[1] _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, pp. 10, 11. Italics
mine.
[2] See ANGELL, "The Relations of Structural and Functional Psychology
to Philosophy," _The Decennial Publications of the University of
Chicago_, Vol. III (1903), Part II, pp. 61-6, 70-72.
[3] See _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, pp. 117-20.
[4] See statements regarding the psychological and the logical in _The
Child and the Curriculum_, pp. 28, 29.
[5] LOTZE, _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, p. 2. For the
preceding exposition see Vol. I, pp. 1, 2, 13, 14, 37, 38; also
_Microkosmus_, Book V, chap. 4.
[6] LOTZE, _Logic_, Vol. I, pp. 6, 7.
[7] LOTZE, _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, p. 25.
[8] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 36.
[9] _Ibid._
[10] _Microkosmus_, Book V, chap. 4.
[11] _Logic_, Vol. II, p. 235; see the whole discussion, §§ 325 through
327.
[12] The emphasis here is upon the term "existences," and in its plural
form. Doubtless the distinction of some experiences as belonging to me,
as mine in a peculiarly intimate way, from others as chiefly concerning
other persons, or as having to do with things, is an early one. But this
is a distinction of _concern_, of value. The distinction referred to
above is that of making an _object_, or presentation, out of this felt
type of value, and thereby breaking it up into distinct "events," etc.,
with their own laws of inner connection. This is the work of
psychological analysis. Upon the whole matter of the psychical I am glad
to refer to PROFESSOR GEORGE H. MEAD'S article entitled "The Definition
of the Psychical," Vol. III, Part II, of _The Decennial Publications of
the University of Chicago_.
[13] We have a most acute and valuable criticism of Lotze from this
point of view in PROFESSOR HENRY JONES, _Philosophy of Lotze_, 1895. My
specific criticisms agree in the main with his, and I am glad to
acknowledge my indebtedness. But I cannot agree in the belief that the
business of thought is to qualify reality as such; its occupation
appears to me to be determining the reconstruction of some aspect or
portion of reality, and to fall within the course of reality itself;
being, indeed, the characteristic medium of its activity. And I cannot
agree that reality as such, with increasing fulness of knowledge,
presents itself as a thought-system, though, as just indicated, I have
no doubt that reality appears as thought-specifications or values, just
as it does as affectional and æsthetic and the rest of them.
[14] Bradley's criticisms of rationalistic idealism should have made the
force of this point reasonably familiar.
[15] The common statement that primitive man projects his own volitions,
emotions, etc., into objects is but a back-handed way of expressing the
truth that "objects," etc., have only gradually emerged from their
life-matrix. Looking back, it is almost impossible to avoid the fallacy
of supposing that somehow such objects were there first and were
afterward emotionally appreciated.
[16] Of course, this very element may be the precarious, the ideal, and
possibly fanciful of some other situation. But it is to change the
historic into the absolute to conclude that therefore everything is
uncertain, all at once, or as such. This gives metaphysical skepticism
as distinct from the working skepticism which is an inherent factor in
all reflection and scientific inquiry.
[17] But this is a slow progress within reflection. Plato, who was
influential in bringing this general distinction to consciousness, still
thought and wrote as if "image" were itself a queer sort of objective
existence; it was only gradually that it was disposed of as psychical,
or a phase of immediate experience.
[18] Of course, this means that what is excluded and so left behind in
the problem of determination of _this_ objective content is regarded as
psychical. With reference to other problems and aims this same psychic
existence is initial, not survival. Released from its prior absorption
in some unanalyzed experience it gains standing and momentum on its own
account; _e. g._, the "personal equation" represents what is eliminated
from a given astronomic time-determination as being purely subjective,
or "source-of-error." But it is initiatory in reference to new modes of
technique, re-readings of previous data--new considerations in
psychology, even new socio-ethical judgments. Moreover, it remains a
fact, and even a worthful fact, as a part of one's own "inner"
experience, as an immediate _psychical reality_. That is to say, there
is a region of _personal_ experience (mainly emotive or affectional)
already recognized as a sphere of value. The "source of error" is
disposed of by making it a _fact_ of this region. The recognition of
falsity does not _originate_ the psychic (p. 38, note).
[19] Of course, this is a further reflective distinction. The plain man
and the student do not determine the extraneous, irrelevant, and
misleading matter as image in a _psychological_ sense, but only as
_fanciful_ or fantastic. Only to the psychologist and for _his_ purpose
does it break up into image and meaning.
[20] Bradley, more than any other writer, has seized upon this double
antithesis, and used it first to condemn the logical as such, and then
turned it around as the impartial condemnation of the psychical also.
See _Appearance and Reality_. In chap. 15 he metes out condemnation to
"thought" because it can never take in the psychical existence or
reality which is present; in chap. 19, he passes similar judgment upon
the "psychical" because it is brutally fragmentary. Other
epistemological logicians have wrestled--or writhed--with this problem,
but I believe Bradley's position is impregnable--from the standpoint of
ready-made differences. When the antithesis is treated as part and lot
of the process of defining the truth of a particular subject-matter, and
thus as historic and relative, the case is quite otherwise.
[21] Vol. I, pp. 28-34.
[22] It is interesting to see how explicitly Lotze is compelled finally
to differentiate two aspects in the antecedents of thoughts, one of
which is necessary in order that there may be anything to call out
thought (a lack, or problem); the other in order that when thought is
evoked it may find data at hand--that is, material in shape to receive
and respond to its exercise. "The manifold matter of ideas is brought
before us, not only in the _systematic order of its qualitative
relationships_, but in the rich _variety of local and temporal
combinations_.... The _combinations of heterogeneous ideas_ ... forms
the _problems_, in connection with which the efforts of thought to
reduce coexistence to coherence will _subsequently_ be made. The
_homogeneous or similar_ ideas, on the other hand, give occasion to
separate, to connect, and to count their repetitions." (Vol. I, pp. 33,
34; italics mine.) Without the heterogeneous variety of the local and
temporal juxtapositions there would be nothing to excite thought.
