alternative between neighbors would be either physical interaction or
complete inertness. In such a world the mental or the physical _status_
of any piece of experience would be unequivocal. When active, it would
figure in the physical, and when inactive, in the mental group.
But the universe we live in is more chaotic than this, and there is room
in it for the hybrid or ambiguous group of our affectional experiences,
of our emotions and appreciative perceptions. In the paragraphs that
follow I shall try to show:
(1) That the popular notion that these experiences are intuitively given
as purely inner facts is hasty and erroneous; and
(2) That their ambiguity illustrates beautifully my central thesis that
subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is
aboriginally made of, but of its classification. Classifications depend
on our temporary purposes. For certain purposes it is convenient to take
things in one set of relations, for other purposes in another set. In
the two cases their contexts are apt to be different. In the case of our
affectional experiences we have no permanent and steadfast purpose that
obliges us to be consistent, so we find it easy to let them float
ambiguously, sometimes classing them with our feelings, sometimes with
more physical realities, according to caprice or to the convenience of
the moment. Thus would these experiences, so far from being an obstacle
to the pure experience philosophy, serve as an excellent corroboration
of its truth.
First of all, then, it is a mistake to say, with the objectors whom I
began by citing, that anger, love and fear are affections purely of the
mind. That, to a great extent at any rate, they are simultaneously
affections of the body is proved by the whole literature of the
James-Lange theory of emotion.[77] All our pains, moreover, are local,
and we are always free to speak of them in objective as well as in
subjective terms. We can say that we are aware of a painful place,
filling a certain bigness in our organism, or we can say that we are
inwardly in a 'state' of pain. All our adjectives of worth are
similarly ambiguous--I instanced some of the ambiguities [in the first
essay].[78] Is the preciousness of a diamond a quality of the gem? or is
it a feeling in our mind? Practically we treat it as both or as either,
according to the temporary direction of our thought. 'Beauty,' says
Professor Santayana, 'is pleasure objectified'; and in Sections 10 and
11 of his work, _The Sense of Beauty_, he treats in a masterly way of
this equivocal realm. The various pleasures we receive from an object
may count as 'feelings' when we take them singly, but when they combine
in a total richness, we call the result the 'beauty' of the object, and
treat it as an outer attribute which our mind perceives. We discover
beauty just as we discover the physical properties of things. Training
is needed to make us expert in either line. Single sensations also may
be ambiguous. Shall we say an 'agreeable degree of heat,' or an
'agreeable feeling' occasioned by the degree of heat? Either will do;
and language would lose most of its esthetic and rhetorical value were
we forbidden to project words primarily connoting our affections upon
the objects by which the affections are aroused. The man is really
hateful; the action really mean; the situation really tragic--all in
themselves and quite apart from our opinion. We even go so far as to
talk of a weary road, a giddy height, a jocund morning or a sullen sky;
and the term 'indefinite' while usually applied only to our
apprehensions, functions as a fundamental physical qualification of
things in Spencer's 'law of evolution,' and doubtless passes with most
readers for all right.
Psychologists, studying our perceptions of movement, have unearthed
experiences in which movement is felt in general but not ascribed
correctly to the body that really moves. Thus in optical vertigo, caused
by unconscious movements of our eyes, both we and the external universe
appear to be in a whirl. When clouds float by the moon, it is as if both
clouds and moon and we ourselves shared in the motion. In the
extraordinary case of amnesia of the Rev. Mr. Hanna, published by Sidis
and Goodhart in their important work on _Multiple Personality_, we read
that when the patient first recovered consciousness and "noticed an
attendant walk across the room, he identified the movement with that of
his own. He did not yet discriminate between his own movements and those
outside himself."[79] Such experiences point to a primitive stage of
perception in which discriminations afterwards needful have not yet been
made. A piece of experience of a determinate sort is there, but there at
first as a 'pure' fact. Motion originally simply _is_; only later is it
confined to this thing or to that. Something like this is true of every
experience, however complex, at the moment of its actual presence. Let
the reader arrest himself in the act of reading this article now. _Now_
this is a pure experience, a phenomenon, or datum, a mere _that_ or
content of fact. _'Reading' simply is, is there_; and whether there for
some one's consciousness, or there for physical nature, is a question
not yet put. At the moment, it is there for neither; later we shall
probably judge it to have been there for both.
