Common-sense and natural science certainly tend to identify the
objectively real with the existent in space and time. The physical
universe is held to be palpably real in a way in which nothing not
presented in sensuous terms can be. To most minds doubtless it is
difficult to understand why Plato should have ascribed to the Ideas a
higher degree of reality than that possessed by the particular objects
of sense-perception, and still more difficult to understand his
ascription of real existence to such Ideas as those of Beauty, Justice,
and the Good. There is a certain apparent stability in a universe
presented in "immediate" sense-perception--a universe with which we are
in constant bodily intercourse--that seems not to belong to a mere
order of relations which, if known in any sense, is not known to us
through the senses. Moreover, knowledge of the physical world is felt to
possess a higher degree of certainty than does any knowledge we can have
of supposed economic or moral truth, or of economic or moral standards.
Of such knowledge one is disposed to say, as Mr. Spencer does of
metaphysics, that at the best it presupposes a long and elaborate
inferential process which, as long, is likely to be faulty; whereas
physical truth is immediate or else, when inference is involved in it,
easy to be tested by appeal to immediate facts. Physical reality is a
reality that can be seen and handled and felt as offering resistance,
and this is evidence of objectivity of a sort not to be found in other
spheres of knowledge for which the like claim is made.
The force of these impressions (and it would not be difficult to find
stronger statements in the history of scientific and ethical nominalism)
diminishes if one tries to determine in what consists that objectivity
which they uncritically assume as given in sense-perception. For one
must recognize that not all our possible modes of sense-experience are
equally concerned in the presentation of this perceived objective world.
Certain sensory "quales" are immediately referred to outward objects as
belonging to them. Certain others are, in a way, "inward," either not
more definitely localized at all or merely localized in the sense-organ
which mediates them. Now, the reason for this difference cannot lie in
the content of the various sense-qualities abstractly taken. A visual
sensation, apart from the setting in which it occurs in common
experience, can be no more objective in its reference--indeed, can have
no more reference of any kind--than the least definite and instructive
organic sensation. For the degree of distinctness with which one
discriminates sense-qualities depends upon the number and importance of
the interpretative associations which it is important from time to time
to "connect" with them; or, conversely, the sense-qualities are not
_self_-discriminating in virtue of an intrinsic objective reference or
meaning which each possesses and which drives it apart from all the
rest. Indeed, an intrinsic meaning, if a sensation could possess one,
would not only be superfluous in the development of knowledge, but, as
likely to be mistaken for the acquired or functional meaning, even
seriously confusing.[116]
Now, it must be granted that, if the "simple idea of sensation" is
without objective reference, no association with it of similarly
abstract sensations can supply the lack. A "movement" sensation, or a
tactual, having in itself no such meaning, cannot merely by being
"associated" with a similarly meaningless visual sensation endow this
latter with reference to an object. Objective reference is, in fact, not
a sensuous thing; it is not a conscious "element," nor does it arise
from any combination or fusion of such. It is neither _in_ the
association of ideas as a constituent member, nor does it belong to the
association considered as a sequence of psychical states. Instead, in
our present view, it belongs to or arises out of the activity through
which and with reference to which associations are first of all
established. It is an aspect or kind of reference or category under
which any sense-quality or datum is apperceived when it is held apart
from the stream of consciousness in order that it may receive new
meaning as a stimulus; and a sensation functioning in such a "state of
consciousness"[117] is a psychical phenomenon very different from the
conscious element of "analytical" psychology. The extent to which it is
true that the objective world of sense-perception is pre-eminently
visual and tactual is then merely an evidence of the extent to which the
exigencies of the life-process have required finer sense-discrimination
for the sake of more refined reaction within these spheres as compared
with others. Our conclusion, then, must be that the consciousness of
objectivity is not as such sensuous, even as given in our perception of
the material world. The world, as viewed from the standpoint of a
