A Pluralistic Universe
{"WorkMasterId":7522,"WpPageId":288907,"ParentWpPageId":193821,"Slug":"pluralistic-universe","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/william-james/pluralistic-universe/","RelativeUrl":"theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/william-james/pluralistic-universe/","HasFullText":true,"RawHtmlLength":541599,"CleanHtmlLength":485901,"Kicker":"Philosophy Work","Title":"A Pluralistic Universe","Deck":"James defends pluralism, finite experience, radical empiricism, and a universe not exhausted by absolute idealist unity.","BackLink":{"Text":"Back to William James","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/william-james/"},"AuthorCard":{"Label":"Author","Title":"William James","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/william-james/","MediaHref":"","ImageSrc":"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/william-james-01-alice-boughton-portrait.jpg","ImageAlt":"William James by Alice M. Boughton","FilterTerra":"North America","ClickText":"William James","ClickHref":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/william-james/","Copies":["1842 CE – 1910 CE","New York City, New York","American philosopher and psychologist whose pragmatism, radical empiricism, stream-of-consciousness psychology, pluralism, and philosophy of religion reshaped modern philosophy."]},"ContextCards":[{"Label":"Period","Key":"Period:4","Title":"Modern History","DateText":"1800 CE – 1944 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-modern-history/"},{"Label":"Era","Key":"Era:11","Title":"Long 19th Century","DateText":"1870 CE – 1913 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-modern-history/philosophers-of-the-long-19th-century/"},{"Label":"Composition","Title":"1909 CE","Url":"","DateText":""}],"DateNote":"Displayed as 1909 CE for the published Hibbert Lectures.","GeoCards":[{"Label":"Region","Key":"Region:1"},{"Label":"Terra Avita","Key":"TerraAvita:6"},{"Label":"Terra Avita Region","Key":"TerraAvitaRegion:25"},{"Label":"Modern Country","Key":"Country:USA:6"}],"OriginalTitle":"A Pluralistic Universe","Language":"English","DisciplineCards":[{"Label":"Primary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:metaphysics"},{"Label":"Secondary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:philosophy-of-religion"}],"Tradition":"American pragmatism, radical empiricism, psychology, moral philosophy, and philosophy of religion","FullText":{"Title":"Full Text","Copy":"Public-domain full text from Project Gutenberg eBook #11984 .","Url":"","Label":"","Kicker":"","Cards":[]},"CoreThesis":["James defends pluralism, finite experience, radical empiricism, and a universe not exhausted by absolute idealist unity."],"Classification":{"AlternateTitles":"Hibbert Lectures; Pluralistic Universe","KeyConcepts":"pluralism; absolute idealism; radical empiricism; finite experience; metaphysics","Methodology":"Direct William James work-cluster record based on SEP, IEP, Britannica, Harvard/Houghton, William James Studies, public edition surfaces, catalog records, and scholarship. 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Change of tone since 1860, 4.\r\n Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing:\r\n Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8.\r\n They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental\r\n differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency\r\n to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of\r\n vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought,\r\n 21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23.\r\n Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and\r\n leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The\r\n contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand\r\n to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The \u0027each-\r\n form\u0027 and the \u0027all-form\u0027 of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks\r\n quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the\r\n finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite\r\n still remains outside of absolute reality, 40.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE II\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00009\"\u003eMONISTIC IDEALISM 41\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00010\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these\r\n lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of\r\n Bradley\u0027s Absolute, 46. Spinoza and \u0027quatenus,\u002747. Difficulty of\r\n sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it,\r\n 50. Professor Jones quoted, 52. Absolutist refutations of Pluralism, 54.\r\n Criticism of Lotze\u0027s proof of Monism by the analysis of what interaction\r\n involves, 55. Vicious intellectualism defined, 60. Royce\u0027s alternative:\r\n either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, 61.\r\n Bradley\u0027s dialectic difficulties with relations, 69. Inefficiency of the\r\n Absolute as a rationalizing remedy, 71. Tendency of Rationalists to fly\r\n to extremes, 74. The question of \u0027external\u0027 relations, 79. Transition to\r\n Hegel, 91.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE III\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00012\"\u003eHEGEL AND HIS METHOD 83\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00013\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Hegel\u0027s influence. 85. The type of his vision is impressionistic, 87.\r\n The \u0027dialectic\u0027 element in reality, 88. Pluralism involves possible\r\n conflicts among things, 90. Hegel explains conflicts by the mutual\r\n contradictoriness of concepts, 91. Criticism of his attempt to transcend\r\n ordinary logic, 92. Examples of the \u0027dialectic\u0027 constitution of things,\r\n 95. The rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of\r\n double negation, 101. Sublimity of the conception, 104. Criticism of\r\n Hegel\u0027s account: it involves vicious intellectualism, 105. Hegel is a\r\n seer rather than a reasoner, 107. \u0027The Absolute\u0027 and \u0027God\u0027 are two\r\n different notions, 110. Utility of the Absolute in conferring mental\r\n peace, 114. But this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which\r\n it introduces into philosophy, 116. Leibnitz and Lotze on the \u0027fall\u0027\r\n involved in the creation of the finite, 119. Joachim on the fall of\r\n truth into error, 121. The world of the absolutist cannot be perfect,\r\n 123. Pluralistic conclusions, 125.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE IV\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00015\"\u003eCONCERNING FECHNER 131\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00016\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute\r\n mind, 134. Thinness of contemporary absolutism, 135. The\r\n tone of Fechner\u0027s empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the\r\n rationalistic sort, 144. Fechner\u0027s life, 145. His vision, the \u0027daylight\r\n view,\u0027 150. His way of reasoning by analogy, 151. The whole universe\r\n animated, 152. His monistic formula is unessential, 153. The\r\n Earth-Soul, 156. Its differences from our souls, 160. The earth as\r\n an angel, 164. The Plant-Soul, 165. The logic used by Fechner,\r\n 168. His theory of immortality, 170. The \u0027thickness\u0027 of his imagination,\r\n 173. Inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism,\r\n to his vision, 174.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE V\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00018\" style=\"margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 0%\"\u003eTHE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179\r\n The assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, 181. This\r\n assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by\r\n transcendental idealism, and by Fechner, 184. Criticism of it by the\r\n present writer in a former book, 188. Physical combinations, so-called,\r\n cannot be invoked as analogous, 194. Nevertheless, combination must be\r\n postulated among the parts of the Universe, 197. The logical objections\r\n to admitting it, 198. Rationalistic treatment of the question brings us\r\n to an \u003ci\u003eimpasse\u003c/i\u003e, 208. A radical breach with intellectualism is required,\r\n 212. Transition to Bergson\u0027s philosophy, 214. Abusive use of concepts,\r\n 219.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VI\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00020\"\u003eBERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00021\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Professor Bergson\u0027s personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228.\r\n Not a sophism, 229. We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by\r\n static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense\r\n practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially\r\n static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240.\r\n No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life,\r\n 244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247.\r\n Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the\r\n understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by\r\n this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists\r\n is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson\u0027s\r\n originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a\r\n universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e their\r\n own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel\u0027s logic is true,\r\n 270.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VII\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00023\"\u003eTHE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00024\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Green\u0027s critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately\r\n felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate\r\n flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux\u0027s aboriginal\r\n incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity,\r\n 284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete\r\n units of experience are \u0027their own others,\u0027 287. Reality is confluent\r\n from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced,\r\n 291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner\u0027s God is not the\r\n Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296.\r\n Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VIII\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00026\"\u003eCONCLUSIONS 301\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00027\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304.\r\n They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part,\r\n 308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of\r\n monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better\r\n ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger\r\n mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection\r\n should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality,\r\n 317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least\r\n foreign, 318. The word \u0027rationality\u0027 had better be replaced by the\r\n word \u0027intimacy,\u0027 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and\r\n defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use\r\n the \u0027faith-ladder\u0027 in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eNOTES 333\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eAPPENDICES\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00030\"\u003e A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00031\"\u003e B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00032\"\u003e C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eINDEX 401\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE I\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eTHE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00036\"\u003eAs these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed\r\nall very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general\r\ninterest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing\r\nphilosophical again—still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford,\r\nlong the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by\r\nKant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different\r\nway of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest\r\nin a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It\r\nlooks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of\r\nfashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming\r\nitself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as\r\nif foundations were being sounded and examined afresh.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00037\"\u003eIndividuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying\r\nevery one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually\r\nsuggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life\r\nof philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and\r\ncomplaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up,\r\nand, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford\r\nand Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties,\r\nMill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in\r\nBritain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In\r\nFrance, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and\r\nRenouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the hegelian\r\nimpetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship,\r\nnothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as\r\nBüchner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole\r\noriginal thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at\r\nall.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00038\"\u003eThe general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of\r\nsmall subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was\r\nrampant. Samuel Bailey\u0027s \u0027letters on the philosophy of the human\r\nmind,\u0027 published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of english\r\nassociationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of\r\nKant: \u0027No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to\r\nhear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years\r\nof study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the\r\nspeculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had.\r\nIn or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes of England,\r\nobserved to Professor Wilson that, after five years\u0027 study of Kant\u0027s\r\nphilosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce,\r\nabout the same time, made the same confession to another friend of\r\nmy own. \"I am endeavoring,\" exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the\r\nirritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, \"to understand this\r\naccursed german philosophy.\"[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00039\"\u003eWhat Oxford thinker would dare to print such \u003ci\u003enaïf\u003c/i\u003e and\r\nprovincial-sounding citations of authority to-day?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00040\"\u003eThe torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth\r\nthe flame. The deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us\r\nenglish folk from Germany, as it will probably pass back ere long.\r\nFerrier, J.H. Stirling, and, most of all, T.H. Green are to be\r\nthanked. If asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal\r\nchange has been, I should call it a change from the crudity of the\r\nolder english thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was\r\nreligious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism\r\nderived in the first instance from Germany, but relieved from german\r\ntechnicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain\r\nvague, and to be, in, the english fashion, devout.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00041\"\u003eBy the time T.H. Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to\r\nfeel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of\r\nassociationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though\r\nit went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding\r\nus of our pre-natal sublimity, would be welcome.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00042\"\u003eGreen\u0027s great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning\r\nenglish sensationalism. \u003ci\u003eRelating\u003c/i\u003e was the great intellectual activity\r\nfor him, and the key to this relating was believed by him to\r\nlodge itself at last in what most of you know as Kant\u0027s unity of\r\napperception, transformed into a living spirit of the world.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00043\"\u003eHence a monism of a devout kind. In some way we must be fallen angels,\r\none with intelligence as such; and a great disdain for empiricism\r\nof the sensationalist sort has always characterized this school of\r\nthought, which, on the whole, has reigned supreme at Oxford and in the\r\nScottish universities until the present day.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00044\"\u003eBut now there are signs of its giving way to a wave of revised\r\nempiricism. I confess that I should be glad to see this latest wave\r\nprevail; so—the sooner I am frank about it the better—I hope to\r\nhave my voice counted in its favor as one of the results of this\r\nlecture-course.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00045\"\u003eWhat do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? Reduced to their\r\nmost pregnant difference, \u003ci\u003eempiricism means the habit of explaining\r\nwholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts\r\nby wholes\u003c/i\u003e. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since\r\nwholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic\r\nviews. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a\r\npicture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird\u0027s-eye view of\r\nthe perspective of events. And the first thing to notice is this, that\r\nthe only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the\r\nwhole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of\r\nwhich we have already had experience. We can invent no new forms of\r\nconception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested\r\noriginally by the parts. All philosophers, accordingly, have conceived\r\nof the whole world after the analogy of some particular feature of it\r\nwhich has particularly captivated their attention. Thus, the theists\r\ntake their cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth. For one\r\nman, the world is like a thought or a grammatical sentence in which a\r\nthought is expressed. For such a philosopher, the whole must logically\r\nbe prior to the parts; for letters would never have been invented\r\nwithout syllables to spell, or syllables without words to utter.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00046\"\u003eAnother man, struck by the disconnectedness and mutual accidentality\r\nof so many of the world\u0027s details, takes the universe as a whole to\r\nhave been such a disconnectedness originally, and supposes order to\r\nhave been superinduced upon it in the second instance, possibly\r\nby attrition and the gradual wearing away by internal friction of\r\nportions that originally interfered.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00047\"\u003eAnother will conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and\r\nthe universe will be for him like a vast grab-bag with black and white\r\nballs in it, of which we guess the quantities only probably, by the\r\nfrequency with which we experience their egress.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00048\"\u003eFor another, again, there is no really inherent order, but it is we\r\nwho project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing\r\nrelations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. We \u003ci\u003ecarve out\u003c/i\u003e\r\norder by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived\r\nthus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which\r\nparks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant trees or\r\nchips of stone.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00049\"\u003eSome thinkers follow suggestions from human life, and treat the\r\nuniverse as if it were essentially a place in which ideals are\r\nrealized. Others are more struck by its lower features, and for them,\r\nbrute necessities express its character better.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00050\"\u003eAll follow one analogy or another; and all the analogies are with some\r\none or other of the universe\u0027s subdivisions. Every one is nevertheless\r\nprone to claim that his conclusions are the only logical ones, that\r\nthey are necessities of universal reason, they being all the while, at\r\nbottom, accidents more or less of personal vision which had far better\r\nbe avowed as such; for one man\u0027s vision may be much more valuable than\r\nanother\u0027s, and our visions are usually not only our most interesting\r\nbut our most respectable contributions to the world in which we play\r\nour part. What was reason given to men for, said some eighteenth\r\ncentury writer, except to enable them to find reasons for what they\r\nwant to think and do?—and I think the history of philosophy largely\r\nbears him out, \u0027The aim of knowledge,\u0027 says Hegel,[2] \u0027is to divest\r\nthe objective world of its strangeness, and to make us more at home\r\nin it.\u0027 Different men find their minds more at home in very different\r\nfragments of the world.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00051\"\u003eLet me make a few comments, here, on the curious antipathies which\r\nthese partialities arouse. They are sovereignly unjust, for all the\r\nparties are human beings with the same essential interests, and no one\r\nof them is the wholly perverse demon which another often imagines him\r\nto be. Both are loyal to the world that bears them; neither wishes to\r\nspoil it; neither wishes to regard it as an insane incoherence; both\r\nwant to keep it as a universe of some kind; and their differences are\r\nall secondary to this deep agreement. They may be only propensities to\r\nemphasize differently. Or one man may care for finality and security\r\nmore than the other. Or their tastes in language may be different.\r\nOne may like a universe that lends itself to lofty and exalted\r\ncharacterization. To another this may seem sentimental or rhetorical.\r\nOne may wish for the right to use a clerical vocabulary, another a\r\ntechnical or professorial one. A certain old farmer of my acquaintance\r\nin America was called a rascal by one of his neighbors. He immediately\r\nsmote the man, saying,\u0027I won\u0027t stand none of your diminutive\r\nepithets.\u0027 Empiricist minds, putting the parts before the whole,\r\nappear to rationalists, who start from the whole, and consequently\r\nenjoy magniloquent privileges, to use epithets offensively diminutive.\r\nBut all such differences are minor matters which ought to be\r\nsubordinated in view of the fact that, whether we be empiricists or\r\nrationalists, we are, ourselves, parts of the universe and share the\r\nsame one deep concern in its destinies. We crave alike to feel more\r\ntruly at home with it, and to contribute our mite to its amelioration.\r\nIt would be pitiful if small aesthetic discords were to keep honest\r\nmen asunder.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00052\"\u003eI shall myself have use for the diminutive epithets of empiricism. But\r\nif you look behind the words at the spirit, I am sure you will not\r\nfind it matricidal. I am as good a son as any rationalist among you to\r\nour common mother. What troubles me more than this misapprehension is\r\nthe genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged\r\nto talk about, and the difficulty of making them intelligible at one\r\nhearing. But there two pieces, \u0027zwei stücke,\u0027 as Kant would have said,\r\nin every philosophy—the final outlook, belief, or attitude to which\r\nit brings us, and the reasonings by which that attitude is reached and\r\nmediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to tell us, must indeed\r\nbe true, but that is the least of its requirements. One may be true\r\nwithout being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation.\r\nWhat distinguishes a philosopher\u0027s truth is that it is \u003ci\u003ereasoned\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nArgument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. Common\r\nmen find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. They\r\njump into them with both feet, and stand there. Philosophers must\r\ndo more; they must first get reason\u0027s license for them; and to the\r\nprofessional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license\r\nis usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular\r\nbeliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. Suppose,\r\nfor example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will.\r\nThat a common man alongside of him should also share that belief,\r\npossessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man\r\nto the philosopher at all—he may even be ashamed to be associated\r\nwith such a man. What interests the philosopher is the particular\r\npremises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the\r\nsense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties\r\nit takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner\r\nand technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question.\r\nA philosopher across the way who should use the same technical\r\napparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite\r\nconclusions and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first\r\nphilosopher far more than would the \u003ci\u003enaïf\u003c/i\u003e co-believer. Their common\r\ntechnical interests would unite them more than their opposite\r\nconclusions separate them. Each would feel an essential consanguinity\r\nin the other, would think of him, write \u003ci\u003eat\u003c/i\u003e him, care for his good\r\nopinion. The simple-minded believer in free-will would be disregarded\r\nby either. Neither as ally nor as opponent would his vote be counted.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00053\"\u003eIn a measure this is doubtless as it should be, but like all\r\nprofessionalism it can go to abusive extremes. The end is after all\r\nmore than the way, in most things human, and forms and methods may\r\neasily frustrate their own purpose. The abuse of technicality is\r\nseen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature,\r\nmetaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits.\r\nAlmost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain,\r\nthe veil of previous philosophers\u0027 opinions. Alternatives are wrapped\r\nin proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The\r\nlate Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about\r\nthis. \u0027Thought,\u0027 he says,\u0027is not a professional matter, not something\r\nfor so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. The best\r\nphilosopher is the man who can think most \u003ci\u003esimply\u003c/i\u003e. … I wish that\r\npeople would consider that thought—and philosophy is no more than\r\ngood and methodical thought—is a matter \u003ci\u003eintimate\u003c/i\u003e to them, a portion\r\nof their real selves … that they would \u003ci\u003evalue\u003c/i\u003e what they think, and\r\nbe interested in it…. In my own opinion,\u0027 he goes on, \u0027there is\r\nsomething depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can\r\ncome into one\u0027s mind but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such\r\nand such a person long ago. … I can conceive of nothing more noxious\r\nfor students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about\r\ntheir ordinary philosophic thought, Oh, somebody must have thought it\r\nall before.\u0027[3] Yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of\r\nlearning. You must tie your opinion to Aristotle\u0027s or Spinoza\u0027s; you\r\nmust define it by its distance from Kant\u0027s; you must refute your\r\nrival\u0027s view by identifying it with Protagoras\u0027s. Thus does all\r\nspontaneity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed.\r\nEverything you touch is shopworn. The over-technicality and consequent\r\ndreariness of the younger disciples at our american universities is\r\nappalling. It comes from too much following of german models and\r\nmanners. Let me fervently express the hope that in this country you\r\nwill hark back to the more humane english tradition. American students\r\nhave to regain direct relations with our subject by painful individual\r\neffort in later life. Some of us have done so. Some of the younger\r\nones, I fear, never will, so strong are the professional shop-habits\r\nalready.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00054\"\u003eIn a subject like philosophy it is really fatal to lose connexion with\r\nthe open air of human nature, and to think in terms of shop-tradition\r\nonly. In Germany the forms are so professionalized that anybody who\r\nhas gained a teaching chair and written a book, however distorted and\r\neccentric, has the legal right to figure forever in the history of the\r\nsubject like a fly in amber. All later comers have the duty of quoting\r\nhim and measuring their opinions with his opinion. Such are the rules\r\nof the professorial game—they think and write from each other and for\r\neach other and at each other exclusively. With this exclusion of the\r\nopen air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count\r\nas much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance\r\nany one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind\r\ndirectly focussed on the subject, it is reckoned \u003ci\u003eoberflächliches\r\nzeug\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eganz unwissenschaftlich\u003c/i\u003e. Professor Paulsen has recently\r\nwritten some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from\r\nthe reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being\r\n\u0027literary,\u0027 have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has\r\nlong assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and\r\noccult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of\r\nstatement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He\r\nrecalls an old professor saying to him once: \u0027Yes, we philosophers,\r\nwhenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences we can\r\nput ourselves where nobody can follow us.\u0027 The professor said this\r\nwith conscious pride, but he ought to have been ashamed of it. Great\r\nas technique is, results are greater. To teach philosophy so that the\r\npupils\u0027 interest in technique exceeds that in results is surely a\r\nvicious aberration. It is bad form, not good form, in a discipline\r\nof such universal human interest. Moreover, technique for technique,\r\ndoesn\u0027t David Hume\u0027s technique set, after all, the kind of pattern\r\nmost difficult to follow? Isn\u0027t it the most admirable? The english\r\nmind, thank heaven, and the french mind, are still kept, by their\r\naversion to crude technique and barbarism, closer to truth\u0027s natural\r\nprobabilities. Their literatures show fewer obvious falsities and\r\nmonstrosities than that of Germany. Think of the german literature of\r\naesthetics, with the preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage\r\nas Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on\r\n\u003ci\u003ereligions-philosophie\u003c/i\u003e, with the heart\u0027s battles translated into\r\nconceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of\r\nquestions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the\r\nreligious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly\r\nlittle technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working\r\nphilosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity of\r\nmind at all. That they still manifest freshness and originality in so\r\neminent a degree, proves the indestructible richness of the german\r\ncerebral endowment.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00055\"\u003eLet me repeat once more that a man\u0027s vision is the great fact about\r\nhim. Who cares for Carlyle\u0027s reasons, or Schopenhauer\u0027s, or Spencer\u0027s?\r\nA philosophy is the expression of a man\u0027s intimate character, and all\r\ndefinitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions\r\nof human characters upon it. In the recent book from which I quoted\r\nthe words of Professor Paulsen, a book of successive chapters by\r\nvarious living german philosophers,[4] we pass from one idiosyncratic\r\npersonal atmosphere into another almost as if we were turning over a\r\nphotograph album.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00056\"\u003eIf we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce\r\nthemselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage\r\nin which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so\r\nmany visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole\r\ndrift of life, forced on one by one\u0027s total character and experience,\r\nand on the whole \u003ci\u003epreferred\u003c/i\u003e—there is no other truthful word—as\r\none\u0027s best working attitude. Cynical characters take one general\r\nattitude, sympathetic characters another. But no general attitude\r\nis possible towards the world as a whole, until the intellect has\r\ndeveloped considerable generalizing power and learned to take pleasure\r\nin synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly\r\nany tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages.\r\nIt is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and\r\nshadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical\r\npowers. \u0027Close to nature\u0027 though they live, they are anything but\r\nWordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is\r\nlikely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the\r\nwicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering with\r\nwitchery and danger. The eeriness of the world, the mischief and the\r\nmanyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the\r\nunaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most\r\nimpressive at that stage of culture, these communicate the thrills\r\nof curiosity and the earliest intellectual stirrings. Tempests and\r\nconflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane\r\npowers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. Nature,\r\nmore demonic than divine, is above all things \u003ci\u003emultifarious\u003c/i\u003e. So many\r\ncreatures that feed or threaten, that help or crush, so many beings\r\nto hate or love, to understand or start at—which is on top and which\r\nsubordinate? Who can tell? They are co-ordinate, rather, and to adapt\r\nourselves to them singly, to \u0027square\u0027 the dangerous powers and keep\r\nthe others friendly, regardless of consistency or unity, is the chief\r\nproblem. The symbol of nature at this stage, as Paulsen well says,\r\nis the sphinx, under whose nourishing breasts the tearing claws are\r\nvisible.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00057\"\u003eBut in due course of time the intellect awoke, with its passion for\r\ngeneralizing, simplifying, and subordinating, and then began those\r\ndivergences of conception which all later experience seems rather\r\nto have deepened than to have effaced, because objective nature has\r\ncontributed to both sides impartially, and has let the thinkers\r\nemphasize different parts of her, and pile up opposite imaginary\r\nsupplements.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00058\"\u003ePerhaps the most interesting opposition is that which results from the\r\nclash between what I lately called the sympathetic and the cynical\r\ntemper. Materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies are the rival\r\ntypes that result: the former defining the world so as to leave man\u0027s\r\nsoul upon it as a soil of outside passenger or alien, while the latter\r\ninsists that the intimate and human must surround and underlie the\r\nbrutal. This latter is the spiritual way of thinking.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00059\"\u003eNow there are two very distinct types or stages in spiritualistic\r\nphilosophy, and my next purpose in this lecture is to make their\r\ncontrast evident. Both types attain the sought-for intimacy of view,\r\nbut the one attains it somewhat less successfully than the other.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00060\"\u003eThe generic term spiritualism, which I began by using merely as the\r\nopposite of materialism, thus subdivides into two species, the more\r\nintimate one of which is monistic and the less intimate dualistic. The\r\ndualistic species is the \u003ci\u003etheism\u003c/i\u003e that reached its elaboration in the\r\nscholastic philosophy, while the monistic species is the \u003ci\u003epantheism\u003c/i\u003e\r\nspoken of sometimes simply as idealism, and sometimes as\r\n\u0027post-kantian\u0027 or \u0027absolute\u0027 idealism. Dualistic theism is professed\r\nas firmly as ever at all catholic seats of learning, whereas it has\r\nof late years tended to disappear at our british and american\r\nuniversities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheism more or less\r\nopen or disguised. I have an impression that ever since T.H. Green\u0027s\r\ntime absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendent at Oxford.\r\nIt is in the ascendent at my own university of Harvard.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00061\"\u003eAbsolute idealism attains, I said, to the more intimate point of view;\r\nbut the statement needs some explanation. So far as theism represents\r\nthe world as God\u0027s world, and God as what Matthew Arnold called a\r\nmagnified non-natural man, it would seem as if the inner quality of\r\nthe world remained human, and as if our relations with it might be\r\nintimate enough—for what is best in ourselves appears then also\r\noutside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same\r\nspiritual species. So far, so good, then; and one might consequently\r\nask, What more of intimacy do you require? To which the answer is\r\nthat to be like a thing is not as intimate a relation as to be\r\nsubstantially fused into it, to form one continuous soul and body with\r\nit; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with\r\nGod, attains this higher reach of intimacy.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00062\"\u003eThe theistic conception, picturing God and his creation as entities\r\ndistinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of\r\nthe deepest reality in the universe. God is from eternity complete, it\r\nsays, and sufficient unto himself; he throws off the world by a free\r\nact and as an extraneous substance, and he throws off man as a third\r\nsubstance, extraneous to both the world and himself. Between them, God\r\nsays \u0027one,\u0027 the world says \u0027two,\u0027 and man says \u0027three,\u0027—that is the\r\northodox theistic view. And orthodox theism has been so jealous of\r\nGod\u0027s glory that it has taken pains to exaggerate everything in the\r\nnotion of him that could make for isolation and separateness. Page\r\nupon page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense\r\nimplicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his\r\nrelation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to\r\nhim, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a\r\npantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that\r\ntheism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox\r\npoint of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures\r\nare \u003ci\u003etoto genere\u003c/i\u003e distinct in the scholastic theology, they have\r\nabsolutely \u003ci\u003enothing\u003c/i\u003e in common; nay, it degrades God to attribute to\r\nhim any generic nature whatever; he can be classed with nothing. There\r\nis a sense, then, in which philosophic theism makes us outsiders and\r\nkeeps us foreigners in relation to God, in which, at any rate, his\r\nconnexion with us appears as unilateral and not reciprocal. His action\r\ncan affect us, but he can never be affected by our reaction. Our\r\nrelation, in short, is not a strictly social relation. Of course in\r\ncommon men\u0027s religion the relation is believed to be social, but that\r\nis only one of the many differences between religion and theology.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00063\"\u003eThis essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of\r\ncollateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to\r\nGod, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the\r\nfield. God is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our\r\nmagistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however\r\nstrange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of\r\ncriminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our\r\nrelations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the\r\nsame externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist\r\nthinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in\r\nscholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established\r\nwithout our help, complete apart from our knowing; and the most we\r\ncan do is to acknowledge it passively and adhere to it, altho such\r\nadhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is adhered to.\r\nThe situation here again is radically dualistic. It is not as if the\r\nworld came to know itself, or God came to know himself, partly through\r\nus, as pantheistic idealists have maintained, but truth exists \u003ci\u003eper\r\nse\u003c/i\u003e and absolutely, by God\u0027s grace and decree, no matter who of us\r\nknows it or is ignorant, and it would continue to exist unaltered,\r\neven though we finite knowers were all annihilated.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00064\"\u003eIt has to be confessed that this dualism and lack of intimacy has\r\nalways operated as a drag and handicap on Christian thought. Orthodox\r\ntheology has had to wage a steady fight within the schools against the\r\nvarious forms of pantheistic heresy which the mystical experiences\r\nof religious persons, on the one hand, and the formal or aesthetic\r\nsuperiorities of monism to dualism, on the other, kept producing. God\r\nas intimate soul and reason of the universe has always seemed to some\r\npeople a more worthy conception than God as external creator. So\r\nconceived, he appeared to unify the world more perfectly, he made\r\nit less finite and mechanical, and in comparison with such a God an\r\nexternal creator seemed more like the product of a childish fancy. I\r\nhave been told by Hindoos that the great obstacle to the spread\r\nof Christianity in their country is the puerility of our dogma\r\nof creation. It has not sweep and infinity enough to meet the\r\nrequirements of even the illiterate natives of India.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00065\"\u003eAssuredly most members of this audience are ready to side with\r\nHinduism in this matter. Those of us who are sexagenarians have\r\nwitnessed in our own persons one of those gradual mutations of\r\nintellectual climate, due to innumerable influences, that make the\r\nthought of a past generation seem as foreign to its successor as if\r\nit were the expression of a different race of men. The theological\r\nmachinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age\r\nof the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and\r\neschatology, its relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of\r\nGod as an external contriver, an \u0027intelligent and moral governor,\u0027\r\nsounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage\r\nreligion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened,\r\nand the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type\r\nof our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or\r\nobsolescent. The place of the divine in the world must be more organic\r\nand intimate. An external creator and his institutions may still be\r\nverbally confessed at Church in formulas that linger by their mere\r\ninertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the\r\nsincere heart of us is elsewhere. I shall leave cynical materialism\r\nentirely out of our discussion as not calling for treatment before\r\nthis present audience, and I shall ignore old-fashioned dualistic\r\ntheism for the same reason. Our contemporary mind having once for all\r\ngrasped the possibility of a more intimate \u003ci\u003eWeltanschauung\u003c/i\u003e, the only\r\nopinions quite worthy of arresting our attention will fall within the\r\ngeneral scope of what may roughly be called the pantheistic field of\r\nvision, the vision of God as the indwelling divine rather than the\r\nexternal creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep\r\nreality.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00066\"\u003eAs we have found that spiritualism in general breaks into a more\r\nintimate and a less intimate species, so the more intimate species\r\nitself breaks into two subspecies, of which the one is more monistic,\r\nthe other more pluralistic in form. I say in form, for our vocabulary\r\ngets unmanageable if we don\u0027t distinguish between form and substance\r\nhere. The inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to\r\nthe tenderer parts of man\u0027s nature in any spiritualistic philosophy.\r\nThe word \u0027intimacy\u0027 probably covers the essential difference.\r\nMaterialism holds the foreign in things to be more primary and\r\nlasting, it sends us to a lonely corner with our intimacy. The brutal\r\naspects overlap and outwear; refinement has the feebler and more\r\nephemeral hold on reality.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00067\"\u003eFrom a pragmatic point of view the difference between living against\r\na background of foreignness and one of intimacy means the difference\r\nbetween a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call\r\nit a social difference, for after all, the common \u003ci\u003esocius\u003c/i\u003e of us all\r\nis the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we\r\nmust be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If\r\nspiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00068\"\u003eThe contrast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts\r\nof other divisions, drawn from other points of view than that of\r\nforeignness and intimacy. We have so many different businesses with\r\nnature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing clasp. The\r\nphilosophic attempt to define nature so that no one\u0027s business is left\r\nout, so that no one lies outside the door saying \u0027Where do \u003ci\u003eI\u003c/i\u003e come\r\nin?\u0027 is sure in advance to fail. The most a philosophy can hope for is\r\nnot to lock out any interest forever. No matter what doors it closes,\r\nit must leave other doors open for the interests which it neglects.\r\nI have begun by shutting ourselves up to intimacy and foreignness\r\nbecause that makes so generally interesting a contrast, and because it\r\nwill conveniently introduce a farther contrast to which I wish this\r\nhour to lead.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00069\"\u003eThe majority of men are sympathetic. Comparatively few are cynics\r\nbecause they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists are\r\nsuch because they think the evidence of facts impels them, or because\r\nthey find the idealists they are in contact with too private and\r\ntender-minded; so, rather than join their company, they fly to the\r\nopposite extreme. I therefore propose to you to disregard materialists\r\naltogether for the present, and to consider the sympathetic party\r\nalone.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00070\"\u003eIt is normal, I say, to be sympathetic in the sense in which I use the\r\nterm. Not to demand intimate relations with the universe, and not to\r\nwish them satisfactory, should be accounted signs of something wrong.\r\nAccordingly when minds of this type reach the philosophic level, and\r\nseek some unification of their vision, they find themselves compelled\r\nto correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are\r\nnot troubled. That sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws,\r\nthat first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for\r\nphilosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be\r\nwritten down as simply coexisting. An order must be made; and in that\r\norder the higher side of things must dominate. The philosophy of the\r\nabsolute agrees with the pluralistic philosophy which I am going\r\nto contrast with it in these lectures, in that both identify human\r\nsubstance with the divine substance. But whereas absolutism thinks\r\nthat the said substance becomes fully divine only in the form of\r\ntotality, and is not its real self in any form but the \u003ci\u003eall\u003c/i\u003e-form, the\r\npluralistic view which I prefer to adopt is willing to believe that\r\nthere may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance\r\nof reality may never get totally collected, that some of it may\r\nremain outside of the largest combination of it ever made, and that\r\na distributive form of reality, the \u003ci\u003eeach\u003c/i\u003e-form, is logically as\r\nacceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form commonly\r\nacquiesced in as so obviously the self-evident thing. The contrast\r\nbetween these two forms of a reality which we will agree to suppose\r\nsubstantially spiritual is practically the topic of this course of\r\nlectures. You see now what I mean by pantheism\u0027s two subspecies. If\r\nwe give to the monistic subspecies the name of philosophy of the\r\nabsolute, we may give that of radical empiricism to its pluralistic\r\nrival, and it may be well to distinguish them occasionally later by\r\nthese names.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00071\"\u003eAs a convenient way of entering into the study of their differences,\r\nI may refer to a recent article by Professor Jacks of Manchester\r\nCollege. Professor Jacks, in some brilliant pages in the \u0027Hibbert\r\nJournal\u0027 for last October, studies the relation between the universe\r\nand the philosopher who describes and defines it for us. You may\r\nassume two cases, he says. Either what the philosopher tells us is\r\nextraneous to the universe he is accounting for, an indifferent\r\nparasitic outgrowth, so to speak; or the fact of his philosophizing\r\nis itself one of the things taken account of in the philosophy, and\r\nself-included in the description. In the former case the philosopher\r\nmeans by the universe everything \u003ci\u003eexcept\u003c/i\u003e what his own presence\r\nbrings; in the latter case his philosophy is itself an intimate\r\npart of the universe, and may be a part momentous enough to give a\r\ndifferent turn to what the other parts signify. It may be a\r\nsupreme reaction of the universe upon itself by which it rises to\r\nself-comprehension. It may handle itself differently in consequence of\r\nthis event.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00072\"\u003eNow both empiricism and absolutism bring the philosopher inside\r\nand make man intimate, but the one being pluralistic and the other\r\nmonistic, they do so in differing ways that need much explanation. Let\r\nme then contrast the one with the other way of representing the status\r\nof the human thinker.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00073\"\u003eFor monism the world is no collection, but one great all-inclusive\r\nfact outside of which is nothing—nothing is its only alternative.\r\nWhen the monism is idealistic, this all-enveloping fact is represented\r\nas an absolute mind that makes the partial facts by thinking them,\r\njust as we make objects in a dream by dreaming them, or personages in\r\na story by imagining them. To \u003ci\u003ebe\u003c/i\u003e, on this scheme, is, on the part of\r\na finite thing, to be an object for the absolute; and on the part of\r\nthe absolute it is to be the thinker of that assemblage of objects. If\r\nwe use the word \u0027content\u0027 here, we see that the absolute and the world\r\nhave an identical content. The absolute is nothing but the knowledge\r\nof those objects; the objects are nothing but what the absolute knows.\r\nThe world and the all-thinker thus compenetrate and soak each other\r\nup without residuum. They are but two names for the same identical\r\nmaterial, considered now from the subjective, and now from the\r\nobjective point of view—gedanke and gedachtes, as we would say if we\r\nwere Germans. We philosophers naturally form part of the material, on\r\nthe monistic scheme. The absolute makes us by thinking us, and if we\r\nourselves are enlightened enough to be believers in the absolute, one\r\nmay then say that our philosophizing is one of the ways in which the\r\nabsolute is conscious of itself. This is the full pantheistic scheme,\r\nthe \u003ci\u003eidentitätsphilosophie\u003c/i\u003e, the immanence of God in his creation, a\r\nconception sublime from its tremendous unity. And yet that unity is\r\nincomplete, as closer examination will show.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00074\"\u003eThe absolute and the world are one fact, I said, when materially\r\nconsidered. Our philosophy, for example, is not numerically distinct\r\nfrom the absolute\u0027s own knowledge of itself, not a duplicate and copy\r\nof it, it is part of that very knowledge, is numerically identical\r\nwith as much of it as our thought covers. The absolute just \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e our\r\nphilosophy, along with everything else that is known, in an act of\r\nknowing which (to use the words of my gifted absolutist colleague\r\nRoyce) forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious\r\nmoment.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00075\"\u003eBut one as we are in this material sense with the absolute substance,\r\nthat being only the whole of us, and we only the parts of it, yet in a\r\nformal sense something like a pluralism breaks out. When we speak of\r\nthe absolute we \u003ci\u003etake\u003c/i\u003e the one universal known material collectively\r\nor integrally; when we speak of its objects, of our finite selves,\r\netc., we \u003ci\u003etake\u003c/i\u003e that same identical material distributively and\r\nseparately. But what is the use of a thing\u0027s \u003ci\u003ebeing\u003c/i\u003e only once if it\r\ncan be \u003ci\u003etaken\u003c/i\u003e twice over, and if being taken in different ways makes\r\ndifferent things true of it? As the absolute takes me, for example, I\r\nappear \u003ci\u003ewith\u003c/i\u003e everything else in its field of perfect knowledge. As\r\nI take myself, I appear \u003ci\u003ewithout\u003c/i\u003e most other things in my field\r\nof relative ignorance. And practical differences result from its\r\nknowledge and my ignorance. Ignorance breeds mistake, curiosity,\r\nmisfortune, pain, for me; I suffer those consequences. The absolute\r\nknows of those things, of course, for it knows me and my suffering,\r\nbut it doesn\u0027t itself suffer. It can\u0027t be ignorant, for simultaneous\r\nwith its knowledge of each question goes its knowledge of each answer.\r\nIt can\u0027t be patient, for it has to wait for nothing, having everything\r\nat once in its possession. It can\u0027t be surprised; it can\u0027t be guilty.\r\nNo attribute connected with succession can be applied to it, for it\r\nis all at once and wholly what it is, \u0027with the unity of a single\r\ninstant,\u0027 and succession is not of it but in it, for we are\r\ncontinually told that it is \u0027timeless.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00076\"\u003eThings true of the world in its finite aspects, then, are not true of\r\nit in its infinite capacity. \u003ci\u003eQuâ\u003c/i\u003e finite and plural its accounts of\r\nitself to itself are different from what its account to itself \u003ci\u003equâ\u003c/i\u003e\r\ninfinite and one must be.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00077\"\u003eWith this radical discrepancy between the absolute and the relative\r\npoints of view, it seems to me that almost as great a bar to intimacy\r\nbetween the divine and the human breaks out in pantheism as that which\r\nwe found in monarchical theism, and hoped that pantheism might not\r\nshow. We humans are incurably rooted in the temporal point of view.\r\nThe eternal\u0027s ways are utterly unlike our ways. \u0027Let us imitate the\r\nAll,\u0027 said the original prospectus of that admirable Chicago quarterly\r\ncalled the \u0027Monist.\u0027 As if we could, either in thought or conduct!\r\nWe are invincibly parts, let us talk as we will, and must always\r\napprehend the absolute as if it were a foreign being. If what I mean\r\nby this is not wholly clear to you at this point, it ought to grow\r\nclearer as my lectures proceed.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE II\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eMONISTIC IDEALISM\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00080\"\u003eLet me recall to you the programme which I indicated to you at our\r\nlast meeting. After agreeing not to consider materialism in any\r\nshape, but to place ourselves straightway upon a more spiritualistic\r\nplatform, I pointed out three kinds of spiritual philosophy between\r\nwhich we are asked to choose. The first way was that of the older\r\ndualistic theism, with ourselves represented as a secondary order of\r\nsubstances created by God. We found that this allowed of a degree of\r\nintimacy with the creative principle inferior to that implied in the\r\npantheistic belief that we are substantially one with it, and that the\r\ndivine is therefore the most intimate of all our possessions, heart of\r\nour heart, in fact. But we saw that this pantheistic belief could be\r\nheld in two forms, a monistic form which I called philosophy of the\r\nabsolute, and a pluralistic form which I called radical empiricism,\r\nthe former conceiving that the divine exists authentically only when\r\nthe world is experienced all at once in its absolute totality, whereas\r\nradical empiricism allows that the absolute sum-total of things may\r\nnever be actually experienced or realized in that shape at all, and\r\nthat a disseminated, distributed, or incompletely unified appearance\r\nis the only form that reality may yet have achieved.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00081\"\u003eI may contrast the monistic and pluralistic forms in question as\r\nthe \u0027all-form\u0027 and the \u0027each-form.\u0027 At the end of the last hour I\r\nanimadverted on the fact that the all-form is so radically different\r\nfrom the each-form, which is our human form of experiencing the\r\nworld, that the philosophy of the absolute, so far as insight and\r\nunderstanding go, leaves us almost as much outside of the divine being\r\nas dualistic theism does. I believe that radical empiricism, on the\r\ncontrary, holding to the each-form, and making of God only one of the\r\neaches, affords the higher degree of intimacy. The general thesis of\r\nthese lectures I said would be a defence of the pluralistic against\r\nthe monistic view. Think of the universe as existing solely in the\r\neach-form, and you will have on the whole a more reasonable and\r\nsatisfactory idea of it than if you insist on the all-form being\r\nnecessary. The rest of my lectures will do little more than make this\r\nthesis more concrete, and I hope more persuasive.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00082\"\u003eIt is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had\r\nfrom philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritualistically\r\nminded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with\r\nwhich the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical\r\nand orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether\r\nthese were morally elevated or only intellectually neat they were\r\nat any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at\r\nascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of\r\ninner structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures,\r\nthe pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry\r\nappearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without\r\na sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. Those of you\r\nwho are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be\r\nexcused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt—a\r\nshrug of the shoulders as if such ideas were unworthy of explicit\r\nrefutation. But one must have lived some time with a system to\r\nappreciate its merits. Perhaps a little more familiarity may mitigate\r\nyour first surprise at such a programme as I offer.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00083\"\u003eFirst, one word more than what I said last time about the relative\r\nforeignness of the divine principle in the philosophy of the absolute.\r\nThose of you who have read the last two chapters of Mr. Bradley\u0027s\r\nwonderful book, \u0027Appearance and reality,\u0027 will remember what an\r\nelaborately foreign aspect \u003ci\u003ehis\u003c/i\u003e absolute is finally made to assume.\r\nIt is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor a collection\r\nof selves, neither truthful, good, nor beautiful, as we understand\r\nthese terms. It is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all that we are\r\npermitted to say of it being that whatever it is, it is at any rate\r\n\u003ci\u003eworth\u003c/i\u003e more (worth more to itself, that is) than if any eulogistic\r\nadjectives of ours applied to it. It is us, and all other appearances,\r\nbut none of us \u003ci\u003eas such\u003c/i\u003e, for in it we are all \u0027transmuted,\u0027 and its\r\nown as-suchness is of another denomination altogether.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00084\"\u003eSpinoza was the first great absolutist, and the impossibility of being\r\nintimate with \u003ci\u003ehis\u003c/i\u003e God is universally recognized. \u003ci\u003eQuatenus infinitus\r\nest\u003c/i\u003e he is other than what he is \u003ci\u003equatenus humanam mentem constituit\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nSpinoza\u0027s philosophy has been rightly said to be worked by the word\r\n\u003ci\u003equatenus\u003c/i\u003e. Conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs play indeed the\r\nvital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idealism the words\r\n\u0027as\u0027 and \u0027quâ\u0027 bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with\r\nphenomenal diversity. Quâ absolute the world is one and perfect, quâ\r\nrelative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same\r\nworld—instead of talking of it as many facts, we call it one fact in\r\nmany aspects.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00085\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eAs\u003c/i\u003e absolute, then, or \u003ci\u003esub specie eternitatis\u003c/i\u003e, or \u003ci\u003equatenus\r\ninfinitus est\u003c/i\u003e, the world repels our sympathy because it has no\r\nhistory. \u003ci\u003eAs such\u003c/i\u003e, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves\r\nnor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or\r\nsuccesses, friends or enemies, victories or defeats. All such things\r\npertain to the world quâ relative, in which our finite experiences\r\nlie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest.\r\nWhat boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and\r\nto exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and\r\nmanners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition? I am\r\nfinite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up\r\nwith the finite world \u003ci\u003eas such\u003c/i\u003e, and with things that have a history.\r\n\u0027Aus dieser erde quellen meine freuden, und ihre sonne scheinet meinen\r\nleiden.\u0027 I have neither eyes nor ears nor heart nor mind for anything\r\nof an opposite description, and the stagnant felicity of the\r\nabsolute\u0027s own perfection moves me as little as I move it. If we were\r\n\u003ci\u003ereaders\u003c/i\u003e only of the cosmic novel, things would be different: we\r\nshould then share the author\u0027s point of view and recognize villains to\r\nbe as essential as heroes in the plot. But we are not the readers but\r\nthe very personages of the world-drama. In your own eyes each of you\r\nhere is its hero, and the villains are your respective friends or\r\nenemies. The tale which the absolute reader finds so perfect, we spoil\r\nfor one another through our several vital identifications with the\r\ndestinies of the particular personages involved.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00086\"\u003eThe doctrine on which the absolutists lay most stress is the\r\nabsolute\u0027s \u0027timeless\u0027 character. For pluralists, on the other hand,\r\ntime remains as real as anything, and nothing in the universe is great\r\nor static or eternal enough not to have some history. But the world\r\nthat each of us feels most intimately at home with is that of beings\r\nwith histories that play into our history, whom we can help in their\r\nvicissitudes even as they help us in ours. This satisfaction the\r\nabsolute denies us; we can neither help nor hinder it, for it stands\r\noutside of history. It surely is a merit in a philosophy to make the\r\nvery life we lead seem real and earnest. Pluralism, in exorcising the\r\nabsolute, exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are\r\nat home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential\r\nforeignness. Every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion,\r\nground of sorrow or joy that we feel is in the world of finite\r\nmultifariousness, for only in that world does anything really happen,\r\nonly there do events come to pass.