Without the systematic arrangement of quality there would be nothing to
meet thought and reward it for its efforts. The homogeneity of
qualitative relationships, _in the pre-thought material_, gives the
tools or instruments by which thought is enabled successfully to tackle
the heterogeneity of collocations and conjunctions also found in the
same material! One would suppose that when Lotze reached this point he
might have been led to suspect that in this remarkable adjustment of
thought-stimuli, thought-material, and thought-tools to one another, he
must after all be dealing, not with something prior to the
thought-function, but with the necessary elements in and of the
thought-situation.
[23] _Supra_, p. 30.
[24] For the identity of sensory experience with the point of greatest
strain and stress in conflicting or tensional experience, see "The
Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," _Psychological Review_, Vol. III, p.
57.
[25] For the "accessory" character of thought, see LOTZE, Vol. I, pp. 7,
25-7, 61, etc.
[26] BOSANQUET, _Logic_ (Vol. I, pp. 30-34), and Jones (_Philosophy of
Lotze_, 1895, chap. 4) have called attention to a curious inconsistency
in Lotzes's treatment of judgment. On one hand, the statement is as
given above. Judgment grows out of conception in making explicit the
determining relation of universal to its own particular, implied in
conception. But, on the other hand, judgment grows not out of conception
at all, but out of the question of determining connection in change.
Lotze's nominal reason for this latter view is that the conceptual world
is purely static; since the actual world is one of change, we need to
pass upon what really goes together (is causal) in the change as
distinct from such as are merely coincident. But, as Jones clearly
shows, it is also connected with the fact that, while Lotze nominally
asserts that judgment grows out of conception, he treats conception as
the result of judgment since the first view makes judgment a mere
explication of the content of an idea, and hence merely expository or
analytic (in the Kantian sense) and so of more than doubtful
applicability to reality. The affair is too large to discuss here, and I
will content myself with referring to the oscillation between
conflicting contents, and gradation of sensory qualities already
discussed (p. 56, note). It is judgment which grows out of the former,
because judgment is the whole situation as such; conception is referable
to the latter because it _is_ one abstraction within the whole (the
solution of possible meanings of the data) just as the datum is another.
In truth, since the sensory datum is not absolute, but comes in a
historical context, the qualities apprehended as constituting the datum
simply define the locus of conflict in the entire situation. They are
attributives of the contents-in-tension of the colliding things, not
calm untroubled ultimates. On pp. 33 and 34 of Vol. I, Lotze recognizes
(as we have just seen) that, as matter of fact, it is both sensory
qualities in their systematic grading, or quantitative determinations
(see Vol. I, p. 43, for the recognition of the necessary place of the
quantitative in the true concept), _and_ the "rich variety of local and
temporal combinations," that provoke thought and supply it with
material. But, as usual, he treats this simply as a historical accident,
not as furnishing the key to the whole matter. In fine, while the
heterogeneous collocations and successions constitute the problematic
element that stimulates thought, quantitative determination of the
sensory quality furnishes one of the two chief means through which
thought deals with the problem. It is a reduction of the original
colliding contents to a form in which the effort at redintegration gets
maximum efficiency. The concept, as ideal meaning, is of course the
other partner to the transaction. It is getting the various possible
meanings-of-the-data into such shape as to make them most useful in
construing the data. The bearing of this upon the subject and predicate
of judgment cannot be discussed here.
[27] See Vol. I, pp. 38, 59, 61, 105, 129, 197, for Lotze's treatment of
these distinctions.
[28] Vol. I, p. 36; see also Vol. II, pp. 290, 291.
[29] Vol. II, p. 246; the same is reiterated in Vol. II, p. 250, where
the question of origin is referred to as a corruption in logic. Certain
psychical acts are necessary as "conditions and occasions" of logical
operations, but the "deep gulf between psychical mechanism and thought
remains unfilled."
[30] _Philosophy of Lotze_, chap. 3, "Thought and the Preliminary
Process of Experience."
[31] Vol. I, p. 38.
[32] Vol. I, p. 13; last italics mine.
[33] Vol. I, p. 14; italics mine.
[34] See Vol. I, pp. 16-20. On p. 22 this work is declared to be not
only the first, but the most indispensable of all thought's operations.
[35] Vol. I, p. 26.
[36] Vol. I, p. 35.
[37] Vol. I, p. 36; see the strong statements already quoted, p. 30.
What if this canon were applied in the first act of thought referred to
above: the original objectification which transforms the mere state into
an abiding quality or meaning? Suppose, that is, it were said that the
first objectifying act cannot make a substantial (or attached) quale out
of a mere state of feeling; it must _find_ the distinction it makes
there already! It is clear we should at once get a _regressus ad
infinitum_. We here find Lotze face to face with this fundamental
dilemma: thought either arbitrarily forces in its own distinctions, or
else just repeats what is already there--is either falsifying or futile.
This same contradiction, so far as it affects the impression, has
already been discussed. See p. 31.
[38] Vol. I, p. 31.
[39] As we have already seen, the concept, the meaning as such, is
always a factor or status in a reflective situation; it is always a
predicate of judgment, in use in interpreting and developing the logical
subject, or datum of perception. See Study VII, on the Hypothesis.
[40] ROYCE, in his _World and Individual_, Vol. I, chaps. 6 and 7, has
criticised the conception of meaning as valid, but in a way which
implies that there is a difference between validity and reality, in the
sense that the meaning or content of the valid idea becomes real only
when it is experienced in direct feeling. The above implies, of course,
a difference between validity and reality, but finds the test of
validity in exercise of the function of direction or control to which
the idea makes pretension or claim. The same point of view would
profoundly modify Royce's interpretation of what he terms "inner" and
"outer" meaning. See MOORE, _The University of Chicago Decennial
Publications_, Vol. III, on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality."
[41] Vol. II, pp. 257, 265 and in general Book III, chap. 4. It is
significant that thought itself, appearing as an act of thinking over
against its own content, is here treated as psychical. Even this
explicit placing of thinking in the psychical sphere, along with
sensations and the associative mechanism, does not, however, lead Lotze
to reconsider his statement that the psychological problem is totally
irrelevant and even corrupting as regards the logical. Consequently, as
we see in the text, it only gives him one more difficulty to wrestle
with: how a process which is _ex officio_ purely psychical and
subjective can yet yield results which are valid, in a logical, to say
nothing of an ontological, sense.
