At most of our American Colleges there are Clubs formed by the students
devoted to particular branches of learning; and these clubs have the
laudable custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar
to address them, the occasion often being made a public one. I have
from time to time accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my
discourse printed in one or other of the Reviews. It has seemed to me
that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as
they shed explanatory light upon each other, and taken together express
a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way.
Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I
should call it that of _radical empiricism_, in spite of the fact that
such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I
say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured
conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to
modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,'
because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and,
{viii} unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under
the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does
not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience
has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is
perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. _Primâ
facie_ the world is a pluralism; as we find it, its unity seems to be
that of any collection; and our higher thinking consists chiefly of an
effort to redeem it from that first crude form. Postulating more unity
than the first experiences yield, we also discover more. But absolute
unity, in spite of brilliant dashes in its direction, still remains
undiscovered, still remains a _Grenzbegriff_. "Ever not quite" must be
the rationalistic philosopher's last confession concerning it. After
all that reason can do has been done, there still remains the opacity
of the finite facts as merely given, with most of their peculiarities
mutually unmediated and unexplained. To the very last, there are the
various 'points of view' which the philosopher must distinguish in
discussing the world; and what is inwardly clear from one point remains
a bare externality and datum to the other. The negative, the alogical,
is never wholly banished. Something--"call it fate, chance, freedom,
spontaneity, the devil, what you will"--is still wrong and other and
outside and unincluded, from _your_ point of view, even though you be
the greatest of philosophers. Something is always mere fact and
_givenness_; and there may be in the whole universe no one point of
view extant from which this would not be found to be the case.
"Reason," as a gifted writer says, "is {ix} but one item in the
mystery; and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned,
reason and wonder blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while
doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is
wild,--game-flavored as a hawk's wing. Nature is miracle all; the same
returns not save to bring the different. The slow round of the
engraver's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the difference is
distributed back over the whole curve, never an instant true,--ever not
quite."[1]
This is pluralism, somewhat rhapsodically expressed. He who takes for
his hypothesis the notion that it is the permanent form of the world is
what I call a radical empiricist. For him the crudity of experience
remains an eternal element thereof. There is no possible point of view
from which the world can appear an absolutely single fact. Real
possibilities, real indeterminations, real beginnings, real ends, real
evil, real crises, catastrophes, and escapes, a real God, and a real
moral life, just as common-sense conceives these things, may remain in
empiricism as conceptions which that philosophy gives up the attempt
either to 'overcome' or to reinterpret in monistic form.
Many of my professionally trained _confrères_ will smile at the
irrationalism of this view, and at the artlessness of my essays in
point of technical form. But they should be taken as illustrations of
the radically empiricist attitude rather than as argumentations for its
validity. That admits meanwhile of {x} being argued in as technical a
shape as any one can desire, and possibly I may be spared to do later a
share of that work. Meanwhile these essays seem to light up with a
certain dramatic reality the attitude itself, and make it visible
alongside of the higher and lower dogmatisms between which in the pages
of philosophic history it has generally remained eclipsed from sight.
The first four essays are largely concerned with defending the
legitimacy of religious faith. To some rationalizing readers such
advocacy will seem a sad misuse of one's professional position.
Mankind, they will say, is only too prone to follow faith
unreasoningly, and needs no preaching nor encouragement in that
direction. I quite agree that what mankind at large most lacks is
criticism and caution, not faith. Its cardinal weakness is to let
belief follow recklessly upon lively conception, especially when the
conception has instinctive liking at its back. I admit, then, that
were I addressing the Salvation Army or a miscellaneous popular crowd
it would be a misuse of opportunity to preach the liberty of believing
as I have in these pages preached it. What such audiences most need is
that their faiths should be broken up and ventilated, that the
northwest wind of science should get into them and blow their
sickliness and barbarism away. But academic audiences, fed already on
science, have a very different need. Paralysis of their native
capacity for faith and timorous _abulia_ in the religious field are
their special forms of mental weakness, brought about by the notion,
carefully instilled, that there is something called scientific evidence
by {xi} waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of shipwreck in
regard to truth. But there is really no scientific or other method by
which men can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing
too little or of believing too much. To face such dangers is
apparently our duty, and to hit the right channel between them is the
measure of our wisdom as men. It does not follow, because recklessness
may be a vice in soldiers, that courage ought never to be preached to
them. What _should_ be preached is courage weighted with
responsibility,--such courage as the Nelsons and Washingtons never
failed to show after they had taken everything into account that might
tell against their success, and made every provision to minimize
disaster in case they met defeat. I do not think that any one can
accuse me of preaching reckless faith. I have preached the right of
the individual to indulge his personal faith at his personal risk. I
have discussed the kinds of risk; I have contended that none of us
escape all of them; and I have only pleaded that it is better to face
them open-eyed than to act as if we did not know them to be there.