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00087\"\u003eIn one sense this is a far-fetched and rather childish objection, for\r\nso much of the history of the finite is as formidably foreign to us as\r\nthe static absolute can possibly be—in fact that entity derives its\r\nown foreignness largely from the bad character of the finite which it\r\nsimultaneously is—that this sentimental reason for preferring the\r\npluralistic view seems small.[1] I shall return to the subject in my\r\nfinal lecture, and meanwhile, with your permission, I will say no more\r\nabout this objection. The more so as the necessary foreignness of the\r\nabsolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of \u003ci\u003etotality\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nwhich is universally considered to carry the further attribute of\r\n\u003ci\u003eperfection\u003c/i\u003e in its train. \u0027Philosophy,\u0027 says a recent american\r\nphilosopher, \u0027is humanity\u0027s hold on totality,\u0027 and there is no doubt\r\nthat most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is\r\ninspiring. \u0027I yielded myself to the perfect whole,\u0027 writes Emerson;\r\nand where can you find a more mind-dilating object? A certain loyalty\r\nis called forth by the idea; even if not proved actual, it must be\r\nbelieved in somehow. Only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly\r\nof it. Rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds\r\ndownward. Movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as\r\nforms of mere appearance. When you accept this beatific vision of\r\nwhat \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e, in contrast with what \u003ci\u003egoes on\u003c/i\u003e, you feel as if you had\r\nfulfilled an intellectual duty. \u0027Reality is not in its truest nature\r\na process,\u0027 Mr. McTaggart tells us, \u0027but a stable and timeless\r\nstate.\u0027[2] \u0027The true knowledge of God begins,\u0027 Hegel writes, \u0027when\r\nwe know that things as they immediately are have no truth.\u0027[3] \u0027The\r\nconsummation of the infinite aim,\u0027 he says elsewhere, \u0027consists merely\r\nin removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. Good\r\nand absolute goodness is eternally accomplishing itself in the world:\r\nand the result is that it needs not wait upon \u003ci\u003eus\u003c/i\u003e, but is already …\r\naccomplished. It is an illusion under which we live. … In the course\r\nof its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an\r\nantithesis to confront it, and its action consists in getting rid of\r\nthe illusion which it has created.\u0027[4]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00088\"\u003eBut abstract emotional appeals of any kind sound amateurish in the\r\nbusiness that concerns us. Impressionistic philosophizing, like\r\nimpressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to\r\nexperts. Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces\r\nme, therefore, to become more technical. The great \u003ci\u003eclaim\u003c/i\u003e of the\r\nphilosophy of the absolute is that the absolute is no hypothesis, but\r\na presupposition implicated in all thinking, and needing only a little\r\neffort of analysis to be seen as a logical necessity. I will therefore\r\ntake it in this more rigorous character and see whether its claim is\r\nin effect so coercive.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00089\"\u003eIt has seemed coercive to an enormous number of contemporaneous\r\nthinkers. Professor Henry Jones thus describes the range and influence\r\nof it upon the social and political life of the present time:[5] \u0027For\r\nmany years adherents of this way of thought have deeply interested the\r\nbritish public by their writings. Almost more important than their\r\nwritings is the fact that they have occupied philosophical chairs in\r\nalmost every university in the kingdom. Even the professional critics\r\nof idealism are for the most part idealists—after a fashion. And when\r\nthey are not, they are as a rule more occupied with the refutation of\r\nidealism than with the construction of a better theory. It follows\r\nfrom their position of academic authority, were it from nothing else,\r\nthat idealism exercises an influence not easily measured upon the\r\nyouth of the nation—upon those, that is, who from the educational\r\nopportunities they enjoy may naturally be expected to become the\r\nleaders of the nation\u0027s thought and practice…. Difficult as it is\r\nto measure the forces … it is hardly to be denied that the power\r\nexercised by Bentham and the utilitarian school has, for better or\r\nfor worse, passed into the hands of the idealists…. \"The Rhine has\r\nflowed into the Thames\" is the warning note rung out by Mr. Hobhouse.\r\nCarlyle introduced it, bringing it as far as Chelsea. Then Jowett\r\nand Thomas Hill Green, and William Wallace and Lewis Nettleship, and\r\nArnold Toynbee and David Eitchie—to mention only those teachers whose\r\nvoices now are silent—guided the waters into those upper reaches\r\nknown locally as the Isis. John and Edward Caird brought them up the\r\nClyde, Hutchison Stirling up the Firth of Forth. They have passed up\r\nthe Mersey and up the Severn and Dee and Don. They pollute the bay of\r\nSt. Andrews and swell the waters of the Cam, and have somehow crept\r\noverland into Birmingham. The stream of german idealism has been\r\ndiffused over the academical world of Great Britain. The disaster is\r\nuniversal.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00090\"\u003eEvidently if weight of authority were all, the truth of absolutism\r\nwould be thus decided. But let us first pass in review the general\r\nstyle of argumentation of that philosophy.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00091\"\u003eAs I read it, its favorite way of meeting pluralism and empiricism is\r\nby a \u003ci\u003ereductio ad absurdum\u003c/i\u003e framed somewhat as follows: You contend,\r\nit says to the pluralist, that things, though in some respects\r\nconnected, are in other respects independent, so that they are not\r\nmembers of one all-inclusive individual fact. Well, your position is\r\nabsurd on either point. For admit in fact the slightest modicum of\r\nindependence, and you find (if you will only think accurately) that\r\nyou have to admit more and more of it, until at last nothing but an\r\nabsolute chaos, or the proved impossibility of any connexion whatever\r\nbetween the parts of the universe, remains upon your hands. Admit, on\r\nthe other hand, the most incipient minimum of relation between any two\r\nthings, and again you can\u0027t stop until you see that the absolute unity\r\nof all things is implied.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00092\"\u003eIf we take the latter \u003ci\u003ereductio ad absurdum\u003c/i\u003e first, we find a good\r\nexample of it in Lotze\u0027s well-known proof of monism from the fact of\r\ninteraction between finite things. Suppose, Lotze says in effect, and\r\nfor simplicity\u0027s sake I have to paraphrase him, for his own words are\r\ntoo long to quote—many distinct beings \u003ci\u003ea, b, c\u003c/i\u003e, etc., to exist\r\nindependently of each other: \u003ci\u003ecan a in that case ever act on b\u003c/i\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00093\"\u003eWhat is it to act? Is it not to exert an influence? Does the influence\r\ndetach itself from \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and find \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e? If so, it is a third fact, and\r\nthe problem is not how \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e acts, but how its \u0027influence\u0027 acts on \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nBy another influence perhaps? And how in the end does the chain of\r\ninfluences find \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e rather than \u003ci\u003ec\u003c/i\u003e unless \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e is somehow prefigured\r\nin them already? And when they have found \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e, how do they make \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e\r\nrespond, if \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e has nothing in common with them? Why don\u0027t they go\r\nright through \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e? The change in \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e is a \u003ci\u003eresponse\u003c/i\u003e, due to \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s\r\ncapacity for taking account of \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s influence, and that again seems\r\nto prove that \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s nature is somehow fitted to \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s nature in\r\nadvance. \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e, in short, are not really as distinct as we at\r\nfirst supposed them, not separated by a void. Were this so they would\r\nbe mutually impenetrable, or at least mutually irrelevant. They would\r\nform two universes each living by itself, making no difference to each\r\nother, taking no account of each other, much as the universe of your\r\nday dreams takes no account of mine. They must therefore belong\r\ntogether beforehand, be co-implicated already, their natures must have\r\nan inborn mutual reference each to each.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00094\"\u003eLotze\u0027s own solution runs as follows: The multiple independent things\r\nsupposed cannot be real in that shape, but all of them, if reciprocal\r\naction is to be possible between them, must be regarded as parts of a\r\nsingle real being, M. The pluralism with which our view began has\r\nto give place to a monism; and the \u0027transeunt\u0027 interaction,\r\nbeing unintelligible as such, is to be understood as an immanent\r\noperation.[6]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00095\"\u003eThe words \u0027immanent operation\u0027 seem here to mean that the single real\r\nbeing M, of which \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e are members, is the only thing that\r\nchanges, and that when it changes, it changes inwardly and all over at\r\nonce. When part \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e in it changes, consequently, part \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e must also\r\nchange, but without the whole M changing this would not occur.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00096\"\u003eA pretty argument, but a purely verbal one, as I apprehend it. \u003ci\u003eCall\u003c/i\u003e\r\nyour \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e distinct, they can\u0027t interact; \u003ci\u003ecall\u003c/i\u003e them one,\r\nthey can. For taken abstractly and without qualification the words\r\n\u0027distinct\u0027 and \u0027independent\u0027 suggest only disconnection. If this be\r\nthe only property of your \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e (and it is the only property\r\nyour words imply), then of course, since you can\u0027t deduce their mutual\r\ninfluence from \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e, you can find no ground of its occurring between\r\nthem. Your bare word \u0027separate,\u0027 contradicting your bare word\r\n\u0027joined,\u0027 seems to exclude connexion.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00097\"\u003eLotze\u0027s remedy for the impossibility thus verbally found is to change\r\nthe first word. If, instead of calling \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e independent, we now\r\ncall them \u0027interdependent,\u0027 \u0027united,\u0027 or \u0027one,\u0027 he says, \u003ci\u003ethese\u003c/i\u003e words\r\ndo not contradict any sort of mutual influence that may be proposed.\r\nIf \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e are \u0027one,\u0027 and the one changes, \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e of course\r\nmust co-ordinately change. What under the old name they couldn\u0027t do,\r\nthey now have license to do under the new name.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00098\"\u003eBut I ask you whether giving the name of \u0027one\u0027 to the former \u0027many\u0027\r\nmakes us really understand the modus operandi of interaction any\r\nbetter. We have now given verbal permission to the many to change all\r\ntogether, if they can; we have removed a verbal impossibility\r\nand substituted a verbal possibility, but the new name, with the\r\npossibility it suggests, tells us nothing of the actual process by\r\nwhich real things that are one can and do change at all. In point\r\nof fact abstract oneness as such \u003ci\u003edoesn\u0027t\u003c/i\u003e change, neither has it\r\nparts—any more than abstract independence as such interacts. But then\r\nneither abstract oneness nor abstract independence \u003ci\u003eexists\u003c/i\u003e; only\r\nconcrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other\r\nproperties which they possess, to make up what we call their total\r\nnature. To construe any one of their abstract names as \u003ci\u003emaking their\r\ntotal nature impossible\u003c/i\u003e is a misuse of the function of naming. The\r\nreal way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not\r\nto fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct\r\nthe first name by qualifying adjectives that restore some concreteness\r\nto the case. Don\u0027t take your \u0027independence\u0027 \u003ci\u003esimpliciter\u003c/i\u003e, as Lotze\r\ndoes, take it \u003ci\u003esecundum quid\u003c/i\u003e. Only when we know what the process of\r\ninteraction literally and concretely \u003ci\u003econsists\u003c/i\u003e in can we tell whether\r\nbeings independent \u003ci\u003ein definite respects\u003c/i\u003e, distinct, for example, in\r\norigin, separate in place, different in kind, etc., can or cannot\r\ninteract.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00099\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the\r\nname\u0027s definition fails positively to include, is what I call\r\n\u0027vicious intellectualism\u003c/i\u003e.\u0027 Later I shall have more to say about this\r\nintellectualism, but that Lotze\u0027s argument is tainted by it I hardly\r\nthink we can deny. As well might you contend (to use an instance from\r\nSigwart) that a person whom you have once called an \u0027equestrian\u0027 is\r\nthereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00100\"\u003eI almost feel as if I should apologize for criticising such subtle\r\narguments in rapid lectures of this kind. The criticisms have to be as\r\nabstract as the arguments, and in exposing their unreality, take\r\non such an unreal sound themselves that a hearer not nursed in the\r\nintellectualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse. But\r\n\u003ci\u003ele vin est versé, il faut le boire\u003c/i\u003e, and I must cite a couple more\r\ninstances before I stop.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00101\"\u003eIf we are empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe that\r\nbeings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence,\r\nand then secondarily become known to one another. But philosophers of\r\nthe absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known\r\nwould, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of\r\nmending. The argument is one of Professor Royce\u0027s proofs that the only\r\nalternative we have is to choose the complete disunion of all things\r\nor their complete union in the absolute One.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00102\"\u003eTake, for instance, the proverb \u0027a cat may look at a king\u0027 and adopt\r\nthe realistic view that the king\u0027s being is independent of the cat\u0027s\r\nwitnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make\r\nno essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject\r\ncognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even\r\nbe annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,—this assumption, I\r\nsay, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd\r\npractical consequence that the two beings \u003ci\u003ecan\u003c/i\u003e never later acquire\r\nany possible linkages or connexions, but must remain eternally as if\r\nin different worlds. For suppose any connexion whatever to ensue, this\r\nconnexion would simply be a third being additional to the cat and the\r\nking, which would itself have to be linked to both by additional links\r\nbefore it could connect them, and so on \u003ci\u003ead infinitum\u003c/i\u003e, the argument,\r\nyou see, being the same as Lotze\u0027s about how \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s influence does its\r\ninfluencing when it influences \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00103\"\u003eIn Royce\u0027s own words, if the king can be without the cat knowing him,\r\nthen king and cat \u0027can have no common features, no ties, no true\r\nrelations; they are separated, each from the other, by absolutely\r\nimpassable chasms. They can never come to get either ties or community\r\nof nature; they are not in the same space, nor in the same time, nor\r\nin the same natural or spiritual order.\u0027[7] They form in short two\r\nunrelated universes,—which is the \u003ci\u003ereductio ad absurdum\u003c/i\u003e required.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00104\"\u003eTo escape this preposterous state of things we must accordingly revoke\r\nthe original hypothesis. The king and the cat are not indifferent to\r\neach other in the way supposed. But if not in that way, then in no\r\nway, for connexion in that way carries connexion in other ways; so\r\nthat, pursuing the reverse line of reasoning, we end with the\r\nabsolute itself as the smallest fact that can exist. Cat and king are\r\nco-involved, they are a single fact in two names, they can never have\r\nbeen absent from each other, and they are both equally co-implicated\r\nwith all the other facts of which the universe consists.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00105\"\u003eProfessor Royce\u0027s proof that whoso admits the cat\u0027s witnessing the\r\nking at all must thereupon admit the integral absolute, may be briefly\r\nput as follows:—\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00106\"\u003eFirst, to know the king, the cat must intend \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e king, must somehow\r\npass over and lay hold of him individually and specifically. The cat\u0027s\r\nidea, in short, must transcend the cat\u0027s own separate mind and somehow\r\ninclude the king, for were the king utterly outside and independent of\r\nthe cat, the cat\u0027s pure other, the beast\u0027s mind could touch the king\r\nin no wise. This makes the cat much less distinct from the king than\r\nwe had at first naïvely supposed. There must be some prior continuity\r\nbetween them, which continuity Royce interprets idealistically as\r\nmeaning a higher mind that owns them both as objects, and owning them\r\ncan also own any relation, such as the supposed witnessing, that may\r\nobtain between them. Taken purely pluralistically, neither of them can\r\nown any part of a \u003ci\u003ebetween\u003c/i\u003e, because, so taken, each is supposed shut\r\nup to itself: the fact of a \u003ci\u003ebetween\u003c/i\u003e thus commits us to a higher\r\nknower.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00107\"\u003eBut the higher knower that knows the two beings we start with proves\r\nto be the same knower that knows everything else. For assume any third\r\nbeing, the queen, say, and as the cat knew the king, so let the king\r\nknow his queen, and let this second knowledge, by the same reasoning,\r\nrequire a higher knower as its presupposition. That knower of the\r\nking\u0027s knowing must, it is now contended, be the same higher knower\r\nthat was required for the cat\u0027s knowing; for if you suppose otherwise,\r\nyou have no longer the \u003ci\u003esame king\u003c/i\u003e. This may not seem immediately\r\nobvious, but if you follow the intellectualistic logic employed in all\r\nthese reasonings, I don\u0027t see how you can escape the admission. If it\r\nbe true that the independent or indifferent cannot be related, for\r\nthe abstract words \u0027independent\u0027 or \u0027indifferent\u0027 as such imply no\r\nrelation, then it is just as true that the king known by the cat\r\ncannot be the king that knows the queen, for taken merely \u0027as such,\u0027\r\nthe abstract term \u0027what the cat knows\u0027 and the abstract term \u0027what\r\nknows the queen\u0027 are logically distinct. The king thus logically\r\nbreaks into two kings, with nothing to connect them, until a higher\r\nknower is introduced to recognize them as the self-same king concerned\r\nin any previous acts of knowledge which he may have brought about.\r\nThis he can do because he possesses all the terms as his own objects\r\nand can treat them as he will. Add any fourth or fifth term, and you\r\nget a like result, and so on, until at last an all-owning knower,\r\notherwise called the absolute, is reached. The co-implicated\r\n\u0027through-and-through\u0027 world of monism thus stands proved by\r\nirrefutable logic, and all pluralism appears as absurd.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00108\"\u003eThe reasoning is pleasing from its ingenuity, and it is almost a pity\r\nthat so straight a bridge from abstract logic to concrete fact should\r\nnot bear our weight. To have the alternative forced upon us of\r\nadmitting either finite things each cut off from all relation with\r\nits environment, or else of accepting the integral absolute with no\r\nenvironment and all relations packed within itself, would be too\r\ndelicious a simplification. But the purely verbal character of the\r\noperation is undisguised. Because the \u003ci\u003enames\u003c/i\u003e of finite things and\r\ntheir relations are disjoined, it doesn\u0027t follow that the realities\r\nnamed need a \u003ci\u003edeus ex machina\u003c/i\u003e from on high to conjoin them. The same\r\nthings disjoined in one respect \u003ci\u003eappear\u003c/i\u003e as conjoined in another.\r\nNaming the disjunction doesn\u0027t debar us from also naming the\r\nconjunction in a later modifying statement, for the two are absolutely\r\nco-ordinate elements in the finite tissue of experience. When at\r\nAthens it was found self-contradictory that a boy could be both tall\r\nand short (tall namely in respect of a child, short in respect of a\r\nman), the absolute had not yet been thought of, but it might just as\r\nwell have been invoked by Socrates as by Lotze or Royce, as a relief\r\nfrom his peculiar intellectualistic difficulty.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00109\"\u003eEverywhere we find rationalists using the same kind of reasoning. The\r\nprimal whole which is their vision must be there not only as a\r\nfact but as a logical necessity. It must be the minimum that can\r\nexist—either that absolute whole is there, or there is absolutely\r\nnothing. The logical proof alleged of the irrationality of supposing\r\notherwise, is that you can deny the whole only in words that\r\nimplicitly assert it. If you say \u0027parts,\u0027 of \u003ci\u003ewhat\u003c/i\u003e are they parts? If\r\nyou call them a \u0027many,\u0027 that very word unifies them. If you suppose\r\nthem unrelated in any particular respect, that \u0027respect\u0027 connects\r\nthem; and so on. In short you fall into hopeless contradiction. You\r\nmust stay either at one extreme or the other.[8] \u0027Partly this and\r\npartly that,\u0027 partly rational, for instance, and partly irrational,\r\nis no admissible description of the world. If rationality be in it at\r\nall, it must be in it throughout; if irrationality be in it anywhere,\r\nthat also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or\r\nwholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or nulliverse; and\r\nreduced to this violent alternative, no one\u0027s choice ought long to\r\nremain doubtful. The individual absolute, with its parts co-implicated\r\nthrough and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which\r\nany other part can remain inwardly unaffected, is the only rational\r\nsupposition. Connexions of an external sort, by which the many became\r\nmerely continuous instead of being consubstantial, would be an\r\nirrational supposition.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00110\"\u003eMr. Bradley is the pattern champion of this philosophy \u003ci\u003ein extremis\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nas one might call it, for he shows an intolerance to pluralism so\r\nextreme that I fancy few of his readers have been able fully to share\r\nit. His reasoning exemplifies everywhere what I call the vice of\r\nintellectualism, for abstract terms are used by him as positively\r\nexcluding all that their definition fails to include. Some Greek\r\nsophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they\r\nsaid, means only man, and good means only good, and the word \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e\r\ncan\u0027t be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley\r\nrevels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally\r\nqualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the\r\nsubstantive, it can\u0027t be united with it; and if not distinct, there is\r\nonly one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic\r\nprocedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally\r\nirrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual\r\nestate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist\r\ndiscursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute\r\nreality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00111\"\u003eReaders of \u0027Appearance and reality\u0027 will remember how Mr. Bradley\r\nsuffers from a difficulty identical with that to which Lotze and Royce\r\nfall a prey—how shall an influence influence? how shall a relation\r\nrelate? Any conjunctive relation between two phenomenal experiences\r\n\u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e must, in the intellectualist philosophy of these authors,\r\nbe itself a third entity; and as such, instead of bridging the one\r\noriginal chasm, it can only create two smaller chasms, each to be\r\nfreshly bridged. Instead of hooking \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e, it needs itself to be\r\nhooked by a fresh relation \u003ci\u003er\u003c/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e and by another \u003ci\u003er\u003c/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nThese new relations are but two more entities which themselves require\r\nto be hitched in turn by four still newer relations—so behold the\r\nvertiginous \u003ci\u003eregressus ad infinitum\u003c/i\u003e in full career.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00112\"\u003eSince a \u003ci\u003eregressus ad infinitum\u003c/i\u003e is deemed absurd, the notion that\r\nrelations come \u0027between\u0027 their terms must be given up. No mere\r\nexternal go-between can logically connect. What occurs must be more\r\nintimate. The hooking must be a penetration, a possession. The\r\nrelation must \u003ci\u003einvolve\u003c/i\u003e the terms, each term must involve \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e, and\r\nmerging thus their being in it, they must somehow merge their being in\r\neach other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so separate, we can\r\nnever conceive exactly how it is that they are inwardly one. The\r\nabsolute, however, must be supposed able to perform the unifying feat\r\nin his own inscrutable fashion.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00113\"\u003eIn old times, whenever a philosopher was assailed for some\r\nparticularly tough absurdity in his system, he was wont to parry the\r\nattack by the argument from the divine omnipotence. \u0027Do you mean to\r\nlimit God\u0027s power?\u0027 he would reply: \u0027do you mean to say that God could\r\nnot, if he would, do this or that?\u0027 This retort was supposed to close\r\nthe mouths of all objectors of properly decorous mind. The functions\r\nof the bradleian absolute are in this particular identical with those\r\nof the theistic God. Suppositions treated as too absurd to pass muster\r\nin the finite world which we inhabit, the absolute must be able to\r\nmake good \u0027somehow\u0027 in his ineffable way. First we hear Mr. Bradley\r\nconvicting things of absurdity; next, calling on the absolute to vouch\r\nfor them \u003ci\u003equand même\u003c/i\u003e. Invoked for no other duty, that duty it must\r\nand shall perform.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00114\"\u003eThe strangest discontinuity of our world of appearance with the\r\nsupposed world of absolute reality is asserted both by Bradley and\r\nby Royce; and both writers, the latter with great ingenuity, seek to\r\nsoften the violence of the jolt. But it remains violent all the same,\r\nand is felt to be so by most readers. Whoever feels the violence\r\nstrongly sees as on a diagram in just what the peculiarity of all this\r\nphilosophy of the absolute consists. First, there is a healthy faith\r\nthat the world must be rational and self-consistent. \u0027All science, all\r\nreal knowledge, all experience presuppose,\u0027 as Mr. Ritchie writes, \u0027a\r\ncoherent universe.\u0027 Next, we find a loyal clinging to the rationalist\r\nbelief that sense-data and their associations are incoherent, and that\r\nonly in substituting a conceptual order for their order can truth\r\nbe found. Third, the substituted conceptions are treated\r\nintellectualistically, that is as mutually exclusive and\r\ndiscontinuous, so that the first innocent continuity of the flow of\r\nsense-experience is shattered for us without any higher conceptual\r\ncontinuity taking its place. Finally, since this broken state of\r\nthings is intolerable, the absolute \u003ci\u003edeus ex machina\u003c/i\u003e is called on to\r\nmend it in his own way, since we cannot mend it in ours.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00115\"\u003eAny other picture than this of post-kantian absolutism I am unable\r\nto frame. I see the intellectualistic criticism destroying the\r\nimmediately given coherence of the phenomenal world, but unable to\r\nmake its own conceptual substitutes cohere, and I see the resort to\r\nthe absolute for a coherence of a higher type. The situation has\r\ndramatic liveliness, but it is inwardly incoherent throughout, and the\r\nquestion inevitably comes up whether a mistake may not somewhere have\r\ncrept in in the process that has brought it about. May not the remedy\r\nlie rather in revising the intellectualist criticism than in first\r\nadopting it and then trying to undo its consequences by an arbitrary\r\nact of faith in an unintelligible agent. May not the flux of sensible\r\nexperience itself contain a rationality that has been overlooked,\r\nso that the real remedy would consist in harking back to it more\r\nintelligently, and not in advancing in the opposite direction away\r\nfrom it and even away beyond the intellectualist criticism that\r\ndisintegrates it, to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute\r\npoint of view. I myself believe that this is the real way to keep\r\nrationality in the world, and that the traditional rationalism has\r\nalways been facing in the wrong direction. I hope in the end to make\r\nyou share, or at any rate respect, this belief, but there is much to\r\ntalk of before we get to that point.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00116\"\u003eI employed the word \u0027violent\u0027 just now in describing the dramatic\r\nsituation in which it pleases the philosophy of the absolute to make\r\nits camp. I don\u0027t see how any one can help being struck in absolutist\r\nwritings by that curious tendency to fly to violent extremes of which\r\nI have already said a word. The universe must be rational; well\r\nand good; but \u003ci\u003ehow\u003c/i\u003e rational? in what sense of that eulogistic but\r\nambiguous word?—this would seem to be the next point to bring up.\r\nThere are surely degrees in rationality that might be discriminated\r\nand described. Things can be consistent or coherent in very diverse\r\nways. But no more in its conception of rationality than in its\r\nconception of relations can the monistic mind suffer the notion of\r\nmore or less. Rationality is one and indivisible: if not rational\r\nthus indivisibly, the universe must be completely irrational, and no\r\nshadings or mixtures or compromises can obtain. Mr. McTaggart writes,\r\nin discussing the notion of a mixture: \u0027The two principles, of\r\nrationality and irrationality, to which the universe is then referred,\r\nwill have to be absolutely separate and independent. For if there were\r\nany common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that\r\nunity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate\r\nexplanation … and the theory, having thus become monistic,\u0027[9] would\r\nresolve itself into the same alternative once more: is the single\r\nprinciple rational through and through or not?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00117\"\u003e\u0027Can a plurality of reals be possible?\u0027 asks Mr. Bradley, and answers,\r\n\u0027No, impossible.\u0027 For it would mean a number of beings not dependent\r\non each other, and this independence their plurality would contradict.\r\nFor to be \u0027many\u0027 is to be related, the word having no meaning unless\r\nthe units are somehow taken together, and it is impossible to take\r\nthem in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger\r\nreality, and so carry the essence of the units beyond their proper\r\nselves, into a whole which possesses unity and is a larger system.[10]\r\nEither absolute independence or absolute mutual dependence—this,\r\nthen, is the only alternative allowed by these thinkers. Of course\r\n\u0027independence,\u0027 if absolute, would be preposterous, so the only\r\nconclusion allowable is that, in Ritchie\u0027s words, \u0027every single event\r\nis ultimately related to every other, and determined by the whole\r\nto which it belongs.\u0027 The whole complete block-universe\r\nthrough-and-through, therefore, or no universe at all!\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00118\"\u003eProfessor Taylor is so \u003ci\u003enaïf\u003c/i\u003e in this habit of thinking only in\r\nextremes that he charges the pluralists with cutting the ground from\r\nunder their own feet in not consistently following it themselves. What\r\npluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely, after the\r\npattern of our daily experience, is possible, and that for certain\r\nreasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred. What Professor Taylor\r\nthinks they naturally must or should say is that any other sort of\r\nuniverse is logically impossible, and that a totality of things\r\ninterrelated like the world of the monists is not an hypothesis that\r\ncan be seriously thought out at all.[11]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00119\"\u003eMeanwhile no sensible pluralist ever flies or wants to fly to this\r\ndogmatic extreme.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00120\"\u003eIf chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutists\r\ninterpret it to mean that double sevens are as likely to be thrown out\r\nof a dice box as double sixes are. If free-will is spoken of, that\r\nmust mean that an english general is as likely to eat his prisoners\r\nto-day as a Maori chief was a hundred years ago. It is as likely—I am\r\nusing Mr. McTaggart\u0027s examples—that a majority of Londoners will\r\nburn themselves alive to-morrow as that they will partake of food, as\r\nlikely that I shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing\r\na murder,[12] and so forth, through various suppositions that no\r\nindeterminist ever sees real reason to make.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00121\"\u003eThis habit of thinking only in the most violent extremes reminds me\r\nof what Mr. Wells says of the current objections to socialism, in his\r\nwonderful little book, \u0027New worlds for old.\u0027 The commonest vice of the\r\nhuman mind is its disposition to see everything as yes or no, as black\r\nor white, its incapacity for discrimination of intermediate shades.\r\nSo the critics agree to some hard and fast impossible definition of\r\nsocialism, and extract absurdities from it as a conjurer gets rabbits\r\nfrom a hat. Socialism abolishes property, abolishes the family, and\r\nthe rest. The method, Mr. Wells continues, is always the same: It\r\nis to assume that whatever the socialist postulates as desirable is\r\nwanted without limit of qualification,—for socialist read pluralist\r\nand the parallel holds good,—it is to imagine that whatever proposal\r\nis made by him is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, and\r\nso to make a picture of the socialist dream which can be presented to\r\nthe simple-minded person in doubt—\u0027This is socialism\u0027—or pluralism,\r\nas the case may be. \u0027Surely!—SURELY! you don\u0027t want \u003ci\u003ethis!\u003c/i\u003e\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00122\"\u003eHow often have I been replied to, when expressing doubts of the\r\nlogical necessity of the absolute, of flying to the opposite extreme:\r\n\u0027But surely, SURELY there must be \u003ci\u003esome\u003c/i\u003e connexion among things!\u0027 As\r\nif I must necessarily be an uncontrolled monomanic insanely denying\r\nany connexion whatever. The whole question revolves in very truth\r\nabout the word \u0027some.\u0027 Radical empiricism and pluralism stand out for\r\nthe legitimacy of the notion of \u003ci\u003esome\u003c/i\u003e: each part of the world is in\r\nsome ways connected, in some other ways not connected with its other\r\nparts, and the ways can be discriminated, for many of them are\r\nobvious, and their differences are obvious to view. Absolutism, on its\r\nside, seems to hold that \u0027some\u0027 is a category ruinously infected\r\nwith self-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly\r\nconsistent and therefore pertinent to reality are \u0027all\u0027 and \u0027none.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00123\"\u003eThe question runs into the still more general one with which Mr.\r\nBradley and later writers of the monistic school have made us\r\nabundantly familiar—the question, namely, whether all the relations\r\nwith other things, possible to a being, are pre-included in its\r\nintrinsic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to\r\nsome of these relations, it can \u003ci\u003ebe\u003c/i\u003e without reference to them, and,\r\nif it ever does enter into them, do so adventitiously and as it\r\nwere by an after-thought. This is the great question as to whether\r\n\u0027external\u0027 relations can exist. They seem to, undoubtedly. My\r\nmanuscript, for example, is \u0027on\u0027 the desk. The relation of being \u0027on\u0027\r\ndoesn\u0027t seem to implicate or involve in any way the inner meaning\r\nof the manuscript or the inner structure of the desk—these objects\r\nengage in it only by their outsides, it seems only a temporary\r\naccident in their respective histories. Moreover, the \u0027on\u0027 fails to\r\nappear to our senses as one of those unintelligible \u0027betweens\u0027 that\r\nhave to be separately hooked on the terms they pretend to connect.\r\nAll this innocent sense-appearance, however, we are told, cannot pass\r\nmuster in the eyes of reason. It is a tissue of self-contradiction\r\nwhich only the complete absorption of the desk and the manuscript into\r\nthe higher unity of a more absolute reality can overcome.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00124\"\u003eThe reasoning by which this conclusion is supported is too subtle and\r\ncomplicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you\r\nwill thank me for not inviting you to consider it at all.[13] I feel\r\nthe more free to pass it by now as I think that the cursory account of\r\nthe absolutistic attitude which I have already given is sufficient for\r\nour present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of\r\nthe absolute as \u0027not proven\u0027—please observe that I go no farther\r\nnow—need not be backed by argument at every special point. Flanking\r\noperations are less costly and in some ways more effective than\r\nfrontal attacks. Possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my\r\nremaining lectures that the alternative of an universe absolutely\r\nrational or absolutely irrational is forced and strained, and that\r\na \u003ci\u003evia media\u003c/i\u003e exists which some of you may agree with me is to\r\nbe preferred. \u003ci\u003eSome\u003c/i\u003e rationality certainly does characterize our\r\nuniverse; and, weighing one kind with another, we may deem that the\r\nincomplete kinds that appear are on the whole as acceptable as\r\nthe through-and-through sort of rationality on which the monistic\r\nsystematizers insist.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00125\"\u003eAll the said systematizers who have written since Hegel have owed\r\ntheir inspiration largely to him. Even when they have found no use\r\nfor his particular triadic dialectic, they have drawn confidence\r\nand courage from his authoritative and conquering tone. I have said\r\nnothing about Hegel in this lecture, so I must repair the omission in\r\nthe next.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE III\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eHEGEL AND HIS METHOD\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00128\"\u003eDirectly or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius Hegel has\r\ndone more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in thoughtful circles\r\nthan all other influences put together. I must talk a little about him\r\nbefore drawing my final conclusions about the cogency of the arguments\r\nfor the absolute. In no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher\u0027s\r\nvision and the technique he uses in proof of it are two different\r\nthings more palpably evident than in Hegel. The vision in his case\r\nwas that of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and\r\naccounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by\r\ntaking it up as a \u0027moment\u0027 into itself. This vision was so intense in\r\nHegel, and the tone of authority with which he spoke from out of the\r\nmidst of it was so weighty, that the impression he made has never been\r\neffaced. Once dilated to the scale of the master\u0027s eye, the disciples\u0027\r\nsight could not contract to any lesser prospect. The technique which\r\nHegel used to prove his vision was the so-called dialectic method, but\r\nhere his fortune has been quite contrary. Hardly a recent disciple has\r\nfelt his particular applications of the method to be satisfactory.\r\nMany have let them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of\r\nprovisional stop-gap, symbolic of what might some day prove possible\r\nof execution, but having no literal cogency or value now. Yet these\r\nvery same disciples hold to the vision itself as a revelation that can\r\nnever pass away. The case is curious and worthy of our study.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00129\"\u003eIt is still more curious in that these same disciples, altho they are\r\nusually willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic\r\nmethod to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape the\r\ndialectic method is the key to truth. What, then, is the dialectic\r\nmethod? It is itself a part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and\r\na part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense.\r\nGreat injustice is done to Hegel by treating him as primarily a\r\nreasoner. He is in reality a naïvely observant man, only beset with a\r\nperverse preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. He\r\nplants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the impression\r\nof what happens. His mind is in very truth \u003ci\u003eimpressionistic\u003c/i\u003e; and his\r\nthought, when once you put yourself at the animating centre of it, is\r\nthe easiest thing in the world to catch the pulse of and to follow.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00130\"\u003eAny author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision. From\r\nthe centre in Hegel come those towering sentences of his that are\r\ncomparable only to Luther\u0027s, as where, speaking of the ontological\r\nproof of God\u0027s existence from the concept of him as the \u003ci\u003eens\r\nperfectissimum\u003c/i\u003e to which no attribute can be lacking, he says: \u0027It\r\nwould be strange if the Notion, the very heart of the mind, or, in\r\na word, the concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough\r\nto embrace so poor a category as Being, the very poorest and most\r\nabstract of all—for nothing can be more insignificant than Being.\u0027\r\nBut if Hegel\u0027s central thought is easy to catch, his abominable habits\r\nof speech make his application of it to details exceedingly difficult\r\nto follow. His passion for the slipshod in the way of sentences,\r\nhis unprincipled playing fast and loose with terms; his dreadful\r\nvocabulary, calling what completes a thing its \u0027negation,\u0027 for\r\nexample; his systematic refusal to let you know whether he is talking\r\nlogic or physics or psychology, his whole deliberately adopted policy\r\nof ambiguity and vagueness, in short: all these things make his\r\npresent-day readers wish to tear their hair—or his—out in\r\ndesperation. Like Byron\u0027s corsair, he has left a name \u0027to other times,\r\nlinked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00131\"\u003eThe virtue was the vision, which was really in two parts. The first\r\npart was that reason is all-inclusive, the second was that things\r\nare \u0027dialectic.\u0027 Let me say a word about this second part of Hegel\u0027s\r\nvision.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00132\"\u003eThe impression that any \u003ci\u003enaïf\u003c/i\u003e person gets who plants himself\r\ninnocently in the flux of things is that things are off their balance.\r\nWhatever equilibriums our finite experiences attain to are but\r\nprovisional. Martinique volcanoes shatter our wordsworthian\r\nequilibrium with nature. Accidents, either moral, mental, or physical,\r\nbreak up the slowly built-up equilibriums men reach in family life\r\nand in their civic and professional relations. Intellectual enigmas\r\nfrustrate our scientific systems, and the ultimate cruelty of the\r\nuniverse upsets our religious attitudes and outlooks. Of no special\r\nsystem of good attained does the universe recognize the value as\r\nsacred. Down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous appetite\r\nfor destruction, of the larger system of history in which it stood\r\nfor a moment as a landing-place and stepping-stone. This dogging of\r\neverything by its negative, its fate, its undoing, this perpetual\r\nmoving on to something future which shall supersede the present,\r\nthis is the hegelian intuition of the essential provisionality, and\r\nconsequent unreality, of everything empirical and finite. Take any\r\nconcrete finite thing and try to hold it fast. You cannot, for so\r\nheld, it proves not to be concrete at all, but an arbitrary extract or\r\nabstract which you have made from the remainder of empirical reality.\r\nThe rest of things invades and overflows both it and you together,\r\nand defeats your rash attempt. Any partial view whatever of the world\r\ntears the part out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning\r\nit, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full truth about anything\r\ninvolves more than that thing. In the end nothing less than the whole\r\nof everything can be the truth of anything at all.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00133\"\u003eTaken so far, and taken in the rough, Hegel is not only harmless, but\r\naccurate. There is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please\r\nyou to call it, one that the whole constitution of concrete life\r\nestablishes; but it is one that can be described and accounted for in\r\nterms of the pluralistic vision of things far more naturally than in\r\nthe monistic terms to which Hegel finally reduced it. Pluralistic\r\nempiricism knows that everything is in an environment, a surrounding\r\nworld of other things, and that if you leave it to work there it will\r\ninevitably meet with friction and opposition from its neighbors. Its\r\nrivals and enemies will destroy it unless it can buy them off by\r\ncompromising some part of its original pretensions.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00134\"\u003eBut Hegel saw this undeniable characteristic of the world we live in\r\nin a non-empirical light. Let the \u003ci\u003emental idea\u003c/i\u003e of the thing work in\r\nyour thought all alone, he fancied, and just the same consequences\r\nwill follow. It will be negated by the opposite ideas that dog it,\r\nand can survive only by entering, along with them, into some kind\r\nof treaty. This treaty will be an instance of the so-called \u0027higher\r\nsynthesis\u0027 of everything with its negative; and Hegel\u0027s originality\r\nlay in transporting the process from the sphere of percepts to that of\r\nconcepts and treating it as the universal method by which every kind\r\nof life, logical, physical, or psychological, is mediated. Not to the\r\nsensible facts as such, then, did Hegel point for the secret of what\r\nkeeps existence going, but rather to the conceptual way of treating\r\nthem. Concepts were not in his eyes the static self-contained things\r\nthat previous logicians had supposed, but were germinative, and passed\r\nbeyond themselves into each other by what he called their immanent\r\ndialectic. In ignoring each other as they do, they virtually exclude\r\nand deny each other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each\r\nother. So the dialectic logic, according to him, had to supersede the\r\n\u0027logic of identity\u0027 in which, since Aristotle, all Europe had been\r\nbrought up.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00135\"\u003eThis view of concepts is Hegel\u0027s revolutionary performance; but so\r\nstudiously vague and ambiguous are all his expressions of it that one\r\ncan hardly tell whether it is the concepts as such, or the sensible\r\nexperiences and elements conceived, that Hegel really means to work\r\nwith. The only thing that is certain is that whatever you may say of\r\nhis procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make\r\nno claim to understanding it, I treat it merely impressionistically.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00136\"\u003eSo treating it, I regret that he should have called it by the name of\r\nlogic. Clinging as he did to the vision of a really living world, and\r\nrefusing to be content with a chopped-up intellectualist picture\r\nof it, it is a pity that he should have adopted the very word that\r\nintellectualism had already pre-empted. But he clung fast to the old\r\nrationalist contempt for the immediately given world of sense and all\r\nits squalid particulars, and never tolerated the notion that the form\r\nof philosophy might be empirical only. His own system had to be a\r\nproduct of eternal reason, so the word \u0027logic,\u0027 with its suggestions\r\nof coercive necessity, was the only word he could find natural. He\r\npretended therefore to be using the \u003ci\u003ea priori\u003c/i\u003e method, and to be\r\nworking by a scanty equipment of ancient logical terms—position,\r\nnegation, reflection, universal, particular, individual, and the like.\r\nBut what he really worked by was his own empirical perceptions, which\r\nexceeded and overflowed his miserably insufficient logical categories\r\nin every instance of their use.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00137\"\u003eWhat he did with the category of negation was his most original\r\nstroke. The orthodox opinion is that you can advance logically through\r\nthe field of concepts only by going from the same to the same. Hegel\r\nfelt deeply the sterility of this law of conceptual thought; he\r\nsaw that in a fashion negation also relates things; and he had the\r\nbrilliant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by treating advance\r\nfrom the different to the different as if it were also a necessity of\r\nthought. \u0027The so-called maxim of identity,\u0027 he wrote, \u0027is supposed to\r\nbe accepted by the consciousness of every one. But the language which\r\nsuch a law demands, \"a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism,\r\nmind is mind,\" deserves to be called silliness. No mind either speaks\r\nor thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no\r\nexistence of any kind whatever conforms to it. We must never view\r\nidentity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference.\r\nThat is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what\r\nalone deserves the name of philosophy. If thinking were no more than\r\nregistering abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous\r\nperformance. Things and concepts are identical with themselves only in\r\nso far as at the same time they involve distinction.\u0027[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00138\"\u003eThe distinction that Hegel has in mind here is naturally in the first\r\ninstance distinction from all other things or concepts. But in his\r\nhands this quickly develops into contradiction of them, and finally,\r\nreflected back upon itself, into self-contradiction; and the immanent\r\nself-contradictoriness of all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the\r\npropulsive logical force that moves the world.[2] \u0027Isolate a thing\r\nfrom all its relations,\u0027 says Dr. Edward Caird,[3] expounding Hegel,\r\n\u0027and try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself\r\nas well as its relations. The thing in itself is nothing.\u0027 Or, to\r\nquote Hegel\u0027s own words: \u0027When we suppose an existent A, and another,\r\nB, B is at first defined as the other. But A is just as much the other\r\nof B. Both are others in the same fashion…. \"Other\" is the other by\r\nitself, therefore the other of every other, consequently the other of\r\nitself, the simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer,\u0027\r\netc.[4] Hegel writes elsewhere: \u0027The finite, as implicitly other than\r\nwhat it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being,\r\nand to turn suddenly into its opposite…. Dialectic is the universal\r\nand irresistible power before which nothing can stay…. \u003ci\u003eSummum jus,\r\nsumma injuria\u003c/i\u003e—to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit\r\ninjustice…. Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one\r\nanother. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy\r\nbrings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.\u0027[5] To which one well\r\nmight add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and\r\nprofessional manner in which they come to be administered, end by\r\nbecoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in\r\nview.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00139\"\u003eOnce catch well the knack of this scheme of thought and you are lucky\r\nif you ever get away from it. It is all you can see. Let any one\r\npronounce anything, and your feeling of a contradiction being implied\r\nbecomes a habit, almost a motor habit in some persons who symbolize by\r\na stereotyped gesture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement\r\ninvolved. If you say \u0027two\u0027 or \u0027many,\u0027 your speech betrayeth you, for\r\nthe very name collects them into one. If you express doubt, your\r\nexpression contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is not\r\ndoubted but affirmed. If you say \u0027disorder,\u0027 what is that but a\r\ncertain bad kind of order? if you say \u0027indetermination,\u0027 you are\r\ndetermining just \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e. If you say \u0027nothing but the unexpected\r\nhappens,\u0027 the unexpected becomes what you expect. If you say \u0027all\r\nthings are relative,\u0027 to what is the all of them itself relative? If\r\nyou say \u0027no more,\u0027 you have said more already, by implying a region\r\nin which no more is found; to know a limit as such is consequently\r\nalready to have got beyond it; And so forth, throughout as many\r\nexamples as one cares to cite.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00140\"\u003eWhatever you posit appears thus as one-sided, and negates its other,\r\nwhich, being equally one-sided, negates \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e; and, since this\r\nsituation remains unstable, the two contradictory terms have together,\r\naccording to Hegel, to engender a higher truth of which they both\r\nappear as indispensable members, mutually mediating aspects of that\r\nhigher concept of situation in thought.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00141\"\u003eEvery higher total, however provisional and relative, thus reconciles\r\nthe contradictions which its parts, abstracted from it, prove\r\nimplicitly to contain. Rationalism, you remember, is what I called the\r\nway of thinking that methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so\r\nHegel here is rationalistic through and through. The only whole by\r\nwhich \u003ci\u003eall\u003c/i\u003e contradictions are reconciled is for him the absolute\r\nwhole of wholes, the all-inclusive reason to which Hegel himself gave\r\nthe name of the absolute Idea, but which I shall continue to call \u0027the\r\nabsolute\u0027 purely and simply, as I have done hitherto.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00142\"\u003eEmpirical instances of the way in which higher unities reconcile\r\ncontradictions are innumerable, so here again Hegel\u0027s vision, taken\r\nmerely impressionistically, agrees with countless facts. Somehow life\r\ndoes, out of its total resources, find ways of satisfying opposites\r\nat once. This is precisely the paradoxical aspect which much of our\r\ncivilization presents. Peace we secure by armaments, liberty by laws\r\nand constitutions; simplicity and naturalness are the consummate\r\nresult of artificial breeding and training; health, strength, and\r\nwealth are increased only by lavish use, expense, and wear. Our\r\nmistrust of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit; our\r\ntolerance of anarchistic and revolutionary utterances is the only way\r\nof lessening their danger; our charity has to say no to beggars in\r\norder not to defeat its own desires; the true epicurean has to observe\r\ngreat sobriety; the way to certainty lies through radical doubt;\r\nvirtue signifies not innocence but the knowledge of sin and its\r\novercoming; by obeying nature, we command her, etc. The ethical and\r\nthe religious life are full of such contradictions held in solution.\r\nYou hate your enemy?—well, forgive him, and thereby heap coals of\r\nfire on his head; to realize yourself, renounce yourself; to save your\r\nsoul, first lose it; in short, die to live.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00143\"\u003eFrom such massive examples one easily generalizes Hegel\u0027s vision.\r\nRoughly, his \u0027dialectic\u0027 picture is a fair account of a good deal of\r\nthe world. It sounds paradoxical, but whenever you once place yourself\r\nat the point of view; of any higher synthesis, you see exactly how\r\nit does in a fashion take up opposites into itself. As an example,\r\nconsider the conflict between our carnivorous appetites and hunting\r\ninstincts and the sympathy with animals which our refinement is\r\nbringing in its train. We have found how to reconcile these opposites\r\nmost effectively by establishing game-laws and close seasons and by\r\nkeeping domestic herds. The creatures preserved thus are preserved for\r\nthe sake of slaughter, truly, but if not preserved for that reason,\r\nnot one of them would be alive at all. Their will to live and our\r\nwill to kill them thus harmoniously combine in this peculiar higher\r\nsynthesis of domestication.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00144\"\u003eMerely as a reporter of certain empirical aspects of the actual,\r\nHegel, then, is great and true. But he aimed at being something far\r\ngreater than an empirical reporter, so I must say something about that\r\nessential aspect of his thought. Hegel was dominated by the notion of\r\na truth that should prove incontrovertible, binding on every one,\r\nand certain, which should be \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c/i\u003e truth, one, indivisible, eternal,\r\nobjective, and necessary, to which all our particular thinking\r\nmust lead as to its consummation. This is the dogmatic ideal,\r\nthe postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all\r\nrationalizers in philosophy. \u0027\u003ci\u003eI have never doubted\u003c/i\u003e,\u0027 a recent Oxford\r\nwriter says, that truth is universal and single and timeless, a single\r\ncontent or significance, one and whole and complete.[6] Advance in\r\nthinking, in the hegelian universe, has, in short, to proceed by the\r\napodictic words \u003ci\u003emust be\u003c/i\u003e rather than by those inferior hypothetic\r\nwords \u003ci\u003emay be\u003c/i\u003e, which are all that empiricists can use.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00145\"\u003eNow Hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement through\r\nthe field of concepts by way of \u0027dialectic\u0027 negation played most\r\nbeautifully into the hands of this rationalistic demand for something\r\nabsolute and \u003ci\u003einconcussum\u003c/i\u003e in the way of truth. It is easy to see how.\r\nIf you affirm anything, for example that A is, and simply leave the\r\nmatter thus, you leave it at the mercy of any one who may supervene\r\nand say \u0027not A, but B is.\u0027 If he does say so, your statement doesn\u0027t\r\nrefute him, it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts you.\r\nThe only way of making your affirmation about A \u003ci\u003eself-securing\u003c/i\u003e is by\r\ngetting it into a form which will by implication negate all possible\r\nnegations in advance. The mere absence of negation is not enough; it\r\nmust be present, but present with its fangs drawn. What you posit as A\r\nmust already have cancelled the alternative or made it innocuous, by\r\nhaving negated it in advance. Double negation is the only form of\r\naffirmation that fully plays into the hands of the dogmatic ideal.\r\nSimply and innocently affirmative statements are good enough for\r\nempiricists, but unfit for rationalist use, lying open as they do to\r\nevery accidental contradictor, and exposed to every puff of doubt.\r\nThe \u003ci\u003efinal\u003c/i\u003e truth must be something to which there is no imaginable\r\nalternative, because it contains all its possible alternatives inside\r\nof itself as moments already taken account of and overcome. Whatever\r\ninvolves its own alternatives as elements of itself is, in a phrase\r\noften repeated, its \u0027own other,\u0027 made so by the \u003ci\u003emethode der absoluten\r\nnegativität\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00146\"\u003eFormally, this scheme of an organism of truth that has already fed as\r\nit were on its own liability to death, so that, death once dead\r\nfor it, there\u0027s no more dying then, is the very fulfilment of the\r\nrationalistic aspiration. That one and only whole, with all its\r\nparts involved in it, negating and making one another impossible if\r\nabstracted and taken singly, but necessitating and holding one another\r\nin place if the whole of them be taken integrally, is the literal\r\nideal sought after; it is the very diagram and picture of that notion\r\nof \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c/i\u003e truth with no outlying alternative, to which nothing can be\r\nadded, nor from it anything withdrawn, and all variations from which\r\nare absurd, which so dominates the human imagination. Once we have\r\ntaken in the features of this diagram that so successfully solves\r\nthe world-old problem, the older ways of proving the necessity of\r\njudgments cease to give us satisfaction. Hegel\u0027s way we think must\r\nbe the right way. The true must be essentially the self-reflecting\r\nself-contained recurrent, that which secures itself by including its\r\nown other and negating it; that makes a spherical system with no loose\r\nends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold upon; that is forever\r\nrounded in and closed, not strung along rectilinearly and open at its\r\nends like that universe of simply collective or additive form which\r\nHegel calls the world of the bad infinite, and which is all that\r\nempiricism, starting with simply posited single parts and elements, is\r\never able to attain to.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00147\"\u003eNo one can possibly deny the sublimity of this hegelian conception.\r\nIt is surely in the grand style, if there be such a thing as a grand\r\nstyle in philosophy. For us, however, it remains, so far, a merely\r\nformal and diagrammatic conception; for with the actual content\r\nof absolute truth, as Hegel materially tries to set it forth, few\r\ndisciples have been satisfied, and I do not propose to refer at all to\r\nthe concreter parts of his philosophy. The main thing now is to grasp\r\nthe generalized vision, and feel the authority of the abstract scheme\r\nof a statement self-secured by involving double negation. Absolutists\r\nwho make no use of Hegel\u0027s own technique are really working by his\r\nmethod. You remember the proofs of the absolute which I instanced in\r\nmy last lecture, Lotze\u0027s and Royce\u0027s proofs by \u003ci\u003ereductio ad absurdum\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nto the effect that any smallest connexion rashly supposed in things\r\nwill logically work out into absolute union, and any minimal\r\ndisconnexion into absolute disunion,—these are really arguments\r\nframed on the hegelian pattern. The truth is that which you implicitly\r\naffirm in the very attempt to deny it; it is that from which every\r\nvariation refutes itself by proving self-contradictory. This is the\r\nsupreme insight of rationalism, and to-day the best \u003ci\u003emust-be\u0027s\u003c/i\u003e of\r\nrationalist argumentation are but so many attempts to communicate it\r\nto the hearer.