[42] Professor James's satisfaction in the
contemplation of bare pluralism, of disconnection, of radical
having-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. The
satisfaction points to an æsthetic attitude in which the brute diversity
becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts itself in
its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, and intellectual
and practical unification are far to seek, nothing is commoner than the
device of securing the needed unity by recourse to an emotion which
feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art and romantic affection
are full of examples.
[43] Lotze even goes so far in this connection as to say that the
antithesis between our ideas and the objects to which they are directed
is itself a part of the world of ideas (Vol. II, p. 192). Barring the
phrase "world of _ideas_" (as against world of continuous experiencing)
he need only have commenced at this point to have traveled straight and
arrived somewhere. But it is absolutely impossible to hold both this
view and that of the original independent existence of something given
to and in thought and an independent existence of a thought-activity,
thought-forms, and thought-contents.
[44] The criticism of Bosanquet's theory of the judgment offered in this
paper is from the standpoint of the theory of the judgment developed by
Professor John Dewey, in his lectures on "The Theory of Logic." While
the chief interest of the paper, as the title implies, is critical, it
has been necessary to devote a portion of it to the exposition of the
point of view from which the criticism is made.--H. B. T.
[45] The references throughout this paper are to the pages of Vol. I of
BERNARD BOSANQUET, _Logic or the Morphology of Knowledge_, Oxford, 1888.
[46] F. H. BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 64.
[47] The difficulty, of course, is not a merely formal one, much less a
verbal one. Instinctively we grant to Bosanquet his statement that
reality is a continuous whole; we feel it almost captious to question
his right to it. But why? Because the _content of judgment_ is
continuous; judgment is always engaged with the determination of a
related totality. But if all content is ideal, and judgment is just the
application of this content to reality in virtue of an isolated contact,
surely it begs the entire question to say that reality apart from the
content applied is continuous, and then to use this assertion to justify
the objective validity of the judgment--its element of permanent truth.
[48] There is good reason for believing that Mr. Bosanquet escapes, in
his own mind, the difficulty by the term "correspondence." "The name
stands for these elements in the idea which _correspond_ in the separate
worlds;" we may even be accused of injustice in confusing this
correspondence with bare identity of existence. But if one idea
corresponds to another in the sense of referring to it, what is this but
the fact to be explained--how an existence can refer beyond itself?
[49] This conclusion is clearly recognized by BRADLEY, _Appearance and
Reality_, chap. 4.
[50] It would be suggestive to inquire in what sense conscious thought
claims to know. Is it a general claim which thought _qua_ thought puts
forth, or is it the claim of the content of some particular thought? The
former, of course, is a mere pious aspiration having no reference to
specific validity or truth; the latter is precisely the problem under
consideration.
[51] Bosanquet would seem to have followed Lotze in this insertion of a
world of "meanings" intermediate between the individual idea as such and
the real object as such. See the criticism already passed, pp. 93-5.
[52] Or, the situation as questioned is itself a fact, and a perfectly
determinate (though not determined) one. See pp. 38, 50.
[53] Of course, the distinction between the process of arriving as
temporal, and the essential relation of subject and predicate as
eternal, harks back to the notion of judgment as the process by which
"we" reproduce, or make real for ourselves, a reality already real
within itself. And it involves just the same difficulties. The relation
of subject and predicate--this simultaneous distinction and mutual
reference--has meaning only in an act of adjustment, of attempt to
control, within which we distribute our conditions. When the act is
completed, the relation of subject and predicate, as subject and
predicate, quite disappears. An eternal relation of the two is
meaningless; we might as well talk of an eternal reaching for the same
distant object by the same hand. In such conceptions, we have only
grasped a momentary phase of a situation, isolated it, and set it up as
an entity. Significant results would be reached by considering the
"synthetic" character (in the Kantian sense) of judgment from this point
of view. All modern logicians agree that judgment must be ampliative,
must extend knowledge; that a "trifling proposition" is no judgment at
all. What does this mean save that judgment is developmental,
transitive, in effect and purport? And yet these same writers conceive
of Reality as a _finished system of content in a complete and
unchangeable single Judgment_! It is impossible to evade the
contradiction save by recognizing that since it is the business of
judgment to transform, its test (or Truth) is successful performance of
the particular transformation it has set itself, and that transformation
is temporal.
[54] It is worth considering whether this may not be the reality of
Royce's distinction between outer and inner meaning. An anticipation of
experience is the working prerequisite of the control which will realize
the idea, _i. e._, the experience anticipated. One is no more "inner" or
"outer" than the other.
[55] _Logik_, p. 304.
[56] DE MORGAN, _Budget of Paradoxes_, pp. 55, 56; quoted by WELTON,
_Logic_, Vol. II, p. 60.
[57] Advanced grammarians treat this matter in a way which should be
instructive to logicians. The hypothesis, says SWEET (§ 295 of _A New
English Grammar, Logical and Historical_, Oxford, 1892), suggests an
affirmation or negation "as objects of thought." "In fact, we often say
_supposing_ (that is, 'thinking') _it is true_, instead of _if it is
true_." In a word, the hypothetical judgment as such puts explicitly
before us the content of thought, of the predicate or hypothesis; and in
so far is a moment in judgment rather than adequate judgment itself.
[58] This carries with it, of course, the notion that "sensation" and
"image" are not distinct psychical existences in themselves, but are
distinguished logical forces.
[59] Concerning the strict correlativity of subject and predicate, data
and hypothesis, see p. 34.
[60] _Novum Organum_, Vol. I, p. 61.
[61] Newton's "Rules for Philosophizing" (_Principia_, Book III) are as
follows:
Rule I. "No more causes of natural things are to be admitted than such
as are both true, and sufficient to explain the phenomena of those
things."
Rule II. "Natural effects of the same kind are to be referred as far as
possible to the same causes."
