is UNITY OF PURPOSE. An enormous number of things in the world subserve
a common purpose. All the man-made systems, administrative, industrial,
military, or what not, exist each for its controlling purpose. Every
living being pursues its own peculiar purposes. They co-operate,
according to the degree of their development, in collective or tribal
purposes, larger ends thus enveloping lesser ones, until an absolutely
single, final and climacteric purpose subserved by all things without
exception might conceivably be reached. It is needless to say that the
appearances conflict with such a view. Any resultant, as I said in
my third lecture, MAY have been purposed in advance, but none of the
results we actually know in is world have in point of fact been purposed
in advance in all their details. Men and nations start with a vague
notion of being rich, or great, or good. Each step they make brings
unforeseen chances into sight, and shuts out older vistas, and the
specifications of the general purpose have to be daily changed. What is
reached in the end may be better or worse than what was proposed, but it
is always more complex and different.
Our different purposes also are at war with each other. Where one can't
crush the other out, they compromise; and the result is again different
from what anyone distinctly proposed beforehand. Vaguely and generally,
much of what was purposed may be gained; but everything makes strongly
for the view that our world is incompletely unified teleologically and
is still trying to get its unification better organized.
Whoever claims ABSOLUTE teleological unity, saying that there is one
purpose that every detail of the universe subserves, dogmatizes at
his own risk. Theologians who dogmalize thus find it more and more
impossible, as our acquaintance with the warring interests of the
world's parts grows more concrete, to imagine what the one climacteric
purpose may possibly be like. We see indeed that certain evils minister
to ulterior goods, that the bitter makes the cocktail better, and that
a bit of danger or hardship puts us agreeably to our trumps. We can
vaguely generalize this into the doctrine that all the evil in the
universe is but instrumental to its greater perfection. But the scale
of the evil actually in sight defies all human tolerance; and
transcendental idealism, in the pages of a Bradley or a Royce, brings us
no farther than the book of Job did--God's ways are not our ways, so let
us put our hands upon our mouth. A God who can relish such superfluities
of horror is no God for human beings to appeal to. His animal spirits
are too high. In other words the 'Absolute' with his one purpose, is not
the man-like God of common people.
7. AESTHETIC UNION among things also obtains, and is very analogous to
ideological union. Things tell a story. Their parts hang together so as
to work out a climax. They play into each other's hands expressively.
Retrospectively, we can see that altho no definite purpose presided
over a chain of events, yet the events fell into a dramatic form, with
a start, a middle, and a finish. In point of fact all stories end; and
here again the point of view of a many is that more natural one to take.
The world is full of partial stories that run parallel to one another,
beginning and ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere
at points, but we cannot unify them completely in our minds. In
following your life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from
my own. Even a biographer of twins would have to press them alternately
upon his reader's attention.
It follows that whoever says that the whole world tells one story utters
another of those monistic dogmas that a man believes at his risk. It is
easy to see the world's history pluralistically, as a rope of which each
fibre tells a separate tale; but to conceive of each cross-section of
the rope as an absolutely single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal
series into one being living an undivided life, is harder. We have
indeed the analogy of embryology to help us. The microscopist makes a
hundred flat cross-sections of a given embryo, and mentally unites them
into one solid whole. But the great world's ingredients, so far as
they are beings, seem, like the rope's fibres, to be discontinuous
cross-wise, and to cohere only in the longitudinal direction. Followed
in that direction they are many. Even the embryologist, when he follows
the DEVELOPMENT of his object, has to treat the history of each single
organ in turn. ABSOLUTE aesthetic union is thus another barely abstract
ideal. The world appears as something more epic than dramatic.
So far, then, we see how the world is unified by its many systems,
kinds, purposes, and dramas. That there is more union in all these ways
than openly appears is certainly true. That there MAY be one sovereign
purpose, system, kind, and story, is a legitimate hypothesis. All I
say here is that it is rash to affirm this dogmatically without better
evidence than we possess at present.
