In the foregoing discussion, particularly in the last chapter, we were
led repeatedly to recognize that thought has its own content. At times
Lotze gives way to the tendency to define thought entirely in terms of
modes and forms of activity which are exercised by it upon a strictly
foreign material. But two motives continually push him in the other
direction. (1) Thought has a distinctive work to do, one which involves
a qualitative transformation of (at least) the _relationships_ of the
presented matter; as fast as it accomplishes this work, the
subject-matter becomes somehow thought's own. As we have just seen, the
data are progressively organized to meet thought's ideal of a complete
whole, with its members interconnected according to a determining
principle. Such progressive organization throws backward doubt upon the
assumption of the original total irrelevancy of the data and
thought-form to each other. (2) A like motive operates from the side of
the subject-matter. As merely foreign and external, it is too
heterogeneous to lend itself to thought's exercise and influence. The
idea, as we saw in the first chapter, is the convenient medium through
which Lotze passes from the purely heterogeneous psychical impression or
event, which is totally irrelevant to thought's purpose and working,
over to a state of affairs which can reward thought. Idea as meaning
forms the bridge from the brute factuality of the psychical impression
over to the coherent value of thought's own content.
We have, in this chapter, to consider the question of the idea or
content of thought from two points of view: first, the _possibility_ of
such a content--its consistency with Lotze's fundamental premises;
secondly, its _objective_ character--its validity and test.
I. The question of the possibility of a specific content of thought is
the question of the nature of the idea as meaning. Meaning is the
characteristic content of thought as such. We have thus far left
unquestioned Lotze's continual assumption of meaning as a sort of
thought-unit; the building-stone of thought's construction. In his
treatment of meaning, Lotze's contradictions regarding the antecedents,
data, and content of thought reach their full conclusion. He expressly
makes meaning to be the product of thought's activity and also the
unreflective material out of which thought's operations grow.
This contradiction has been worked out in accurate and complete detail
by Professor Jones.[30] He summarizes it as follows (p. 99): "No other
way was left to him [Lotze] excepting this of first attributing all to
sense and afterwards attributing all to thought, and, finally of
attributing it to thought only because it was already in its material.
This _seesaw_ is essential to his theory; the elements of knowledge as
he describes them can subsist only by the alternate robbery of each
other." We have already seen how strenuously Lotze insists upon the fact
that the given subject-matter of thought is to be regarded wholly as the
work of a physical mechanism, "without any action of thought."[31] But
Lotze also states that if the products of the psychical mechanism "are
to admit of combination in the definite form of a _thought_, they each
require some previous shaping to make them into logical building-stones
and to convert them from _impressions_ into _ideas_. Nothing is really
more familiar to us than this first operation of thought; the only
reason why we usually overlook it is that in the language which we
inherit, it is already carried out, and it seems, therefore, to belong
to the self-evident presuppositions of thought, _not to its own specific
work_."[32] And again (Vol. I, p. 23) judgments "can consist of nothing
but combinations of ideas which are no longer mere impressions: every
such idea must have undergone at least the simple formation mentioned
above." Such ideas are, Lotze goes on to urge, already rudimentary
concepts--that is to say, logical determinations.
The obviousness of the logical contradiction of attributing to a
preliminary specific work of thought exactly the condition of affairs
which is elsewhere explicitly attributed to a psychical mechanism prior
to any thought-activity, should not blind us to its meaning and relative
necessity. The impression, it will be recalled, is a mere state of our
own consciousness--a mood of ourselves. As such it has simply _de facto_
relations as an event to other similar events. But reflective thought is
concerned with the relationship of a content or matter to other
contents. Hence the impression must have a matter before it can come at
all within the sphere of thought's exercise. How shall it secure this?