Rule III. "Those qualities of bodies that can neither be increased nor
diminished in intensity, and which are found to belong to all bodies
within reach of our experiments are to be regarded as qualities of all
bodies whatever."
Rule IV. "In experimental philosophy propositions collected by induction
from phenomena are to be regarded either as accurately true or very
nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis, till other
phenomena occur, by which they are made more accurate or are rendered
subject to exceptions."
[62] Book III, chap. 2, sec. 5; italics mine. The latter part of the
passage, beginning with the words "If we did not often commence," etc.,
is quoted by Mill from Comte. The words "neither induction nor deduction
would enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena" are his own.
[63] Book III, chap. 7, sec. 1.
[64] Book III, chap. 14, secs. 4 and 5.
[65] WILLIAM WHEWELL, _The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_,
London, 1840.
[66] The essential similarity between Whewell's view and that of Lotze,
already discussed (see chap. 3) is of course explainable on the basis of
their common relationship to Kant.
[67] _Logic_, Book IV, chap. 2, sec. 2; italics mine.
[68] _Ibid._
[69] _Ibid._, sec. 4; in sec. 6 he states even more expressly that any
conception is appropriate in the degree in which it "helps us toward
what we wish to understand."
[70] _Ibid._, sec. 6; italics mine.
[71] VENN, _Empirical Logic_, p. 383.
[72] VENN, _Empirical Logic_, p. 25; italics mine.
[73] WELTON, _Manual of Logic_, Vol. II, chap. 3.
[74] W. S. JEVONS, _Principles of Science_, pp. 231, 232.
[75] B. ERDMANN, "Zur Theorie des Syllogismus und der Induktion,"
_Philosophische Abhandlungen_, Vol. VI, p. 230.
[76] WUNDT, _Logik_, 2d ed., Vol. II, p. 131.
[77] WELTON, _Manual of Logic_, Vol. II, p. 72.
[78] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 452 ff.
[79] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 454-461.
[80] BOSANQUET, _Logic_, Vol. I, p. 46.
[81] BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 10.
[82] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 74.
[83] BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 11.
[84] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 75, 76.
[85] BRADLEY, _op. cit._, pp. 4-6.
[86] _Op. cit._, pp. 7, 8.
[87] This study may be regarded as in some sense a development of pp.
7-10 of _The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System_,
published in 1896 by The University of Chicago Press. While quite
independent in treatment, the two papers supplement each other.
[88] The best special illustration of this truth with which I am
acquainted is presented for the science of chemistry in an article by F.
WALD, "Die Genesis der stöchiometrischen Grundgesetze," in _Zeitschrift
für physikalische Chemie_, Vol. XVIII (1895), pp. 337 ff.
[89] [Greek: Xi] 201, 246.
[90] H 99.
[91] In allusion to fr. 90 (DIELS). DIELS finds in fr. 108 (fr. 18,
BYWATER), [Greek: oti sophon esti pantôn kechôrismenon] the thought that
God is the Absolute, comparing the [Greek: Nous] of Anaxagoras and the
[Greek: chôristê idea] of Plato and the [Greek: ousia chôristê] of
Aristotle. He assumes that [Greek: sophon]=[Greek: logos] and concedes
great significance to the fragment. But this interpretation is utterly
incompatible with everything else that we know of Heraclitus, and should
be admitted only if it were the only one admissible. ZELLER discusses
the fragment at length, Vol. I, p. 629, 1. If Diels's interpretation be
accepted, the exposition above given of Heraclitus's logical position
must be abandoned.
[92] It has been, and in some quarters is still, the fashion to say that
Heraclitus is the originator of the doctrine of relativity; but Zeller
is quite right in denying the charge. No doubt his teachings lent
themselves readily to such a development, but he did not so express
himself. According to him the _contrarieties coexist in the process_.
[93] _Cf._ RITTER-PRELLER, § 65_c_.
[94] This, in a word, is the burden of my study of _The Necessary and
the Contingent in the Aristotelian System_.
[95] I have in preparation a study of the problem of physical
interaction in Pre-Socratic philosophy which deals with this question in
all its phases.
[96] This statement is, of course, figurative, since Empedocles denied
the existence of a void.
[97] I cannot now undertake a defense of this statement, which runs
counter to certain ancient reports, but must reserve a full discussion
for my account of physical interaction.
[98] The motive for making this assumption was clearly the desire to
make of the [Greek: Nous] the prime mover in the world while exempting
it from reaction on the part of the world, which would have been
unavoidable if its nature had contained parts of other things. It is the
same problem of "touching without being touched in return" that led
Aristotle to a similar definition of God and of the rational soul. The
same difficulty besets the absolutely "simple" soul of Plato's _Phaedo_
and the causality of the Ideas.
[99] ARISTOTLE, _De Generatione et Corruptione_, 323^b 10 f.
[100] We have seen that this distinction was latent in Anaximenes's
process of rarefaction and condensation. For other matters see CHAIGNET,
_Histoire de la Psychologie_, Vol. I, p. 114, whose account, however,
needs to be corrected in some particulars.
[101] I say "perhaps" because ancient reports differ as to the precise
relation of position and arrangement to the distinction between
qualities, primary and secondary.
[102] This is only another instance of what MR. VENN (_Empirical Logic_,
p. 56) has wittily alluded to as "screwing up the cause and the effect
into close juxtaposition."
[103] Simplicius says [Greek: euthys meta to prooimion]; see DIELS, _Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_ (Berlin, 1903), p. 347, l. 18.
[104] Fr. 2, DIELS.
[105] See DIELS, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, p. 343, l. 2; p. 344, l.
27.
[106] 320 C f.
[107] Considerations of space as well as circumstances attending the
immediate preparation of this discussion for the press have precluded
any but the most general and casual reference to the recent literature
of the subject. Much of this literature only imperfectly distinguishes
the logical and psychological points of view, so that critical reference
to it, unaccompanied by detailed restatement and analysis of the
positions criticised, would be useless.
