permanent that has ta k en the most important
pl a ce in ethical values A s we place consciousness above mere ma
.

t er ia l facts in its character and importance we must naturally ask

whether there is any tendency for this fact to persist in the order of
thi ngs in the form which gives it a personally ethical value We .

observe that matter is eternal The doctrine of the conservation of

.

energy shows that matter is permanent and if nature does not confer,

an equal boon upon personal consciousness it adopts a policy in favor

of the facts which our o wn progress imperatively depreciate s in com
parison with those it must estimate most highly Nature seems more .

careless of consciousness than of matter What is highest in ou r .

moral nature in the prese n t life is apparently held in an inferior esti

mation by the cosmos This situation is a fact showing one half of
.

t h e present order quite rational and the other half j ust as irrational .

If a future life be a fact then t h e whole syste m appears rational at ,

least in t h e fact of its preserving consciousness as well as matter The .

discrimin a tion w h ich the moral l a w ma k es shows that the present sys
tem is not wholly irra tional but its rationality would seem to be very
,

imperfect or such as it had would be rendered n ugatory if personal

, ,

co n sciousness were n o t granted an equal ran k with matter in the proc

 C ONC L U S I O N
.
5 97

e ss of conservation We have to adj ust our conduct to the law and

.

o rder of nature and if that order does not make consciousness with i n
,

t ell ig en c e emotion and morality permanent w e can hardly be blamed

,

if we regulate our actions according to material considerations

which are the only ones presu mably respected by the cosmos These .

d o not prevent prudence in conduct of an hedo nistic type , but they do

show that there is no necessity of reckoning with a future spiritual life ,

if it is not to be A materialistic life is always the natural the logical ,

.
,

.and the necessary consequence of a m aterialistic philosophy in the long

r un . If nature does not respect consciousness as mu ch as matter we ,

have only the present to take account of and this alone will permit
a ctions that a future life wou ld not at least fro m the point of view of
,

k nowledge It is just this condition of the case that gives Ka nt s

.

m oral argument its force and not the question of rewards and penal
,

t ies . I t would not be felt where the moral nature has not once and
f ully fel t the moral la w which simply demands that the cosmos be
m ade as rational throughout as the present and as the ideals which it
c reates suggest as possible This is why the natural reex of a ne
.

m oral nature is always on the side of hope and faith if it ca n free ,

i tself from those conceptions of such a life which have both weakened
t h e belief and depreciated its value .

It will be seen then that with all the d ii c ul t ies weaknesses

, , ,

d oubts and limitations the belief in a future life has its importance
, .

O r rather the credible and proved fact of survival would have much
i mportance for civiliz ation in that stage in which its ideals require this
a dditional motive to give the m the power they need and which would

lose their im p er a tiv en ess if the doctrine were displaced No doubt

, , .

w e should be stronger if we could respect the moral l a w without this

f aith but the maj ority of the race can look at life with more encourage
,

ment if they know that their high est duties and i deals are as much r e
s e ct e d by the order of the world as they feel for them The value
p .

t hat is placed on personality in comparison with matter must suggest

t h e desirability that the more ideal of the two should be preserved so

that duty a n d the realization of its object should coincide not so mu ch ,

as a concessio n to the idea of reward as to that of a rational consequence

of the relative value that we must place upon personality and matter .

Any man wh o has a moral ideal involving the highest development of

consciousness , whatever he may think about the evidence for survival ,

must frankly recogniz e the desirability of it in its ideal form and the
different view of man s relation to the universe which it w ould indi

c ate It is all very ne to put on a brave face and say we do not care
.
5 98 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

for it when about the only reason we have for assuming such an air of
,

courage and bravado is the fact that we have to confess the want of
evidence for it We all li k e to appear indifferent when there is no
.

hope Self control is a most important duty and so is resignation but

.
-
,

this fact is no reason for pretending to hold that survival is not de

sirable if it is not a degenerated condition H ealthy natures will not
, .

whimper under disappointment but will endeavor to mak e the b est o f ,

a bad bargain But in spite of the necessity for being strong in such
.

circumstances and contenting one s self with morality and the absence

of hope there is not a serious scepti c that would not frankly admit that
,

such a fact as survival from death , assuming that it carried with it any
sanity of mental condit i on would change man s attitude toward th e
,

cosmos and represent its order in a more favorable light than materi
a li s m . Respectability may h a v e m o r e to do with making us stoics l

'

than real virtue Courage is a safe quality when cowardice s uffer s a ll

.

the pains and runs as many risks as bravery H ence there is no u se .

to pretend moral indifference to the question when sound ju dgment

must concede that , hypothetically at least survival after death would
'
,

put a more ideal construction on the policy of nature or P rovidence

than annihilation assuming that life of any k ind has any value We
, .

might nd it necessary to give up hope no matter what we thought o f ,

the case but the necessity of being brave is not a reason for denyi n g
,

the moral value of the doctrine under proper c onditions even though ,

it is only the result of the morality which it in turn encourages and

perpetuates P retence of not being interested in it beca u se w e cannot
.

prove it , though it would color the existence of morality with a n e

stimulus is no better than a passionate desire for it It looks and
, .

sounds heroi c to plead for stout and brave hearts but that language ,

and the mood it represents only masks the very value which I am con
tending for and if w e cannot be stoical without tacitly confessing t h e
,

desirability of what we cannot get it m ight be a higher virtue to avoid ,

hypocrisy in the matter Man may easily forget the fable of the fo x
.

and the grapes when he talks about immortality while he shows a pas
si o nat e sel shness in the pursuit of wealth fame social eclat r esp ec , , ,

t a bi l ity and freedom from toil and neglects all the human sympathie s
,

that might redeem the present life from many of the features that i n duc e
the sceptic to impeach nature S cientic reputation is not a protection
.

against selsh impulses even when it enforces allegiance to facts

,

against what seems to be a human interest O bedience to logic and .

fact is a duty as well as a necessity when it comes to the inevitable but ,

this does not i nvolve any necessity or obligation to pretend that t h e

 C ONCL U S I O N
.
5 99

universe is better without than with the preservation of perso nality and
the best ideals that ever inuenced human action .

It is easy , however , to abuse the belief as I ha ve already indicated

, .

Christian thought was a complete reaction upon the despair of Greek

life Greek eth ics were wholly secular and not religious In fact
. .
,

after the decline of mythology the ideals of Greek civiliz ation were
,

wholly ae sthetic and political , never of the religious type that regulated
the present solely for the future life of the sou l Christian thou ght
.

placed the centra l point of huma n interest in anot her worl d after
d eath . As a consequence it neglected the present life , except so far as
it was a means for the next The t wo ty pes of thought were just the
.

opposite of each other , the one sacriced the future life to the present
and the other the present lif e to the future S cepticis m and material
.

ism however , have weakened the faith in immortality and left only
,

the social aims of Christia nity to ta ke its place There has been an
.

unquestioned need for this development in order to ba l ance morality

against the abuses of a belief that h a d formed more denite co ncep
tions of the hereafter than any facts justied and made it necessary for
healthy min d s to cu l tivate virtue without a too insistent expectation of
other reward The reaction against other worldliness wa s a n eceS
.
a

sit
y to secure proper attention to our natural duties which are pri
marily in the present life even if they are in any way re l ated to the
,

future The value of the belief in survival depends not so much upon
.

the future considered as the a i m of the present as it does upon the con
duct of the present with the future as a consequence The duty is n o t.

so much to work for the future as to work for the highest ideals of the
present w ith the prospect of the future , if that has any credentials , and
to rest satised if it h a s not the sufcient evidence in its support .

In concluding the cha pter on the existence of God I deferred some

observations on that problem until they could be made here I h ad in .

mind some remarks o n the passions th at cling so tenaciously to mere

formu l as about God In trying to smooth the way for a reconciliation;
.

between science and religion on the question of the divine existence , I

pointed out that the conception of matter had become so rened that it
mi ght easily be substituted for God in so far as philosophic use a n d
,

conception are co ncerned But the religious mind wi l l not easily a c

.

cept the suggestion of any such substitution The name of God to it

.

is hallowed by too many association s with the highest ideals of person

ality and the aspirations of man to divest it safely of its power to in
voke respect , fear and reverence as it s identication with matter wou l d
,

appear to do , its associations being free from all spiritual avor It is .

 600 TH E P R OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

rue that it has not been the same in all ages and never assumes
t ,

m ore than what man himself has achieved in his development a l ,

w ays reecting his best and sometimes with it the worst that a f icts

h i s nature . T h e Gree k gods embodied all the moral defects of that

-
c iviliz ation and di ffered from the Greek himself only in the superiority

o f their power and the force of their passions The Juda istic and .

C hrist ian conceptions of God were as various as the stages of their de

v e l o p m e nt n o w cruel and merciless and again tender and righteous
, .

I n the middle ages the name was not suffi cient to restrain any impulse
e xcept humanity I n fac t the conception of God was best represented
.

by the dire cruelty which he was said to visit upon his creatures if they
d id not assent to certain unbelievable propositions The doctrine of .

e ternal punishment embodied in the idea of the most frightful tortures

,

a n d pictured with unrivalled savage ry in Dante s I nf e r n o and supple

,

m e n t ed by a theory of arbitrary grace and predestination d is cr i m in a t

i n g between the saved and the l ost without any regard to fre e will ,

h olds up to our vision as ugly a spectre of inhuman and immoral

p ower as ever darkened the judgment of man I know that among .

t h e ner intellects even in the interpretation of these doctrines there

, ,

w a s a s pirit that moderated their repugnance and tempered them to

more approved ways and means while here and there noble min d s
,

kept alive the S park of humanity and j ustice until better times But .

the s upercial ch aracter of medi ae val history its savagery in war and ,

politics together with its idea of the terrible retribution for sins that
,

d eserved more pity than punishment that is to say the annals of the
, ,

p ast and the prospects it held out for the future require us to go very ,

d eeply if the conception of God entertained by them could shed any

l ustre upon either histor y or hope The fact that we nd the co n ce p
.

tion puried by the pro gress of man and tending to represe n t the best
m oral a chievements and ideals of his development shows here as in
t h e question of immortality that it is the prior moralization of man

t hat moraliz es and idealiz es his conception of God B lesse d a r e t h e .

l

p ure in heart for they shall see God
,
Hence the primary matter
.

i s not a theistic theory nor an atheistic but a pure heart which will
, ,

a ffect our view of t h e universe whether we regard it as good or bad

, ,

a n d our actions will be determined by what is wit h in more nobly than

b y what is without It is not every man who says God that shall be
.

s a v ed but he that doeth what a tru eideal makes imperative

,
The in .

t o l e r a n t demand that a man must believe in the existence of G od in

r
,

the sense in which it has so long been represented as a condition of

b ei ng moral or religious simply mistakes the order of nature and indi

,
 C O NC L U S I ON .
60 1

c ates the last refuge of the spirit of authority I do not deny a value in
.

t h e use of the idea as it is a very complex one but it must be qualied

, ,

by the development of the man to whom the conception appeals The .

f act that it is man s moralization that puries the conception of God

only proves the extent to which the idea may become anthropomorphic ,

a s our own minds must be the measure of what w e conceive R e ec .

t ion and criticism m a v eliminate objectionable features but the natural ,

t emptation to anthropomorph i sm as perhaps the necessity of it in some

,

f orm is su ch that it is more important to imbue the human mind w ith

,

t h e right ideas and the will with the right motives than it is to save

p hilosophic theism fro m mere speculative impurities .

To correct the tendencies to individualistic anthropomorphis m we

n eed to test our ideals by reference to the totality of the phenomena

w hich they are supposed to embrace in the s cope of their action and ,

t his duty brings us to face all the facts as the data by which we shall
m easure the character of the causal agency at the basis of things wit h ,

n o more right to anthropomorphize it than w e are allowed to anthropo

m o r p h i z e everything under the limitations of criticism In the ideal .

i st i c philosophy everything is anthropomorphic Since all reality has

.

to be seen and understood in terms of human nature there can be no ,

o bjection to a denite characterization of the A bsolute because it must ,

b e interpreted by what it does and if the moralization of man in the

,

p rocess of evolution is the work of the Absolute in any respect its char
a cter is to that extent deter m ined in spite of the anthropomorphic ele

ments in our ideas .

But to retu rn to the main point It is not a theistic theory a s

.

u sually understood that is the primary thing to be established but the

, ,

m oraliz ation of man as a condition of making su ch a conception useful .

I t of course reacts on character but the appreciation of an idealiz ed

,

d eity is necessary in order to give it any moral e i c ie n cy and this a p ,

p reciation involves some prior moraliz ation as a condition of accepting

the obj ective existence of the ideal in anything else I have already .

r emarked that the cogency of the arguments for God s existence de

pend more upon the conception of God which w e entertain than upon
the method of arguing the case The m aterial content of our conclu
.

sions is as important fact as the formal pro cess O ur method may be .

f aultless and our conclusion a n o n s e gu zt n r simply because it r e p r e

'
-

sents more than is contained in our premises This means of course

.
, ,

t hat less importance attaches to the name of God tha n to the facts of

t h e cosmos which are supposed to have a cause The name cannot .

s afely be used for any other purpose than to express these facts or the
60 2 TH E PR OBLEM S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

la w underlying them We shall have to discover the general plan or

.
,

the v a rious parall e l or convergent plans of cosmic evolution in order t o

endow the conception of God with that use for science which it h as
ideally for religion The d ii cult ie s here are unquestionably great
. .

The evidential criterion of science is so rigid and exacting that it im

poses a n unusually severe task upon inquiry , and the tendency for a
century has been to trust no other criterion or authority S cience has .

taken the place of philosophy with a method that subordinates a p r za r z

' '

,
' '

to a p o s t e r zo r z considerations and thus insists upon the study from

,

t h e point of view of facts I have shown that the supreme method of

.

proof in science is the Method of Difference or isolation the Method , ,

of Agreement always requiring more or less suspense of judgment in

forming convi ctions .

Now if God have an organic relation to the universe it will be im

possible to p r o v e his existence absolutely by scientic method be ,

cause he cannot be isolated o r separated from it H e is too integral a .

part of it on this supposition of his continual support of it to apply

, ,

the method of di fference to the determination of the result T h e .

method of agreement would be applicable to sustain su ch possibilitie s

as the fa cts and that method will support but will always leave much
,

to variations of individual temperament in the determination of belief ,

as it can give only various degrees of probability This procedure .

m ight go so far as to decide the balance against scepticism when it ,

did not wholly remove that inuence on cautious minds The con .

vergent effect of all fa cts and the inuence of moral temperament

might c o nclude in favor of a possibility or a probab ility and the mind
remain content with that where it could not attain certitude But in .

any case whether for proof or presumption there must be evidenc e

, ,

su fcient to show an intelligent and moral tendency in the course o f

things to estimate the character of the Absolute by what it does a n d ,

so to ma k e the conception of God as that is contrasted with nature

, ,

agreeable to the demands of our highest intelligence and morality .

There is only one way open to us to effect this after realiz ing t h e ,

enormous d ii cult i es in the way of scientically proving the existence

of God by either of the methods mentioned This is to make probable .

that the order of the world involves the preservation of personal con
sc io u sn ess . It is the struggle of the human mind between its ideal s
and the discoverable tendency of things toward materialism that give s
the sting to scepticism and tortures those who wish to create an a p t

preciation for the highest spiritual life by showing that nature is on t h e

side of it To feel that the cosmos creates impulses and obligation s
.
 CO NC L U S I ON .
60 3

which it has no intention either to reward or to estimate as highly as

it does the impulses which that ideal i mp eratively treats as morally in
f er i o r is to pla ce ourselves inevitably where we must j udge the world
,

by that standard If man could give the immortality of the soul , that
.

is its su r vival of death the same probability that many of his widest
, ,

scientic truths possess he would nd himself in a positio n to be less

,

passionately interested i n the theistic arg umen t and might nd himself

conceding it without resistance If he found the actual order of the
.

world o n the side of his best ideals the reex of this fact would be to
,

bring the conception of God into closer relation to the idea of nature
than it has ever been since the co n troversy arose between Christianity
and Greek philosophy Such a result would show the conservation
.

of personality to be equa l to that of matter and a part of the same

scheme and the technically theistic conclusion would either follow as
,

a natural consequence or be eas i ly held i n abeyance for further knowl

edge To be thus conscious that duty and humanity are estimated by
.

nature as they are by the best men is to remove the attack on the world
for not being divine , and though the mystery of apparently unjust pain
would still remain to trouble ne intellects its savagery would be miti ,

gated by the hope o f nal victory over struggle and for mercy The .

conception of God as a personal being would more e a sily adj ust itself
to su ch an order without being made any longer antithetic to nature ,

which after all is nothing but a name for facts divested of all pr e sup

positions o f causes We deceive our selves w hen we ta lk of nature
.

