totality of things _may_ be organized exactly after the pattern of one
of these "through-and-through" abstractions. In fact, it is the
pleasantest and freest of mental movements. Husband makes, and is made
by, wife, through marriage; one makes other, by being itself other;
everything self-created through its opposite--you go round like a
squirrel in a cage. But if you stop and reflect upon what you are about,
you lay bare the exact point at issue between common sense and the
"through-and-through" school.
What, in fact, is the logic of these abstract systems? It is, as we said
above: If any Member, then the Whole System; if not the Whole System,
then Nothing. But how can Logic possibly do anything more with these
two hypotheses than combine them into the single disjunctive
proposition--"Either this Whole System, just as it stands, or Nothing at
all." Is not that disjunction the ultimate word of Logic in the matter,
and can any disjunction, as such, resolve _itself_? It may be that Mr.
Haldane sees how one horn, the concept of the Whole System, carries real
existence with it. But if he has been as unsuccessful as I in
assimilating the Hegelian re-editings of the Anselmian proof,[143] he
will have to say that though Logic may determine _what_ the system must
be, _if_ it is, something else than Logic must tell us _that_ it is. Mr.
Haldane in this case would probably consciously, or unconsciously, make
an appeal to Fact: the disjunction _is_ decided, since nobody can
dispute that now, as a matter of fact, _something_, and not nothing,
_is_. We must _therefore_, he would probably say, go on to admit the
Whole System in the desiderated sense. Is not then the validity of the
Anselmian proof the nucleus of the whole question between Logic and
Fact? Ought not the efforts of Mr. Haldane and his friends to be
principally devoted to its elucidation? Is it not the real door of
separation between Empiricism and Rationalism? And if the Rationalists
leave that door for a moment off its hinges, can any power keep that
abstract, opaque, unmediated, external, irrational, and irresponsible
monster, known to the vulgar as bare Fact, from getting in and
contaminating the whole sanctuary with his presence? Can anything
prevent Faust from changing "Am Anfang war das Wort" into "Am Anfang war
die That?"
Nothing in earth or heaven. Only the Anselmian proof can keep Fact out
of philosophy. The question, "Shall Fact be recognized as an ultimate
principle?" is the whole issue between the Rationalists and the
Empiricism of vulgar thought.
Of course, if so recognized, Fact sets a limit to the
"through-and-through" character of the world's rationality. That
rationality might then mediate between all the members of our
conception of the world, but not between the conception itself and
reality. Reality would have to be given, not by Reason, but by Fact.
Fact holds out blankly, brutally and blindly, against that universal
deliquescence of everything into logical relations which the Absolutist
Logic demands, and it is the only thing that does hold out. Hence the
ire of the Absolutist Logic--hence its non-recognition, its 'cutting' of
Fact.
The reasons it gives for the 'cutting' are that Fact is speechless, a
mere word for the negation of thought, a vacuous unknowability, a
dog-in-the-manger, in truth, which having no rights of its own, can find
nothing else to do than to keep its betters out of theirs.
There are two points involved here: first the claim that certain things
have rights that are absolute, ubiquitous and all pervasive, and in
regard to which nothing else can possibly exist in its _own_ right; and
second that anything that denies _this_ assertion is _pure_ negativity
with no positive context whatsoever.
Take the latter point first. Is it true that what is negative in one way
is thereby convicted of incapacity to be positive in any other way? The
word "Fact" is like the word "Accident," like the word "Absolute"
itself. They all have their negative connotation. In truth, their whole
connotation is negative and relative. All it says is that, whatever the
thing may be that is denoted by the words, _other_ things do not control
it. Where fact, where accident is, they must be silent, it alone can
speak. But that does not prevent its speaking as loudly as you please,
in its own tongue. It may have an inward life, self-transparent and
active in the maximum degree. An indeterminate future volition on my
part, for example, would be a strict accident as far as my present self
is concerned. But that could not prevent it, _in the moment in which it
occurred_, from being possibly the most intensely living and luminous
experience I ever had. Its quality of being a brute fact _ab extra_ says
nothing whatever as to its inwardness. It simply says to _outsiders_:
'Hands off!'