particular, practical emergency, is an objective world, not in virtue of
its having a "sensuous" or a "material" aspect as something existent
_per se_, but because it is a world of stimuli in course of definition
for the guidance of activity.[118]
It will be well to give further positive exposition of the meaning of
the view thus stated. To return once more to our fundamental
psychological conception, knowledge is essentially relevant to the
solution of particular problems of more or less urgency and of various
kinds and figures in the solution of such problems as the assemblage of
consciously recognized symbols or stimuli by which various actions are
suggested. The object as known is therefore not the same as the object
as apprehended in other possible modes of being conscious of it. The
workman who is actually using his tool in shaping his material, or the
warrior who is actually using his weapon in the thick of combat, is, if
conscious of these objects at all (and doubtless he may be conscious of
them at such times), not conscious of them _as objects_--as the one
might be, for example, in adjusting the tool for a particular kind of
use, and the other in giving a keen edge to his blade. Under these
latter circumstances the tool or weapon is an _object_, and its observed
condition, viewed in the light of a purpose of using the object in a
certain way, is regarded as properly suggesting certain changes or
improvements. And likewise will the tool or the weapon have an objective
character in the agent's apprehension in the moment of identifying and
selecting it from among a number of others, or even in the act of
reaching for it, especially if it is inconveniently placed. But in the
act of freely using one's objective means the category of the objective
plays no part in consciousness, because at such times there is no
judgment respecting the means--because there is no sufficient occasion
for the isolation of certain conscious elements from the rest of the
stream of conscious experience to be defined as stimuli to certain
needed responses. Such isolation will not normally take place so long as
the reactions suggested by the conscious contents involved in the
experience are fully adequate to the situation. Objects are not normally
held apart as such from the stream of consciousness in which they are
presented and recognized as possessing qualities warranting certain
modes of conduct, excepting as it has become necessary to the attainment
of the agent's purposes to modify or reconstruct his activity.[119]
Are things, then, apprehended as objective in virtue of the agent's
attitude toward them, or is the agent's attitude in a typical case
grounded upon an antecedent determination of the objectivity of the
things in question? We must answer, in the first place, that there can
be no such antecedent determination. We may, it is true, speak of
believing, on the evidence of sight or touch, that a certain object is
really present before us. But neither sight nor touch possesses in
itself, as a particular sense-quality, any objective meaning. If touch
is _par excellence_ the sense of the objective and the appeal to touch
the test of objectivity, this can only be because touch is the sense
most closely and intimately connected in our experience with action.
After any interval of hesitation and judgment, action begins with
contact with and manipulation of the physical means which have been
under investigation. Not only is touch the proximate stimulus and guide
to manipulation, but all relevant knowledge which has been gained in any
judgment-process, through the other senses, and especially through
sight, must ultimately be reducible to terms of touch or other contact
sense. The alleged tactual evidence of objectivity is, then, rather a
confirmation than a difficulty for our present view. In short, we must
dismiss as impossible the hypothesis that there can be a consciousness
of objectivity which is not dependent upon and an expression of primary
antecedent tendencies toward motor response to the presented stimulus.
It is our attitude toward the prospective stimulus that mediates the
consciousness of an object standing over against us.
So far, indeed, is it from being true that objectivity is a matter for
special determination antecedently to action that by common testimony
the conviction of objectivity comes to us quite irresistibly. The object
forces itself upon us, as we say, and "whether we will or no" we must
recognize its presence there before us and its independence of any
choice of ours or of our knowledge. In the cautious manipulation of an
instrument, in the laborious shaping of some refractory material, in the
performance of any delicate or difficult task, one's sense of the
objectivity of the thing with which one works is as obtrusive as remorse
or grief, and as little to be shaken off. We shall revert to this
suggested analogy at a later stage in our discussion.
