(trans. by Max Mueller, second edition, p. 128).]
[93] I refer to such descriptive work as Ladd's (_Psychology,
Descriptive and Explanatory_, part I, chap. V, part II, chap. XI, part
III, chaps. XXV and XXVI); as Sully's (_The Human Mind_, part V); as
Stout's (_Analytic Psychology_, book I, chap. VI, and book II, chaps. I,
II, and III); as Bradley's (in his long series of analytic articles on
Psychology in _Mind_); as Titchener's (_Outline of Psychology_, part I,
chap. VI); as Shand's (_Mind_, N. S., III, 449; IV, 450; VI, 289); as
Ward's (_Mind_, XII, 67; 564); as Loveday's (_Mind_, N. S., X, 455); as
Lipps's (Vom Fuehlen, Wollen und Denken, 1902, chaps. II, IV, VI); and as
Bergson's (_Revue Philosophique_, LIII, 1)--to mention only a few
writings which I immediately recall.
[94] Their existence forms a curious commentary on Prof. Muensterberg's
dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He himself has
contributed in a superior way to their description, both in his
_Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzuege_ [_der Psychologie_], part II,
chap. IX, Sec. 7.
[95] I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous sinner in
my own chapter on the will. [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, chap.
XXVI.]
[96] [Cf. F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp.
96-97.]
[97] [Cf. above, p. 59, note.]
[98] _Verborum gratia_: "The feeling of activity is not able, _qua_
feeling, to tell us anything about activity" (Loveday: _Mind_, N. S.,
vol. X, [1901], p. 463); "A sensation or feeling or sense _of_ activity
... is not, looked at in another way, an experience _of_ activity at
all. It is a mere sensation shut up within which you could by no
reflection get the idea of activity.... Whether this experience is or is
not later on a character essential to our perception and our idea of
activity, it, as it comes first, is not in itself an experience of
activity at all. It, as it comes first, is only so for extraneous
reasons and only so for an outside observer" (Bradley, _Appearance and
Reality_, second edition, p. 605); "In dem Taetigkeitsgefuehle liegt an
sich nicht der geringste Beweis fuer das Vorhandensein einer psychischen
Taetigkeit" (Muensterberg: _Grundzuege der Psychologie_). I could multiply
similar quotations and would have introduced some of them into my text
to make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of
view in most of these author's discussions (not in Muensterberg's) make
it impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any
case, to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note,
by omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more I
stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of
opinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may
add to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in the
excellent chapter on 'Mental Activity,' in vol. I of his _Analytic
Psychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with
certain muscular feelings and gives quotations to bear him out. They are
from certain paragraphs on 'the Self,' in which my attempt was to show
what the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' is.
[_Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp. 299-305.] I found it in certain
intracephalic movements which we habitually oppose, as 'subjective,' to
the activities of the transcorporeal world. I sought to show that there
is no direct evidence that we feel the activity of an inner spiritual
agent as such (I should now say the activity of 'consciousness' as such,
see [the first essay], 'Does Consciousness Exist?'). There are, in fact,
three distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: the
elementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in the
fact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification of this
_something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and an
activity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies
'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I
circumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort
of external appendage to itself (Stout: _op. cit._, vol. I, pp.
162-163), as if I 'separated the activity from the process which is
active.' But all the processes in question are active, and their
activity is inseparable from their being. My book raised only the
question of _which_ activity deserved the name of 'ours.' So far as we
are 'persons,' and contrasted and opposed to an 'environment,' movements
in our body figure as our activities; and I am unable to find any other
activities that are ours in this strictly personal sense. There is a
wider sense in which the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the
earth,' and their activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' But
'we' are here only another name for the total process of experience,
another name for all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the
personal and individualized self exclusively in the passages with which
Professor Stout finds fault.
The individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly
called self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The
world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness')
comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision,
centre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is 'here';
when the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all
other things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' These words of
emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference
to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the
systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no
developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that
ordered form. So far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their
activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through
first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of the
rest of the world. [Cf. also _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 344, note 8.
ED.] The body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the
constant place of stress in all that experience-train. Everything
circles round it, and is felt from its point of view. The word 'I,'
then, is primarily a noun of position, just like 'this' and 'here.'
Activities attached to 'this' position have prerogative emphasis, and,
if activities have feelings, must be felt in a peculiar way. The word
'my' designates the kind of emphasis. I see no inconsistency whatever
in defending, on the one hand, 'my' activities as unique and opposed
to those of outer nature, and, on the other hand, in affirming, after
introspection, that they consist in movements in the head. The 'my' of
them is the emphasis, the feeling of perspective-interest in which
they are dyed.