8. The GREAT monistic DENKMITTEL for a hundred years past has been
the notion of THE ONE KNOWER. The many exist only as objects for his
thought--exist in his dream, as it were; and AS HE KNOWS them, they have
one purpose, form one system, tell one tale for him. This notion of an
ALL-ENVELOPING NOETIC UNITY in things is the sublimest achievement of
intellectualist philosophy. Those who believe in the Absolute, as the
all-knower is termed, usually say that they do so for coercive reasons,
which clear thinkers cannot evade. The Absolute has far-reaching
practical consequences, some of which I drew attention in my second
lecture. Many kinds of difference important to us would surely follow
from its being true. I cannot here enter into all the logical proofs of
such a Being's existence, farther than to say that none of them seem to
me sound. I must therefore treat the notion of an All-Knower simply as
an hypothesis, exactly on a par logically with the pluralist notion that
there is no point of view, no focus of information extant, from
which the entire content of the universe is visible at once. "God's
consciousness," says Professor Royce,[Footnote: The Conception of
God, New York, 1897, p. 292.] "forms in its wholeness one luminously
transparent conscious moment"--this is the type of noetic unity on which
rationalism insists. Empiricism on the other hand is satisfied with the
type of noetic unity that is humanly familiar. Everything gets known by
SOME knower along with something else; but the knowers may in the end be
irreducibly many, and the greatest knower of them all may yet not know
the whole of everything, or even know what he does know at one single
stroke:--he may be liable to forget. Whichever type obtained, the world
would still be a universe noetically. Its parts would be conjoined
by knowledge, but in the one case the knowledge would be absolutely
unified, in the other it would be strung along and overlapped.
The notion of one instantaneous or eternal Knower--either adjective
here means the same thing--is, as I said, the great intellectualist
achievement of our time. It has practically driven out that conception
of 'Substance' which earlier philosophers set such store by, and by
which so much unifying work used to be done--universal substance which
alone has being in and from itself, and of which all the particulars
of experience are but forms to which it gives support. Substance has
succumbed to the pragmatic criticisms of the English school. It appears
now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are
actually grouped and given in coherent forms, the very forms in which
we finite knowers experience or think them together. These forms of
conjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience as are the
terms which they connect; and it is a great pragmatic achievement for
recent idealism to have made the world hang together in these directly
representable ways instead of drawing its unity from the 'inherence' of
its parts--whatever that may mean--in an unimaginable principle behind
the scenes.
'The world is one,' therefore, just so far as we experience it to be
concatenated, one by as many definite conjunctions as appear. But then
also NOT one by just as many definite DISjunctions as we find. The
oneness and the manyness of it thus obtain in respects which can
be separately named. It is neither a universe pure and simple nor
a multiverse pure and simple. And its various manners of being one
suggest, for their accurate ascertainment, so many distinct programs
of scientific work. Thus the pragmatic question 'What is the oneness
known-as? What practical difference will it make?' saves us from all
feverish excitement over it as a principle of sublimity and carries us
forward into the stream of experience with a cool head. The stream may
indeed reveal far more connexion and union than we now suspect, but we
are not entitled on pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in
any respect in advance.
It is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness can mean,
that probably the majority of you are satisfied with the sober attitude
which we have reached. Nevertheless there are possibly some radically
monistic souls among you who are not content to leave the one and the
many on a par. Union of various grades, union of diverse types, union
that stops at non-conductors, union that merely goes from next to next,
and means in many cases outer nextness only, and not a more internal
bond, union of concatenation, in short; all that sort of thing seems to
you a halfway stage of thought. The oneness of things, superior to their
manyness, you think must also be more deeply true, must be the more
real aspect of the world. The pragmatic view, you are sure, gives us
a universe imperfectly rational. The real universe must form an
unconditional unit of being, something consolidated, with its parts
co-implicated through and through. Only then could we consider our
estate completely rational. There is no doubt whatever that this
ultra-monistic way of thinking means a great deal to many minds. "One
Life, One Truth, one Love, one Principle, One Good, One God"--I quote
from a Christian Science leaflet which the day's mail brings into my
hands--beyond doubt such a confession of faith has pragmatically an
emotional value, and beyond doubt the word 'one' contributes to the
value quite as much as the other words. But if we try to realize
INTELLECTUALLY what we can possibly MEAN by such a glut of oneness we
are thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations again. It
means either the mere name One, the universe of discourse; or it means
the sum total of all the ascertainable particular conjunctions and
concatenations; or, finally, it means some one vehicle of conjunction
treated as all-inclusive, like one origin, one purpose, or one knower.
In point of fact it always means one KNOWER to those who take it
intellectually to-day. The one knower involves, they think, the other
forms of conjunction. His world must have all its parts co-implicated
in the one logical-aesthetical-teleological unit-picture which is his
eternal dream.
The character of the absolute knower's picture is however so impossible
for us to represent clearly, that we may fairly suppose that the
authority which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses, and probably
always will possess over some persons, draws its strength far less from
intellectual than from mystical grounds. To interpret absolute monism
worthily, be a mystic. Mystical states of mind in every degree are shown
by history, usually tho not always, to make for the monistic view. This
is no proper occasion to enter upon the general subject of mysticism,
but I will quote one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean.