With the affectional experiences which we are considering, the
relatively 'pure' condition lasts. In practical life no urgent need has
yet arisen for deciding whether to treat them as rigorously mental or as
rigorously physical facts. So they remain equivocal; and, as the world
goes, their equivocality is one of their great conveniences.
The shifting place of 'secondary qualities' in the history of
philosophy[80] is another excellent proof of the fact that 'inner' and
'outer' are not coefficients with which experiences come to us
aboriginally stamped, but are rather results of a later classification
performed by us for particular needs. The common-sense stage of thought
is a perfectly definite practical halting-place, the place where we
ourselves can proceed to act unhesitatingly. On this stage of thought
things act on each other as well as on us by means of their secondary
qualities. Sound, as such, goes through the air and can be intercepted.
The heat of the fire passes over, as such, into the water which it sets
a-boiling. It is the very light of the arc-lamp which displaces the
darkness of the midnight street, etc. By engendering and translocating
just these qualities, actively efficacious as they seem to be, we
ourselves succeed in altering nature so as to suit us; and until more
purely intellectual, as distinguished from practical, needs had arisen,
no one ever thought of calling these qualities subjective. When,
however, Galileo, Descartes, and others found it best for philosophic
purposes to class sound, heat, and light along with pain and pleasure as
purely mental phenomena, they could do so with impunity.[81]
Even the primary qualities are undergoing the same fate. Hardness and
softness are effects on us of atomic interactions, and the atoms
themselves are neither hard nor soft, nor solid nor liquid. Size and
shape are deemed subjective by Kantians; time itself is subjective
according to many philosophers;[82] and even the activity and causal
efficacy which lingered in physics long after secondary qualities were
banished are now treated as illusory projections outwards of phenomena
of our own consciousness. There are no activities or effects in nature,
for the most intellectual contemporary school of physical speculation.
Nature exhibits only _changes_, which habitually coincide with one
another so that their habits are describable in simple 'laws.'[83]
There is no original spirituality or materiality of being, intuitively
discerned, then; but only a translocation of experiences from one world
to another; a grouping of them with one set or another of associates for
definitely practical or intellectual ends.
I will say nothing here of the persistent ambiguity of _relations_. They
are undeniable parts of pure experience; yet, while common sense and
what I call radical empiricism stand for their being objective, both
rationalism and the usual empiricism claim that they are exclusively the
'work of the mind'--the finite mind or the absolute mind, as the case
may be.
* * * * *
Turn now to those affective phenomena which more directly concern us.
We soon learn to separate the ways in which things appeal to our
interests and emotions from the ways in which they act upon one another.
It does not _work_ to assume that physical objects are going to act
outwardly by their sympathetic or antipathetic qualities. The beauty of
a thing or its value is no force that can be plotted in a polygon of
compositions, nor does its 'use' or 'significance' affect in the
minutest degree its vicissitudes or destiny at the hands of physical
nature. Chemical 'affinities' are a purely verbal metaphor; and, as I
just said, even such things as forces, tensions, and activities can at a
pinch be regarded as anthropomorphic projections. So far, then, as the
physical world means the collection of contents that determine in each
other certain regular changes, the whole collection of our appreciative
attributes has to be treated as falling outside of it. If we mean by
physical nature whatever lies beyond the surface of our bodies, these
attributes are inert throughout the whole extent of physical nature.
Why then do men leave them as ambiguous as they do, and not class them
decisively as purely spiritual?
The reason would seem to be that, although they are inert as regards the
rest of physical nature, they are not inert as regards that part of
physical nature which our own skin covers. It is those very appreciative
attributes of things, their dangerousness, beauty, rarity, utility,
etc., that primarily appeal to our attention. In our commerce with
nature these attributes are what give _emphasis_ to objects; and for an
object to be emphatic, whatever spiritual fact it may mean, means also
that it produces immediate bodily effects upon us, alterations of tone
and tension, of heart-beat and breathing, of vascular and visceral
action. The 'interesting' aspects of things are thus not wholly inert
physically, though they be active only in these small corners of
physical nature which our bodies occupy. That, however, is enough to
save them from being classed as absolutely non-objective.
The attempt, if any one should make it, to sort experiences into two
absolutely discrete groups, with nothing but inertness in one of them
and nothing but activities in the other, would thus receive one check.