[108] In order to avoid complicating the problems, we have here employed
the common notion that the physical world, physical object, and property
may be taken for granted as possible adequate contents of judgment, and
that the problem is only as to the objectivity of economic and ethical
contents. Of course we may, in the end, come to believe that the
"physical" object is itself an economic construct, in the large sense of
"economic;" that is, an instrument of an effective or successful
experience. Thus in terms of the illustration used above, in the
attitude of entertaining in a general way the plan of building a house
_of some sort or other_, one may have before him various building
materials the ascertained qualities of which are, it may be, socially
recognized as in a general way fitting them for such a use. There is
doubtless so much of real foundation for the common notion here referred
to. But along with the _definition_ of the plan in ethical and economic
judgment, along with the determination actually to build a house, and a
house of a certain specific kind, must go _further_ determination of the
means in their physical aspects, a determination which all the while
reacts into the process of determination of the end. See below, p. 246,
note 3.
[109] In the moral life, as elsewhere, the distinction of deduction and
induction is one of degree. There is but one _type_ or _method_ of
inference, though some inferences may approach more closely than do
others the limit of pure "subsumption."
[110] See III below.
[111] It is no part of the present view that the ends which enter into
economic conflict are incapable of becoming organic and intrinsically
interrelated members of the provisional system of life. On the contrary,
the very essence of our contention is that adjustment established
between two such conflicting ends in economic judgment is in itself
ethical and a member of the provisional system of the individual's ends
of life, and will stand as such, subject to modification through changes
elsewhere in the system, so long as the economic conditions in view of
which it was determined remained unchanged. The "mutual exclusiveness"
of the ends in ethical deliberation is simply the correlate of a
relative fixity in certain of the conditions of life. A man's command
over the means of obtaining such things as books and fuel varies much
and often suddenly in a society like ours from time to time; but, on the
other hand, his physical condition, his intelligence, his powers of
sympathy, and his spiritual capacity for social service commonly do not.
Hence there can be and is a certain more or less definite and permanent
comprehensive scheme of conduct morally obligatory upon him so far as
the exercise of these latter faculties is concerned, but so far as his
conduct depends upon the variable conditions mentioned, it cannot be
prescribed in general terms, nor will any provisional ideal of moral
selfhood admit any such prescriptions as integral elements into itself.
The moral self is an ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions
of life--conditions so fixed that the spiritual furtherance or
deterioration likely to result from certain modes of conduct involving
and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease by
the "ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of
course, a reference to certain relatively permanent social and also
physical conditions. In so far as society and physical nature, and for
that matter the individual's own nature, are _variable_, these are the
subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments incidental to the
determination of problems by the "economic" method--problems, that is,
for which no _general_ answer, through reference to a more or less
definite and stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our
knowledge of the physical universe is largely, if not chiefly,
incidental to and conditioned by our economic experience. Again, our
economic judgments are in every case determinative of the self in
situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable
conditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is
inapplicable. In a socialistic state, in which economic conditions might
be more stable than in our present one, many problems in consumption
which now are economic in one sense would be ethical because admitting
of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed in the
established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is
not easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is
absolutely indifferent ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance
even in so "æsthetic" an indulgence as Turkish rugs.
[112] Accordingly there can be no distinction of ends, some as ethical,
others as economic, but from an ethical standpoint indifferent, and yet
others as amenable neither to ethical nor to economic judgment. The type
of situation and the corresponding mode of judgment employed determines
whether an end shall be for the time being ethical, economic, or of
neither sort conspicuously.
[113] The right of Prudence to rank among the virtues cannot, on our
present view, be questioned. Economic judgment, though it must be
valuation of means, is essentially choice of ends--and, as would appear,
choice of a sort peculiarly difficult by reason of the usually slight
intrinsic relation between the ends involved and also by reason of the
absence of effective points of view for comparison. Culture, as Emerson
remarks, "sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for
wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants." And again,
"The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and
cowards, and is the subject of all comedy.... [The true prudence] takes
the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are,
and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good" (Essay on
_Prudence_).
[114] Here again we purposely use inaccurate language. Strictly, the
ends here spoken of as competing are such, we must say, only because
they are as yet in a measure indeterminate, wanting in "clearness," and
are not yet understood in their true economic character; likewise the
means are wanting in that final shade or degree of physical and
mechanical determinateness which they are presently to possess as means
to a finally determinate economic end. Thus economic judgment, by which
is to be understood determination of an end of action by the economic
method and in accordance with economic principles, involves in general
physical re-determination of the means. The means which at the outset of
the present economic judgment-process appear as physically available
indifferently for either of the tentative ends under consideration are
only in a general way the same means for knowledge as they will be when
the economic problem has been solved. They are, so far as now
determinate, the outcome of former physical judgment-processes
incidental to the definition of economic ends in former situations like
the present.
[115] In our discussion of this preliminary question there is no attempt
to furnish what might be called an _analysis_ of the consciousness of
objectivity. This has been undertaken by various psychologists in recent
well-known contributions to the subject. For our purpose it is necessary
only to specify the intellectual and practical attitude out of which the
consciousness of objectivity arises; not the sensory "elements" or
factors involved in its production as an experience.
[116] So, on the other hand, our vague organic sensations are possibly
more instructive as they are, _for their own purpose_, than they would
be if more sharply discriminated and complexly referred.
For convenience we here meet the view under consideration with its own
terminology; we by no means wish to be understood as indorsing this
terminology as psychologically correct. The sense-quality of which we
read in "structural psychology" is, we hold, not a structural unit at
all, but in fact a highly abstract development out of that unorganized
whole of sensory experience in which reflective attention begins. There
is, for example, no such thing as the simple unanalyzable sense-quality
"red" in consciousness until judgment has proceeded far enough to have
constructed a definite and measured experience which may be symbolized
as "object-before-me-possessing-the-attribute-red." In place of the
original sensory total-experience we now have a more or less developed
perceptual (_i. e._, judgmental) total-experience. It is an instance of
the "psychological fallacy" to interpret what are really elements of
_meaning_ in a perceived object constructed in judgment (for this is the
true nature of the "simple idea of sensation" or "sense-element") as so
many bits of psychical material which were isolated from each other at
the outset, and have been externally joined together in their present
combination.