And this brings us back to the first point of the Absolutist indictment
of Fact. Is that point really anything more than a fantastic dislike to
letting _anything_ say 'Hands off'? What else explains the contempt the
Absolutist authors exhibit for a freedom defined simply on its
"negative" side, as freedom "from," etc.? What else prompts them to
deride such freedom? But, dislike for dislike, who shall decide? Why is
not their dislike at having me "from" them, entirely on a par with mine
at having them "through" me?
I know very well that in talking of dislikes to those who never mention
them, I am doing a very coarse thing, and making a sort of intellectual
Orson of myself. But, for the life of me, I can not help it, because I
feel sure that likes and dislikes _must_ be among the ultimate factors
of their philosophy as well as of mine. Would they but admit it! How
sweetly we then could hold converse together! There is something finite
about us both, as we now stand. We do not know the Absolute Whole _yet_.
_Part_ of it is still negative to us. Among the _whats_ of it still
stalks a mob of opaque _thats_, without which we cannot think. But just
as I admit that this is all possibly provisional, that even the
Anselmian proof may come out all right, and creation _may_ be a rational
system through-and-through, why might they not also admit that it may
all be otherwise, and that the shadow, the opacity, the negativity, the
"from"-ness, the plurality that is ultimate, _may_ never be wholly
driven from the scene. We should both then be avowedly making
hypotheses, playing with Ideals. Ah! Why is the notion of hypothesis so
abhorrent to the Hegelian mind?
And once down on our common level of hypothesis, we might then admit
scepticism, since the Whole is not yet revealed, to be the soundest
_logical_ position. But since we are in the main not sceptics, we might
go on and frankly confess to each other the motives for our several
faiths. I frankly confess mine--I can not but think that at bottom they
are of an aesthetic and not of a logical sort. The "through-and-through"
universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable
all-pervasiveness. Its necessity, with no possibilities; its relations,
with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with
no reserved rights, or rather as if I had to live in a large seaside
boarding-house with no private bed-room in which I might take refuge
from the society of the place. I am distinctly aware, moreover, that the
old quarrel of sinner and pharisee has something to do with the matter.
Certainly, to my personal knowledge, all Hegelians are not prigs, but I
somehow feel as if all prigs ought to end, if developed, by becoming
Hegelians. There is a story of two clergymen asked by mistake to conduct
the same funeral. One came first and had got no farther than "I am the
Resurrection and the Life," when the other entered. "_I_ am the
Resurrection and the Life," cried the latter. The "through-and-through"
philosophy, as it actually exists, reminds many of us of that clergyman.
It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to
speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread
abysses and its unknown tides. The "freedom" _we_ want to see there is
not the freedom, with a string tied to its leg and warranted not to fly
away, of that philosophy. "Let it fly away," we say, "from _us_! What
then?"
Again, I know I am exhibiting my mental grossness. But again, _Ich kann
nicht anders._ I show my feelings; why _will_ they not show theirs? I
know they _have_ a personal feeling about the through-and-through
universe, which is entirely different from mine, and which I should very
likely be much the better for gaining if they would only show me how.
Their persistence in telling me that feeling has nothing to do with the
question, that it is a pure matter of absolute reason, keeps me for ever
out of the pale. Still seeing a _that_ in things which Logic does not
expel, the most I can do is to _aspire_ to the expulsion. At present I
do not even aspire. Aspiration is a feeling. What can kindle feeling but
the example of feeling? And if the Hegelians _will_ refuse to set an
example, what can they expect the rest of us to do? To speak more
seriously, the one _fundamental_ quarrel Empiricism has with Absolutism
is over this repudiation by Absolutism of the personal and aesthetic
factor in the construction of philosophy. That we all of us have
feelings, Empiricism feels quite sure. That they may be as prophetic and
anticipatory of truth as anything else we have, and some of them more so
than others, can not possibly be denied. But what hope is there of
squaring and settling opinions unless Absolutism will hold parley on
this common ground; and will admit that all philosophies are hypotheses,
to which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical, help us, and
the truest of which will at the final integration of things be found in
possession of the men whose faculties on the whole had the best divining
power?