It would receive another as soon as we examined the more distinctively
mental group; for though in that group it be true that things do not act
on one another by their physical properties, do not dent each other or
set fire to each other, they yet act on each other in the most energetic
way by those very characters which are so inert extracorporeally. It is
by the interest and importance that experiences have for us, by the
emotions they excite, and the purposes they subserve, by their affective
values, in short, that their consecution in our several conscious
streams, as 'thoughts' of ours, is mainly ruled. Desire introduces them;
interest holds them; fitness fixes their order and connection. I need
only refer for this aspect of our mental life, to Wundt's article 'Ueber
psychische Causalitaet,' which begins Volume X. of his _Philosophische
Studien_.[84]
It thus appears that the ambiguous or amphibious _status_ which we find
our epithets of value occupying is the most natural thing in the world.
It would, however, be an unnatural status if the popular opinion which I
cited at the outset were correct. If 'physical' and 'mental' meant two
different kinds of intrinsic nature, immediately, intuitively, and
infallibly discernible, and each fixed forever in whatever bit of
experience it qualified, one does not see how there could ever have
arisen any room for doubt or ambiguity. But if, on the contrary, these
words are words of sorting, ambiguity is natural. For then, as soon as
the relations of a thing are sufficiently various it can be sorted
variously. Take a mass of carrion, for example, and the
'disgustingness' which for us is part of the experience. The sun
caresses it, and the zephyr wooes it as if it were a bed of roses. So
the disgustingness fails to _operate_ within the realm of suns and
breezes,--it does not function as a physical quality. But the carrion
'turns our stomach' by what seems a direct operation--it _does_ function
physically, therefore, in that limited part of physics. We can treat it
as physical or as non-physical according as we take it in the narrower
or in the wider context, and conversely, of course, we must treat it as
non-mental or as mental.
Our body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous. Sometimes I
treat my body purely as a part of outer nature. Sometimes, again, I
think of it as 'mine,' I sort it with the 'me,' and then certain local
changes and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings. Its
breathing is my 'thinking,' its sensorial adjustments are my
'attention,' its kinesthetic alterations are my 'efforts,' its visceral
perturbations are my 'emotions.' The obstinate controversies that have
arisen over such statements as these (which sound so paradoxical, and
which can yet be made so seriously) prove how hard it is to decide by
bare introspection what it is in experiences that shall make them either
spiritual or material. It surely can be nothing intrinsic in the
individual experience. It is their way of behaving towards each other,
their system of relations, their function; and all these things vary
with the context in which we find it opportune to consider them.
I think I may conclude, then (and I hope that my readers are now ready
to conclude with me), that the pretended spirituality of our emotions
and of our attributes of value, so far from proving an objection to the
philosophy of pure experience, does, when rightly discussed and
accounted for, serve as one of its best corroborations.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 11, May 25, 1905.]
[76] It will be still better if he shall have also read the [essay]
entitled 'A World of Pure Experience,' which follows [the first] and
develops its ideas still farther.
[77] [Cf. _The Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, ch. XXV; and "The
Physical Basis of Emotion," _The Psychological Review_, vol. I, 1894, p.
516.]
[78] [See above, pp. 34, 35.]
[79] Page 102.
[80] [Cf. Janet and Seailles: _History of the Problems of Philosophy_,
trans. by Monahan, part I, ch. III.]
[81] [Cf. Descartes: _Meditation_ II; _Principles of Philosophy_, part
I, XLVIII.]
[82] [Cf. A. E. Taylor: _Elements of Metaphysics_, bk. III, ch. IV.]
[83] [Cf. K. Pearson: _Grammar of Science_, ch. III.]
[84] It is enough for my present purpose if the appreciative characters
but _seem_ to act thus. Believers in an activity _an sich_, other than
our mental experiences of activity, will find some farther reflections
on the subject in my address on 'The Experience of Activity.' [The next
essay. Cf. especially, p. 169. ED.]
VI
THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[85]
BRETHREN OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION:
In casting about me for a subject for your President this year to talk
about it has seemed to me that our experiences of activity would form a
good one; not only because the topic is so naturally interesting, and
because it has lately led to a good deal of rather inconclusive
discussion, but because I myself am growing more and more interested in
a certain systematic way of handling questions, and want to get others
interested also, and this question strikes me as one in which, although
I am painfully aware of my inability to communicate new discoveries or
to reach definitive conclusions, I yet can show, in a rather definite
manner, how the method works.