Why, by a preliminary activity of thought which objectifies the
impression. Blue as a mere sensuous irritation or feeling is given a
quality, the meaning "blue"--blueness; the sense-impression is
objectified; it is presented "no longer as a condition which we undergo,
but as a something which has its being and its meaning in itself, and
which continues to be what it is, and to mean what it means whether we
are conscious of it or not. It is easy to see here the _necessary
beginning of that activity which we above appropriated to thought as
such_: it has not yet got so far as converting coexistence into
coherence. It has first to perform the previous task of investing each
single impression with an independent validity, without which the later
opposition of their real coherence to mere coexistence could not be made
in any intelligible sense."[33]
This objectification, which converts a sensitive state into a sensible
matter to which the sensitive state is referred, also gives this matter
"position," a certain typical character. It is not objectified in a
merely general way, but is given a specific sort of objectivity. Of
these kinds of objectivity there are three mentioned: that of a
substantive content; that of an attached dependent content; that of an
active relationship connecting the various contents with each other. In
short, we have the types of meaning embodied in language in the form of
nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is through this preliminary formative
activity of thought that reflective or _logical_ thought has presented
to it a world of meanings ranged in an order of relative independence
and dependence, and ranged as elements in a complex of meanings whose
various constituent parts mutually influence each other's meanings.[34]
As usual, Lotze mediates the contradiction between material constituted
_by_ thought and the same material just presented _to_ thought, by a
further position so disparate to each that, taken in connection with
each in a pair, and by turns, it seems to bridge the gulf. After
describing the prior constitutive work of thought as above, he goes on
to discuss a _second_ phase of thought which is intermediary between
this and the third phase, viz., reflective thought proper. This second
activity is that of arranging experienced quales in series and groups,
thus ascribing a sort of universal or common somewhat to various
instances (as already described; see p. 55). On one hand, it is clearly
stated that this second phase of thought's activity is in reality the
_same_ as the first phase: since all objectification involves positing,
since positing involves distinction of one matter from others, and since
this involves placing it in a series or group in which each is
measurably marked off, as to the degree and nature of its diversity,
from every other. We are told that we are only considering "a really
inseparable operation" of thought from two different sides: first, as to
the effect which objectifying thought has upon the matter as set over
against the feeling _subject_, secondly, the effect which this
objectification has upon the matter in relation to _other matters_.[35]
Afterward, however, these two operations are declared to be radically
different in type and nature. The first is determinant and formative; it
gives ideas "the shape without which the logical spirit could not accept
them." In a way it dictates "its own laws to its object-matter."[36] The
second activity of thought is rather passive and receptive. It simply
recognizes what is already there. "Thought can make no difference where
it finds none already in the matter of impressions."[37] "The first
universal, as we saw, can only be experienced in immediate sensation. It
is no product of thought, but something that thought finds already in
existence."[38]
The obviousness of this further contradiction is paralleled only by its
inevitableness. Thought is in the air, is arbitrary and wild in dealing
with meanings, unless it gets its start and cue from actual experience.
Hence the necessity of insisting upon thought's activity as just
recognizing the contents already given. But, on the other hand, prior to
the work of thought there is to Lotze no content or meaning. It requires
a work of thought to detach anything from the flux of sense-irritations
and invest it with a meaning of its own. This dilemma is inevitable to
any writer who declines to consider as correlative the nature of
thought-activity and thought-content from the standpoint of their
generating conditions in the movement of experience. Viewed from such a
standpoint the principle of solution is clear enough. As we have already
seen (p. 53), the internal dissension of an experience leads to
detaching certain values previously absorptively integrated into the
concrete experience as part of its own qualitative coloring; and to
relegating them, for the time being, (pending integration into further
immediate values of a reconstituted experience) into a world of bare
meanings, a sphere qualified as ideal throughout. These meanings then
become the tools of thought in interpreting the data, just as the
sense-qualities which define the presented situation are the immediate
object to thought. The two _as mutually referred_ are content. That is,
the datum and the thought-mode or idea as connected are the object of
thought.
To reach this unification is thought's objective or goal. Exactly the
same value is idea, as either tool or content, according as it is taken
as instrumental or as accomplishment. Every successive cross-section of
the thought-situation presents what may be taken for granted as the
outcome of previous thinking, and consequently as the determinant of
further reflective procedure. Taken as defining the point reached in the
thought-function and serving as constituent unit of further thought, it
is content. Lotze's instinct is sure in identifying and setting over
against each other the material given to thought and the content which
is thought's own "building-stone." His contradictions arise simply from
the fact that his absolute, non-historic method does not permit him to
interpret this joint identity and distinction in a working, and hence
relative, sense.