We are now in a position to define more precisely the nature of the
conditions in which the sense of objectivity emerges, and this will
bring us to the point at which the objective import of our economic and
ethical judgments can profitably be discussed. We have said that the
world of the physical is objective, not in virtue of the sensuous terms
in which it is presented, but because it is a world of stimuli for the
guidance of human conduct. Under what circumstances, then, are we
conscious of stimuli in their capacity of guides or incentives or
grounds of conduct? And the answer must be that stimuli are interpreted
as such, and so take on the character of objectivity, when their precise
character as stimuli is still in doubt, and they must therefore receive
further definition.
For example, a man pursued by a wild beast must find some means of
escape or defense, and, seeing a tree which he may climb or a stone
which he may hurl, will inspect these as well as may be with reference
to their fitness for the intended purpose. It is at just such moments as
these, then, that physical things become things for knowledge and take
on their stubbornly objective character--that is to say, when they are
essentially problematic. Now, in order that any physical thing may be
thus problematic and so possess objective character for knowledge, it
must (1) be in part understood, and so prompt certain more or less
indiscriminate responses; and (2) be in part as yet not understood--in
such wise that, while there are certain indefinite or unmeasured
tendencies on the agent's part to respond to the object--climb the tree
or hurl the stone--there is also a certain failure of complete unity in
the co-ordination of these activities, a certain contradiction between
different suggestions of conduct which different observed qualities of
the tree or stone may give, and so hesitation and arrest of final
action. The pursued man views the tree suspiciously before trusting
himself to its doubtful strength, or weighs well the stone and tests its
rough edges before pausing to throw it. Thus, to state the matter
negatively, there are two possible situations in which the sense of
objectivity, if it emerge into consciousness at all, cannot long
continue. An object---as, for example, some strange shrub or
flower--which, in the case we are supposing, may attract the pursued
wayfarer's notice, may awaken no responses relevant to the emergency in
which the agent finds himself; and it will therefore forthwith lapse
from consciousness. Or, on the other hand, the object, as the tree or
stone, may rightly or wrongly seem to the agent so completely
satisfactory, or, rather, in effect may _be_ so, as instantly to prompt
the action which otherwise would come, if at all, only after a period of
more or less prolonged attention. In neither of these cases, then, is
there a problematic object. In the one the thing in question is wholly
apart from any present interest, and therefore lapses. In the other case
the thing seen is comprehended on the instant with reference to its
general use and merges immediately into the main stream of the agent's
consciousness without having been an object of express attention. In
neither case, therefore, is there hesitation with reference to the
thing in question--any conflict between inconsiderate positive responses
prompted by certain features of the object and inhibitions due to
recognition of its shortcomings. In a word, in neither case is there any
judgment or possibility of judgment, and hence no sense of objectivity.
We can have consciousness of an object, in the strict sense of the term,
only when some part or general aspect of the total situation confronting
an agent excites or seems to warrant responses which must be held in
check for further determination. In terms of consciousness, an object is
always an object of attention--that is, an object which is under process
of development and reconstruction with reference to an end.
An inhibited impulse to react in a more or less definite way to a
stimulus is, then, the adequate condition of the emergence in
consciousness of the sense of objectivity. So long as an activity is
proceeding without check or interruption, and no conflict develops
between motor responses prompted by different parts or aspects of the
situation, the agent's consciousness will not present the distinction of
Objective and Subjective. The mode of being conscious which accompanies
free and harmonious activity of this sort may be exemplified by such
experiences as æsthetic appreciation, sensuous enjoyment, acquiescent
absorption in pleasurable emotion, or even intellectual processes of the
mechanical sort, such as easy computation or the solution of simple
algebraic problems--processes in which no more serious difficulty is
encountered than suffices to stimulate a moderate degree of interest.