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00148\"\u003eThus, you see, my last lecture and this lecture make connexion again\r\nand we can consider Hegel and the other absolutists to be supporting\r\nthe same system. The next point I wish to dwell on is the part played\r\nby what I have called vicious intellectualism in this wonderful\r\nsystem\u0027s structure.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00149\"\u003eRationalism in general thinks it gets the fulness of truth by turning\r\naway from sensation to conception, conception obviously giving the\r\nmore universal and immutable picture. Intellectualism in the vicious\r\nsense I have already defined as the habit of assuming that a concept\r\n_ex_cludes from any reality conceived by its means everything not\r\nincluded in the concept\u0027s definition. I called such intellectualism\r\nillegitimate as I found it used in Lotze\u0027s, Royce\u0027s, and Bradley\u0027s\r\nproofs of the absolute (which absolute I consequently held to be\r\nnon-proven by their arguments), and I left off by asserting my own\r\nbelief that a pluralistic and incompletely integrated universe,\r\ndescribable only by the free use of the word \u0027some,\u0027 is a legitimate\r\nhypothesis.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00150\"\u003eNow Hegel himself, in building up his method of double negation,\r\noffers the vividest possible example of this vice of intellectualism.\r\nEvery idea of a finite thing is of course a concept of \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e thing\r\nand not a concept of anything else. But Hegel treats this not being a\r\nconcept of anything else as if it were \u003ci\u003eequivalent to the concept of\r\nanything else not being\u003c/i\u003e, or in other words as if it were a denial\r\nor negation of everything else. Then, as the other things, thus\r\nimplicitly contradicted by the thing first conceived, also by the same\r\nlaw contradict \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e, the pulse of dialectic commences to beat and the\r\nfamous triads begin to grind out the cosmos. If any one finds\r\nthe process here to be a luminous one, he must be left to the\r\nillumination, he must remain an undisturbed hegelian. What others feel\r\nas the intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, and unscrupulousness of the\r\nmaster\u0027s way of deducing things, he will probably ascribe—since\r\ndivine oracles are notoriously hard to interpret—to the \u0027difficulty\u0027\r\nthat habitually accompanies profundity. For my own part, there seems\r\nsomething grotesque and \u003ci\u003esaugrenu\u003c/i\u003e in the pretension of a style so\r\ndisobedient to the first rules of sound communication between minds,\r\nto be the authentic mother-tongue of reason, and to keep step more\r\naccurately than any other style does with the absolute\u0027s own ways\r\nof thinking. I do not therefore take Hegel\u0027s technical apparatus\r\nseriously at all. I regard him rather as one of those numerous\r\noriginal seers who can never learn how to articulate. His would-be\r\ncoercive logic counts for nothing in my eyes; but that does not in\r\nthe least impugn the philosophic importance of his conception of the\r\nabsolute, if we take it merely hypothetically as one of the great\r\ntypes of cosmic vision.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00151\"\u003eTaken thus hypothetically, I wish to discuss it briefly. But before\r\ndoing so I must call your attention to an odd peculiarity in the\r\nhegelian procedure. The peculiarity is one which will come before us\r\nagain for a final judgment in my seventh lecture, so at present I only\r\nnote it in passing. Hegel, you remember, considers that the immediate\r\nfinite data of experience are \u0027untrue\u0027 because they are not their own\r\nothers. They are negated by what is external to them. The absolute\r\nis true because it and it only has no external environment, and has\r\nattained to being its own other. (These words sound queer enough, but\r\nthose of you who know something of Hegel\u0027s text will follow them.)\r\nGranting his premise that to be true a thing must in some sort be its\r\nown other, everything hinges on whether he is right in holding that\r\nthe several pieces of finite experience themselves cannot be said\r\nto be in any wise \u003ci\u003etheir\u003c/i\u003e own others. When conceptually or\r\nintellectualistically treated, they of course cannot be their own\r\nothers. Every abstract concept as such excludes what it doesn\u0027t\r\ninclude, and if such concepts are adequate substitutes for\r\nreality\u0027s concrete pulses, the latter must square themselves with\r\nintellectualistic logic, and no one of them in any sense can claim to\r\nbe its own other. If, however, the conceptual treatment of the flow of\r\nreality should prove for any good reason to be inadequate and to have\r\na practical rather than a theoretical or speculative value, then an\r\nindependent empirical look into the constitution of reality\u0027s pulses\r\nmight possibly show that some of them \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e their own others, and\r\nindeed are so in the self-same sense in which the absolute is\r\nmaintained to be so by Hegel. When we come to my sixth lecture,\r\non Professor Bergson, I shall in effect defend this very view,\r\nstrengthening my thesis by his authority. I am unwilling to say\r\nanything more about the point at this time, and what I have just said\r\nof it is only a sort of surveyor\u0027s note of where our present position\r\nlies in the general framework of these lectures.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00152\"\u003eLet us turn now at last to the great question of fact, \u003ci\u003eDoes the\r\nabsolute exist or not\u003c/i\u003e? to which all our previous discussion has been\r\npreliminary. I may sum up that discussion by saying that whether\r\nthere really be an absolute or not, no one makes himself absurd\r\nor self-contradictory by doubting or denying it. The charges of\r\nself-contradiction, where they do not rest on purely verbal reasoning,\r\nrest on a vicious intellectualism. I will not recapitulate my\r\ncriticisms. I will simply ask you to change the \u003ci\u003evenue\u003c/i\u003e, and to\r\ndiscuss the absolute now as if it were only an open hypothesis. As\r\nsuch, is it more probable or more improbable?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00153\"\u003eBut first of all I must parenthetically ask you to distinguish the\r\nnotion of the absolute carefully from that of another object with\r\nwhich it is liable to become heedlessly entangled. That other object\r\nis the \u0027God\u0027 of common people in their religion, and the creator-God\r\nof orthodox christian theology. Only thoroughgoing monists or\r\npantheists believe in the absolute. The God of our popular\r\nChristianity is but one member of a pluralistic system. He and we\r\nstand outside of each other, just as the devil, the saints, and the\r\nangels stand outside of both of us. I can hardly conceive of anything\r\nmore different from the absolute than the God, say, of David or of\r\nIsaiah. \u003ci\u003eThat\u003c/i\u003e God is an essentially finite being \u003ci\u003ein\u003c/i\u003e the cosmos,\r\nnot with the cosmos in him, and indeed he has a very local habitation\r\nthere, and very one-sided local and personal attachments. If it should\r\nprove probable that the absolute does not exist, it will not follow in\r\nthe slightest degree that a God like that of David, Isaiah, or Jesus\r\nmay not exist, or may not be the most important existence in the\r\nuniverse for us to acknowledge. I pray you, then, not to confound the\r\ntwo ideas as you listen to the criticisms I shall have to proffer.\r\nI hold to the finite God, for reasons which I shall touch on in the\r\nseventh of these lectures; but I hold that his rival and competitor—I\r\nfeel almost tempted to say his enemy—the absolute, is not only not\r\nforced on us by logic, but that it is an improbable hypothesis.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00154\"\u003eThe great claim made for the absolute is that by supposing it we make\r\nthe world appear more rational. Any hypothesis that does that will\r\nalways be accepted as more probably true than an hypothesis that makes\r\nthe world appear irrational. Men are once for all so made that they\r\nprefer a rational world to believe in and to live in. But rationality\r\nhas at least four dimensions, intellectual, aesthetical, moral, and\r\npractical; and to find a world rational to the maximal degree \u003ci\u003ein all\r\nthese respects simultaneously\u003c/i\u003e is no easy matter. Intellectually, the\r\nworld of mechanical materialism is the most rational, for we subject\r\nits events to mathematical calculation. But the mechanical world\r\nis ugly, as arithmetic is ugly, and it is non-moral. Morally,\r\nthe theistic world is rational enough, but full of intellectual\r\nfrustrations. The practical world of affairs, in its turn, so\r\nsupremely rational to the politician, the military man, or the man of\r\nconquering business-faculty that he never would vote to change the\r\ntype of it, is irrational to moral and artistic temperaments; so that\r\nwhatever demand for rationality we find satisfied by a philosophic\r\nhypothesis, we are liable to find some other demand for rationality\r\nunsatisfied by the same hypothesis. The rationality we gain in one\r\ncoin we thus pay for in another; and the problem accordingly seems at\r\nfirst sight to resolve itself into that of getting a conception which\r\nwill yield the largest \u003ci\u003ebalance\u003c/i\u003e of rationality rather than one which\r\nwill yield perfect rationality of every description. In general, it\r\nmay be said that if a man\u0027s conception of the world lets loose any\r\naction in him that is easy, or any faculty which he is fond of\r\nexercising, he will deem it rational in so far forth, be the faculty\r\nthat of computing, fighting, lecturing, classifying, framing schematic\r\ntabulations, getting the better end of a bargain, patiently waiting\r\nand enduring, preaching, joke-making, or what you like. Albeit the\r\nabsolute is defined as being necessarily an embodiment of objectively\r\nperfect rationality, it is fair to its english advocates to say that\r\nthose who have espoused the hypothesis most concretely and seriously\r\nhave usually avowed the irrationality to their own minds of certain\r\nelements in it.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00155\"\u003eProbably the weightiest contribution to our feeling of the rationality\r\nof the universe which the notion of the absolute brings is the\r\nassurance that however disturbed the surface may be, at bottom all is\r\nwell with the cosmos—central peace abiding at the heart of endless\r\nagitation. This conception is rational in many ways, beautiful\r\naesthetically, beautiful intellectually (could we only follow it into\r\ndetail), and beautiful morally, if the enjoyment of security can be\r\naccounted moral. Practically it is less beautiful; for, as we saw in\r\nour last lecture, in representing the deepest reality of the world as\r\nstatic and without a history, it loosens the world\u0027s hold upon our\r\nsympathies and leaves the soul of it foreign. Nevertheless it does\r\ngive \u003ci\u003epeace\u003c/i\u003e, and that kind of rationality is so paramountly demanded\r\nby men that to the end of time there will be absolutists, men who\r\nchoose belief in a static eternal, rather than admit that the finite\r\nworld of change and striving, even with a God as one of the strivers,\r\nis itself eternal. For such minds Professor Royce\u0027s words will always\r\nbe the truest: \u0027The very presence of ill in the temporal order is the\r\ncondition of the perfection of the eternal order…. We long for the\r\nabsolute only in so far as in us the absolute also longs, and seeks\r\nthrough our very temporal striving, the peace that is nowhere in time,\r\nbut only, and yet absolutely, in eternity. Were there no longing in\r\ntime there would be no peace in eternity…. God [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c/i\u003e the absolute]\r\nwho here in me aims at what I now temporally miss, not only possesses\r\nin the eternal world the goal after which I strive, but comes to\r\npossess it even through and because of my sorrow. Through this my\r\ntribulation the absolute triumph then is won…. In the absolute I am\r\nfulfilled. Yet my very fulfilment demands and therefore can transcend\r\nthis sorrow.\u0027[7] Royce is particularly felicitous in his ability to\r\ncite parts of finite experience to which he finds his picture of this\r\nabsolute experience analogous. But it is hard to portray the absolute\r\nat all without rising into what might be called the \u0027inspired\u0027 style\r\nof language—I use the word not ironically, but prosaically and\r\ndescriptively, to designate the only literary form that goes with the\r\nkind of emotion that the absolute arouses. One can follow the pathway\r\nof reasoning soberly enough,[8] but the picture itself has to be\r\neffulgent. This admirable faculty of transcending, whilst inwardly\r\npreserving, every contrariety, is the absolute\u0027s characteristic form\r\nof rationality. We are but syllables in the mouth of the Lord; if the\r\nwhole sentence is divine, each syllable is absolutely what it should\r\nbe, in spite of all appearances. In making up the balance for or\r\nagainst absolutism, this emotional value weights heavily the credit\r\nside of the account.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00156\"\u003eThe trouble is that we are able to see so little into the positive\r\ndetail of it, and that if once admitted not to be coercively proven\r\nby the intellectualist arguments, it remains only a hypothetic\r\npossibility.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00157\"\u003eOn the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and\r\nnot as a mere name for our right occasionally to drop the strenuous\r\nmood and take a moral holiday, introduces all those tremendous\r\nirrationalities into the universe which a frankly pluralistic theism\r\nescapes, but which have been flung as a reproach at every form of\r\nmonistic theism or pantheism. It introduces a speculative \u0027problem\r\nof evil\u0027 namely, and leaves us wondering why the perfection of the\r\nabsolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as\r\ndarken the day for our human imaginations. If they were forced on it\r\nby something alien, and to \u0027overcome\u0027 them the absolute had still to\r\nkeep hold of them, we could understand its feeling of triumph, though\r\nwe, so far as we were ourselves among the elements overcome, could\r\nacquiesce but sullenly in the resultant situation, and would never\r\njust have chosen it as the most rational one conceivable. But the\r\nabsolute is represented as a being without environment, upon which\r\nnothing alien can be forced, and which has spontaneously chosen from\r\nwithin to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a\r\nspectacle with less evil in it.[9] Its perfection is represented as\r\nthe source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is\r\nthe tremendous imperfection of all finite experience. In whatever\r\nsense the word \u0027rationality\u0027 may be taken, it is vain to contend that\r\nthe impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing\r\nthings is altogether rational. Theologians have felt its irrationality\r\nacutely, and the \u0027fall,\u0027 the predestination, and the election which\r\nthe situation involves have given them more trouble than anything else\r\nin their attempt to pantheize Christianity. The whole business remains\r\na puzzle, both intellectually and morally.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00158\"\u003eGrant that the spectacle or world-romance offered to itself by the\r\nabsolute is in the absolute\u0027s eyes perfect. Why would not the world be\r\nmore perfect by having the affair remain in just those terms, and\r\nby not having any finite spectators to come in and add to what was\r\nperfect already their innumerable imperfect manners of seeing the same\r\nspectacle? Suppose the entire universe to consist of one superb copy\r\nof a book, fit for the ideal reader. Is that universe improved or\r\ndeteriorated by having myriads of garbled and misprinted separate\r\nleaves and chapters also created, giving false impressions of the book\r\nto whoever looks at them? To say the least, the balance of rationality\r\nis not obviously in favor of such added mutilations. So this question\r\nbecomes urgent: Why, the absolute\u0027s own total vision of things\r\nbeing so rational, was it necessary to comminute it into all these\r\ncoexisting inferior fragmentary visions?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00159\"\u003eLeibnitz in his theodicy represents God as limited by an antecedent\r\nreason in things which makes certain combinations logically\r\nincompatible, certain goods impossible. He surveys in advance all the\r\nuniverses he might create, and by an act of what Leibnitz calls his\r\nantecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the\r\nevil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its minimum. It is the best of\r\nall the worlds that are possible, therefore, but by no means the most\r\nabstractly desirable world. Having made this mental choice, God next\r\nproceeds to what Leibnitz calls his act of consequent or decretory\r\nwill: he says \u0027\u003ci\u003eFiat\u003c/i\u003e\u0027 and the world selected springs into objective\r\nbeing, with all the finite creatures in it to suffer from its\r\nimperfections without sharing in its creator\u0027s atoning vision.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00160\"\u003eLotze has made some penetrating remarks on this conception of\r\nLeibnitz\u0027s, and they exactly fall in with what I say of the absolutist\r\nconception. The world projected out of the creative mind by the\r\n\u003ci\u003efiat\u003c/i\u003e, and existing in detachment from its author, is a sphere of\r\nbeing where the parts realize themselves only singly. If the divine\r\nvalue of them is evident only when they are collectively looked at,\r\nthen, Lotze rightly says, the world surely becomes poorer and not\r\nricher for God\u0027s utterance of the \u003ci\u003efiat\u003c/i\u003e. He might much better have\r\nremained contented with his merely antecedent choice of the scheme,\r\nwithout following it up by a creative decree. The scheme \u003ci\u003eas such\u003c/i\u003e was\r\nadmirable; it could only lose by being translated into reality.[10]\r\nWhy, I similarly ask, should the absolute ever have lapsed from the\r\nperfection of its own integral experience of things, and refracted\r\nitself into all our finite experiences?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00161\"\u003eIt is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them\r\nhave confessed the imperfect rationality of the absolute from this\r\npoint of view. Mr. McTaggart, for example, writes: \u0027Does not our very\r\nfailure to perceive the perfection of the universe destroy it? … In\r\nso far as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not\r\nperfect ourselves. And as we are parts of the universe, that cannot be\r\nperfect.\u0027[11]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00162\"\u003eAnd Mr. Joachim finds just the same difficulty. Calling the hypothesis\r\nof the absolute by the name of the \u0027coherence theory of truth,\u0027 he\r\ncalls the problem of understanding how the complete coherence of all\r\nthings in the absolute should involve as a necessary moment in\r\nits self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds, a\r\nself-assertion which in its extreme form is error,—he calls this\r\nproblem, I say, an insoluble puzzle. If truth be the universal \u003ci\u003efons\r\net origo\u003c/i\u003e, how does error slip in? \u0027The coherence theory of truth,\u0027 he\r\nconcludes, \u0027may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very\r\nentrance of the harbor.\u0027[12] Yet in spite of this rather bad form\r\nof irrationality, Mr. Joachim stoutly asserts his \u0027immediate\r\ncertainty\u0027[13] of the theory shipwrecked, the correctness of which\r\nhe says he has \u0027never doubted.\u0027 This candid confession of a fixed\r\nattitude of faith in the absolute, which even one\u0027s own criticisms and\r\nperplexities fail to disturb, seems to me very significant. Not only\r\nempiricists, but absolutists also, would all, if they were as candid\r\nas this author, confess that the prime thing in their philosophy\r\nis their vision of a truth possible, which they then employ their\r\nreasoning to convert, as best it can, into a certainty or probability.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00163\"\u003eI can imagine a believer in the absolute retorting at this point that\r\n\u003ci\u003ehe\u003c/i\u003e at any rate is not dealing with mere probabilities, but that\r\nthe nature of things logically requires the multitudinous erroneous\r\ncopies, and that therefore the universe cannot be the absolute\u0027s book\r\nalone. For, he will ask, is not the absolute defined as the total\r\nconsciousness of everything that is? Must not its field of view\r\nconsist of parts? And what can the parts of a total consciousness be\r\nunless they be fractional consciousnesses? Our finite minds \u003ci\u003emust\u003c/i\u003e\r\ntherefore coexist with the absolute mind. We are its constituents, and\r\nit cannot live without us.—But if any one of you feels tempted to\r\nretort in this wise, let me remind you that you are frankly employing\r\npluralistic weapons, and thereby giving up the absolutist cause. The\r\nnotion that the absolute is made of constituents on which its being\r\ndepends is the rankest empiricism. The absolute as such has \u003ci\u003eobjects\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nnot constituents, and if the objects develop selfhoods upon their own\r\nseveral accounts, those selfhoods must be set down as facts additional\r\nto the absolute consciousness, and not as elements implicated in its\r\ndefinition. The absolute is a rationalist conception. Rationalism\r\ngoes from wholes to parts, and always assumes wholes to be\r\nself-sufficing.[14]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00164\"\u003eMy conclusion, so far, then, is this, that altho the hypothesis of the\r\nabsolute, in yielding a certain kind of religious peace, performs\r\na most important rationalizing function, it nevertheless, from\r\nthe intellectual point of view, remains decidedly irrational. The\r\n\u003ci\u003eideally\u003c/i\u003e perfect whole is certainly that whole of which the \u003ci\u003eparts\r\nalso are perfect\u003c/i\u003e—if we can depend on logic for anything, we can\r\ndepend on it for that definition. The absolute is defined as the\r\nideally perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, are\r\nadmittedly imperfect. Evidently the conception lacks internal\r\nconsistency, and yields us a problem rather than a solution. It\r\ncreates a speculative puzzle, the so-called mystery of evil and of\r\nerror, from which a pluralistic metaphysic is entirely free.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00165\"\u003eIn any pluralistic metaphysic, the problems that evil presents are\r\npractical, not speculative. Not why evil should exist at all, but how\r\nwe can lessen the actual amount of it, is the sole question we need\r\nthere consider. \u0027God,\u0027 in the religious life of ordinary men, is the\r\nname not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal\r\ntendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to\r\nco-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy.\r\nHe works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When\r\nJohn Mill said that the notion of God\u0027s omnipotence must be given up,\r\nif God is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately\r\nright; yet so prevalent is the lazy monism that idly haunts the region\r\nof God\u0027s name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally\r\ntreated as a paradox: God, it was said, \u003ci\u003ecould\u003c/i\u003e not be finite. I\r\nbelieve that the only God worthy of the name \u003ci\u003emust\u003c/i\u003e be finite, and I\r\nshall return to this point in a later lecture. If the absolute exist\r\nin addition—and the hypothesis must, in spite of its irrational\r\nfeatures, still be left open—then the absolute is only the wider\r\ncosmic whole of which our God is but the most ideal portion, and which\r\nin the more usual human sense is hardly to be termed a religious\r\nhypothesis at all. \u0027Cosmic emotion\u0027 is the better name for the\r\nreaction it may awaken.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00166\"\u003eObserve that all the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute\r\ngives rise to, and from which the finite God remains free, are due to\r\nthe fact that the absolute has nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of\r\nitself. The finite God whom I contrast with it may conceivably have\r\n\u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c/i\u003e nothing outside of himself; he may already have triumphed\r\nover and absorbed all but the minutest fraction of the universe; but\r\nthat fraction, however small, reduces him to the status of a\r\nrelative being, and in principle the universe is saved from all the\r\nirrationalities incidental to absolutism. The only irrationality left\r\nwould be the irrationality of which pluralism as such is accused, and\r\nof this I hope to say a word more later.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00167\"\u003eI have tired you with so many subtleties in this lecture that I will\r\nadd only two other counts to my indictment.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00168\"\u003eFirst, then, let me remind you that \u003ci\u003ethe absolute is useless for\r\ndeductive purposes\u003c/i\u003e. It gives us absolute safety if you will, but\r\nit is compatible with every relative danger. You cannot enter the\r\nphenomenal world with the notion of it in your grasp, and name\r\nbeforehand any detail which you are likely to meet there. Whatever the\r\ndetails of experience may prove to be, \u003ci\u003eafter the fact of them\u003c/i\u003e\r\nthe absolute will adopt them. It is an hypothesis that functions\r\nretrospectively only, not prospectively. \u003ci\u003eThat\u003c/i\u003e, whatever it may be,\r\nwill have been in point of fact the sort of world which the absolute\r\nwas pleased to offer to itself as a spectacle.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00169\"\u003eAgain, the absolute is always represented idealistically, as the\r\nall-knower. Thinking this view consistently out leads one to frame\r\nan almost ridiculous conception of the absolute mind, owing to the\r\nenormous mass of unprofitable information which it would then seem\r\nobliged to carry. One of the many \u003ci\u003ereductiones ad absurdum\u003c/i\u003e of\r\npluralism by which idealism thinks it proves the absolute One is as\r\nfollows: Let there be many facts; but since on idealist principles\r\nfacts exist only by being known, the many facts will therefore mean\r\nmany knowers. But that there are so many knowers is itself a fact,\r\nwhich in turn requires \u003ci\u003eits\u003c/i\u003e knower, so the one absolute knower has\r\neventually to be brought in. \u003ci\u003eAll\u003c/i\u003e facts lead to him. If it be a fact\r\nthat this table is not a chair, not a rhinoceros, not a logarithm, not\r\na mile away from the door, not worth five hundred pounds sterling, not\r\na thousand centuries old, the absolute must even now be articulately\r\naware of all these negations. Along with what everything is it must\r\nalso be conscious of everything which it is not. This infinite\r\natmosphere of explicit negativity—observe that it has to be\r\nexplicit—around everything seems to us so useless an encumbrance as\r\nto make the absolute still more foreign to our sympathy. Furthermore,\r\nif it be a fact that certain ideas are silly, the absolute has to have\r\nalready thought the silly ideas to establish them in silliness. The\r\nrubbish in its mind would thus appear easily to outweigh in amount the\r\nmore desirable material. One would expect it fairly to burst with such\r\nan obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information.[15]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00170\"\u003eI will spare you further objections. The sum of it all is that the\r\nabsolute is not forced on our belief by logic, that it involves\r\nfeatures of irrationality peculiar to itself, and that a thinker\r\nto whom it does not come as an \u0027immediate certainty\u0027 (to use Mr.\r\nJoachim\u0027s words), is in no way bound to treat it as anything but an\r\nemotionally rather sublime hypothesis. As such, it might, with all its\r\ndefects, be, on account of its peace-conferring power and its formal\r\ngrandeur, more rational than anything else in the field. But meanwhile\r\nthe strung-along unfinished world in time is its rival: \u003ci\u003ereality MAY\r\nexist in distributive form, in the shape not of an all but of a set of\r\neaches, just as it seems to\u003c/i\u003e—this is the anti-absolutist hypothesis.\r\n\u003ci\u003ePrima facie\u003c/i\u003e there is this in favor of the eaches, that they are at\r\nany rate real enough to have made themselves at least \u003ci\u003eappear\u003c/i\u003e to\r\nevery one, whereas the absolute has as yet appeared immediately to\r\nonly a few mystics, and indeed to them very ambiguously. The advocates\r\nof the absolute assure us that any distributive form of being is\r\ninfected and undermined by self-contradiction. If we are unable to\r\nassimilate their arguments, and we have been unable, the only course\r\nwe can take, it seems to me, is to let the absolute bury the absolute,\r\nand to seek reality in more promising directions, even among the\r\ndetails of the finite and the immediately given.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00171\"\u003eIf these words of mine sound in bad taste to some of you, or even\r\nsacrilegious, I am sorry. Perhaps the impression may be mitigated by\r\nwhat I have to say in later lectures.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE IV\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eCONCERNING FECHNER\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00174\"\u003eThe prestige of the absolute has rather crumbled in our hands.\r\nThe logical proofs of it miss fire; the portraits which its best\r\ncourt-painters show of it are featureless and foggy in the extreme;\r\nand, apart from the cold comfort of assuring us that with \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e all is\r\nwell, and that to see that all is well with us also we need only rise\r\nto its eternal point of view, it yields us no relief whatever. It\r\nintroduces, on the contrary, into philosophy and theology certain\r\npoisonous difficulties of which but for its intrusion we never should\r\nhave heard.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00175\"\u003eBut if we drop the absolute out of the world, must we then conclude\r\nthat the world contains nothing better in the way of consciousness\r\nthan our consciousness? Is our whole instinctive belief in higher\r\npresences, our persistent inner turning towards divine companionship,\r\nto count for nothing? Is it but the pathetic illusion of beings with\r\nincorrigibly social and imaginative minds?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00176\"\u003eSuch a negative conclusion would, I believe, be desperately hasty,\r\na sort of pouring out of the child with the bath. Logically it is\r\npossible to believe in superhuman beings without identifying them with\r\nthe absolute at all. The treaty of offensive and defensive alliance\r\nwhich certain groups of the Christian clergy have recently made with\r\nour transcendentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a\r\nwell-meaning but baleful mistake. Neither the Jehovah of the old\r\ntestament nor the heavenly father of the new has anything in common\r\nwith the absolute except that they are all three greater than man;\r\nand if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of\r\nAbraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each\r\nother, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective\r\nand modern minds, I reply that although in certain specifically\r\nphilosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more\r\nproperly to be termed religious the development has followed quite\r\nanother path. The whole history of evangelical Christianity is there\r\nto prove it. I propose in these lectures to plead for that other line\r\nof development. To set the doctrine of the absolute in its proper\r\nframework, so that it shall not fill the whole welkin and exclude all\r\nalternative possibilities of higher thought—as it seems to do for\r\nmany students who approach it with a limited previous acquaintance\r\nwith philosophy—I will contrast it with a system which, abstractly\r\nconsidered, seems at first to have much in common with absolutism, but\r\nwhich, when taken concretely and temperamentally, really stands at the\r\nopposite pole. I refer to the philosophy of Gustav Theodor Fechner, a\r\nwriter but little known as yet to English readers, but destined, I am\r\npersuaded, to wield more and more influence as time goes on.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00177\"\u003eIt is the intense concreteness of Fechner, his fertility of detail,\r\nwhich fills me with an admiration which I should like to make this\r\naudience share. Among the philosophic cranks of my acquaintance in the\r\npast was a lady all the tenets of whose system I have forgotten except\r\none. Had she been born in the Ionian Archipelago some three thousand\r\nyears ago, that one doctrine would probably have made her name sure\r\nof a place in every university curriculum and examination paper. The\r\nworld, she said, is composed of only two elements, the Thick, namely,\r\nand the Thin. No one can deny the truth of this analysis, as far as it\r\ngoes (though in the light of our contemporary knowledge of nature it\r\nhas itself a rather \u0027thin\u0027 sound), and it is nowhere truer than in\r\nthat part of the world called philosophy. I am sure, for example, that\r\nmany of you, listening to what poor account I have been able to\r\ngive of transcendental idealism, have received an impression of its\r\narguments being strangely thin, and of the terms it leaves us with\r\nbeing shiveringly thin wrappings for so thick and burly a world as\r\nthis. Some of you of course will charge the thinness to my exposition;\r\nbut thin as that has been, I believe the doctrines reported on to have\r\nbeen thinner. From Green to Haldane the absolute proposed to us to\r\nstraighten out the confusions of the thicket of experience in which\r\nour life is passed remains a pure abstraction which hardly any one\r\ntries to make a whit concreter. If we open Green, we get nothing but\r\nthe transcendental ego of apperception (Kant\u0027s name for the fact that\r\nto be counted in experience a thing has to be witnessed), blown up\r\ninto a sort of timeless soap-bubble large enough to mirror the whole\r\nuniverse. Nature, Green keeps insisting, consists only in\r\nrelations, and these imply the action of a mind that is eternal;\r\na self-distinguishing consciousness which itself escapes from the\r\nrelations by which it determines other things. Present to whatever is\r\nin succession, it is not in succession itself. If we take the Cairds,\r\nthey tell us little more of the principle of the universe—it is\r\nalways a return into the identity of the self from the difference of\r\nits objects. It separates itself from them and so becomes conscious of\r\nthem in their separation from one another, while at the same time it\r\nbinds them together as elements in one higher self-consciousness.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00178\"\u003eThis seems the very quintessence of thinness; and the matter hardly\r\ngrows thicker when we gather, after enormous amounts of reading, that\r\nthe great enveloping self in question is absolute reason as such, and\r\nthat as such it is characterized by the habit of using certain jejune\r\n\u0027categories\u0027 with which to perform its eminent relating work. The\r\nwhole active material of natural fact is tried out, and only the\r\nbarest intellectualistic formalism remains.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00179\"\u003eHegel tried, as we saw, to make the system concreter by making the\r\nrelations between things \u0027dialectic,\u0027 but if we turn to those who use\r\nhis name most worshipfully, we find them giving up all the particulars\r\nof his attempt, and simply praising his intention—much as in our\r\nmanner we have praised it ourselves. Mr. Haldane, for example, in his\r\nwonderfully clever Gifford lectures, praises Hegel to the skies, but\r\nwhat he tells of him amounts to little more than this, that \u0027the\r\ncategories in which the mind arranges its experiences, and gives\r\nmeaning to them, the universals in which the particulars are grasped\r\nin the individual, are a logical chain, in which the first presupposes\r\nthe last, and the last is its presupposition and its truth.\u0027 He hardly\r\ntries at all to thicken this thin logical scheme. He says indeed\r\nthat absolute mind in itself, and absolute mind in its hetereity or\r\notherness, under the distinction which it sets up of itself from\r\nitself, have as their real \u003ci\u003eprius\u003c/i\u003e absolute mind in synthesis; and,\r\nthis being absolute mind\u0027s true nature, its dialectic character must\r\nshow itself in such concrete forms as Goethe\u0027s and Wordsworth\u0027s\r\npoetry, as well as in religious forms. \u0027The nature of God, the nature\r\nof absolute mind, is to exhibit the triple movement of dialectic, and\r\nso the nature of God as presented in religion must be a triplicity,\r\na trinity.\u0027 But beyond thus naming Goethe and Wordsworth and\r\nestablishing the trinity, Mr. Haldane\u0027s Hegelianism carries us hardly\r\nan inch into the concrete detail of the world we actually inhabit.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00180\"\u003eEqually thin is Mr. Taylor, both in his principles and in their\r\nresults. Following Mr. Bradley, he starts by assuring us that reality\r\ncannot be self-contradictory, but to be related to anything really\r\noutside of one\u0027s self is to be self-contradictory, so the ultimate\r\nreality must be a single all-inclusive systematic whole. Yet all he\r\ncan say of this whole at the end of his excellently written book is\r\nthat the notion of it \u0027can make no addition to our information and can\r\nof itself supply no motives for practical endeavor.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00181\"\u003eMr. McTaggart treats us to almost as thin a fare. \u0027The main practical\r\ninterest of Hegel\u0027s philosophy,\u0027 he says, \u0027is to be found in the\r\nabstract certainty which the logic gives us that all reality is\r\nrational and righteous, even when we cannot see in the least how it is\r\nso…. Not that it shows us how the facts around us are good, not that\r\nit shows us how we can make them better, but that it proves that they,\r\nlike other reality, are \u003ci\u003esub specie eternitatis\u003c/i\u003e, perfectly good, and\r\n\u003ci\u003esub specie temporis\u003c/i\u003e, destined to become perfectly good.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00182\"\u003eHere again, no detail whatever, only the abstract certainty that\r\nwhatever the detail may prove to be, it will be good. Common\r\nnon-dialectical men have already this certainty as a result of the\r\ngenerous vital enthusiasm about the universe with which they are born.\r\nThe peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is its sovereign contempt\r\nfor merely vital functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to turn\r\nour simple and immediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically\r\nmediated certainties, to question which would be absurd. But the whole\r\nbasis on which Mr. McTaggart\u0027s own certainty so solidly rests, settles\r\ndown into the one nutshell of an assertion into which he puts Hegel\u0027s\r\ngospel, namely, that in every bit of experience and thought, however\r\nfinite, the whole of reality (the absolute idea, as Hegel calls it) is\r\n\u0027implicitly present.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00183\"\u003eThis indeed is Hegel\u0027s \u003ci\u003evision\u003c/i\u003e, and Hegel thought that the details of\r\nhis dialectic proved its truth. But disciples who treat the details of\r\nthe proof as unsatisfactory and yet cling to the vision, are surely,\r\nin spite of their pretension to a more rational consciousness, no\r\nbetter than common men with their enthusiasms or deliberately adopted\r\nfaiths. We have ourselves seen some of the weakness of the monistic\r\nproofs. Mr. McTaggart picks plenty of holes of his own in Hegel\u0027s\r\nlogic, and finally concludes that \u0027all true philosophy must be\r\nmystical, not indeed in its methods but in its final conclusions,\u0027\r\nwhich is as much as to say that the rationalistic methods leave us\r\nin the lurch, in spite of all their superiority, and that in the end\r\nvision and faith must eke them out. But how abstract and thin is\r\nhere the vision, to say nothing of the faith! The whole of reality,\r\nexplicitly absent from our finite experiences, must nevertheless\r\nbe present in them all implicitly, altho no one of us can ever see\r\nhow—the bare word \u0027implicit\u0027 here bearing the whole pyramid of the\r\nmonistic system on its slender point. Mr. Joachim\u0027s monistic system of\r\ntruth rests on an even slenderer point.—\u003ci\u003eI have never doubted\u003c/i\u003e,\u0027\r\nhe says, \u0027that universal and timeless truth is a single content or\r\nsignificance, one and whole and complete,\u0027 and he candidly confesses\r\nthe failure of rationalistic attempts \u0027to raise this immediate\r\ncertainty\u0027 to the level of reflective knowledge. There is, in short,\r\nno mediation for him between the Truth in capital letters and all\r\nthe little \u0027lower-case\u0027 truths—and errors—which life presents. The\r\npsychological fact that he never has \u0027doubted\u0027 is enough.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00184\"\u003eThe whole monistic pyramid, resting on points as thin as these, seems\r\nto me to be a \u003ci\u003emachtspruch\u003c/i\u003e, a product of will far more than one of\r\nreason. Unity is good, therefore things \u003ci\u003eshall\u003c/i\u003e cohere; they \u003ci\u003eshall\u003c/i\u003e\r\nbe one; there \u003ci\u003eshall\u003c/i\u003e be categories to make them one, no matter what\r\nempirical disjunctions may appear. In Hegel\u0027s own writings, the\r\n\u003ci\u003eshall-be\u003c/i\u003e temper is ubiquitous and towering; it overrides verbal and\r\nlogical resistances alike. Hegel\u0027s error, as Professor Royce so well\r\nsays, \u0027lay not in introducing logic into passion,\u0027 as some people\r\ncharge, \u0027but in conceiving the logic of passion as the only logic….\r\nHe is [thus] suggestive,\u0027 Royce says, \u0027but never final. His system as\r\na system has crumbled, but his vital comprehension of our life remains\r\nforever.\u0027[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00185\"\u003eThat vital comprehension we have already seen. It is that there is a\r\nsense in which real things are not merely their own bare selves, but\r\nmay vaguely be treated as also their own others, and that ordinary\r\nlogic, since it denies this, must be overcome. Ordinary logic denies\r\nthis because it substitutes concepts for real things, and concepts\r\n\u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e their own bare selves and nothing else. What Royce calls Hegel\u0027s\r\n\u0027system\u0027 was Hegel\u0027s attempt to make us believe that he was working\r\nby concepts and grinding out a higher style of logic, when in reality\r\nsensible experiences, hypotheses, and passion furnished him with all\r\nhis results.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00186\"\u003eWhat I myself may mean by things being their own others, we shall see\r\nin a later lecture. It is now time to take our look at Fechner, whose\r\nthickness is a refreshing contrast to the thin, abstract, indigent,\r\nand threadbare appearance, the starving, school-room aspect, which the\r\nspeculations of most of our absolutist philosophers present.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00187\"\u003eThere is something really weird and uncanny in the contrast between\r\nthe abstract pretensions of rationalism and what rationalistic methods\r\nconcretely can do. If the \u0027logical prius\u0027 of our mind were really the\r\n\u0027implicit presence\u0027 of the whole \u0027concrete universal,\u0027 the whole of\r\nreason, or reality, or spirit, or the absolute idea, or whatever it\r\nmay be called, in all our finite thinking, and if this reason worked\r\n(for example) by the dialectical method, doesn\u0027t it seem odd that\r\nin the greatest instance of rationalization mankind has known, in\r\n\u0027science,\u0027 namely, the dialectical method should never once have been\r\ntried? Not a solitary instance of the use of it in science occurs\r\nto my mind. Hypotheses, and deductions from these, controlled by\r\nsense-observations and analogies with what we know elsewhere, are to\r\nbe thanked for all of science\u0027s results.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00188\"\u003eFechner used no methods but these latter ones in arguing for his\r\nmetaphysical conclusions about reality—but let me first rehearse a\r\nfew of the facts about his life.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00189\"\u003eBorn in 1801, the son of a poor country pastor in Saxony, he lived\r\nfrom 1817 to 1887, when he died, seventy years therefore, at Leipzig,\r\na typical \u003ci\u003egelehrter\u003c/i\u003e of the old-fashioned german stripe. His means\r\nwere always scanty, so his only extravagances could be in the way\r\nof thought, but these were gorgeous ones. He passed his medical\r\nexaminations at Leipzig University at the age of twenty-one, but\r\ndecided, instead of becoming a doctor, to devote himself to physical\r\nscience. It was ten years before he was made professor of physics,\r\nalthough he soon was authorized to lecture. Meanwhile, he had to make\r\nboth ends meet, and this he did by voluminous literary labors. He\r\ntranslated, for example, the four volumes of Biot\u0027s treatise on\r\nphysics, and the six of Thénard\u0027s work on chemistry, and took care of\r\ntheir enlarged editions later. He edited repertories of chemistry\r\nand physics, a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight\r\nvolumes, of which he wrote about one third. He published physical\r\ntreatises and experimental investigations of his own, especially in\r\nelectricity. Electrical measurements, as you know, are the basis of\r\nelectrical science, and Fechner\u0027s measurements in galvanism, performed\r\nwith the simplest self-made apparatus, are classic to this day.\r\nDuring this time he also published a number of half-philosophical,\r\nhalf-humorous writings, which have gone through several editions,\r\nunder the name of Dr. Mises, besides poems, literary and artistic\r\nessays, and other occasional articles.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00190\"\u003eBut overwork, poverty, and an eye-trouble produced by his observations\r\non after-images in the retina (also a classic piece of investigation)\r\nproduced in Fechner, then about thirty-eight years old, a terrific\r\nattack of nervous prostration with painful hyperaesthesia of all the\r\nfunctions, from which he suffered three years, cut off entirely from\r\nactive life. Present-day medicine would have classed poor Fechner\u0027s\r\nmalady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its\r\nseverity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation\r\nincomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get\r\nwell, both Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine\r\nmiracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with inner\r\ndesperation, made a great crisis in his life. \u0027Had I not then clung to\r\nthe faith,\u0027 he writes, \u0027that clinging to faith would somehow or other\r\nwork its reward, \u003ci\u003eso hätte ich jene zeit nicht ausgehalten\u003c/i\u003e.\u0027 His\r\nreligious and cosmological faiths saved him—thenceforward one great\r\naim with him was to work out and communicate these faiths to the\r\nworld. He did so on the largest scale; but he did many other things\r\ntoo ere he died.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00191\"\u003eA book on the atomic theory, classic also; four elaborate mathematical\r\nand experimental volumes on what he called psychophysics—many persons\r\nconsider Fechner to have practically founded scientific psychology in\r\nthe first of these books; a volume on organic evolution, and two works\r\non experimental aesthetics, in which again Fechner is considered by\r\nsome judges to have laid the foundations of a new science, must be\r\nincluded among these other performances. Of the more religious and\r\nphilosophical works, I shall immediately give a further account.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00192\"\u003eAll Leipzig mourned him when he died, for he was the pattern of the\r\nideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was\r\nhomely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and\r\nlearning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the\r\nvernacular sort. The materialistic generation, that in the fifties and\r\nsixties called his speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one\r\nwith greater liberty of imagination, and a Preyer, a Wundt, a Paulsen,\r\nand a Lasswitz could now speak of Fechner as their master.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00193\"\u003eHis mind was indeed one of those multitudinously organized cross-roads\r\nof truth which are occupied only at rare intervals by children of men,\r\nand from which nothing is either too far or too near to be seen in due\r\nperspective. Patientest observation, exactest mathematics, shrewdest\r\ndiscrimination, humanest feeling, flourished in him on the largest\r\nscale, with no apparent detriment to one another. He was in fact a\r\nphilosopher in the \u0027great\u0027 sense, altho he cared so much less than\r\nmost philosophers care for abstractions of the \u0027thin\u0027 order. For him\r\nthe abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he\r\ndid was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into\r\never greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole\r\nuniverse in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and\r\nenvelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious. It has taken fifty\r\nyears for his chief book, \u0027Zend-avesta,\u0027 to pass into a second edition\r\n(1901). \u0027One swallow,\u0027 he cheerfully writes, \u0027does not make a summer.\r\nBut the first swallow would not come unless the summer were coming;\r\nand for me that summer means my daylight view some time prevailing.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00194\"\u003eThe original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and\r\nour scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the\r\nspiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature.\r\nInstead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater\r\nlife, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality,\r\nwhich must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence\r\nthan all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies\r\noutside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we\r\nbelieve in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless,\r\nand nature as soulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, Fechner\r\nasks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath,\r\nthe stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit\r\nand sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature\r\nturns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is\r\ntreated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns\r\nbetween us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a\r\nthin nest of abstractions.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00195\"\u003eFechner\u0027s great instrument for vivifying the daylight view is\r\nanalogy; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in all his\r\nmany pages—only reasonings like those which men continually use in\r\npractical life. For example: My house is built by some one, the world\r\ntoo is built by some one. The world is greater than my house, it\r\nmust be a greater some one who built the world. My body moves by the\r\ninfluence of my feeling and will; the sun, moon, sea, and wind, being\r\nthemselves more powerful, move by the influence of some more powerful\r\nfeeling and will. I live now, and change from one day to another; I\r\nshall live hereafter, and change still more, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00196\"\u003eBain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. The number\r\nthat Fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the\r\ndifferences as well. Neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is\r\nthe common fallacy in analogical reasoning. Most of us, for example,\r\nreasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with\r\nbodies, therefore God\u0027s mind should be connected with a body, proceed\r\nto suppose that that body must be just an animal body over again, and\r\npaint an altogether human picture of God. But all that the analogy\r\ncomports is \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e body—the particular features of \u003ci\u003eour\u003c/i\u003e body are\r\nadaptations to a habitat so different from God\u0027s that if God have\r\na physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ours in\r\nstructure. Throughout his writings Fechner makes difference and\r\nanalogy walk abreast, and by his extraordinary power of noticing\r\nboth, he converts what would ordinarily pass for objections to his\r\nconclusions into factors of their support.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00197\"\u003eThe vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The\r\nentire earth on which we live must have, according to Fechner, its own\r\ncollective consciousness. So must each sun, moon, and planet; so must\r\nthe whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, in which the\r\nconsciousness of our earth plays one part. So has the entire starry\r\nsystem as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the\r\nsum of all that \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e, materially considered, then that whole system,\r\nalong with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely\r\ntotalized consciousness of the universe to which men give the name of\r\nGod.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00198\"\u003eSpeculatively Fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is\r\nroom in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man\r\nand the final all-inclusive God; and in suggesting what the positive\r\ncontent of all this super-humanity may be, he hardly lets his\r\nimagination fly beyond simple spirits of the planetary order. The\r\nearth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our\r\nspecial human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to\r\ntheir saints; but I think that in his system, as in so many of the\r\nactual historic theologies, the supreme God marks only a sort of limit\r\nof enclosure of the worlds above man. He is left thin and abstract in\r\nhis majesty, men preferring to carry on their personal transactions\r\nwith the many less remote and abstract messengers and mediators whom\r\nthe divine order provides.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00199\"\u003eI shall ask later whether the abstractly monistic turn which Fechner\u0027s\r\nspeculations took was necessitated by logic. I believe it not to have\r\nbeen required. Meanwhile let me lead you a little more into the\r\ndetail of his thought. Inevitably one does him miserable injustice\r\nby summarizing and abridging him. For altho the type of reasoning he\r\nemploys is almost childlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions\r\ncan be written on a single page, the \u003ci\u003epower\u003c/i\u003e of the man is due\r\naltogether to the profuseness of his concrete imagination, to the\r\nmultitude of the points which he considers successively, to the\r\ncumulative effect of his learning, of his thoroughness, and of the\r\ningenuity of his detail, to his admirably homely style, to the\r\nsincerity with which his pages glow, and finally to the impression he\r\ngives of a man who doesn\u0027t live at second-hand, but who \u003ci\u003esees\u003c/i\u003e, who in\r\nfact speaks as one having authority, and not as if he were one of the\r\ncommon herd of professorial philosophic scribes.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00200\"\u003eAbstractly set down, his most important conclusion for my purpose in\r\nthese lectures is that the constitution of the world is identical\r\nthroughout. In ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes,\r\ntactile consciousness with our skin. But altho neither skin nor eye\r\nknows aught of the sensations of the other, they come together and\r\nfigure in some sort of relation and combination in the more inclusive\r\nconsciousness which each of us names his \u003ci\u003eself\u003c/i\u003e. Quite similarly,\r\nthen, says Fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself\r\nand yours of yourself, altho in their immediacy they keep separate\r\nand know nothing of each other, are yet known and used together in a\r\nhigher consciousness, that of the human race, say, into which they\r\nenter as constituent parts. Similarly, the whole human and animal\r\nkingdoms come together as conditions of a consciousness of still wider\r\nscope. This combines in the soul of the earth with the consciousness\r\nof the vegetable kingdom, which in turn contributes its share of\r\nexperience to that of the whole solar system, and so on from synthesis\r\nto synthesis and height to height, till an absolutely universal\r\nconsciousness is reached.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00201\"\u003eA vast analogical series, in which the basis of the analogy consists\r\nof facts directly observable in ourselves.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00202\"\u003eThe supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong instinctive\r\nprejudice which Fechner ingeniously tries to overcome. Man\u0027s mind is\r\nthe highest consciousness upon the earth, we think—the earth itself\r\nbeing in all ways man\u0027s inferior. How should its consciousness, if it\r\nhave one, be superior to his?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00203\"\u003eWhat are the marks of superiority which we are tempted to use here? If\r\nwe look more carefully into them, Fechner points out that the earth\r\npossesses each and all of them more perfectly than we. He considers in\r\ndetail the points of difference between us, and shows them all to\r\nmake for the earth\u0027s higher rank. I will touch on only a few of these\r\npoints.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00204\"\u003eOne of them of course is independence of other external beings.\r\nExternal to the earth are only the other heavenly bodies. All the\r\nthings on which we externally depend for life—air, water, plant and\r\nanimal food, fellow men, etc.—are included in her as her constituent\r\nparts. She is self-sufficing in a million respects in which we are not\r\nso. We depend on her for almost everything, she on us for but a small\r\nportion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from winter to\r\nsummer and revolves us from day into night and from night into day.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00205\"\u003eComplexity in unity is another sign of superiority. The total earth\u0027s\r\ncomplexity far exceeds that of any organism, for she includes all our\r\norganisms in herself, along with an infinite number of things that our\r\norganisms fail to include. Yet how simple and massive are the phases\r\nof her own proper life! As the total bearing of any animal is sedate\r\nand tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood corpuscles, so\r\nis the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with the animals\r\nwhom she supports.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00206\"\u003eTo develop from within, instead of being fashioned from without, is\r\nalso counted as something superior in men\u0027s eyes. An egg is a higher\r\nstyle of being than a piece of clay which an external modeler makes\r\ninto the image of a bird. Well, the earth\u0027s history develops from\r\nwithin. It is like that of a wonderful egg which the sun\u0027s heat, like\r\nthat of a mother-hen, has stimulated to its cycles of evolutionary\r\nchange.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00207\"\u003eIndividuality of type, and difference from other beings of its type,\r\nis another mark of rank. The earth differs from every other planet,\r\nand as a class planetary beings are extraordinarily distinct from\r\nother beings.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00208\"\u003eLong ago the earth was called an animal; but a planet is a higher\r\nclass of being than either man or animal; not only quantitatively\r\ngreater, like a vaster and more awkward whale or elephant, but a being\r\nwhose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. Our\r\nanimal organization comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to\r\nand fro, of stretching our limbs and bending our bodies, shows only\r\nour defect. What are our legs but crutches, by means of which, with\r\nrestless efforts, we go hunting after the things we have not inside\r\nof ourselves. But the earth is no such cripple; why should she who\r\nalready possesses within herself the things we so painfully pursue,\r\nhave limbs analogous to ours? Shall she mimic a small part of herself?\r\nWhat need has she of arms, with nothing to reach for? of a neck, with\r\nno head to carry? of eyes or nose when she finds her way through space\r\nwithout either, and has the millions of eyes of all her animals to\r\nguide their movements on her surface, and all their noses to smell the\r\nflowers that grow? For, as we are ourselves a part of the earth, so\r\nour organs are her organs. She is, as it were, eye and ear over her\r\nwhole extent—all that we see and hear in separation she sees and\r\nhears at once. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon\r\nher surface, and their multitudinous conscious relations with each\r\nother she takes up into her higher and more general conscious life.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00209\"\u003eMost of us, considering the theory that the whole terrestrial mass is\r\nanimated as our bodies are, make the mistake of working the analogy\r\ntoo literally, and allowing for no differences. If the earth be a\r\nsentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? What\r\ncorresponds to her heart and lungs? In other words, we expect\r\nfunctions which she already performs through us, to be performed\r\noutside of us again, and in just the same way. But we see perfectly\r\nwell how the earth performs some of these functions in a way unlike\r\nour way. If you speak of circulation, what need has she of a heart\r\nwhen the sun keeps all the showers of rain that fall upon her and all\r\nthe springs and brooks and rivers that irrigate her, going? What need\r\nhas she of internal lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in\r\nliving commerce with the atmosphere that clings to it?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00210\"\u003eThe organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. All the\r\nconsciousness we directly know seems tied to brains.—Can there be\r\nconsciousness, we ask, where there is no brain? But our brain, which\r\nprimarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external\r\nobjects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth\r\nperforms in an entirely different way. She has no proper muscles or\r\nlimbs of her own, and the only objects external to her are the other\r\nstars. To these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations in\r\nits total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses in\r\nits substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as in a mighty\r\nmirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the\r\nclouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers\r\ndisperse them into colors. Polarization, interference, absorption,\r\nawaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to\r\ntake any note.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00211\"\u003eFor these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs a special\r\nbrain than she needs eyes or ears. \u003ci\u003eOur\u003c/i\u003e brains do indeed unify and\r\ncorrelate innumerable functions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our\r\nears nothing of light, but, having brains, we can feel sound and light\r\ntogether, and compare them. We account for this by the fibres which in\r\nthe brain connect the optical with the acoustic centre, but just how\r\nthese fibres bring together not only the sensations, but the centres,\r\nwe fail to see. But if fibres are indeed all that is needed to do that\r\ntrick, has not the earth pathways, by which you and I are physically\r\ncontinuous, more than enough to do for our two minds what the\r\nbrain-fibres do for the sounds and sights in a single mind? Must every\r\nhigher means of unification between things be a literal \u003ci\u003ebrain\u003c/i\u003e-fibre,\r\nand go by that name? Cannot the earth-mind know otherwise the contents\r\nof our minds together?