II. The question of how the possibility of meanings, or
thought-contents, is to be understood merges imperceptibly into the
question of the real objectivity or validity of such contents. The
difficulty for Lotze is the now familiar one: So far as his logic
compels him to insist that these meanings are the possession and product
of thought (since thought is an independent activity), the ideas are
merely ideas; there is no test of objectivity beyond the thoroughly
unsatisfactory and formal one of their own mutual consistency. In
reaction from this Lotze is thrown back upon the idea of these contents
as the original matter given in the impressions themselves. Here there
seems to be an objective or external test by which the reality of
thought's operations may be tried; a given idea is verified or found
false according to its measure of correspondence with the matter of
experience as such. But now we are no better off. The original
independence and heterogeneity of impressions and of thought is so great
that there is no way to compare the results of the latter with the
former. We cannot compare or contrast distinctions of worth with bare
differences of factual existence (Vol. I, p. 2). The standard or test of
objectivity is so thoroughly external that by original definition it is
wholly outside the realm of thought. How can thought compare its own
contents with that which is wholly outside itself?
Or again, the given material of experience apart from thought is
precisely the relatively chaotic and unorganized; it even reduces itself
to a mere sequence of psychical events. What rational meaning is there
in directing us to compare the highest results of scientific inquiry
with the bare sequence of our own states of feeling; or even with the
original data whose fragmentary and uncertain character was the exact
motive for entering upon scientific inquiry? How can the former in any
sense give a check or test of the value of the latter? This is
professedly to test the validity of a system of meanings by comparison
with that whose defects and errors call forth the construction of the
system of meanings by which to rectify and replace themselves. Our
subsequent inquiry simply consists in tracing some of the phases of the
characteristic seesaw from one to the other of the two horns of the now
familiar dilemma: either thought is separate from the matter of
experience, and then its validity is wholly its own private business; or
else the objective results of thought are already in the antecedent
material, and then thought is either unnecessary, or else has no way of
checking its own performances.
1. Lotze assumes, as we have seen, a certain independent validity in
each meaning or qualified content, taken in and of itself. "Blue" has a
certain validity, or meaning, in and of itself; it is an object for
consciousness as such. After the original sense-irritation through which
it was mediated has entirely disappeared, it persists as a valid idea,
as a meaning. Moreover, it is an object or content of thought for others
as well. Thus it has a double mark of validity: in the comparison of one
part of my own experience with another, and in the comparison of my
experience as a whole with that of others. Here we have a sort of
validity which does not raise at all the question of _metaphysical_
reality (Vol. I, pp. 14, 15). Lotze thus seems to have escaped from the
necessity of employing as check or test for the validity of ideas any
reference to a real outside the sphere of thought itself. Such terms as
"conjunction," "franchise," "constitution," "algebraic zero," etc.,
etc., claim to possess objective validity. Yet none of these professes
to refer to a reality beyond thought. Generalizing this point of view,
validity or objectivity of meaning means simply that which is "identical
for all consciousness" (Vol. I, p. 3); "it is quite indifferent whether
certain parts of the world of thought indicate something which has
beside an independent reality outside of thinking minds, or whether all
that it contains exists only in the thoughts of those who think it, but
with equal validity for them all" (Vol. I, p. 16).
So far it seems clear sailing. Difficulties, however, show themselves,
the moment we inquire what is meant by a self-identical content for all
thought. Is this to be taken in a static or in a dynamic way? That is to
say: Does it express the fact that a given content or meaning is _de
facto_ presented to the consciousness of all alike? Does this coequal
presence guarantee an objectivity? Or does validity attach to a given
meaning or content in so far as it directs and controls the further
exercise of thinking, and thus the formation of further _new_ contents
of consciousness?