[99] [_Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, sect. VII, part I,
Selby-Bigge's edition, pp. 65 ff.]
[100] Page 172.
[101] Let me not be told that this contradicts [the first essay], 'Does
Consciousness Exist?' (see especially page 32), in which it was said
that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures
work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water
wets, etc.) but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are composed
of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other, they check,
sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely
associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my
reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that
energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is a
desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a
feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. The
interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,'
'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental series.
In what we term the physical drama these qualities play absolutely no
part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can see no
inconsistency.
[102] I have found myself more than once accused in print of being the
assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since literary
misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should like to
say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published on Effort
and on Will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to express.
[_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, ch. XXVI.] I owe all my doctrines
on this subject to Renouvier; and Renouvier, as I understand him, is (or
at any rate then was) an out and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces'
in the most strenuous sense. [Cf. Ch. Renouvier: _Esquisse d'une
Classification Systematique des Doctrines Philosophiques_ (1885), vol.
II, pp. 390-392; _Essais de Critique Generale_ (1859), vol. II, Secs. ix,
xiii. For an acknowledgment of the author's general indebtedness to
Renouvier, cf. _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 165, note. ED.] Single
clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their connection, may
possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal principle of
energy; but I defy anyone to show a single sentence which, taken with
its context, should be naturally held to advocate that view. The
misinterpretation probably arose at first from my defending (after
Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. 'Free will' was supposed by
my critics to involve a supernatural agent. As a matter of plain history
the only 'free will' I have ever thought of defending is the character
of novelty in fresh activity-situations. If an activity-process is the
form of a whole 'field of consciousness,' and if each field of
consciousness is not only in its totality unique (as is now commonly
admitted) but has its elements unique (since in that situation they are
all dyed in the total) then novelty is perpetually entering the world
and what happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the
literal uniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in
short, each with an original touch. A 'principle' of free will if there
were one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never
saw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the
phenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.
[103] _Mind_, N. S., vol. VI, 1897; cf. pp. 392-393.
[104] [Cf. _A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. VI (on Bergson); H. Bergson:
_Creative Evolution_, trans. by A. Mitchell; C. A. Strong: _Why the Mind
has a Body_, ch. XII. ED.]
VII
THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM[105]
Humanism is a ferment that has 'come to stay.'[106] It is not a single
hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a
slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as
from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are
strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though
their own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small
confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part
against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other
side.[107]
If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it
is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in
some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their
foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not
keep just the same.[108] If such pervasive consequences be involved in
humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first
in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its
progress, will be thrown away.
It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most
systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary
programs only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has
not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance,
have showered blows on doctrines--subjectivism and scepticism, for
example--that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their
still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed
the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.' It
is always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view
authentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the
word 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have
to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating
of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps,
and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage
which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each
side of its central point of view.
Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure
of what's what and who is who. Anyone can contribute such a definition,
and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own
provisional definition of humanism[109] now and here, others may improve
it, some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by
the contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general
opinion may result.
I
The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to
have seen that _though one part of our experience may lean upon another
part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it may
be considered, experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on
nothing_.
Since this formula also expresses the main contention of transcendental
idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it unambiguous. It
seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and
pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would
depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical, it
would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters. I
myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a
God, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of
widest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion
susceptible of reasoned defence, though I am well aware how many minds
there are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been
monistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for
me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of--it
being essentially a _social_ philosophy, a philosophy of '_co_,' in
which conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it
is its matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the
standing 'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil,' 'problem
of freedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and
paradoxes as well.
It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing
to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets
rid of any need for an absolute of the Bradleyan type (avowedly sterile
for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations
found within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need of
an absolute of the Roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic
treatment of the problem of knowledge [a treatment of which I have
already given a version in two very inadequate articles].[110] As the
views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been
those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that
a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore
to bring the views which _I_ impute to humanism in these respects into
focus as briefly as I can.