.

as a cause Neither nature nor law d o anything They are .

mere names for what is d o n e and the cause remains a qua s itu m unless
,

it is given directly with the event or events caused The perpetua l .

s cientic reference to nature as a cause is based upon an illusion and

owes its cogency with most minds to the readiness with which even
theis m conceded it causal i mpli cations But where it is not a synonym.

for gross sensi ble matter and where we have to assume that super
sensible matter if ether is called this is not distinguishable from spirit
, ,

as the basis of phenomenal reality it is worthless for combating the

,

conception of G od especia lly if we should ever render it certain or

,

probable that the preservation of personal consciousness is a part of

the world s plan The reex inuence of su ch a fact upon every i n

.

dividual man who realizes what the moral la w commands for his ethi
cal life must be to treat the conception of God quite as sympathetically
as he would any general ization representing a cosmic order sa t isfa c
tory to reason and conscience although he m ay not e a sily see the ideal
,

in all the individual facts any more than a child sees it in all the acts
,
6 04 TH E PR O B L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

o a parent leading to a desirable end It might ma k e the moral forces

f .

of intellectual men more effective if they could prove as mu ch as they

believe but in the absence of su ch proof they can only try to console
,

themselves with the hope that things are better than they look .

So lan ge w ir vertra uen So lo ng a s we can trust

A u f u ns re n e i g ne n M uth O u co urag e m t o hold

, r r ,

U n d ho ffen d o wa t s schauen
v r r , A n d h O p i n g forward s look ,

S o lang i st alles g ut S o lon g i s a l l fo g ood

. r .

U n d s e i d i es H o ffen S ehn en , A n d i f th i s lo ng i ng hope

A uch n u e i n S ch o n er T raum
r I s bu t a fai ry d ream ,

Z u trockn en d e i n e T h an e n r T o d y o u bi t ter tears

r r

G i b ih m i m H er z en R au m . G i e i t a p lace i n l i fe
v .

Some of us however will not do this without evidence But gu a s z

, , .

a pologies for our ignorance aside the primary condition for viewing
,

both immortality and God with proper respect is the actual morality
which is supposed to be conditioned by them and it only adds to one s ,

d istress if he loses faith in the moral l a w because he feels sceptical in

h i s metaphysics When a man endeavors to prove the maxims of
.

morality by philosophic defen ce of the existence of God and of a

future life he shows that he accepts the truth and the value of that law
,

prior to the proof of it so that its integrity is safe He relies upon

, .

h is insight and not upon his logic .

E in g uter M ensch i n s ei nem d unk eln D ran ge

I st i s ch d es rechten Weges wohl bewu sst .

A good man even in the darkest hours of distress is quite conscious of

the path of duty The priority of moral insight does not imply any
.

indifference to or impeachment of the value of theistic belief but only ,

the condition of mak ing that belief useful Unless God represent in .

himself the moral ideal he is nothing but the embodiment of arbitrary

,

power such as the Greeks thought their gods and hence s cepticism ,

with regard to them created no distress Theism and morality may .

act a nd react on each other but m a n can never attribute to his divini
,

ties any qualities which he has not previously discovered or idealiz ed

in himself , and these will be some form of power and intelligence .

The only rational obj ect that he can have in so attributing them is the
desire to indicate the existence of some law or age n cy in the system of
external things which has to be respected in his action But the d if .

culty which he has to meet in the assertion or belief in su ch an agency

is that which is created by the absence of clear evidence for the real
existence of the ideal being which he would place at the basis of the
cosmos for t h e purpose of j ustifying the hopes and faith he entertains
 C O NC L U S I ON .
605

as to i t s outcome If he were not too a nthropomorphic as I have

.
,

already remarked , his di i c ul t ies would be less But all that he can do
.

is to respect his ideal and to search for the facts that may illu minate
the course of nature with that be auty and goodness which has al way s
passed for the d ivine whatever we may choose to call the cause that
,

supports them .

To follow kno wledg e li ke a s i n ki n g star

Bey on d t h e ut m ost bo un d o f h u m an t houg ht .

T o sa i l bey on d t h e suns et a n d t h e baths

O f a l l t h e we st ern stars un t i l we d ie .

It m ay be that t h e g ul fs w i ll wash u s d own

I t m ay be we shall touc h t h e hap py i sle s .

But since the recognition of the indestructibility of matter and the con
servation of energy it has been impossible to accept a theistic view o f
thi ngs that did not a d m it the immanence of the divine in the cosmic
process and the only way to give this any spirit ual character at all i s
,

to nd explicit evidence that consciousness cannot be explained by

brain activity a l o n e a nd that there is something besides the gross mat

ter which we sensibly kno w in the organis m It may be anyt h ing we
.

choose to call it but once established it leads inevitably to the demand

,

for a unity at the basis of both matter and mind as we kno w them It .

will not ma k e any di fference what w e call this provided that its la w ,

of action respects human personality and its ide als

.
.

A word on the subj ect of P antheism is perhaps necessary in the

dis cussion of the theistic theory since it has been considered in the
,

h istory of philosophy as especially opposed to religion and a theisti c

view of things There w a s some antagonis m to Pantheism during t h e
.

middle ages when it was discovered that the P latonic conception of

God was that of an impersonal reality But the illusion regardin g
.

P lato s doctrine of im m ortality sui ce d to prevent his pantheistic con

cep t io n of God fro m being dangerously heretical a fact of some in ,

t e r est because it shows that the interest we have in the assumed person
ality of God relates solely to the relation of that idea to immortality if
it is not guaranteed by natural evidence But when the conception of
.

God as a personal being was necessary to protect t h e belie f in a pos

sible survival from death the doctrine of pantheism appeared very
,

diff erent to th e religious mind and as Spinoza revived in all its logical
,

severity the monistic conception of the Absolute as set o ff again st the

monotheistic conception of God distinguished from a pluralistic cos
m o l o gy it was natural to feel the antagonism between the t w o points
,

of vie w especially when it was remarked that Spinoza had no clea r

,
6 06 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L OS OPH Y .

ideas on either the personality of God or the doctrine of perso nal

immortality .

But I must consider th is antagonism to the monistic and pantheistic

conception as whol ly mista ken I do not consider a single philosophic
.

theory of the cosmos as in the slightest opposed to religious views or to ,

the personality of God and to the immortality of the soul except modern ,

atomic materialism The suppositio n that they are incompatible comes

.

from the ge neral theolo gical acceptance of one interpretation of the

doctrine of Spinoza , who in fact may be and is interpreted by some
writers as having held to both ideas What Sp i no z ism opposed and had
.

to oppose was the Christian doctrine of the spiritual body which
occupied space Spinoza had adopted the philosophic theory of D es
.

cartes in regard to mental and physical phenomena , and this required

him to regard the mental as spaceless or unextended If perso n ality .

were conceived as essentially extended of course Spinoza denied it and

had to deny it to be consistently Cartesian With him persona lit y had
.

to be conceived as a stream of consciousness or as not existing in any

,

sense but the physico l egal sense in which it applied to the h uman
-

organism and a ll its proper ties and functions All that is needed to
.

get out of dif cu lties in this question is to distinguish between per

son as a name for the soul and personality as the name for its
manifestation in the functional unity of consciousness and its stream .

Accepting personality in this last sense , the real import of it to
most scholastic philosophers and remembering that Spinoz a a frmed
,

thought or cons ciousness of the Absolute we see that he essentially

,

admitted all tha t the theist d esires in his conception of God He also .

a f rmed extension of the Absolute though he made the two attributes ,

,

consciousness and extension , parallelistic in their nature But the .

function of thou ght or consciousness a frmed of it makes his panthe

isti c doctrine consistent with a l l that is essential to theism .

Nor coul d he escape the do ctrine of personal immortality except as ,

it was conceived in the doctrine of the bo d i ly resurrection in which

personality was asso ciated in its meaning too closely with the idea
of extension , and the body wa s n o t imperishable B ut as his panthe.

i st ic doctrine ma de all phenomena modes of the Abso l ute ; as he could

not appeal to the postu l ates of atomis m to make cons ciousness a func
tion of composition ; and as h e had to suppose the same relation of
consciousness to the Absolute in all its stages it was only a question
,

of fact to determine whether the personal stream of the individual sur

v i ve d or not . There was nothing in the pantheistic conception to
mak e it impossible , so far as the nature of the Abso l ute was con
 C O NC L U S I O N .
60 7

c erned especially as one of its attributes w as cons ciousness Besides

, .

the analogy which we have in primary and secondary personalities ,

subliminal and supraliminal mental phenomena shows h o w w e might ,

conceive the relation between our own individuality and the personality
of the Absolute though I have no intention of urging this analogy as
,

representing the facts It merely indicates that t wo distinct personali

.

ties may exist side by side in the same subj ect , so that we do not violate
any known principles when w e suppose the Absolute to have a per
so n a l i ty distinct from that represented in our own individuality and per

sonal nature .

All these general questions between realism and idealism material ,

ism and spiritualism agnosticism and theism are summarizable in the

, ,

relation bet ween s cience and religion which may be taken up as the t w o
great antagonistic modes of thought from the earliest times I shall not .

enter into any technical denition of either of them here as I am not ,

concerned with a critica l examination of their concepti o ns for special

purposes but only with the genera l spirit represented by them R e
, .

l ig io n is broadly conceived as a creed a sentiment and a cult while , , ,

s cience is as broadly treated as a creed about the cosmos and its laws

of action minus sentiment and a cult Religion has been various ly

, .

related to faith and reason , and s cience to reason only in its attempt to ,

u nderstand the past and to predict the future from what it learns about

t h e present . I shall not go h owever into any careful examina tion of

, ,

t heir conceptual re l atio n s philosophically considered but content myself ,

with the simple remark that the general spirit of science is respect for
facts while religion is essentially identical with poetry In fact I shall .
,

here treat religion and poetry as the same distinguishing as the age has , ,

begun to do between religion and theology the latter being a philosophy

, ,

s ubj ect to the vicissitudes of human opinio n while the former is perennial

and embo d ies the emotional attitude of man toward the totality of things
and their moral outcome and which whether cons cious or unconscious
, ,

of its anthropomorphic character may even tou ch the spirit of science

,

w ith inspiration and power H e n ce it is not the abstract conceptions

.

o f s cience and religion with which we have to deal nor merely with ,

certain clearly dened functions of mind Both of these may easily .

be harmoniously adjusted if the subject matter to which they relate is

,

consistent one with the other But it is the m a n of science and the
.

m a n of religion with their complex temperaments that stand so opposed

,

t o each other O r perhaps better it is the general mass of ideas and

.
,

interests gradua l ly se l ected and consolidated on each side by the develop

ments of history that constitute the battle ground of th ese t wo enemies .
60 8 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

It is w ith these we have to treat in the e ffort to adj ust their differe n ces .

The terms religion and science simply stand for these t wo sets of com
plex temperaments and condition s .

It is impossible however to compose the di fferences between thes e

, ,

t w o tendencies without more or less criticism of both sides Recon .

ciliation cannot be e ffected without mutual concession and it is t h e ,

writer s opinion that most of this concession will have to be made by t h e

champions of religion Science will be required to yield something to

.

those fee l ings which make existence serious and excite reverence but ,

religion will have to depend upon science for its creed .

It has al w ays been the peculiar characteristic of religion that it has

been especially conservative and science liberal a n d progressive There .

may be something inherent in this tendency for religion as it is cer ,

t a i n ly inherent in the n a ture of science to be liberal since it is base d ,

upon the study of facts in the everchanging present and not upon mere
authority and traditio n about the past or upon hopes about the future,
.

I am inclined to think however that the conservative instincts of r e

, ,

l ig i o n are due more to hereditary animosities than to the nature of the

m ental needs satised by it But whatever the reasons it has bee n
.
,

in some way connected with losing causes more tha n any other
tendency of the human mind or has resisted change and intellectual
,

progress more than any other system of beliefs and feelings No doubt .

thi s tendency was distinguished by the tenacity of certain beliefs li k e

those co n cerning the existence of God and of a future life and their ,

association with a vast system of dogmas on both cosmic and philo

sophic questions so that the w hole seemed to be threatened if the in
,
o

t e gr ity of a n y part of it was a ffected But it was rst the misfortun e

.

of religion that it conded its protection to do ctrines which were

evanescent and which became the prey of the changes effected by
science while to save itself destruction at the hands of progress it r e
,

s orted to the use of political power and persecution This policy de .

scribes its history for centuries and the same spirit is not yet wholly
,

defunct It has ceased to burn heretics at the stake but it does not
.
,

always rel ax the spirit of intolerance as is incumbent upon a power

that has suffered so many scientic defeats It has simply rened it s .

methods of persecution Wherever it can it withholds the natural

.
,

and intellectual rew a rds of life from those who undertake to criticise
its errors Anything like adequate freedom of thought it does not
.

permit a n d this in spite of its own P rotestantism in behalf of freedom

,

of consc ience The imputation of int o ler en ce against this age however ,
.
,

may mistake the amount of progress away from it Vast improvement .

over the past is evident , th ough examination will show that its evidence
is more in the abandonment of the rougher methods applied to sc ept i
c i s m rather than the adoption of a positive interest in freedom of

thought But with all allo w ances for liberaliz ing tendencies there is
.

no su ch opportunity for frank remonstrance against the illusions of the

religious mind where it is most needed in regard to questions that are
rightly the subj ect of philosophic debate It is only the man wh o has
.

no responsibilities as an institutional teacher that can speak out his

mind freely in the public forum The freedom of academi c teaching
.

is perfect on every subj ect but religio n and those questions a ffecting
religious interests .

I do not deny that scepticism has ofte n been quite as provoki n g as

faith Sceptical intolerance has often been as great as that of which
.

it has complained , while it has also been complicated with the pride
of knowledge But apart from a temperament quite as objectionable
.

as religious bigotry s cepticism is only the obverse side of faith itself

, .

So many thin gs of a detrimental character to men individually and col

l ec t i v ely have been accepted without examination or restraint by whole
generations that scepticism has been the only hope of redemption It .

is only that temper of mind which as k s for evidence and examinatio n

before accepting beliefs This men regard as a duty in all subj ects ex
.

cept religion and here it is too often regarded as sacrilege The belief
.

in the existence of God and of immortality has bee n infused with the
intolerance and the passions of political power while cultivating a
vie w of things as sensuous as it was supposed to be spiritual until there
,

is nothing to bri n g us to rational conceptions except to question author

ity Scepticism therefore in restraining these tendencies li k e wis
.
, , ,

dom has had to seek j ustication of her chil dren in the appeal to
,

humanity whe n challenging the truth of fancies that have been i u suf
c ie nt ly sustained by evidence and that have not prevented but have ,

perhaps actually encouraged the di sp lay of the worst passions Poeti c .

imagination untempered by respect for fact and rea l ity has too ofte n
, ,

molded the ideals and condu ct of men and its inuence has bee n
,

directly proportioned to the nature of the objects on which admiration

fell These may be as poisonous in the religious eld as in any other
. .

No wonder that P lato banished H omer from his ideal republic where
he intended a higher humanity to reign The wrath of Achilles and
.

the savage cruelties of the Iliad cannot be objects of respect for human e
ages or fo r societies that value renement and morality Ulysses in.

his wandering search for knowledge is a better conception Nor can .

an
y really spiritual nature lose itself in reverence for the purely ma
6 10 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH IL O S O P H y .

t er ia l ist i c
ideas of mediaev a l Christianity turned into the poetry of Dante
a n d Milton It is man s sensuousness that curses him wit h an ideal

.

w hich only scepticism can destroy But this savior li k e all others
.
, ,

o nly gets crucixion for its pains in clearing man of the illusions

t hat haunt the path of salvation But scepticism performs an impor

.

t ant function in the wor k of progress by tempering the extravagances

o f

other worldliness by restraining useless excursions into the un
,

k nown and by preparing the way for a j udicious use and economy of
,

the moral earnestness that may remain after doubt has limited the area
of certitude in k nowledge It is also often enough accompanied by as
.

much reverence for truth beauty and goodness as it has by resigna

, ,

tion for the loss of aspirations that are identical with those of faith .

B ut it has none of the temper either of the coward or of the hypo crite ,

a nd it nds in moral courage a compensation for restricted ideals It .

m a y even identify itself with the humanities that confer upon religion
i t s whole secular value .