After all, though, you will say, Why such an ado about a matter
concerning which, however we may theoretically differ, we all
practically agree? In this age of toleration, no scientist will ever
try actively to interfere with our religious faith, provided we enjoy
it quietly with our friends and do not make a public nuisance of it in
the market-place. But it is just on this matter of the market-place
that I think the utility of such essays as mine may turn. If {xii}
religious hypotheses about the universe be in order at all, then the
active faiths of individuals in them, freely expressing themselves in
life, are the experimental tests by which they are verified, and the
only means by which their truth or falsehood can be wrought out. The
truest scientific hypothesis is that which, as we say, 'works' best;
and it can be no otherwise with religious hypotheses. Religious
history proves that one hypothesis after another has worked ill, has
crumbled at contact with a widening knowledge of the world, and has
lapsed from the minds of men. Some articles of faith, however, have
maintained themselves through every vicissitude, and possess even more
vitality to-day than ever before: it is for the 'science of religions'
to tell us just which hypotheses these are. Meanwhile the freest
competition of the various faiths with one another, and their openest
application to life by their several champions, are the most favorable
conditions under which the survival of the fittest can proceed. They
ought therefore not to lie hid each under its bushel, indulged-in
quietly with friends. They ought to live in publicity, vying with each
other; and it seems to me that (the régime of tolerance once granted,
and a fair field shown) the scientist has nothing to fear for his own
interests from the liveliest possible state of fermentation in the
religious world of his time. Those faiths will best stand the test
which adopt also his hypotheses, and make them integral elements of
their own. He should welcome therefore every species of religious
agitation and discussion, so long as he is willing to allow that some
religious hypothesis _may_ be {xiii} true. Of course there are plenty
of scientists who would deny that dogmatically, maintaining that
science has already ruled all possible religious hypotheses out of
court. Such scientists ought, I agree, to aim at imposing privacy on
religious faiths, the public manifestation of which could only be a
nuisance in their eyes. With all such scientists, as well as with
their allies outside of science, my quarrel openly lies; and I hope
that my book may do something to persuade the reader of their crudity,
and range him on my side. Religious fermentation is always a symptom
of the intellectual vigor of a society; and it is only when they forget
that they are hypotheses and put on rationalistic and authoritative
pretensions, that our faiths do harm. The most interesting and
valuable things about a man are his ideals and over-beliefs. The same
is true of nations and historic epochs; and the excesses of which the
particular individuals and epochs are guilty are compensated in the
total, and become profitable to mankind in the long run.
The essay 'On some Hegelisms' doubtless needs an apology for the
superficiality with which it treats a serious subject. It was written
as a squib, to be read in a college-seminary in Hegel's logic, several
of whose members, mature men, were devout champions of the dialectical
method. My blows therefore were aimed almost entirely at that. I
reprint the paper here (albeit with some misgivings), partly because I
believe the dialectical method to be wholly abominable when worked by
concepts alone, and partly because the essay casts some positive light
on the pluralist-empiricist point of view.
{xiv}
The paper on Psychical Research is added to the volume for convenience
and utility. Attracted to this study some years ago by my love of
sportsmanlike fair play in science, I have seen enough to convince me
of its great importance, and I wish to gain for it what interest I can.
The American Branch of the Society is in need of more support, and if
my article draws some new associates thereto, it will have served its
turn.
Apology is also needed for the repetition of the same passage in two
essays (pp. 59-61 and 96-7, 100-1). My excuse is that one cannot
always express the same thought in two ways that seem equally forcible,
so one has to copy one's former words.
The Crillon-quotation on page 62 is due to Mr. W. M. Salter (who
employed it in a similar manner in the 'Index' for August 24, 1882),
and the dream-metaphor on p. 174 is a reminiscence from some novel of
George Sand's--I forget which--read by me thirty years ago.
Finally, the revision of the essays has consisted almost entirely in
excisions. Probably less than a page and a half in all of new matter
has been added.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
December, 1896.
[1] B. P. Blood: The Flaw in Supremacy: Published by the Author,
Amsterdam, N. Y., 1893.
{x}