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00212\"\u003eFechner\u0027s imagination, insisting on the differences as well as on the\r\nresemblances, thus tries to make our picture of the whole earth\u0027s life\r\nmore concrete. He revels in the thought of its perfections. To carry\r\nher precious freight through the hours and seasons what form could be\r\nmore excellent than hers—being as it is horse, wheels, and wagon all\r\nin one. Think of her beauty—a shining ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over\r\none half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens\r\nfrom all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her\r\nmountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a spectacle of\r\nrainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her\r\nfrom her own mountain-tops. Every quality of landscape that has a\r\nname would then be visible in her at once—all that is delicate or\r\ngraceful, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or\r\ncheerful, or luxuriant, or fresh. That landscape is her face—a\r\npeopled landscape, too, for men\u0027s eyes would appear in it like\r\ndiamonds among the dew-drops. Green would be the dominant color, but\r\nthe blue atmosphere and the clouds would enfold her as a bride is\r\nshrouded in her veil—a veil the vapory transparent folds of which\r\nthe earth, through her ministers the winds, never tires of laying and\r\nfolding about herself anew.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00213\"\u003eEvery element has its own living denizens. Can the celestial ocean of\r\nether, whose waves are light, in which the earth herself floats, not\r\nhave hers, higher by as much as their element is higher, swimming\r\nwithout fins, flying without wings, moving, immense and tranquil, as\r\nby a half-spiritual force through the half-spiritual sea which they\r\ninhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one\r\nanother, following the slightest pull of one another\u0027s attraction, and\r\nharboring, each of them, an inexhaustible inward wealth?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00214\"\u003eMen have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light,\r\nneeding no earthly food or drink, messengers between ourselves and\r\nGod. Here are actually existent beings, dwelling in the light and\r\nmoving through the sky, needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries\r\nbetween God and us, obeying his commands. So, if the heavens really\r\nare the home of angels, the heavenly bodies must be those very angels,\r\nfor other creatures \u003ci\u003ethere\u003c/i\u003e are none. Yes! the earth is our great\r\ncommon guardian angel, who watches over all our interests combined.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00215\"\u003eIn a striking page Fechner relates one of his moments of direct vision\r\nof this truth.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00216\"\u003e\u0027On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. The fields were\r\ngreen, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here\r\nand there a man appeared; a light as of transfiguration lay on all\r\nthings. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment\r\nof her existence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it\r\nseemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear\r\na fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and\r\nflower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly and so\r\nat one with herself, turning her whole living face to Heaven, and\r\ncarrying me along with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how\r\nthe opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life\r\nso far as to deem the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels\r\nabove it or about it in the emptiness of the sky,—only to find them\r\nnowhere…. But such an experience as this passes for fantastic. The\r\nearth is a globular body, and what more she may be, one can find in\r\nmineralogical cabinets.\u0027[2]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00217\"\u003eWhere there is no vision the people perish. Few professorial\r\nphilosophers have any vision. Fechner had vision, and that is why one\r\ncan read him over and over again, and each time bring away a fresh\r\nsense of reality.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00218\"\u003eHis earliest book was a vision of what the inner life of plants may be\r\nlike. He called it \u0027Nanna.\u0027 In the development of animals the nervous\r\nsystem is the central fact. Plants develop centrifugally, spread their\r\norgans abroad. For that reason people suppose that they can have no\r\nconsciousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous\r\nsystem provides. But the plant\u0027s consciousness may be of another type,\r\nbeing connected with other structures. Violins and pianos give out\r\nsounds because they have strings. Does it follow that nothing but\r\nstrings can give out sound? How then about flutes and organ-pipes?\r\nOf course their sounds are of a different quality, and so may the\r\nconsciousness of plants be of a quality correlated exclusively with\r\nthe kind of organization that | they possess. Nutrition, respiration,\r\npropagation take place in them without nerves. In us these functions\r\nare conscious only in unusual states, normally their consciousness is\r\neclipsed by that which goes with the brain. No such eclipse occurs in\r\nplants, and their lower consciousness may therefore be all the more\r\nlively. With nothing to do but to drink the light and air with their\r\nleaves, to let their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw\r\nthe sap, is it conceivable that they should not consciously suffer\r\nif water, light, and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the\r\nflowering and fertilization which are the culmination of their life\r\ntake place, they should not feel their own existence more intensely\r\nand enjoy something like what we call pleasure in ourselves? Does\r\nthe water-lily, rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light,\r\nrelish in no wise her own beauty? When the plant in our room turns to\r\nthe light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering\r\nor pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has\r\nthe right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive\r\npart? Truly plants can foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the\r\nmower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neither\r\nrun away nor cry out. But this only proves how different their modes\r\nof feeling life must be from those of animals that live by eyes and\r\nears and locomotive organs, it does not prove that they have no mode\r\nof feeling life at all.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00219\"\u003eHow scanty and scattered would sensation be on our globe, if the\r\nfeeling-life of plants were blotted from existence. Solitary would\r\nconsciousness move through the woods in the shape of some deer or\r\nother quadruped, or fly about the flowers in that of some insect, but\r\ncan we really suppose that the Nature through which God\u0027s breath blows\r\nis such a barren wilderness as this?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00220\"\u003eI have probably by this time said enough to acquaint those of you who\r\nhave never seen these metaphysical writings of Fechner with their more\r\ngeneral characteristics, and I hope that some of you may now feel like\r\nreading them yourselves.[3] The special thought of Fechner\u0027s with\r\nwhich in these lectures I have most practical concern, is his\r\nbelief that the more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part\r\n\u003ci\u003econstituted\u003c/i\u003e by the more limited forms. Not that they are the mere\r\nsum of the more limited forms. As our mind is not the bare sum of\r\nour sights plus our sounds plus our pains, but in adding these terms\r\ntogether also finds relations among them and weaves them into schemes\r\nand forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate\r\nknows anything, so the earth-soul traces relations between the\r\ncontents of my mind and the contents of yours of which neither of\r\nour separate minds is conscious. It has schemes, forms, and objects\r\nproportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too\r\nnarrow to cognize. By ourselves we are simply out of relation with\r\neach other, for it we are both of us there, and \u003ci\u003edifferent\u003c/i\u003e from each\r\nother, which is a positive relation. What we are without knowing, it\r\nknows that we are. We are closed against its world, but that world is\r\nnot closed against us. It is as if the total universe of inner life\r\nhad a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure,\r\npermitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the wider might\r\nalways have the narrower under observation, but never the narrower the\r\nwider.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00221\"\u003eFechner\u0027s great analogy here is the relation of the senses to our\r\nindividual minds. When our eyes are open their sensations enter into\r\nour general mental life, which grows incessantly by the addition of\r\nwhat they see. Close the eyes, however, and the visual additions stop,\r\nnothing but thoughts and memories of the past visual experiences\r\nremain—in combination of course with the enormous stock of other\r\nthoughts and memories, and with the data coming in from the senses\r\nnot yet closed. Our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of this\r\nenormous life into which they fall. Fechner thinks, as any common man\r\nwould think, that they are taken into it directly when they occur,\r\nand form part of it just as they are. They don\u0027t stay outside and\r\nget represented inside by their copies. It is only the memories and\r\nconcepts of them that are copies; the sensible perceptions themselves\r\nare taken in or walled out in their own proper persons according as\r\nthe eyes are open or shut.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00222\"\u003eFechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many\r\nsense-organs of the earth\u0027s soul. We add to its perceptive life so\r\nlong as our own life lasts. It absorbs our perceptions, just as they\r\noccur, into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the\r\nother data there. When one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world\r\nwere closed, for all \u003ci\u003eperceptive\u003c/i\u003e contributions from that particular\r\nquarter cease. But the memories and conceptual relations that have\r\nspun themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the\r\nlarger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and grow\r\nand develop throughout all the future, in the same way in which our\r\nown distinct objects of thought, once stored in memory, form new\r\nrelations and develop throughout our whole finite life. This is\r\nFechner\u0027s theory of immortality, first published in the little\r\n\u0027Büchlein des lebens nach dem tode,\u0027 in 1836, and re-edited in greatly\r\nimproved shape in the last volume of his \u0027Zend-avesta.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00223\"\u003eWe rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the ocean. We grow out of\r\nher soil as leaves grow from a tree. The wavelets catch the sunbeams\r\nseparately, the leaves stir when the branches do not move. They\r\nrealize their own events apart, just as in our own consciousness, when\r\nanything becomes emphatic, the background fades from observation. Yet\r\nthe event works back upon the background, as the wavelet works upon\r\nthe waves, or as the leaf\u0027s movements work upon the sap inside the\r\nbranch. The whole sea and the whole tree are registers of what has\r\nhappened, and are different for the wave\u0027s and the leaf\u0027s action\r\nhaving occurred. A grafted twig may modify its stock to the roots:—so\r\nour outlived private experiences, impressed on the whole earth-mind as\r\nmemories, lead the immortal life of ideas there, and become parts of\r\nthe great system, fully distinguished from one another, just as we\r\nourselves when alive were distinct, realizing themselves no longer\r\nisolatedly, but along with one another as so many partial systems,\r\nentering thus into new combinations, being affected by the perceptive\r\nexperiences of those living then, and affecting the living in their\r\nturn—altho they are so seldom recognized by living men to do so.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00224\"\u003eIf you imagine that this entrance after the death of the body into a\r\ncommon life of higher type means a merging and loss of our distinct\r\npersonality, Fechner asks you whether a visual sensation of our own\r\nexists in any sense \u003ci\u003eless for itself\u003c/i\u003e or \u003ci\u003eless distinctly\u003c/i\u003e, when\r\nit enters into our higher relational consciousness and is there\r\ndistinguished and defined.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00225\"\u003e—But here I must stop my reporting and send you to his volumes. Thus\r\nis the universe alive, according to this philosopher! I think you\r\nwill admit that he makes it more \u003ci\u003ethickly\u003c/i\u003e alive than do the other\r\nphilosophers who, following rationalistic methods solely, gain the\r\nsame results, but only in the thinnest outlines. Both Fechner and\r\nProfessor Royce, for example, believe ultimately in one all-inclusive\r\nmind. Both believe that we, just as we stand here, are constituent\r\nparts of that mind. No other \u003ci\u003econtent\u003c/i\u003e has it than us, with all the\r\nother creatures like or unlike us, and the relations which it finds\r\nbetween us. Our eaches, collected into one, are substantively\r\nidentical with its all, tho the all is perfect while no each is\r\nperfect, so that we have to admit that new qualities as well as\r\nunperceived relations accrue from the collective form. It is thus\r\nsuperior to the distributive form. But having reached this result,\r\nRoyce (tho his treatment of the subject on its moral side seems to\r\nme infinitely richer and thicker than that of any other contemporary\r\nidealistic philosopher) leaves us very much to our own devices.\r\nFechner, on the contrary, tries to trace the superiorities due to the\r\nmore collective form in as much detail as he can. He marks the various\r\nintermediary stages and halting places of collectivity,—as we are to\r\nour separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system\r\nto the earth, etc.,—and if, in order to escape an infinitely long\r\nsummation, he posits a complete God as the all-container and leaves\r\nhim about as indefinite in feature as the idealists leave their\r\nabsolute, he yet provides us with a very definite gate of approach to\r\nhim in the shape of the earth-soul, through which in the nature of\r\nthings we must first make connexion with all the more enveloping\r\nsuperhuman realms, and with which our more immediate religious\r\ncommerce at any rate has to be carried on.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00226\"\u003eOrdinary monistic idealism leaves everything intermediary out. It\r\nrecognizes only the extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the\r\nphenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in\r\nall its perfection could be found. First, you and I, just as we are in\r\nthis room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable\r\nabsolute itself! Doesn\u0027t this show a singularly indigent imagination?\r\nIsn\u0027t this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in\r\nit for a long hierarchy of beings? Materialistic science makes it\r\ninfinitely richer in terms, with its molecules, and ether, and\r\nelectrons, and what not. Absolute idealism, thinking of reality only\r\nunder intellectual forms, knows not what to do with \u003ci\u003ebodies\u003c/i\u003e of\r\nany grade, and can make no use of any psychophysical analogy or\r\ncorrespondence. The resultant thinness is startling when compared with\r\nthe thickness and articulation of such a universe as Fechner paints.\r\nMay not satisfaction with the rationalistic absolute as the alpha\r\nand omega, and treatment of it in all its abstraction as an adequate\r\nreligious object, argue a certain native poverty of mental demand?\r\nThings reveal themselves soonest to those who most passionately want\r\nthem, for our need sharpens our wit. To a mind content with little,\r\nthe much in the universe may always remain hid.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00227\"\u003eTo be candid, one of my reasons for saying so much about Fechner has\r\nbeen to make the thinness of our current transcendentalism appear\r\nmore evident by an effect of contrast. Scholasticism ran thick; Hegel\r\nhimself ran thick; but english and american transcendentalisms run\r\nthin. If philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of\r\nlogic,—and I believe it is, logic only finding reasons for the vision\r\nafterwards,—must not such thinness come either from the vision being\r\ndefective in the disciples, or from their passion, matched with\r\nFechner\u0027s or with Hegel\u0027s own passion, being as moonlight unto\r\nsunlight or as water unto wine?[4]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00228\"\u003eBut I have also a much deeper reason for making Fechner a part of my\r\ntext. His \u003ci\u003eassumption that conscious experiences freely compound and\r\nseparate themselves\u003c/i\u003e, the same assumption by which absolutism explains\r\nthe relation of our minds to the eternal mind, and the same by\r\nwhich empiricism explains the composition of the human mind out of\r\nsubordinate mental elements, is not one which we ought to let pass\r\nwithout scrutiny. I shall scrutinize it in the next lecture.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE V\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eTHE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00231\"\u003eIn my last lecture I gave a miserably scanty outline of the way\r\nof thinking of a philosopher remarkable for the almost unexampled\r\nrichness of his imagination of details. I owe to Fechner\u0027s shade an\r\napology for presenting him in a manner so unfair to the most essential\r\nquality of his genius; but the time allotted is too short to say more\r\nabout the particulars of his work, so I proceed to the programme\r\nI suggested at the end of our last hour. I wish to discuss the\r\nassumption that states of consciousness, so-called, can separate and\r\ncombine themselves freely, and keep their own identity unchanged while\r\nforming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00232\"\u003eLet me first explain just what I mean by this. While you listen to\r\nmy voice, for example, you are perhaps inattentive to some bodily\r\nsensation due to your clothing or your posture. Yet that sensation\r\nwould seem probably to be there, for in an instant, by a change of\r\nattention, you can have it in one field of consciousness with the\r\nvoice. It seems as if it existed first in a separate form, and then as\r\nif, without itself changing, it combined with your other co-existent\r\nsensations. It is after this analogy that pantheistic idealism thinks\r\nthat we exist in the absolute. The absolute, it thinks, makes the\r\nworld by knowing the whole of it at once in one undivided eternal\r\nact.[1] To \u0027be,\u0027 \u003ci\u003ereally\u003c/i\u003e to be, is to be as it knows us to be, along\r\nwith everything else, namely, and clothed with the fulness of our\r\nmeaning. Meanwhile we \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e at the same time not only really and as it\r\nknows us, but also apparently, for to our separate single selves we\r\nappear \u003ci\u003ewithout\u003c/i\u003e most other things and unable to declare with\r\nany fulness what our own meaning is. Now the classic doctrine of\r\npantheistic idealism, from the Upanishads down to Josiah Royce, is\r\nthat the finite knowers, in spite of their apparent ignorance, are one\r\nwith the knower of the all. In the most limited moments of our private\r\nexperience, the absolute idea, as Dr. McTaggart told us, is implicitly\r\ncontained. The moments, as Royce says, exist only in relation to it.\r\nThey are true or erroneous only through its overshadowing presence. Of\r\nthe larger self that alone eternally is, they are the organic parts.\r\nThey \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e, only inasmuch as they are implicated in its being.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00233\"\u003eThere is thus in reality but this one self, consciously inclusive of\r\nall the lesser selves, \u003ci\u003elogos\u003c/i\u003e, problem-solver, and all-knower; and\r\nRoyce ingeniously compares the ignorance that in our persons breaks\r\nout in the midst of its complete knowledge and isolates me from you\r\nand both of us from it, to the inattention into which our finite minds\r\nare liable to fall with respect to such implicitly present details as\r\nthose corporeal sensations to which I made allusion just now. Those\r\nsensations stand to our total private minds in the same relation in\r\nwhich our private minds stand to the absolute mind. Privacy means\r\nignorance—I still quote Royce—and ignorance means inattention. We\r\nare finite because our wills, as such, are only fragments of the\r\nabsolute will; because will means interest, and an incomplete will\r\nmeans an incomplete interest; and because incompleteness of interest\r\nmeans inattention to much that a fuller interest would bring us to\r\nperceive.[2]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00234\"\u003eIn this account Royce makes by far the manliest of the post-hegelian\r\nattempts to read some empirically apprehensible content into the\r\nnotion of our relation to the absolute mind.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00235\"\u003eI have to admit, now that I propose to you to scrutinize this\r\nassumption rather closely, that trepidation seizes me. The subject is\r\na subtle and abstruse one. It is one thing to delve into subtleties by\r\none\u0027s self with pen in hand, or to study out abstruse points in\r\nbooks, but quite another thing to make a popular lecture out of them.\r\nNevertheless I must not flinch from my task here, for I think that\r\nthis particular point forms perhaps the vital knot of the present\r\nphilosophic situation, and I imagine that the times are ripe, or\r\nalmost ripe, for a serious attempt to be made at its untying.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00236\"\u003eIt may perhaps help to lessen the arduousness of the subject if I put\r\nthe first part of what I have to say in the form of a direct personal\r\nconfession.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00237\"\u003eIn the year 1890 I published a work on psychology in which it became\r\nmy duty to discuss the value of a certain explanation of our higher\r\nmental states that had come into favor among the more biologically\r\ninclined psychologists. Suggested partly by the association of ideas,\r\nand partly by the analogy of chemical compounds, this opinion was\r\nthat complex mental states are resultants of the self-compounding of\r\nsimpler ones. The Mills had spoken of mental chemistry; Wundt of a\r\n\u0027psychic synthesis,\u0027 which might develop properties not contained in\r\nthe elements; and such writers as Spencer, Taine, Fiske, Barratt, and\r\nClifford had propounded a great evolutionary theory in which, in the\r\nabsence of souls, selves, or other principles of unity, primordial\r\nunits of mind-stuff or mind-dust were represented as summing\r\nthemselves together in successive stages of compounding and\r\nre-compounding, and thus engendering our higher and more complex\r\nstates of mind. The elementary feeling of A, let us say, and the\r\nelementary feeling of B, when they occur in certain conditions,\r\ncombine, according to this doctrine, into a feeling of A-plus-B, and\r\nthis in turn combines with a similarly generated feeling of C-plus-D,\r\nuntil at last the whole alphabet may appear together in one field of\r\nawareness, without any other witnessing principle or principles beyond\r\nthe feelings of the several letters themselves, being supposed to\r\nexist. What each of them witnesses separately, \u0027all\u0027 of them are\r\nsupposed to witness in conjunction. But their distributive knowledge\r\ndoesn\u0027t \u003ci\u003egive rise\u003c/i\u003e to their collective knowledge by any act, it \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e\r\ntheir collective knowledge. The lower forms of consciousness \u0027taken\r\ntogether\u0027 \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e the higher. It, \u0027taken apart,\u0027 consists of nothing\r\nand \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e nothing but them. This, at least, is the most obvious way\r\nof understanding the doctrine, and is the way I understood it in the\r\nchapter in my psychology.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00238\"\u003eSuperficially looked at, this seems just like the combination of H_2\r\nand O into water, but looked at more closely, the analogy halts badly.\r\nWhen a chemist tells us that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen\r\ncombine themselves of their own accord into the new compound substance\r\n\u0027water,\u0027 he knows (if he believes in the mechanical view of nature)\r\nthat this is only an elliptical statement for a more complex fact.\r\nThat fact is that when H_2 and O, instead of keeping far apart, get\r\ninto closer quarters, say into the position H-O-H, they \u003ci\u003eaffect\r\nsurrounding bodies differently\u003c/i\u003e: they now wet our skin, dissolve\r\nsugar, put out fire, etc., which they didn\u0027t in their former\r\npositions. \u0027Water\u0027 is but \u003ci\u003eour name\u003c/i\u003e for what acts thus peculiarly.\r\nBut if the skin, sugar, and fire were absent, no witness would speak\r\nof water at all. He would still talk of the H and O distributively,\r\nmerely noting that they acted now in the new position H-O-H.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00239\"\u003eIn the older psychologies the soul or self took the place of the\r\nsugar, fire, or skin. The lower feelings produced \u003ci\u003eeffects on it\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nand their apparent compounds were only its reactions. As you tickle\r\na man\u0027s face with a feather, and he laughs, so when you tickle his\r\nintellectual principle with a retinal feeling, say, and a muscular\r\nfeeling at once, it laughs responsively by its category of \u0027space,\u0027\r\nbut it would be false to treat the space as simply made of those\r\nsimpler feelings. It is rather a new and unique psychic creation which\r\ntheir combined action on the mind is able to evoke.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00240\"\u003eI found myself obliged, in discussing the mind-dust theory, to urge\r\nthis last alternative view. The so-called mental compounds are simple\r\npsychic reactions of a higher type. The form itself of them, I said,\r\nis something new. We can\u0027t say that awareness of the alphabet as\r\nsuch is nothing more than twenty-six awarenesses, each of a separate\r\nletter; for those are twenty-six distinct awarenesses, of single\r\nletters \u003ci\u003ewithout\u003c/i\u003e others, while their so-called sum is one awareness,\r\nof every letter \u003ci\u003ewith\u003c/i\u003e its comrades. There is thus something new in\r\nthe collective consciousness. It knows the same letters, indeed, but\r\nit knows them in this novel way. It is safer, I said (for I fought shy\r\nof admitting a self or soul or other agent of combination), to treat\r\nthe consciousness of the alphabet as a twenty-seventh fact, the\r\nsubstitute and not the sum of the twenty-six simpler consciousnesses,\r\nand to say that while under certain physiological conditions they\r\nalone are produced, other more complex physiological conditions result\r\nin its production instead. Do not talk, therefore, I said, of the\r\nhigher states \u003ci\u003econsisting\u003c/i\u003e of the simpler, or \u003ci\u003ebeing\u003c/i\u003e the same with\r\nthem; talk rather of their \u003ci\u003eknowing the same things\u003c/i\u003e. They are\r\ndifferent mental facts, but they apprehend, each in its own peculiar\r\nway, the same objective A, B, C, and D.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00241\"\u003eThe theory of combination, I was forced to conclude, is thus\r\nuntenable, being both logically nonsensical and practically\r\nunnecessary. Say what you will, twelve thoughts, each of a single\r\nword, are not the self-same mental thing as one thought of the whole\r\nsentence. The higher thoughts, I insisted, are psychic units, not\r\ncompounds; but for all that, they may know together as a collective\r\nmultitude the very same objects which under other conditions are known\r\nseparately by as many simple thoughts.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00242\"\u003eFor many years I held rigorously to this view,[3] and the reasons for\r\ndoing so seemed to me during all those years to apply also to the\r\nopinion that the absolute mind stands to our minds in the relation of\r\na whole to its parts. If untenable in finite psychology, that opinion\r\nought to be untenable in metaphysics also. The great transcendentalist\r\nmetaphor has always been, as I lately reminded you, a grammatical\r\nsentence. Physically such a sentence is of course composed of clauses,\r\nthese of words, the words of syllables, and the syllables of letters.\r\nWe may take each word in, yet not understand the sentence; but if\r\nsuddenly the meaning of the whole sentence flashes, the sense of each\r\nword is taken up into that whole meaning. Just so, according to\r\nour transcendentalist teachers, the absolute mind thinks the whole\r\nsentence, while we, according to our rank as thinkers, think a clause,\r\na word, a syllable, or a letter. Most of us are, as I said, mere\r\nsyllables in the mouth of Allah. And as Allah comes first in the order\r\nof being, so comes first the entire sentence, the \u003ci\u003elogos\u003c/i\u003e that forms\r\nthe eternal absolute thought. Students of language tell us that speech\r\nbegan with men\u0027s efforts to make \u003ci\u003estatements\u003c/i\u003e. The rude synthetic\r\nvocal utterances first used for this effect slowly got stereotyped,\r\nand then much later got decomposed into grammatical parts. It is not\r\nas if men had first invented letters and made syllables of them, then\r\nmade words of the syllables and sentences of the words;—they actually\r\nfollowed the reverse order. So, the transcendentalists affirm, the\r\ncomplete absolute thought is the pre-condition of our thoughts, and\r\nwe finite creatures \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e only in so far as it owns us as its verbal\r\nfragments.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00243\"\u003eThe metaphor is so beautiful, and applies, moreover, so literally to\r\nsuch a multitude of the minor wholes of experience, that by merely\r\nhearing it most of us are convinced that it must apply universally.\r\nWe see that no smallest raindrop can come into being without a whole\r\nshower, no single feather without a whole bird, neck and crop, beak\r\nand tail, coming into being simultaneously: so we unhesitatingly lay\r\ndown the law that no part of anything can be except so far as the\r\nwhole also is. And then, since everything whatever is part of the\r\nwhole universe, and since (if we are idealists) nothing, whether part\r\nor whole, exists except for a witness, we proceed to the conclusion\r\nthat the unmitigated absolute as witness of the whole is the one sole\r\nground of being of every partial fact, the fact of our own existence\r\nincluded. We think of ourselves as being only a few of the feathers,\r\nso to speak, which help to constitute that absolute bird. Extending\r\nthe analogy of certain wholes, of which we have familiar experience,\r\nto the whole of wholes, we easily become absolute idealists.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00244\"\u003eBut if, instead of yielding to the seductions of our metaphor, be\r\nit sentence, shower, or bird, we analyze more carefully the notion\r\nsuggested by it that we are constituent parts of the absolute\u0027s\r\neternal field of consciousness, we find grave difficulties arising.\r\nFirst, the difficulty I found with the mind-dust theory. If the\r\nabsolute makes us by knowing us, how can we exist otherwise than \u003ci\u003eas\u003c/i\u003e\r\nit knows us? But it knows each of us indivisibly from everything else.\r\nYet if to exist means nothing but to be experienced, as idealism\r\naffirms, we surely exist otherwise, for we experience \u003ci\u003eourselves\u003c/i\u003e\r\nignorantly and in division. We indeed differ from the absolute not\r\nonly by defect, but by excess. Our ignorances, for example, bring\r\ncuriosities and doubts by which it cannot be troubled, for it owns\r\neternally the solution of every problem. Our impotence entails pains,\r\nour imperfection sins, which its perfection keeps at a distance. What\r\nI said of the alphabet-form and the letters holds good of the absolute\r\nexperience and our experiences. Their relation, whatever it may be,\r\nseems not to be that of identity.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00245\"\u003eIt is impossible to reconcile the peculiarities of our experience with\r\nour being only the absolute\u0027s mental objects. A God, as distinguished\r\nfrom the absolute, creates things by projecting them beyond himself as\r\nso many substances, each endowed with \u003ci\u003eperseity\u003c/i\u003e, as the scholastics\r\ncall it. But objects of thought are not things \u003ci\u003eper se\u003c/i\u003e. They are\r\nthere only \u003ci\u003efor\u003c/i\u003e their thinker, and only \u003ci\u003eas\u003c/i\u003e he thinks them. How,\r\nthen, can they become severally alive on their own accounts and think\r\nthemselves quite otherwise than as he thinks them? It is as if the\r\ncharacters in a novel were to get up from the pages, and walk away and\r\ntransact business of their own outside of the author\u0027s story.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00246\"\u003eA third difficulty is this: The bird-metaphor is physical, but we\r\nsee on reflection that in the \u003ci\u003ephysical\u003c/i\u003e world there is no real\r\ncompounding. \u0027Wholes\u0027 are not realities there, parts only are\r\nrealities. \u0027Bird\u0027 is only our \u003ci\u003ename\u003c/i\u003e for the physical fact of a\r\ncertain grouping of organs, just as \u0027Charles\u0027s Wain\u0027 is our name for a\r\ncertain grouping of stars. The \u0027whole,\u0027 be it bird or constellation,\r\nis nothing but our vision, nothing but an effect on our sensorium when\r\na lot of things act on it together. It is not realized by any organ\r\nor any star, or experienced apart from the consciousness of an\r\nonlooker.[4] In the physical world taken by itself there \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e thus no\r\n\u0027all,\u0027 there are only the \u0027eaches\u0027—at least that is the \u0027scientific\u0027\r\nview.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00247\"\u003eIn the mental world, on the contrary, wholes do in point of fact\r\nrealize themselves \u003ci\u003eper se\u003c/i\u003e. The meaning of the whole sentence is\r\njust as much a real experience as the feeling of each word is; the\r\nabsolute\u0027s experience \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e for itself, as much as yours is for\r\nyourself or mine for myself. So the feather-and-bird analogy won\u0027t\r\nwork unless you make the absolute into a distinct sort of mental agent\r\nwith a vision produced in it \u003ci\u003eby\u003c/i\u003e our several minds analogous to the\r\n\u0027bird\u0027-vision which the feathers, beak, etc., produce \u003ci\u003ein\u003c/i\u003e those same\r\nminds. The \u0027whole,\u0027 which is \u003ci\u003eits\u003c/i\u003e experience, would then be its\r\nunifying reaction on our experiences, and not those very experiences\r\nself-combined. Such a view as this would go with theism, for the\r\ntheistic God is a separate being; but it would not go with pantheistic\r\nidealism, the very essence of which is to insist that we are literally\r\n\u003ci\u003eparts\u003c/i\u003e of God, and he only ourselves in our totality—the word\r\n\u0027ourselves\u0027 here standing of course for all the universe\u0027s finite\r\nfacts.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00248\"\u003eI am dragging you into depths unsuitable, I fear, for a rapid lecture.\r\nSuch difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to\r\nspeak, and lecturers should take only bird\u0027s-eye views. The practical\r\nupshot of the matter, however, so far as I am concerned, is this, that\r\nif I had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ago, I should\r\nunhesitatingly have urged these difficulties, and developed them at\r\nstill greater length, to show that the hypothesis of the absolute\r\nwas not only non-coercive from the logical point of view, but\r\nself-contradictory as well, its notion that parts and whole are only\r\ntwo names for the same thing not bearing critical scrutiny. If you\r\nstick to purely physical terms like stars, there is no whole. If you\r\ncall the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one\r\nfact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those\r\nparts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic God is\r\nsupposed to be.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00249\"\u003eSo long as this was the state of my own mind, I could accept the\r\nnotion of self-compounding in the supernal spheres of experience no\r\nmore easily than in that chapter on mind-dust I had accepted it in\r\nthe lower spheres. I found myself compelled, therefore, to call\r\nthe absolute impossible; and the untrammelled freedom with which\r\npantheistic or monistic idealists stepped over the logical barriers\r\nwhich Lotze and others had set down long before I had—I had done\r\nlittle more than quote these previous critics in my chapter—surprised\r\nme not a little, and made me, I have to confess, both resentful and\r\nenvious. Envious because in the bottom of my heart I wanted the same\r\nfreedom myself, for motives which I shall develop later; and resentful\r\nbecause my absolutist friends seemed to me to be stealing the\r\nprivilege of blowing both hot and cold. To establish their absolute\r\nthey used an intellectualist type of logic which they disregarded when\r\nemployed against it. It seemed to me that they ought at least to have\r\nmentioned the objections that had stopped me so completely. I had\r\nyielded to them against my \u0027will to believe,\u0027 out of pure logical\r\nscrupulosity. They, professing to loathe the will to believe and to\r\nfollow purest rationality, had simply ignored them. The method was\r\neasy, but hardly to be called candid. Fechner indeed was candid\r\nenough, for he had never thought of the objections, but later writers,\r\nlike Royce, who should presumably have heard them, had passed them by\r\nin silence. I felt as if these philosophers were granting their will\r\nto believe in monism too easy a license. My own conscience would\r\npermit me no such license.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00250\"\u003eSo much for the personal confession by which you have allowed me to\r\nintroduce the subject. Let us now consider it more objectively.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00251\"\u003eThe fundamental difficulty I have found is the number of\r\ncontradictions which idealistic monists seem to disregard. In the\r\nfirst place they attribute to all existence a mental or experiential\r\ncharacter, but I find their simultaneous belief that the higher and\r\nthe lower in the universe are entitatively identical, incompatible\r\nwith this character. Incompatible in consequence of the generally\r\naccepted doctrine that, whether Berkeley were right or not in saying\r\nof material existence that its \u003ci\u003eesse\u003c/i\u003e is \u003ci\u003esentiri\u003c/i\u003e, it is undoubtedly\r\nright to say of \u003ci\u003emental\u003c/i\u003e existence that its \u003ci\u003eesse\u003c/i\u003e is \u003ci\u003esentiri\u003c/i\u003e or\r\n\u003ci\u003eexperiri\u003c/i\u003e. If I feel pain, it is just pain that I feel, however I\r\nmay have come by the feeling. No one pretends that pain as such only\r\nappears like pain, but in itself is different, for to be as a mental\r\nexperience \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e only to appear to some one.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00252\"\u003eThe idealists in question ought then to do one of two things, but they\r\ndo neither. They ought either to refute the notion that as mental\r\nstates appear, so they are; or, still keeping that notion, they\r\nought to admit a distinct agent of unification to do the work of\r\nthe all-knower, just as our respective souls or selves in popular\r\nphilosophy do the work of partial knowers. Otherwise it is like a\r\njoint-stock company all shareholders and no treasurer or director. If\r\nour finite minds formed a billion facts, then its mind, knowing our\r\nbillion, would make a universe composed of a billion and one facts.\r\nBut transcendental idealism is quite as unfriendly to active\r\nprinciples called souls as physiological psychology is, Kant having,\r\nas it thinks, definitively demolished them. And altho some disciples\r\nspeak of the transcendental ego of apperception (which they celebrate\r\nas Kant\u0027s most precious legacy to posterity) as if it were a combining\r\nagent, the drift of monistic authority is certainly in the direction\r\nof treating it as only an all-witness, whose field of vision we finite\r\nwitnesses do not cause, but constitute rather. We are the letters, it\r\nis the alphabet; we are the features, it is the face; not indeed as if\r\neither alphabet or face were something additional to the letters or\r\nthe features, but rather as if it were only another name for the very\r\nletters or features themselves. The all-form assuredly differs from\r\nthe each-form, but the \u003ci\u003ematter\u003c/i\u003e is the same in both, and the each-form\r\nonly an unaccountable appearance.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00253\"\u003eBut this, as you see, contradicts the other idealist principle, of\r\na mental fact being just what it appears to be. If their forms\r\nof appearance are so different, the all and the eaches cannot be\r\nidentical.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00254\"\u003eThe way out (unless, indeed, we are willing to discard the logic of\r\nidentity altogether) would seem to be frankly to write down the all\r\nand the eaches as two distinct orders of witness, each minor witness\r\nbeing aware of its own \u0027content\u0027 solely, while the greater witness\r\nknows the minor witnesses, knows their whole content pooled together,\r\nknows their relations to one another, and knows of just how much each\r\none of them is ignorant.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00255\"\u003eThe two types of witnessing are here palpably non-identical. We get a\r\npluralism, not a monism, out of them. In my psychology-chapter I\r\nhad resorted openly to such pluralism, treating each total field of\r\nconsciousness as a distinct entity, and maintaining that the higher\r\nfields merely supersede the lower functionally by knowing more about\r\nthe same objects.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00256\"\u003eThe monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape\r\npluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it.\r\nThey speak of the eternal and the temporal \u0027points of view\u0027; of the\r\nuniverse in its infinite \u0027aspect\u0027 or in its finite \u0027capacity\u0027; they\r\nsay that \u0027\u003ci\u003equâ\u003c/i\u003e absolute\u0027 it is one thing, \u0027\u003ci\u003equâ\u003c/i\u003e relative\u0027 another;\r\nthey contrast its \u0027truth\u0027 with its appearances; they distinguish the\r\ntotal from the partial way of \u0027taking\u0027 it, etc.; but they forget that,\r\non idealistic principles, to make such distinctions is tantamount to\r\nmaking different beings, or at any rate that varying points of view,\r\naspects, appearances, ways of taking, and the like, are meaningless\r\nphrases unless we suppose outside of the unchanging content of reality\r\na diversity of witnesses who experience or take it variously, the\r\nabsolute mind being just the witness that takes it most completely.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00257\"\u003eFor consider the matter one moment longer, if you can. Ask what this\r\nnotion implies, of appearing differently from different points of\r\nview. If there be no outside witness, a thing can appear only to\r\nitself, the eaches or parts to their several selves temporally, the\r\nall or whole to itself eternally. Different \u0027selves\u0027 thus break out\r\ninside of what the absolutist insists to be intrinsically one fact.\r\nBut how can what is \u003ci\u003eactually\u003c/i\u003e one be \u003ci\u003eeffectively\u003c/i\u003e so many? Put your\r\nwitnesses anywhere, whether outside or inside of what is witnessed,\r\nin the last resort your witnesses must on idealistic principles be\r\ndistinct, for what is witnessed is different.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00258\"\u003eI fear that I am expressing myself with terrible obscurity—some of\r\nyou, I know, are groaning over the logic-chopping. Be a pluralist or\r\nbe a monist, you say, for heaven\u0027s sake, no matter which, so long as\r\nyou stop arguing. It reminds one of Chesterton\u0027s epigram that the only\r\nthing that ever drives human beings insane is logic. But whether I be\r\nsane or insane, you cannot fail, even tho you be transcendentalists\r\nyourselves, to recognize to some degree by my trouble the difficulties\r\nthat beset monistic idealism. What boots it to call the parts and the\r\nwhole the same body of experience, when in the same breath you have to\r\nsay that the all \u0027as such\u0027 means one sort of experience and each part\r\n\u0027as such\u0027 means another?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00259\"\u003eDifficulties, then, so far, but no stable solution as yet, for I have\r\nbeen talking only critically. You will probably be relieved to hear,\r\nthen, that having rounded this corner, I shall begin to consider what\r\nmay be the possibilities of getting farther.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00260\"\u003eTo clear the path, I beg you first to note one point. What has so\r\ntroubled my logical conscience is not so much the absolute by itself\r\nas the whole class of suppositions of which it is the supreme\r\nexample, collective experiences namely, claiming identity with their\r\nconstituent parts, yet experiencing things quite differently from\r\nthese latter. If \u003ci\u003eany\u003c/i\u003e such collective experience can be, then of\r\ncourse, so far as the mere logic of the case goes, the absolute may\r\nbe. In a previous lecture I have talked against the absolute from\r\nother points of view. In this lecture I have meant merely to take it\r\nas the example most prominent at Oxford of the thing which has given\r\nme such logical perplexity. I don\u0027t logically see how a collective\r\nexperience of any grade whatever can be treated as logically identical\r\nwith a lot of distributive experiences. They form two different\r\nconcepts. The absolute happens to be the only collective experience\r\nconcerning which Oxford idealists have urged the identity, so I took\r\nit as my prerogative instance. But Fechner\u0027s earth-soul, or any stage\r\nof being below or above that, would have served my purpose just\r\nas well: the same logical objection applies to these collective\r\nexperiences as to the absolute.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00261\"\u003eSo much, then, in order that you may not be confused about my\r\nstrategical objective. The real point to defend against the logic that\r\nI have used is the identity of the collective and distributive anyhow,\r\nnot the particular example of such identity known as the absolute.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00262\"\u003eSo now for the directer question. Shall we say that every complex\r\nmental fact is a separate psychic entity succeeding upon a lot of\r\nother psychic entities which are erroneously called its parts, and\r\nsuperseding them in function, but not literally being composed of\r\nthem? This was the course I took in my psychology; and if followed in\r\ntheology, we should have to deny the absolute as usually conceived,\r\nand replace it by the \u0027God\u0027 of theism. We should also have to deny\r\nFechner\u0027s \u0027earth-soul\u0027 and all other superhuman collections of\r\nexperience of every grade, so far at least as these are held to be\r\ncompounded of our simpler souls in the way which Fechner believed\r\nin; and we should have to make all these denials in the name of the\r\nincorruptible logic of self-identity, teaching us that to call a thing\r\nand its other the same is to commit the crime of self-contradiction.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00263\"\u003eBut if we realize the whole philosophic situation thus produced,\r\nwe see that it is almost intolerable. Loyal to the logical kind of\r\nrationality, it is disloyal to every other kind. It makes the universe\r\ndiscontinuous. These fields of experience that replace each other\r\nso punctually, each knowing the same matter, but in ever-widening\r\ncontexts, from simplest feeling up to absolute knowledge, \u003ci\u003ecan\u003c/i\u003e\r\nthey have no \u003ci\u003ebeing\u003c/i\u003e in common when their cognitive function is so\r\nmanifestly common? The regular succession of them is on such terms an\r\nunintelligible miracle. If you reply that their common \u003ci\u003eobject\u003c/i\u003e is\r\nof itself enough to make the many witnesses continuous, the same\r\nimplacable logic follows you—how \u003ci\u003ecan\u003c/i\u003e one and the same object appear\r\nso variously? Its diverse appearances break it into a plurality; and\r\nour world of objects then falls into discontinuous pieces quite as\r\nmuch as did our world of subjects. The resultant irrationality is\r\nreally intolerable.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00264\"\u003eI said awhile ago that I was envious of Fechner and the other\r\npantheists because I myself wanted the same freedom that I saw them\r\nunscrupulously enjoying, of letting mental fields compound themselves\r\nand so make the universe more continuous, but that my conscience held\r\nme prisoner. In my heart of hearts, however, I knew that my situation\r\nwas absurd and could be only provisional. That secret of a continuous\r\nlife which the universe knows by heart and acts on every instant\r\ncannot be a contradiction incarnate. If logic says it is one, so\r\nmuch the worse for logic. Logic being the lesser thing, the static\r\nincomplete abstraction, must succumb to reality, not reality to logic.\r\nOur intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in its\r\nchrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the\r\nuniverse that engendered it. Fechner, Royce, and Hegel seem on the\r\ntruer path. Fechner has never heard of logic\u0027s veto, Royce hears the\r\nvoice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to\r\nspurn them—and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall we alone obey the\r\nveto?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00265\"\u003eSincerely, and patiently as I could, I struggled with the problem for\r\nyears, covering hundreds of sheets of paper with notes and memoranda\r\nand discussions with myself over the difficulty. How can many\r\nconsciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can one and\r\nthe same identical fact experience itself so diversely? The struggle\r\nwas vain; I found myself in an \u003ci\u003eimpasse\u003c/i\u003e. I saw that I must either\r\nforswear that \u0027psychology without a soul\u0027 to which my whole\r\npsychological and kantian education had committed me,—I must, in\r\nshort, bring back distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states,\r\nnow singly and now in combination, in a word bring back scholasticism\r\nand common sense—or else I must squarely confess the solution of\r\nthe problem impossible, and then either give up my intellectualistic\r\nlogic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or lower) form\r\nof rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is logically\r\nirrational.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00266\"\u003eSincerely, this is the actual trilemma that confronts every one of us.\r\nThose of you who are scholastic-minded, or simply common-sense minded,\r\nwill smile at the elaborate groans of my parturient mountain resulting\r\nin nothing but this mouse. Accept the spiritual agents, for heaven\u0027s\r\nsake, you will say, and leave off your ridiculous pedantry. Let but\r\nour \u0027souls\u0027 combine our sensations by their intellectual faculties,\r\nand let but \u0027God\u0027 replace the pantheistic world-soul, and your wheels\r\nwill go round again—you will enjoy both life and logic together.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00267\"\u003eThis solution is obvious and I know that many of you will adopt it. It\r\nis comfortable, and all our habits of speech support it. Yet it is not\r\nfor idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the substantial\r\nsoul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophies,\r\nhas fallen upon such evil days, and has no prestige in the eyes of\r\ncritical thinkers. It only shares the fate of other unrepresentable\r\nsubstances and principles. They are without exception all so barren\r\nthat to sincere inquirers they appear as little more than names\r\nmasquerading—Wo die begriffe fehlen da stellt ein wort zur rechten\r\nzeit sich ein. You see no deeper into the fact that a hundred\r\nsensations get compounded or known together by thinking that a \u0027soul\u0027\r\ndoes the compounding than you see into a man\u0027s living eighty years by\r\nthinking of him as an octogenarian, or into our having five fingers by\r\ncalling us pentadactyls. Souls have worn out both themselves and\r\ntheir welcome, that is the plain truth. Philosophy ought to get the\r\nmanifolds of experience unified on principles less empty. Like the\r\nword \u0027cause,\u0027 the word \u0027soul\u0027 is but a theoretic stop-gap—it marks a\r\nplace and claims it for a future explanation to occupy.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00268\"\u003eThis being our post-humian and post-kantian state of mind, I will ask\r\nyour permission to leave the soul wholly out of the present discussion\r\nand to consider only the residual dilemma. Some day, indeed, souls may\r\nget their innings again in philosophy—I am quite ready to admit that\r\npossibility—they form a category of thought too natural to the human\r\nmind to expire without prolonged resistance. But if the belief in the\r\nsoul ever does come to life after the many funeral-discourses which\r\nhumian and kantian criticism have preached over it, I am sure it will\r\nbe only when some one has found in the term a pragmatic significance\r\nthat has hitherto eluded observation. When that champion speaks, as\r\nhe well may speak some day, it will be time to consider souls more\r\nseriously.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00269\"\u003eLet us leave out the soul, then, and confront what I just called\r\nthe residual dilemma. Can we, on the one hand, give up the logic\r\nof identity?—can we, on the other, believe human experience to be\r\nfundamentally irrational? Neither is easy, yet it would seem that we\r\nmust do one or the other.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00270\"\u003eFew philosophers have had the frankness fairly to admit the necessity\r\nof choosing between the \u0027horns\u0027 offered. Reality must be rational,\r\nthey have said, and since the ordinary intellectualist logic is\r\nthe only usual test of rationality, reality and logic must agree\r\n\u0027somehow.\u0027 Hegel was the first non-mystical writer to face the\r\ndilemma squarely and throw away the ordinary logic, saving a\r\npseudo-rationality for the universe by inventing the higher logic of\r\nthe \u0027dialectic process.\u0027 Bradley holds to the intellectualist logic,\r\nand by dint of it convicts the human universe of being irrationality\r\nincarnate. But what must be and can be, is, he says; there must and\r\ncan be relief from \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e irrationality; and the absolute must already\r\nhave got the relief in secret ways of its own, impossible for us to\r\nguess at. \u003ci\u003eWe\u003c/i\u003e of course get no relief, so Bradley\u0027s is a rather\r\nascetic doctrine. Royce and Taylor accept similar solutions, only they\r\nemphasize the irrationality of our finite universe less than Bradley\r\ndoes; and Royce in particular, being unusually \u0027thick\u0027 for an\r\nidealist, tries to bring the absolute\u0027s secret forms of relief more\r\nsympathetically home to our imagination.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00271\"\u003eWell, what must we do in this tragic predicament? For my own part, I\r\nhave finally found myself compelled to \u003ci\u003egive up the logic\u003c/i\u003e, fairly,\r\nsquarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life,\r\nbut that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the\r\nessential nature of reality—just what it is I can perhaps suggest\r\nto you a little later. Reality, life, experience, concreteness,\r\nimmediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and\r\nsurrounds it. If you like to employ words eulogistically, as most\r\nmen do, and so encourage confusion, you may say that reality obeys a\r\nhigher logic, or enjoys a higher rationality. But I think that\r\neven eulogistic words should be used rather to distinguish than\r\nto commingle meanings, so I prefer bluntly to call reality if not\r\nirrational then at least non-rational in its constitution,—and by\r\nreality here I mean reality where things \u003ci\u003ehappen\u003c/i\u003e, all temporal\r\nreality without exception. I myself find no good warrant for even\r\nsuspecting the existence of any reality of a higher denomination than\r\nthat distributed and strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we\r\nfinite beings swim in. That is the sort of reality given us, and that\r\nis the sort with which logic is so incommensurable. If there be any\r\nhigher sort of reality—the \u0027absolute,\u0027 for example—that sort, by\r\nthe confession of those who believe in it, is still less amenable\r\nto ordinary logic; it transcends logic and is therefore still less\r\nrational in the intellectualist sense, so it cannot help us to save\r\nour logic as an adequate definer and confiner of existence.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00272\"\u003eThese sayings will sound queer and dark, probably they will sound\r\nquite wild or childish in the absence of explanatory comment. Only the\r\npersuasion that I soon can explain them, if not satisfactorily to all\r\nof you, at least intelligibly, emboldens me to state them thus baldly\r\nas a sort of programme. Please take them as a thesis, therefore, to be\r\ndefended by later pleading.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00273\"\u003eI told you that I had long and sincerely wrestled with the dilemma. I\r\nhave now to confess (and this will probably re-animate your interest)\r\nthat I should not now be emancipated, not now subordinate logic with\r\nso very light a heart, or throw it out of the deeper regions of\r\nphilosophy to take its rightful and respectable place in the world of\r\nsimple human practice, if I had not been influenced by a comparatively\r\nyoung and very original french writer, Professor Henri Bergson.\r\nReading his works is what has made me bold. If I had not read\r\nBergson, I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper\r\nprivately, in the hope of making ends meet that were never meant to\r\nmeet, and trying to discover some mode of conceiving the behavior of\r\nreality which should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted\r\nlaws of the logic of identity. It is certain, at any rate, that\r\nwithout the confidence which being able to lean on Bergson\u0027s authority\r\ngives me I should never have ventured to urge these particular views\r\nof mine upon this ultra-critical audience.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00274\"\u003eI must therefore, in order to make my own views more intelligible,\r\ngive some preliminary account of the bergsonian philosophy. But here,\r\nas in Fechner\u0027s case, I must confine myself only to the features\r\nthat are essential to the present purpose, and not entangle you in\r\ncollateral details, however interesting otherwise. For our present\r\npurpose, then, the essential contribution of Bergson to philosophy\r\nis his criticism of intellectualism. In my opinion he has killed\r\nintellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery. I don\u0027t\r\nsee how it can ever revive again in its ancient platonizing rôle of\r\nclaiming to be the most authentic, intimate, and exhaustive definer\r\nof the nature of reality. Others, as Kant for example, have denied\r\nintellectualism\u0027s pretensions to define reality \u003ci\u003ean sich\u003c/i\u003e or in its\r\nabsolute capacity; but Kant still leaves it laying down laws—and laws\r\nfrom which there is no appeal—to all our human experience; while what\r\nBergson denies is that its methods give any adequate account of this\r\nhuman experience in its very finiteness. Just how Bergson accomplishes\r\nall this I must try to tell in my imperfect way in the next lecture;\r\nbut since I have already used the words \u0027logic,\u0027 \u0027logic of identity,\r\nintellectualistic logic,\u0027 and \u0027intellectualism\u0027 so often, and\r\nsometimes used them as if they required no particular explanation, it\r\nwill be wise at this point to say at greater length than heretofore in\r\nwhat sense I take these terms when I claim that Bergson has refuted\r\ntheir pretension to decide what reality can or cannot be. Just what I\r\nmean by intellectualism is therefore what I shall try to give a fuller\r\nidea of during the remainder of this present hour.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00275\"\u003eIn recent controversies some participants have shown resentment\r\nat being classed as intellectualists. I mean to use the word\r\ndisparagingly, but shall be sorry if it works offence. Intellectualism\r\nhas its source in the faculty which gives us our chief superiority to\r\nthe brutes, our power, namely, of translating the crude flux of our\r\nmerely feeling-experience into a conceptual order. An immediate\r\nexperience, as yet unnamed or classed, is a mere \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e that we\r\nundergo, a thing that asks, \u0027\u003ci\u003eWhat\u003c/i\u003e am I?\u0027 When we name and class it,\r\nwe say for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract\r\nnames or concepts. Each concept means a particular \u003ci\u003ekind\u003c/i\u003e of thing,\r\nand as things seem once for all to have been created in kinds, a far\r\nmore efficient handling of a given bit of experience begins as soon as\r\nwe have classed the various parts of it. Once classed, a thing can be\r\ntreated by the law of its class, and the advantages are endless. Both\r\ntheoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts\r\nis one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. We come back\r\ninto the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an\r\nincrease both of vision and of power. It is no wonder that earlier\r\nthinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the\r\ntemporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type\r\nof being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in\r\nnature to the turbid, restless lower world. The latter then appears as\r\nbut their corruption and falsification.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00276\"\u003eIntellectualism in the vicious sense began when Socrates and Plato\r\ntaught that what a thing really is, is told us by its \u003ci\u003edefinition\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nEver since Socrates we have been taught that reality consists of\r\nessences, not of appearances, and that the essences of things are\r\nknown whenever we know their definitions. So first we identify\r\nthe thing with a concept and then we identify the concept with a\r\ndefinition, and only then, inasmuch as the thing \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e whatever the\r\ndefinition expresses, are we sure of apprehending the real essence of\r\nit or the full truth about it.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00277\"\u003eSo far no harm is done. The misuse of concepts begins with the habit\r\nof employing them privatively as well as positively, using them not\r\nmerely to assign properties to things, but to deny the very properties\r\nwith which the things sensibly present themselves. Logic can extract\r\nall its possible consequences from any definition, and the logician\r\nwho is \u003ci\u003eunerbittlich consequent\u003c/i\u003e is often tempted, when he cannot\r\nextract a certain property from a definition, to deny that the\r\nconcrete object to which the definition applies can possibly possess\r\nthat property. The definition that fails to yield it must exclude or\r\nnegate it. This is Hegel\u0027s regular method of establishing his system.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00278\"\u003eIt is but the old story, of a useful practice first becoming a method,\r\nthen a habit, and finally a tyranny that defeats the end it was used\r\nfor. Concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung\r\nto even when they make them unintelligible. Thus it comes that when\r\nonce you have conceived things as \u0027independent,\u0027 you must proceed to\r\ndeny the possibility of any connexion whatever among them, because\r\nthe notion of connexion is not contained in the definition of\r\nindependence. For a like reason you must deny any possible forms or\r\nmodes of unity among things which you have begun by defining as a\r\n\u0027many.