FOOTNOTES:
[140] [Reprinted from _Mind_, vol. IX, No. 34, April, 1884.]
[141] [In 1884.]
[142] ["Life and Mechanism," _Mind_, vol. IX, 1884.]
[143] [_Cf._ P. Janet and G. Seailles: _History of the Problems of
Philosophy_, trans. by Monahan, vol. II, pp. 275-278; 305-307. ED.]
INDEX
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM: 46, 60, 99,
102, 134, 195, 256 ff., Essay XII.
ACTIVITY: x, Essay VI.
AFFECTIONAL FACTS: 34 ff., Essay
V, 217 ff.
AGNOSTICISM: 195.
APPRECIATIONS. _See_ AFFECTIONAL
FACTS.
BERGSON, H.: 156, 188.
BERKELEY: 10-11, 43, 76, 77, 212,
232.
BODE, B. H.: 234 ff.
BODY: 78, 84 ff., 153, 221.
BRADLEY, F. H.: 60, 98, 99, 100,
107 ff., 157, 162.
CAUSE: 163, 174, 181 ff.
CHANGE: 161.
COGNITIVE RELATION: 52 ff. _See
also_ under KNOWLEDGE.
CONCEPTS: 15 ff., 22, 33, 54 ff.,
65 ff.
CONJUNCTIVE RELATIONS: x, 44 ff.,
59, 70, 94, 104, 107 ff., 117 ff.,
163, 240.
CONSCIOUSNESS: xi, Essay I, 75,
80, 127 ff., 139 ff., 154, 184, Essay
VIII.
CONTINUITY: 48 ff., 59, 70, 94.
DEMOCRITUS: 11.
DESCARTES: 30.
DEWEY, J.: 53, 156, 191, 204, 247,
260.
DISJUNCTIVE RELATIONS: x, 42 ff.,
105, 107 ff.
DUALISM: 10, 207 ff., 225, 257.
EMPIRICISM: iv-v, vii-xiii, 41, 46-47,
Essay XII. _See also_ under
RADICAL EMPIRICISM.
EPISTEMOLOGY: 239. _See also_ under
KNOWLEDGE.
ETHICS: 194.
EXPERIENCE: vii, xii, 8 ff., 53, 62,
ff., 71, 80, 87, 92, 216, 224, 233,
242, 243. _See also_ under PURE
EXPERIENCE.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS: 110 ff. _See
also_ under RELATIONS, and
DISJUNCTIVE.
FEELING. _See_ under AFFECTIONAL
FACTS.
FREE WILL: 185.
HALDANE, J. S.: 266 ff.
HEGEL: 106, 276, 277.
HERBART: 106.
HOBHOUSE, L. T.: 109.
HODDER, A. L.: 22, 109.
HODGSON, S.: ix, 48.
HOEFFDING, H.: 238.
HUMANISM: 90, 156, Essay VII,
Essay XI.
HUME: x, 42, 43, 103, 174.
IDEALISM: 39, 40, 134, 219, 241,
256.
IDEAS: 55 ff., 73, 177, 209.
IDENTITY, Philosophy of: 134,
197, 202.
INDETERMINISM: 90, 274.
INTELLECT: 97 ff.
JOSEPH, H. W. B.: 203, 244 ff.
KANT: 1, 37, 162, 206.
KIERKEGAARD: 238.
KNOWLEDGE: 4, 25, 56 ff., 68 ff.,
87-88, 196 ff., 231. _See also_ under
COGNITIVE RELATION, OBJECTIVE
REFERENCE.
LIFE: 87, 161.
LOCKE: 10.
LOGIC: 269 ff.
LOTZE: 59, 75, 167.
MATERIALISM: 179, 232.
MILL, J. S.: x, 43, 76.
MILL, JAMES: 43.
MILLER, D.: 54.
MINDS, their Conterminousness:
76 ff., Essay IV.
MONISM: vii, 208, 267 ff.
MOORE, G. E.: 6-7.
MUENSTERBERG, H.: 1, 18-20, 158.
NATORP, P.: 1, 7-8.
NATURALISM: 96.
NEO-KANTISM: 5-6.