II
If the central humanistic thesis, printed above in italics, be accepted,
it will follow that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing, the
knower and the object known must both be portions of experience. One
part of experience must, therefore, either
(1) Know another part of experience--in other words, parts must, as
Professor Woodbridge says,[111] represent _one another_ instead of
representing realities outside of 'consciousness'--this case is that of
conceptual knowledge; or else
(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate _thats_ or facts of
being, in the first instance; and then, as a secondary complication, and
without doubling up its entitative single-ness, any one and the same
_that_ must figure alternately as a thing known and as a knowledge of
the thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into which, in
the general course of experience, it gets woven.[112]
This second case is that of sense-perception. There is a stage of
thought that goes beyond common sense, and of it I shall say more
presently; but the common-sense stage is a perfectly definite
halting-place of thought, primarily for purposes of action; and, so long
as we remain on the common-sense stage of thought, object and subject
_fuse_ in the fact of 'presentation' or sense-perception--the pen and
hand which I now _see_ writing, for example, _are_ the physical
realities which those words designate. In this case there is no
self-transcendency implied in the knowing. Humanism, here, is only a
more comminuted _Identitaetsphilosophie_.[113]
In case (1), on the contrary, the representative experience does
transcend itself in knowing the other experience that is its object. No
one can talk of the knowledge of the one by the other without seeing
them as numerically distinct entities, of which the one lies beyond the
other and away from it, along some direction and with some interval,
that can be definitely named. But, if the talker be a humanist, he must
also see this distance-interval concretely and pragmatically, and
confess it to consist of other intervening experiences--of possible
ones, at all events, if not of actual. To call my present idea of my
dog, for example, cognitive of the real dog means that, as the actual
tissue of experience is constituted, the idea is capable of leading into
a chain of other experiences on my part that go from next to next and
terminate at last in vivid sense-perceptions of a jumping, barking,
hairy body. Those _are_ the real dog, the dog's full presence, for my
common sense. If the supposed talker is a profound philosopher, although
they may not _be_ the real dog for him, they _mean_ the real dog, are
practical substitutes for the real dog, as the representation was a
practical substitute for them, that real dog being a lot of atoms, say,
or of mind-stuff, that lie _where_ the sense-perceptions lie in his
experience as well as in my own.
III
The philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes beyond
the stage of common sense; and the difference is simply that he
'interpolates' and 'extrapolates,' where common sense does not. For
common sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philosophy,
noting actual differences in their perceptions, points out the duality
of these latter, and interpolates something between them as a more real
terminus--first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then, ultimate
atoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-termini of the two
men, instead of coalescing with each other and with the real dog-object,
as at first supposed, are thus held by philosophers to be separated by
invisible realities with which, at most, they are conterminous.
Abolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes into
'extrapolation.' The sense-terminus of the remaining percipient is
regarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality. He has only
carried the procession of experiences, the philosopher thinks, to a
definite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on the way towards
an absolute truth that lies beyond.
The humanist sees all the time, however, that there is no absolute
transcendency even about the more absolute realities thus conjectured or
believed in. The viscera and cells are only possible percepts following
upon that of the outer body. The atoms again, though we may never attain
to human means of perceiving them, are still defined perceptually. The
mind-stuff itself is conceived as a kind of experience; and it is
possible to frame the hypothesis (such hypotheses can by no logic be
excluded from philosophy) of two knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and
the mind-stuff itself becoming 'confluent' at the moment at which our
imperfect knowing might pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so
do you and I habitually represent our two perceptions and the real dog
as confluent, though only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage
of thought. If my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no
confluence _now_ between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of
the pen. But conceivably there might come to be such confluence; for, in
the case of my hand, the visual sensations and the inward feelings of
the hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even now as confluent as any
two things can be.
There is, thus, no breach in humanistic epistemology. Whether knowledge
be taken as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to pass muster for
practice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever
remote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibilities
of experience; and what knows it is defined as an experience _that
'represents' it, in the sense of being substitutable for it in our
thinking_ because it leads to the same associates, _or in the sense of
'pointing to it'_ through a chain of other experiences that either
intervene or may intervene.
Absolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation
bears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final
termini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man
habitually stops, while the philosopher projects a 'beyond' in the
shape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the
philosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They
are not 'true' of anything else, they simply _are_, are _real_. They
'lean on nothing,' as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole
fabric of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the solar
system, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute
position in space, on any one of its constituent stars. Here, again, one
gets a new _Identitaetsphilosophie_ in pluralistic form.[114]
IV
If I have succeeded in making this at all clear (though I fear that
brevity and abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader
will see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must always be an
intra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense
when it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which for
common sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to be
_provisionally_ true by the philosopher just in so far as it _covers_
(abuts at, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real
experience, in the possibility of which to some remoter experient the
philosopher finds reason to believe.