If, however, reverting to the illustration, our present need for a stone
calls for some property which the stone we have seized appears to lack,
consciousness must pass over into the reflective or attentive phase. The
stone will now figure as an _object_ possessing certain qualities which
render it in a general way relevant to the emergency before us. A
needed quality is missing, and this defect must hold in check all the
imminent responses until discovery of the missing quality can set them
free. In a word, the stone as known to us has assumed the station of
subject in a judgment-process, and our effort is, if possible, to assign
to it a new predicate relevant to our present situation. Psychologically
speaking, the stone is an object, a stimulus to which we are endeavoring
to find warrant for responding in some new or reconstructed way.
In this process we must assume, then, first of all, an interest on the
agent's part in the situation as a whole, which in the first place, in
terms of the illustration, makes the pursued one note the tree or
stone--which might otherwise have escaped his notice as completely as
any passing cloud or falling leaf--and suggests what particular
qualities or adaptabilities should be looked for in it. Given this
interest in "making something" out of the total situation as explaining
the recognition of the stone and the impulse to seize and hurl it, we
find the sense of the stone's objectivity emerging just in the arrest of
the undiscriminating impulse. The stone must have a certain meaning as a
stimulus first of all, but it must be a meaning not yet quite defined
and certain of acceptance. The stone will be an _object_ only if, and so
long as, the undiscriminating impulses suggested by these elements of
meaning are held in check in order that they may be ordered,
supplemented, or made more definite. It is, then, the essence of the
present contention that physical things are _objective_ in our
experience in virtue of their recognized inadequacy as means or
incentives of action--an inadequacy which, in turn, is felt as such in
so far as we are seeking to use them as means or grounds of conduct, or
to avail ourselves of them as conditions, in coping with the general
situation from which our attention has abstracted them.
From this analysis of the conditions of the consciousness of objectivity
we must now proceed to inquire whether in the typical ethical and
economic situations, as they have been described, essentially these same
conditions are present.
In the ethical situation, according to our statement, the subject of the
judgment (the object of attention) is the new end which has just been
presented in imagination, and we have now to see that the agent's
attitude toward this end is for our present purpose essentially the same
as toward a physical object which is under scrutiny. For just as the
physical object is such for consciousness because it is partly relevant
(whether in the way of furthering or of hindering) to the agent's
purpose, but as yet partly not understood from this point of view, so
the imaged end may likewise be ambiguous. The agent's moral purpose may
be the (very likely mythical) primitive one of which we read in
"associational" discussions of the moral consciousness--that of avoiding
punishment. It may be that of "imitative," sympathetic obedience to
authority--a sentiment whose fundamental importance for ethical
psychology has long remained without due recognition.[120] It may be
loyalty to an ideal of conscience, or yet again a purpose of enlargement
and development of personality. But on either supposition the
compatibility of the end with the prevailing standard or principle of
decision may be a matter of doubt and so call for judgment. The problem
will, of course, be a problem in the full logical sense as involving
judgment of the type described in our discussion of the ethical
situation only when the attitudes of obedience to authority and to fixed
ideals have been outgrown; but, on the other hand, as might be shown, it
is just the inevitable increasing use of judgment with reference to
these formulations of the moral life which gradually undermines them
and, by a kind of "internal dialectic" of the moral consciousness,
brings the agent to recognition as well as to more perfect practice of a
logical or deliberative method.