[117] The phrase is Külpe's and is used in his sense of consciousness
taken as a whole, as, for example, attentive, apperceptive, volitional,
rather than in the sense made familiar by Spencer and others.
[118] The foregoing discussion is in many ways similar to Brentano's
upon the same subject. In discussing his first class of modes of
consciousness, the _Vorstellungen_, he says: "We find no contrasts
between presentations excepting those of the objects to which the
presentations refer. Only in so far as warm and cold, light and dark, a
high note and a low, form contrasts can we speak of the corresponding
presentations as contrasted; and, in general, there is in any other
sense than this no contrast within the entire range of these conscious
processes" (_Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte_, Bd. I, p. 29).
This may stand as against any attempt to find contrast between abstract
sense-qualities taken apart from their objective reference. What is,
however, the ground of distinction between the presented objects?
Apparently this must be answered in the last resort as above. In this
sense we should need finally to interpret "sensuous" and "material" in
terms of objectivity as above defined, rather than the reverse. They are
cases in or specifications of the determination of adequate stimuli.
[119] In this connection reference may be made to the well-known
disturbing effect of the forced introduction of attention to details
into established sensori-motor co-ordinations, such as "typewriting,"
playing upon the piano, and the like.
[120] _Cf._ PROFESSOR BALDWIN'S _Social and Ethical Interpretations_,
and PROFESSOR MCGILVARY'S recent paper on "Moral Obligation,"
_Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, especially pp. 349 f.
[121] Manifestly, as indicated just above, this accepted value of the
object implies fuller physical knowledge of the object than was
possessed at the outset of the economic judgment. See above, p. 234,
note; p. 246, note 3; and p. 271, below.
[122] _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II, p. 5.
[123] See p. 253 above.
[124] It is not so much the case that the object, on the one side,
excites in the agent's consciousness, on the other, the "sensations of
resistance" which have played such a part in recent controversy on the
subject, as that (1) the object in certain of its promptings is
"resisting" certain other of its promptings, or that (2) certain
"positive" activities of the agent are being inhibited by certain
"negative" activities, thereby giving rise to the "emotion of
resistance." That "positive" and "negative" are here used in a
teleological way will be apparent. It is surely misleading to speak of
"_sensations_ of resistance" even in deprecatory quotation marks, except
as "sensation" is used in its everyday meaning, viz., experience of
strongly sensory quality.
[125] The general theory of emotion which is here presupposed, and
indeed is fundamental to the entire discussion, may be found in
PROFESSOR DEWEY'S papers on "The Theory of Emotion," _Psychological
Review_, Vol. I, p. 553; Vol. II, p. 13.
[126] Such is, in fact, the teaching of the various forms of ethical
intuitionism, and we find it not merely implied, but explicitly
affirmed, in a work in many respects so remote from intuitionism in its
standpoint as GREEN'S _Prolegomena to Ethics_. See pp. 178-81, and
especially pp. 355-9.
[127] Sermon II.
[128] Not to imply of course that psychologically or logically the
distinction of conditions and means is other than a convenient
superficial one.
[129] Manifestly we have here been approaching from a new direction the
"Recognition coefficient" of reality described above. See p. 266.
[130] This, if it were intended as an account of the genesis of
psychology as a science and of the psychological interest on the part of
the individual, would doubtless be most inadequate. We have, for one
thing, made no mention of the part which error and resulting practical
failure play in stimulating an interest in the _judgmental_ processes of
observation and the like, and in technique of the control of these.
Here, as well as in the processes of _execution_ of our purposes, must
be found many of the roots of psychology as a science. Moreover, no
explanation has been offered above for the appropriation by the
"energetic" self of these phenomena of interruption and retardation of
its energy as being, in fact, its own, or within itself. The problem
would appear to be psychological, and so without our province, and we
gladly pass it by.
[131] We can, of course, undertake no minute analysis of the
psychological mechanism or concatenation of the process here sketched in
barest outline. Our present purpose is wholly that of description.
Slight as our account of the process of transition is, we give it space
only because it seems necessary to do so in order to make intelligible
the accounts yet to be given of the conscious valuation processes for
which the movement here described prepares the way.
It will be observed that we assume above that the purpose is _successful
as planned_ and _by succeeding_ brings about the undesirable results.
Failure in execution of the purpose as such could only, in the manner
already outlined, prompt a more adequate investigation of the _factual
conditions_.
[132] The case is not essentially altered in logical character if for
the Levitical law be substituted the general principles of the new
dispensation read off details by an authoritative church or by "private
judgment."
[133] A remark may be added here by way of caution. The presented self,
we have said, attenuates to a mere maxim or tacit presumption in favor
of a certain type of logical procedure in dealing with the situation. It
must be remembered that the presented self, like all other presentation,
is and comes to be for the sake of its function in experience, and so is
practical from the start. The process sketched above is therefore not
from bare presented content as such to a methodological presumption,
which, as methodological and not contentual, is qualitatively different
from what preceded it.
[134] _Recognized_ authority is, of course, not the same thing by any
means as authority unrecognized because absolutely dominant.
[135] We may be pardoned for supplying from the history of ethics no
illustrations of this slight sketch.
[136] In fact, as suggested above, the _Prolegomena to Ethics_ is in
many respects essentially intuitional in spirit, though its intuitionism
is of a modern discreetly attenuated sort.
[137] This would appear to be the logical value of functional psychology
as a science of mental process.
[138] We have already given a slight sketch of the historical process
here characterized in the barest logical terms.
[139] Further consideration of the problem of factual judgment must be
deferred to Part V.
[140] The relation of the empirical self to the "energetic" and to
standards will come in for statement in Part V in the connection just
referred to.
[141] It might be possible to construct a "logic" of these various types
of working moral standard in such a way as to show that in each type
there is implied the one next higher morphologically, and ultimately the
highest--that is, some sort of concept of the "energetic" self.