OBJECTIVE REFERENCE: 67 ff.
OBJECTIVITY: 23 ff., 79.
PANPSYCHISM: 89, 188.
PARALLELISM: 210.
PERCEPTION: 11 ff., 17, 33, 65, 78,
82 ff., 197, 200, 211 ff.
PERRY, R. B.: 24.
PHYSICAL REALITY: 14, 22, 32, 124
ff., 139 ff., 149 ff., 154, 211 ff.,
229, 235.
PITKIN, W. B.: 241 ff.
PLURALISM: 89, 90, 110.
PRAGMATISM: iv, x, xi-xii, 11, 72,
97 ff., 156, 159, 176, 242, 261.
PRIMARY QUALITIES: 147.
PRINCE, M.: 88.
PRINGLE-PATTISON, A. S.: 109.
PSYCHOLOGY: 206, 209 ff.
PURE EXPERIENCE: 4, 23, 26-27,
35, Essay II, 74, 90, 93 ff., 96.
121, 123, 134, 135, 138, 139, 160,
193, 200, 226 ff., 257.
RADICAL EMPIRICISM: iv-v, vii,
ix-xiii, 41 ff., 47, 48, 69, 76, 89,
91, 107, 109, 121, 148, 156, 159,
182, 235, 237, 238, 239, 241, 242.
RATIONALISM: 41, 96 ff., 237, 266.
REALISM: 16, 40, 76, 82 ff.
REHMKE, J.: 1.
RELATIONS: x, 16, 25, 42 ff., 71, 81,
Essay III, 148, 268. _See also_ under
CONJUNCTIVE and DISJUNCTIVE.
RELIGION: xiii, 194.
RENOUVIER: 184-185.
REPRESENTATION: 61, 196 ff., 212
ff. _See also_ under SUBSTITUTION.
ROYCE, J.: 21, 158, 186-187, 195.
SANTAYANA, G.: 143, 218.
SCHILLER, F. C. S.: 109, 191, 204,
249, 260.
SCHUBERT-SOLDERN, R. V.: 2.
SCHUPPE, W.: 1.
SECONDARY QUALITIES: 146, 219.
SELF: 45, 46, 94, 128 ff.
SENSATION: 30, 201.
SIDIS, B.: 144.
SOLIPSISM: Essay IX.
SPACE: 30-31, 84, 94, 110, 114.
SPENCER, H.: 144.
SPINOZA: 208.
SPIR, A.: 106.
STOUT, G. F.: 109, 158.
STRONG, C. A.: 54, 88, 89, 188.
SUBJECTIVITY: 23 ff., 234 ff., 251 ff.
SUBSTITUTION: 62 ff., 104, 201.
TAINE: 20, 62.
TAYLOR, A. E.: 111.
TELEOLOGY: 179.
THINGS: 1, 9 ff., 28 ff., 37, Essay
III, 209.
THOUGHT: 1, 22, 28 ff., 37, 213.
_See also_ under KNOWLEDGE.
TIME: 27, 94.
TRANSCENDENTALISM: 39, 52, 67,
71, 75, 239.
TRUTH: 24, 98, 192, 202 ff., 247 ff.
WARD, J.: 157, 162.
WILL: 165, 184.
WOODBRIDGE. F. J. E.: 196.
WORTH: 186-187.
WUNDT, W.: 152.
The Riverside Press
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
U. S. A.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The following changes were made to the text.
Page 98:
Yet when so broken it is less consistent then ever.
Changed to
Yet when so broken it is less consistent than ever.
Page 180:
some comtemptibly small process on which success depends.
Changed to
some contemptibly small process on which success depends.
Note 93:
XXV aud XXVI
Changed to
XXV and XXVI
Note 101:
'Does Consciousuess Exist?'
Changed to
'Does Consciousness Exist?'
Note 109:
either as a syuonym for 'radical empiricism'
Changed to
either as a synonym for 'radical empiricism'
Note 109:
For other discussions of 'humauism,'
Changed to
For other discussions of 'humanism,'
Note 130:
'Humanism and Truth' first appeared iu
Changed to
'Humanism and Truth' first appeared in