The end, then, is, in the typical ethical situation, an _object_ which
one must determine by analysis and reconstruction as a means or
condition of moral "integrity" and progress. It is, accordingly, in the
second place, an object upon whose determination a definite activity of
the agent is regarded by him as depending. Just as in the physical
judgment-process the object is set off over against the self and
regarded as a given thing which, when once completely defined, will
prompt certain movements of the body, so here the contemplated act is an
object which, when fully defined in all its relevant psychological and
sociological bearings, will prompt a definite act of rejection or
acceptance by the self. Now, it might be shown, as we believe, that the
complete psychological and sociological definition of the course of
conduct _is_ in truth the full explanation of the choice; there is no
_separate_ reaction of the moral self to which the course of conduct is,
as defined, an external stimulus. So also in the sphere of physical
judgment complete definition passes over into action--or the
appreciative mode of consciousness which accompanies action--without
breach of continuity. But within the judgment-process in all its forms
there is in the agent's apprehension this characteristic feature of
apparent separation between the subject as an objective thing presently
to be known and used or responded to, and the predicate as a response
yet to be perfected in details, but at the right time, when one has
proper warrant, to be set free. It is not our purpose here to speak of
metaphysical interpretations or misinterpretations of this functional
distinction; but only to argue from the presence of the distinction in
the ethical type of judgment as in the physical as genuine an
objectivity for the ethical type as can be ascribed to the other. The
ethical judgment is objective in the sense that in it an object--an
imaged mode of conduct taken as such--is presented for development to a
degree of adequacy at which one can accept it or reject it as a mode of
conduct. The ethical predicates Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, each pair
representing a particular standpoint, as we shall later see, signify
this accepting or rejecting movement of the self, this "act of will," of
which, as an act in due time to be performed, the agent is more or less
acutely conscious in the course of moral judgment.
In the economic situation also, as above described, there is present the
requisite condition of the consciousness of objectivity. Here, as in the
ethical situation, an object is presented which one must redetermine,
and toward which one must presently act in a way likewise to be
determined in detail in judgment. We shall defer until a later stage
discussion of the reason why this subject of the economic judgment is
the _means_ in the activity that is in progress. We are not yet ready to
show that the means _must_ be the center of attention under the
conditions which have been specified. Here we need only note the fact of
common experience that economic judgment does center upon the means, and
show that in this fact is given the objective status of the means in the
judgment-process; for the economic problem is essentially that of
withdrawing a portion, a "marginal increment," of the means from some
use or set of uses to which they are at present set apart, and applying
it to the new end that has come to seem, on ethical grounds at least,
desirable; and we may regard this diversion as the essentially economic
act which, in the agent's apprehension during judgment, is contingent
upon the determination of the means. The object as economic is
accordingly the means, or a marginal portion of the means, which is to
be thus diverted (or, so to speak, exposed to the likelihood of such
diversion), and its determination must be of such a nature as to show
the economic urgency, or at least the permissibility, of this diversion.
Into this determination, manifestly, the results of much auxiliary
inquiry into physical properties of the means must enter--such
properties, for example, as have to do with its technological fitness
for its present use as compared with possible substitutes, and its
adaptability for the new use proposed. Taking the word in the broad
sense of _object of thought_, it is always an object in space and time
to which the economic judgment assigns an economic value; and it is true
here (just the same is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the psychological
and sociological determinations necessary to the fixation of ethical
value) that the _economically motivated_ physical determination of the
objective means from the standpoint of the emergency in hand is the full
"causal" explanation of the economic act. It must, however, be carefully
observed that this physical determination is in the typical case
altogether incidental, from the agent's standpoint, to the assignment of
an economic character or value to the means--a value which will at the
close of the judgment come to conscious recognition. As we shall see,
the process is directed throughout by reference to economic principles
and standards, and what shall be an adequate determination in the case
depends upon the precision with which these are formulated and the
strenuousness with which they are applied. In a word, the economic
judgment assigns to the physical object, as known at the outset, a new
non-physical character. Throughout the judgment-process this character
is gaining in distinctness, and at the end it is accepted as the Value
of the means, as warrant for the diversion of them to the new use which
has been decided on.[121]
We have now to consider whether in the actual ethical and economic
experience of men there is any direct evidence confirming the
conclusions which our logical analysis of the respective situations
would appear to require. Can any phases of the total experience of
working out a satisfactory course of conduct in these typical
emergencies be appealed to as actually showing at least some tacit
recognition that these types of judgment present each one an order of
reality or an aspect of the one reality?
In the first place, then, one must recognize that in the agent's own
apprehension a judgment of value has something more than a purely
subjective meaning. It is never offered, by one who has taken the
trouble to work it out more or less laboriously and then to express it
in terms which are certainly objective, as a mere announcement of _de
facto_ determination or a registration of arbitrary whim and caprice.