The religious mind too often fails to realize this basis of honesty in
the sceptic and by want of proper sympathy drives him into contro
v er s
y where the morals of both are in danger of co n tamination and
when honest candor might make the m allies But the chief fault of .

the religious mind is its inelasticity and inadaptability to n ew facts It .

will sit at no shrine but the dead formulas of the past It is forever .

trying to put n ew wine into old bottles It has allo w ed its creeds to .

become xed and petried that is mere words with the content of
, ,

what they once meant wholly lost R eligion forgets that its rst con
.

c aptions had their meaning determined by their relation to the e n v i

r o n m en t in which they were formed and which no longer exists and ,

consequently that its o w n victory over ancient philosophy imposed the

duty of progress whic h it has allowed science to assume Repeating .

antique formulas is not the way of salvation It is no better than .

counti ng one s beads Nor will logical j ugglery save a creed from

.

decay or give its decrepit form n ew life Contact with present reality .

is its only safe refuge It cannot remain in the twilight of fable and
.

save its hopes from despair if it persists in its distrust of s cience It

, .

needs to learn the lesson of humility and sacrice which it has always
taught as its experience with Copernican astronomy Newtonian grav
, ,

i ta t io n and Darwinian evolution ought to indicate

,
The confession of .

error and the change fro m a useless devotion to the past are as impera
tive duties as any that religion h a s urged upon the hardened sinner .

But it parades its o wn infallibility and hides its o wn sins while it ,

evades all the merits and magnies or misrepresents the weakness and
 C ON C L U S I ON .
61 1

e rrors of scientic scepticism It is not wise , however , to thr e aten

.

t h e valu e of its i d ea l s by persistence in creeds that ha ve as little in

t heir d efence as they have power to sustain those idea l s Its rst duty .

i s to accept the situation which sci ence has created abandon al l con ,

t r o ver sy with facts , and construct its s yste m of beliefs in accordance

w ith the methods which it has so long antagoniz ed The religious .

'

m a n is forced to accept indu ctive p r o ces se s fo r a ll convictions in sci

'

e nce and tries to keep a

p r zo r z methods alive for the one subject tha t
is more dubious than all others The time is past when w e require
.

a bso l ute certitude for a ll our convictions P robability is the guide

.

o f life , and no har m comes fro m th e perpetual adjustment of our be
l iefs to everchanging facts Religion will certainly lose its power for
.

usefu l ness on any other policy and what moral earnestness it has con
s erved for the worl d wil l languish or expire for the want of association

with the conceptions and conclusions of s cience , so many of which are

d e nitel y set tled.

It is important to remind the relig ious man that there is one fact
about science that makes its inuence highl y mora l and religious i n the
t rue sense of those terms . N o man ca n cultivate the scientic spirit
without having a supreme reverence for facts There is no eld of .

h uman interest which commands so mu ch sacrice of prejudice , of ,

preconceptions , of half formed theories or of selsh propensities in

-

t h e matter of convictions . No fact dare be distorted without t h e

a ssurance tha t it will return in its inte grity to p l ague the inquirer .

S cience demands the most absolute sacrice possible A man must .

b o w before facts as he would before the A l mighty He cannot de .

m and that the universe yield to his wishes in everything unless h e is

prepared for the fate of Midas His spirit must be that of the pious
.

d evotee w h o earnest l y prays Thy will be done There is no sur .

r ender o f the will so absolute as that required by s cience There is no .

ritual in the worship tha t it commands but like the kingdom of God ,
, ,

i ts sanctuary is in the heart and will having no outward forms tha t are
,

e ither ne cessary or usefu l for the incitement of obedience and rever

ence S cience has but one mood by which to secure salvation and
.

that is willing accepta nce of fact s reg ardl ess of theories and emotions .

T h e Christian who demands of himself and others the strictest subm is

s ion to the will of God , the sacrice that asks no favor and pines at no

s u ffering only expects of man what the s cientist must practice whether
,

he makes it a n ideal or not , if he expects to be a scientist at a ll or to ,

f ree himself from the travel of despair and to be content with l ess than
h e might hope . The rel igious man may oft en , or perhaps may n ear l y
6I 2 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

always fail to live up to his ideals , but the scientic man never The
,
.

latter is ever before an unpropitiable power and he knows it H e .

learns to bo w to its course and to adjust his ideals to the limitations

under which he work s He may not feel the reverence that is due to .

personality but he fulls the rst condition for understanding a per

,

so na li t
y if he ever found a belief in it justiable and he realiz es in his ,

moral attitude toward things all that any personality can require of
him as lo n g as it conceals its o wn clear existence from human knowl
edge The truly scientic man will allow n o sentimental considera
.

tions to prej udge his estimate of nature but accepts it as a privilege ,

and a duty to live strictly within the boundaries of assured fact , and
where he can venture to hope for more than this , he does so with the
resignation of a Stoic The letter of P rofessor Huxley to Charles .

Kingsley is an illustration of the scientic man in his best estate and is

a lesson to the religious devotee that should not be forgotten .

1
T h e whole o f th i s letter i s worth q uot i n g as t h e best exam p le that I k now o f
'

t h e re l i g i o us sp i r i t i n t h e sc i ent i st T h e so n say s o f i t Hi s rep ly t o a lon g

. :

letter o f sy m pathy i n whi ch C harles K i n g sley set forth t h e g roun d s o f h i s o wn

phi lo sophy a s t o t h e en d s o f l i fe a n d t h e hope o f i m m ortali ty aff ord s i ns i ght ,

i nto t h e v ery d epths o f h i s nature It i s a rare out burst at a m om en t o f i ntense

.

fee lin g i n wh ich m ore com p letely than i n alm o st an y other wr i t i ng o f h i s i n

, , ,

t e l lec t u a l clearness a n d m oral r e a e t o be s e en u n i t i n g i n a er i table pas s i o n

r v

f o r truth

.

M Y D EA R KI N G S L E Y I
cannot s u fci ently than k y o u both o n m y wife s ,

account a n d m y o wn f r y our long an d frank letter a n d f o a ll t h e hearty sy m

o r

p at hy w h i ch i t e x h i bi ts a n d M s K i n g sl ey w i ll I hop e bel i eve that w e a e n

r .
. , r o

less sen s i ble o f h e k i n d thought o f u s T o m yself y our letter wa s sp ec ially

r .

v al uable a i t t ouched upon wh at I thoug ht e en m ore than up on what I sai d i n

, s v

my letter t o y o u My convi ct i ons p os i t ive a n d neg at ive o n a ll t h e m atters o f

.
, ,

wh i ch y o u s peak a r e o f l o n g n d slow g rowth a n d ar e rm ly roote d

, a B ut t h e .

g reat blow wh i ch fell u p o n m e s eem e d t o st i r them t o the i r fo u nd at i o n a n d h a d ,

I l i ed a couple o f cen t ur i es e a li er I co uld ha e fanc i e d a d evi l sc o i n g at m e

'

a n d t h em
v r v

a n d as k i n g m e what pro t i t wa s t o ha e str i pped m y s elf o f t h e v

hope s an d consolat i o ns o f t h e m ass o f m ank i n d ! T o whi ch m y only rep ly wa s

an d is O h t h e d ev i l truth i s better than m uch pro t I have s earche d o ve . r

t h e g ro un ds o f m y bel i ef a n d i f wi fe an d ch i l d a n d nam e a n d fam e were a l l t o be

,

l o st t o me o n e after t h e ot her a s t h e p enalty st i ll I woul d n o t l i e , .

A n d n o w I feel that i t i s d ue t o y o u t o s peak a s fran k ly as y o u have d on e t o

me A n o ld a n d worthy fr i en d o f m i n e tr i ed so m e three o r fo ur y ears a g o t o
br i n g u s tog ethe r
.

becau se as h e s a i d y o u were t h e only m a n wh o would d o

, ,

m e an y g o o d Y o ur letter le ad s m e t o th i nk h e wa s r i ght though n o t perhap s

.
,

i n t h e sen se h e attached t o h i s o wn word s .

T o beg i n wi th t h e g re at d octr i ne y o u d i scuss I n e i ther deny n o a i m t h e . r r

i m m ortali ty o f m a n I see n o reason fo r be lievi ng i n i t but o n t h e other han d

.
, , ,

I h ave n o m eans o f d i s prov i n g i t .

 C O NC L U S I ON .
613

F aust s mo nologue exhibits in clear light the tendencies of the sci
e nt i c mind when it has to free itself fro m the shackles which tradi
t io n a l conceptions of religion have put u pon it F aust had come fresh .

ray und erstan d that I have n o p r o o bj ect i ons t o the doctri ne No

P a
'

z rz

m an w h o h a s t o d eal da i ly a n d ho u rly wi th nat ure can tro u ble h i m self abo u t

d i f cult i es G i e m e s uch e id e nce a s wo uld j us t i fy m e i n bel i e i n g
'

a p f r zo r z . v v v

any thi ng els e a n d I w i ll bel i e e that Wh y should I n o t ! It i s n o t half s o

, v .

won d erful a s t h e cons er at i on o f force o r t h e i n d estruct i bi l ity o f m atter

v Wh o , .

so clearly ap pre c i at es a l l that i s i m p l i e d i n t h e fall i n g o f a stone can ha e n o v

d i fculty a bout a n y d octr i n e s i m p ly o n acco unt o f i t s m ar e llo usn ess B ut t h e v .

langer I l i ve t h e m ore obv i ous i t i s t o m e that t h e m ost sacred act o f a m an s l ife

i s t o s ay a n d t o fee l I be l i e e s uch a n d s uch t o be true A l l t h e greatest r e

, v .

ward s a n d a l l t h e heav i est p enalt i es o f e xi stence cl i n g about that act T h e un i .

v ers e i s o n e a n d t h e sam e thro ug hout ; a n d i f t h e con d i t i on o f m y s u ccess i n

unrav ell i ng som e li ttle d i ffi cu lty o f anatom y o phy s i ology i s that I shall ri g or r

o us ly refu s e t o p u t fa i th i n that wh i ch d o es n o t rest o n s u i c i en t e i d ence I v .

can n o t beli e e that t h e great m y ster i es o f exi stence w i ll be lai d op en t o m e o n

v

ot h er term s It i n o u se t o tal k t o m e o f analog i es a n d probabi l i t ies I kno w

. s .

what I m ean w he n I s ay I bel i e e i n t h e la w o f i n ers e s q uares a n d I wi ll n o tv v ,

ri s k m y life a n d m y hopes o n weaker con i ct i ons I dare n o t i f I wo uld v . .

M eas u re d by th i s stand ard what beco m es o f t h e doctr i ne o f i m m ortal ity !

,

Y o u rest i n y our strong con i ct i on o f y our p ersonal ex i st ence a n d i n t h e i n

v ,

s t i n ct o f t h e
pers i stence o f that e xi stence whi ch i s so strong i n y o u a s i n m ost
m en .

thi s i s a s nothi n g T hat m y p erso n al i ty i s t h e surest th i n g I kno w

To me .

m ay be true B ut t h e att em pt t o conce i e what i t i s le ad s m e i nto m e re e rbal

. v v

subtlet i es I have cham p e d u p a ll that chaff a bo ut t h e eg o a n d t h e n o n eg o

.
-

about noum ena a n d p heno m ena a n d a ll t h e rest o f i t t o o often n o t t o kn o w that, ,

i n attem p t i ng eve n t o th i nk o f these quest i ons t h e hum an i ntellect o un de s at , r

once o ut o f it s d epth .

It m u st be twenty y ears s i nce a bo y I re ad H am i lton s e ssay o n t h e un co n

, ,

d i t i o n e d a n d fro m that t i m e t o th i s ontolog i cal s peculat ion h a s been a fo lly t o

.

me . When M anse l took u p H am i lton s arg u m ent o n t h e s i d e o f ortho doxy ( P)

I sa i d h e rem i n d e d m e o f noth i n g o m u ch a s t h e m a n w h o w s saw i ng o ff t h e s a

s i g n o n wh i ch h e i s s itt i ng i n H o g a t h s p i ct ure B ut thi s by t h e way

,
r

. .

I cannot conce i v e o f m y p ers o nal i ty a s ap art from t h e p h en o m e na o f m y

l i fe When I t r y t o form such a co ncep t i on I d i sco er that a C o ler i dg e wo u ld
. v , s

hav e sai d I only hy postat ize a word a n d i t alters n o thi ng if wi th Fi chte I Su p

, , , ,

p os e t h e un i v erse t o be noth i n g bu t a m an i fe stat i on o f m y p ersonal i ty I am .

n e ither m ore n o less than I wa s before r .

No r does t h e i n n i t e d i fference bet ween m y s e lf a n d t h e an i m als alter t h e

case I d o n o t know whether t h e an im als pers i st after they d i sappear o n o t I
.
r .

d o n o t e e n k n o w whether t h e i n n i t e di fference bet ween u s a n d them m ay n o t be

v

co m p ensated by t l e pers i st ence a n d my cessat i on after app arent death j u s t as

z zr

t h e hu m ble bulb o f an annual l i ves wh i le t h e g lor i ous o wers i t h as p ut forth ,

d i e away .

S ure ly i t m u st be p la i n that an i n g en i ous m a n could s peculat e w i thout en d

o n both s i d es a n d n d analog i s f o ,
ll h i d ream s No d oes i t help m e t o t ell
e r a s . r
6I4 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y .

from scholastic training into direct contact with nature and was e n
dowed with a capacity for seeing its poetic side T h e ush of excite .

ment and enthusiasm which the change produced made the reaction
m e t h at t h e asp i rat i ons o f m ank i n d that m y o wn h ighest as p i rat i ons even
lead m e towar d s t h e d o ctr i ne o f i m m ortali ty I d ou bt t h e fact t o beg i n with .
, ,

but i f i t be so e en what i s th i s but i n g ran d word s as k i n g m e t bel i ev e a th i n g

v , o

beca u se I l i k e i t !
S ci en ce h a s taug ht m e t h e oppos i te lesson S h e warn s m e t o be careful h o w .

I ad opt a vi ew wh i ch j um p s wi th m y p reconce pt i ons a n d t o req u i re stro n g er ,

ev i d e nce f o r s u ch be l i ef t h an f o r o n e t o wh i ch I wa s p rev i ously host i le .

My bus i ne ss i s t o t each my as p i rat ions t o conform them se l es t o fact n o t v ,

t o t y a n d m ake facts harm on iz e w i th m y as p i rat i ons

r .

S c i ence s ee m t o m e t o t each i n t h e h i ghe st a n d strong e st m anne r t h e g reat

s

truth wh ich i s em bo d i ed i n t h e C hr i st i an concep t ion o f ent ire surrender t o t h e

wi ll o f Go d S it d o wn before fact as a l ittle chi l d be p re p ared t o g ive up every
.
,

preco n ce i ve d n o t i o n follow hum bly where er an d t o whatever aby ss es n at ure

, v

lead s o y o u shall learn nothi ng I have only begu n to learn content an d peace
, r .

o f m i n d s i nce I have re sol e d at a ll r i s k s t o d o th i s v .

T here a e h owe e r o ther arg u m ents com m only bro ught forwar d i n fa or
r , v , v

o f t h e i m m ortal i ty o f m a n wh i ch ar e t o m y m i n d n o t only d e lus i ve but m i s

, ,

ch i e o u s
v T h e o n e i s t h e not i on that t h e m oral g o ern m e nt o f t h e w o rld i s
. v

i m perfect w i thout a sy stem o f fu ture reward s a n d p u n i shm ents T h e other i s .

t hat s u ch a sy st em i s i n d i s p ensable t o p ract i cal m oral i ty I be l i e e that bo t h . v

these d og m as a e e ry m i sch i evo us lies

r v .

Wi th res pect t o t h e rst I am n o opt i m i st B ut I have t h e m est bel i ef
, . r

that t h e D iv i ne Govern m ent ( if we m ay us e s u ch a phras e t o exp ress t h e u m o f s

t h e custom s o f m atter ) i s wholly j u st T h e m ore I k now i n t i m ate ly o f t h e

.

lives o f other m en ( t o say noth i ng o f m y o wn ) t h e m ore o bvi ous i t i t o m e that , s

t h e w i cke d d oe s n o t o ur i sh n o i s t h e r i g hteo u s pun i she d

, r B ut fo thi s t o be . r

clear we m ust bear i n m i n d what alm ost a ll fo rg et that t h e reward s o f life ar e

cont i ngent upon obe d i ence t o t h e w k l law p hy s i cal a we ll a s m oral a n d
,

o e s

that m oral obe d i en ce w i ll n o t atone fo phy s i cal s i n o r v i ce v sa r , er .

T h e led ger o f t h e A lm i g ht y i s str i ctly kept a n d every o n e o f u s h a s t h e ,

balance o f h i s O p erat i ons p ai d over t o h i m at t h e e n d o f every m i n u te o f h i s

ex i st ence .

L ife cannot ex i st wi thout a certa i n conform i ty t o t h e s urro u n d i ng un i v ers e

that conform i ty i nvolve s a certain am ount o f happ i ne ss i n excess o f pai n In .

sho rt a s we l i ve we ar e pa i d fo r l ivi ng .

A n d i t i s t o be recollecte d i n v i ew o f t h e apparent d i scre pancy bet ween
m en s acts a n d the i r rewar ds that Nat ure i s j uster than we

S h e take s i nto a c .

count what a man bri ng s w ith h im i nto th e world whi ch hum an j ust ice ca nnot ,

do . If I born a blo o dth i rsty a n d sa age brute i nher i t i n g thes e q u al i t i e s fro

, v
m ,

others k i ll y o u m y fellow m en wi ll very j u stly hang m e but I shall n o t be

, ,
-

vi s i te d w i th t h e horr i ble rem ors e wh i ch would be m y real p un i shm ent i f m y ,

nature bei n g h igher I h a d done t h e sam e thi ng , .