[142] It matters not at all whether, in ethics or metaphysics, our
universal be abstract or on the other hand "concrete," like Green's
conception of the self, or a "Hegelian" Absolute. Its logical use in the
determination of particulars must be essentially the same in either
case.
[143] In this connection reference may be made to MR. TAYLOR'S recent
work, _The Problem of Conduct_. Mr. Taylor reduces the moral life to
terms of an ultimate conflict between the ideals of egoism and social
justice, holding that the conflict is in theory irreconcilable. With
this negative attitude toward current standards in ethical theory one
may well be in accord without accepting Mr. Taylor's further contention
that a theory of ethics is therefore impossible. Because the "ethics of
subsumption" is demonstrably futile it by no means follows that a method
of ethics cannot be developed along the lines of modern scientific logic
which shall be as valid as the procedure of the investigator in the
sciences. Mr. Taylor's _logic_ is virtually the same as that of the
ethical theories which he criticises; because an ethical _ideal_ is
impossible, a theory of ethics is impossible also. One is reminded of
MR. BRADLEY'S criticism of knowledge in the closing chapters of the
_Logic_ as an interesting parallel.
[144] MR. BOSANQUET'S discussion of the place of the principle of
teleology in analogical inference will be found suggestive in this
connection (_Logic_, Vol. II, chap. iii).
[145] See above, p. 243 and p. 259 _ad fin._
[146] We use the expression "energy-_equivalent_" because the "excess"
gained by the self through the past adjustment is not of importance at
just this point. The essential significance of the means now is not that
they "cost" less than they promised to bring in in energy, but that
_because they required sacrifice the self will now lose unless they are
allowed to fulfil the promise_. They are the logical equivalent of the
established modes of consumption from the standpoint of conservation of
the energies of the self, not the mathematical equivalent.
It would be desirable, if there were space, to present a brief account
of the psychological basis of the concepts of energy and
energy-equivalence which here come into play, but this must be omitted.
[147] Putting it negatively, the renunciation of the new end involves a
"greater" sacrifice than all the sacrifices which adherence to the
present system of consumption can compensate.
[148] Green, as is well known, allows that any formulation of the ideal
self must be incomplete, but holds that it is not for this reason
useless. But this is to assume that development in the ideal is never to
be radically reconstructive, that the ideal is to expand and fill out
along established and unchangeable lines of growth so that all increase
shall be in the nature of accretion. The self as a system is fixed and
all individual moral growth is in the nature of approximation to this
absolute ideal. This would appear to be essentially identical in a
logical sense with Mr. Spencer's hypothesis of social evolution as a
process of gradual approach to a condition of perfect adaptation of
society and the individual to each other in an environment to which
society is perfectly adapted--a condition in which "perfectly evolved"
individuals shall live in a state of blessedness in conformity to the
requirements of "absolute ethics." For a criticism of this latter type
of view see MR. TAYLOR'S above-mentioned work (chap. v, _passim_).
[149] For GREEN'S cautious defense of conscientiousness as a moral
attitude see the _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book IV, chap. i; and for a
statement of the present point of view as bearing upon Green's
difficulty, see DEWEY, _The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus_, p. 37 _ad
fin._, and _Philosophical Review_, Vol. II, pp. 661, 662.
[150] Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an
answer to certain criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a
metaphysical idea of the self. Such criticisms usually urge that without
reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning attaches to such
conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and the like as
predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the
"energetic" self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of
the self, if it be something new, except as we judge it by a
metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded self. For an excellent
statement of this general line of criticism see STRATTON, "A
Psychological Test of Virtue," _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol.
XI, p. 200.
[151] The polemic of certain recent writers (as, for example, EHRENFELS
in his _System der Werttheorie_) against the objectivity of judgments of
value appears to rest upon an uncritical acceptance of the time-honored
distinction between "primary" and "secondary" qualities as equivalent to
the logical distinction of subjective and objective. Thus EHRENFELS
confutes "das Vorurteil von der objectiven Bedeutung des Wertbegriffes"
by explaining it as due to a misleading usage of speech expressive of
"an impulse, deep-rooted in the human understanding, to objectify its
presentations" and then goes on to say "We do not desire things because
we recognize the presence in them of a mysterious impalpable essence of
Value but we ascribe value to them because we desire them." (_Op. cit._,
Bd. I, p. 2.) This may serve to illustrate the easy possibility of
confusing the logical and psychological points of view, as likewise does
EHRENFELS's formal definition of value. (Bd. I., p. 65.)
[152] The essential dependence of factual judgment upon the rise of
economic and ethical conflict is implied in the widely current doctrine
of the teleological character of knowledge. It is indeed nowadays
something like a commonplace to say in one sense or another that
knowledge is relative to ends, but it is not always recognized by those
who hold this view that an end never appears as such in consciousness
alone. The end that guides in the construction of factual knowledge is
an end in ethical or economic conflict with some other likewise
indeterminate end in the manner above discussed.
[153] See above, pp. 282, 283.
[154] _Cf._ SCHILLER, _Riddles of the Sphinx_, chap. vii, §§ 10-14.
[155] It would appear that the principle of the conservation of energy
is valid only in the physical sphere; but the logical significance of
this limitation cannot be here discussed.
[156] That the assumption mentioned is the essential basis of the twin
theories of associationism in psychology and hedonism in ethics is shown
by DR. WARNER FITE in his article, "The Associational Conception of
Experience," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. IX, pp. 283 ff. _Cf._ MR.
BRADLEY's remarks on the logic of hedonism in his _Principles of Logic_,
pp. 244-9.
[157] The "energetic" self is apparently MR. BRADLEY'S fourth "meaning
of self," the self as monad--"something moving parallel with the life of
a man, or, rather, something not moving, but literally _standing_ in
relation to his successive variety" (_Appearance and Reality_ [1st ed.]
p. 86, in chap. ix, "The Meanings of the Self"). Mr. Bradley's
difficulty appears to come from his desiring a psychological content for
what is essentially a logical conception--a confusion (if we may be
permitted the remark) which runs through the entire chapter to which we
refer and is responsible for the undeniable and hopeless incoherency of
the various meanings of the self, as Mr. Bradley therein expounds them.