One no more means to announce a groundless choice or a choice based upon
pleasure felt in contemplation of the imaged end than in his judgments
concerning the physical universe he means to affirm coexistences and
sequences, agreements and disagreements, of "ideas" as psychical
happenings. That there is an ethical or economic truth to which one can
appeal in doubtful cases is, indeed, the tacit assumption in all
criticism of another's deliberate conduct; the contrary assumption, that
criticism is merely the opposition of one's own private prejudice or
desire to the equally private prejudice or desire of another, would
render all criticism and mutual discussion of ethical problems
meaningless and futile in the plain man's apprehension as in the
philosopher's. For the plain man has a spontaneous confidence in his
knowledge of the material world which makes him look askance at any
alleged analysis of his sense-perceptions and scientific judgments into
"associations of ideas," and the same confidence, or something very like
it, attaches to judgments of these other types. It may perhaps be
easier (though the concession is a very doubtful one) to destroy a naïve
confidence in the objectivity of moral truth than a like confidence in
scientific knowledge, but it must be remembered that the plain man's
sense of the urgency, at least of ethical problems, if not of economic,
is commonly less acute than for the physical. In the plain man's
experience serious moral problems are infrequent--problems of the true
type, that is, which cannot be disposed of as mere cases of temptation;
one must have attained a considerable capacity for sympathy and a
considerable knowledge of social relations before either the recognition
of such problems or proper understanding of their significance is
possible. Moral and economic crises are not vividly presented in
sensuous imagery excepting in minds of developed intelligence,
experience, and imaginative power; and the judgments reached in coping
with them do not, as a rule, obviously call for nicely measured,
calculated, and adjusted bodily movements. The immediate act of
executing an important economic judgment may be a very commonplace
performance, like the dictation of a letter, and an ethical decision
may, however great its importance for future overt conduct, be expressed
by no immediate visible movements of the body. But this possible
difference of impressiveness between physical and other types of
judgments is from our present standpoint unessential; and indeed, after
all, it cannot be denied that there are persons whose sense of moral
obligation is quite as distinct and influential, and even sensuously
vivid, as their conviction of the real existence of an external world.
To the average man it certainly is clear that, as Dr. Martineau
declares, "it is an inversion of moral truth to say ... that honour is
higher than appetite _because_ we feel it so; we feel it so because it
_is_ so. This '_is_' we know to be not contingent on our apprehension,
not to arise from our constitution of faculty, but to be a reality
irrespective of us in adaptation to which our nature is constituted, and
for the recognition of which the faculty is given."[122] And the
impressiveness, to most minds, of likening the sublimity of the moral
law to the visible splendor of the starry heavens would seem to suggest
that the apprehension of moral truth is a mode of consciousness, in form
at least, so far akin to sense-perception as to be capable of
illustration and even reinforcement from that type of experience.
At this point we must revert to a suggestion which presented itself
above in another connection, but which at the time could not be further
developed. This was, in a word, that there is often a feeling of
_obtrusiveness_ in our appreciation of the objectivity of the things
before us in ordinary sense-perception (or physical judgment) which is
not unlike the felt insistence of remorse and grief.[123] This feeling
is so conspicuous a feature of the state of consciousness in physical
judgment as frequently to serve the plain man as his last and
irrefragable evidence of the metaphysical independence of the material
world, and it is indeed a feature whose explanation does throw much
light upon the meaning of the consciousness of objectivity as a factor
within experience. Now, there is another common feeling--or, as we do
not scruple to call it, another emotion--which is perhaps quite as often
appealed to in this way; though, as we believe, never in quite the same
connection in any argument in which the two experiences are called upon
to do service to the same end. Material objects, we are told, are
_reliable_ and _stable_ as distinguished from the fleeting illusive
images of a dream--they have a "solidity" in virtue of which one can
"depend upon them," are "hard and fast" remaining faithfully where one
deposits them for future use or, if they change and disappear, doing so
in accordance with fixed laws which make the changes calculable in
advance. The material realm is the realm of "solid fact" in which one
can work with assurance that causes will infallibly produce their right
and proper effects, and to which one willingly returns from the
dream-world in which his adversary, the "idealist," would hold him
spellbound. We propose now briefly to consider these two modes of
apprehension of external physical reality in the light of the general
analysis of judgment given above--from which it will appear that they
are, psychologically, emotional expressions of what have been set forth
as the essential features of the judgment-situation, whether in its
physical, ethical, or economic forms. From this we shall argue that
there should actually be in the ethical and economic spheres similar, or
essentially identical, "emotions of reality," and we shall then proceed
to verify the hypothesis by pointing to those ethical and economic
experiences which answer the description.