The former interpretation is alone consistent with Lotze's notion that
the independent idea as such is invested with a certain validity or
objectivity. It alone is consistent with his assertion that concepts
precede judgments. It alone, that is to say, is consistent with the
notion that reflective thinking has a sphere of ideas or meanings
supplied to it at the outset. But it is impossible to entertain this
belief. The stimulus which, according to Lotze, goads thought on from
ideas or concepts to judgments and inferences, is in truth simply the
lack of validity, of objectivity in its original independent meanings or
contents. A meaning as independent is precisely that which is not
invested with validity, but which is a mere idea, a "notion," a fancy,
at best a surmise which may turn out to be valid (and of course this
indicates possible reference); a standpoint to have its value determined
by its further active use. "Blue" as a mere detached floating meaning,
an idea at large, would not gain in validity simply by being entertained
continuously in a given consciousness; or by being made at one and the
same time the persistent object of attentive regard by all human
consciousnesses. If this were all that were required, the chimera, the
centaur, or any other subjective construction, could easily gain
validity. "Christian Science" has made just this notion the basis of its
philosophy.
The simple fact is that in such illustrations as "blue," "franchise,"
"conjunction," Lotze instinctively takes cases which are not mere
independent and detached meanings, but which involve reference to a
region of cosmic experience, or to a region of mutually determining
social activities. The conception that reference to a _social_ activity
does not involve the same sort of reference of thought beyond itself
that is involved in physical matters, and hence may be taken quite
innocent and free of the metaphysical problem of reference to reality
beyond meaning, is one of the strangest that has ever found lodgment in
human thinking. Either both physical and social reference or neither, is
metaphysical; if neither, then it is because the meaning functions, as
it originates, in a specific situation which carries with it its own
tests (see p. 17). Lotze's conception is made possible only by
unconsciously substituting the idea of object as content of thought for
a large number of persons (or a _de facto_ somewhat for every
consciousness), for the genuine definition of object as a determinant in
a scheme of experience. The former is consistent with Lotze's conception
of thought, but wholly indeterminate as to validity or intent. The
latter is the test used experimentally in all concrete thinking, but
involves a radical transformation of all Lotze's assumptions. A given
idea of the conjunction of the franchise, or of blue, is valid, not
because everybody happens to entertain it, but because it expresses the
factor of control or direction in a given movement of experience. The
test of validity of idea[39] is its functional or instrumental use in
effecting the transition from a relatively conflicting experience to a
relatively integrated one. If Lotze's view were correct, "blue" valid
once would be valid always--even when red or green were actually called
for to fulfil specific conditions. This is to say validity always refers
to rightfulness or adequacy of performance in an asserting of
connection--not to the meaning as detached and contemplated.
If we refer again to the fact that the genuine antecedent of thought is
a situation which is tensional as regards its existing status, or
disorganized in its structural elements, yet organized as emerging out
of the unified experience of the past and as striving as a whole, or
equally in all its phases, to reinstate an experience harmonized in
make-up, we can easily understand how certain contents may be detached
and held apart as meanings or references, actual or possible (according
as they are viewed with reference to the past or to the future). We can
understand how such detached contents may be of use in effecting a
review of the entire experience, and as affording standpoints and
methods of a reconstruction which will maintain the integrity of
experience. We can understand how validity of meaning is measured by
reference to something which is not mere meaning; by reference to
something which lies beyond the idea as such--viz., the reconstitution
of an experience into which thought enters as mediator. That paradox of
ordinary experience and of scientific inquiry by which objectivity is
given alike to matter of perception and to conceived relations--to
facts and to laws--affords no peculiar difficulty, because we see that
the test of objectivity is everywhere the same: anything is objective in
so far as, through the medium of conflict, it controls the movement of
experience in its reconstructive transition from one unified form to
another. There is not first an object, whether of sense-perception or of
conception, which afterward somehow exercises this controlling
influence; but the objective is such in virtue of the exercise of
function of control. It may only control the act of inquiry; it may only
set on foot doubt, but this is direction of subsequent experience, and,
in so far, is a token of objectivity.