T h e absolute j u st i ce o f t h e sy ste m o f th i ng s i s a s cle ar a s a n y sc i ent i c fact .

T h e grav i t at i o n o f si n t o s o rr o w i s as ce rt ai n as that o f t h e e arth t o t h e s u n a n d ,

 C O N C L U S I ON .
615

tremendous and transferred all the e m otions that h a d properly or tra

d it io n a lly characterized religious worship over to physical nature It .

is u nfortunate however that the opposition between science and r e

, ,

m ore so f r i m ental proof o f t h e fact is w i thi n reach o f u s all

o r e xp e n ay i s ,

before u s a ll i n o u o wn l i ve s i f we h ad but t h e ey es t o see i t

r ,
.

No t only then d o I d i s bel i e e i n t h e nee d fo r com pe nsat i on but I be l i e e v v

that t h e s eek i ng fo r re ward s a n d p un i shm

, , ,

e nts o u t o f th i s l i fe lead s m e n t o a

ru i no u s i g norance o f t h e fact that the i r i nev itable reward s an d p un i shm ents a e r

here .

If t h e e xp e ctat i on o f hell he reaft er can k eep m e fro m e v i l d o i ng s u re ly -

,
a

f e certa i n t O h ll w w i ll If a m a n cou ld be rm ly i m p re s s ed
'

o t
r zo r i t h f e n d o s o ! o
y
wi th t h e be l i ef that s te al i n g d am ag e d h i m a s m u ch a s s wallowi n g ars en i c w ould
d o ( a n d i t d o e s ) wo u ld n o t t h e d i s s u a s i e fo rce o f that beli ef be g re ater than
, v

t h at o f a n y bas e d o n m ere fu t u re e x p ectat i on ! A nd thi s lea d s m e t o m y other

po i nt .

A s I stoo d beh i n d t h e co i n o f m y l i ttle s o n t h e other d ay w i th m y m i n d ,

bent o n any th i n g but d i s p utat i on t h e o i i at i n g m i n i st er re ad s a part o f h i s

, c , a

d uty t h e word s
, If t h e d ea d r i s e n o t aga i n let u s e at a n d d r i n k fo r t o m orrow
, , ,
-

we d i e I cannot te ll y o u h o w i n e xp re ss i bly t h ey shocke d m e P aul h a d

. .

n e i th er w ife n o ch i ld o h e m u t h e k n o wn t h at h i s alternat i e i n o l e d a
r , r s av v v v

b las p hem y ag ai nst a ll that wa s be st a n d n o ble s t i n h u m an nat ure I co ul d hav e .

laug he d w i th scorn What ! becau e I m face t o face wi th i rrepara ble l ss be

. s a o ,

cau se I have g i en back t o t h e so urce from whence i t cam e t h e cause o f a g reat

v ,

happ i nes s st i ll retai n i n g through a l l m y li fe t h e bless i ng s that ha e s prung a n d

, v

w i ll pr i n g fro m that ca u s e I m t o reno u nce m y m anh o o d n d ho wl i n g gro e

s , a , a , , v

i n best i al i ty ! W h y t h e very ap es k n o w bett er a n d i f y o u sho t the i r y ou n g

, , o ,

t h e p oor bru t e s g r i eve the i r g r i ef o u t n d d o n o t i m m ed i ately s ee k d i stract i on i n a

a g orge .

K i ck ed i nto t h e world a bo y w i t ho u t g u i d e o r t ra i n i ng o w i th wor e than, , r s

non e I confe s t o m y sh am e that few m en ha e drunk d eeper o f a ll k i n d s f i n

, s v o s

than I H ap p i ly m y co urs e wa s arres te d i n t i m e before I h ad earne d abso

lu t e d estru ct i on a n d f o long y ears I ha e been slowly a n d pa i n fu lly cli m bi ng
. ,

r v
,

w i th m any a fall to ward bett t h i n g s, A n d whe n I look back wha t d o I n d t o

er .
,

h ave bee n t h e ag ents o f m y re d e m p t i n ! T h e ho p e o f i m m o t a l i t v o o f fut u re

o r r

reward ! I can ho nestly say t h at fo thes e fo urteen years such a con s i d erat i o n r

h a s n o t e nt e re d m y head No I ca n t e ll y o u e xactly what h s been at work

.
, a .

S r t o r R s r t us l e d m e t o k n o w that a d eep s en e o f re l i g i o n wa s co m p at i ble

a e a s

w i t h an ent i re absence o f t he olo gy S econ d ly sc ie nce a n d h e m etho d s g a e .

, r v

m e a rest i n g p lace i n de p en d ent o f a ut hor i ty a n d trad i t i o n T h i rd ly l e o pe n e d .

, o v

up to m e a i e w o f t h e sanct i ty o f h um an nat ure n d i m press ed m e w i th a deep

v , a

sense o f res pon s i bili ty .

If at th i s m o m ent I am n o t a worn o ut d ebau ch e d u sele s carcass o f a m n , , s a ,

i f i t h a s been o wi ll be m y fat e t o ad ance t h e caus e o f sc i ence i f I feel t h at I

r v ,

have a shad ow o f a cla i m o n t h e lo e o f t ho s e abo ut m e i f i n t h e s u pre m e v ,

m om ent when I loo k e d do wn i n t o m y boy s g ra e m y s o rrow w s full o f su bm i s

v a

s i on a n d w i thou t bi ttern es s i t i s becau s e the se ag enci e s ha e wo rke d upon m e

,
v .

a n d n o t becaus e I have e er care d whether m y p oor p e rsonal i ty shall re m a i n d i s

v

ti nct fore er fro m t h e A ll fro m whence i t cam e a n d wh ither i t goes

v .
6 16 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

lig i o n should give any roo m for m i s un d er s a nd i n g as to the law of

things or as to the source of reverential emotions But religion has .

sought to exalt the purity of its o w n emotional content by conning it

to some spiritual world whose W hole meaning was obtained in contrast
with the material Y et at the same time that it dened its ideals by
.

the exclusion of nature it still considered the latter as a product of the ,

same power that expressed its divine character in the spiritual It .

m ust therefore not blame the s cientic man if the latter distrustful of ,

A n d t hu m y d e ar K i n g sley y 0 u wi ll un d ers tan d what m y p os i t i on i s

s, , I .

m ay be q u i te wrong a n d i n that cas e I know I shall ha e to p ay t h e penalty f o r

, v

be i n g wron g B ut I can only say w i th L uther

. Go t he lfe m i i ch kann n i chts , r ,

and ers .

I kno w r i g ht well that 99 o ut o f 1 00 o f m y fe llow s w uld call m e athe i st o ,

i n d el a nd a ll t h e other u s ual hard na m e s A s o u laws stan d i f t h e lo west

, . r ,

thi ef steals m y co at m y e i d ence ( m y op i n i on bei n g k nown ) w o uld n o t be r e

, v s

c ei ed ag a i nst h i m
v [S ai d i n 1 860 T h e la w w s reform e d i n x869 ]
. . a .

B ut I can n o t he lp i t O n e th i n g p eo p le shall n o t call m e w ith j u st ice a n d
that i s a l i ar A s y o u s ay o f y ours elf I t o o feel that I lack courag e but i f
.

.
, :

e er t h e occas i on ar i s es when I a m bo u n d t o s p eak I w i ll n o t sham e m y bo y

v ,
.

I h a e s p ok en m ore Ope nly a n d d i st i nctly t o y o u t han I e ve r have t o a n y
v

hu m an bei ng except m y w ife .

I f y o u can sho w m e that I e i n pre m i s es o conclus i on I am ready t o g i e

rr r , v

up the s e a s I w oul d a ny othe r theor i e s B ut at an y rat e y o u w i ll d o m e t h e .

j usti ce t o bel i e e that I hav e n o t reached m y conclus i ons wi tho ut care be tt i ng

v

t h e m o m ent u s nat ure o f t h e p roble m s i nvol e d

o v .

A n d I wr i te t h e m o re re ad i ly t o y o u beca use i t i s clear t o m e that i f that .

g reat a n d p o werf u l i nstru m e nt f o g ood o e v i l t h e C hu rch o f E ng lan d i s t o

r r , ,

be sa e d fro m be i ng sh i e re d i nto frag m e n t s by t h e ad anc i n g t i d e o f sci e nce

v v v

a n e ent I sho u l d be er
v
y sorry t o w i tne s bu t wh i ch w i ll i nfall i bly occu r i f m en
v s ,

l ik e S am ue l o f O xford a e t o ha e t h e g u i dance o f h er d e st i n i es i t m ust be by

r v

t h e e ff rts o f m e n w h o l i k e y o urs elf

o ee y o ur way t o
, t h e co m bi nat i o n o f t h e
, s

p ract i ce o f t h e C h u r h w i th t h e S p i r i t o f sc i e n ce
c U n derstan d that a l l t h e .

y o u g e r m e n o f sc i e n ce wh o m I k n o w i nt i m ate ly a e ss n t i lly o f m y w ay o f
n r e e a

th i nk i g ( I k n o w n o t a sco ffer o r an i rre li g i o u s o an i m m oral m a n am o ng

n . r

them but they a l l reg ard ortho do xy a s y o u d o B rahm an i s m ) U n derstand that

, .

thi n ew scho o l o f t h e prophets i s t h e only o n e that can work m i racl s t h e o n ly

s e ,

o n e that can constantl

y ap p e al t o nature f o r e i d ence that i t i s r i g ht a n d y o u v ,

w i ll co m p rehen d that i t i s o f n o u se t o t y t o barr i ca d e u s w i th sho e l hats n d r v a

apro ns o r t o talk about o ur d octr i nes bei ng sh o ck i n g

, .

I d on t p rofe ss t o un d ers t an d t h e log i c o f y o urs elf M a ur i ce a n d t h e res t o f

, ,

y o ur school but I ha e alway s sa i d I woul d s we ar by y o ur trut h fu ln ess a n d

, v

s i ncer i ty a n d that g ood m ust com e o f y o ur e ff orts T h e m ore pla i n thi s wa s t o

, .

m e howe er t h e m ore ob i o us t h e n eces s i ty t o l et y o u see where t h e m e n o f

, v , v

scie nce a e d rivi ng a n d i t h s often bee i n my m i n d t o wri te t o y o u before

r , a n .

If I h ave sp oken t o o p lai nly any where o r t o o abr u ptly p ar don m e a n d d o , , ,

t h e l i ke t o m e My wife than k s y u e ry m uch f o y our ser m o ns

. o v r .

E er y ur s fai t hfu lly v o ,

T . H . H UX LEY .

 C O N C L U S I ON .
617

'

peculations of an a p r zo r z sort and without adequate evide n ce in

'

their support nds his G od in the syste m which be admires , but which
,

s hows none of t h e ideal that is so much the object of the religious m an s

r everence .

There are t w o thing s whi ch the religious mind should learn The rst .

is that the language which it employs in the des cription of its system can
have either of t wo meanings ( r ) it may be abstract in which its import
is neither interesting nor intelligible to those who thin k in concrete i m
ages o f sensible experience ; ( 2 ) it may be interpreted and must be in
t er p r et ed by mankind in general in the terms of present experience and
,

not the past It is the misfortune of religious doctri nes that they carry
.

their formulas fro m age to age while experience changes , and this ex
p er ien ce is the only thing by which the meaning of formulas ca n be u n
d e r st o o d
. Consequently there is a perpetual clash between the con
,

ser v a t iv e and the progressi v e spirit of men and times between the ,

tendencies that form their ideals in t h e past and those that form them
in the present The religious man insists upon being poetic H e can
. .

hardly be anything else H e can only imagine the past and the future
.
,

a nd his religion is based upon these Nothing but the ideal sur v ives.

the past and nothing but the ideal will pass into the future The real .

of the one is buried forever and the real of the other can never be rep
resented But the s cientic man the lover of facts must get his ideal
.
,

and the source of emotional reverence from the present a n d fortunate ,

it will be after the religious mind has discredited nature if the sc ie n

, ,

t ist can be st irred by any beauty in it at all But when he does feel .

emotional interest in it the system which he studies is a mixed one

, .

The real and the ideal are combined in miscellaneous confusion so ,

that he can never contemplate the spectacle of nature without seeing

that for the moment that it passes the ideal is touched by illusion
, , .

W h at survives from the past and what is expected in the future are
idealiz ed by poetry and religion and hence they enjoy a liberty for the
,

i magination which scie n ce cannot indulge with impunity Science is .

r esponsible for truth whether the ideals of poetry and religion are
,

realiz ed or not Its kingdom is that of fact and its temper must be
.

austere and stoical But in all this the man may rise above his s ci
.

u c e just as the devotee may fall below his ideal It will all depend .

o n the religious ma n to say after so ma ny scientic defeats against tra

,

dition whether the s cientist can ma k e any overtures for peace The
,
.

vicissitudes of intellectual progress have dispossessed the reign of faith

in all but those who have not the courage to defy the temptations of
despair and in those who n ever cle a rly realize the real source of hope
6r8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

and a spiration T hose who have to measure the character of n ature

.

or Providence by t h e present facts of experience and who have none ,

of the moral wea k ness of the sentimental m u st be pardoned a tempe r

of courage and deance as a condition of restraining intolerance a n d
the indulgence of religious emotions that are inj udicious in the choice
of mea n s for a justication If left alone to express their devotions
.

and enthusiasms the scientic men will always co me near to piety and
reverence They have no quarrel with what cannot be They ask n o
. .

favor but to know and obey .

Wenn d erralte
u , When the anc ient ,

H e i l i g e V ater H ea enly father

v

M i t ge lassen er H an d W i th tran q ui l h an d
A u s rollen de n W o lken From roll i n g clou d s
S eg nen d e B li t ze less i ng s i n thun derbolts
U eber d i U r d e s a t
e , S en d s over t h e earth ,

K ii ss i ch d e n let z ten I k i ss t h e last h em

S au m s ei n e s K le i d es , O f h i g arment
s ,

K i n d li che S chauer C h i l d li ke i n a we
T re u i n d e B rustr . Fa i thf u l i n s p i r i t .

That is a temper which the religious man cannot discourage without

doi n g injury to t h e best that is in his own ideals and it is remarkable ,

that the sentiment should be expressed by a man lik e Goethe .

Human nature has always sought the divine in the past and t h e
future and could see no good in the present or no poetry in the real .

It has looked with envy on an imaginary past and insists upon lookin g
with passionate hope on an equally imaginary future for it s ideals ,and
refu ses to be consoled or satised with work and conquest in an order
which it cannot regard as bene cent But science has come to dis .

turb its fancies and to teach a stoical attitude where poetic ecstasy can
not be felt o r the worship of art and nature indulged with indiff erenc e
to the golden illusions about t h e past and the future It refuses to t e .

gard the a ges that are gone and the ages that are coming as any better
essentially than that w h ich we inherit Nature is uniform and impar.

tial and does not alter its course or behavior The su n and the moo n .

do not stop in the valley of Aj alon Whatever of mystery there is in

.

the course of the world is the mystery of the present and not especially
of the past or t h e future There is either no age of miracles or it i s
.

ever present The glory and the s h adows of the world are the same
.

for all periods of time Whatever its changes it represents the s a me

.

eternal coloring Whatever inspiration comes from its beauty and

.

grandeur and whatever intelligible aspect it shows they are ree cted ,

from the present as much as from any real or imaginary past .

 C ONC L U S I ON .
619

D ie S onn e tont nach alter We i s e The sun st i ll s i ngs h i s anci ent song
In B r ii d er sp h ar e n Wettg e san g , I n r iva l m us i c wi th t h e stars ,

U n d i hre v o r g e sc h r i e b n e R e i se A n d i n h i s pred eterm i ne d path

V ollen d et s ie m i t D onn erg an g . H en d s h i s cours e i n t h u n de t o n e s

e r ,

I h A n bl i ck g i bt d e n E ng e ln S tarke
r H i s v i sag e g ive s t h e ang els stren g th
We n n k ei ner s i e er g r ii n d en m ag ; When non e can comp rehend h i s way s ;
D i e u n beg e i ic h hohe n Werk e
r T h e u n conce i ed m aj e st i c work s
v

S i n d herrl i ch w i e a m erst en T ag . A e crown ed a s o n t h e rst o f d ay s

r .