We have seen that the center of attention or subject in the
judgment-process is as such problematic--in the sense that there are
certain of its observed and recognized attributes which make it in some
sense relevant and useful to the purpose in hand, while yet other of its
attributes (or absences of certain attributes) suggest conflicting
activities. The object which one sees is certainly a stone and of
convenient size for hurling at the pursuing animal. The situation has
been analyzed and found to demand a missile, and this demand has led to
search for and recognition of a stone. The stone, however, may be of a
color suggesting a soft and crumbling texture, or its form may appear
from a distance to be such as to make it practically certain to miss the
mark, however carefully it may be aimed and thrown. Until these points
of difficulty have been ascertained, the stone is wanting still in
certain essential determinations. So far as it has been certainly
determined, it prompts to the response directly suggested by one's
general end of defense and escape, but there are these other indications
which hold this response in check and which, if verified, will cause the
stone to be let lie unused. Now, we have, in this situation of conflict
or tension between opposed incitements given by the various
discriminated characters of the object, the explanation of the aspect of
obtrusiveness, of arbitrary resistance to and independence of one's
will, which for the time being seems the unmistakable mark or
coefficient of the thing's objectivity. For it is not the object as a
whole that is obtrusive; indeed, clearly, there could be no
obtrusiveness on the part of an "object as a whole," and in such a case
there could also be no judgment. The obtrusion in the case before us is
not a sense of the energy of a recalcitrant metaphysical object put
forth upon a coerced and helpless human will, but simply a conscious
interpretation of the inhibition of certain of the agent's motor
tendencies by certain others prompted by the object's "suspicious" and
as yet undetermined appearances or possible attributes. The object as
amenable to use--those of its qualities which taken by themselves are
unquestionable and clearly conducive to the agent's purpose--needs no
attention for the moment, let us say. The attention is rather upon the
dubious and to all appearance unfavorable qualities, and these for the
time being make up the sum and content of the agent's knowledge of the
object. On the other hand, the agent as an active self is identified
with the end and with those modes of response to the object which
promise to contribute directly to its realization. It is in this
direction that his interest is set and he strains with all his powers of
mind to move, and it is upon the self as identified with, and for the
time being expressed in, the "effort of the agent's will" that the
object as resistant, refusing to be misconstrued, obtrudes. One _must_
see the object and _must_ acknowledge its apparent, or in the end its
ascertained, unfitness. One is "coerced." The situation is one of
conflict, and it is out of the conflict that the essentially emotional
experience of "resistance" emerges.[124] The more special emotions of
impatience, anger, or discouragement may in a given case not be present
or may be suppressed, but the emotion of objectivity will still
remain.[125]
On the same general principles the other of our two coefficients of
reality may be explained. Let us assume that the stone in our
illustration has at last been cleared of all ambiguity in its
suggestion, having been taken as a missile, and that the man in flight
now holds it ready awaiting the most favorable moment for hurling it at
his pursuer. It will hardly be maintained that under these conditions
the coefficient of the stone's reality as an object consists in its
obtrusiveness, in its resistance to or coercion of the self. The stone
is now regarded as a fixed and determinate feature of the situation--a
condition which can be counted on, whatever else may fail. Over against
other still uncertain aspects of the situation (which are now in _their_
turn real because resistant, coercive, and obtrusive) stands the stone
as a reassuring fact upon and about which the agent can build up the
whole plan of conduct which may, if all goes well, bring him safely out
of his predicament. The stone has, so to speak, passed over to the "end"
side of the situation, and although it may have to be rejected for some