"If the monad stands aloof," says Mr. Bradley, "either with no character
at all or a private character apart, then it may be a fine thing in
itself, but it is a mere mockery to call it the self of a man" (p. 87).
Surely this is to misconstrue and then find fault with that very
character of essential _logical_ apartness from any possibility of
determination in point of descriptive psychological content which
constitutes the whole value of the "energetic" self as a logical
conception stimulative of the valuation-process and so inevitably of
factual judgment. See pp. 258, 259, above. The reader may find for
himself in Mr. Bradley's enumeration of meanings our concept of the
empirical self. But surely the "energetic" and empirical selves would
appear on our showing to have no necessary conflict with each other.
[158] In the first of these inseparable aspects valuation is
determinative of Rightness and Wrongness; in the second it presents the
object as Good or Bad. See p. 259, above.
[159] See, for example, WIESER, _Natural Value_ (Eng. trans.), p. 17.
[160] See pp. 307-12 above.
[161] The illustration, as also the general principle which it here is
used to illustrate, was suggested some years since by Professor G. H.
Mead in a lecture course on the "History of Psychology," which the
writer had the advantage of attending.
[162] The conservative function of valuation may be further illustrated
by reference to the well-known principle of marginal utility of which we
have already made mention (p. 307 above), and which has played so great
a part in modern economic theory. The value of the unit quantity of a
stock of any commodity is, according to this principle, measured by the
least important single use in the schedule of uses to which the stock as
a whole is to be applied. Manifestly, then, adherence to this valuation
placed upon the unit quantity is in so far conservative of the whole
schedule and the marginal value is a "short-hand" symbol expressive of
the value of the whole complex purpose presented in the schedule.
Moreover, the increase of marginal value concurrently with diminution of
the stock through consumption, loss, or reapplication is not indicative
so much of a change of purpose as of determination to adhere to so much
of the original program of consumption as may still be possible of
attainment with the depleted supply of the commodity.
[163] Thus except on this condition we should deny the propriety of
speaking of the value of a friend or of a memento or sacred relic. The
purpose of accurate definition of the function of such objects as these
in the attainment of one's ends is foreign to the proper attitude of
loving, prizing, or venerating them. We may ethically value the _act_ of
sacrifice for a friend or of solicitous care of the memento, but the
object of our sacrifice or solicitude has simply the direct or immediate
"qualitative" emotional character appropriate to the kinds of activity
to which it is the adequate stimulus.
[164] _History of Philosophy_ (TUFT's translation), p. 117.
[165] _Cf._ PROFESSOR J. R. ANGELL's article, "Relations of Structural
and Functional Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial Publications of the
University of Chicago_, Vol. III, pp. 10-12; also _Philosophical
Review_, Vol. XII, No. 3. _Cf._ also MR. SCHILLER's essay on "Axioms as
Postulates" in _Personal Idealism_.
[166] From this point on this paper is an expansion of some paragraphs,
pp. 11-13, in an article on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality," printed
from Vol. III of the First Series of the _Decennial Publications of the
University of Chicago_.
[167] P. 22.
[168] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.
[169] P. 25.
[170] P. 26.
[171] p. 36; italics mine.
[172] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.
[173] P. 307.
[174] P. 327.
[175] P. 23; italics mine.
[176] _Cf._ p. 34; also p. 22.
[177] P. 35.
[178] This warns us that in the phrase, "a plan of action," the term
"action" must be more inclusive than it is in much current discussion.
It must not be limited to gymnastic performance. It must apply to any
sort of activity planned for, and which, when it arrives, fulfils the
plan. This, I take it, is the import of the paragraph at the top of p. 7
of PROFESSOR JAMES's _Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results_.
[179] P. 270.
[180] Pp. 270, 271.
[181] P. 276.
[182] P. 277.
[183] Pp. 280, 281.
[184] See p. 256.
[185] P. 289; italics mine.
[186] P. 281; italics mine.
[187] It is worth noting in passing that here the universal appears to
be located in finite experience, while the ground of the particular is
in the absolute.
[188] P. 282.
[189] P. 284; italics mine.
[190] P. 283.
[191] P. 332.
[192] P. 339.
[193] This ghost of subjectivism haunts the entire part of the essay in
which the final fulfilment of finite ideas is found in "a certain
absolute system of ideas."
[194] P. 330; italics mine.
[195] P. 337.
[196] P. 286.
[197] P. 307.
[198] P. 297.
[199] This reduction of the purposive to the representative function
carries with it an interesting implication concerning the whole
character and relationship of thought and will. From beginning to end,
on almost every page, Mr. Royce insists upon the idea as an expression
of will. At the outset we read: "When we try to define the idea in
itself, as a conscious fact, our best means is to lay stress upon the
sort of will or active meaning which any idea involves for the mind that
forms the idea" (p. 22). Again: "The idea is a will seeking its own
determination. It is nothing else" (p. 332)--and so on throughout the
lectures. And we have already seen how consistently this is worked out
in the analysis of concrete acts, such as singing, etc. But now, as
related to the absolute system, the will, as embodied in the idea, is to
find its final determination in approximating the certain absolute
system of ideas. This would seem to make will but little more than the
mere form of representation itself. The idea is a will, but in its
relation to truth its will is "to correspond even in its vagueness to
its own final and completely individual expression."
[200] P. 339.
[201] P. 338.
[202] P. 335.
[203] _Cf._ MR. GORE'S paper, above.
[204] _Cf._ BALDWIN'S _Development and Evolution_, pp. 250, 251, on the
necessity of the submission of the "new experience" to the test of its
ability to utilize habit. Interpreted broadly, habit might here mean the
whole mechanical side, including organism _and_ environment, and so
include Mr. Baldwin's second or "extra-organic" test.
[205] P. 19.
[206] Pp. 17, 18.
[207] See, above, PROFESSOR DEWEY'S Study III, pp. 49 ff.
[208] P. 55.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
1. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved from the middle of a
chapter to the end of the main text.
2. Other than that, printer's inconsistencies in spelling,
punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.