\u0027 We have cast a glance at Hegel\u0027s and Bradley\u0027s use of this\r\nsort of reasoning, and you will remember Sigwart\u0027s epigram that\r\naccording to it a horseman can never in his life go on foot, or a\r\nphotographer ever do anything but photograph.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00279\"\u003eThe classic extreme in this direction is the denial of the possibility\r\nof change, and the consequent branding of the world of change as\r\nunreal, by certain philosophers. The definition of A is changeless,\r\nso is the definition of B. The one definition cannot change into\r\nthe other, so the notion that a concrete thing A should change into\r\nanother concrete thing B is made Out to be contrary to reason. In Mr.\r\nBradley\u0027s difficulty in seeing how sugar can be sweet intellectualism\r\noutstrips itself and becomes openly a sort of verbalism. Sugar is just\r\nsugar and sweet is just sweet; neither is the other; nor can the\r\nword \u0027is\u0027 ever be understood to join any subject to its predicate\r\nrationally. Nothing \u0027between\u0027 things can connect them, for \u0027between\u0027\r\nis just that third thing, \u0027between,\u0027 and would need itself to be\r\nconnected to the first and second things by two still finer betweens,\r\nand so on ad infinitum.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00280\"\u003eThe particular intellectualistic difficulty that had held my own\r\nthought so long in a vise was, as we have seen at such tedious length,\r\nthe impossibility of understanding how \u0027your\u0027 experience and \u0027mine,\u0027\r\nwhich \u0027as such\u0027 are defined as not conscious of each other, can\r\nnevertheless at the same time be members of a world-experience defined\r\nexpressly as having all its parts co-conscious, or known together. The\r\ndefinitions are contradictory, so the things defined can in no way be\r\nunited. You see how unintelligible intellectualism here seems to make\r\nthe world of our most accomplished philosophers. Neither as they\r\nuse it nor as we use it does it do anything but make nature look\r\nirrational and seem impossible.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00281\"\u003eIn my next lecture, using Bergson as my principal topic, I shall enter\r\ninto more concrete details and try, by giving up intellectualism\r\nfrankly, to make, if not the world, at least my own general thesis,\r\nless unintelligible.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VI\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eBERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00284\"\u003eI gave you a very stiff lecture last time, and I fear that this one\r\ncan be little less so. The best way of entering into it will be to\r\nbegin immediately with Bergson\u0027s philosophy, since I told you that\r\nthat was what had led me personally to renounce the intellectualistic\r\nmethod and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of\r\nwhat can or cannot be.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00285\"\u003eProfessor Henri Bergson is a young man, comparatively, as influential\r\nphilosophers go, having been born at Paris in 1859. His career has\r\nbeen the perfectly routine one of a successful french professor.\r\nEntering the école normale supérieure at the age of twenty-two, he\r\nspent the next seventeen years teaching at \u003ci\u003elycées\u003c/i\u003e, provincial or\r\nparisian, until his fortieth year, when he was made professor at the\r\nsaid école normale. Since 1900 he has been professor at the College de\r\nFrance, and member of the Institute since 1900. So far as the outward\r\nfacts go, Bergson\u0027s career has then been commonplace to the utmost.\r\nNeither one of Taine\u0027s famous principles of explanation of great\r\nmen, \u003ci\u003ethe race, the environment, or the moment\u003c/i\u003e, no, nor all three\r\ntogether, will explain that peculiar way of looking at things that\r\nconstitutes his mental individuality. Originality in men dates from\r\nnothing previous, other things date from it, rather. I have to confess\r\nthat Bergson\u0027s originality is so profuse that many of his ideas baffle\r\nme entirely. I doubt whether any one understands him all over, so to\r\nspeak; and I am sure that he would himself be the first to see that\r\nthis must be, and to confess that things which he himself has not yet\r\nthought out clearly, had yet to be mentioned and have a tentative\r\nplace assigned them in his philosophy. Many of us are profusely\r\noriginal, in that no man can understand us—violently peculiar ways\r\nof looking at things are no great rarity. The rarity is when great\r\npeculiarity of vision is allied with great lucidity and unusual\r\ncommand of all the classic expository apparatus. Bergson\u0027s resources\r\nin the way of erudition are remarkable, and in the way of expression\r\nthey are simply phenomenal. This is why in France, where \u003ci\u003el\u0027art de\r\nbien dire\u003c/i\u003e counts for so much and is so sure of appreciation, he has\r\nimmediately taken so eminent a place in public esteem. Old-fashioned\r\nprofessors, whom his ideas quite fail to satisfy, nevertheless speak\r\nof his talent almost with bated breath, while the youngsters flock to\r\nhim as to a master.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00286\"\u003eIf anything can make hard things easy to follow, it is a style like\r\nBergson\u0027s. A \u0027straightforward\u0027 style, an american reviewer lately\r\ncalled it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a\r\nflexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a\r\ncrease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements\r\nof one\u0027s body. The lucidity of Bergson\u0027s way of putting things is what\r\nall readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in\r\nadvance to become his disciple. It is a miracle, and he a real\r\nmagician.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00287\"\u003eM. Bergson, if I am rightly informed, came into philosophy through the\r\ngateway of mathematics. The old antinomies of the infinite were,\r\nI imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their\r\ndogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno\u0027s famous paradox, or sophism,\r\nas many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the\r\ntortoise. Give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift\r\nrunner Achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him;\r\nfor if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects\r\ntell us they must be), by the time Achilles reaches the tortoise\u0027s\r\nstarting-point, the tortoise has already got ahead of \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e\r\nstarting-point, and so on \u003ci\u003ead infinitum\u003c/i\u003e, the interval between the\r\npursuer and the pursued growing endlessly minuter, but never becoming\r\nwholly obliterated. The common way of showing up the sophism here is\r\nby pointing out the ambiguity of the expression \u0027never can overtake.\u0027\r\nWhat the word \u0027never\u0027 falsely suggests, it is said, is an infinite\r\nduration of time; what it really means is the inexhaustible number of\r\nthe steps of which the overtaking must consist. But if these steps are\r\ninfinitely short, a finite time will suffice for them; and in point of\r\nfact they do rapidly converge, whatever be the original interval\r\nor the contrasted speeds, toward infinitesimal shortness. This\r\nproportionality of the shortness of the times to that of the spaces\r\nrequired frees us, it is claimed, from the sophism which the word\r\n\u0027never\u0027 suggests.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00288\"\u003eBut this criticism misses Zeno\u0027s point entirely. Zeno would have been\r\nperfectly willing to grant that if the tortoise can be overtaken at\r\nall, he can be overtaken in (say) twenty seconds, but he would still\r\nhave insisted that he can\u0027t be overtaken at all. Leave Achilles and\r\nthe tortoise out of the account altogether, he would have said—they\r\ncomplicate the case unnecessarily. Take any single process of change\r\nwhatever, take the twenty seconds themselves elapsing. If time be\r\ninfinitely divisible, and it must be so on intellectualist principles,\r\nthey simply cannot elapse, their end cannot be reached; for no matter\r\nhow much of them has already elapsed, before the remainder, however\r\nminute, can have wholly elapsed, the earlier half of it must first\r\nhave elapsed. And this ever re-arising need of making the earlier half\r\nelapse \u003ci\u003efirst\u003c/i\u003e leaves time with always something to do \u003ci\u003ebefore\u003c/i\u003e the\r\nlast thing is done, so that the last thing never gets done. Expressed\r\nin bare numbers, it is like the convergent series 1/2 plus 1/4 plus\r\n1/8…, of which the limit is one. But this limit, simply because it\r\nis a limit, stands outside the series, the value of which approaches\r\nit indefinitely but never touches it. If in the natural world there\r\nwere no other way of getting things save by such successive addition\r\nof their logically involved fractions, no complete units or whole\r\nthings would ever come into being, for the fractions\u0027 sum would always\r\nleave a remainder. But in point of fact nature doesn\u0027t make eggs by\r\nmaking first half an egg, then a quarter, then an eighth, etc., and\r\nadding them together. She either makes a whole egg at once or none\r\nat all, and so of all her other units. It is only in the sphere of\r\nchange, then, where one phase of a thing must needs come into being\r\nbefore another phase can come that Zeno\u0027s paradox gives trouble.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00289\"\u003eAnd it gives trouble then only if the succession of steps of change\r\nbe infinitely divisible. If a bottle had to be emptied by an infinite\r\nnumber of successive decrements, it is mathematically impossible that\r\nthe emptying should ever positively terminate. In point of fact,\r\nhowever, bottles and coffee-pots empty themselves by a finite number\r\nof decrements, each of definite amount. Either a whole drop emerges or\r\nnothing emerges from the spout. If all change went thus drop-wise,\r\nso to speak, if real time sprouted or grew by units of duration of\r\ndeterminate amount, just as our perceptions of it grow by pulses,\r\nthere would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian antinomies to trouble\r\nus. All our sensible experiences, as we get them immediately, do thus\r\nchange by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying\r\n\u0027more, more, more,\u0027 or \u0027less, less, less,\u0027 as the definite increments\r\nor diminutions make themselves felt. The discreteness is still more\r\nobvious when, instead of old things changing, they cease, or when\r\naltogether new things come. Fechner\u0027s term of the \u0027threshold,\u0027 which\r\nhas played such a part in the psychology of perception, is only one\r\nway of naming the quantitative discreteness in the change of all our\r\nsensible experiences. They come to us in drops. Time itself comes in\r\ndrops.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00290\"\u003eOur ideal decomposition of the drops which are all that we feel into\r\nstill finer fractions is but an incident in that great transformation\r\nof the perceptual order into a conceptual order of which I spoke in\r\nmy last lecture. It is made in the interest of our rationalizing\r\nintellect solely. The times directly \u003ci\u003efelt\u003c/i\u003e in the experiences of\r\nliving subjects have originally no common measure. Let a lump of sugar\r\nmelt in a glass, to use one of M. Bergson\u0027s instances. We feel the\r\ntime to be long while waiting for the process to end, but who knows\r\nhow long or how short it feels to the sugar? All \u003ci\u003efelt\u003c/i\u003e times coexist\r\nand overlap or compenetrate each other thus vaguely, but the artifice\r\nof plotting them on a common scale helps us to reduce their aboriginal\r\nconfusion, and it helps us still more to plot, against the same scale,\r\nthe successive possible steps into which nature\u0027s various changes may\r\nbe resolved, either sensibly or conceivably. We thus straighten out\r\nthe aboriginal privacy and vagueness, and can date things publicly, as\r\nit were, and by each other. The notion of one objective and \u0027evenly\r\nflowing\u0027 time, cut into numbered instants, applies itself as a common\r\nmeasure to all the steps and phases, no matter how many, into which we\r\ncut the processes of nature. They are now definitely contemporary,\r\nor later or earlier one than another, and we can handle them\r\nmathematically, as we say, and far better, practically as well as\r\ntheoretically, for having thus correlated them one to one with each\r\nother on the common schematic or conceptual time-scale.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00291\"\u003eMotion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of\r\nwhich the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of\r\nvertigo. In vertigo we feel that movement \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e, and is more or less\r\nviolent or rapid, more or less in this direction or that, more or less\r\nalarming or sickening. But a man subject to vertigo may gradually\r\nlearn to co-ordinate his felt motion with his real position and that\r\nof other things, and intellectualize it enough to succeed at last in\r\nwalking without staggering. The mathematical mind similarly organizes\r\nmotion in its way, putting it into a logical definition: motion is now\r\nconceived as \u0027the occupancy of serially successive points of space\r\nat serially successive instants of time.\u0027 With such a definition we\r\nescape wholly from the turbid privacy of sense. But do we not also\r\nescape from sense-reality altogether? Whatever motion really may be,\r\nit surely is not static; but the definition we have gained is of the\r\nabsolutely static. It gives a set of one-to-one relations between\r\nspace-points and time-points, which relations themselves are as fixed\r\nas the points are. It gives \u003ci\u003epositions\u003c/i\u003e assignable ad infinitum, but\r\nhow the body gets from one position to another it omits to mention.\r\nThe body gets there by moving, of course; but the conceived positions,\r\nhowever numerously multiplied, contain no element of movement, so\r\nZeno, using nothing but them in his discussion, has no alternative\r\nbut to say that our intellect repudiates motion as a non-reality.\r\nIntellectualism here does what I said it does—it makes experience\r\nless instead of more intelligible.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00292\"\u003eWe of course need a stable scheme of concepts, stably related with\r\none another, to lay hold of our experiences and to co-ordinate them\r\nwithal. When an experience comes with sufficient saliency to stand\r\nout, we keep the thought of it for future use, and store it in our\r\nconceptual system. What does not of itself stand out, we learn to\r\n\u003ci\u003ecut\u003c/i\u003e out; so the system grows completer, and new reality, as it\r\ncomes, gets named after and conceptually strung upon this or that\r\nelement of it which we have already established. The immutability\r\nof such an abstract system is its great practical merit; the same\r\nidentical terms and relations in it can always be recovered and\r\nreferred to—change itself is just such an unalterable concept. But\r\nall these abstract concepts are but as flowers gathered, they are only\r\nmoments dipped out from the stream of time, snap-shots taken, as by\r\na kinetoscopic camera, at a life that in its original coming is\r\ncontinuous. Useful as they are as samples of the garden, or to\r\nre-enter the stream with, or to insert in our revolving lantern, they\r\nhave no value but these practical values. You cannot explain by them\r\nwhat makes any single phenomenon be or go—you merely dot out the path\r\nof appearances which it traverses. For you cannot make continuous\r\nbeing out of discontinuities, and your concepts are discontinuous. The\r\nstages into which you analyze a change are \u003ci\u003estates\u003c/i\u003e, the change itself\r\ngoes on between them. It lies along their intervals, inhabits what\r\nyour definition fails to gather up, and thus eludes conceptual\r\nexplanation altogether.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00293\"\u003e\u0027When the mathematician,\u0027 Bergson writes, \u0027calculates the state of\r\na system at the end of a time \u003ci\u003et\u003c/i\u003e, nothing need prevent him from\r\nsupposing that betweenwhiles the universe vanishes, in order suddenly\r\nto appear again at the due moment in the new configuration. It is\r\nonly the \u003ci\u003et\u003c/i\u003e-th moment that counts—that which flows throughout the\r\nintervals, namely real time, plays no part in his calculation…. In\r\nshort, the world on which the mathematician operates is a world which\r\ndies and is born anew at every instant, like the world which Descartes\r\nthought of when he spoke of a continued creation.\u0027 To know adequately\r\nwhat really \u003ci\u003ehappens\u003c/i\u003e we ought, Bergson insists, to see into the\r\nintervals, but the mathematician sees only their extremities. He\r\nfixes only a few results, he dots a curve and then interpolates, he\r\nsubstitutes a tracing for a reality.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00294\"\u003eThis being so undeniably the case, the history of the way in which\r\nphilosophy has dealt with it is curious. The ruling tradition in\r\nphilosophy has always been the platonic and aristotelian belief that\r\nfixity is a nobler and worthier thing than change. Reality must be one\r\nand unalterable. Concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with\r\nthis fixed nature of truth, so that for any knowledge of ours to be\r\nquite true it must be knowledge by universal concepts rather than\r\nby particular experiences, for these notoriously are mutable and\r\ncorruptible. This is the tradition known as rationalism in philosophy,\r\nand what I have called intellectualism is only the extreme application\r\nof it. In spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of Protagoras,\r\nHume, and James Mill, rationalism has never been seriously questioned,\r\nfor its sharpest critics have always had a tender place in their\r\nhearts for it, and have obeyed some of its mandates. They have not\r\nbeen consistent; they have played fast and loose with the enemy; and\r\nBergson alone has been radical.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00295\"\u003eTo show what I mean by this, let me contrast his procedure with that\r\nof some of the transcendentalist philosophers whom I have lately\r\nmentioned. Coming after Kant, these pique themselves on being\r\n\u0027critical,\u0027 on building in fact upon Kant\u0027s \u0027critique\u0027 of pure reason.\r\nWhat that critique professed to establish was this, that concepts do\r\nnot apprehend reality, but only such appearances as our senses\r\nfeed out to them. They give immutable intellectual forms to these\r\nappearances, it is true, but the reality \u003ci\u003ean sich\u003c/i\u003e from which in\r\nultimate resort the sense-appearances have to come remains forever\r\nunintelligible to our intellect. Take motion, for example. Sensibly,\r\nmotion comes in drops, waves, or pulses; either some actual amount of\r\nit, or none, being apprehended. This amount is the datum or \u003ci\u003egabe\u003c/i\u003e\r\nwhich reality feeds out to our intellectual faculty; but our intellect\r\nmakes of it a task or \u003ci\u003eaufgabe\u003c/i\u003e—this pun is one of the most memorable\r\nof Kant\u0027s formulas—and insists that in every pulse of it an infinite\r\nnumber of successive minor pulses shall be ascertainable. These minor\r\npulses \u003ci\u003ewe\u003c/i\u003e can indeed \u003ci\u003ego on\u003c/i\u003e to ascertain or to compute indefinitely\r\nif we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an\r\ninfinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually\r\ncounted \u003ci\u003ethemselves\u003c/i\u003e out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the\r\ninfinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus\r\na future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of\r\nstructure. The datum after it has made itself must be decompos_able_\r\nad infinitum by our conception, but of the steps by which that\r\nstructure actually got composed we know nothing. Our intellect casts,\r\nin short, no ray of light on the processes by which experiences \u003ci\u003eget\r\nmade\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00296\"\u003eKant\u0027s monistic successors have in general found the data of immediate\r\nexperience even more self-contradictory, when intellectually treated,\r\nthan Kant did. Not only the character of infinity involved in the\r\nrelation of various empirical data to their \u0027conditions,\u0027 but the very\r\nnotion that empirical things should be related to one another at all,\r\nhas seemed to them, when the intellectualistic fit was upon them, full\r\nof paradox and contradiction. We saw in a former lecture numerous\r\ninstances of this from Hegel, Bradley, Royce, and others. We saw also\r\nwhere the solution of such an intolerable state of things was sought\r\nfor by these authors. Whereas Kant had placed it outside of and\r\n\u003ci\u003ebefore\u003c/i\u003e our experience, in the \u003ci\u003edinge an sich\u003c/i\u003e which are the causes\r\nof the latter, his monistic successors all look for it either \u003ci\u003eafter\u003c/i\u003e\r\nexperience, as its absolute completion, or else consider it to be even\r\nnow implicit within experience as its ideal signification. Kant and\r\nhis successors look, in short, in diametrically opposite directions.\r\nDo not be misled by Kant\u0027s admission of theism into his system.\r\nHis God is the ordinary dualistic God of Christianity, to whom his\r\nphilosophy simply opens the door; he has nothing whatsoever in common\r\nwith the \u0027absolute spirit\u0027 set up by his successors. So far as this\r\nabsolute spirit is logically derived from Kant, it is not from his\r\nGod, but from entirely different elements of his philosophy. First\r\nfrom his notion that an unconditioned totality of the conditions of\r\nany experience must be assignable; and then from his other notion that\r\nthe presence of some witness, or ego of apperception, is the most\r\nuniversal of all the conditions in question. The post-kantians make\r\nof the witness-condition what is called a concrete universal, an\r\nindividualized all-witness or world-self, which shall imply in its\r\nrational constitution each and all of the other conditions put\r\ntogether, and therefore necessitate each and all of the conditioned\r\nexperiences.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00297\"\u003eAbridgments like this of other men\u0027s opinions are very unsatisfactory,\r\nthey always work injustice; but in this case those of you who are\r\nfamiliar with the literature will see immediately what I have in mind;\r\nand to the others, if there be any here, it will suffice to say that\r\nwhat I am trying so pedantically to point out is only the fact that\r\nmonistic idealists after Kant have invariably sought relief from the\r\nsupposed contradictions of our world of sense by looking forward\r\ntoward an \u003ci\u003eens rationis\u003c/i\u003e conceived as its integration or logical\r\ncompletion, while he looked backward toward non-rational \u003ci\u003edinge an\r\nsich\u003c/i\u003e conceived as its cause. Pluralistic empiricists, on the other\r\nhand, have remained in the world of sense, either naïvely and because\r\nthey overlooked the intellectualistic contradictions, or because, not\r\nable to ignore them, they thought they could refute them by a superior\r\nuse of the same intellectualistic logic. Thus it is that John Mill\r\npretends to refute the Achilles-tortoise fallacy.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00298\"\u003eThe important point to notice here is the intellectualist logic. Both\r\nsides treat it as authoritative, but they do so capriciously: the\r\nabsolutists smashing the world of sense by its means, the empiricists\r\nsmashing the absolute—for the absolute, they say, is the quintessence\r\nof all logical contradictions. Neither side attains consistency.\r\nThe Hegelians have to invoke a higher logic to supersede the purely\r\ndestructive efforts of their first logic. The empiricists use their\r\nlogic against the absolute, but refuse to use it against finite\r\nexperience. Each party uses it or drops it to suit the vision it has\r\nfaith in, but neither impugns in principle its general theoretic\r\nauthority.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00299\"\u003eBergson alone challenges its theoretic authority in principle. He\r\nalone denies that mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible\r\nor possible in the world of being or fact; and he does so for reasons\r\nwhich at the same time that they rule logic out from lordship over the\r\nwhole of life, establish a vast and definite sphere of influence where\r\nits sovereignty is indisputable. Bergson\u0027s own text, felicitous as\r\nit is, is too intricate for quotation, so I must use my own inferior\r\nwords in explaining what I mean by saying this.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00300\"\u003eIn the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between\r\nconcepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only\r\nsecondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with\r\nconcepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the\r\nconceptual method. But the conceptual method is a transformation which\r\nthe flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice\r\nessentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. We\r\nlive forward, we understand backward, said a danish writer; and to\r\nunderstand life by concepts is to arrest its movement, cutting it up\r\ninto bits as if with scissors, and immobilizing these in our logical\r\nherbarium where, comparing them as dried specimens, we can ascertain\r\nwhich of them statically includes or excludes which other. This\r\ntreatment supposes life to have already accomplished itself, for the\r\nconcepts, being so many views taken after the fact, are retrospective\r\nand post mortem. Nevertheless we can draw conclusions from them and\r\nproject them into the future. We cannot learn from them how life made\r\nitself go, or how it will make itself go; but, on the supposition that\r\nits ways of making itself go are unchanging, we can calculate what\r\npositions of imagined arrest it will exhibit hereafter under given\r\nconditions. We can compute, for instance, at what point Achilles\r\nwill be, and where the tortoise will be, at the end of the twentieth\r\nminute. Achilles may then be at a point far ahead; but the full detail\r\nof how he will have managed practically to get there our logic never\r\ngives us—we have seen, indeed, that it finds that its results\r\ncontradict the facts of nature. The computations which the other\r\nsciences make differ in no respect from those of mathematics. The\r\nconcepts used are all of them dots through which, by interpolation or\r\nextrapolation, curves are drawn, while along the curves other dots are\r\nfound as consequences. The latest refinements of logic dispense\r\nwith the curves altogether, and deal solely with the dots and their\r\ncorrespondences each to each in various series. The authors of these\r\nrecent improvements tell us expressly that their aim is to abolish the\r\nlast vestiges of intuition, \u003ci\u003evidelicet\u003c/i\u003e of concrete reality, from the\r\nfield of reasoning, which then will operate literally on mental dots\r\nor bare abstract units of discourse, and on the ways in which they may\r\nbe strung in naked series.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00301\"\u003eThis is all very esoteric, and my own understanding of it is most\r\nlikely misunderstanding. So I speak here only by way of brief reminder\r\nto those who know. For the rest of us it is enough to recognize this\r\nfact, that altho by means of concepts cut out from the sensible flux\r\nof the past, we can re-descend upon the future flux and, making\r\nanother cut, say what particular thing is likely to be found there;\r\nand that altho in this sense concepts give us knowledge, and may be\r\nsaid to have some theoretic value (especially when the particular\r\nthing foretold is one in which we take no present practical interest);\r\nyet in the deeper sense of giving \u003ci\u003einsight\u003c/i\u003e they have no theoretic\r\nvalue, for they quite fail to connect us with the inner life of the\r\nflux, or with the causes that govern its direction. Instead of being\r\ninterpreters of reality, concepts negate the inwardness of reality\r\naltogether. They make the whole notion of a causal influence between\r\nfinite things incomprehensible. No real activities and indeed no real\r\nconnexions of any kind can obtain if we follow the conceptual logic;\r\nfor to be distinguishable, according to what I call intellectualism,\r\nis to be incapable of connexion. The work begun by Zeno, and continued\r\nby Hume, Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and Bradley, does not stop till\r\nsensible reality lies entirely disintegrated at the feet of \u0027reason.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00302\"\u003eOf the \u0027absolute\u0027 reality which reason proposes to substitute for\r\nsensible reality I shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile you see\r\nwhat Professor Bergson means by insisting that the function of the\r\nintellect is practical rather than theoretical. Sensible reality is\r\ntoo concrete to be entirely manageable—look at the narrow range of it\r\nwhich is all that any animal, living in it exclusively as he does, is\r\nable to compass. To get from one point in it to another we have to\r\nplough or wade through the whole intolerable interval. No detail is\r\nspared us; it is as bad as the barbed-wire complications at Port\r\nArthur, and we grow old and die in the process. But with our faculty\r\nof abstracting and fixing concepts we are there in a second, almost as\r\nif we controlled a fourth dimension, skipping the intermediaries as\r\nby a divine winged power, and getting at the exact point we require\r\nwithout entanglement with any context. What we do in fact is to\r\n\u003ci\u003eharness up\u003c/i\u003e reality in our conceptual systems in order to drive it\r\nthe better. This process is practical because all the termini to which\r\nwe drive are \u003ci\u003eparticular\u003c/i\u003e termini, even when they are facts of the\r\nmental order. But the sciences in which the conceptual method chiefly\r\ncelebrates its triumphs are those of space and matter, where the\r\ntransformations of external things are dealt with. To deal with moral\r\nfacts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute\r\nbrain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests\r\nas mechanical forces, our conscious \u0027selves\u0027 as \u0027streams,\u0027 and the\r\nlike. Paradoxical effect! as Bergson well remarks, if our intellectual\r\nlife were not practical but destined to reveal the inner natures.\r\nOne would then suppose that it would find itself most at home in the\r\ndomain of its own intellectual realities. But it is precisely there\r\nthat it finds itself at the end of its tether. We know the inner\r\nmovements of our spirit only perceptually. We feel them live in us,\r\nbut can give no distinct account of their elements, nor definitely\r\npredict their future; while things that lie along the world of space,\r\nthings of the sort that we literally \u003ci\u003ehandle\u003c/i\u003e, are what our intellects\r\ncope with most successfully. Does not this confirm us in the view that\r\nthe original and still surviving function of our intellectual life\r\nis to guide us in the practical adaptation of our expectancies and\r\nactivities?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00303\"\u003eOne can easily get into a verbal mess at this point, and my own\r\nexperience with pragmatism\u0027 makes me shrink from the dangers that lie\r\nin the word \u0027practical,\u0027 and far rather than stand out against you for\r\nthat word, I am quite willing to part company with Professor Bergson,\r\nand to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect,\r\nprovided you on your part then agree to discriminate \u0027theoretic\u0027 or\r\nscientific knowledge from the deeper \u0027speculative\u0027 knowledge aspired\r\nto by most philosophers, and concede that theoretic knowledge,\r\nwhich is knowledge \u003ci\u003eabout\u003c/i\u003e things, as distinguished from living or\r\nsympathetic acquaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of\r\nreality. The surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense\r\ncovers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot the whole diameter\r\nof space and time with its conceptual creations; but it does not\r\npenetrate a millimeter into the solid dimension. That inner dimension\r\nof reality is occupied by the \u003ci\u003eactivities\u003c/i\u003e that keep it going, but the\r\nintellect, speaking through Hume, Kant \u0026amp; Co., finds itself obliged to\r\ndeny, and persists in denying, that activities have any intelligible\r\nexistence. What exists for \u003ci\u003ethought\u003c/i\u003e, we are told, is at most the\r\nresults that we illusorily ascribe to such activities, strung along\r\nthe surfaces of space and time by \u003ci\u003eregeln der verknüpfung\u003c/i\u003e, laws of\r\nnature which state only coexistences and successions.[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00304\"\u003eThought deals thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness\r\nof reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is\r\nessential and permanent, not temporary.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00305\"\u003eThe only way in which to apprehend reality\u0027s thickness is either to\r\nexperience it directly by being a part of reality one\u0027s self, or to\r\nevoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining some one else\u0027s\r\ninner life. But what we thus immediately experience or concretely\r\ndivine is very limited in duration, whereas abstractly we are able to\r\nconceive eternities. Could we feel a million years concretely as we\r\nnow feel a passing minute, we should have very little employment for\r\nour conceptual faculty. We should know the whole period fully at every\r\nmoment of its passage, whereas we must now construct it laboriously by\r\nmeans of concepts which we project. Direct acquaintance and conceptual\r\nknowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the\r\nother\u0027s defects. If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment\r\nof phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered\r\nlike, we must follow the conceptual method. But if, as metaphysicians,\r\nwe are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what\r\nreally makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts\r\naltogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing\r\nmoments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points\r\nof which they occasionally rest and perch.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00306\"\u003eProfessor Bergson thus inverts the traditional platonic doctrine\r\nabsolutely. Instead of intellectual knowledge being the profounder,\r\nhe calls it the more superficial. Instead of being the only adequate\r\nknowledge, it is grossly inadequate, and its only superiority is the\r\npractical one of enabling us to make short cuts through experience\r\nand thereby to save time. The one thing it cannot do is to reveal the\r\nnature of things—which last remark, if not clear already, will become\r\nclearer as I proceed. Dive back into the flux itself, then, Bergson\r\ntells us, if you wish to \u003ci\u003eknow\u003c/i\u003e reality, that flux which Platonism, in\r\nits strange belief that only the immutable is excellent, has always\r\nspurned; turn your face toward sensation, that flesh-bound thing which\r\nrationalism has always loaded with abuse.—This, you see, is exactly\r\nthe opposite remedy from that of looking forward into the absolute,\r\nwhich our idealistic contemporaries prescribe. It violates our mental\r\nhabits, being a kind of passive and receptive listening quite contrary\r\nto that effort to react noisily and verbally on everything, which is\r\nour usual intellectual pose.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00307\"\u003eWhat, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which the\r\nconceptual translation so fatally leaves out?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00308\"\u003eThe essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our\r\nconcepts are all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making\r\nthem coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of\r\narrest therein. With such arrests our concepts may be made congruent.\r\nBut these concepts are not \u003ci\u003eparts\u003c/i\u003e of reality, not real positions\r\ntaken by it, but \u003ci\u003esuppositions\u003c/i\u003e rather, notes taken by ourselves, and\r\nyou can no more dip up the substance of reality with them than you can\r\ndip up water with a net, however finely meshed.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00309\"\u003eWhen we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything\r\nbut what we have fixed. A concept means a \u003ci\u003ethat-and-no-other\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nConceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other;\r\napproach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes\r\nplurality; independence excludes relativity; \u0027mine\u0027 excludes \u0027yours\u0027;\r\nthis connexion excludes that connexion—and so on indefinitely;\r\nwhereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences\r\ncompenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is\r\nexcluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually\r\nseparated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined\r\nas being the opposite sides of that cut, are to some extent, however\r\nbrief, co-present with each other throughout experience. The literally\r\npresent moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position; the\r\nonly present ever realized concretely being the \u0027passing moment\u0027 in\r\nwhich the dying rearward of time and its dawning future forever mix\r\ntheir lights. Say \u0027now\u0027 and it \u003ci\u003ewas\u003c/i\u003e even while you say it.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00310\"\u003eIt is just intellectualism\u0027s attempt to substitute static cuts\r\nfor units of experienced duration that makes real motion so\r\nunintelligible. The conception of the first half of the interval\r\nbetween Achilles and the tortoise excludes that of the last half, and\r\nthe mathematical necessity of traversing it separately before the last\r\nhalf is traversed stands permanently in the way of the last half ever\r\nbeing traversed. Meanwhile the living Achilles (who, for the purposes\r\nof this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of\r\nimpetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic.\r\nThe velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the\r\nexpansive tension in a spring compressed. We define it conceptually as\r\n[\u003ci\u003es/t\u003c/i\u003e], but the \u003ci\u003es\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003et\u003c/i\u003e are only artificial cuts made after the\r\nfact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners\r\nas the same tracts of \u0027objective\u0027 space and time, for the experienced\r\nspaces and times in which the tortoise inwardly lives are probably\r\nas different as his velocity from the same things in Achilles. The\r\nimpetus of Achilles is one concrete fact, and carries space, time, and\r\nconquest over the inferior creature\u0027s motion indivisibly in it. He\r\nperceives nothing, while running, of the mathematician\u0027s homogeneous\r\ntime and space, of the infinitely numerous succession of cuts in both,\r\nor of their order. End and beginning come for him in the one onrush,\r\nand all that he actually experiences is that, in the midst of a\r\ncertain intense effort of his own, the rival is in point of fact\r\noutstripped.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00311\"\u003eWe are so inveterately wedded to the conceptual decomposition of life\r\nthat I know that this will seem to you like putting muddiest confusion\r\nin place of clearest thought, and relapsing into a molluscoid state\r\nof mind. Yet I ask you whether the absolute superiority of our higher\r\nthought is so very clear, if all that it can find is impossibility in\r\ntasks which sense-experience so easily performs.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00312\"\u003eWhat makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as\r\nif they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which\r\nconception breaks life\u0027s flow by keeping apart. But \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e not\r\ndifferents actually dissolved in one another? Hasn\u0027t every bit of\r\nexperience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity,\r\nits urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which\r\ncan exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it?\r\nThey exist only \u003ci\u003edurcheinander\u003c/i\u003e. Reality always is, in M. Bergson\u0027s\r\nphrase, an endosmosis or conflux of the same with the different: they\r\ncompenetrate and telescope. For conceptual logic, the same is nothing\r\nbut the same, and all sames with a third thing are the same with each\r\nother. Not so in concrete experience. Two spots on our skin, each of\r\nwhich feels the same as a third spot when touched along with it, are\r\nfelt as different from each other. Two tones, neither distinguishable\r\nfrom a third tone, are perfectly distinct from each other. The whole\r\nprocess of life is due to life\u0027s violation of our logical axioms.\r\nTake its continuity as an example. Terms like A and C appear to be\r\nconnected by intermediaries, by B for example. Intellectualism calls\r\nthis absurd, for \u0027B-connected-with-A\u0027 is, \u0027as such,\u0027 a different term\r\nfrom \u0027B-connected-with-C.\u0027 But real life laughs at logic\u0027s veto.\r\nImagine a heavy log which takes two men to carry it. First A and B\r\ntake it. Then C takes hold and A drops off; then D takes hold and B\r\ndrops off, so that C and D now bear it; and so on. The log meanwhile\r\nnever drops, and keeps its sameness throughout the journey. Even so\r\nit is with all our experiences. Their changes are not complete\r\nannihilations followed by complete creations of something absolutely\r\nnovel. There is partial decay and partial growth, and all the while a\r\nnucleus of relative constancy from which what decays drops off, and\r\nwhich takes into itself whatever is grafted on, until at length\r\nsomething wholly different has taken its place. In such a process we\r\nare as sure, in spite of intellectualist logic with its \u0027as suches,\u0027\r\nthat it \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e the same nucleus which is able now to make connexion with\r\nwhat goes and again with what comes, as we are sure that the same\r\npoint can lie on diverse lines that intersect there. Without being one\r\nthroughout, such a universe is continuous. Its members interdigitate\r\nwith their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no\r\nclean cuts between them anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00313\"\u003eThe great clash of intellectualist logic with sensible experience is\r\nwhere the experience is that of influence exerted. Intellectualism\r\ndenies (as we saw in lecture ii) that finite things can act on one\r\nanother, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up\r\nto themselves. To act on anything means to get into it somehow; but\r\nthat would mean to get out of one\u0027s self and be one\u0027s other, which is\r\nself-contradictory, etc. Meanwhile each of us actually \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e his own\r\nother to that extent, livingly knowing how to perform the trick which\r\nlogic tells us can\u0027t be done. My thoughts animate and actuate this\r\nvery body which you see and hear, and thereby influence your thoughts.\r\nThe dynamic current somehow does get from me to you, however numerous\r\nthe intermediary conductors may have to be. Distinctions may be\r\ninsulators in logic as much as they like, but in life distinct things\r\ncan and do commune together every moment.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00314\"\u003eThe conflict of the two ways of knowing is best summed up in the\r\nintellectualist doctrine that \u0027the same cannot exist in many\r\nrelations.\u0027 This follows of course from the concepts of the two\r\nrelations being so distinct that \u0027what-is-in-the-one\u0027 means \u0027as such\u0027\r\nsomething distinct from what \u0027what-is-in-the-other\u0027 means. It is like\r\nMill\u0027s ironical saying, that we should not think of Newton as both an\r\nEnglishman and a mathematician, because an Englishman as such is not\r\na mathematician and a mathematician as such is not an Englishman. But\r\nthe real Newton was somehow both things at once; and throughout the\r\nwhole finite universe each real thing proves to be many differents\r\nwithout undergoing the necessity of breaking into disconnected\r\neditions of itself.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00315\"\u003eThese few indications will perhaps suffice to put you at the\r\nbergsonian point of view. The immediate experience of life solves the\r\nproblems which so baffle our conceptual intelligence: How can what is\r\nmanifold be one? how can things get out of themselves? how be their\r\nown others? how be both distinct and connected? how can they act on\r\none another? how be for others and yet for themselves? how be absent\r\nand present at once? The intellect asks these questions much as we\r\nmight ask how anything can both separate and unite things, or how\r\nsounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. If\r\nyou already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by\r\npointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical\r\nscale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you\r\nmust first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. Similarly\r\nBergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our\r\nvarious finite sensational experiences and saying, \u0027Lo, even thus;\r\neven so are these other problems solved livingly.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00316\"\u003eWhen you have broken the reality into concepts you never can\r\nreconstruct it in its wholeness. Out of no amount of discreteness\r\ncan you manufacture the concrete. But place yourself at a bound, or\r\n\u003ci\u003ed\u0027emblée\u003c/i\u003e, as M. Bergson says, inside of the living, moving, active\r\nthickness of the real, and all the abstractions and distinctions\r\nare given into your hand: you can now make the intellectualist\r\nsubstitutions to your heart\u0027s content. Install yourself in phenomenal\r\nmovement, for example, and velocity, succession, dates, positions, and\r\ninnumerable other things are given you in the bargain. But with only\r\nan abstract succession of dates and positions you can never patch up\r\nmovement itself. It slips through their intervals and is lost.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00317\"\u003eSo it is with every concrete thing, however complicated. Our\r\nintellectual handling of it is a retrospective patchwork, a\r\npost-mortem dissection, and can follow any order we find most\r\nexpedient. We can make the thing seem self-contradictory whenever\r\nwe wish to. But place yourself at the point of view of the thing\u0027s\r\ninterior \u003ci\u003edoing\u003c/i\u003e, and all these back-looking and conflicting\r\nconceptions lie harmoniously in your hand. Get at the expanding centre\r\nof a human character, the \u003ci\u003eélan vital\u003c/i\u003e of a man, as Bergson calls it,\r\nby living sympathy, and at a stroke you see how it makes those who see\r\nit from without interpret it in such diverse ways. It is something\r\nthat breaks into both honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice,\r\nstupidity and insight, at the touch of varying circumstances, and you\r\nfeel exactly why and how it does this, and never seek to identify\r\nit stably with any of these single abstractions. Only your\r\nintellectualist does that,—and you now also feel why \u003ci\u003ehe\u003c/i\u003e must do it\r\nto the end.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00318\"\u003ePlace yourself similarly at the centre of a man\u0027s philosophic vision\r\nand you understand at once all the different things it makes him write\r\nor say. But keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build\r\nthe philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then\r\nanother and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You\r\ncrawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling\r\ninto every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but\r\ninconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope\r\nthat some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have\r\nhad something different from this intellectualist type of criticism\r\napplied to their own works!\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00319\"\u003eWhat really \u003ci\u003eexists\u003c/i\u003e is not things made but things in the making. Once\r\nmade, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual\r\ndecompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself \u003ci\u003ein the\r\nmaking\u003c/i\u003e by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the\r\nwhole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your\r\npossession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of\r\nthem is the more absolutely true. Reality \u003ci\u003efalls\u003c/i\u003e in passing into\r\nconceptual analysis; it \u003ci\u003emounts\u003c/i\u003e in living its own undivided life—it\r\nbuds and bourgeons, changes and creates. Once adopt the movement of\r\nthis life in any given instance and you know what Bergson calls the\r\n\u003ci\u003edevenir réel\u003c/i\u003e by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should\r\nseek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality,\r\nnot follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead\r\nresults.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00320\"\u003eThus much of M. Bergson\u0027s philosophy is sufficient for my purpose in\r\nthese lectures, so here I will stop, leaving unnoticed all its other\r\nconstituent features, original and interesting tho they be. You may\r\nsay, and doubtless some of you now are saying inwardly, that his\r\nremanding us to sensation in this wise is only a regress, a return to\r\nthat ultra-crude empiricism which your own idealists since Green\r\nhave buried ten times over. I confess that it is indeed a return to\r\nempiricism, but I think that the return in such accomplished shape\r\nonly proves the latter\u0027s immortal truth. What won\u0027t stay buried must\r\nhave some genuine life. \u003ci\u003eAm anfang war die tat\u003c/i\u003e; fact is a \u003ci\u003efirst\u003c/i\u003e; to\r\nwhich all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second,\r\nnever its full equivalent. When I read recent transcendentalist\r\nliterature—I must partly except my colleague Royce!—I get nothing\r\nbut a sort of marking of time, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground,\r\nand resettling into the same attitude, like a weary horse in a stall\r\nwith an empty manger. It is but turning over the same few threadbare\r\ncategories, bringing the same objections, and urging the same answers\r\nand solutions, with never a new fact or a new horizon coming into\r\nsight. But open Bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read.\r\nIt is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells\r\nof reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded\r\nprofessors have written about what other previous professors have\r\nthought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00321\"\u003eThat he gives us no closed-in system will of course be fatal to him in\r\nintellectualist eyes. He only evokes and invites; but he first annuls\r\nthe intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with\r\na philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a french\r\ndisciple of his well expresses it: \u0027Bergson claims of us first of all\r\na certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a\r\nlogical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible\r\nenough for the execution of such a psychological change of front,\r\ndiscover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient\r\nattitude of mind. They are now Bergsonians … and possess the\r\nprincipal thoughts of the master all at once. They have understood in\r\nthe fashion in which one loves, they have caught the whole melody and\r\ncan thereafter admire at their leisure the originality, the fecundity,\r\nand the imaginative genius with which its author develops, transposes,\r\nand varies in a thousand ways by the orchestration of his style and\r\ndialectic, the original theme.\u0027[2]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00322\"\u003eThis, scant as it is, is all I have to say about Bergson on this\r\noccasion—I hope it may send some of you to his original text. I must\r\nnow turn back to the point where I found it advisable to appeal to his\r\nideas. You remember my own intellectualist difficulties in the last\r\nlecture, about how a lot of separate consciousnesses can at the same\r\ntime be one collective thing. How, I asked, can one and the same\r\nidentical content of experience, of which on idealist principles the\r\n\u003ci\u003eesse\u003c/i\u003e is to be felt, be felt so diversely if itself be the only\r\nfeeler? The usual way of escape by \u0027quatenus\u0027 or \u0027as such\u0027 won\u0027t\r\nhelp us here if we are radical intellectualists, I said, for\r\nappearance-together is as such \u003ci\u003enot\u003c/i\u003e appearance-apart, the world \u003ci\u003equâ\u003c/i\u003e\r\nmany is not the world \u003ci\u003equâ\u003c/i\u003e one, as absolutism claims. If we hold to\r\nHume\u0027s maxim, which later intellectualism uses so well, that whatever\r\nthings are distinguished are as separate as if there were no manner of\r\nconnexion between them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty save\r\nby stepping outside of experience altogether and invoking different\r\nspiritual agents, selves or souls, to realize the diversity required.\r\nBut this rescue by \u0027scholastic entities\u0027 I was unwilling to accept any\r\nmore than pantheistic idealists accept it.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00323\"\u003eYet, to quote Fechner\u0027s phrase again, \u0027nichts wirkliches kann\r\nunmöglich sein,\u0027 the actual cannot be impossible, and what \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e actual\r\nat every moment of our lives is the sort of thing which I now\r\nproceed to remind you of. You can hear the vibration of an electric\r\ncontact-maker, smell the ozone, see the sparks, and feel the thrill,\r\nco-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. But you can\r\nalso isolate any one of these sensations by shutting out the rest. If\r\nyou close your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get\r\nthe sensation of sound alone, but it seems still the same sensation\r\nthat it was; and if you restore the action of the other organs, the\r\nsound coalesces with the feeling, the sight, and the smell sensations\r\nagain. Now the natural way of talking of all this[3] is to say that\r\ncertain sensations are experienced, now singly, and now together\r\nwith other sensations, in a common conscious field. Fluctuations of\r\nattention give analogous results. We let a sensation in or keep it out\r\nby changing our attention; and similarly we let an item of memory in\r\nor drop it out. [Please don\u0027t raise the question here of how these\r\nchanges \u003ci\u003ecome to pass\u003c/i\u003e. The immediate condition is probably cerebral\r\nin every instance, but it would be irrelevant now to consider it, for\r\nnow we are thinking only of results, and I repeat that the natural way\r\nof thinking of them is that which intellectualist criticism finds so\r\nabsurd.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00324\"\u003eThe absurdity charged is that the self-same should function so\r\ndifferently, now with and now without something else. But this it\r\nsensibly seems to do. This very desk which I strike with my hand\r\nstrikes in turn your eyes. It functions at once as a physical object\r\nin the outer world and as a mental object in our sundry mental worlds.\r\nThe very body of mine that \u003ci\u003emy\u003c/i\u003e thought actuates is the body whose\r\ngestures are \u003ci\u003eyour\u003c/i\u003e visual object and to which you give my name. The\r\nvery log which John helped to carry is the log now borne by James. The\r\nvery girl you love is simultaneously entangled elsewhere. The very\r\nplace behind me is in front of you. Look where you will, you gather\r\nonly examples of the same amid the different, and of different\r\nrelations existing as it were in solution in the same thing. \u003ci\u003eQuâ\u003c/i\u003e\r\nthis an experience is not the same as it is \u003ci\u003equâ\u003c/i\u003e that, truly enough;\r\nbut the \u003ci\u003equâs\u003c/i\u003e are conceptual shots of ours at its post-mortem\r\nremains, and in its sensational immediacy everything is all at once\r\nwhatever different things it is at once at all. It is before C and\r\nafter A, far from you and near to me, without this associate and with\r\nthat one, active and passive, physical and mental, a whole of\r\nparts and part of a higher whole, all simultaneously and without\r\ninterference or need of doubling-up its being, so long as we keep to\r\nwhat I call the \u0027immediate\u0027 point of view, the point of view in which\r\nwe follow our sensational life\u0027s continuity, and to which all living\r\nlanguage conforms. It is only when you try—to continue using the\r\nhegelian vocabulary—to \u0027mediate\u0027 the immediate, or to substitute\r\nconcepts for sensational life, that intellectualism celebrates\r\nits triumph and the immanent-self-contradictoriness of all this\r\nsmooth-running finite experience gets proved.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00325\"\u003eOf the oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences\r\nresulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object\r\ncalled an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions\r\nunreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is\r\nsaid to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. But\r\nthat is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of the\r\nsensational stream takes up the adjacent morsels by coalescing with\r\nthem. This is just what we mean by the stream\u0027s sensible continuity.\r\nNo element \u003ci\u003ethere\u003c/i\u003e cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts\r\ncut themselves from concepts. No part \u003ci\u003ethere\u003c/i\u003e is so small as not to be\r\na place of conflux. No part there is not really \u003ci\u003enext\u003c/i\u003e its neighbors;\r\nwhich means that there is literally nothing between; which means\r\nagain that no part goes exactly so far and no farther; that no part\r\nabsolutely excludes another, but that they compenetrate and are\r\ncohesive; that if you tear out one, its roots bring out more with\r\nthem; that whatever is real is telescoped and diffused into other\r\nreals; that, in short, every minutest thing is already its hegelian\r\n\u0027own other,\u0027 in the fullest sense of the term.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00326\"\u003eOf course this \u003ci\u003esounds\u003c/i\u003e self-contradictory, but as the immediate facts\r\ndon\u0027t sound at all, but simply \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e, until we conceptualize and name\r\nthem vocally, the contradiction results only from the conceptual\r\nor discursive form being substituted for the real form. But if, as\r\nBergson shows, that form is superimposed for practical ends only, in\r\norder to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it;\r\nand if it cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life\u0027s inner\r\nnature is or ought to be; why then we can turn a deaf ear to its\r\naccusations. The resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or\r\n\u0027catastrophe\u0027 of which M. Bergson\u0027s disciple whom I lately quoted\r\nspoke. We are so subject to the philosophic tradition which treats\r\n\u003ci\u003elogos\u003c/i\u003e or discursive thought generally as the sole avenue to truth,\r\nthat to fall back on raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer, and\r\nto think of concepts as the merely practical things which Bergson\r\ncalls them, comes very hard. It is putting off our proud maturity of\r\nmind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of\r\nreason. But difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way,\r\nI believe, to the possession of reality, and I permit myself to hope\r\nthat some of you may share my opinion after you have heard my next\r\nlecture.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VII\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eTHE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00329\"\u003eI fear that few of you will have been able to obey Bergson\u0027s call upon\r\nyou to look towards the sensational life for the fuller knowledge of\r\nreality, or to sympathize with his attempt to limit the divine right\r\nof concepts to rule our mind absolutely. It is too much like looking\r\ndownward and not up. Philosophy, you will say, doesn\u0027t lie flat on its\r\nbelly in the middle of experience, in the very thick of its sand and\r\ngravel, as this Bergsonism does, never getting a peep at anything from\r\nabove. Philosophy is essentially the vision of things from above.\r\nIt doesn\u0027t simply feel the detail of things, it comprehends their\r\nintelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories\r\nand rules, their order and necessity. It takes the superior point of\r\nview of the architect. Is it conceivable that it should ever forsake\r\nthat point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate\r\nfeeling? To say nothing of your traditional Oxford devotion to\r\nAristotle and Plato, the leaven of T.H. Green probably works still\r\ntoo strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly.\r\nGreen more than any one realized that knowledge \u003ci\u003eabout\u003c/i\u003e things was\r\nknowledge of their relations; but nothing could persuade him that our\r\nsensational life could contain any relational element. He followed\r\nthe strict intellectualist method with sensations. What they were not\r\nexpressly defined as including, they must exclude. Sensations are not\r\ndefined as relations, so in the end Green thought that they could\r\nget related together only by the action on them from above of a\r\n\u0027self-distinguishing\u0027 absolute and eternal mind, present to that which\r\nis related, but not related itself. \u0027A relation,\u0027 he said, \u0027is not\r\ncontingent with the contingency of feeling. It is permanent with\r\nthe permanence of the combining and comparing thought which alone\r\nconstitutes it.\u0027[1] In other words, relations are purely conceptual\r\nobjects, and the sensational life as such cannot relate itself\r\ntogether. Sensation in itself, Green wrote, is fleeting, momentary,\r\nunnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for\r\nthe same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability. Were\r\nthere no permanent objects of conception for our sensations to be\r\n\u0027referred to,\u0027 there would be no significant names, but only noises,\r\nand a consistent sensationalism must be speechless.[2] Green\u0027s\r\nintellectualism was so earnest that it produced a natural and an\r\ninevitable effect. But the atomistic and unrelated sensations which he\r\nhad in mind were purely fictitious products of his rationalist fancy.\r\nThe psychology of our own day disavows them utterly,[3] and Green\u0027s\r\nlaborious belaboring of poor old Locke for not having first seen that\r\nhis ideas of sensation were just that impracticable sort of thing, and\r\nthen fled to transcendental idealism as a remedy,—his belaboring of\r\npoor old Locke for this, I say, is pathetic. Every examiner of the\r\nsensible life \u003ci\u003ein concreto\u003c/i\u003e must see that relations of every sort, of\r\ntime, space, difference, likeness, change, rate, cause, or what not,\r\nare just as integral members of the sensational flux as terms are, and\r\nthat conjunctive relations are just as true members of the flux as\r\ndisjunctive relations are.[4] This is what in some recent writings of\r\nmine I have called the \u0027radically empiricist\u0027 doctrine (in distinction\r\nfrom the doctrine of mental atoms which the name empiricism so\r\noften suggests). Intellectualistic critics of sensation insist that\r\nsensations are \u003ci\u003edisjoined\u003c/i\u003e only. Radical empiricism insists\r\nthat conjunctions between them are just as immediately given as\r\ndisjunctions are, and that relations, whether disjunctive or\r\nconjunctive, are in their original sensible givenness just as fleeting\r\nand momentary (in Green\u0027s words), and just as \u0027particular,\u0027 as terms\r\nare. Later, both terms and relations get universalized by being\r\nconceptualized and named.