other means of defense, as the definition of the situation proceeds and
the plan of action accordingly changes (as in some degree it probably
must), nevertheless for the time being the imaged activities as stimulus
to which the stone is now accepted are a fixed part of the plan and
guide in further judgment of the means still undefined. The agent can
hardly recur to the stone, when, after attending for a time to the
bewildering perplexities of the situation, he pauses once more to take
an inventory of his certain resources, without something of an emotional
thrill of assurance and encouragement. In this emotional appreciation of
the "solidity" and "dependability" of the object the second of our
coefficients of reality consists. This might be termed the Recognition,
the other the Perception, coefficient. Classifying them as emotions,
because both are phenomena of tension in activity, we should group the
Perception coefficient with emotions of the Contraction type, like grief
and anger, and the Recognition coefficient with the Expansion emotions,
like joy and triumph.
Now, in the foregoing interpretation no reference has been made to any
conditions peculiar to the physical type of judgment-situation. The
ground of explanation has been the feature of arrest of activity for the
sake of reconstruction, and this, if our analyses have been correct, is
the essence of the ethical and economic situations as well as of the
physical. Can there then be found in these two spheres experiences of
the same nature and emerging under the same general conditions as our
Perception and Recognition coefficients of reality? If so, then our case
for the objective significance and value of ethical and economic
judgment is in so far strengthened. (1) In the first place, then, the
object in its economic character is problematic, assuming a desire on
the agent's part to apply it, as means, to some new or freshly
interesting end, because it has already been, and accordingly now is,
set apart for other uses and cannot thoughtlessly be withdrawn from
them. Extended illustration is not needed to remind one that these
established and hitherto unquestioned uses will haunt the economic
conscience as obtrusively and inhibit the desired course of economic
conduct with as much energy of resistance as in the other case will any
of the contrary promptings of a physical object. Moreover, the
Recognition coefficient may as easily be identified in this connection.
If one's scruples gain the day, in such a case one has at least a sense
of comforting assurance in the conservatism of his choice and its
accordance with the facts, however unreconciled in another way one may
be to the deprivation that has thus seemed to be necessary. If, however,
the new end in a measure makes good its case and the modes of
expenditure which the "scruples" represented have been readjusted in
accordance with it, then the means, no less than before the new
interpretation had been placed upon them, will enjoy the status of
Reality in the economic sense. They will be real now, however, not in
the obtrusive way, as presenting aspects which inhibit the leading
tendency in the judgment-process, but, instead, as means having a fixed
and certain character in one's economic life, which, after the
hesitation and doubt just now superseded, one may safely count upon and
will do well to keep in view henceforth. (2) In the second place, mere
mention of the corresponding ethical experiences must suffice, since
only extended illustration from literature and life would be fully
adequate: on the one hand, the "still small voice" of Conscience or the
authoritativeness of Duty, "stern daughter of the voice of God;" and, on
the other, the restful assurance with which, from the vantage-ground of
a satisfying decision, one may look back in wonder at the possibility of
so serious a temptation or in rejoicing over the new-won freedom from a
burdensome and repressive prejudice.
This must for the present serve as positive exposition of our view as
to the objective significance of the valuational types of judgment.
There are certain essential points which have as yet not been touched
upon, and there are certain objections to the general view the
consideration of which will serve further to explain it; but the
discussion of these various matters will more conveniently follow the
special analysis of the valuational judgments, to which we shall now
proceed.