The paragon of all monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of
Hindostan, and the paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late
Swami Vivekananda who visited our shores some years ago. The method of
Vedantism is the mystical method. You do not reason, but after going
through a certain discipline YOU SEE, and having seen, you can report
the truth. Vivekananda thus reports the truth in one of his lectures
here:
"Where is any more misery for him who sees this Oneness in the
Universe...this Oneness of life, Oneness of everything? ...This
separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child, nation
from nation, earth from moon, moon from sun, this separation between
atom and atom is the cause really of all the misery, and the Vedanta
says this separation does not exist, it is not real. It is merely
apparent, on the surface. In the heart of things there is Unity still.
If you go inside you find that Unity between man and man, women and
children, races and races, high and low, rich and poor, the gods and
men: all are One, and animals too, if you go deep enough, and he who has
attained to that has no more delusion. ... Where is any more delusion
for him? What can delude him? He knows the reality of everything, the
secret of everything. Where is there any more misery for him? What does
he desire? He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord, that
centre, that Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Bliss, Eternal
Knowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow nor
misery, nor discontent is there ... in the centre, the reality, there
is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated
everything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the Stainless, He
the Knower, He the Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is giving to
everyone what he deserves."
Observe how radical the character of the monism here is. Separation is
not simply overcome by the One, it is denied to exist. There is no many.
We are not parts of the One; It has no parts; and since in a sense we
undeniably ARE, it must be that each of us is the One, indivisibly and
totally. AN ABSOLUTE ONE, AND I THAT ONE--surely we have here a religion
which, emotionally considered, has a high pragmatic value; it imparts a
perfect sumptuosity of security. As our Swami says in another place:
"When man has seen himself as one with the infinite Being of the
universe, when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all women, all
angels, all gods, all animals, all plants, the whole universe has been
melted into that oneness, then all fear disappears. Whom to fear? Can
I hurt myself? Can I kill myself? Can I injure myself? Do you fear
yourself? Then will all sorrow disappear. What can cause me sorrow? I am
the One Existence of the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear;
of whom to be jealous? Of myself? Then all bad feelings disappear.
Against whom will I have this bad feeling? Against myself? There is none
in the universe but me. ... Kill out this differentiation; kill out this
superstition that there are many. 'He who, in this world of many, sees
that One; he who in this mass of insentiency sees that One Sentient
Being; he who in this world of shadow catches that Reality, unto him
belongs eternal peace, unto none else, unto none else.'"
We all have some ear for this monistic music: it elevates and reassures.
We all have at least the germ of mysticism in us. And when our idealists
recite their arguments for the Absolute, saying that the slightest union
admitted anywhere carries logically absolute Oneness with it, and that
the slightest separation admitted anywhere logically carries disunion
remediless and complete, I cannot help suspecting that the palpable weak
places in the intellectual reasonings they use are protected from their
own criticism by a mystical feeling that, logic or no logic, absolute
Oneness must somehow at any cost be true. Oneness overcomes MORAL
separateness at any rate. In the passion of love we have the mystic germ
of what might mean a total union of all sentient life. This mystical
germ wakes up in us on hearing the monistic utterances, acknowledges
their authority, and assigns to intellectual considerations a secondary
place.
I will dwell no longer on these religious and moral aspects of the
question in this lecture. When I come to my final lecture there will be
something more to say.
Leave then out of consideration for the moment the authority which
mystical insights may be conjectured eventually to possess; treat the
problem of the One and the Many in a purely intellectual way; and we
see clearly enough where pragmatism stands. With her criterion of the
practical differences that theories make, we see that she must equally
abjure absolute monism and absolute pluralism. The world is one just
so far as its parts hang together by any definite connexion. It is many
just so far as any definite connexion fails to obtain. And finally it
is growing more and more unified by those systems of connexion at least
which human energy keeps framing as time goes on.
It is possible to imagine alternative universes to the one we know, in
which the most various grades and types of union should be embodied.
Thus the lowest grade of universe would be a world of mere WITHNESS, of
which the parts were only strung together by the conjunction 'and.' Such
a universe is even now the collection of our several inner lives. The
spaces and times of your imagination, the objects and events of your
day-dreams are not only more or less incoherent inter se, but are wholly
out of definite relation with the similar contents of anyone else's
mind. Our various reveries now as we sit here compenetrate each other
idly without influencing or interfering. They coexist, but in no order
and in no receptacle, being the nearest approach to an absolute 'many'
that we can conceive. We cannot even imagine any reason why they SHOULD
be known all together, and we can imagine even less, if they were known
together, how they could be known as one systematic whole.
But add our sensations and bodily actions, and the union mounts to
a much higher grade. Our audita et visa and our acts fall into those
receptacles of time and space in which each event finds its date and
place. They form 'things' and are of 'kinds' too, and can be classed.