It will be the same with the future Science will no more indulge .

i m aginary hopes about the future than it will permit imaginary theorie s
about the past Facts with what explains them and what they may
.
,

presage are the only revelation which it will tolerate P atience cour
, .
,

age and fortitude are the o n ly virtues that it recogniz es in its attitude
,

to ward the cos mos though in doing thi s it often forgets the religiou s
,

passion which worships even when it loses hope , its mind still linger
ing on the fond possibility that its stoicis m and what it has to rever
ence and respect in the present order may yet have a fruition where ,

virtue does not have to seek a refuge in despair or be swallowed up by

the in satiable maw of fate But if it succeeds in coloring nature with
.

any hue of beauty or goodness , or excites any admiration for externa l

art and order , or counsels any moral attitude toward the cosmic proc
ess it must either j oin its worship to pride and deance without
,

either hope or despair or let its resignation pay homage to an ideal

,

which it c a nnot prove while its emotional inspiration and enthusiasm

shall mingle the aspirations of a Christian everence and hope with the r

pathos of a Stoic life .

A lles h i n z u ge ben A ll t o t hee t o y i el d

I s t d er Li ebe Br a n c h ; love ;
I s , Go d , t h e way o f
Ni m m d e nn h i n m e i n leben , S o tak e then hence m y li fe
, ,

U n d m e i n S terbe n auch ! A n d t o m y de ath f o t h ee !r

A ller me i ner L i ed er A ll m y ge ntle song s

S anften S c h m e i ch e ll a u t , Of hol y wo rshi p here ,

D ie e i n Ed en w i e d er T hat bu i ld the i r Ede n j oy s

S ich a u s S chutt erbaut ; From o nly heap s o f earth ;

A lle L i c h t ged a n ken , A ll t h e l n d i d tho ughts

Sp e

D i e an G l ii ck u n d L e i d T hat g leam i n jo y a n d pai n ,

K uhn s i ch aufwart e ran ke n A n d bold ly upward look

I n d i e E wi g k e i t ; I nto E t ern i ty ;

A ll m ei n st i lles S ehnen ,
s l nt hopes
A ll m y i e
Inn i g d i r vertraut , A n d d eeper fa i th i n thee ,

D a s i n s el ge n T h n e n

ra T hat i n m y h a ppy t ears
A uf d i ch n i e de r t h a ut ! A s dew d rop s fall n thee ;
-
o
620 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

Ni m m ass n i cht s d i fehle

, d r , a these that noth i ng fa i l
T ke ,

Wenn d ie st un de ruft ,
A n d wh en t h e h o ur calls ,

M e i ne g an z e S ee le My sou l a nd a ll i t i s
H in a ls O pfer d uft . A s i nce ns e frag rance th i ne .

But in this temper science w ill pass into religion and religion will
submit to the sacrice of its personal and selsh ideals until knowl
edge extending beyond the utmost bo unds of human thought , shall
,

sho w us that the future is a link with the present as the present is with
the past But whatever beauty or goodness t h e future may promise
.

they must be found either latent or revealed in our present experience

and must not be wholly unrelated or disconnected with an existence
which is decried o n the one h a n d a n d conceived as the end of all
, ,
.

things on the other Evolution with its persistence of ene rgy con
, .
, ,

c e i v es the present as a moving point between the past and the future

and ever developing progress or communicati n g the ideal and perma

nent from age to age , though for the moment that it passes it is mark ed
by a shadow But at any point in which the scientic and the r e
.

lig io us temper meet the passing moment will be fraught with promise
and though it may not yield the hopes which we love to indulge it ,

will not wholly disappoint those w h o struggling to realiz e the ideal , ,

are patient to bear the ills of the passing moment which while leav , ,

ing the darkness in its wa k e carries into the next the visible and pro
,

p h e t i c ligh t of progress If evolution be the mediu m for transm itting

.

the achievements of the present intact into the future whatever sombre ,

h ues it may have for those impatient minds who watch in pain its r e
m o r se l es s course it will still shelter for preserva tion more than it allows
,

to perish and a defensible hope may hover over a limitless horiz o n

,

which an older view had pictured as a precipice leading i nto a botto m

less gulf We a r e not accustomed to think of evolution as the bearer
.

of any inspiriting mess a ge but with this conception of its function to

,

preserve achievement and to protect progress it assumes the chara cter

of a gospel that may cheer the moment which the gloomy fears of th e
past had saddened and the science which had come to destroy our
,

illusions follows its victory with the promise of life instead of death .

It may no t be apparent at rst in this conception ,

Y et r i ence i s an arch wherethrough

a ll e xpe

G le am s that un t a e l l d worl d whos e m arg i n fad es

r v

Fore er a n d fore er a s we m o e
v v v .

It would be strange if the vigilance of the scientic spirit should bring

again what its stoic morality told us must be sacri ced The fabled .

P h o enix may rise again from its o w n ashes It did so once in the .
 C O NC L U S I ON .
62 1

history of the world w hen Christian spiritualism arose fro m Greek

materialism , and right in the triumphs of modern scientic mater
ia lis m the latter s method may be the Nemesis of its scepticism

.

In that moment it will reanimate ethical and religio us aspiration

while it reconciles the passions of truth and hope Greek and .

Christian ideals , the one an enthusiasm for a rt with a fear of death

and the other an ascetic moral temper bathed in the prospect of eternal
life , may be fused in a secular morality and a religious faith , a co n
su mmation which neither Gree k nor Christian could fu l ly realize .

The fear of age a nd death says Dickinson , is the shado w of the

,

love of life ; and on no people has it fallen with more horror tha n on
the Greeks The tenderest of their songs of love close with a sob
.

and it is an autumn wind that rustles in their bowers of spring The .

Christian transferred the charm and lustre of the present to the future ,

sought to redeem his earthly life by the belief in im m ortality and the
brotherhood of man forgot t h e scientic credentials for his hopes and
,

the ethics of his social life and became a prey to the triumph of an
,

economic and materialistic order until between the contempt for fact
, ,

and the loss of his faith he must come to science for the resuscita tion
,

of the ideal and the illumination of the real It is poss ible that this .

may discover the end toward which h is history moves .

O n the other hand , there is in the scientic man s d uties and o c cu

p at io n s a condition of things that tends to suppress the sympathetic

emotions The very constrai nt of facts and the necessity for perpetual
.

watchfulness against the inuence of hopes and wishes , the suspense of

judgment in the estimation of theories and the temptation to conne
the vision to what is immediately before him tend to keep in the ,

background all the humaniz ing ideals and emotio ns that ha ve done
more than either science or philosophy to civiliz e the race and have ,

given science and philosophy themselves half the power which they
exercise over the human mind The scientic man needs to learn that
.

the narrowing of his enthusias m to the mere discovery of truth may

blind his vision to beauty and goodness or at least may check the i m
,

pulse to realiz e more than the cosmic order which he nds and does
not produce Man s character is as much concerned in making as in
.

observing facts The contemplative life alone is enervating and with

.
,

all the submissio n to the cosmic order there is in scientic patience

,

and resignation a condition of mind that escapes moral latitudinarian

ism only by the presence o f the complementary virtues giving vigor
and passion to the w i ll There is as much danger of the unhuman
.

iz ing mental qualit i es in s cience as there is of illusions in religion , and

622 TH E P R OB L E ZII S OF PH I L O S O PH Y
.

the m a n of fact should learn this as necessary to make his work as use
ful as it deserves to be The division of labor which has seiz ed every
.

d epartment of human activity too often shuts the s cientic man out
from those i nuences which tend to make him concessive to a power
on which he depends for his existence His l iving is a ssured by ar
.

r angements that permit exclusive occupation with his investigation s .

H e is relieved from that struggle for existence a gainst nature directly

which do es so much to create the sense of dependence tha t calls out
religious hope and fear Agricultural communities have always been
.

religious : urban communities are less so In the one , the direct con .

tact with nature whether it be regarded as impersonal or as the per

,

s onal dispensation of a will as xed as anything impersona l could be ,

tends to enforce the sense of d ependence o n superior and mysterious

p ower . In the other , this dependence is remote and i nd irect the com ,

m unity being commercia l a nd the relations more or less social directly

or indirectly The one is a struggle of man with nature and the other
.

a struggle of man with man in his econo m ic relations No w the sc ien .

t i c man with his l iving provided for him feels little of this struggle in
, ,

either the natural or the economic eld Su ch as he feels is that be

.

tween himself and those who have power to limit him in the freedom
of his thought and speech In contact with nature only as something
.

to study and subje ct to his own will and with man as a personal being
,

whose whims and power he must consider without respe cting he will ,

feel littl e religious dependence o n the one and must learn in relation to
the other the ha bits of prudence sycophancy , politic manners intel
, ,

lectual and moral reservation obsequiousness , and deference to perse

,

c ut i n g power and unwi l li ng conc ession to minds and wills that invoke

no respect while their power is feared and a l l in a situation that obli

,

gates h im to think and to tell the truth as he sees it Dependence on .

nature where effort can do nothing to make it obedient to our needs ,

,

invokes some of the nest as well as some of the worst of our religious
habits of mind and wil l but the courage that conquers it a n d diverts
,

its blind processes into our o wn uses does not elicit the respect or rev
erence that is stimulated by dependence on its grace The struggle .

w ith n ature will be humaniz ing only when it represents a balance be

tween courage and faith the one to prevent superstitious sub servience
,

and the other to escape the despair of minds that fee l the impulse of
high duties and no h ope of realiz ing their idea l s But t h e scientic .

man if he cannot have this courage and faith , and if he does not share
,

with his fellows the conditions that may press his wi l l into the genera l
s ervice he must lose the social function of his work
, But he will .
 C ON C L U S I ON .
6 23

n ever understand the religious temper u ntil he is placed in that erce

s truggle with nature to earn his living and to sustain an ideal which

the physical world appare n tly regards with indiff erence .

Wer n ie s e i n Bro d m it T h r a n e n as s ,

Wer n ie r ollen Nachte

d ie k u m m e v

A uf s e i ne m B ett e we i n en d sa s s ,

D e k e n nt e uc h n i cht i hr h i m m l i schen M achte

r , .

He who has never eate n his bread in tears or passed his anxious
n ights in weeping will ever feel the sense of the divine But place .

t h e s cientic man where he both feels his proper dependence upon the
s truggle for existence and can enjoy the freedom that is due his posi

tio n as a m issionary of truth and he too will be the rst to express the
humaniz ing and re l igious tendencies that are adaptable to the cosmic
order and to the wants of his race The religious cons ciousness can .

be revived in both its social functio ns and its larger hopes S ci .

ence says John Morley w h o will not be accused of any orthodox r e
, ,

l igi o us prej udices when she has accompl i shed all her triumphs in
,

her own order w ill still have to go back when the time comes to as
, , ,

s ist in building up a n e w creed by which men can live The builders .

will have to seek material in the puried and sublimated ideas of

!

which the confessions and rites of the Christian churches have been
the grosser expre ssion Just as what w a s once the ne w dispensation
.

'
'
was preached a J n d cezs a d j n a ce o s ap n a J u d ce o s so must the n ew that , ,

is to be nd a Christian teacher and Christian hearers It can hardly

, .

be other tha n an expansion a development a r eadaptation of all the

, , ,

moral and spiritual truth that lay hidden under the worn out forms .

It must be su ch a harmoniz i ng of the truth with our intellectual con

c ep t io n s as shall t it to be an active guide to conduct In a world .

wne r e m e n 5 27 a n d [t e a r ea c o t k er g r o an, wber e h at t o unk i s t o

f u l l qf s o r r o w it is hard to ima g ine a time when we shall be in dif

,

f er e nt to that sovereign legend of P ity We have to incorporate it in

.

s ome wider gospel of Justice and P rogress .

The task imposed in this service is a large one and the scie ntic
m ind whose duty it is to perform it is exposed to the blight of ten
, ,

d en c ies of which it is not wholly conscious Two thin gs tend to de .

h umaniz e the s cientist th e concentration of his life and thought on the

iron order of nature and the measure of his exe m ption from competitio n
with both nat ure and his fellows With all his reverence for fact and
.

with all his submission to la ws that he can neither ma k e nor unmake ,

c onstant isolatio n from the sense of dependence and his consciousness ,

 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y .

of power to penetrate the secrets of nature and to mold its forces t o

his o w n will encourage pride and self c o n de n ce close the S prings of
-

humanity as he deals only with physical reality induce him to form

, ,

his ideals on the ty pe of brute force and to imitate the supercia l

characteristics of an order from which he has banished all the highe r
sentiments of ar t of poetry and of religion I do not mean that we
, , .

need turn our bac k s on nature and seek again the ages of faith for sal
vation from the brutalities of that struggle for existence which seem s
t h e on ly norm of condu ct tha t nature gives us for a gospel Fo r in .

spite of the conceptio n which the orthodox middle ages maintained or ,

appeared to maintain in regard to nature and in spite of its boasted

, ,

charity and love of man its works were governed by the hope of per
,

sonal reward and the springs of the good were not humane in any r e
spect Besides this particular period and hu man character represent
.
,

such moral defects that one must regard nature as very long su ffering -

to preserve the species at all But along with the scientic spirit has
.

gone the consciousness that nature will not help us unless we help our
selves and the consciousness that we cannot depend upon the future t o
right the wrongs of the present in any articial manner a spirit that ,

places the burden of responsibility for m oral achievement upon cour

age and Work and so discredits the indolence of hope without w ork
, ,

while it d oes not lessen the feeling that man is superior to the physica l
order though it brings him to see that his salvation must be won
,

f r o m it instead of ag a i n s t it P ity and sympathy can ourish more

.

in a world of struggle than in one of grace Y et the scientic spiri t .

m ay easily lose the guerdon that the situation offers for the prize .

The possession of power to move men depends as mu ch upon showing

that nature is on the side of human ide als and morality as upon the
recognitio n of an inexorable order But in the scientic man the
.
,

sense of the priority of physical la w to what is to be won by mora l

effort and the dethronement of emotion from its natural and perhap s ,

dangerous power in life leaves him where he has to face the ugly
,

spectre of nature s apparent indi fference to ideals which cannot be

realiz ed except i n the physical order and thus to obey laws that h is
,

own nature m ay not respect as highly a s it would personality could ,

he feel convinced of its presence The apparent heartlessness of what

.

he studies and the remorseless savagery of the models that it o ffers to

imitative action without any belief in a higher purpose than the actual
,

order that he contemplates require strong inner principles to resist

,

the temptation to follow nature instead of the humanity that en
d ea v o r s to rise above it What science then will do for moral ideal s
.
 C ONC L U S I O N.
62 5

d epends more o n the man than u pon his work Evo l ution ha s to pro .

du ce the instincts that will counteract the n arrowing inuence of ah

sorption in physical investigations and distribute the honors of progress
equally between what is consciously and what is unconsciously a e com
p l ish e d I t is the duty of science to add to what can be unconsciously
.

gained fro m the world and as a part of this system is that immense
mass of ideas and feelings that are embodied in poetry and ho pe it ,

cannot aff o rd to neglect them any more than it does the harder facts of
matter and physical l a w If we quarrel with nature for the lack of
.

the humanities in her course the obligation is all the stronger to t e

,

spect e n ough the sense of superiority we f eel to extort them from the
reluctant hands of what we clai m to master for o ur ends It is only .

when w e a r e ignora n t of the ideal that we are excusable for imitating

the n ature tha t the moralist despises Here is the place and func
.

tion of idealis m It is to stim ul ate and to realize w h at the conscience

.

indicates is above nature and not to wait for its spontaneous occur
rence It is not a revelation that we w ant but achievement But the
.
, .

scientic man is in d anger of abandoning an ideal because h e does not

nd it ready made and he may sacrice its inspiration and inuence
for mere grubbing in the mephitic mines of matter sensible only of ,

the colder stoi c pa ssion of coura ge to endure what he cannot respect

or admire P oetry and religion though they have too often been led
.
,

to look for peace outside the scientic world have a function there for ,

those minds that can see in it the chance for moral development and ,

it requires only that they accommodate their vision to the real and
i d ealize that if they hope to rob scientic enthusiasm of its sting
,
.

But if science take their place for humaniz ing man it must exhibit suf
c ie nt moral interest and po wer to inspire high ideals , or at least not
to stie them I n its mastery over matter however it is exposed to
.
, ,
.

all t h e temptations of the cyni c and m ay cool the ardor of youth in a

passionless search for facts when wonder and beauty have lost their
power But let these retain t h eir inspiration and the opportunity is
open for the union of the scientic an d the religious spirit provided , ,

however tha t the latter may concede to science the right to form our
,

creeds Religion as a name for the ser ious view of life may furnish
.
, ,

the emotional attitude toward reality a n d the motive power for action ,

but it must leave to science the determination of what is true .

The objection to su ch a reconciliation bet w een scie n ce and religion

would be that it involves the complete surrender of the latter to the
former and that it leaves noth ing to religion which had characterized
its very essence Its fundamenta l conceptions h ave been the existence
.