So much for the thought-content or meaning as having a validity of its
own. It does not have it as isolated or given or static; it has it in
its dynamic reference, its use in determining further movement of
experience. In other words, the "meaning" or idea as such, having been
selected and made-up with reference to performing a certain office in
the evolution of a unified experience, can be tested in no other way
than by discovering whether it does what it was intended to do and what
it purports to do.[40]
2. Lotze has to wrestle with this question of validity in a further
aspect: What constitutes the objectivity of thinking as a total
attitude, activity, or function? According to his own statement, the
meanings or valid ideas are after all only building-stones for logical
thought. Validity is thus not a question of them in their independent
existences, but of their mutual reference to each other. Thinking is the
process of instituting these mutual references; of building up the
various scattered and independent building-stones into the coherent
system of thought. What is the validity of the various forms of thinking
which find expression in the various types of judgment and in the
various forms of inference? Categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive
judgment; inference by induction, by analogy, by mathematical equation;
classification, theory of explanation--all these are processes of
reflection by which mutual connection in an individualized whole is
given to the fragmentary meanings or ideas with which thought as it sets
out is supplied. What shall we say of the validity of such processes?
On one point Lotze is quite clear. These various logical acts do not
really enter into the constitution of the valid world. The logical forms
as such are maintained _only_ in the process of thinking. The world of
valid truth does not undergo a series of contortions and evolutions,
paralleling in any way the successive steps and missteps, the succession
of tentative trials, withdrawals, and retracings, which mark the course
of our own thinking.[41]
Lotze is explicit upon the point that it is only the thought-content in
which the process of thinking issues that has objective validity; the
act of thinking is "purely and simply an inner movement of our own
minds, made necessary to us by reason of the constitution of our nature
and of our place in the world" (Vol. II, p. 279).
Here the problem of validity presents itself as the problem of the
relation of the act of thinking to its own product. In his solution
Lotze uses two metaphors: one derived from building operations, the
other from traveling. The construction of a building requires of
necessity certain tools and extraneous constructions, stagings,
scaffoldings, etc., which are necessary to effect the final
construction, but yet which do not enter into the building as such. The
activity has an instrumental, though not a constitutive, value as
regards its product. Similarly, in order to get a view from the top of a
mountain--this view being the objective--the traveler has to go through
preliminary movements along devious courses. These again are antecedent
prerequisites, but do not constitute a portion of the attained view.
The problem of thought as activity, as distinct from thought as content,
opens up altogether too large a question to receive complete
consideration at this point. Fortunately, however, the previous
discussion enables us to narrow the point which is in issue just here.
It is once more the question whether the activity of thought is to be
regarded as an independent function supervening entirely from without
upon antecedents, and directed from without upon data; or whether it
marks merely a phase of the transformation which the course of
experience (whether practical, or artistic, or socially affectional or
whatever) undergoes in entering into a tensional status where the
maintenance of its harmony of content is problematic and hence an aim.
If it be the latter, a thoroughly intelligent sense can be given to the
proposition that the activity of thinking is instrumental, and that its
worth is found, not in its own successive states as such, but in the
result in which it comes to conclusion. But the conception of thinking
as an independent activity somehow occurring after an independent
antecedent, playing upon an independent subject-matter, and finally
effecting an independent result, presents us with just one miracle the
more.
I do not question the strictly instrumental character of thinking. The
problem lies not here, but in the interpretation of the nature of the
organ and instrument. The difficulty with Lotze's position is that it
forces us into the assumption of a means and an end which are simply and
only external to each other, and yet necessarily dependent upon each
other--a position which, whenever found, is so thoroughly
self-contradictory as to necessitate critical reconsideration of the
premises which lead to it. Lotze vibrates between the notion of thought
as a tool in the external sense, a mere scaffolding to a finished
building in which it has no part nor lot, and the notion of thought as
an immanent tool, as a scaffolding which is an integral part of the very
operation of building, and set up for the sake of the building-activity
which is carried on effectively only with and through a scaffolding.
Only in the former case can the scaffolding be considered as a _mere_
tool. In the latter case the external scaffolding is not itself the
instrumentality; the actual tool is the _action_ of erecting the
building, and this action involves the scaffolding as a constituent part
of itself. The work of erecting is not set over against the completed
building as mere means to an end; it _is_ the end taken in process or
historically, longitudinally viewed. The scaffolding, moreover, is not
an external means to the process of erecting, but an organic member of
it. It is no mere accident of language that "building" has a double
sense--meaning at once the process and the finished product. The outcome
of thought is the thinking activity carried on to its own completion;
the activity, on the other hand, _is_ the outcome taken anywhere short
of its own realization, and thereby still going on.