[5] But all the thickness, concreteness, and\r\nindividuality of experience exists in the immediate and relatively\r\nunnamed stages of it, to the richness of which, and to the standing\r\ninadequacy of our conceptions to match it, Professor Bergson so\r\nemphatically calls our attention. And now I am happy to say that we\r\ncan begin to gather together some of the separate threads of our\r\nargument, and see a little better the general kind of conclusion\r\ntoward which we are tending. Pray go back with me to the lecture\r\nbefore the last, and recall what I said about the difficulty of seeing\r\nhow states of consciousness can compound themselves. The difficulty\r\nseemed to be the same, you remember, whether we took it in psychology\r\nas the composition of finite states of mind out of simpler finite\r\nstates, or in metaphysics as the composition of the absolute mind out\r\nof finite minds in general. It is the general conceptualist difficulty\r\nof any one thing being the same with many things, either at once or\r\nin succession, for the abstract concepts of oneness and manyness must\r\nneeds exclude each other. In the particular instance that we have\r\ndwelt on so long, the one thing is the all-form of experience, the\r\nmany things are the each-forms of experience in you and me. To call\r\nthem the same we must treat them as if each were simultaneously\r\nits own other, a feat on conceptualist principles impossible of\r\nperformance.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00330\"\u003eOn the principle of going behind the conceptual function altogether,\r\nhowever, and looking to the more primitive flux of the sensational\r\nlife for reality\u0027s true shape, a way is open to us, as I tried in my\r\nlast lecture to show. Not only the absolute is its own other, but the\r\nsimplest bits of immediate experience are their own others, if that\r\nhegelian phrase be once for all allowed. The concrete pulses of\r\nexperience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual\r\nsubstitutes for them are confined by. They run into one another\r\ncontinuously and seem to interpenetrate. What in them is relation and\r\nwhat is matter related is hard to discern. You feel no one of them as\r\ninwardly simple, and no two as wholly without confluence where they\r\ntouch. There is no datum so small as not to show this mystery, if\r\nmystery it be. The tiniest feeling that we can possibly have comes\r\nwith an earlier and a later part and with a sense of their continuous\r\nprocession. Mr. Shadworth Hodgson showed long ago that there is\r\nliterally no such object as the present moment except as an unreal\r\npostulate of abstract thought.[6] The \u0027passing\u0027 moment is, as I\r\nalready have reminded you, the minimal fact, with the \u0027apparition of\r\ndifference\u0027 inside of it as well as outside. If we do not feel both\r\npast and present in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all. We\r\nhave the same many-in-one in the matter that fills the passing time.\r\nThe rush of our thought forward through its fringes is the everlasting\r\npeculiarity of its life. We realize this life as something always off\r\nits balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a\r\ndarkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn\r\nfulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as\r\nan alteration. \u0027Yes,\u0027 we say at the full brightness, \u0027\u003ci\u003ethis\u003c/i\u003e is what I\r\njust meant.\u0027 \u0027No,\u0027 we feel at the dawning, \u0027this is not yet the full\r\nmeaning, there is more to come.\u0027 In every crescendo of sensation, in\r\nevery effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction\r\nof desire, this succession of an emptiness and fulness that have\r\nreference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the\r\nphenomenon. In every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal\r\npresence which is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which the\r\nonly function of the present is to \u003ci\u003emean\u003c/i\u003e, is even more notoriously\r\nthere. And in the movement of pure thought we have the same\r\nphenomenon. When I say \u003ci\u003eSocrates is mortal\u003c/i\u003e, the moment \u003ci\u003eSocrates\u003c/i\u003e is\r\nincomplete; it falls forward through the \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e which is pure movement,\r\ninto the \u003ci\u003emortal\u003c/i\u003e which is indeed bare mortal on the tongue, but\r\nfor the mind is \u003ci\u003ethat mortal\u003c/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003emortal Socrates\u003c/i\u003e, at last\r\nsatisfactorily disposed of and told off.[7]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00331\"\u003eHere, then, inside of the minimal pulses of experience, is realized\r\nthat very inner complexity which the transcendentalists say only the\r\nabsolute can genuinely possess. The gist of the matter is always the\r\nsame—something ever goes indissolubly with something else. You cannot\r\nseparate the same from its other, except by abandoning the real\r\naltogether and taking to the conceptual system. What is immediately\r\ngiven in the single and particular instance is always something pooled\r\nand mutual, something with no dark spot, no point of ignorance. No one\r\nelementary bit of reality is eclipsed from the next bit\u0027s point of\r\nview, if only we take reality sensibly and in small enough pulses—and\r\nby us it has to be taken pulse-wise, for our span of consciousness is\r\ntoo short to grasp the larger collectivity of things except nominally\r\nand abstractly. No more of reality collected together at once is\r\nextant anywhere, perhaps, than in my experience of reading this page,\r\nor in yours of listening; yet within those bits of experience as\r\nthey come to pass we get a fulness of content that no conceptual\r\ndescription can equal. Sensational experiences \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e their \u0027own\r\nothers,\u0027 then, both internally and externally. Inwardly they are one\r\nwith their parts, and outwardly they pass continuously into their next\r\nneighbors, so that events separated by years of time in a man\u0027s life\r\nhang together unbrokenly by the intermediary events. Their \u003ci\u003enames\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nto be sure, cut them into separate conceptual entities, but no cuts\r\nexisted in the continuum in which they originally came.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00332\"\u003eIf, with all this in our mind, we turn to our own particular\r\npredicament, we see that our old objection to the self-compounding of\r\nstates of consciousness, our accusation that it was impossible for\r\npurely logical reasons, is unfounded in principle. Every smallest\r\nstate of consciousness, concretely taken, overflows its own\r\ndefinition. Only concepts are self-identical; only \u0027reason\u0027 deals with\r\nclosed equations; nature is but a name for excess; every point in\r\nher opens out and runs into the more; and the only question, with\r\nreference to any point we may be considering, is how far into the\r\nrest of nature we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond its\r\noverflow. In the pulse of inner life immediately present now in each\r\nof us is a little past, a little future, a little awareness of our own\r\nbody, of each other\u0027s persons, of these sublimities we are trying to\r\ntalk about, of the earth\u0027s geography and the direction of history,\r\nof truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how much more?\r\nFeeling, however dimly and subconsciously, all these things, your\r\npulse of inner life is continuous with them, belongs to them and they\r\nto it. You can\u0027t identify it with either one of them rather than with\r\nthe others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those\r\ndirections, what it develops into will look back on it and say, \u0027That\r\nwas the original germ of me.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00333\"\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eprinciple\u003c/i\u003e, then, the real units of our immediately-felt life are\r\nunlike the units that intellectualist logic holds to and makes its\r\ncalculations with. They are not separate from their own others, and\r\nyou have to take them at widely separated dates to find any two of\r\nthem that seem unblent. Then indeed they do appear separate even as\r\ntheir concepts are separate; a chasm yawns between them; but the chasm\r\nitself is but an intellectualist fiction, got by abstracting from the\r\ncontinuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was\r\nfilled. It is like the log carried first by William and Henry, then\r\nby William, Henry, and John, then by Henry and John, then by John and\r\nPeter, and so on. All real units of experience \u003ci\u003eoverlap\u003c/i\u003e. Let a row of\r\nequidistant dots on a sheet of paper symbolize the concepts by which\r\nwe intellectualize the world. Let a ruler long enough to cover at\r\nleast three dots stand for our sensible experience. Then the conceived\r\nchanges of the sensible experience can be symbolized by sliding the\r\nruler along the line of dots. One concept after another will apply to\r\nit, one after another drop away, but it will always cover at least two\r\nof them, and no dots less than three will ever adequately cover \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e.\r\nYou falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00334\"\u003eWhat is true here of successive states must also be true of\r\nsimultaneous characters. They also overlap each other with their\r\nbeing. My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a\r\nfringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more. I use three\r\nseparate terms here to describe, this fact; but I might as well use\r\nthree hundred, for the fact is all shades and no boundaries. Which\r\npart of it properly is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what\r\nis out, it already has come in. The centre works in one way while the\r\nmargins work in another, and presently overpower the centre and are\r\ncentral themselves. What we conceptually identify ourselves with and\r\nsay we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our \u003ci\u003efull\u003c/i\u003e self\r\nis the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious\r\npossibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving,\r\nand can hardly begin to analyze. The collective and the distributive\r\nways of being coexist here, for each part functions distinctly, makes\r\nconnexion with its own peculiar region in the still wider rest of\r\nexperience and tends to draw us into that line, and yet the whole is\r\nsomehow felt as one pulse of our life,—not conceived so, but felt so.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00335\"\u003eIn principle, then, as I said, intellectualism\u0027s edge is broken; it\r\ncan only approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our\r\ninner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its impossibilities.\r\nEvery bit of us at every moment is part and parcel of a wider self, it\r\nquivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass, and the\r\nactual in it is continuously one with possibles not yet in our present\r\nsight.[8] And just as we are co-conscious with our own momentary\r\nmargin, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more really\r\ncentral self in things which is co-conscious with the whole of us? May\r\nnot you and I be confluent in a higher consciousness, and confluently\r\nactive there, tho we now know it not?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00336\"\u003eI am tiring myself and you, I know, by vainly seeking to describe\r\nby concepts and words what I say at the same time exceeds either\r\nconceptualization or verbalization. As long as one continues\r\n\u003ci\u003etalking\u003c/i\u003e, intellectualism remains in undisturbed possession of the\r\nfield. The return to life can\u0027t come about by talking. It is an \u003ci\u003eact\u003c/i\u003e;\r\nto make you return to life, I must set an example for your imitation,\r\nI must deafen you to talk, or to the importance of talk, by showing\r\nyou, as Bergson does, that the concepts we talk with are made for\r\npurposes of \u003ci\u003epractice\u003c/i\u003e and not for purposes of insight. Or I must\r\n\u003ci\u003epoint\u003c/i\u003e, point to the mere \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e of life, and you by inner sympathy\r\nmust fill out the \u003ci\u003ewhat\u003c/i\u003e for yourselves. The minds of some of you,\r\nI know, will absolutely refuse to do so, refuse to think in\r\nnon-conceptualized terms. I myself absolutely refused to do so\r\nfor years together, even after I knew that the denial of\r\nmanyness-in-oneness by intellectualism must be false, for the same\r\nreality does perform the most various functions at once. But I hoped\r\never for a revised intellectualist way round the difficulty, and it\r\nwas only after reading Bergson that I saw that to continue using the\r\nintellectualist method was itself the fault. I saw that philosophy had\r\nbeen on a false scent ever since the days of Socrates and Plato, that\r\nan \u003ci\u003eintellectual\u003c/i\u003e answer to the intellectualist\u0027s difficulties will\r\nnever come, and that the real way out of them, far from consisting in\r\nthe discovery of such an answer, consists in simply closing one\u0027s ears\r\nto the question. When conceptualism summons life to justify itself\r\nin conceptual terms, it is like a challenge addressed in a foreign\r\nlanguage to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is\r\nirrelevant to him altogether—he may let it lie unnoticed. I went thus\r\nthrough the \u0027inner catastrophe\u0027 of which I spoke in the last lecture;\r\nI had literally come to the end of my conceptual stock-in-trade, I was\r\nbankrupt intellectualistically, and had to change my base. No words\r\nof mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of\r\nconcepts. But if any of you try sincerely and pertinaciously on your\r\nown separate accounts to intellectualize reality, you may be similarly\r\ndriven to a change of front. I say no more: I must leave life to teach\r\nthe lesson.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00337\"\u003eWe have now reached a point of view from which the self-compounding of\r\nmind in its smaller and more accessible portions seems a certain\r\nfact, and in which the speculative assumption of a similar but wider\r\ncompounding in remoter regions must be reckoned with as a legitimate\r\nhypothesis. The absolute is not the impossible being I once thought\r\nit. Mental facts do function both singly and together, at once, and we\r\nfinite minds may simultaneously be co-conscious with one another in a\r\nsuperhuman intelligence. It is only the extravagant claims of coercive\r\nnecessity on the absolute\u0027s part that have to be denied by \u003ci\u003ea priori\u003c/i\u003e\r\nlogic. As an hypothesis trying to make itself probable on analogical\r\nand inductive grounds, the absolute is entitled to a patient hearing.\r\nWhich is as much as to say that our serious business from now onward\r\nlies with Fechner and his method, rather than with Hegel, Royce, or\r\nBradley. Fechner treats the superhuman consciousness he so fervently\r\nbelieves in as an hypothesis only, which he then recommends by all the\r\nresources of induction and persuasion.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00338\"\u003eIt is true that Fechner himself is an absolutist in his books, not\r\nactively but passively, if I may say so. He talks not only of the\r\nearth-soul and of the star-souls, but of an integrated soul of all\r\nthings in the cosmos without exception, and this he calls God just\r\nas others call it the absolute. Nevertheless he \u003ci\u003ethinks\u003c/i\u003e only of\r\nthe subordinate superhuman souls, and content with having made his\r\nobeisance once for all to the august total soul of the cosmos, he\r\nleaves it in its lonely sublimity with no attempt to define its\r\nnature. Like the absolute, it is \u0027out of range,\u0027 and not an object for\r\ndistincter vision. Psychologically, it seems to me that Fechner\u0027s\r\nGod is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of his system\r\npositively thought out. As we envelop our sight and hearing, so the\r\nearth-soul envelops us, and the star-soul the earth-soul, until—what?\r\nEnvelopment can\u0027t go on forever; it must have an \u003ci\u003eabschluss\u003c/i\u003e, a total\r\nenvelope must terminate the series, so God is the name that Fechner\r\ngives to this last all-enveloper. But if nothing escapes this\r\nall-enveloper, he is responsible for everything, including evil, and\r\nall the paradoxes and difficulties which I found in the absolute\r\nat the end of our third lecture recur undiminished. Fechner tries\r\nsincerely to grapple with the problem of evil, but he always solves it\r\nin the leibnitzian fashion by making his God non-absolute, placing\r\nhim under conditions of \u0027metaphysical necessity\u0027 which even his\r\nomnipotence cannot violate. His will has to struggle with conditions\r\nnot imposed on that will by itself. He tolerates provisionally what he\r\nhas not created, and then with endless patience tries to overcome it\r\nand live it down. He has, in short, a history. Whenever Fechner tries\r\nto represent him clearly, his God becomes the ordinary God of theism,\r\nand ceases to be the absolutely totalized all-enveloper.[9] In this\r\nshape, he represents the ideal element in things solely, and is our\r\nchampion and our helper and we his helpers, against the bad parts of\r\nthe universe.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00339\"\u003eFechner was in fact too little of a metaphysician to care for perfect\r\nformal consistency in these abstract regions. He believed in God in\r\nthe pluralistic manner, but partly from convention and partly from\r\nwhat I should call intellectual laziness, if laziness of any kind\r\ncould be imputed to a Fechner, he let the usual monistic talk about\r\nhim pass unchallenged. I propose to you that we should discuss the\r\nquestion of God without entangling ourselves in advance in the\r\nmonistic assumption. Is it probable that there is any superhuman\r\nconsciousness at all, in the first place? When that is settled, the\r\nfurther question whether its form be monistic or pluralistic is in\r\norder.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00340\"\u003eBefore advancing to either question, however, and I shall have to deal\r\nwith both but very briefly after what has been said already, let me\r\nfinish our retrospective survey by one more remark about the curious\r\nlogical situation of the absolutists. For what have they invoked the\r\nabsolute except as a being the peculiar inner form of which shall\r\nenable it to overcome the contradictions with which intellectualism\r\nhas found the finite many as such to be infected? The many-in-one\r\ncharacter that, as we have seen, every smallest tract of finite\r\nexperience offers, is considered by intellectualism to be fatal to the\r\nreality of finite experience. What can be distinguished, it tells us,\r\nis separate; and what is separate is unrelated, for a relation, being\r\na \u0027between,\u0027 would bring only a twofold separation. Hegel, Royce,\r\nBradley, and the Oxford absolutists in general seem to agree about\r\nthis logical absurdity of manyness-in-oneness in the only places where\r\nit is empirically found. But see the curious tactics! Is the absurdity\r\n\u003ci\u003ereduced\u003c/i\u003e in the absolute being whom they call in to relieve it? Quite\r\notherwise, for that being shows it on an infinitely greater scale, and\r\nflaunts it in its very definition. The fact of its not being related\r\nto any outward environment, the fact that all relations are inside of\r\nitself, doesn\u0027t save it, for Mr. Bradley\u0027s great argument against the\r\nfinite is that \u003ci\u003ein\u003c/i\u003e any given bit of it (a bit of sugar, for instance)\r\nthe presence of a plurality of characters (whiteness and sweetness,\r\nfor example) is self-contradictory; so that in the final end all that\r\nthe absolute\u0027s name appears to stand for is the persistent claim of\r\noutraged human nature that reality \u003ci\u003eshall\u003c/i\u003e not be called\r\nabsurd. \u003ci\u003eSomewhere\u003c/i\u003e there must be an aspect of it guiltless of\r\nself-contradiction. All we can see of the absolute, meanwhile, is\r\nguilty in the same way in which the finite is. Intellectualism sees\r\nwhat it calls the guilt, when comminuted in the finite object; but\r\nis too near-sighted to see it in the more enormous object. Yet the\r\nabsolute\u0027s constitution, if imagined at all, has to be imagined after\r\nthe analogy of some bit of finite experience. Take any \u003ci\u003ereal\u003c/i\u003e bit,\r\nsuppress its environment and then magnify it to monstrosity, and you\r\nget identically the type of structure of the absolute. It is obvious\r\nthat all your difficulties here remain and go with you. If the\r\nrelative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is\r\ninfinitely more so. Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat,\r\nbut swallows the whole camel. But this polemic against the absolute\r\nis as odious to me as it is to you, so I will say no more about that\r\nbeing. It is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that\r\ndo mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of\r\nphilosophy, so I will turn to the more general positive question of\r\nwhether superhuman unities of consciousness should be considered as\r\nmore probable or more improbable.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00341\"\u003eIn a former lecture I went over some of the fechnerian reasons for\r\ntheir plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more\r\nobvious grounds of doubt concerning them. The numerous facts of\r\ndivided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical\r\nmen, as Janet, Freud, Prince, Sidis, and others, have unearthed were\r\nunknown in Fechner\u0027s time, and neither the phenomena of automatic\r\nwriting and speech, nor of mediumship and \u0027possession\u0027 generally, had\r\nbeen recognized or studied as we now study them, so Fechner\u0027s stock of\r\nanalogies is scant compared with our present one. He did the best with\r\nwhat he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal\r\nor supernormal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior\r\nco-consciousness being possible. I doubt whether we shall ever\r\nunderstand some of them without using the very letter of Fechner\u0027s\r\nconception of a great reservoir in which the memories of earth\u0027s\r\ninhabitants are pooled and preserved, and from which, when the\r\nthreshold lowers or the valve opens, information ordinarily shut out\r\nleaks into the mind of exceptional individuals among us. But those\r\nregions of inquiry are perhaps too spook-haunted to interest an\r\nacademic audience, and the only evidence I feel it now decorous to\r\nbring to the support of Fechner is drawn from ordinary religious\r\nexperience. I think it may be asserted that there \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e religious\r\nexperiences of a specific nature, not deducible by analogy or\r\npsychological reasoning from our other sorts of experience. I think\r\nthat they point with reasonable probability to the continuity of\r\nour consciousness with a wider spiritual environment from which\r\nthe ordinary prudential man (who is the only man that scientific\r\npsychology, so called, takes cognizance of) is shut off. I shall begin\r\nmy final lecture by referring to them again briefly.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VIII\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eCONCLUSIONS\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00344\"\u003eAt the close of my last lecture I referred to the existence of\r\nreligious experiences of a specific nature. I must now explain just\r\nwhat I mean by such a claim. Briefly, the facts I have in mind may\r\nall be described as experiences of an unexpected life succeeding upon\r\ndeath. By this I don\u0027t mean immortality, or the death of the body. I\r\nmean the deathlike termination of certain mental processes within the\r\nindividual\u0027s experience, processes that run to failure, and in some\r\nindividuals, at least, eventuate in despair. Just as romantic love\r\nseems a comparatively recent literary invention, so these experiences\r\nof a life that supervenes upon despair seem to have played no great\r\npart in official theology till Luther\u0027s time; and possibly the best\r\nway to indicate their character will be to point to a certain contrast\r\nbetween the inner life of ourselves and of the ancient Greeks and\r\nRomans.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00345\"\u003eMr. Chesterton, I think, says somewhere, that the Greeks and Romans,\r\nin all that concerned their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn\r\nset of folks. The Athenians thought that the very gods must admire the\r\nrectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves\r\nwere apparently of much the same opinion. Cato\u0027s veracity was so\r\nimpeccable that the extremest incredulity a Roman could express of\r\nanything was to say, \u0027I would not believe it even if Cato had told\r\nme.\u0027 Good was good, and bad was bad, for these people. Hypocrisy,\r\nwhich church-Christianity brought in, hardly existed; the naturalistic\r\nsystem held firm; its values showed no hollowness and brooked no\r\nirony. The individual, if virtuous enough, could meet all possible\r\nrequirements. The pagan pride had never crumbled. Luther was the first\r\nmoralist who broke with any effectiveness through the crust of all\r\nthis naturalistic self-sufficiency, thinking (and possibly he was\r\nright) that Saint Paul had done it already. Religious experience of\r\nthe lutheran type brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy.\r\nYou are strong only by being weak, it shows. You cannot live on pride\r\nor self-sufficingness. There is a light in which all the naturally\r\nfounded and currently accepted distinctions, excellences, and\r\nsafeguards of our characters appear as utter childishness. Sincerely\r\nto give up one\u0027s conceit or hope of being good in one\u0027s own right is\r\nthe only door to the universe\u0027s deeper reaches.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00346\"\u003eThese deeper reaches are familiar to evangelical Christianity and\r\nto what is nowadays becoming known as \u0027mind-cure\u0027 religion or \u0027new\r\nthought.\u0027 The phenomenon is that of new ranges of life succeeding on\r\nour most despairing moments. There are resources in us that naturalism\r\nwith its literal and legal virtues never recks of, possibilities that\r\ntake our breath away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on\r\ngiving up our own will and letting something higher work for us, and\r\nthese seem to show a world wider than either physics or philistine\r\nethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in \u003ci\u003espite\u003c/i\u003e\r\nof certain forms of death, indeed \u003ci\u003ebecause\u003c/i\u003e of certain forms of\r\ndeath—death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility,\r\nof fear and worry, competency and desert, death of everything that\r\npaganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their\r\ntrust to.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00347\"\u003eReason, operating on our other experiences, even our psychological\r\nexperiences, would never have inferred these specifically religious\r\nexperiences in advance of their actual coming. She could not suspect\r\ntheir existence, for they are discontinuous with the \u0027natural\u0027\r\nexperiences they succeed upon and invert their values. But as they\r\nactually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their\r\nrecipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our strictly\r\nmoralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real\r\nhuman experience. They soften nature\u0027s outlines and open out the\r\nstrangest possibilities and perspectives.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00348\"\u003eThis is why it seems to me that the logical understanding, working in\r\nabstraction from such specifically religious experiences, will always\r\nomit something, and fail to reach completely adequate conclusions.\r\nDeath and failure, it will always say, \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e death and failure\r\nsimply, and can nevermore be one with life; so religious experience,\r\npeculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered\r\nand interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more complete\r\nphilosophy.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00349\"\u003eThe sort of belief that religious experience of this type naturally\r\nengenders in those who have it is fully in accord with Fechner\u0027s\r\ntheories. To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer\r\nfinds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous\r\nwith a \u003ci\u003emore\u003c/i\u003e of the same quality which is operative in the universe\r\noutside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a\r\nfashion get on board of and save himself, when all his lower being has\r\ngone to pieces in the wreck. In a word, the believer is continuous,\r\nto his own consciousness, at any rate, with a wider self from which\r\nsaving experiences flow in. Those who have such experiences distinctly\r\nenough and often enough to live in the light of them remain quite\r\nunmoved by criticism, from whatever quarter it may come, be it\r\nacademic or scientific, or be it merely the voice of logical\r\ncommon sense. They have had their vision and they \u003ci\u003eknow\u003c/i\u003e—that is\r\nenough—that we inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which\r\nhelp comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose\r\ninstruments we are.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00350\"\u003eOne may therefore plead, I think, that Fechner\u0027s ideas are not without\r\ndirect empirical verification. There is at any rate one side of life\r\nwhich would be easily explicable if those ideas were true, but of\r\nwhich there appears no clear explanation so long as we assume either\r\nwith naturalism that human consciousness is the highest consciousness\r\nthere is, or with dualistic theism that there is a higher mind in the\r\ncosmos, but that it is discontinuous with our own. It has always been\r\na matter of surprise with me that philosophers of the absolute should\r\nhave shown so little interest in this department of life, and so\r\nseldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that\r\npersonal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in\r\ntheir own vision so strong. The logician\u0027s bias has always been too\r\nmuch with them. They have preferred the thinner to the thicker method,\r\ndialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than\r\nthe confused and unwholesome facts of personal biography.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00351\"\u003eIn spite of rationalism\u0027s disdain for the particular, the personal,\r\nand the unwholesome, the drift of all the evidence we have seems to\r\nme to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form\r\nof superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be\r\nco-conscious. We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our\r\nlibraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having\r\nno inkling of the meaning of it all. The intellectualist objections\r\nto this fall away when the authority of intellectualist logic is\r\nundermined by criticism, and then the positive empirical evidence\r\nremains. The analogies with ordinary psychology and with the facts of\r\npathology, with those of psychical research, so called, and with those\r\nof religious experience, establish, when taken together, a decidedly\r\n\u003ci\u003eformidable\u003c/i\u003e probability in favor of a general view of the world\r\nalmost identical with Fechner\u0027s. The outlines of the superhuman\r\nconsciousness thus made probable must remain, however, very vague, and\r\nthe number of functionally distinct \u0027selves\u0027 it comports and carries\r\nhas to be left entirely problematic. It may be polytheistically or\r\nit may be monotheistically conceived of. Fechner, with his distinct\r\nearth-soul functioning as our guardian angel, seems to me clearly\r\npolytheistic; but the word \u0027polytheism\u0027 usually gives offence, so\r\nperhaps it is better not to use it. Only one thing is certain, and\r\nthat is the result of our criticism of the absolute: the only way\r\nto escape from the paradoxes and perplexities that a consistently\r\nthought-out monistic universe suffers from as from a species of\r\nauto-intoxication—the mystery of the \u0027fall\u0027 namely, of reality\r\nlapsing into appearance, truth into error, perfection into\r\nimperfection; of evil, in short; the mystery of universal determinism,\r\nof the block-universe eternal and without a history, etc.;—the only\r\nway of escape, I say, from all this is to be frankly pluralistic and\r\nassume that the superhuman consciousness, however vast it may be, has\r\nitself an external environment, and consequently is finite. Present\r\nday monism carefully repudiates complicity with spinozistic monism. In\r\nthat, it explains, the many get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas\r\nin the improved idealistic form they get preserved in all their\r\nmanyness as the one\u0027s eternal object. The absolute itself is thus\r\nrepresented by absolutists as having a pluralistic object. But if even\r\nthe absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves\r\nhesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? Why should we\r\nenvelop our many with the \u0027one\u0027 that brings so much poison in its\r\ntrain?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00352\"\u003eThe line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me, both in\r\ntheology and in philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman\r\nconsciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion,\r\nin other words, that there is a God, but that he is finite, either in\r\npower or in knowledge, or in both at once. These, I need hardly tell\r\nyou, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their\r\nactive commerce with God; and the monistic perfections that make the\r\nnotion of him so paradoxical practically and morally are the colder\r\naddition of remote professorial minds operating \u003ci\u003ein distans\u003c/i\u003e upon\r\nconceptual substitutes for him alone.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00353\"\u003eWhy cannot \u0027experience\u0027 and \u0027reason\u0027 meet on this common ground? Why\r\ncannot they compromise? May not the godlessness usually but needlessly\r\nassociated with the philosophy of immediate experience give way to a\r\ntheism now seen to follow directly from that experience more widely\r\ntaken? and may not rationalism, satisfied with seeing her \u003ci\u003ea priori\u003c/i\u003e\r\nproofs of God so effectively replaced by empirical evidence, abate\r\nsomething of her absolutist claims? Let God but have the least\r\ninfinitesimal \u003ci\u003eother\u003c/i\u003e of any kind beside him, and empiricism and\r\nrationalism might strike hands in a lasting treaty of peace. Both\r\nmight then leave abstract thinness behind them, and seek together, as\r\nscientific men seek, by using all the analogies and data within reach,\r\nto build up the most probable approximate idea of what the divine\r\nconsciousness concretely may be like. I venture to beg the younger\r\nOxford idealists to consider seriously this alternative. Few men are\r\nas qualified by their intellectual gifts to reap the harvests that\r\nseem certain to any one who, like Fechner and Bergson, will leave the\r\nthinner for the thicker path.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00354\"\u003eCompromise and mediation are inseparable from the pluralistic\r\nphilosophy. Only monistic dogmatism can say of any of its hypotheses,\r\n\u0027It is either that or nothing; take it or leave it just as it stands.\u0027\r\nThe type of monism prevalent at Oxford has kept this steep and brittle\r\nattitude, partly through the proverbial academic preference for thin\r\nand elegant logical solutions, partly from a mistaken notion that the\r\nonly solidly grounded basis for religion was along those lines. If\r\nOxford men could be ignorant of anything, it might almost seem that\r\nthey had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement towards\r\na pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own\r\ngeneration has been drawn, and which threatens to short-circuit their\r\nmethods entirely and become their religious rival unless they are\r\nwilling to make themselves its allies. Yet, wedded as they seem to\r\nbe to the logical machinery and technical apparatus of absolutism,\r\nI cannot but believe that their fidelity to the religious ideal in\r\ngeneral is deeper still. Especially do I find it hard to believe that\r\nthe more clerical adherents of the school would hold so fast to its\r\nparticular machinery if only they could be made to think that religion\r\ncould be secured in some other way. Let empiricism once become\r\nassociated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange\r\nmisunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I\r\nbelieve that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be\r\nready to begin. That great awakening of a new popular interest in\r\nphilosophy, which is so striking a phenomenon at the present day in\r\nall countries, is undoubtedly due in part to religious demands. As\r\nthe authority of past tradition tends more and more to crumble, men\r\nnaturally turn a wistful ear to the authority of reason or to the\r\nevidence of present fact. They will assuredly not be disappointed if\r\nthey open their minds to what the thicker and more radical empiricism\r\nhas to say. I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural\r\nally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. It\r\nis true that superstitions and wild-growing over-beliefs of all\r\nsorts will undoubtedly begin to abound if the notion of higher\r\nconsciousnesses enveloping ours, of fechnerian earth-souls and the\r\nlike, grows orthodox and fashionable; still more will they superabound\r\nif science ever puts her approving stamp on the phenomena of which\r\nFrederic Myers so earnestly advocated the scientific recognition, the\r\nphenomena of psychic research so-called—and I myself firmly believe\r\nthat most of these phenomena are rooted in reality. But ought one\r\nseriously to allow such a timid consideration as that to deter one\r\nfrom following the evident path of greatest religious promise? Since\r\nwhen, in this mixed world, was any good thing given us in purest\r\noutline and isolation? One of the chief characteristics of life is\r\nlife\u0027s redundancy. The sole condition of our having anything, no\r\nmatter what, is that we should have so much of it, that we are\r\nfortunate if we do not grow sick of the sight and sound of it\r\naltogether. Everything is smothered in the litter that is fated to\r\naccompany it. Without too much you cannot have enough, of anything.\r\nLots of inferior books, lots of bad statues, lots of dull speeches, of\r\ntenth-rate men and women, as a condition of the few precious specimens\r\nin either kind being realized! The gold-dust comes to birth with the\r\nquartz-sand all around it, and this is as much a condition of religion\r\nas of any other excellent possession. There must be extrication; there\r\nmust be competition for survival; but the clay matrix and the noble\r\ngem must first come into being unsifted. Once extricated, the gem can\r\nbe examined separately, conceptualized, defined, and insulated. But\r\nthis process of extrication cannot be short-circuited—or if it is,\r\nyou get the thin inferior abstractions which we have seen, either\r\nthe hollow unreal god of scholastic theology, or the unintelligible\r\npantheistic monster, instead of the more living divine reality with\r\nwhich it appears certain that empirical methods tend to connect men in\r\nimagination.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00355\"\u003eArrived at this point, I ask you to go back to my first lecture and\r\nremember, if you can, what I quoted there from your own Professor\r\nJacks—what he said about the philosopher himself being taken up into\r\nthe universe which he is accounting for. This is the fechnerian as\r\nwell as the hegelian view, and thus our end rejoins harmoniously our\r\nbeginning. Philosophies are intimate parts of the universe, they\r\nexpress something of its own thought of itself. A philosophy may\r\nindeed be a most momentous reaction of the universe upon itself. It\r\nmay, as I said, possess and handle itself differently in consequence\r\nof us philosophers, with our theories, being here; it may trust itself\r\nor mistrust itself the more, and, by doing the one or the other,\r\ndeserve more the trust or the mistrust. What mistrusts itself deserves\r\nmistrust.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00356\"\u003eThis is the philosophy of humanism in the widest sense. Our\r\nphilosophies swell the current of being, add their character to it.\r\nThey are part of all that we have met, of all that makes us be. As\r\na French philosopher says, \u0027Nous sommes du réel dans le réel.\u0027 Our\r\nthoughts determine our acts, and our acts redetermine the previous\r\nnature of the world.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00357\"\u003eThus does foreignness get banished from our world, and far more so\r\nwhen we take the system of it pluralistically than when we take it\r\nmonistically. We are indeed internal parts of God and not external\r\ncreations, on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. Yet\r\nbecause God is not the absolute, but is himself a part when the system\r\nis conceived pluralistically, his functions can be taken as not wholly\r\ndissimilar to those of the other smaller parts,—as similar to our\r\nfunctions consequently.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00358\"\u003eHaving an environment, being in time, and working out a history just\r\nlike ourselves, he escapes from the foreignness from all that is\r\nhuman, of the static timeless perfect absolute.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00359\"\u003eRemember that one of our troubles with that was its essential\r\nforeignness and monstrosity—there really is no other word for it than\r\nthat. Its having the all-inclusive form gave to it an essentially\r\nheterogeneous \u003ci\u003enature\u003c/i\u003e from ourselves. And this great difference\r\nbetween absolutism and pluralism demands no difference in the\r\nuniverse\u0027s material content—it follows from a difference in the form\r\nalone. The all-form or monistic form makes the foreignness result, the\r\neach-form or pluralistic form leaves the intimacy undisturbed.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00360\"\u003eNo matter what the content of the universe may be, if you only allow\r\nthat it is \u003ci\u003emany\u003c/i\u003e everywhere and always, that \u003ci\u003enothing\u003c/i\u003e real escapes\r\nfrom having an environment; so far from defeating its rationality, as\r\nthe absolutists so unanimously pretend, you leave it in possession of\r\nthe maximum amount of rationality practically attainable by our minds.\r\nYour relations with it, intellectual, emotional, and active, remain\r\nfluent and congruous with your own nature\u0027s chief demands.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00361\"\u003eIt would be a pity if the word \u0027rationality\u0027 were allowed to give us\r\ntrouble here. It is one of those eulogistic words that both sides\r\nclaim—for almost no one is willing to advertise his philosophy as a\r\nsystem of irrationality. But like most of the words which people used\r\neulogistically, the word \u0027rational\u0027 carries too many meanings. The\r\nmost objective one is that of the older logic—the connexion between\r\ntwo things is rational when you can infer one from the other, mortal\r\nfrom Socrates, \u003ci\u003ee.g.;\u003c/i\u003e and you can do that only when they have a\r\nquality in common. But this kind of rationality is just that logic\r\nof identity which all disciples of Hegel find insufficient. They\r\nsupersede it by the higher rationality of negation and contradiction\r\nand make the notion vague again. Then you get the aesthetic or\r\nteleologic kinds of rationality, saying that whatever fits in any way,\r\nwhatever is beautiful or good, whatever is purposive or gratifies\r\ndesire, is rational in so far forth. Then again, according to Hegel,\r\nwhatever is \u0027real\u0027 is rational. I myself said awhile ago that whatever\r\nlets loose any action which we are fond of exerting seems rational. It\r\nwould be better to give up the word \u0027rational\u0027 altogether than to get\r\ninto a merely verbal fight about who has the best right to keep it.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00362\"\u003ePerhaps the words \u0027foreignness\u0027 and \u0027intimacy,\u0027 which I put forward\r\nin my first lecture, express the contrast I insist on better than the\r\nwords \u0027rationality\u0027 and \u0027irrationality\u0027—let us stick to them, then.\r\nI now say that the notion of the \u0027one\u0027 breeds foreignness and that of\r\nthe \u0027many\u0027 intimacy, for reasons which I have urged at only too great\r\nlength, and with which, whether they convince you or not, I may\r\nsuppose that you are now well acquainted. But what at bottom is meant\r\nby calling the universe many or by calling it one?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00363\"\u003ePragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is\r\nmany means only that the sundry parts of reality \u003ci\u003emay be externally\r\nrelated\u003c/i\u003e. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has\r\non the pluralistic view a genuinely \u0027external\u0027 environment of some\r\nsort or amount. Things are \u0027with\u0027 one another in many ways, but\r\nnothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word\r\n\u0027and\u0027 trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes.\r\n\u0027Ever not quite\u0027 has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in\r\nthe universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is\r\nthus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom.\r\nHowever much may be collected, however much may report itself as\r\npresent at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something\r\nelse is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00364\"\u003eMonism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality\r\nas such, to the reality of realities, everything is present\r\nto \u003ci\u003eeverything\u003c/i\u003e else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated\r\ncompleteness—nothing can in \u003ci\u003eany\u003c/i\u003e sense, functional or substantial,\r\nbe really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and\r\ntelescope together in the great total conflux.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00365\"\u003eFor pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution\r\nof reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every\r\nminimum of finite life. Briefly it is this, that nothing real is\r\nabsolutely simple, that every smallest bit of experience is a \u003ci\u003emultum\r\nin parvo\u003c/i\u003e plurally related, that each relation is one aspect,\r\ncharacter, or function, way of its being taken, or way of its taking\r\nsomething else; and that a bit of reality when actively engaged in one\r\nof these relations is not \u003ci\u003eby that very fact\u003c/i\u003e engaged in all the other\r\nrelations simultaneously. The relations are not \u003ci\u003eall\u003c/i\u003e what the French\r\ncall \u003ci\u003esolidaires\u003c/i\u003e with one another. Without losing its identity a\r\nthing can either take up or drop another thing, like the log I spoke\r\nof, which by taking up new carriers and dropping old ones can travel\r\nanywhere with a light escort.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00366\"\u003eFor monism, on the contrary, everything, whether we realize it or not,\r\ndrags the whole universe along with itself and drops nothing. The log\r\nstarts and arrives with all its carriers supporting it. If a thing\r\nwere once disconnected, it could never be connected again, according\r\nto monism. The pragmatic difference between the two systems is thus a\r\ndefinite one. It is just thus, that if \u003ci\u003ea\u003c/i\u003e is once out of sight of \u003ci\u003eb\u003c/i\u003e\r\nor out of touch with it, or, more briefly, \u0027out\u0027 of it at all, then,\r\naccording to monism, it must always remain so, they can never get\r\ntogether; whereas pluralism admits that on another occasion they may\r\nwork together, or in some way be connected again. Monism allows for\r\nno such things as \u0027other occasions\u0027 in reality—in \u003ci\u003ereal\u003c/i\u003e or absolute\r\nreality, that is.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00367\"\u003eThe difference I try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more\r\nthan the difference between what I formerly called the each-form and\r\nthe all-form of reality. Pluralism lets things really exist in the\r\neach-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or\r\ncollective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form\r\nallows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the\r\nparts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form,\r\non the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with\r\na thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It\r\nis thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not\r\nnecessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path\r\nof intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word \u0027or\u0027 names\r\na genuine reality. Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead \u003ci\u003eor\u003c/i\u003e to the\r\nright \u003ci\u003eor\u003c/i\u003e to the left, and in either case the intervening space and\r\nair and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of\r\nthis audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these\r\nfaces.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00368\"\u003eIf the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the\r\nform of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not\r\nan incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists. Our\r\n\u0027multiverse\u0027 still makes a \u0027universe\u0027; for every part, tho it may not\r\nbe in actual or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible\r\nor mediated connexion, with every other part however remote, through\r\nthe fact that each part hangs together with its very next neighbors in\r\ninextricable interfusion. The type of union, it is true, is different\r\nhere from the monistic type of \u003ci\u003eall-einheit\u003c/i\u003e. It is not a universal\r\nco-implication, or integration of all things \u003ci\u003edurcheinander\u003c/i\u003e. It is\r\nwhat I call the strung-along type, the type of continuity, contiguity,\r\nor concatenation. If you prefer greek words, you may call it the\r\nsynechistic type. At all events, you see that it forms a definitely\r\nconceivable alternative to the through-and-through unity of all things\r\nat once, which is the type opposed to it by monism. You see also that\r\nit stands or falls with the notion I have taken such pains to defend,\r\nof the through-and-through union of adjacent minima of experience, of\r\nthe confluence of every passing moment of concretely felt experience\r\nwith its immediately next neighbors. The recognition of this fact of\r\ncoalescence of next with next in concrete experience, so that all\r\nthe insulating cuts we make there are artificial products of the\r\nconceptualizing faculty, is what distinguishes the empiricism which\r\nI call \u0027radical,\u0027 from the bugaboo empiricism of the traditional\r\nrationalist critics, which (rightly or wrongly) is accused of chopping\r\nup experience into atomistic sensations, incapable of union with one\r\nanother until a purely intellectual principle has swooped down upon\r\nthem from on high and folded them in its own conjunctive categories.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00369\"\u003eHere, then, you have the plain alternative, and the full mystery of\r\nthe difference between pluralism and monism, as clearly as I can\r\nset it forth on this occasion. It packs up into a nutshell:—Is the\r\nmanyness in oneness that indubitably characterizes the world we\r\ninhabit, a property only of the absolute whole of things, so that you\r\nmust postulate that one-enormous-whole indivisibly as the \u003ci\u003eprius\u003c/i\u003e\r\nof there being any many at all—in other words, start with the\r\nrationalistic block-universe, entire, unmitigated, and complete?—or\r\ncan the finite elements have their own aboriginal forms of manyness in\r\noneness, and where they have no immediate oneness still be continued\r\ninto one another by intermediary terms—each one of these terms being\r\none with its next neighbors, and yet the total \u0027oneness\u0027 never getting\r\nabsolutely complete?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00370\"\u003eThe alternative is definite. It seems to me, moreover, that the two\r\nhorns of it make pragmatically different ethical appeals—at least\r\nthey \u003ci\u003emay\u003c/i\u003e do so, to certain individuals. But if you consider the\r\npluralistic horn to be intrinsically irrational, self-contradictory,\r\nand absurd, I can now say no more in its defence. Having done what\r\nI could in my earlier lectures to break the edge of the\r\nintellectualistic \u003ci\u003ereductiones ad absurdum\u003c/i\u003e, I must leave the issue\r\nin your hands. Whatever I may say, each of you will be sure to take\r\npluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and\r\ninclines. The only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it is a\r\nfully co-ordinate hypothesis with monism. This world \u003ci\u003emay\u003c/i\u003e, in the\r\nlast resort, be a block-universe; but on the other hand it \u003ci\u003emay\u003c/i\u003e be a\r\nuniverse only strung-along, not rounded in and closed. Reality \u003ci\u003emay\u003c/i\u003e\r\nexist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that\r\npossibility I do insist.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00371\"\u003eOne\u0027s general vision of the probable usually decides such\r\nalternatives. They illustrate what I once wrote of as the \u0027will to\r\nbelieve.\u0027 In some of my lectures at Harvard I have spoken of what\r\nI call the \u0027faith-ladder,\u0027 as something quite different from the\r\n\u003ci\u003esorites\u003c/i\u003e of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form. I\r\nthink you will quickly recognize in yourselves, as I describe it, the\r\nmental process to which I give this name.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00372\"\u003eA conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it\r\ntrue or not? you ask.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00373\"\u003eIt \u003ci\u003emight\u003c/i\u003e be true somewhere, you say, for it is not\r\nself-contradictory.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00374\"\u003eIt \u003ci\u003emay\u003c/i\u003e be true, you continue, even here and now.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00375\"\u003eIt is \u003ci\u003efit\u003c/i\u003e to be true, it would be \u003ci\u003ewell if it were true\u003c/i\u003e, it \u003ci\u003eought\u003c/i\u003e\r\nto be true, you presently feel.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00376\"\u003eIt \u003ci\u003emust\u003c/i\u003e be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and\r\nthen—as a final result—\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00377\"\u003eIt shall be \u003ci\u003eheld for true\u003c/i\u003e, you decide; it \u003ci\u003eshall be\u003c/i\u003e as if true, for\r\n\u003ci\u003eyou\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00378\"\u003eAnd your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making\r\nit securely true in the end.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00379\"\u003eNot one step in this process is logical, yet it is the way in which\r\nmonists and pluralists alike espouse and hold fast to their visions.\r\nIt is life exceeding logic, it is the practical reason for which the\r\ntheoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there.\r\nIn just this way do some of us hold to the unfinished pluralistic\r\nuniverse; in just this way do others hold to the timeless universe\r\neternally complete.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00380\"\u003eMeanwhile the incompleteness of the pluralistic universe, thus assumed\r\nand held to as the most probable hypothesis, is also represented by\r\nthe pluralistic philosophy as being self-reparative through us, as\r\ngetting its disconnections remedied in part by our behavior. \u0027We use\r\nwhat we are and have, to know; and what we know, to be and have still\r\nmore.\u0027[1] Thus do philosophy and reality, theory and action, work in\r\nthe same circle indefinitely.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eI have now finished these poor lectures, and as you look back on them,\r\nthey doubtless seem rambling and inconclusive enough. My only hope is\r\nthat they may possibly have proved suggestive; and if indeed they have\r\nbeen suggestive of one point of method, I am almost willing to let\r\nall other suggestions go. That point is that \u003ci\u003eit is high time for the\r\nbasis of discussion in these questions to be broadened and thickened\r\nup\u003c/i\u003e. It is for that that I have brought in Fechner and Bergson, and\r\ndescriptive psychology and religious experiences, and have ventured\r\neven to hint at psychical research and other wild beasts of the\r\nphilosophic desert. Owing possibly to the fact that Plato and\r\nAristotle, with their intellectualism, are the basis of philosophic\r\nstudy here, the Oxford brand of transcendentalism seems to me to have\r\nconfined itself too exclusively to thin logical considerations, that\r\nwould hold good in all conceivable worlds, worlds of an empirical\r\nconstitution entirely different from ours. It is as if the actual\r\npeculiarities of the world that is were entirely irrelevant to the\r\ncontent of truth. But they cannot be irrelevant; and the philosophy\r\nof the future must imitate the sciences in taking them more and more\r\nelaborately into account. I urge some of the younger members of\r\nthis learned audience to lay this hint to heart. If you can do so\r\neffectively, making still more concrete advances upon the path which\r\nFechner and Bergson have so enticingly opened up, if you can gather\r\nphilosophic conclusions of any kind, monistic or pluralistic, from\r\nthe \u003ci\u003eparticulars of life\u003c/i\u003e, I will say, as I now do say, with the\r\ncheerfullest of hearts, \u0027Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but\r\nring the fuller minstrel in.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eNOTES\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE I\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00384\"\u003eNote 1, page 5.—Bailey: \u003ci\u003eop. cit.\u003c/i\u003e, First Series, p. 52.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00385\"\u003eNote 2, page 11.—\u003ci\u003eSmaller Logic\u003c/i\u003e, § 194.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00386\"\u003eNote 3, page 16.—\u003ci\u003eExploratio philosophica\u003c/i\u003e, Part I, 1865, pp.\r\nxxxviii, 130.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00387\"\u003eNote 4, page 20.—Hinneberg: \u003ci\u003eDie Kultur der Gegenwart: Systematische\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nPhilosophie\u003c/i\u003e. Leipzig: Teubner, 1907.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE II\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00389\"\u003eNote 1, page 50.—The difference is that the bad parts of this finite\r\nare eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists may hope\r\nthat they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if they had\r\nnot been.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00390\"\u003eNote 2, page 51.—Quoted by W. Wallace: \u003ci\u003eLectures and Essays\u003c/i\u003e, Oxford,\r\n1898, p. 560.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00391\"\u003eNote 3, page 51.—\u003ci\u003eLogic\u003c/i\u003e, tr. Wallace, 1874, p. 181.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00392\"\u003eNote 4, page 52.—\u003ci\u003eIbid.\u003c/i\u003e, p. 304.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00393\"\u003eNote 5, page 53.—\u003ci\u003eContemporary Review\u003c/i\u003e, December, 1907, vol. 92, p.\r\n618.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00394\"\u003eNote 6, page 57.—\u003ci\u003eMetaphysic\u003c/i\u003e, sec. 69 ff.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00395\"\u003eNote 7, page 62.—\u003ci\u003eThe World and the Individual\u003c/i\u003e, vol. i, pp. 131-132.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00396\"\u003eNote 8, page 67.—A good illustration of this is to be found in a\r\ncontroversy between Mr. Bradley and the present writer, in \u003ci\u003eMind\u003c/i\u003e\r\nfor 1893, Mr. Bradley contending (if I understood him rightly) that\r\n\u0027resemblance\u0027 is an illegitimate category, because it admits of\r\ndegrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute\r\nidentity and absolute non-comparability.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00397\"\u003eNote 9, page 75.—\u003ci\u003eStudies in the Hegelian Dialectic\u003c/i\u003e, p. 184.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00398\"\u003eNote 10, page 75.—\u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, 1893, pp. 141-142.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00399\"\u003eNote 11, page 76.—Cf. \u003ci\u003eElements of Metaphysics\u003c/i\u003e, p. 88.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00400\"\u003eNote 12, page 77.—\u003ci\u003eSome Dogmas of Religion\u003c/i\u003e, p. 184.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00401\"\u003eNote 13, page 80.—For a more detailed criticism of Mr. Bradley\u0027s\r\nintellectualism, see Appendix A.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE III\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00403\"\u003eNote 1, page 94.—Hegel, \u003ci\u003eSmaller Logic\u003c/i\u003e, pp. 184-185.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00404\"\u003eNote 2, page 95.—Cf. Hegel\u0027s fine vindication of this function of\r\ncontradiction in his \u003ci\u003eWissenschaft der Logik\u003c/i\u003e, Bk. ii, sec. 1, chap,\r\nii, C, Anmerkung 3.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00405\"\u003eNote 3, page 95—\u003ci\u003eHegel\u003c/i\u003e, in \u003ci\u003eBlackwood\u0027s Philosophical Classics\u003c/i\u003e, p.\r\n162.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00406\"\u003eNote 4, page 95—\u003ci\u003eWissenschaft der Logik\u003c/i\u003e, Bk. i, sec. 1, chap, ii, B,\r\na.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00407\"\u003eNote 5, page 96—Wallace\u0027s translation of the \u003ci\u003eSmaller Logic\u003c/i\u003e, p. 128.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00408\"\u003eNote 6, page 101—Joachim, \u003ci\u003eThe Nature of Truth\u003c/i\u003e, Oxford, 1906, pp.\r\n22, 178. The argument in case the belief should be doubted would be\r\nthe higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of\r\nthat possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00409\"\u003eNote 7, page 115.—\u003ci\u003eThe World and the Individual\u003c/i\u003e, vol. ii, pp. 385,\r\n386, 409.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00410\"\u003eNote 8, page 116.—The best _un_inspired argument (again not\r\nironical!) which I know is that in Miss M.W. Calkins\u0027s excellent book,\r\n\u003ci\u003eThe Persistent Problems of Philosophy\u003c/i\u003e, Macmillan, 1902.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00411\"\u003eNote 9, page 117.—Cf. Dr. Fuller\u0027s excellent article,\u0027 Ethical monism\r\nand the problem of evil,\u0027 in the \u003ci\u003eHarvard Journal of Theology\u003c/i\u003e, vol.\r\ni, No. 2, April, 1908.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00412\"\u003eNote 10, page 120.—\u003ci\u003eMetaphysic\u003c/i\u003e, sec. 79.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00413\"\u003eNote 11, page 121.—\u003ci\u003eStudies in the Hegelian Dialectic\u003c/i\u003e, secs. 150,\r\n153.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00414\"\u003eNote 12, page 121.—\u003ci\u003eThe Nature of Truth\u003c/i\u003e, 1906, pp. 170-171.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00415\"\u003eNote 13, page 121.—\u003ci\u003eIbid.\u003c/i\u003e, p. 179.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00416\"\u003eNote 14, page 123.—The psychological analogy that certain finite\r\ntracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together,\r\ncannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential\r\nelements of all consciousness. Other finite fields of consciousness\r\nseem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable\r\nparts.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00417\"\u003eNote 15, page 128.—Judging by the analogy of the relation which our\r\ncentral consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower\r\nganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever\r\nsuperhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination\r\nof certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might\r\nbe as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving\r\nof other human contents.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE IV\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00419\"\u003eNote 1, page 143.—\u003ci\u003eThe Spirit of Modern Philosophy\u003c/i\u003e, p. 227.