40
6 26 TH E PR OBL EM S OF PH I L O S O P H Y .

of God the immortality of the soul at least in Christianity , and the

, ,

various beliefs that represent a cosmic dispensation ever in the per

sonal interests of man present and future It will be said that the
. .

reconciliation proposed offers no rational substitute for t h ese Such .

an obj ection howe v er is partly true and partly false I have not pro
, , .

posed any dogmati c doctrines against scepticism a n d scientic method ,

but I have endeavored to preserve what is important in both move

ments It is impossible to read the history of the conict between the
.

t w o tendencies without recognizing frankly the extent to which r e

l i g io n or theology has been humiliatingly defeated in its claims and ,

this makes it necessary to frankly admit that unless it can show func
,

tions unattack able by cosmic science it must go the way of all the a n
,

cient religions The fundamental difculty with much of what r e

.

l ig io n has taught has been the impossibility of testing its assertions in

the same way that any alleged fact could be tested A scientic and .

critical age must try every assertion by experience and if it is inter

pr eta bl e in t hese terms it is credible ; otherwise it is not Greco .

Roman my thology w a s the earliest form of religion for those people ,

a n d it has wholly disappeared , except as a reservoir of literary refer

ence and for the reasons that it wa s too anthropomorphic to be toler

,

ated by the spirit of scie nce and that it had no ethical and social mo
t i v e s and connections adequate to a properly humaniz ing mission It .

was perhaps the most extensive and most explicit system of con
c e t io ns that the human mind ever formed impersonating and sym
p
bo l iz i ng in anthropomorphic types the O perations of natural forces .

The early Greeks saw and felt nature in its relation to man not men ,

in relation to each other Hence th eir religion was naturalistic and

.

obtained no social content Hence their mythological religion disa p

.

p ea r e d l i k e a morning mist before scientic and philosophic criticism ,

though there remained in P latonism and Neo Platonism a consuming -

desire to see the cosmic order in the light of a system in some way
identied with the interests of man But the general reaction was
.

into a triumphant or despondent m aterialism When Christianity .

came to reconstruct the religious system which it made more or less

anthropomorphic it did so more consistently with the spirit of sci
,

ence as it admitted that intelligence was secondari ly connected with

,

physical events It conceded an enormous eld to the operations of

.

natural l a w after the initial act of creation had been eff ected and so
w a s less anthropomorphic than mythology But it also h a d the good
.

fortune to identify itself with philanthropic and ethical impulses which

were as much its primary characteristic as any creed about the tra n
 C ON C L U S I O N .
527

sce n den ta l world It w a s only the decline of the ethical motive and
.

the extension of the philosophic that brought it into conict with cos
mic problems o f more enlightened ages But even in this develop .

ment it was the moral and social impulses in the system that did as
mu ch to preserve it as its philosophic creed , and perhaps more In .

this respect it completely contrasts with Greco Roman religions -

.

These , as I have remarked above never had the social and moral con
,

tent that infused Christianity with a passion for humanity even though ,

t h is w a s tinctured with a primary interest in a future life beyond the

grave Greco R oma n religions were a little more than superstitions
.
-

about nature The functions of ethics were left to philosophy which

.

was sharply distinguished from religion by its opposition to anthropo

morphism But Christianity more or less identied itself with philos
.

o p h y in the course of its development and enforced something of a

compromise with anthropomorphism while it clung to its ethical im

pulses and to the hope of a future life Its vitality depended upon .

this fact But in the course of time it allowed its science to atrophy
.
,

or to become a lifeless system of dogmatism in conict with n e w dis

c o v e r ies and so endangered its ethics by their association with decadent

cosmic beliefs Its continued usefulness will depend upon the conver
.

sion of its energy and enthusiasm into the ethical problems of civiliza
tion and the adjus tment of its cree d to the methods and results of sci
ence It may as well face this condition and make its peace with sci
.

ence fran k ly and without reservation It can do this with good grace ,
.

if science should succeed in giving a future life of the soul the same
status that evolution and gravitation have But its priesthood must .

have the courage to lead and not to follow in this movement A n ew .

P rotestantism is needed which will insist that reli gi on needs as much

r eforming as s c ience needs the leaven of moral impulse O n e main .

dif culty is that there is too little freedom for those who would correct
the errors of the religious mind by plain speaking The priesthood .

that is able and willing to refor mit are not permitted to do it in the
,

only w ay in which reform is possible and the same inuences keep the
institutional scientic man silent while the most intellectual men who
,

would like to do man a service as his ethical and religious teacher are
not co n ceded the requisite freedom of thought and speech and must r e
sort to the professions for a career But the time is past in which we
.

c a n insist that all the concessions sh a ll be made by science It has .

vindicated itself by its actual success as a guide to human co nviction ,

a n d it is possible that it may in the near futu re , supply all the credi
,

bil ity that the immortality of the soul can have and this doctrine wa s ,
62 8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S O PH Y.

and is the foundation of Christianity even in its ethical ideas It s ,

.

hope lies in alliance with science and n o t in antagonism with it In .

many of its leaders it already shows this disposition but it requires to ,

be conscious intelligent and unreserved It must abandon all perse

,
.

o utin g spirit and have as much faith in science as it h a s tried to cultivat e

hate against it The virtues which it inculcates in men t o ward each

.

other with its professions of faith it must adopt toward the scienti c
world and it will nd itself met half way and receive as mu ch strength
,

from voluntary humility as it does from t h e alliance with science .

The comparative funct ions of reason and faith come under co n sid
c ration in this connection It is but another way of stating the rela
.

tion between science and religion The historical controversy under

.

these terms ma k es it necessary to give it at least a passing notice , and

it represents the form of conception in which many minds understand
the problem P hilosophy and science have stood for the supremacy
.

of reason and religion for that of faith There have been diff erences .

between philosophy and science but they w ere not radical Their
, .

general spirit is the same and to some extent their territory Both are .

concerned with the cosmic order whether material or spiritual , and

,

both have aimed to correct mythological and anthropomorphic co n c ep

tions of th e world Religion , whether consciously or uncons ciously
.
,

h a s conserved the latter and whenever it has been ba fed by reason to

,

support tradition and authority it has appealed to faith as some agency

,

f o r validating doctrines which are otherwise incredible .

Both the strength and the weak ness of the religious position is shown
in this appeal to faith . The term is so equivo cal that it may com
prise either a n important truth or the most fatal of all errors I m ay .

summarize its various m ean ings ( I ) Intuition as prior to and the

.

basis of all ratiocinative or reasoned truth ; ( 2 ) i n ductive as opposed

to deductive or demonstrative conclusion ; ( 3 ) a cceptance of truth on
authority and not on personal insight ; ( 4 ) delity of will toward a
person or principle of conduct There are corresponding equivoca
.

tions in the use of the term reason some of them actually coinciding
,

with some of those for faith ( I ) P ersonal insight as opposed to

.

authority Intuitive as well as ratiocinative processes ; ( 2 ) r at io ci n

.

ative as distinct f rom intuitive processes ; ( 3 ) deductive and de m on

st r a t ive ratiocinatio n as distinct from both intuitive and inductive

action ; ( 4 ) critical investigation of present facts as oppo sed to the

blind acceptance of tradition and authority .

It will be apparent to any reader what conicts may arise from

these various conceptions , not only between reason and faith ,
 C O NC L U S I ON .
629

b ut also betwee n the different meanings of each term I need not go .

i nto any elaborate examination of the claims of any particular applica

t ion of either term as each and all would be subject to the qualication
,

which the elimination of equivocation would e ffect With the proper .

d enitions and limitations a function for both reason and faith

is perfectly possible and equally possible would be their opposition
,

a ccording to denitio n and application Th us if reason be ratio

.

c in a t iv e and
faith intuitive there is no necessary coni ct because
,

p rocess and object are supposed to be di fferent If reason be de .

d u c t iv e and
faith inductive there is no necessary conict as they ,

would di ffer only in the modality of their judgments But in the .

c ourse of intellectual develop m ent reason has come generally to

s tand for both a method of obtaining a conviction and a certitude of

mind which is contrasted with faith while this faith has uc
,

t u a t e d between a mental condition which supplied the basis for

reason and some sort of conviction w hich was not necessarily a
b asis for reasoned truth of a ny kind but a sort of mixt ure of chance
,

.and induction or acceptance of what could not be proved , though
,

it may have some slight probability in its favor as against the opposite
vie w All these however represent the matter as a process of ar
.
, ,

r iving a t convictions whether xed or suspended absolute or tenta

, ,

tive and do not concern the subject matter involved But in the con
, .

t r o v er sy between science and religion the primary question has not been

t h e process of obtaining k nowledge but the obj ects of it the proposi ,

t ions of which assent is a i r m ed or denied The conict has been

.

a bout the subject matter not the mental process The shift ing of the
,
.

controversy over to the question of process only evaded the real dis
pute as faith has practically stood for the insistence for certain
,

d ogmas against the invulnerable conclusio n s of science and gained ,

illegitimate support by the effort to apply the term to a process which

c a n be opposed to

reaso n only as ratio cinative certitude is disti n
g ui sh ed from ratio cinative probability In t h e controversy therefore
.
, ,

we must distinguish radically bet ween the question of process affecting

t h e modality of conviction and the subject matter of assent or denial .

F aith has too ofte n been the appeal for the support of truth whe n
t h e alleged fact was not supportable by reason as an organon of ,

f act a nd experience Faith as an inductive process which is t h e

.
,

o nly legitimate meaning of the term as implying assent to propositions ,

may very well guarantee conviction in scientic matters as well a s in

r eligion but as a quality of will it does nothing of the kind
,
The only .

w a y to give it a function which science cannot attack is to l imit it to

63 0 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

this quality of will toward a person or principle B ut to gi ve it the.

function of determinin g probability as distinct fro m ce r titude co n cedes

it a place in science and does not make it the organon of religion so l ely ,
but opens the way for convictions in science quite a s opposed to re l i
g io n s dogma as any demonstrative tr uth a g ainst it A probabi l
. ity in
science is quite as cogent for crea ting scepticism as a ce r titude when the
choice has to be made between the more and the less probable The .

consequence is that faith can have no function independent of the
authority of science , unl ess it limits its mea ning to the quality of will
which conforms conduct to the best that we know and waits for further
knowledge .

It is sometimes said that Kant s philosophy p r ovides a perfect

reconciliation between science a nd reli gion , between reason and

faith by virtu e of the admission that although God and i mm o r

, ,

tality cannot be dispr oved , they may be objects o f fa ith

The .

argu ment may be stated somewhat thus Kant maintains that G od.

and immortality cannot be proved In ordinary parlance this nega

.

tive conclusion is tanta mount to the admission tha t they ca nnot be

believed , as it is wrongfully assumed th a t the abse nce of evidence is
equivalent to the denial of the fact It is this negative si d e of Kant ,
.

that is h is ne gation of the positive argument , that is usually em p h a

,

sized by the sceptic But Kant was also quite as emphatic in main
.

tainin g that th e existence of G od and immortality could no t be dis

proved and in th is balance between proof and disproof , the positio n
,

of pure agnosticism Ka nt was supposed to guarantee the rights o f

,

faith to be l ieve or assert what

reason could neither cert ify no r
dis credit This appears to say that if you call a menta l proces s
reason it cannot do wha t it ca n do if you ca ll it faith To t h e .

present writer nothing can be more absurd than such a method o f

reconciling science and religion The incompetency of the mind in
.

any eld shuts out the right to form any j ud gment in it whatever .

Such a view , ho wever , does not exactly represent th e doctrine o f

Kant He does not explicitly state t h e case in any such way althou gh
.
,

there is much in his point of view to suggest th is concepti on as t h e

brief way of indicating his doctrine What Kant does is to draw th e
.

distinction between faith ( G l auben ) an d know l edge ( Wissen

in a way to indicate that th e difference is between personal convie
tions , subjectivel y suf cient , and truth that can be d ogm a tically proved ,

objectively sufcient , that is , between w hat one can believe himsel f

and what he can make others believe But he did not develop in the
.

Kr itik the basis upo n which this personal belief rested He did thi s .
 C ONC L U S I ON .
63 K

in his later work on practical reason where h e made the argu ment
a
mor l and not logical .

I do not think that his procedure wa s
valid without the recognition of the theoretical principle which gave
his argu ment what little force it possessed He assumed the explana
.

tory power of nature , which in fact it did not possess and so forced ,

himself to conceive God as transcendent instead of immanent an d con ,

sequently had no argume nt but the moral to support it But he .

did not see that the actual cogency so often felt for this argument was
derived from the element of indu ctive reason involved i n it .

There are two fundamental weaknesses in Ka nt s discussion of the

proble m The rst is his conception of God which he accepted from the
.

s cholastic dualism that his own position destroyed a conception which

,

was the a p r i o r i consequence of the assu med nature of matter and not
the result of i n ference from proved facts H a d Kant seen that the idea
.

of nature did not involve the explanatory at all ; had be seen that the
primary conception of causality w as neither phenomenal nor cosmo
logical and had he sought to form his conception of God from the
,

facts of nature as this duty wa s implied by his respect for the t el eo

,

logical argument , instead o f assuming that its cogency applied to the

scholastic transcendentalism he would have had no grounds to resort
,

to faith as the organ of belief regarding G od and immo rtality .

The second weakness of Kant s doctrine wa s his failure to consider the

problem of induction in his conception of reason and proof .

Kant borrowed his whole conception of reason from the scholastic
idea of ratiocination as the primary function or organon of truth In .

the crucial situations affecting his argument his reason does not

mean the mind as a whole but the logical and deductive pro cess which
w a s the scholastic and dogmatic a gency for determining conviction .

Though he recogniz es experience as the source of ideas he does not

develop the logic of it which is inductive but only the judgments of
, ,

experience . This would have been to admit as a function of rea

son something more than a p r i o r i and ded ucti v e demonstratio n
or proof and so to have applied the idea of proof to the indu c
,

,
k
tive process as well ; that is to have admitted two inds of proof ,

one indu ctive and the other dedu ctive But Kant had such a stron g
.

predilection for the scholastic habit of assigning reason the f unc
tion of determining certitude that he never conceived the place of i n

d uc t ive ratio c inat i on in the theory of knowledge a view that appe a ls
,

to evidence and fa ct for its support of conviction and consequently , ,

when he conceded faith a function in the formation of convictions
on transcendental matters he seemed to favor the very dogmatism which
63 2 TH E PR O BL EM S OF PH I L O S OPH Y .

he sought to eradicate ; fo r it m ay be said that it had nearly alwa y s

made G od and immortality o bjects of this function and when rea ,

son w a s appealed to it wa s with the purpose of increasing the mind s

c ertitude on such matters and sustaining the idea th a t there was a con
n ect io n bet w een the transcendental and phenomenal worlds , a connec

t ion that was admitted by Kant when he assumed the existence of an

un k nown cause ( Ursache ) of phenomena His strenuous denial .

of the competency of reason to certify the great doctrines of r e
ligi o n assuming reason to be the deductive and a p r zo r z function
' '

of intelligence and failing to analyz e and use the inductive method in

,

his theory he prevented himself from making faith consistent with

,

science and reason by giving it an inductive function in the formation

of convictions and affording some measure of probability or choice in
favor of one or the other alternatives in belief But the impression .

left by Kant s conclusion was that reason could do nothing and

faith everything in the important beliefs of the world while he

,

s aid nothing to show the value of the

reason he accepted in the
phenomena of nature The real or anomalous character of this p o
.

s it i o n consisted in the facts that mankind regarded God and i m m o r

tality as fundamentally more importa nt than any truth about the cosmos
and the present life and that Kan t would neither a i r m n o r deny this
fact while he dis credited the competency of reason in the t r a n sce n
,

dental and held it competent for the phenomena in which no one had
any ethical interest If Kant had explicitly declared that the eld in
.

which reason was competent had n o impo r tance for ethics and r e
lig i o n and that the eld in which it was incompetent was all important -

his relation to religion would have been clear consistent and i n t ell i , ,

g ibl e . But it was necessary to throw a sop to Cerberus and the m ost
convenient way to pacify the monster w a s to admit a function for
faith and to remain silent on the valuation of
reason in the
sphere of the natural and the phenomenal Kant therefore has done .
, ,

nothing to reconcile science and religio n because he is hopelessly in

,

volved in the meshes of a dualism one term of which is u nkno wable

,

and the ot h er presumably worthless for morality .

The function of faith as I have suggested above in the analysis
,

of the equi v ocations attaching to the term must be clearly dened in,

all atte m pts to estimate its relation to s cientic methods Wherever .

it is assigned a function for determining a mental attitude toward

propositions it can only be more or less identical with some process
,

of r ea s o n whether intuitive or ratiocinative deductive or inductive

, , .