The only consideration which prevents easy and immediate acceptance of
this view is the notion of thinking as something purely formal. It is
strange that the empiricist does not see that his insistence upon a
matter extraneously given to thought only strengthens the hands of the
rationalist with his claim of thinking as an independent activity,
separate from the actual make-up of the affairs of experience. Thinking
as a merely formal activity exercised upon certain sensations or images
or objects sets forth an absolutely meaningless proposition. The
psychological identification of thinking with the process of association
is much nearer the truth. It is, indeed, on the way to the truth. We
need only to recognize that association is of contents or matters or
meanings, not of ideas as bare existences or events; and that the type
of association we call thinking differs from the associations of casual
fancy and revery in an element of control by reference to an end which
determines the fitness and thus the selection of the associates, to
apprehend how completely thinking is a reconstructive movement of actual
contents of experience in relation to each other, and for the sake of a
redintegration of a conflicting experience.
There is no miracle in the fact that tool and material are adapted to
each other in the process of reaching a valid conclusion. Were they
external in origin to each other and to the result, the whole affair
would, indeed, present an insoluble problem--so insoluble that, if this
were the true condition of affairs, we never should even know that there
was a problem. But, in truth, both material and tool have been secured
and determined with reference to economy and efficiency in effecting the
end desired--the maintenance of a harmonious experience. The builder has
discovered that his building means building tools, and also building
material. Each has been slowly evolved with reference to its fit employ
in the entire function; and this evolution has been checked at every
point by reference to its own correspondent. The carpenter has not
thought at large on his building and then constructed tools at large,
but has thought of his building in terms of the material which enters
into it, and through that medium has come to the consideration of the
tools which are helpful. Life proposes to maintain at all hazards the
unity of its own process. Experience insists on being itself, on
securing integrity even through and by means of conflict.
This is not a formal question, but one of the placing and relations of
the matters or values actually entering into experience. And this in
turn determines the taking up of just those mental attitudes, and the
employing of just those intellectual operations, which most effectively
handle and organize the material. Thinking is adaptation _to_ an end
_through_ the adjustment of particular objective contents.
The thinker, like the carpenter, is at once stimulated and checked in
every stage of his procedure by the particular situation which confronts
him. A person is at the stage of wanting a new house: well then, his
materials are available resources, the price of labor, the cost of
building, the state and needs of his family, profession, etc.; his tools
are paper and pencil and compass, or possibly the bank as a credit
instrumentality, etc. Again, the work is beginning. The foundations are
laid. This in turn determines its own specific materials and tools.
Again, the building is almost ready for occupancy. The concrete process
is that of taking away the scaffolding, clearing up the grounds,
furnishing and decorating rooms, etc. This specific operation again
determines its own fit or relevant materials and tools. It defines the
time and mode and manner of beginning and ceasing to use them. Logical
theory will get along as well as does reflective practice, when it
sticks close by and observes the directions and checks inherent in each
successive phase of the evolution of the cycle of experiencing. The
problem in general of validity of the thinking process as distinct from
the validity of this or that process arises only when thinking is
isolated from its historic position and its material context.
3. But Lotze is not yet done with the problem of validity, even from his
own standpoint. The ground shifts again under his feet. It is no longer
a question of the validity of the idea or meaning with which thought is
supposed to set out; it is no longer a question of the validity of the
process of thinking in reference to its own product; it is the question
of the validity of the product. Supposing, after all, that the final
meaning, or logical idea, is thoroughly coherent and organized;
supposing it is an object for all consciousness as such. Once more
arises the question: What is the validity of even the most coherent and
complete idea?--a question which rises and will not down. We may
reconstruct our notion of the chimera until it ceases to be an
independent idea and becomes a part of the system of Greek mythology.
Has it gained in validity in ceasing to be an independent myth, in
becoming an element in systematized myth? Myth it was and myth it
remains. Mythology does not get validity by growing bigger. How do we
know the same is not the case with the ideas which are the product of
our most deliberate and extended scientific inquiry? The reference again
to the content as the self-identical object of all consciousness proves
nothing; the matter of a hallucination does not gain worth in proportion
to its social contagiousness. Or the reference proves that we have not
as yet reached any conclusion, but are entertaining a hypothesis--since
social validity is not a matter of mere common content, but of securing
participation in a commonly adjudged social experience through action
directed thereto and directed by consensus of judgment.