Yet we can imagine a world of things and of kinds in which the causal
interactions with which we are so familiar should not exist. Everything
there might be inert towards everything else, and refuse to propagate
its influence. Or gross mechanical influences might pass, but no
chemical action. Such worlds would be far less unified than ours. Again
there might be complete physico-chemical interaction, but no minds; or
minds, but altogether private ones, with no social life; or social
life limited to acquaintance, but no love; or love, but no customs
or institutions that should systematize it. No one of these grades of
universe would be absolutely irrational or disintegrated, inferior tho
it might appear when looked at from the higher grades. For instance, if
our minds should ever become 'telepathically' connected, so that we knew
immediately, or could under certain conditions know immediately, each
what the other was thinking, the world we now live in would appear to
the thinkers in that world to have been of an inferior grade.
With the whole of past eternity open for our conjectures to range in, it
may be lawful to wonder whether the various kinds of union now realized
in the universe that we inhabit may not possibly have been successively
evolved after the fashion in which we now see human systems evolving in
consequence of human needs. If such an hypothesis were legitimate, total
oneness would appear at the end of things rather than at their origin.
In other words the notion of the 'Absolute' would have to be replaced by
that of the 'Ultimate.' The two notions would have the same content--the
maximally unified content of fact, namely--but their time-relations
would be positively reversed. [Footnote: Compare on the Ultimate,
Mr. Schiller's essay "Activity and Substance," in his book entitled
Humanism, p. 204.]
After discussing the unity of the universe in this pragmatic way, you
ought to see why I said in my second lecture, borrowing the word from my
friend G. Papini, that pragmatism tends to UNSTIFFEN all our theories.
The world's oneness has generally been affirmed abstractly only, and as
if anyone who questioned it must be an idiot. The temper of monists has
been so vehement, as almost at times to be convulsive; and this way of
holding a doctrine does not easily go with reasonable discussion and the
drawing of distinctions. The theory of the Absolute, in particular, has
had to be an article of faith, affirmed dogmatically and exclusively.
The One and All, first in the order of being and of knowing, logically
necessary itself, and uniting all lesser things in the bonds of mutual
necessity, how could it allow of any mitigation of its inner
rigidity? The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of
independence of any one of its parts from the control of the totality,
would ruin it. Absolute unity brooks no degrees--as well might you claim
absolute purity for a glass of water because it contains but a single
little cholera-germ. The independence, however infinitesimal, of a part,
however small, would be to the Absolute as fatal as a cholera-germ.
Pluralism on the other hand has no need of this dogmatic rigoristic
temper. Provided you grant SOME separation among things, some tremor of
independence, some free play of parts on one another, some real novelty
or chance, however minute, she is amply satisfied, and will allow you
any amount, however great, of real union. How much of union there may
be is a question that she thinks can only be decided empirically. The
amount may be enormous, colossal; but absolute monism is shattered if,
along with all the union, there has to be granted the slightest modicum,
the most incipient nascency, or the most residual trace, of a separation
that is not 'overcome.'
Pragmatism, pending the final empirical ascertainment of just what the
balance of union and disunion among things may be, must obviously range
herself upon the pluralistic side. Some day, she admits, even total
union, with one knower, one origin, and a universe consolidated in
every conceivable way, may turn out to be the most acceptable of all
hypotheses. Meanwhile the opposite hypothesis, of a world imperfectly
unified still, and perhaps always to remain so, must be sincerely
entertained. This latter hypothesis is pluralism's doctrine. Since
absolute monism forbids its being even considered seriously, branding it
as irrational from the start, it is clear that pragmatism must turn its
back on absolute monism, and follow pluralism's more empirical path.
This leaves us with the common-sense world, in which we find things
partly joined and partly disjoined. 'Things,' then, and their
'conjunctions'--what do such words mean, pragmatically handled? In
my next lecture, I will apply the pragmatic method to the stage of
philosophizing known as Common Sense.
Lecture V
Pragmatism and Common Sense
In the last lecture we turned ourselves from the usual way of talking
of the universe's oneness as a principle, sublime in all its blankness,
towards a study of the special kinds of union which the universe
enfolds. We found many of these to coexist with kinds of separation
equally real. "How far am I verified?" is the question which each
kind of union and each kind of separation asks us here, so as good
pragmatists we have to turn our face towards experience, towards
'facts.'
Absolute oneness remains, but only as an hypothesis, and that hypothesis
is reduced nowadays to that of an omniscient knower who sees all things
without exception as forming one single systematic fact. But the knower
in question may still be conceived either as an Absolute or as an
Ultimate; and over against the hypothesis of him in either form the
counter-hypothesis that the widest field of knowledge that ever was or
will be still contains some ignorance, may be legitimately held. Some
bits of information always may escape.