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00420\"\u003eNote 2, page 165.—Fechner: \u003ci\u003eÜber die Seelenfrage\u003c/i\u003e, 1861, p. 170.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00421\"\u003eNote 3, page 168.—Fechner\u0027s latest summarizing of his views, \u003ci\u003eDie\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nTagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht\u003c/i\u003e, Leipzig, 1879, is now, I\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nunderstand, in process of translation. His \u003ci\u003eLittle Book of Life after\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nDeath\u003c/i\u003e exists already in two American versions, one published by\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nLittle, Brown \u0026amp; Co., Boston, the other by the Open Court Co., Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00422\"\u003eNote 4, page 176.—Mr. Bradley ought to be to some degree exempted\r\nfrom my attack in these last pages. Compare especially what he says of\r\nnon-human consciousness in his \u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, pp. 269-272.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE V\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00424\"\u003eNote 1, page 182.—Royce: \u003ci\u003eThe Spirit of Modern Philosophy\u003c/i\u003e, p. 379.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00425\"\u003eNote 2, page 184.—\u003ci\u003eThe World and the Individual\u003c/i\u003e, vol. ii, pp. 58-62.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00426\"\u003eNote 3, page 190.—I hold to it still as the best description of\r\nan enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. They\r\ndemonstrably do not \u003ci\u003econtain\u003c/i\u003e the lower states that know the same\r\nobjects. Of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the\r\n\u003ci\u003ePsychological Review\u003c/i\u003e for 1895, vol. ii, p. 105 (see especially pp.\r\n119-120), I frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to\r\ntalking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler \u0027parts,\u0027\r\nleaving the facts to decide the question in each special case.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00427\"\u003eNote 4, page 194.—I abstract from the consciousness attached to the\r\nwhole itself, if such consciousness be there.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VI\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00429\"\u003eNote 1, page 250.—For a more explicit vindication of the notion of\r\nactivity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as\r\na definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic\r\ncritics.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00430\"\u003eI subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics\r\nof Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings\r\nof his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement\r\nthat concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood\r\nin one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we\r\ncertainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a\r\ntheoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in\r\nits train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of\r\nhis own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better\r\ninsight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is\r\nit in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by\r\nconcepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no\r\ninsight?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00431\"\u003eTo this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply.\r\nIn using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of\r\nconcepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary\r\nemphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for\r\nthey serve in his hands only to \u0027orient\u0027 us, to show us to what\r\nquarter we must \u003ci\u003epractically turn\u003c/i\u003e if we wish to gain that completer\r\ninsight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs\r\nour hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. \u003ci\u003eWhat\r\nhe reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude\u003c/i\u003e. He\r\nbut restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our\r\nnaturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense.\r\nThis service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which\r\nwe may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with\r\na good philosophic conscience!—who ever conferred on us so valuable a\r\nfreedom before?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00432\"\u003eBy making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the\r\nother counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order,\r\nwith particular relations between them. These relations are just as\r\nmuch directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the\r\ndistance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it.\r\nConception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of\r\nperception, then; and when the results of these are written down,\r\nwe get those bodies of \u0027mental truth\u0027 (as Locke called it) known as\r\nmathematics, logic, and \u003ci\u003ea priori\u003c/i\u003e metaphysics. To know all this truth\r\nis a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the\r\nrelations between conceptual objects as such are only the static\r\nones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or\r\ncontradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing \u003ci\u003ehappens\u003c/i\u003e in the realm\r\nof concepts; relations there are \u0027eternal\u0027 only. The theoretic gain\r\nfails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real\r\nworld, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and\r\nhistory. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right\r\nin turning us away from conception and towards perception.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00433\"\u003eBy combining concepts with percepts, \u003ci\u003ewe can draw maps of the\r\ndistribution\u003c/i\u003e of other percepts in distant space and time. To know\r\nthis distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the\r\nachievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without\r\npercepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From\r\nmaps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the\r\nslightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming\r\nour plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous\r\npractical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00434\"\u003eBut concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths\r\nof comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new\r\n\u003ci\u003evalues\u003c/i\u003e into life. In their mapping function they stand to perception\r\nin general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to\r\ntouch—Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory\r\ntouch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent\r\nglory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement\r\nof life\u0027s value follows. Even so does the conceptual world bring new\r\nranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not only serve\r\nus practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures\r\nis of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements, and\r\nfeelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00435\"\u003eAbstractness \u003ci\u003eper se\u003c/i\u003e seems to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE\u0027S\r\n\u0027loyalty to loyalty\u0027 is an excellent example. \u0027Causes,\u0027 as\r\nanti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their\r\nsordid particulars. The veritable \u0027cash-value\u0027 of the idea seems to\r\ncleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE\r\ncontends, in his \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Loyalty\u003c/i\u003e, appears another thing\r\naltogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe.\r\nIt transcends in value all those \u0027expediencies,\u0027 and is something to\r\nlive for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a\r\n\u0027momentous issue\u0027; truths in detail are \u0027poor scraps,\u0027 mere \u0027crumbling\r\nsuccesses.\u0027 (\u003ci\u003eOp. cit.\u003c/i\u003e, Lecture VII, especially § v.)\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00436\"\u003eIs, now, such bringing into existence of a new \u003ci\u003evalue\u003c/i\u003e to be regarded\r\nas a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for altho a\r\nvalue is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of\r\nthat quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being\r\na dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as their\r\nvalue-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts\r\nconnect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life,\r\nso here again Bergson\u0027s formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who\r\nhave certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own\r\nvital careers differently. It doesn\u0027t necessarily follow that they\r\nunderstand other vital careers more intimately.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00437\"\u003eAgain it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones,\r\nconceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not,\r\nof which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant.\r\nThis surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called\r\na theoretical achievement. Yet here again Bergson\u0027s criticisms hold\r\ngood. Much as conception may tell us \u003ci\u003eabout\u003c/i\u003e such invisible objects,\r\nit sheds no ray of light into their interior. The completer, indeed,\r\nour definitions of ether-waves, atoms, Gods, or souls become, the less\r\ninstead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. The learned\r\nin such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a\r\nsolely instrumental value to our concepts of them. Ether and molecules\r\nmay be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the\r\nhelp of which we practically perform the operation of getting about\r\namong our sensible experiences.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00438\"\u003eWe see from these considerations how easily the question of whether\r\nthe function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into\r\na logomachy. It may be better from this point of view to refuse to\r\nrecognize the alternative as a sharp one. The sole thing that is\r\ncertain in the midst of it all is that Bergson is absolutely right\r\nin contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly\r\nimpenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to\r\nsympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. All the\r\n\u003ci\u003ewhats\u003c/i\u003e as well as the \u003ci\u003ethats\u003c/i\u003e of reality, relational as well as\r\nterminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception.\r\nYet the remoter unperceived \u003ci\u003earrangements\u003c/i\u003e, temporal, spatial, and\r\nlogical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as\r\nwell for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. We may\r\ncall this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need,\r\naccording as we choose to lay the emphasis; but Bergson is accurately\r\nright when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he\r\ninsists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of\r\nwhat we ought to know.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00439\"\u003eNote 2, page 266.—Gaston Rageot, \u003ci\u003eRevue Philosophique\u003c/i\u003e, vol. lxiv, p.\r\n85 (July, 1907).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00440\"\u003eNote 3, page 268.—I have myself talked in other ways as plausibly\r\nas I could, in my \u003ci\u003ePsychology\u003c/i\u003e, and talked truly (as I believe) in\r\ncertain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly\r\ncomes back.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VII\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00442\"\u003eNote 1, page 278.—\u003ci\u003eIntroduction to Hume\u003c/i\u003e, 1874, p. 151.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00443\"\u003eNote 2, page 279.—\u003ci\u003eIbid.\u003c/i\u003e, pp. 16, 21, 36, \u003ci\u003eet passim\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00444\"\u003eNote 3, page 279.—See, \u003ci\u003einter alia\u003c/i\u003e, the chapter on the \u0027Stream of\r\nThought\u0027 in my own Psychologies; H. Cornelius, \u003ci\u003ePsychologie\u003c/i\u003e, 1897,\r\nchaps, i and iii; G.H. Luquet, \u003ci\u003eIdées Générales de Psychologie\u003c/i\u003e, 1906,\r\n\u003ci\u003epassim\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00445\"\u003eNote 4, page 280.—Compare, as to all this, an article by the present\r\nwriter, entitled \u0027A world of pure experience,\u0027 in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of\r\nPhilosophy\u003c/i\u003e, New York, vol. i, pp. 533, 561 (1905).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00446\"\u003eNote 5, page 280.—Green\u0027s attempt to discredit sensations by\r\nreminding us of their \u0027dumbness,\u0027 in that they do not come already\r\n\u003ci\u003enamed\u003c/i\u003e, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism\r\nis dominated by verbality. The unnamed appears in Green as synonymous\r\nwith the unreal.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00447\"\u003eNote 6, page 283.—\u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Reflection\u003c/i\u003e, i, 248 ff.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00448\"\u003eNote 7, page 284.—Most of this paragraph is extracted from an address\r\nof mine before the American Psychological Association, printed in the\r\n\u003ci\u003ePsychological Review\u003c/i\u003e, vol. ii, p. 105. I take pleasure in the\r\nfact that already in 1895 I was so far advanced towards my present\r\nbergsonian position.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00449\"\u003eNote 8, page 289.—The conscious self of the moment, the central self,\r\nis probably determined to this privileged position by its functional\r\nconnexion with the body\u0027s imminent or present acts. It is the present\r\n\u003ci\u003eacting\u003c/i\u003e self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be \u0027subconscious\u0027\r\nto us, yet if in its \u0027collective capacity\u0027 it also exerts an active\r\nfunction, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were,\r\nover our heads.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00450\"\u003eOn the relations of consciousness to action see Bergson\u0027s \u003ci\u003eMatière\r\net Mémoire, passim\u003c/i\u003e, especially chap. i. Compare also the hints in\r\nMünsterberg\u0027s \u003ci\u003eGrundzüge der Psychologie\u003c/i\u003e, chap, xv; those in my own\r\n\u003ci\u003ePrinciples of Psychology\u003c/i\u003e, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in W.\r\nMcDougall\u0027s \u003ci\u003ePhysiological Psychology\u003c/i\u003e, chap. vii.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00451\"\u003eNote 9, page 295.—Compare \u003ci\u003eZend-Avesta\u003c/i\u003e, 2d edition, vol. i, pp. 165\r\nff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; \u003ci\u003eDie Tagesansicht\u003c/i\u003e, etc., chap, v, § 6;\r\nand chap. xv.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eLECTURE VIII\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00453\"\u003eNote 1, page 330.—Blondel: \u003ci\u003eAnnales de Philosophie Chrétienne\u003c/i\u003e, June,\r\n1906, p. 241.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eAPPENDICES\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eAPPENDIX A\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00456\"\u003eTHE THING AND ITS RELATIONS[1]\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00457\"\u003eExperience in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. The active\r\nsense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our\r\ninstinctive world for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes.\r\nIts difficulties are disappointments and uncertainties. They are not\r\nintellectual contradictions.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00458\"\u003eWhen the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers\r\nincomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its\r\nelements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus\r\ndisjoins it cannot easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the\r\nirrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. Other\r\nphilosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by\r\nturning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first\r\nnegations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let\r\nredemption take the place of innocence. The perfection with which any\r\nphilosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its\r\nimportance in philosophic history. In an article entitled \u0027A world of\r\npure experience,[2] I tried my own hand sketchily at\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00459\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Reprinted from the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Philosophy, Psychology,\r\nand Scientific Methods\u003c/i\u003e, vol. ii, New York, 1905, with slight verbal\r\nrevision.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00460\"\u003e[Footnote 2: \u003ci\u003eJournal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nMethods\u003c/i\u003e, vol. i, No. 20, p. 566.]\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00461\"\u003ethe problem, resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting\r\nin a general way that the immediately experienced conjunctive\r\nrelations are as real as anything else. If my sketch is not to appear\r\ntoo \u003ci\u003enäif\u003c/i\u003e, I must come closer to details, and in the present essay I\r\npropose to do so.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eI\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00463\"\u003e\u0027Pure experience\u0027 is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of\r\nlife which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its\r\nconceptual categories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma\r\nfrom sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an\r\nexperience pure in the literal sense of a \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e which is not yet any\r\ndefinite \u003ci\u003ewhat\u003c/i\u003e, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of\r\noneness and of manyness, but in respects that don\u0027t appear; changing\r\nthroughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no\r\npoints, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure\r\nexperience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation.\r\nBut the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with\r\nemphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and\r\nabstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with\r\nadjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is\r\nonly a relative term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized\r\nsensation which it still embodies.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00464\"\u003eFar back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that\r\nof things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space,\r\nand the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together\r\nwithout interfering. The things that they envelop come as separate in\r\nsome ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with\r\nsome ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one\r\nspace, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently\r\nin groups that move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are\r\nabrupt or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as\r\nthey do so, they fall into either even or irregular series.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00465\"\u003eIn all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely\r\nco-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are\r\nas primordial elements of \u0027fact\u0027 as are the distinctions and\r\ndisjunctions. In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute\r\nis a new pulse of my life, I feel that the old life continues into it,\r\nand the feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous\r\nfeeling of a novelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously.\r\nPrepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, \u0027is,\u0027 \u0027isn\u0027t,\u0027 \u0027then,\u0027\r\n\u0027before,\u0027 \u0027in,\u0027 \u0027on,\u0027 \u0027beside,\u0027 \u0027between,\u0027 \u0027next,\u0027 \u0027like,\u0027 \u0027unlike,\u0027\r\n\u0027as,\u0027 \u0027but,\u0027 flower out of the stream of pure experience, the stream\r\nof concretes or the sensational stream, as naturally as nouns and\r\nadjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply\r\nthem to a new portion of the stream.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eII\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00467\"\u003eIf now we ask why we must translate experience from a more concrete\r\nor pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more\r\nabounding conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give\r\ndifferent replies.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00468\"\u003eThe rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and\r\nits interests imperative; that to understand is simply the duty of\r\nman; and that who questions this need not be argued with, for by the\r\nfact of arguing he gives away his case.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00469\"\u003eThe naturalist answer is that the environment kills as well as\r\nsustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the\r\nexperient himself is lessened just in the degree in which the elements\r\nin it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out of the\r\ncontinuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know\r\nwhat is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time. Had pure\r\nexperience, the naturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there\r\nwould never have arisen the necessity of isolating or verbalizing\r\nany of its terms. We should just have experienced inarticulately and\r\nunintellectually enjoyed. This leaning on \u0027reaction\u0027 in the naturalist\r\naccount implies that, whenever we intellectualize a relatively pure\r\nexperience, we ought to do so for the sake of redescending to the\r\npurer or more concrete level again; and that if an intellect stays\r\naloft among its abstract terms and generalized relations, and does not\r\nreinsert itself with its conclusions into some particular point of\r\nthe immediate stream of life, it fails to finish out its function and\r\nleaves its normal race unrun.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00470\"\u003eMost rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true\r\nenough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but\r\nthey will deny these latter implications. The case, they will say,\r\nresembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need\r\nof getting another generation born, this passion has developed\r\nsecondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why\r\nanother generation ought to be born at all, the answer is: \u0027Chiefly\r\nthat love may go on.\u0027 Just so with our intellect: it originated as a\r\npractical means of serving life; but it has developed incidentally the\r\nfunction of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to\r\nbe given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted.\r\nBut truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and\r\nuniversals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly\r\nin this region, without any need of redescending into pure experience\r\nagain.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00471\"\u003eIf the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as naturalistic\r\nand rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example\r\nwill make them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance, is an\r\nultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily\r\npractical, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need is\r\nsimply Truth.[1] Truth, moreover, must be assumed \u0027consistent.\u0027\r\nImmediate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities,\r\nterms and relations, to be understood as truth at all. Yet when\r\nso broken it is less consistent than ever. Taken raw, it is all\r\nundistinguished. Intellectualized, it is all distinction without\r\noneness. \u0027Such an arrangement may \u003ci\u003ework\u003c/i\u003e, but the theoretic problem is\r\nnot solved\u0027 (p. 23). The question is, \u0027\u003ci\u003eHow\u003c/i\u003e the diversity can exist\r\nin harmony with the oneness\u0027 (p. 118). To go back to pure experience\r\nis unavailing. \u0027Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle\u0027 (p. 104).\r\nEven if your intuition is a fact, it is not an \u003ci\u003eunderstanding\u003c/i\u003e. \u0027It is\r\na mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view\u0027 (pp. 108-109).\r\nThe experiences offered as facts or truths \u0027I find that my intellect\r\nrejects because they contradict themselves. They offer a complex of\r\ndiversities conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which\r\nit cannot repeat as its own…. For to be satisfied, my intellect must\r\nunderstand, and it cannot understand by taking a congeries in\r\nthe lump\u0027 (p. 570). So Mr. Bradley, in the sole interests of\r\n\u0027understanding\u0027 (as he conceives that function), turns his back on\r\nfinite\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00472\"\u003e[Footnote 1: \u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, pp. 152-133.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00473\"\u003eexperience forever. Truth must lie in the opposite direction,\r\nthe direction of the absolute; and this kind of rationalism and\r\nnaturalism, or (as I will now call it) pragmatism, walk thenceforward\r\nupon opposite paths. For the one, those intellectual products are most\r\ntrue which, turning their face towards the absolute, come nearest to\r\nsymbolizing its ways of uniting the many and the one. For the other,\r\nthose are most true which most successfully dip back into the finite\r\nstream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular\r\nwave or wavelet. Such confluence not only proves the intellectual\r\noperation to have been true (as an addition may \u0027prove\u0027 that a\r\nsubtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes,\r\naccording to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in\r\nso far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, into sensible\r\nexperience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at\r\nall.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eIII\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00475\"\u003eIn Section the 6th of my article, \u0027A world of pure experience,\u0027 I\r\nadopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same\r\nworld is cognized by our different minds; but I left undiscussed the\r\ndialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd.\r\nThe usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one\r\nobject (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my\r\nmind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second\r\nrelation cannot logically be the same term which it was at first.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00476\"\u003eI have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with\r\nabsolutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly,\r\nif it were valid, that I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and\r\nseriously to search its strength.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00477\"\u003eFor instance, let the matter in dispute be a term \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e, asserted to be\r\non the one hand related to \u003ci\u003eL\u003c/i\u003e, and on the other to \u003ci\u003eN\u003c/i\u003e; and let the\r\ntwo cases of relation be symbolized by \u003ci\u003eL—M\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eM—N\u003c/i\u003e respectively.\r\nWhen, now, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be\r\ngiven in the shape \u003ci\u003eL—M—N\u003c/i\u003e, with no trace of doubling or internal\r\nfission in the \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e, I am told that this is all a popular delusion;\r\nthat \u003ci\u003eL—M—N\u003c/i\u003e logically means two different experiences, \u003ci\u003eL—M\u003c/i\u003e and\r\n\u003ci\u003eM—N\u003c/i\u003e, namely; and that although the absolute may, and indeed must,\r\nfrom its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity into \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s\r\ntwo editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s\r\nlie irretrievably asunder, and the world between them is broken and\r\nunbridged.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00478\"\u003eIn arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the\r\nlogical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking\r\na concrete example to fix one\u0027s ideas by, to choose one in which the\r\nletter \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which\r\nnoun, being related to \u003ci\u003eL\u003c/i\u003e by one of its parts and to \u003ci\u003eN\u003c/i\u003e by another,\r\nwould inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both\r\nrelations. Thus, one might say: \u0027David Hume, who weighed so many stone\r\nby his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.\u0027 The body and the\r\ndoctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover\r\nno real sameness, though the same name covers both of them. And then,\r\none might continue: \u0027Only an absolute is capable of uniting such a\r\nnon-identity.\u0027 We must, I say, avoid this sort of example; for the\r\ndialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations\r\nuniversally. It must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns\r\ncollective; and if we prove it by concrete examples, we must take the\r\nsimplest, so as to avoid irrelevant material suggestions.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00479\"\u003eTaken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems\r\nto use as its major premise Hume\u0027s notion \u0027that all our distinct\r\nperceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives\r\nany real connexion among distinct existences.\u0027 Undoubtedly, since we\r\nuse two phrases in talking first about \u0027\u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s relation to \u003ci\u003eL\u003c/i\u003e\u0027 and\r\nthen again about \u0027\u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e\u0027s relation to \u003ci\u003eN\u003c/i\u003e,\u0027 we must be having, or must\r\nhave had, two distinct perceptions;—and the rest would then seem to\r\nfollow duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be\r\nthe fact of the two \u003ci\u003ephrases\u003c/i\u003e; and this suggests that the argument\r\nmay be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic achievement\r\nconsists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution\r\nsimilar to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we\r\nassert the objective doubleness of the \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e merely because we have to\r\nname it twice over when we name its two relations?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00480\"\u003eCandidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic\r\nconclusion![1] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple\r\nconcrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience\r\nitself belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate\r\nconcepts in analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be\r\nbut substitutional, and that the \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e in \u003ci\u003eL—M\u003c/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e in \u003ci\u003eM—N\u003c/i\u003e\r\n\u003ci\u003emean\u003c/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c/i\u003e, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one\r\nself-same piece, \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e, of sensible experience. This persistent identity\r\nof certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members—call\r\nthem what you will—of the experience-continuum, is just one of\r\nthose conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so\r\nemphatically. For samenesses are parts of experience\u0027s indefeasible\r\nstructure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its\r\nafter-image dies away, I still hark back to it as \u0027that same\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00481\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Technically, it seems classable as a \u0027fallacy of\r\ncomposition.\u0027 A duality, predicable of the two wholes, \u003ci\u003eL—M\u003c/i\u003e and\r\n\u003ci\u003eM—N\u003c/i\u003e, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00482\"\u003ebell-stroke.\u0027 When I see a thing \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e, with \u003ci\u003eL\u003c/i\u003e to the left of it and\r\n\u003ci\u003eN\u003c/i\u003e to the right of it, I see it \u003ci\u003eas\u003c/i\u003e one \u003ci\u003eM\u003c/i\u003e; and if you tell me I\r\nhave had to \u0027take\u0027 it twice, I reply that if I \u0027took\u0027 it a thousand\r\ntimes, I should still \u003ci\u003esee\u003c/i\u003e it as a unit.[1] Its unity is aboriginal,\r\njust as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It\r\ncomes unbroken as \u003ci\u003ethat M\u003c/i\u003e, as a singular which I encounter; they come\r\nbroken, as \u003ci\u003ethose\u003c/i\u003e takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity\r\nand the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom\r\nwhy my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily\r\nunderstandable that they must needs infect the whole of finite\r\nexperience with it, and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare\r\npostulate and no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to the\r\nregion of the absolute\u0027s mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I\r\nsay, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all\r\nthat I can catch in their talk is the substitution of what is true of\r\ncertain words for what is true of what they signify. They stay with\r\nthe words,—not returning to the stream of life whence all the meaning\r\nof them came, and which is always ready to reabsorb them.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00483\"\u003e[Footnote 1: I may perhaps refer here to my \u003ci\u003ePrinciples of\r\nPsychology\u003c/i\u003e, vol. i, pp. 459 ff. It really seems \u0027weird\u0027 to have to\r\nargue (as I am forced now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet\r\nof paper (with its two surfaces and all that lies between) which is\r\nboth under my pen and on the table while I write—the \u0027claim\u0027 that it\r\nis two sheets seems so brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists\r\nof sincerity!]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eIV\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00485\"\u003eFor aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that\r\none thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial of one thing in\r\nmany relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic\r\ndifficulty. Man can\u0027t be good, said the sophists, for man is \u003ci\u003eman\u003c/i\u003e and\r\n\u003ci\u003egood\u003c/i\u003e is good; and Hegel and Herbart in their day, more recently H.\r\nSpir, and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, inform us\r\nthat a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one\r\nof the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to\r\nyield, is rationally possible.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00486\"\u003eOf course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a\r\nshilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their\r\nface-value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them.\r\nThe world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are\r\nconjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves\r\ndisjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which\r\nthey are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang\r\ntogether similarly, inasmuch as \u003ci\u003esome\u003c/i\u003e path of conjunctive transition\r\nby which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be\r\ndiscernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called\r\n\u003ci\u003econcatenated\u003c/i\u003e union, to distinguish it from the \u0027through-and-through\u0027\r\ntype of union, \u0027each in all and all in each\u0027 (union of \u003ci\u003etotal\r\nconflux\u003c/i\u003e, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain\r\nwhen things are taken in their absolute reality. In a concatenated\r\nworld a partial conflux often is experienced. Our concepts and our\r\nsensations are confluent; successive states of the same ego, and\r\nfeelings of the same body are confluent. Where the experience is not\r\nof conflux, it may be of conterminousness (things with but one thing\r\nbetween); or of contiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness; or\r\nof nearness; or of simultaneousness; or of in-ness; or of on-ness; or\r\nof for-ness; or of simple with-ness; or even of mere and-ness, which\r\nlast relation would make of however disjointed a world otherwise, at\r\nany rate for that occasion a universe \u0027of discourse.\u0027 Now Mr. Bradley\r\ntells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience them,\r\ncan possibly be real.[1] My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue\r\nradical empiricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortunately, as it seems to me,\r\nhis general contention, that the very notion of relation is\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00487\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Here again the reader must beware of slipping from\r\nlogical into phenomenal considerations. It may well be that we\r\n\u003ci\u003eattribute\u003c/i\u003e a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of\r\nthe case, being complex, have deceived us. At a railway station we\r\nmay take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be\r\nmoving. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its\r\noriginal place the motion is a part of reality. What Mr. Bradley\r\nmeans is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion\r\nare nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically\r\nincorrigible seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00488\"\u003eunthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00489\"\u003eIt is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to\r\nthe previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So,\r\nin noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of\r\nradical empiricism solely.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eV\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00491\"\u003eThe first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at\r\ntheir face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some\r\nas more external. When two terms are \u003ci\u003esimilar\u003c/i\u003e, their very natures\r\nenter into the relation. Being \u003ci\u003ewhat\u003c/i\u003e they are, no matter where or\r\nwhen, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues\r\npredicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the \u003ci\u003ewhere\u003c/i\u003e\r\nand the \u003ci\u003ewhen\u003c/i\u003e, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper\r\nmay be \u0027off\u0027 or \u0027on\u0027 the table, for example; and in either case the\r\nrelation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside,\r\nboth of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external:\r\nthe term\u0027s inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00492\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his\r\n\u003ci\u003eMan and the Cosmos\u003c/i\u003e; by L.T. Hobhouse, in chapter xii (the Validity\r\nof Judgment) of his \u003ci\u003eTheory of Knowledge\u003c/i\u003e; and by F.C.S. Schiller,\r\nin his \u003ci\u003eHumanism\u003c/i\u003e, Essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are\r\nHodder\u0027s, in the \u003ci\u003ePsychological Review\u003c/i\u003e, vol. i, 307; Stout\u0027s, in\r\nthe \u003ci\u003eProceedings of the Aristotelian Society\u003c/i\u003e, 1901-02, p. 1; and\r\nMacLennan\u0027s, in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Philosophy\u003c/i\u003e, etc., vol. i, 403.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00493\"\u003ebook, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created \u003ci\u003epro hac\r\nvice\u003c/i\u003e, not by their existence, but by their casual situation. It\r\nis just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so\r\nexternal that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism\r\nin its ontology. So far as things have space-relations, for example,\r\nwe are free to imagine them with different origins even. If they could\r\nget to \u003ci\u003ebe\u003c/i\u003e, and get into space at all, then they may have done so\r\nseparately. Once there, however, they are \u003ci\u003eadditives\u003c/i\u003e to one another,\r\nand, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations\r\nmay supervene between them. The question of how things could come\r\nto be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their\r\nrelations, once the being accomplished, may consist in.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00494\"\u003eMr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the\r\nspace-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different\r\nsubjects from those of which the absence of such relations might\r\na moment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not only is the\r\n\u003ci\u003esituation\u003c/i\u003e different when the book is on the table, but the \u003ci\u003ebook\r\nitself\u003c/i\u003e is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the\r\ntable. He admits that \u0027such external relations\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00495\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Once more, don\u0027t slip from logical into physical\r\nsituations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book,\r\nor if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will\r\nbreak it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at\r\nissue. The point is whether the successive relations \u0027on\u0027 and \u0027not-on\u0027\r\ncan rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms,\r\nabstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into\r\nmaterial considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof\r\nthat \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e, \u0027as contra-distinguished from \u003ci\u003eB\u003c/i\u003e, is not the same thing as\r\nmere \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e not in any way affected\u0027 (\u003ci\u003eElements of Metaphysics\u003c/i\u003e, 1903, p.\r\n145). Note the substitution, for \u0027related,\u0027 of the word \u0027affected,\u0027\r\nwhich begs the whole question.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00496\"\u003eseem possible and even existing…. That you do not alter what you\r\ncompare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious,\r\nand that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not\r\noccur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these\r\ndifficulties…. There is a relation in the result, and this relation,\r\nwe hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what\r\ndoes it make a difference? [\u003ci\u003edoesn\u0027t it make a difference to us\r\nonlookers, at least?\u003c/i\u003e] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying\r\nthe terms by it? [\u003ci\u003eSurely the meaning is to tell the truth about their\r\nrelative position\u003c/i\u003e.[1]] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how\r\ncan it possibly be true \u003ci\u003eof\u003c/i\u003e them? [\u003ci\u003eIs it the \u0027intimacy\u0027 suggested by\r\nthe little word \u0027of,\u0027 here, which I have underscored, that is the root\r\nof Mr. Bradley\u0027s trouble?\u003c/i\u003e]…. If the terms from their inner nature\r\ndo not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned,\r\nthey seem related for no reason at all…. Things are spatially\r\nrelated, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and\r\nyet in no way themselves\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00497\"\u003e[Footnote 1: But \u0027is there any sense,\u0027 asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly,\r\non p. 579, \u0027and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and\r\n\"about\" things?\u0027 Surely such a question may be left unanswered.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00498\"\u003eare altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. But I\r\nreply that, if so, I cannot \u003ci\u003eunderstand\u003c/i\u003e the leaving by the terms of\r\none set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set. The\r\nprocess and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it\r\n[\u003ci\u003esurely they contribute to it all there is \u0027of\u0027 it!\u003c/i\u003e] seem irrational\r\nthroughout. [\u003ci\u003eIf \u0027irrational\u0027 here means simply \u0027non-rational,\u0027\r\nor non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no\r\nreproach; if it means \u0027contradicting\u0027 such essence, Mr. Bradley should\r\nshow wherein and how\u003c/i\u003e.] But, if they contribute anything, they must\r\nsurely be affected internally. [\u003ci\u003eWhy so, if they contribute only their\r\nsurface? In such relations as \u0027on,\u0027 \u0027a foot away,\u0027 \u0027between,\u0027 \u0027next,\u0027\r\netc., only surfaces are in question\u003c/i\u003e.] … If the terms contribute\r\nanything whatever, then the terms are affected [\u003ci\u003einwardly altered?\u003c/i\u003e]\r\nby the arrangement…. That for working purposes we treat, and do well\r\nto treat, some relations as external merely, I do not deny, and that\r\nof course is not the question at issue here. That question is …\r\nwhether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [\u003ci\u003ei.e.,\r\na relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their\r\nnature simultaneously\u003c/i\u003e] is possible and forced on us by the facts.\u0027[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00499\"\u003eMr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according\r\nto him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a\r\nmedium of external relations;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00500\"\u003e[Footnote 1: \u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, 2d edition, pp. 575-576.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00501\"\u003eand he then concludes that \u0027Irrationality and externality cannot be\r\nthe last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this\r\nand that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in\r\nthe whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in\r\nwhich their internal connexion must lie, and out of which from the\r\nbackground appear those fresh results which never could have come\r\nfrom the premises\u0027 (p. 577). And he adds that \u0027Where the whole is\r\ndifferent, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be\r\ndifferent…. They are altered so far only [\u003ci\u003ehow far? farther than\r\nexternally, yet not through and through?\u003c/i\u003e], but still they are\r\naltered…. I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by\r\ntheir whole [\u003ci\u003equalified how?—do their external relations, situations,\r\ndates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify\r\nthem \u0027far\u0027 enough?\u003c/i\u003e], and that in the second case there is a whole\r\nwhich differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole;\r\nand I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are\r\naltered\u0027 (p. 579).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00502\"\u003eNot merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: \u003ci\u003eund\r\nzwar\u003c/i\u003e \u0027so far.\u0027 But just \u003ci\u003ehow\u003c/i\u003e far is the whole problem; and\r\n\u0027through-and-through\u0027 would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley\u0027s somewhat\r\nundecided utterances[1])\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00503\"\u003e[Footnote 1: I say \u0027undecided,\u0027 because, apart from the \u0027so far,\u0027\r\nwhich sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very\r\npages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for\r\nexample, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its\r\n\u0027character\u0027 unchanged, though, in its change of place, its \u0027existence\u0027\r\ngets altered; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility that\r\nan abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, \u0027may throughout remain\r\nunchanged\u0027 although the thing be altered; or his admission that in\r\nred-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with\r\nthe rest of him, there may be \u0027no change\u0027 (p. 580). Why does he\r\nimmediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of\r\nsuch abstractions would be an \u003ci\u003eignoratio elenchi\u003c/i\u003e? It is impossible to\r\nadmit it to be such. The entire \u003ci\u003eelenchus\u003c/i\u003e and inquest is just as to\r\nwhether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can also\r\ncontribute to other wholes without changing their inner nature. If\r\nthey can thus mould various wholes into new \u003ci\u003egestalt-qualitäten\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nthen it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in\r\ndifferent wholes [whether physically able would depend on\r\nadditional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and\r\nthrough-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is\r\nonly an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is\r\na rationally respectable hypothesis also. All the theses of radical\r\nempiricism, in short, follow.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00504\"\u003eto be the full bradleyan answer. The \u0027whole\u0027 which he here treats as\r\nprimary and determinative of each part\u0027s manner of \u0027contributing,\u0027\r\nsimply \u003ci\u003emust\u003c/i\u003e, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There \u003ci\u003emust\u003c/i\u003e\r\nbe total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The\r\n\u0027must\u0027 appears here as a \u003ci\u003eMachtspruch\u003c/i\u003e, as an \u003ci\u003eipse dixit\u003c/i\u003e of Mr.\r\nBradley\u0027s absolutistically tempered \u0027understanding,\u0027 for he candidly\r\nconfesses that how the parts \u003ci\u003edo\u003c/i\u003e differ as they contribute to\r\ndifferent wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00505\"\u003eAlthough I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr.\r\nBradley\u0027s understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted.\r\n\u0027External relations\u0027 stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain,\r\nfor aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable,\r\nbut also perfectly intelligible factors of reality.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eVI\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00507\"\u003eMr. Bradley\u0027s understanding shows the most extraordinary power of\r\nperceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in\r\ncomprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say \u0027neither or both,\u0027\r\nbut not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain \u003ci\u003ewhats\u003c/i\u003e\r\nfrom out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness\r\n\u003ci\u003eas thus isolated\u003c/i\u003e. But this does not prevent him from equally well\r\nunderstanding their combination with each other as \u003ci\u003eoriginally\r\nexperienced in the concrete\u003c/i\u003e, or their confluence with new sensible\r\nexperiences in which they recur as \u0027the same.\u0027 Returning into the\r\nstream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and \u003ci\u003ethats\u003c/i\u003e and\r\nabstract \u003ci\u003ewhats\u003c/i\u003e, grow confluent again, and the word \u0027is\u0027 names\r\nall these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the\r\nisolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to\r\nhim impossible.[1] \u0027To understand a complex \u003ci\u003eAB\u003c/i\u003e,\u0027 he\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00508\"\u003e[Footnote 1: So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like\r\nthis: \u0027Book,\u0027 \u0027table,\u0027 \u0027on\u0027—how does the existence of these three\r\nabstract elements result in \u003ci\u003ethis\u003c/i\u003e book being livingly on \u003ci\u003ethis\u003c/i\u003e\r\ntable? Why isn\u0027t the table on the book? Or why doesn\u0027t the \u0027on\u0027\r\nconnect itself with another book, or something that is not a table?\r\nMustn\u0027t something \u003ci\u003ein\u003c/i\u003e each of the three elements already determine\r\nthe two others to \u003ci\u003eit\u003c/i\u003e, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float\r\nvaguely? Mustn\u0027t the whole fact be \u003ci\u003eprefigured in each part\u003c/i\u003e, and\r\nexist \u003ci\u003ede jure\u003c/i\u003e before it can exist \u003ci\u003ede facto\u003c/i\u003e? But, if so, in what\r\ncan the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of\r\nthe whole fact\u0027s constitution actuating; every partial factor as its\r\npurpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of\r\nlooking behind a fact \u003ci\u003ein esse\u003c/i\u003e for the ground of the fact, and\r\nfinding it in the shape of the very same fact \u003ci\u003ein posse\u003c/i\u003e? Somewhere we\r\nmust leave off with a \u003ci\u003econstitution\u003c/i\u003e behind which there is nothing.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00509\"\u003esays, \u0027I must begin with \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e or \u003ci\u003eB\u003c/i\u003e. And beginning, say with \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e, if\r\nI then merely find \u003ci\u003eB\u003c/i\u003e, I have either lost \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e, or I have got beside\r\n\u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e, [\u003ci\u003ethe word \u0027beside\u0027 seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction\r\n\u0027external\u0027 and therefore unintelligible\u003c/i\u003e] something else, and in\r\nneither case have I understood.[1] For my intellect cannot simply\r\nunite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of\r\ntogetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eB\u003c/i\u003e, you offer\r\nme their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more\r\nthan another external element. And \"facts,\" once for all, are for my\r\nintellect not true unless they satisfy it…. The intellect has in its\r\nnature no principle of mere togetherness\u0027 (pp. 570, 572).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00510\"\u003eOf course Mr. Bradley has a right to define \u0027intellect\u0027 as the power\r\nby which we perceive separations but not unions—provided he give\r\ndue notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and\r\namputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its\r\nbehoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he\r\nelsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a \u003ci\u003eproprius motus\u003c/i\u003e of\r\ntransition, but says that\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00511\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Apply this to the case of \u0027book-on-table\u0027! W.J.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00512\"\u003ewhen he looks for \u003ci\u003ethese\u003c/i\u003e transitions in the detail of living\r\nexperience, he \u0027is unable to verify such a solution\u0027 (p. 569).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00513\"\u003eYet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like\r\nin case we had them. He only defines them negatively—they are not\r\nspatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or\r\notherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naïvely trace\r\nrelations, for relations \u003ci\u003eseparate\u003c/i\u003e terms, and need themselves to be\r\nhooked on \u003ci\u003ead infinitum\u003c/i\u003e. The nearest approach he makes to describing\r\na truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of \u003ci\u003eA\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eB\u003c/i\u003e\r\nas being \u0027united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the\r\nnature of both alike\u0027 (p. 570). But this (which, \u003ci\u003epace\u003c/i\u003e Mr. Bradley,\r\nseems exquisitely analogous to \u0027taking a congeries in a lump,\u0027 if\r\nnot to \u0027swamping\u0027) suggests nothing but that \u003ci\u003econflux\u003c/i\u003e which pure\r\nexperience so abundantly offers, as when \u0027space,\u0027 \u0027white,\u0027 and \u0027sweet\u0027\r\nare confluent in a \u0027lump of sugar,\u0027 or kinesthetic, dermal, and\r\noptical sensations confluent in \u0027my hand.\u0027[1] All that I can verify\r\nin the transitions which Mr. Bradley\u0027s intellect desiderates as\r\nits \u003ci\u003eproprius motus\u003c/i\u003e is a reminiscence of these and other sensible\r\nconjunctions (especially space-conjunctions),\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00514\"\u003e[Footnote 1: How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes\r\n(or in \u0027book-on-table,\u0027 \u0027watch-in-pocket,\u0027 etc.) the relation is an\r\nadditional entity \u003ci\u003ebetween\u003c/i\u003e the terms, needing itself to be related\r\nagain to each! Both Bradley (\u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, pp. 32-33) and\r\nRoyce (\u003ci\u003eThe World and the Individual\u003c/i\u003e, i, 128) lovingly repeat this\r\npiece of profundity.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00515\"\u003ebut a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized.\r\nBradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its\r\nimage in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest\r\nunion, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite,\r\nthe \u0027how\u0027 of which you \u0027understand\u0027 as soon as you see the fact of\r\nthem,[1] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as\r\ngiven; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for\r\nsome ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained\r\nit, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full\r\npossession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all\r\nof us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00516\"\u003ePolemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession\r\nin so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against\r\nits best known champion would count as either superficiality or\r\ninability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated\r\nin the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as\r\nexperienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an\r\nempirical theory of knowledge intact, and lets us continue to believe\r\nwith common sense that one object \u003ci\u003emay\u003c/i\u003e be known, if we have any\r\nground for thinking that it \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e known, to many knowers.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00517\"\u003e[Footnote 1: The \u0027why\u0027 and the \u0027whence\u0027 are entirely other questions,\r\nnot under discussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience\r\ngets itself born, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is\r\nthe puzzle.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eAPPENDIX B\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eTHE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[1]\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00520\"\u003e… Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to\r\nphilosophy, and if one turns to the current literature of the\r\nsubject—his own writings included—one easily gathers what he means.\r\nThe opponents cannot even understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to\r\nMr. Ward: \u0027I do not care what your oracle is, and your preposterous\r\npsychology may here be gospel if you please; … but if the revelation\r\ndoes contain a meaning, I will commit myself to this: either the\r\noracle is so confused that its signification is not discoverable,\r\nor, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite\r\nstatement, then that statement will be false.\u0027[2] Mr. Ward in turn\r\nsays of Mr. Bradley: \u0027I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which\r\nhis description applies…. It reads like an unintentional travesty of\r\nHerbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without\r\nbeing at the pains to master it.\u0027 Münsterberg excludes a view opposed\r\nto his own by saying that with any one who holds it a \u003ci\u003everständigung\u003c/i\u003e\r\nwith him is \u0027\u003ci\u003egrundsätzlich ausgeschlossen\u003c/i\u003e\u0027; and Royce,\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00521\"\u003e[Footnote 1: President\u0027s Address before the American Psychological\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nAssociation, December, 1904. Reprinted from the \u003ci\u003ePsychological\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nReview\u003c/i\u003e, vol. xii, 1905, with slight verbal revision.]\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00522\"\u003e[Footnote 2: \u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, p. 117. Obviously written \u003ci\u003eat\u003c/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\nWard, though Ward\u0027s name is not mentioned.]\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00523\"\u003ein a review of Stout,[1] hauls him over the coals at great length for\r\ndefending \u0027efficacy\u0027 in a way which I, for one, never gathered from\r\nreading him, and which I have heard Stout himself say was quite\r\nforeign to the intention of his text.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00524\"\u003eIn these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and\r\ndifferent points of view are talked of \u003ci\u003edurcheinander\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00525\"\u003e(1) There is a psychological question: Have we perceptions of\r\nactivity? and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have\r\nthem?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00526\"\u003e(2) There is a metaphysical question: Is there a \u003ci\u003efact\u003c/i\u003e of activity?\r\nand if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what\r\ndoes it do, if it does anything? And finally there is a logical\r\nquestion:\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00527\"\u003e(3) Whence do we \u003ci\u003eknow\u003c/i\u003e activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or\r\nby some other source of information? Throughout page after page of the\r\nliterature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and\r\nmere description of the surface-show of experience is proffered as if\r\nit implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants,\r\nmoreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view\r\nwould carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one\u0027s\r\nexperience it would make if his adversary\u0027s were triumphant.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00528\"\u003e[Footnote 1: \u003ci\u003eMind\u003c/i\u003e, N.S., VI, 379.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00529\"\u003eIt seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it\r\nought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience,\r\nto be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them\r\nsomewhat. The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there\r\nis no difference of truth that doesn\u0027t make a difference of fact\r\nsomewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of\r\nopinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some\r\npractical or particular issue. The principle of pure experience is\r\nalso a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it\r\nsays, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some\r\nexperient; and for every feature of fact ever so experienced, a\r\ndefinite place must be found somewhere in the final system of reality.\r\nIn other words: Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and\r\nevery kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00530\"\u003eArmed with these rules of method, let us see what face the problems of\r\nactivity present to us.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00531\"\u003eBy the principle of pure experience, either the word \u0027activity\u0027 must\r\nhave no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what\r\nit means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be\r\ndefinitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually\r\ncome to make regarding activity, \u003ci\u003ethat sort\u003c/i\u003e of thing will be what the\r\njudgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in\r\nthe stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity.\r\nWhat we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later\r\nquestion.