W herever it is a quality of will it has nothing to do with assent to

 C ONC L U S I ON .
63 3

tr uth of any kind but wit h the readiness to test any alleged truth by con
,

for m ity practically to what it demands This assigns it the function

.

of expectatio n in a situation where necessity is not a quality of the

co nceptions involved As assent to propositions it has always been
.

d istinguished from deductive ratiocination and so has uctuated be

tween intuition o r personal insight and the acceptance of truth o n
authority with the minimu m of inductive reasoning involved this be ,

ing l imited to the poss ibility of a tr uth as attested by the character and
kno w ledge of the assertor This conception however absolutely pre
.
, ,

vents any conict with science by making it a function i n the study of

phenomenal facts as well as in the acceptance of the tra nsphenomenal ,

and so cuts religion o ff from any other court of appeal than scient ic
met h od itself But considered as expectation a state of mind on the
.
,

border line between assent and action it has nothing to do with the
-

, _

determination of truth certain or probable , but with the prudence of

,

action in accordance with a possible or probable fact not immediate ly

or certainly known This conception also leaves to scientic method
.

the determination of all convictions .

It remains to consider the work of philosophy in the general de

v e l o p m e nt of man and in the problems between science and religion .

1 shall treat it as essentially the same with s cience It only happens .

that the narrower conception of the term science whether as the ,

s tudy of physical phenomena alone or as a mere study of the laws the ,

coexistence and sequences of all events of whatever kind is not com

, ,

mouly u nderstood to represent the critical study of conceptions or

metaphysical problems The broader meaning of the term includes
.

these as it concerns method rathe r than subject matter alone But as

,
.

the usual habit of dening an inquiry is determined by its subject mat

ter or territor y the reective study of ideas and of problems beyond
,

empirical science in the eld of physical phenomena gets the name

of P hilosophy ,
as distinguished from nomological questions .

Philosoph y thus happens to study proble m s w hich science has

n o t often under that name presumed to consider especially when they ,

have been complicated with psychological factors There is a com .

m o n eld however in cosmic problems even when the purpose and

, ,

mode of dis cussing them is not the same But in all history phi .

l o so p h y has been expected to consider the most ge neral questions of

n ature and mind and this m a k es it the nal arbiter in all the matter s

that have been discussed in this conclusion ; though it is conditioned in

its work , as I think and insist by the methods and results of the
,

empirical and phy s ical scie n ces .

63 4 TH E PR OBL EM S OF PH I L OS O P H Y .

The one general problem which usually distinguishes philosophy

from the particular sciences is the reciprocal relation of man and cosmos .

This has always been an absorbing theme with ce rt ain types of mind
and it concentrates itself in t h e questions of ethics and religion and
these about the existence of God and the immo rtality of the soul .

It is justly said says John Morley , that at the bottom of all the

,

great discussions of modern society lie the t w o momentous questions ,

rst whether there is a God and second whether the soul is immorta l
, .

In other words whether our fellow creatures are the highest beings
,
-

who ta k e an interest in us or in whom we need take an interest ; and

, ,

then whether life in this world is the only life of which we shall ever
,

be conscious It is true of most people that when they are talking of

.

evolution and the o rigin of species and the experiential or intuitional

, ,

source of ideas and the utilitarian or transcendental basis of moral

,

obligation these are the questions w hich they really have in th ei r

,

minds No w in spite of t h e s ci ent ic a ctivity of the day nobody is

.
, ,

likely to contend that men are pressed keenly in their souls by any
poignant stress of spiritual tribulatio n in the face of the two supreme
enigmas Nobody will say that there is much of that striving and
.

wrestling and bitter agoniz ing , which whole societies of men have felt
before n o w on questions of far less tremendous import O urs , as has .

been truly said is a time of loud disputes and weak convictions In

,
.

a generation deeply impressed by a sense of intellectual responsibility

this cou l d not be As it is even superior men are better pleased t o
.
,

play about the height of these great arguments , to y in busy intel

lectual sport from side to side from aspect to aspect than they are , ,

intent on resolving what it is after all that the discussion comes to , ,

and to which solution when everything has been said a n d heard the
, ,

balance of truth re a l ly seems to incline There are too many giggli n g .

epigrams ; people a r e too willing to look on collections of mutually

hostile O pinions with the same k ind of curiosity which they bestow on
a collection of mutually hostile beasts in a menagerie T h e v have .

very faint predilections for one rather than the other If they were .

truly alive to the duty of conclusiveness or to the inexpressible mag ,

ni t u d e of the subjects which nominally occupy their minds but really

, ,

only exercise their tongues this elegant Pyrrhonism would be im p o s

,

sible and this light h earted neutrality most unendurable

,
-
.

Such being the fact the duty of philosophy is to have some in

t ell i gibl e message on the great issues that have been mentioned In .

P lato a nd Aristotle th is responsibility was felt and philosophy con

ti nn ed its service in that eld whether for good or il l , until the tim e
,
 C ON C L U S I O N .
63 5

of Ka nt But the outcome of Kant s work w as such a spirit of agnos

.

t i c i sm and the intolerance of the religious world toward honest doubt

has been so effective , that philo sophy cannot speak its mind so freely
as is n ecessary to insure its usefulness It has been obliged to conne .

its reections to the theory of knowledge and problems tha t have no

manner of human interest in general however important they may be ,

for the philosopher himself It should be free to speak as freely against

.

religious illusions as it is to utter uni ntelligible and eulogistic phrases

that are construed as a defence of it , but which are only subterfuges
for the alteration of its meaning It has not been as a fact institution
.

ally free ever since Kant to correct the tendencies of the religious
, ,

mind to cling to sensational and a nthropomorphic views but has been ,

obliged to compromise itself by an idealism that is as unintelligible to

s cience as it is deceptive to religion of the prevalent type It is only .

outside institutional philosophy that we can get any bold critical work .

The work and inuence of Mr Spencer is evidence of this No a ca

. .

demic philosophy will compare with his in power and e ffect whatever ,

adverse judgment w e pronounce upon his system It has been the .

a cademic philosopher that has attac k ed Mr Spencer most vigorously .

and that attack has been directed almost exclusively against his meta
physics of the Unknowable while his doctrine of the knowable ,

his science which was as much or more opposed to the ordinary r e

,

lig io u s conceptions than any of h is

metaphysical agnosticism w a s ,

systematically ignored It was his doctrine of evolution that played

.

such havoc with the prevailing theology and not his agnosticism ,

though the theological world allowed the reverse idea to survive as

long as possible Now that Mr Spencer has made it cl ea r i n the last
. .

edition of the F irst P rinciples that the doctrine of the knowable

is not logically dependent upon the correctness of his theory of the

Unknowable there is no longer any excuse for u sing an easy victory
,

over his metaphysics that are undoubtedly vulnerable in their logic
,

and misunderstanding of the problem to insinuate but not assert that ,

this resu lt is favorable to religion while the science of the k nowable

retains its integrity against it It does not save the reputation of the
.

philosopher to permit the public to d raw an inference from the attack

on Spencer s agnosti c ism which the philosopher himself does not r e

,

ga rd as valid But this has been the general course of his critics to
.

vociferously den o u nce his metaphysics and to remain silent on the
more destru ctive character of his science It were bett er if the aca .

demic world could frankly and boldly announce a doctrine of agnosticism

in religious matters , as sincerity clearness and direct ness are more in
, ,
636 TH E PR O BLEM S OF PH I L O S O P H y .

and redeeming with honest thinkers than any amount of canting

u e nt ia l
c oncession It is certain that the j argon of Kanto H egelianism contains
.
-

n o denite message but agnosticism that can be intelligible to any but

the initiated It may be true as we please to regard it That I am

.
,
.

not disputing But how does it affect the great general questions in
.

which the human race rightly or wro ngly is interested ! Can it rmly
a n d openly defend the secular against the religious or the religious

a gainst the secular view of life as they are ordinarily understood ! Or

,

c a n it me diate with su f cient clearness and earnestness between them !

It certainly has not effected any of these results a n d its action is not quali
e d to e ffect them If the Kantian and Hegelian systems were clear
.

e nough to have their sceptical position denitely understood the problem ,

would be explicitly dened and we should k now what we believe regard

'

ing them when we approached religion and its claims But u nfo r t u .

nat aly they disguise their real spirit and have not the courage or the free
dom to defend it They will not boldly defend the value of scepticism
.

for man but content themselves with the concealment of positivism be

,

hind metaphysical language This only ma k es them hard to understand .

when they might as well be clear I accord them the value of making .

hard students who have rst to understand philosophy before they can
understand these masters but they have hardly any other service when
,

it comes to producing clear and earnest convictions The philosopher s .

rst duty is to think out his problems in his o w n language and to give
the result the widest intelligibility and acceptance that are possible .

This is especially true as I have remarked in a democracy Philos

, , .

o
p h y li k e everything else in democratic civiliz a tions must extend
, ,

its service to the community at large or lose its place in edu cation It .

must have a message for the world in general and it must be ab l e to ,

mak e that message clear It does not require that it shall pander to
.

prej udice and ignorance as the price of inuence There are various .

ways of a perfectly honest sort by which it may correct the errors and
illusions of the world without compromising its dignity or integrity
and without antagoniz ing the ideals that are imprisoned even in the
basest of superstitions All that it requires is sui c ient knowledge of
.

life and elasticity of mind to adjust its work to the complexity of the
situation stating clearly the strong and the weak aspects of the t e
,

l igio us temperament and to feel enough for all orders of men to show
,

t h e application of philosophic thought to the commonest details of life .

Unfortunately ever since Kant it has had no positive message for

, ,

the world such as would be regarded as helpful Having left to

, .

faith the belief of what has presumptively no rational evidence for

 C O N C L U S I ON .
63 7

it s existence ; having adopted the gospel of agnosticis m under the guise

of an idealis m which vociferously denounces a materialism that is
harmless or irrelevant to the great problems of huma n interest as ordi

nar il conceived and having cut itself loose fro m the empirical and
y ,

physical sciences in both method and results it i s wandering about i n ,

' '

a
p r zo r z reections on nature that appear to have a meaning becaus e
the language in which they are cou ched seems to favor the religious
view while their real conceptions are concealed behind equivocations
,

which few detect It will not explicitly and courageously emphasiz e

.

the n a ture and extent of our agnosticis m in regard to the clai m s of

faith or better the illusory and erroneous conception of t h e com
, ,

mon religious mind It either evades them altogether and concentrate s

.

its attention upon the problem of epistemology which h a s a purely

minor interest unless its conclusions can be utilized to enforce t h e
,

lesson of k nowledge or ignorance on the religious question or it take s ,

refuge in a jargon that has a northodox ring but a heterodox meaning .

What it needs most is the same missionary z eal for the limitations o f
knowledge on transcendental things as the religious mind has for its
creed that it may show where our real life and duties are to be o c cu
,

pied But the consequence of its latitudinarianism and subterfuges is

.

that it provo k es the criticism which Kant himself who was not alto ,

gether remiss on this point had to direct against it in his o wn time

, .

H is remark s are found at the close of the K r i t i k in the section on the

D i s c ip l i e of
n P u r e R a
e s o n which should be studied quite a s
,

mu ch as his the o ry of space and of judgment Speaking there of the .

abuse that had been directed against H ume and P riestley for their scep
t ic i s m he makes a strong plea for frank and courageous speech on the
,

fundamental problems of philosophy and deprecates the disingenuous

ness that prevailed in the treatment of those problems having bee n ,

himself nauseatingly emphatic in proclaiming the truth of agnosticism .

There is in human nature a certain disingenuousness which how ,

ever like everything that springs from nature must contain a useful
, ,

germ namely a tenden cy to conceal one s own true sentiments and to

, ,

give expression to adopted opinions w h ich are supposed to be good and

creditable There is no doubt that this tendency to conceal oneself
.

and to assume a favorable appearance has helped toward the progres s

of civilization nay to a certain extent of morality because others ,
, , , ,

who could not see through the varnish of respectability honesty , ,

and correctness were led to improve themselves by seeing every

,

where these examples o f goodness which they believed to be genuine .

Th i s te n dency however to show oneself better than one really is

, , ,
63 8 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OP H Y
.

a nd to utter sentiments which one does not really share can only ,

serve provisionally to rescue men from a rude state and to teach ,

them to a ssume at least the appearance of wha t they know to be good .

A fter wards , when genuine principles have once been developed and
become part of our nature that disingenuousness must be gradually
,

conquered , because it will otherwise deprave the heart and not allow
the good seeds of honest conviction to grow up among the tares of fair
appearances .

I am sorry to observe the same disingenuousness concealment , ,

and hypocrisy even in the utterance of speculative thought though ,

there are fewer h indrances in uttering our convictions openly and freely
as we ought and no advantage whatever in our not doing so F or
, .

what can be more mis chievous to the advancement of knowledge than

to communicate even our thoughts in a falsied form to conceal doubts ,

which we feel in our own assertions and to impart an appearance of ,

conclusiveness to argu ments which we know ourselves to be in co n c lu

sive ! So long as those tricks arise from personal vanity only ( which is
commonly the case with speculative arguments , as touching no parti e n
lar interests nor capable of apodictic certainty ) they are mostly coun
, ,

t er a ct e d by the vanity of others with the full approval of the public at

,

large and thus the result is generally the same as what would or might
,

h ave been obtained sooner by means of pure ingenuousness and hon

esty But where the public h a s once persuaded itself that certain
.

subtle speculators aim at nothing less than to shake the very fo un da

tions of the common w elfare of the people it is supposed n o t only ,

prudent but even advisable and honorable to come to the su ccor of

, ,

what is called the good cause by sophistries rather than to allow our
, ,

supposed a ntagonists the satisfaction of having lowered our tone to that

of a purely practical conviction and havin g forced us to confess the
,

absence of all speculative and apodictic certainty I cannot believe .

this nor can I admit that the intention of serving a good cause can
,

ever be combined w ith trickery misrepresentation and fraud That

, , .

in weighing the arguments of a speculative discussion we ought to be

honest seems the least that can be demanded ; and if w e could at least
,

depend on this with perfect certainty the conict of speculative reason

,

with regard to the important questions of G od the immortality of ,

the soul and freedom would long ago have been decided or would
, , ,

soon be brought to a conclusion Thus it often happens that the purity

.

of the motives and sentiments stands in a n inverse ratio to the goodness

of the cause and that its supposed assailants are more honest and more
,

straightforward than its defenders .
 C ON C L U S I ON .
63 9

This is a strong indictment of philosophers from one who has not

wholly escaped criti c ism for the same real or apparent fault and it ,

seems to reproach them for cowardice and hypocrisy But I am far .

f ro m impugning the m for so unfort unate a situation which exposes

the m as the world s teachers to this accusation The fact is that they

.

are qu ite ready to speak their minds if they were conceded the free
,

dom they need and deserve But democratic institutions will not grant
.

this and whether we call a government demo cratic or monarchic the

,

extent of the su ffrage makes all our western civilizations democratic

in character and inuence A demo cracy ins ists upon reducing every
.

thing to the level of the lowest class that can hold the balance of
power We usually charge socialism with this tendency but it is
.
,

probable that in every form of government socialism would soon develop

into an aristocracy But however this may be democracy exalts the
.
,

j udgment and importance of the uninte l ligent cl asses that may happe n
to possess the balance of power The demagogue and the politician
.

a ppeal to the passions of the populace and atter it with praise for

its abilities to decide social questions until with its acceptance of weak
,

j ournal is m as a gospel it comes to feel that it is equal to the best in

,

the determination of politica l counsels The same spirit is fostered

.

by the large number of religious denominations with their insistence

u pon the right of private judgment without tolerance for that of others .

O u r educational institutions are orga n ized on the basis of making con

cessions to this tendency a n d the result is that any atte m pt to teach
disagreeable truths to political and religious masters is resented and
missionary work is impossible unless it expresses the belief of those
,

who are to receive the teaching ! P hilosophy suffers especially fro m

this condition because its duties bring it into more ready conict with
,

the na i ve religious conceptions of the masses who prefer to lead and ,

govern rather than be instructed and guided P hilosophy has either .

to accommodate itself to popular opinion or to occupy itself with use

less o r curious and unintelligible problems It is not the right of the .

public to demand sincerity and missionary fervor when it will not con
cede the freedom o f thought and speech which are so necessary a con
dition or test of them We shall not have any independent p h ilo so
.

p h iz ing until men can criticis e popular conceptions as freely as they are
permitted to a dopt or atter them Those who are willing to under
.

take the correction and guidance of the human mind must be al lowed
the right to dissent and critic i se as well as to belie v e or to be ade pts
in prudence and silence This freedom is fully enjoyed by the non
.

a cademic man who has no calling to sustain and no bread to win

, ,
64 0 TH E PR OB LE M S OF PH I L O S OPH Y
.

w hen he undertakes the expression of opinion But our educationa l

.

institutions are organiz ed to pay respect to pub lic opinion not to direct ,

it beyond its willingness to listen and this opinio n with its tyrannical
,

love of power must not expect its dependents to cultivate any othe r
virtues tha n are actually permitted There is no use to charge h y p o c
.

r is
y in such a situation , as hypo crisy is not a vice where there is no
freedom The conduct which often goes by that name is a perfect ly
.

l egitimate mode of defence against intolerance The tendency a n d

.

right to accuse the teacher of this are the inherita n ce of those age s
when the university was the leader not the servant of the masses , a n d
,

those conditions must be restored if that vice is to have any reproach .