The way of handling things I speak of, is, as you already will have
suspected, that known sometimes as the pragmatic method, sometimes as
humanism, sometimes as Deweyism, and in France, by some of the disciples
of Bergson, as the Philosophie nouvelle. Professor Woodbridge's _Journal
of Philosophy_[86] seems unintentionally to have become a sort of
meeting place for those who follow these tendencies in America. There is
only a dim identity among them; and the most that can be said at present
is that some sort of gestation seems to be in the atmosphere, and that
almost any day a man with a genius for finding the right word for things
may hit upon some unifying and conciliating formula that will make so
much vaguely similar aspiration crystallize into more definite form.
I myself have given the name of 'radical empiricism' to that version of
the tendency in question which I prefer; and I propose, if you will now
let me, to illustrate what I mean by radical empiricism, by applying it
to activity as an example, hoping at the same time incidentally to
leave the general problem of activity in a slightly--I fear very
slightly--more manageable shape than before.
Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to philosophy, and
if one turns to the current literature of the subject--his own writings
included--one easily gathers what he means. The opponents cannot even
understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to Mr. Ward: "I do not care
what your oracle is, and your preposterous psychology may here be gospel
if you please; ... but if the revelation does contain a meaning, I will
commit myself to this: either the oracle is so confused that its
signification is not discoverable, or, upon the other hand, if it can be
pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be
false."[87] Mr. Ward in turn says of Mr. Bradley: "I cannot even imagine
the state of mind to which his description applies.... [It] reads like
an unintentional travesty of Herbartian psychology by one who has tried
to improve upon it without being at the pains to master it."[88]
Muensterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any
one who holds it a _Verstaendigung_ with him is "_grundsaetzlich
ausgeschlossen_"; and Royce, in a review of Stout,[89] hauls him over
the coals at great length for defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for
one, never gathered from reading him, and which I have heard Stout
himself say was quite foreign to the intention of his text.
In these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and
different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_.
(1) There is a psychological question: "Have we perceptions of activity?
and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have them?"
(2) There is a metaphysical question: "Is there a _fact_ of activity?
and if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what
does it do, if it does anything?" And finally there is a logical
question:
(3) "Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or
by some other source of information?" Throughout page after page of the
literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and
mere description of the surface-show of experience is proferred as if it
implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants,
moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view would
carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's experience
it would make if his adversary's were triumphant.
It seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it
ought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience,
to be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them somewhat.
The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no
difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact somewhere;
and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of opinion by
making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some practical or
particular issue. The principle of pure experience is also a methodical
postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it says, except what can
be experienced at some definite time by some experient; and for every
feature of fact ever so experienced, a definite place must be found
somewhere in the final system of reality. In other words: Everything
real must be experienceable somewhere, and every kind of thing
experienced must somewhere be real.
Armed with these rules of method let us see what face the problems of
activity present to us.
By the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must
have no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what it
means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be
definitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually
come to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the
judgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in
the stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity.
What we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later
question.
Now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever we
find anything _going on_. Taken in the broadest sense, any apprehension
of something _doing_, is an experience of activity. Were our world
describable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing changing,'
'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an 'inactive' world.
Bare activity then, as we may call it, means the bare fact of event or
change. 'Change taking place' is a unique content of experience, one of
those 'conjunctive' objects which radical empiricism seeks so earnestly
to rehabilitate and preserve. The sense of activity is thus in the
broadest and vaguest way synonymous with the sense of 'life.' We should
feel our own subjective life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming
an otherwise inactive world. Our own reaction on its monotony would be
the one thing experienced there in the form of something coming to
pass.
This seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist that
for an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to justify, or
at any rate to explain, Mr. Ward's expression that we _are_ only as we
are active,[90] for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out Mr.
Bradley's contention that "there is no original experience of anything
like activity."[91] What we ought to say about activities thus
elementary, whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they
effect anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only
when the field of experience is enlarged.
Bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite
direction, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a
wild _Ideenflucht_, or _Rhapsodie der Wahrnehmungen_, as Kant would
say,[92] would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive
world.