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00532\"\u003eNow it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever\r\nwe find anything \u003ci\u003egoing on\u003c/i\u003e. Taken in the broadest sense, any\r\napprehension of something \u003ci\u003edoing\u003c/i\u003e, is an experience of activity. Were\r\nour world describable only by the words \u0027nothing happening,\u0027 \u0027nothing\r\nchanging,\u0027 \u0027nothing doing,\u0027 we should unquestionably call it an\r\n\u0027inactive\u0027 world. Bare activity, then, as we may call it, means the\r\nbare fact of event or change. \u0027Change taking place\u0027 is a unique\r\ncontent of experience, one of those \u0027conjunctive\u0027 objects which\r\nradical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate and preserve.\r\nThe sense of activity is thus in the broadest and vaguest way\r\nsynonymous with the sense of \u0027life.\u0027 We should feel our own subjective\r\nlife at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise inactive\r\nworld. Our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing\r\nexperienced there in the form of something coming to pass.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00533\"\u003eThis seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist\r\nthat for an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to\r\njustify, or at any rate to explain, Mr. Ward\u0027s expression that we\r\n\u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e only as we are active,[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00534\"\u003e[Footnote 1: \u003ci\u003eNaturalism and Agnosticism\u003c/i\u003e, vol. ii, p. 245. One thinks\r\nnaturally of the peripatetic \u003ci\u003eactus primus\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eactus secundus\u003c/i\u003e\r\nhere.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00535\"\u003efor we \u003ci\u003eare\u003c/i\u003e only as experients; and it rules out Mr. Bradley\u0027s\r\ncontention that \u0027there is no original experience of anything like\r\nactivity.\u0027 What we ought to say about activities thus simply given,\r\nwhose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect\r\nanything at all—these are later questions, to be answered only when\r\nthe field of experience is enlarged.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00536\"\u003eBare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite\r\ndirection, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a\r\nwild \u003ci\u003eideenflucht\u003c/i\u003e, or \u003ci\u003erhapsodie der wahrnehmungen\u003c/i\u003e, as Kant would\r\nsay, would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive\r\nworld.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00537\"\u003eBut in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of\r\nthe activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire\r\nand sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it\r\novercomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of\r\nresistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like\r\nthese that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed\r\nto activity arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes\r\nto birth. Perhaps the most elaborate work ever done in descriptive\r\npsychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more\r\ncomplex activity-situations. In their descriptions, exquisitely subtle\r\nsome of them,[1] the activity appears as the \u003ci\u003egestalt-qualität\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00538\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Their existence forms a curious commentary on Professor\r\nMunsterberg\u0027s dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He\r\nhimself has contributed in a superior way to their description, both\r\nin his \u003ci\u003eWillenshandlung\u003c/i\u003e, and in his \u003ci\u003eGrundzüge\u003c/i\u003e, Part II, chap, ix, §\r\n7.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00539\"\u003eor the \u003ci\u003efundirte inhalt\u003c/i\u003e (or as whatever else you may please to call\r\nthe conjunctive form) which the content falls into when we experience\r\nit in the ways which the describers set forth. Those factors in those\r\nrelations are what we \u003ci\u003emean\u003c/i\u003e by activity-situations; and to the\r\npossible enumeration and accumulation of their circumstances and\r\ningredients there would seem to be no natural bound. Every hour of\r\nhuman life could contribute to the picture gallery; and this is the\r\nonly fault that one can find with such descriptive industry—where is\r\nit going to stop? Ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures of\r\nwhat we have already in concrete form in our own breasts?[1]\r\nThey never take us off the superficial plane. We knew the facts\r\nalready—less spread out and separated, to be sure—but we knew them\r\nstill. We always felt our own activity, for example, as \u0027the expansion\r\nof an idea with which our Self is identified, against an obstacle\u0027;\r\nand the following out of such a definition through a multitude of\r\ncases elaborates the obvious so as to be little more than an exercise\r\nin synonymic speech.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00540\"\u003eAll the descriptions have to trace familiar outlines, and to use\r\nfamiliar terms. The activity is, for example,\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00541\"\u003e[Footnote 1: I ought myself to cry \u003ci\u003epeccavi\u003c/i\u003e, having been a voluminous\r\nsinner in my own chapter on the will.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00542\"\u003eattributed either to a physical or to a mental agent, and is either\r\naimless or directed. If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may\r\nor may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when\r\na body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at\r\ntheir own sweet will. If resistance is met, \u003ci\u003eits\u003c/i\u003e agent complicates\r\nthe situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency\r\ncontinues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain\r\nor squeeze. Will, in the narrower sense of the word, then comes upon\r\nthe scene, whenever, along with the tendency, the strain and squeeze\r\nare sustained. But the resistance may be great enough to check the\r\ntendency, or even to reverse its path. In that case, we (if \u0027we\u0027 were\r\nthe original agents or subjects of the tendency) are overpowered.\r\nThe phenomenon turns into one of tension simply, or of necessity\r\nsuccumbed—to, according as the opposing power is only equal, or is\r\nsuperior to ourselves.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00543\"\u003eWhosoever describes an experience in such terms as these, describes an\r\nexperience \u003ci\u003eof\u003c/i\u003e activity. If the word have any meaning, it must denote\r\nwhat there is found. \u003ci\u003eThere\u003c/i\u003e is complete activity in its original and\r\nfirst intention. What it is \u0027known-as\u0027 is what there appears. The\r\nexperiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains.\r\nHe feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the\r\ntriumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the\r\nspace, the swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and\r\ncolor, the pain and pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining\r\ncharacters the situation may involve. He goes through all that ever\r\ncan be imagined where activity is supposed. If we suppose activities\r\nto go on outside of our experience, it is in forms like these that we\r\nmust suppose them, or else give them some other name; for the word\r\n\u0027activity\u0027 has no imaginable content whatever save these experiences\r\nof process, obstruction, striving, strain, or release, ultimate\r\n\u003ci\u003equalia\u003c/i\u003e as they are of the life given us to be known.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00544\"\u003eWere this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had\r\nsuccessfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be\r\npermitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had\r\nbeen really active, that we had met real resistance and had really\r\nprevailed. Lotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is\r\nnecessary is to \u003ci\u003egelten\u003c/i\u003e as an entity, to operate, or be felt,\r\nexperienced, recognized, or in any way realized, as such. In our\r\nactivity-experiences the activity assuredly fulfils Lotze\u0027s demand.\r\nIt makes itself \u003ci\u003egelten\u003c/i\u003e. It is witnessed at its work. No matter what\r\nactivities there may really be in this extraordinary universe of ours,\r\nit is impossible for us to conceive of any one of them being either\r\nlived through or authentically known otherwise than in this dramatic\r\nshape of something sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles\r\nand overcoming or being overcome. What \u0027sustaining\u0027 means here is\r\nclear to any one who has lived through the experience, but to no one\r\nelse; just as \u0027loud,\u0027 \u0027red,\u0027 \u0027sweet,\u0027 mean something only to beings\r\nwith ears, eyes, and tongues. The \u003ci\u003epercipi\u003c/i\u003e in these originals of\r\nexperience is the \u003ci\u003eesse\u003c/i\u003e; the curtain is the picture. If there is\r\nanything hiding in the background, it ought not to be called activity,\r\nbut should get itself another name.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00545\"\u003eThis seems so obviously true that one might well experience\r\nastonishment at finding so many of the ablest writers on the subject\r\nflatly denying that the activity we live through in these situations\r\nis real. Merely to feel active is not to be active, in their sight.\r\nThe agents that appear in the experience are not real agents, the\r\nresistances do not really resist, the effects that appear are not\r\nreally effects at all.[1] It is evident from this that\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00546\"\u003e[Footnote 1: \u003ci\u003eVerborum gratiâ\u003c/i\u003e:\u0027The feeling of activity is not able,\r\nquâ feeling, to tell us anything about activity\u0027 (Loveday: \u003ci\u003eMind\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nN.S., X., 403); \u0027A sensation or feeling or sense of activity … is\r\nnot, looked at in another way, a feeling of activity at all. It is a\r\nmere sensation shut up within which you could by no reflection get the\r\nidea of activity…. Whether this experience is or is not later on a\r\ncharacter essential to our perception and our idea of activity, it, as\r\nit comes first, is not in itself an experience of activity at all. It,\r\nas it comes first, is only so for extraneous reasons and only so for\r\nan outside observer\u0027 (Bradley, \u003ci\u003eAppearance and Reality\u003c/i\u003e, 2d edition,\r\np. 605); \u0027In dem tätigkeitsgefühle leigt an sich nicht der\r\ngeringste beweis für das vorhandensein einer psychischen tätigkeit\u0027\r\n(Münsterberg: \u003ci\u003eGrundzüge\u003c/i\u003e, etc., p. 67). I could multiply similar\r\nquotations, and would have introduced some of them into my text to\r\nmake it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of\r\nview in most of these author\u0027s discussions (not in Münsterberg\u0027s) make\r\nit impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any\r\ncase to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note,\r\nby omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more\r\nI stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of\r\nopinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may\r\nadd to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in\r\nthe excellent chapter on \u0027Mental Activity,\u0027 in vol. i of his \u003ci\u003eAnalytic\r\nPsychology\u003c/i\u003e, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with\r\ncertain muscular feelings, and gives quotations to bear him out. They\r\nare from certain paragraphs on \u0027the Self,\u0027 in which my attempt was to\r\nshow what the central nucleus of the activities that we call \u0027ours\u0027\r\nis. I found it in certain intracephalic movements which we habitually\r\noppose, as \u0027subjective,\u0027 to the activities of the transcorporeal\r\nworld. I sought to show that there is no direct evidence that we feel\r\nthe activity of an inner spiritual agent as such (I should now say the\r\nactivity of \u0027consciousness\u0027 as such, see my paper \u0027Does consciousness\r\nexist?\u0027 in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Philosophy\u003c/i\u003e, vol. i, p. 477). There are, in\r\nfact, three distinguishable \u0027activities\u0027 in the field of discussion:\r\nthe elementary activity involved in the mere \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e of experience, in\r\nthe fact that \u003ci\u003esomething\u003c/i\u003e is going on, and the farther specification\r\nof this \u003ci\u003esomething\u003c/i\u003e into two \u003ci\u003ewhats\u003c/i\u003e, an activity felt as \u0027ours,\u0027 and\r\nan activity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies\r\n\u0027our\u0027 activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I\r\ncircumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort\r\nof external appendage to itself (pp. 162-163), as if I \u0027separated the\r\nactivity from the process which is active.\u0027 But all the processes in\r\nquestion are active, and their activity is inseparable from their\r\nbeing. My book raised only the question of \u003ci\u003ewhich\u003c/i\u003e activity deserved\r\nthe name of \u0027ours.\u0027 So far as we are \u0027persons,\u0027 and contrasted and\r\nopposed to an \u0027environment,\u0027 movements in our body figure as our\r\nactivities; and I am unable to find any other activities that are ours\r\nin this strictly personal sense. There is a wider sense in which\r\nthe whole \u0027choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,\u0027 and their\r\nactivities, are ours, for they are our \u0027objects.\u0027 But \u0027we\u0027 are here\r\nonly another name for the total process of experience, another name\r\nfor all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the personal and\r\nindividualized self exclusively in the passages with which Professor\r\nStout finds fault.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00547\"\u003eThe individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly\r\ncalled self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The\r\nworld experienced (otherwise called the \u0027field of consciousness\u0027)\r\ncomes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision,\r\ncentre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is \u0027here\u0027;\r\nwhen the body acts is \u0027now\u0027; what the body touches is \u0027this\u0027; all\r\nother things are \u0027there\u0027 and \u0027then\u0027 and \u0027that.\u0027 These words of\r\nemphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference\r\nto a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the\r\nsystematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no\r\ndeveloped or active experience exists for us at all except in that\r\nordered form. So far as \u0027thoughts\u0027 and \u0027feelings\u0027 can be active, their\r\nactivity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through\r\nfirst arousing its activities can they begin to change those of\r\nthe rest of the world. The body is the storm centre, the origin\r\nof co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that\r\nexperience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its\r\npoint of view. The word \u0027I,\u0027 then, is primarily a noun of position,\r\njust like \u0027this\u0027 and \u0027here.\u0027 Activities attached to \u0027this\u0027 position\r\nhave prerogative emphasis, and, if activities have feelings, must be\r\nfelt in a peculiar way. The word \u0027my\u0027 designates the kind of emphasis.\r\nI see no inconsistency whatever in defending, on the one hand, \u0027my\u0027\r\nactivities as unique and opposed to those of outer nature, and, on the\r\nother hand, in affirming, after introspection, that they consist in\r\nmovements in the head. The \u0027my\u0027 of them is the emphasis, the feeling\r\nof perspective-interest in which they are dyed.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00548\"\u003emere descriptive analysis of any one of our activity-experiences is\r\nnot the whole story, that there is something still to tell \u003ci\u003eabout\u003c/i\u003e\r\nthem that has led such able writers to conceive of a \u003ci\u003eSimon-pure\u003c/i\u003e\r\nactivity, of an activity \u003ci\u003ean sich\u003c/i\u003e, that does, and doesn\u0027t merely\r\nappear to us to do, and compared with whose real doing all this\r\nphenomenal activity is but a specious sham.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00549\"\u003eThe metaphysical question opens here; and I think that the state of\r\nmind of one possessed by it is often something like this: \u0027It is\r\nall very well,\u0027 we may imagine him saying, \u0027to talk about certain\r\nexperience-series taking on the form of feelings of activity, just as\r\nthey might take on musical or geometric forms. Suppose that they do\r\nso; suppose that what we feel is a will to stand a strain. Does our\r\nfeeling do more than \u003ci\u003erecord\u003c/i\u003e the fact that the strain is sustained?\r\nThe \u003ci\u003ereal\u003c/i\u003e activity, meanwhile, is the \u003ci\u003edoing\u003c/i\u003e of the fact; and what\r\nis the doing made of before the record is made? What in the will\r\n\u003ci\u003eenables\u003c/i\u003e it to act thus? And these trains of experience themselves,\r\nin which activities appear, what makes them \u003ci\u003ego\u003c/i\u003e at all? Does the\r\nactivity in one bit of experience bring the next bit into being? As an\r\nempiricist you cannot say so, for you have just declared activity\r\nto be only a kind of synthetic object, or conjunctive relation\r\nexperienced between bits of experience already made. But what made\r\nthem at all? What propels experience \u003ci\u003eüberhaupt\u003c/i\u003e into being? \u003ci\u003eThere\u003c/i\u003e\r\nis the activity that \u003ci\u003eoperates\u003c/i\u003e; the activity \u003ci\u003efelt\u003c/i\u003e is only its\r\nsuperficial sign.\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00550\"\u003eTo the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, I must pay\r\nserious attention ere I end my remarks, but, before doing so, let me\r\nshow that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience,\r\nor asking what makes activity itself act, we still find the\r\ndistinction between less real and more real activities forced upon us,\r\nand are driven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00551\"\u003eWe must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of\r\nour activity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a\r\nwider world, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience\r\nout of which history is made. Each partial process, to him who lives\r\nthrough it, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an\r\nobserver with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it,\r\nthat goal would appear but as a provisional halting-place, and the\r\nsubjectively felt activity would be seen to continue into objective\r\nactivities that led far beyond. We thus acquire a habit, in discussing\r\nactivity-experiences, of defining them by their relation to something\r\nmore. If an experience be one of narrow span, it will be mistaken as\r\nto what activity it is and whose. You think that \u003ci\u003eyou\u003c/i\u003e are acting\r\nwhile you are only obeying some one\u0027s push. You think you are doing\r\n\u003ci\u003ethis\u003c/i\u003e, but you are doing something of which you do not dream. For\r\ninstance, you think you are but drinking this glass; but you are\r\nreally creating the liver-cirrhosis that will end your days. You think\r\nyou are just driving this bargain, but, as Stevenson says somewhere,\r\nyou are laying down a link in the policy of mankind.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00552\"\u003eGenerally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision,\r\nregards the \u003ci\u003eultimate outcome\u003c/i\u003e of an activity as what it is more\r\nreally doing; and \u003ci\u003ethe most previous agent\u003c/i\u003e ascertainable, being the\r\nfirst source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the\r\nfield. The others but transmit that agent\u0027s impulse; on him we put\r\nresponsibility; we name him when one asks us, \u0027Who\u0027s to blame?\u0027\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00553\"\u003eBut the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer\r\nspan, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view.\r\nBrain-cells are our best example. My brain-cells are believed to\r\nexcite each other from next to next (by contiguous transmission of\r\nkatabolic alteration, let us say), and to have been doing so long\r\nbefore this present stretch of lecturing-activity on my part began.\r\nIf any one cell-group stops its activity, the lecturing will cease or\r\nshow disorder of form. \u003ci\u003eCessante causa, cessat et effectus\u003c/i\u003e—does not\r\nthis look as if the short-span brain activities were the more real\r\nactivities, and the lecturing activities on my part only their\r\neffects? Moreover, as Hume so clearly pointed out, in my mental\r\nactivity-situation the words physically to be uttered are represented\r\nas the activity\u0027s immediate goal. These words, however, cannot be\r\nuttered without intermediate physical processes in the bulb and vagi\r\nnerves, which processes nevertheless fail to figure in the mental\r\nactivity-series at all. That series, therefore, since it leaves out\r\nvitally real steps of action, cannot represent the real activities. It\r\nis something purely subjective; the \u003ci\u003efacts\u003c/i\u003e of activity are elsewhere.\r\nThey are something far more interstitial, so to speak, than what my\r\nfeelings record.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00554\"\u003eThe \u003ci\u003ereal\u003c/i\u003e facts of activity that have in point of fact been\r\nsystematically pleaded for by philosophers have, so far as my\r\ninformation goes, been of three principal types.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00555\"\u003eThe first type takes a consciousness of wider time-span than ours to\r\nbe the vehicle of the more real activity. Its will is the agent, and\r\nits purpose is the action done.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00556\"\u003eThe second type assumes that \u0027ideas\u0027 struggling with one another are\r\nthe agents, and that the prevalence of one set of them is the action.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00557\"\u003eThe third type believes that nerve-cells are the agents, and that\r\nresultant motor discharges are the acts achieved.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00558\"\u003eNow if we must de-realize our immediately felt activity-situations for\r\nthe benefit of either of these types of substitute, we ought to know\r\nwhat the substitution practically involves. \u003ci\u003eWhat practical difference\r\nought it to make if\u003c/i\u003e, instead of saying naively that \u0027I\u0027 am active now\r\nin delivering this address, I say that \u003ci\u003ea wider thinker is active\u003c/i\u003e,\r\nor that \u003ci\u003ecertain ideas are active\u003c/i\u003e, or that \u003ci\u003ecertain nerve-cells are\r\nactive\u003c/i\u003e, in producing the result?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00559\"\u003eThis would be the pragmatic meaning of the three hypotheses. Let us\r\ntake them in succession in seeking a reply.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00560\"\u003eIf we assume a wider thinker, it is evident that his purposes envelop\r\nmine. I am really lecturing \u003ci\u003efor\u003c/i\u003e him; and altho I cannot surely know\r\nto what end, yet if I take him religiously, I can trust it to be a\r\ngood end, and willingly connive. I can be happy in thinking that my\r\nactivity transmits his impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. So\r\nlong as I take him religiously, in short, he does not de-realize my\r\nactivities. He tends rather to corroborate the reality of them, so\r\nlong as I believe both them and him to be good.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00561\"\u003eWhen now we turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas\r\nare supposed by the association psychology to influence each other\r\nonly from next to next. The \u0027span\u0027 of an idea, or pair of ideas, is\r\nassumed to be much smaller instead of being larger than that of my\r\ntotal conscious field. The same results may get worked out in both\r\ncases, for this address is being given anyhow. But the ideas supposed\r\nto \u0027really\u0027 work it out had no prevision of the whole of it; and if\r\nI was lecturing for an absolute thinker in the former case, so,\r\nby similar reasoning, are my ideas now lecturing for me, that is,\r\naccomplishing unwittingly a result which I approve and adopt. But,\r\nwhen this passing lecture is over, there is nothing in the bare notion\r\nthat ideas have been its agents that would seem to guarantee that my\r\npresent purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. \u003ci\u003eI\u003c/i\u003e may have ulterior\r\ndevelopments in view; but there is no certainty that my ideas as such\r\nwill wish to, or be able to, work them out.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00562\"\u003eThe like is true if nerve-cells be the agents. The activity of a\r\nnerve-cell must be conceived of as a tendency of exceedingly short\r\nreach, an \u0027impulse\u0027 barely spanning the way to the next cell—for\r\nsurely that amount of actual \u0027process\u0027 must be \u0027experienced\u0027 by the\r\ncells if what happens between them is to deserve the name of activity\r\nat all. But here again the gross resultant, as \u003ci\u003eI\u003c/i\u003e perceive it, is\r\nindifferent to the agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen.\r\nTheir being agents now congruous with my will gives me no guarantee\r\nthat like results will recur again from their activity. In point of\r\nfact, all sorts of other results do occur. My mistakes, impotencies,\r\nperversions, mental obstructions, and frustrations generally, are also\r\nresults of the activity of cells. Altho these are letting me lecture\r\nnow, on other occasions they make me do things that I would willingly\r\nnot do.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00563\"\u003eThe question \u003ci\u003eWhose is the real activity?\u003c/i\u003e is thus tantamount to the\r\nquestion \u003ci\u003eWhat will be the actual results?\u003c/i\u003e Its interest is dramatic;\r\nhow will things work out? If the agents are of one sort, one way; if\r\nof another sort, they may work out very differently. The pragmatic\r\nmeaning of the various alternatives, in short, is great. It makes more\r\nthan a merely verbal difference which opinion we take up.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00564\"\u003eYou see it is the old dispute come back! Materialism and teleology;\r\nelementary short-span actions summing themselves \u0027blindly,\u0027 or far\r\nforeseen ideals coming with effort into act.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00565\"\u003eNaïvely we believe, and humanly and dramatically we like to believe,\r\nthat activities both of wider and of narrower span are at work in life\r\ntogether, that both are real, and that the long-span tendencies yoke\r\nthe others in their service, encouraging them in the right direction,\r\nand damping them when they tend in other ways. But how to represent\r\nclearly the \u003ci\u003emodus operandi\u003c/i\u003e of such steering of small tendencies\r\nby large ones is a problem which metaphysical thinkers will have to\r\nruminate upon for many years to come. Even if such control should\r\neventually grow clearly picturable, the question how far it is\r\nsuccessfully exerted in this actual world can be answered only by\r\ninvestigating the details of fact. No philosophic knowledge of the\r\ngeneral nature and constitution of tendencies, or of the relation\r\nof larger to smaller ones, can help us to predict which of all the\r\nvarious competing tendencies that interest us in this universe are\r\nlikeliest to prevail. We know as an empirical fact that far-seeing\r\ntendencies often carry out their purpose, but we know also that they\r\nare often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly small process\r\non which success depends. A little thrombus in a statesman\u0027s meningeal\r\nartery will throw an empire out of gear. Therefore I cannot even hint\r\nat any solution of the pragmatic issue. I have only wished to show you\r\nthat that issue is what gives the real interest to all inquiries into\r\nwhat kinds of activity may be real. Are the forces that really act in\r\nthe world more foreseeing or more blind? As between \u0027our\u0027 activities\r\nas \u0027we\u0027 experience them, and those of our ideas, or of our\r\nbrain-cells, the issue is well defined.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00566\"\u003eI said awhile back (p. 381) that I should return to the \u0027metaphysical\u0027\r\nquestion before ending; so, with a few words about that, I will now\r\nclose my remarks.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00567\"\u003eIn whatever form we hear this question propounded, I think that it\r\nalways arises from two things, a belief that \u003ci\u003ecausality\u003c/i\u003e must be\r\nexerted in activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made. If we\r\ntake an activity-situation at its face-value, it seems as if we caught\r\n\u003ci\u003ein flagrante delicto\u003c/i\u003e the very power that makes facts come and be. I\r\nnow am eagerly striving, for example, to get this truth which I seem\r\nhalf to perceive, into words which shall make it show more clearly. If\r\nthe words come, it will seem as if the striving itself had drawn or\r\npulled them into actuality out from the state of merely possible being\r\nin which they were. How is this feat performed? How does the pulling\r\n\u003ci\u003epull\u003c/i\u003e? How do I get my hold on words not yet existent, and when they\r\ncome, by what means have I \u003ci\u003emade\u003c/i\u003e them come? Really it is the problem\r\nof creation; for in the end the question is: How do I make them \u003ci\u003ebe?\u003c/i\u003e\r\nReal activities are those that really make things be, without which\r\nthe things are not, and with which they are there. Activity, so far as\r\nwe merely feel it, on the other hand, is only an impression of ours,\r\nit may be maintained; and an impression is, for all this way of\r\nthinking, only a shadow of another fact.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00568\"\u003eArrived at this point, I can do little more than indicate the\r\nprinciples on which, as it seems to me, a radically empirical\r\nphilosophy is obliged to rely in handling such a dispute.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00569\"\u003eIf there \u003ci\u003ebe\u003c/i\u003e real creative activities in being, radical empiricism\r\nmust say, somewhere they must be immediately lived. Somewhere the\r\n\u003ci\u003ethat\u003c/i\u003e of efficacious causing and the \u003ci\u003ewhat\u003c/i\u003e of it must be experienced\r\nin one, just as the what and the that of \u0027cold\u0027 are experienced in one\r\nwhenever a man has the sensation of cold here and now. It boots not to\r\nsay that our sensations are fallible. They are indeed; but to see the\r\nthermometer contradict us when we say \u0027it is cold\u0027 does not abolish\r\ncold as a specific nature from the universe. Cold is in the arctic\r\ncircle if not here. Even so, to feel that our train is moving when the\r\ntrain beside our window moves, to see the moon through a telescope\r\ncome twice as near, or to see two pictures as one solid when we look\r\nthrough a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, nearness, and solidity\r\nstill in being—if not here, yet each in its proper seat elsewhere.\r\nAnd wherever the seat of real causality \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e, as ultimately known \u0027for\r\ntrue\u0027 (in nerve-processes, if you will, that cause our feelings of\r\nactivity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a\r\nphilosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no\r\nother \u003ci\u003enature\u003c/i\u003e of thing than that which even in our most erroneous\r\nexperiences appears to be at work. Exactly what appears there is what\r\nwe \u003ci\u003emean\u003c/i\u003e by working, tho we may later come to learn that working was\r\nnot exactly \u003ci\u003ethere\u003c/i\u003e. Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with\r\neffort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our intention—this\r\n\u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e action, this \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e effectuation in the only shape in which, by\r\na pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be\r\ndiscussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here is causality\r\nat work.[1] To treat this offhand as the bare illusory\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00570\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Let me not be told that this contradicts a former article\r\nof mine, \u0027Does consciousness exist?\u0027 in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Philosophy\u003c/i\u003e\r\nfor September 1, 1904 (see especially page 489), in which it was said\r\nthat while \u0027thoughts\u0027 and \u0027things\u0027 have the same natures, the natures\r\nwork \u0027energetically\u0027 on each other in the things (fire burns, water\r\nwets, etc.), but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are\r\ncomposed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other: they\r\ncheck, sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely\r\nassociational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my\r\nreply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that\r\nenergize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is\r\na desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a\r\nfeeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this.\r\nThe interplay of these secondary tones (among which \u0027interest,\u0027\r\n\u0027difficulty,\u0027 and \u0027effort\u0027 figure) runs the drama in the mental\r\nseries. In what we term the physical drama these qualities play\r\nabsolutely no part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can\r\nsee no inconsistency.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00571\"\u003esurface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable ontological\r\nprinciple hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of\r\nthinking, only animism in another shape. You explain your given fact\r\nby your \u0027principle,\u0027 but the principle itself, when you look clearly\r\nat it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little spiritual copy\r\nof the fact. Away from that one and only kind of fact your mind,\r\nconsidering causality, can never get.[1]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00572\"\u003e[Footnote 1: I have found myself more than once accused in print of\r\nbeing the assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since\r\nliterary misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should\r\nlike to say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published\r\non effort and on will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to\r\nexpress. I owe all my doctrines on this subject to Renouvier; and\r\nRenouvier, as I understand him, is (or at any rate then was) an out\r\nand out phenomenist, a denier of \u0027forces\u0027 in the most strenuous\r\nsense. Single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their\r\nconnexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal\r\nprinciple of energy; but I defy any one to show a single sentence\r\nwhich, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate\r\nthat view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my\r\nhaving defended (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts.\r\n\u0027Free will\u0027 was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural\r\nagent. As a matter of plain history, the only \u0027free will\u0027 I have\r\never thought of defending is the character of novelty in fresh\r\nactivity-situations. If an activity-process is the form of a whole\r\n\u0027field of consciousness,\u0027 and if each field of consciousness is not\r\nonly in its totality unique (as is now commonly admitted), but has\r\nits elements unique (since in that situation they are all dyed in\r\nthe total), then novelty is perpetually entering the world and what\r\nhappens there is not pure \u003ci\u003erepetition\u003c/i\u003e, as the dogma of the literal\r\nuniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in short,\r\neach with an original touch. A \u0027principle\u0027 of free will, if there were\r\none, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never\r\nsaw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the\r\nphenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00573\"\u003eI conclude, then, that real effectual causation as an ultimate nature,\r\nas a \u0027category,\u0027 if you like, of reality, is \u003ci\u003ejust what we feel it\r\nto be\u003c/i\u003e, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series\r\nreveal. We have the whole butt and being of it in our hands; and the\r\nhealthy thing for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground for\r\nwhat effects effectuation, or what makes action act, and to try to\r\nsolve the concrete questions of where effectuation in this world is\r\nlocated, of which things are the true causal agents there, and of what\r\nthe more remote effects consist.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00574\"\u003eFrom this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed\r\nto the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely\r\ndisappears. If we could know what causation really and\r\ntranscendentally is in itself, the only \u003ci\u003euse\u003c/i\u003e of the knowledge would\r\nbe to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and so to\r\ntrack the future course of operations more intelligently out. The mere\r\nabstract inquiry into causation\u0027s hidden nature is not more sublime\r\nthan any other inquiry equally abstract. Causation inhabits no more\r\nsublime level than anything else. It lives, apparently, in the dirt of\r\nthe world as well as in the absolute, or in man\u0027s unconquerable mind.\r\nThe worth and interest of the world consists not in its elements,\r\nbe these elements things, or be they the conjunctions of things; it\r\nexists rather in the dramatic outcome of the whole process, and in the\r\nmeaning of the succession stages which the elements work out.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00575\"\u003eMy colleague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of\r\nStout\u0027s \u003ci\u003eAnalytic Psychology\u003c/i\u003e, in \u003ci\u003eMind\u003c/i\u003e for 1897, has some fine words\r\non this point with which I cordially agree. I cannot agree with his\r\nseparating the notion of efficacy from that of activity altogether\r\n(this I understand to be one contention of his), for activities are\r\nefficacious whenever they are real activities at all. But the inner\r\nnature both of efficacy and of activity are superficial problems, I\r\nunderstand Royce to say; and the only point for us in solving them\r\nwould be their possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper\r\nproblem of the course and meaning of the world of life. Life, says\r\nour colleague, is full of significance, of meaning, of success and of\r\ndefeat, of hoping and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of inner\r\nvalue. It is a total presence that embodies worth. To live our own\r\nlives better in this presence is the true reason why we wish to know\r\nthe elements of things; so even we psychologists must end on this\r\npragmatic note.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00576\"\u003eThe urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. They all\r\nare problems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span\r\nactivities. When, for example, a number of \u0027ideas\u0027 (to use the name\r\ntraditional in psychology) grow confluent in a larger field of\r\nconsciousness, do the smaller activities still coexist with the wider\r\nactivities then experienced by the conscious subject? And, if so, do\r\nthe wide activities accompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they\r\nexert control? Or do they perhaps utterly supplant and replace them\r\nand short-circuit their effects? Again, when a mental activity-process\r\nand a brain-cell series of activities both terminate in the same\r\nmuscular movement, does the mental process steer the neural processes\r\nor not? Or, on the other hand, does it independently short-circuit\r\ntheir effects? Such are the questions that we must begin with. But so\r\nfar am I from suggesting any definitive answer to such questions,\r\nthat I hardly yet can put them clearly. They lead, however, into that\r\nregion of panpsychic and ontologic speculation of which Professors\r\nBergson and Strong have lately enlarged the literature in so able and\r\ninteresting a way. The results of these authors seem in many respects\r\ndissimilar, and I understand them as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot\r\nhelp suspecting that the direction of their work is very promising,\r\nand that they have the hunter\u0027s instinct for the fruitful trails.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eAPPENDIX C\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00579\"\u003eIn my \u003ci\u003ePrinciples of Psychology\u003c/i\u003e (vol. ii, p. 646) I gave the name of\r\nthe \u0027axiom of skipped intermediaries and transferred relations\u0027 to a\r\nserial principle of which the foundation of logic, the \u003ci\u003edictum de omni\r\net nullo\u003c/i\u003e (or, as I expressed it, the rule that what is of a kind is\r\nof that kind\u0027s kind), is the most familiar instance. More than the\r\nmore is more than the less, equals of equals are equal, sames of the\r\nsame are the same, the cause of a cause is the cause of its effects,\r\nare other examples of this serial law. Altho it applies infallibly\r\nand without restriction throughout certain abstract series, where the\r\n\u0027sames,\u0027 \u0027causes,\u0027 etc., spoken of, are \u0027pure,\u0027 and have no properties\r\nsave their sameness, causality, etc., it cannot be applied offhand to\r\nconcrete objects with numerous properties and relations, for it is\r\nhard to trace a straight line of sameness, causation, or whatever it\r\nmay be, through a series of such objects without swerving into some\r\n\u0027respect\u0027 where the relation, as pursued originally, no longer holds:\r\nthe objects have so many \u0027aspects\u0027 that we are constantly deflected\r\nfrom our original direction, and find, we know not why, that we are\r\nfollowing something different from what we started with. Thus a cat is\r\nin a sense the same as a mouse-trap, and a mouse-trap the same as a\r\nbird-cage; but in no valuable or easily intelligible sense is a cat\r\nthe same as a bird-cage. Commodore Perry was in a sense the cause\r\nof the new régime in Japan, and the new régime was the cause of the\r\nrussian Douma; but it would hardly profit us to insist on holding to\r\nPerry as the cause of the Douma: the terms have grown too remote to\r\nhave any real or practical relation to each other. In every series of\r\nreal terms, not only do the terms themselves and their associates\r\nand environments change, but we change, and their \u003ci\u003emeaning\u003c/i\u003e for\r\nus changes, so that new kinds of sameness and types of causation\r\ncontinually come into view and appeal to our interest. Our earlier\r\nlines, having grown irrelevant, are then dropped. The old terms can no\r\nlonger be substituted nor the relations \u0027transferred,\u0027 because of so\r\nmany new dimensions into which experience has opened. Instead of a\r\nstraight line, it now follows a zigzag; and to keep it straight, one\r\nmust do violence to its spontaneous development. Not that one might\r\nnot possibly, by careful seeking (tho I doubt it), \u003ci\u003efind\u003c/i\u003e some line in\r\nnature along which terms literally the same, or causes causal in the\r\nsame way, might be serially strung without limit, if one\u0027s interest\r\nlay in such finding. Within such lines our axioms might hold, causes\r\nmight cause their effect\u0027s effects, etc.; but such lines themselves\r\nwould, if found, only be partial members of a vast natural network,\r\nwithin the other lines of which you could not say, in any sense that\r\na wise man or a sane man would ever think of, in any sense that would\r\nnot be concretely \u003ci\u003esilly\u003c/i\u003e, that the principle of skipt intermediaries\r\nstill held good. In the \u003ci\u003epractical\u003c/i\u003e world, the world whose\r\nsignificances we follow, sames of the same are certainly not sames of\r\none another; and things constantly cause other things without being\r\nheld responsible for everything of which those other things are\r\ncauses.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00580\"\u003eProfessor Bergson, believing as he does in a heraclitean \u0027devenir\r\nréel,\u0027 ought, if I rightly understand him, positively to deny that in\r\nthe actual world the logical axioms hold good without qualification.\r\nNot only, according to him, do terms change, so that after a certain\r\ntime the very elements of things are no longer what they were, but\r\nrelations also change, so as no longer to obtain in the same identical\r\nway between the new things that have succeeded upon the old ones. If\r\nthis were really so, then however indefinitely sames might still\r\nbe substituted for sames in the logical world of nothing but pure\r\nsameness, in the world of real operations every line of sameness\r\nactually started and followed up would eventually give out, and cease\r\nto be traceable any farther. Sames of the same, in such a world, will\r\nnot always (or rather, in a strict sense will never) be the same\r\nas one another, for in such a world there \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e no literal or ideal\r\nsameness among numerical differents. Nor in such a world will it be\r\ntrue that the cause of the cause is unreservedly the cause of\r\nthe effect; for if we follow lines of real causation, instead of\r\ncontenting ourselves with Hume\u0027s and Kant\u0027s eviscerated schematism, we\r\nfind that remoter effects are seldom aimed at by causal intentions,[1]\r\nthat no one kind of causal activity continues indefinitely, and that\r\nthe principle of skipt intermediaries can be talked of only \u003ci\u003ein\r\nabstracto\u003c/i\u003e.[2]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00581\"\u003eVolumes i, ii, and iii of the \u003ci\u003eMonist\u003c/i\u003e (1890-1893) contain a number of\r\narticles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which\r\nhas apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but\r\nwhich, if I mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers\r\nof the coming generation. Mr. Peirce\u0027s views, tho reached so\r\ndifferently, are altogether congruous with Bergson\u0027s. Both\r\nphilosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is\r\ngenuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes,\r\nnovelty can appear only as so much \u0027chance\u0027; to one who stands inside\r\nit is the expression of \u0027free creative activity.\u0027 Peirce\u0027s \u0027tychism\u0027\r\nis thus practically synonymous with Bergson\u0027s \u0027devenir réel.\u0027 The\r\ncommon objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly\r\nin, \u003ci\u003eex nihilo\u003c/i\u003e, they shatter the world\u0027s rational continuity. Peirce\r\nmeets this objection by combining his tychism\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00582\"\u003e[Footnote 1: Compare the douma with what Perry aimed at.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00583\"\u003e[Footnote 2: Compare Appendix B, as to what I mean here by \u0027real\u0027\r\ncasual activity.]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00584\"\u003ewith an express doctrine of \u0027synechism\u0027 or continuity, the two\r\ndoctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the\r\nname of \u0027agapasticism (\u003ci\u003eloc. cit.\u003c/i\u003e, iii, 188), which means exactly the\r\nsame thing as Bergson\u0027s \u0027évolution créatrice.\u0027 Novelty, as empirically\r\nfound, doesn\u0027t arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibly, for\r\nadjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum\r\nbeing both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being\r\nrealized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. The\r\nintervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and\r\nall the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous\r\ninfiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut.\r\nJust so, in a curve, the same direction is \u003ci\u003enever\u003c/i\u003e followed, and the\r\nconception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by\r\nsupposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an\r\n\u0027infinitesimal\u0027 tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion\r\nof an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same\r\nand yet the nascent other, of an identity that won\u0027t \u003ci\u003ekeep\u003c/i\u003e except so\r\nfar as it keeps \u003ci\u003efailing\u003c/i\u003e, that won\u0027t \u003ci\u003etransfer\u003c/i\u003e, any more than the\r\nserial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality\r\ninstead of applying them to concepts alone.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00585\"\u003eA friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified\r\nscale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that\r\nI will mention it here. He thinks that nothing more is needed to make\r\nhistory \u0027scientific\u0027 than to get the content of any two epochs (say\r\nthe end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century)\r\naccurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the\r\nchange that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to\r\nprolong the line of that direction into the future. So prolonging the\r\nline, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state\r\nof things at any future date we please. We all feel the essential\r\nunreality of such a conception of \u0027history\u0027 as this; but if such a\r\nsynechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what\r\nreally exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest,\r\nwould prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter\r\npretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or\r\nstatistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00586\"\u003eI can give no further account of Mr. Peirce\u0027s ideas in this note, but\r\nI earnestly advise all students of Bergson to compare them with those\r\nof the french philosopher.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eINDEX\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003eINDEX TO THE LECTURES\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00589\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Absolute, the, 49, 108-109, 114 ff., 173, 175, 190 ff., 203, 271, 292 ff.,\r\n 311; not the same as God, 111, 134; its rationality, 114 f.; its\r\n irrationality, 117-129; difficulty of conceiving it, 195.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00590\"\u003e Absolutism, 34, 38, 40, 54, 72 f, 79, 122, 310. See Monism.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00591\"\u003e Achilles and tortoise, 228, 255.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00592\"\u003e All-form, the, 34, 324.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00593\"\u003e Analogy, 8, 151 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00594\"\u003e Angels, 164.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00595\"\u003e Antinomies, 231, 239.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00596\"\u003e ARISTIDES, 304.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e BAILEY, S., 5.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00598\"\u003e BERGSON, H., Lecture VI, \u003ci\u003epassim\u003c/i\u003e. His characteristics, 226 f, 266.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00599\"\u003e \u0027Between,\u0027 70.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00600\"\u003e Block-universe, 310, 328.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00601\"\u003e BRADLEY, F.H., 46, 69, 79, 211, 220, 296.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00602\"\u003e Brain, 160.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e CAIRD, E., 89, 95, 137.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00604\"\u003e CATO, 304.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00605\"\u003e Causation, 258. See Influence.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00606\"\u003e Change, 231, 253.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00607\"\u003e CHESTERTON, 203, 303.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00608\"\u003e Compounding of mental states, 168, 173, 186 f., 268, 281, 284, 292, 296.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00609\"\u003e Concepts, 217, 234 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00610\"\u003e Conceptual method, 243 f., 246, 253.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00611\"\u003e Concrete reality, 283, 286.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00612\"\u003e Confluence, 326.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00613\"\u003e Conflux, 257.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00614\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Consciousness, superhuman, 156, 310 f.; its compound nature, 168, 173,\r\n 186 f., 289.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00615\"\u003e Continuity, 256 f., 325.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00616\"\u003e Contradiction, in Hegel, 89 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00617\"\u003e Creation, 29, 119.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Death, 303.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00619\"\u003e Degrees, 74.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00620\"\u003e Dialectic method, 89.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00621\"\u003e Difference, 257 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00622\"\u003e Diminutive epithets, 12, 24.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\n Discreteness of change, 231.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e \u0027Each-form,\u0027 the, 34, 325.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00624\"\u003e Earth, the, in Fechner\u0027s philosophy, 156; is an angel, 164.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00625\"\u003e Earth-soul, 152 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00626\"\u003e Elan vital, 262.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00627\"\u003e Empiricism, 264, 277; and religion, 314; defined, 7.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00628\"\u003e Endosmosis, 257.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00629\"\u003e Epithets. See Diminutive.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00630\"\u003e Evil, 310.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00631\"\u003e Experience, 312; religious, 307.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00632\"\u003e Extremes, 67, 74.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e \u0027Faith-ladder,\u0027 328.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00634\"\u003e \u0027Fall,\u0027 the, 119, 310.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00635\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e FECHNER, Lecture IV, \u003ci\u003epassim.\u003c/i\u003e His life, 145-150; he reasons by analogy,\r\n 151; his genius, 154; compared with Royce, 173, 207; not a genuine\r\n monist, 293; his God; and religious experience, 308.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00636\"\u003e FERRIER, Jas., 13.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00637\"\u003e Finite experience, 39, 48, 182, 192-193.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00638\"\u003e Finiteness, of God, 111, 124, 294.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00639\"\u003e Foreignness, 31.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e German manner of philosophizing, 17.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00641\"\u003e GOD, 24 f., 111, 124, 193, 240, 294.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00642\"\u003e GREEN, T.H., 6, 24, 137, 278.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e HALDANE, R.B., 138.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00644\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e HEGEL, Lecture III, \u003ci\u003epassim\u003c/i\u003e, 11, 85, 207, 211, 219, 296. His vision,\r\n 88, 98 f., 104; his use of double negation, 102; his vicious\r\n intellectualism 106; Haldane on, 138; McTaggart on, 140; Royce on, 143.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00645\"\u003e HODGSON, S.H., 282.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00646\"\u003e Horse, 265.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00647\"\u003e HUME, 19, 267.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Idealism, 36. See Absolutism.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00649\"\u003e Identity, 93.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00650\"\u003e Immortality, Fechner\u0027s view of, 171.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00651\"\u003e \u0027Independent\u0027 beings, 55, 58.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00652\"\u003e Indeterminism, 77.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00653\"\u003e Infinity, 229.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00654\"\u003e Influence, 258, 561.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00655\"\u003e Intellect, its function is practical, 247 f., 252.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00656\"\u003e Intellectualism, vicious, 60, 218.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00657\"\u003e Intellectualist logic, 216, 259, 261.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00658\"\u003e Intellectualist method, 291.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00659\"\u003e Interaction, 56.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00660\"\u003e Intimacy, 31.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00661\"\u003e Irrationality, 81; of the absolute, 117-129.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e JACKS, L.P., 35.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00663\"\u003e JOACHIM, H., 121, 141.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00664\"\u003e JONES, H., 52.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e KANT, 19, 199, 238, 240.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e LEIBNITZ, 119.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00667\"\u003e Life, 523.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00668\"\u003e Log, 323.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00669\"\u003e Logic, 92, 211; Intellectualist, 217, 242.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00670\"\u003e LOTZE, 55, 120.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00671\"\u003e LUTHER, 304.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e McTAGGART, 51, 74 f., 120, 140 f., 183.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00673\"\u003e Manyness in oneness, 322. See Compounding.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00674\"\u003e Mental chemistry, 185.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00675\"\u003e MILL, J.S., 242, 260.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00676\"\u003e Mind, dust theory, 189.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00677\"\u003e Mind, the eternal, 137. See Absolute.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00678\"\u003e Monism, 36, 117, 125, 201, 313, 321 f.; Fechner\u0027s, 153. See Absolutism.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00679\"\u003e Monomaniacs, 78.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00680\"\u003e Motion, 233, 238, 254; Zeno on, 228.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00681\"\u003e MYERS, F.W.H., 315.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Nature, 21, 286.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00683\"\u003e Negation, 93 f.; double, 102.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00684\"\u003e Newton, 260.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Other, 95, 312; \u0027its own other,\u0027 108 f., 282.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00686\"\u003e Oxford, \u003ci\u003e3\u003c/i\u003e, 313, 331.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Pantheism, 24, 28.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00688\"\u003e PAULSEN, 18, 22.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00689\"\u003e Personality, divided, 298.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00690\" style=\"margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%\"\u003e Philosophers, their method, 9; their common desire, 11 f.; they must\r\n reason, 13.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00691\"\u003e Philosophies, their types, 23, 31.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00692\"\u003e PHOCION, 304.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00693\"\u003e Plant-soul, 165 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00694\"\u003e Pluralism, 45, 76, 79, 311, 319, 321 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00695\"\u003e Polytheism, 310.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00696\"\u003e Practical reason, 329.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00697\"\u003e Psychic synthesis, 185. See Compounding.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00698\"\u003e Psychical research, 299.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e \u0027Quâ,\u0027 39, 47, 267, 270.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00700\"\u003e \u0027Quatenus,\u0027 47, 267.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Rationalism defined, 7, 98; its thinness, 144, 237.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00702\"\u003e Rationality, 81, 112 f., 319 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00703\"\u003e Reality, 262 f., 264, 283 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00704\"\u003e Reason, 286, 312.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00705\"\u003e Relating, 7.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00706\"\u003e Relations, 70, 278 ff.; \u0027external,\u0027 80.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00707\"\u003e Religious experiences, 305 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00708\"\u003e RITCHIE, 72.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00709\"\u003e ROYCE, 61 f., 115, 173, 182 f., 197, 207, 212, 265, 296.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Same, 269, 281.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00711\"\u003e Savage philosophy, 21.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00712\"\u003e Science, 145.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00713\"\u003e Sensations, 279.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00714\"\u003e Socialism, 78.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00715\"\u003e SOCRATES, 284.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00716\"\u003e Soul, 199, 209.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00717\"\u003e \u0027Some,\u0027 79.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00718\"\u003e Sphinx, 22.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00719\"\u003e SPINOZA, 47.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00720\"\u003e Spiritualistic philosophy, 23.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00721\"\u003e Sugar, 220, 232.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00722\"\u003e Synthesis, psychic. See Compounding.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e TAYLOR, A.E., 76, 139, 212.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00724\"\u003e Theism, 24.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00725\"\u003e Thick, the, 136.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00726\"\u003e \u0027Thickness\u0027 of Fechner\u0027s philosophy, 144.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00727\"\u003e Thin, the, 136.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00728\"\u003e Thinness of the current transcendentalism, 144, 174 f.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00729\"\u003e Time, 232.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Units of reality, 287.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e Vision, in philosophy, 20.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e WELLS, H.G., 78.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00733\"\u003e Will to believe, 328.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp id=\"id00734\"\u003e Witnesses, as implied in experience, 200.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch5 id=\"id00735\"\u003e WUNDT, W., 185.\u003c/h5\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c\u003e ZENO, 228.\u003c/h4\u003e\r\n\u003c/article\u003e"}],"SectionSequence":["Back Link","Work Title","Deck","Author","Period","Era","Composition","Date Note","Region","Terra Avita","Terra Avita Region","Modern Country","Original Title","Language","Primary Discipline","Secondary Discipline","Tradition","Full Versions","Core Thesis","Classification","Arguments","Influence","Significance","Evidence Note","Full Text"],"Counts":{"ContextCards":3,"GeoCards":4,"DisciplineCards":2,"Links":11,"Sections":25,"Styles":3,"Scripts":1}}