According to Lotze, the final product is, after all, still thought. Now,
Lotze is committed once for all to the notion that thought, in any form,
is directed by and at an outside reality. The ghost haunts him to the
last. How, after all, does even the ideally perfect valid thought apply
or refer to reality? Its genuine subject is still beyond itself. At the
last Lotze can dispose of this question only by regarding it as a
metaphysical, not a logical, problem (Vol. II, pp. 281, 282). In other
words, _logically_ speaking, we are at the end just exactly where we
were at the beginning--in the sphere of ideas, and of ideas only, plus a
consciousness of the necessity of referring these ideas to a reality
which is beyond them, which is utterly inaccessible to them, which is
out of reach of any influence which they may exercise, and which
transcends any possible comparison with their results. "It is vain,"
says Lotze, "to shrink from acknowledging the circle here involved ...
all we know of the external world depends upon the ideas of it which are
within us" (Vol. II, p. 185). "It is then this varied world of ideas
within us which forms the sole material directly given to us" (Vol. II,
p. 186). As it is the only material given to us, so it is the only
material with which thought can end. To talk about knowing the external
world through ideas which are merely within us is to talk of an inherent
self-contradiction. There is no common ground in which the external
world and our ideas can meet. In other words, the original implication
of a separation between an independent thought-material and an
independent thought-function and purpose lands us inevitably in the
metaphysics of subjective idealism, plus a belief in an unknown reality
beyond, which unknowable is yet taken as the ultimate test of the value
of our ideas as just subjective. The subjectivity of the psychical
event infects at the last the meaning or ideal object. Because it has
been taken to be something "in itself," thought is also something "in
itself," and at the end, after all our maneuvering we are where we
began:--with two separate disparates, one of meaning, but no existence,
the other of existence, but no meaning.
The other aspect of Lotze's contradiction which completes the circle is
clear when we refer to his original propositions, and recall that at the
outset he was compelled to regard the origination and conjunctions of
the impressions, the elements of ideas, as themselves the effects
exercised by a world of things already in existence (see p. 31). He sets
up an independent world of thought, and yet has to confess that both at
its origin and termination it points with absolute necessity to a world
beyond itself. Only the stubborn refusal to take this initial and
terminal reference of thought beyond itself as having a historic
meaning, indicating a particular place of generation and a particular
point of fulfilment in the drama of evolving experience, compels Lotze
to give such bifold objective reference a purely metaphysical turn.
When Lotze goes on to say (Vol. II, p. 191) that the measure of truth of
particular parts of experience is found in asking whether, when judged
by thought, they are in harmony with other parts of experience; when he
goes on to say that there is no sense in trying to compare the entire
world of ideas with a reality which is non-existent, excepting as it
itself should become an idea, Lotze lands where he might better have
frankly commenced.[43] He saves himself from utter skepticism only by
claiming that the explicit assumption of skepticism, the need of
agreement of a ready-made idea as such, with an extraneous independent
material as such, is meaningless. He defines correctly the work of
thought as consisting in harmonizing the various portions of experience
with each other: a definition which has meaning only in connection with
the fact that experience is continually integrating itself into a
wholeness of coherent meaning deepened in significance by passing
through an inner distraction in which by means of conflict certain
contents are rendered partial and hence objectively conscious. In this
case the test of thought is the harmony or unity of experience actually
effected. In that sense the test of reality is beyond thought, as
thought, just as at the other limit thought originates out of a
situation which is not reflectional in character. Interpret this before
and beyond in a historic sense, as an affair of the place occupied and
rôle played by thinking as a function in experience in relation to other
functions, and the intermediate and instrumental character of thought,
its dependence upon unreflective antecedents for its existence, and upon
a consequent experience for its test of final validity, becomes
significant and necessary. Taken at large, it plunges us in the depths
of a hopelessly complicated and self-revolving metaphysic.
V