Moral courage and sincerity can be demanded only when there is toler
ance for difference of opinions and readiness to listen to knowledge
when it comes from those whose function it is to know and impart it .

Dialectical freedom was thought by P lato to be necessary to prevent

intellectual pride , but be required that the pupil should be young a n d
noble and fair as a condition of becoming sober and g entle toward
other men and of not fancying that he knows what he does not k now .

The want of nobility of character made impossib l e he thought, that ,

insight which wa s the only source of the vision sublime The p h ilo so .

pher is no less in need of this freedom as a condition of both his sin

cer ity and usefulness . If it is not granted him his calling must degen
c rate into the prudential consideration of safe and curious problems .

Rel igi on must accept , or at least share the blame for this situation
, .

Its obstina te anta gonism to th e n atu ral has only succeeded in an

t h r o p o m o r p h iz i ng the conception of G od and his functio nal relation t o

the world and in divorcing the supernatural from the conceptio n
of l a w and order which the modern mind infected with the scienti c
,

spirit or with the view of nature which that spirit has created h as ,

come to respect At rst even Greek belief was divided on these mat
.

ters Its fu ndamental conception of the gods endowed them with c a

.

price but in the course of development they were either relegated t o

,

the int er m undia where they were divested of interference in the a ffairs
,

of the world , or were subordinated to the will of one supreme po we r

who was subj ect to but one limiting inuence namely tha t of F ate
, , .

This was a tacit d enial that person a lity l ay at th e basis of things .

Religion accepted the challenge and in subordina tin g cosmic phenom

ena to intelli gence ne gl ected to fully reconcile it with l aw and mad e
the Divine capri cious , as reected in its theory of cr eation its illustra ,

tions of miracles , and in its doctrine of salvation by grace It was ar .

bit r a r y intervention in the order of things that l ed the Epicureans t o

 C ON C L U S I ON .
64 1

put the gods out of court Man cannot endure the exercise of irre
.

sponsible and incal culab le power H e must rely upon consta ncy in .

cosmic events a nd in fact ca n him self be made responsible only whe n

,

his ideals which seem so imperative for his development can rely
, ,

upon that constancy for their realization Had Christianity identied .

the Divine more closely with the xed order of nature and made its
will less capricious than it did it would have accomplished all that
,

Epicureanis m e ffected and at the same ti m e it would have invoked

for that order the spirit of reverence that had characterized the Gree k
mind for nature As F ate was the shadow which nature cast on
.

the D ivine it was quite nat ural in the reaction against that inexible
, ,

order which had troubled man in his vision of God and which had
shown him only the ugly side of the shield of Hercules that he should ,

endow personality with instability of character and thus ma k e it the

heir of the caprice that had determined the nature of the Greek gods .

But fortunately he denuded it of their malice and inhuman propensities ,

and hence the attribute of benevolence saved it from ruin But the .

progress of knowledge and of scepticism has so disturbed man s hopes
for the future that he can see no benignities in the struggle for existence
and the discovery reects its somber hues again on the conception of
the D ivine and throws the whole responsibility for the restoration of
t h ose ideals and hopes upon the problem of a future life O u r con .

c e p t i o n of the Divine must be affected by what we think or kno w is

the actual outcome of things a situation created by the supremacy of

,

scientic method which is the determination of truth by observation of

present facts and not the mere deduction of prospects from a p r zo r z
' '

theories Hence the present moment must be found to reect the

.

future in some w ay as a means of deciding whether its course is as

rational as it is inexorable and the rst step in this is the convictio n
,

that cons ciousness is as permanent as the mechanical order .

Whatever w e may think of Kant he faced and discussed the great

problems which had constituted the n ature of philosophy from the be
ginning o f its reections He did not hesitate to pronounce a sc ep
.

tical verdict upon them and history will recognize the value of thi s
,

result when it comes to estimate rightly and justly the service of s eep
t ic i s m to civiliz ation in diverting m a n away from transcendental ideas
which had induced him to neglect his proper social and pra c tical
duties Kant s defect w a s that he did not see clearly enough his way
.

to show h o w missionary enthusiasm that is all the moral fervor of the , ,

old religious ideal could be applied to the n atural life when the
,

other worldliness of transcendentalism had been dis credited In ; .

4 1
64 2 TH E PR OB L E M S OF PI/ I L O S OP H y .

t he attempt to correct the impe rsonal view of things in Greek thought ,

w hich had reacted against mythology Christianity had rushed off

,

aga in into the oppos i t e extreme adopting a personal conception of t h e

,

c osmic order and con centrating a passionate attention upon an exist

ence beyond the pres ent life that wholly underestimated the n a ture and
~

i mportance of man s duties and relations to his prese n t environment

.

K ant s philos o p h y called him back from thi s trans cendental debauch

into the world of reality where the drama of actual life has to be
played and where ethics have all their beauty and imperativeness in
aims and ends tha t may have a relation to the hereafter but that
may be nevertheless as valid , though they may not be as ef cient
without this hope Kant stated these duties in a severe formula
.

and with a tendency to admit that the rewards of virtue could

o nly be found in another world But the development of ethical t e
.

e ct io n s leads us more and more toward the view that ideals need n o t
l ack attainment in t h e prese nt order if on ly w e have the insight and
,

c ourage to see and realiz e them within the limits of the conditions to

which we are im mediat ely responsible Philosophy has a mission to

.

inculcate the pursu it of the ideal in the real world a nd in the interest
'

of this aim it need not counsel stoicism for the present life and tacitly
or explicitly concede the right of i nsp i ration to the trans cendental
.

though further s cientic investigations may reveal a prospect for th e

future that may stimulate moral endeavor as m uch as it can color life
with religious fervor and passion .
 INDE X .

A B EL A R D , 5 2 2
A bsolute , T h e , 5 46 5 5 3 C han ge , 5 ,
Chri st i an ity , 9
2 16
-
1 2 . 1 6, 60, 68, 1 81 , 3 3 6,
Absolute a n d R e lat ive , 4 , 8 406 , 407 , 408, 5 84 , 5 85 . 5 99, 62 1 ,
A c qu i s i t i on , 23 8 , 23 9 62 6 , 62 7
E sc h
y l us , 3 85 C las s i cat i on , 2 88

E t iolo cal
gi , 2 6 , 3 9 , 40 C las s i cat i on o f th e sci ences , 22 , 24 ,
E t i olog i cal arg um ent 5 46 , 5 60 27

E t i olog i cal i nterpretat i on o f nat ur e , C leanthes , 5 85

35 0 C og n i t i on , 1 07 , 1 1 1 , 1 2 9 , 1 30

E t i ology a n d T eleology 3 5 3 35 7 ,
-
Or d o , 1 54

A naly t i c j ud g m ents 1 5 7 C o g no s cend z, R a t i o

'

, , 1 9, 20 , 1 22, 1 25 ,

A naxag oras 3 63 3 65 3 7 5 3 7 6 , , ) , ) 3 80 ; 1 66 , 2 45 , 2 5 2

3 83 C oll i er , 7 4
Ans elm , 5 2 2 C o m m un i cat i on o f know le dg e , 1 5 7 , 1 5 8
A nthro pology , 28 C om te , 22 , 24 , 2 6 3 5 .

A nt i sthe ne s , 7 C oncepts , S i ng ular an d G en eral , 1 08 ,

A pp ercep t ion , 7 7 , 1 03 , 1 3 1 , 1 43 1 46 -
1 09

A pp rehens i o n , 7 7 , 7 8 , 98 1 06, 1 1 1 , 1 93 -
C oncre te concepts , 1 08 , 1 0 9

I 97 C o n d i llac 3 40

,

A q u i nas , 1 83 Co n per ce pt i o n , 77 , 1 03 , 1 39 1 43 , 2 02

A r i st o tle , 8, 1 7 8 , 1 80, 1 83 , 1 84 , 1 88 , 2 3 1 , C o m pos it i on o f elem e nts , 3 48 , 3 49

2 65 , 3 63 , 3 65 , 3 70 , 3 7 1 , 3 7 4 ,
2 66 , C onsci ousn ess , 7 9
3 80 . 3 83 . 5 2 6 . 5 3 4 Co n ci ousness Im med iat e 1 92
ns er vati o n o f energy 3 90
s , ,

Co 3 97 , , 468,
A C O N,
B Be com i ng
23 1

8
486
, C op ern i cus , 2 43 , 377
n
Be i g , 5 , 8 , 1 2 C or puscula r theory o f p ercept i on , 2 64
n
B e i g an d K w i g , 6, no n 1 2, 91 C orrelat i on o f forces 3 93 ,

l f
Be i e , 9 , 1 0 , 1 1 , 6 1 C os m olog ical 49 5 6
C o s m olog i cal problem 5 3 1
-
,

Be rke ley 1 2 13, 4 1 , 5 3 , 74 , 1 73 , 1 75 ,

537
2 65 C r i ter i a o f truth 1 7 8
. ,
,

271 , 2 75 , 277 , 3 10 , 3 1 3 , 3 1 6, 25 7 ,

3 1 9 , 3 40 , 3 42 , 5 83 C ro okes S i r W i ll i a m 3 7 6
, ,

Bi n ocular i s i on 3 1 2 v , , 3 1 8, 32 1 , 3 3 1
B iology 2 7 3 1 AL TO N, 408
, ,

B rewster 2 46 3 1 0 , ,
D ant
e, 600 , 61 0

B u sse 33 7 ,
D arwin 2 43 ,

D avy S i r H um phrey 2 49
, ,

AI R D , 49 1 D e d uct ive reas on i ng 2 33 ,

C arl l
y e, 5 2 2 D e ni t i on 1 84 2 1 7 2 84
, , ,

C at eg or i e s 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 1 2 1
, , D e m o cr i tus 36 1 3 62 3 63 3 66
, , , , , 3 7 5 , 3 76
C ausal i ty C ategory o f 1 20 1 2 1
, , , D eont o lo gy 2 7 2 9 , ,

C as ual ity M at er ial 3 2 3 3 42 3 7 1

, , , , D e scart es 2 1 1 1 3 6o 62
, , , , , , 72 , 1 1 6,

C ause 1 8 1 9 46 48 5 1 55 3 7 1
, , ,
-

,
-
, 1 93 1 I 95 , 2 85 1 3 9 1 , 3 9 2 , 3 97 : 3 98
C ert i tu d e 5 9 6 1 63 1 2 6 1 2 7
, , , , , 3 99 , 400 , 5 22 ; 5 2 3 , 55 8
6 44 I ND E X .

D i ck i nson , 62 1 Greek t hought , 8 , 9 , 1 2 , 1 6 , 1 9 , 60 , 64 , 2,

D i m ens i on , t h e thi rd 2 67 27 1 310 3 65 , 3 7 1 . 406 , 5 08 , 5 1 3 5 1 6, 5 43 ,

-
-

, ,

D i ng e 3 7 , 2 98 3 03 5 84 , 5 95 , 5 99 , 62 1 , 626 , 62 7

a n s zelz, -

D ivers i ty , 1 2 6, 1 2 7 G reen , T H , 7 4 , 8 1 . .

D oubt , 6 1 . S ee S cep t i cism . G rove , 3 93

D ream s , 2 06

D ual i sm A L L U C I NA T IO NS , 2 06
, 1 0, 357
H am i lton , 87 , 1 83 , 1 88 , 55 0
LEA TIC S , 8 , 3 6 1 H awksbee , 2 49
E E m p ed e , 8 , 2 64 , ocl s 2 66 , 3 63 l i egeh
E m pi ri ci s m 70 7 1 , ,
He racl tus 5 7
i , , , 8 , 3 63
Ep i curus a n d Ep i curean i s m 7 , 8 , 9 , 1 6, , H e rbart 495 ,

7 4, 3 6 1 . 3 62 . 3 63 . 3 66 . 3 68 . 3 69 . 3 7 0 . H obbes 3 9 1 ,

H o bhous e 5 9 ,

Ep i stem ology 2 8 44 5 8 1 67 , , ,
-
, 1 82 , 1 83 H ollan d 3 0 ,

E p i stem olog i cal real i sm 2 7 7 , , 2 7 9 , 2 93 H omer 609 ,

Ho w do we k now ! 64 , 65 , 7 1 ,

2 95 3 0 1,

E r g o l o g i cal , 25 73
E r ken n t n i ss , 5 8 , 5 9 H uy g he n s , 3 91
ss nc
E e e, 5 H um e , 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 6, 1 2 0 , 1 75 , 340 ,
E ssend z, R a t io , 66 , 63 7
'

1 9, 20 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 40 ,

2 45 : 2 5 2 H uxley , 5 64, 61 2
E thology 2 7 2 9 , , H y lology , 2 8 , 3 4, 3 3 4
Eve nts 1 04 1 05
, , Hy per a st h esia , 488 , 489
E v olut i o n o f S p ace percept i on 3 1 9 H y pothe s i s , 2 3 8 2 4 1
E xi sten ce o f Go d 3 5 5 1 3
, ,

5 7 4 599 , , ,

D EA L real
607
I and

I de al i s m , 4, 5 , 1 2 , 1 4, 1 5 , 1 6, 7 2 ,
, 4
E x per i m ent 2 3 8 ,

1 68 , 1 69 , 1 7 0 , 1 7 1 , 1 7 4 , 1 7 6 , 2 80 ,
E xp er i ence 7 1 4 69 , , ,

E xp lanat i on 1 8 2 0 2 1 2 3 8 2 3 9 35 8, , , , , ,
3 3 5 , 3 3 6, 3 3 7 . 339 , 3 47 . 3 56 .
E xplanatory a n d ev i de nt i al p ro blem s 3 78 . 3 7 9. 5 02 5 06 , 5 7 8 5 83 ,
- -

3 58 5 85
E xtens i on 1 09 1 87 , ,
I de nt i ty P ri nci p le o f 1 2 7
, ,

E xtens i ve j ud gm ents 1 23 , 1 2 9 , 2 1 8 Id eolog i cal 2 6 ,

,

I nduct i ve reason i ng 2 33 ,

A IT H , 6 1 , 68, 62 8 6 33 I llus i ons 2 06 2 64

F Fi cht 1 0, 1 1 , - , ,

e, 7 4, 3 4s
1 9 , 2 0 , 1 22 , 2 40 , 2 45 , 2 5 2
I m med i ate consci o usne ss 1 92
I ndestruct i bi l i ty o f m atter
,

,

3 86 3 90 ,
Fischer Kuno 5 23
, ,
486
Frankl i n 2 42 I n d ivi d ual i ty , 45 7
Free wi ll 47 8
,

In ert ia . 3 7 9 3 84. 5 33
48 1
-

I nference , 1 90

ALIL E O , 243 I nfero app rehens i on

-

, 151

Gass e n d i , 391 I n uxus p lzy szcus , 5 3 , 66 , 3 2 3 , 3 42 , 45 2 ,

Gen er al co ncepts , S i n gular and , 1 08 , 5 02

1 09 Ins ig ht , 67
General iz at ion , 1 48 , 2 1 0 I nte llect uali sm 3 47 ,

Genes i s s pace per cept i on 2 5 9 2 63

o f ,
-
I ntens ion 1 09 ,

C oncept i on o f 5 24 5 2 7 5 3 1
E x i sten ce o f 3 5 5 1 3
Go d , , , , I ntens i e j udg m e nts 1 2 3
v , , 1 25 , 2 1 9
Go d , 5 7 4 5 99 607 , , ,
-
Intu it i o n 1 4 1 07 1 08 , , ,
 I ND E A

.

EV O NS , 2 49 M athem at i cal j u dg m ents 2 1 3 , 2 1 5 2 2 7 , ,

J ud gm ent , 1 07 , 1 1 1 M em ory 97 1 5 6 , ,

J u dg m ents M athem at i cal 2 1 3 2 1 5

, , , , 227 M ec h an i cal theory 3 67 3 7 0 3 90 3 93 , , ,
-

J ud g m ents S u bstant i ve 2 1 3 2 2 7
, , , M en de lssohn 33 7 496 49 7 . 499 5 00 . . . .

J uri s p ru d e n ce 30 , M entat i on 93 ,

Metap hy s i cs 2 6 3 4 3 7 , 40
A NT .
K
, , ,
2 1 2 . 1 3 . I 4. 2 6 .
. 3 4 . 3 7 . 43 . 44 . M et ho d o f A g reem ent , 2 4 1 482 ,
4s. 52 . 5 8. 59 . 7 4. 7 7 . 1 05 .
Method o f C onco m itant V ari at ions 2 46 ,
111 11 2, 1 13, 1 15 , 1 1 6, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8,
Metho d o f D i fference 2 46 482
,

, ,
1 20 , 121, 1 2 6, 152 , 157 , 1 81 2 42 ,
,
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