(6) The various worlds of individual opinion, as numerous as men are.

(7) The worlds of sheer madness and vagary, also indefinitely numerous.

_Every object we think of gets at last referred to one world or

another of this or of some similar list._ It settles into our belief

as a common-sense object, a scientific object, an abstract object, a

mythological object, an object of some one's mistaken conception, or

a madman's object; and it reaches this state sometimes immediately,

but often only after being hustled and bandied about amongst other

objects until it finds some which will tolerate its presence and

stand in relations to it which nothing contradicts. The molecules and

ether-waves of the scientific world, for example, simply kick the

object's warmth and color out, they refuse to have any relations with

them. But the world of 'idols of the tribe' stands ready to take them

in. Just so the world of classic myth takes up the winged horse; the

world of individual hallucination, the vision of the candle; the world

of abstract truth, the proposition that justice is kingly, though no

actual king be just. The various worlds themselves, however, appear

(as aforesaid) to most men's minds in no very definitely conceived

relation to each other, and our attention, when it turns to one, is apt

to drop the others for the time being out of its account. Propositions

concerning the different worlds are made from 'different points of

view'; and in this more or less chaotic state the consciousness of most

thinkers remains to the end. Each world _whilst it is attended to_ is

real after its own fashion; only the reality lapses with the attention.

THE WORLD OF 'PRACTICAL REALITIES.'

Each thinker, however, has dominant habits of attention; and these

_practically elect from among the various worlds some one to be for him

the world of ultimate realities_. From this world's objects he does not

appeal. Whatever positively contradicts them must get into another

world or die. The horse, e.g., may have wings to its heart's content,

so long as it does not pretend to be the real world's horse--_that_

horse is absolutely wingless. For most men, as we shall immediately

see, the 'things of sense' hold this prerogative position, and are the

absolutely real world's nucleus. Other things, to be sure, may be real

for this man or for that--things of science, abstract moral relations,

things of the Christian theology, or what not. But even for the special

man, these things are usually real with a less real reality than that

of the things of sense. They are taken less seriously; and the very

utmost that can be said for anyone's belief in them is that it is as

strong as his 'belief in his own senses.'[297]

In all this the everlasting partiality of our nature shows itself, our

inveterate propensity to choice. For, in the strict and ultimate sense

of the word existence, everything which can be thought of at all exists

as _some_ sort of object, whether mythical object, individual thinker's

object, or object in outer space and for intelligence at large. Errors,

fictions, tribal beliefs, are parts of the whole great Universe which

God has made, and He must have meant all these things to be in it,

each in its respective place. But for us finite creatures, "'tis to

consider too curiously to consider so." The mere fact of appearing

as an object at all is not enough to constitute reality. That may be

metaphysical reality, reality for God; but what we need is practical

reality, reality for ourselves; and, to have that, an object must not

only appear, but it must appear both _interesting_ and _important_. The

worlds whose objects are neither interesting nor important we treat

simply negatively, we brand them as _un_real.

_In the relative sense,_ then, the sense in which we contrast reality

with simple _un_reality, and in which one thing is said to have _more_

reality than another, and to be more believed, _reality means simply

relation to our emotional and active life._ This is the only sense

which the word ever has in the mouths of practical men. _In this sense,

whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real;_ whenever an

object so appeals to us that we turn to it, accept it, fill our mind

with it, or practically take account of it, so far it is real for us,

and we believe it. Whenever, on the contrary, we ignore it, fail to

consider it or act upon it, despise it, reject it, forget it, so far it

is unreal for us and disbelieved. Hume's account of the matter was then

essentially correct, when he said that belief in anything was simply

the having the idea of it in a lively and active manner:

"I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively,

forcible, firm, steady conception of an object than the imagination

alone is ever able to attain.... It consists not in the peculiar

nature or order of the ideas, but in the _manner_ of their conception

and in their _feeling_ to the mind. I confess that it is impossible

perfectly to explain this feeling or manner of conception.... Its

true and proper name... is _belief_, which is a term that everyone

sufficiently understands in common life. And in philosophy we can go

no farther than assert that belief is something felt by the mind,

which distinguishes the idea of the judgment from the fictions of the

imagination.[298] It gives them more weight and influence; makes them

appear of greater importance; enforces them in the mind; gives them

a superior influence on the passions, and renders them the governing

principle in our actions."[299]

Or as Prof. Bain puts it: "In its essential character, belief is a

phase of our active nature--otherwise called the Will."[300]

* * * * *

The object of belief, then, reality or real existence, is something

quite different from all the other predicates which a subject may

possess. Those are properties intellectually or sensibly intuited.

When we add any one of them to the subject, we increase the intrinsic

content of the latter, we enrich its picture in our mind. But adding

reality does not enrich the picture in any such inward way; it leaves

it inwardly as it finds it, and only fixes it and stamps it in to _us_.

"The real," as Kant says, "contains no more than the possible. A

hundred real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred

possible dollars.... By whatever, and by however many, predicates I

may think a thing, nothing is added to it if I add that the thing

exists.... Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain,

we must always step outside of it in order to attribute to it

existence."[301]

The 'stepping outside' of it is the establishment either of immediate

practical relations between it and ourselves, or of relations between

it and other objects with which we have immediate practical relations.

Relations of this sort, which are as yet not transcended or superseded

by others, are _ipso facto_ real relations, and confer reality upon

their objective term. _The fons et origo of all reality, whether from_

_the absolute or the practical point of view, is thus subjective, is

ourselves._ As bare logical thinkers, without emotional reaction, we

give reality to whatever objects we think of, for they are really

phenomena, or objects of our passing thought, if nothing more. But,

_as thinkers with emotional reaction, we give what seems to us a still

higher degree of reality to whatever things we select and emphasize

and turn to_ WITH A WILL. These are our _living_ realities; and not

only these, but all the other things which are intimately connected

with these. Reality, starting from our Ego, thus sheds itself from

point to point--first, upon all objects which have an immediate sting

of interest for our Ego in them, and next, upon the objects most

continuously related with these. It only fails when the connecting

thread is lost. A whole system may be real, if it only hang to our

Ego by one immediately _stinging_ term. But what contradicts any such

stinging term, even though it be another stinging term itself, is

either not believed, or only believed after settlement of the dispute.

* * * * *

We reach thus the important conclusion that _our own reality, that

sense of our own life which we at every moment possess, is the ultimate

of ultimates for our belief._ 'As sure as I exist!'--this is our

uttermost warrant for the being of all other things. As Descartes made

the indubitable reality of the _cogito_ go bail for the reality of all

that the _cogito_ involved, so we all of us, feeling our own present

reality with absolutely coercive force, ascribe an all but equal degree

of reality, first to whatever things we lay hold on with a sense of

personal need, and second, to whatever farther things continuously

belong with these. "Mein Jetzt und Hier," as Prof. Lipps says, "ist der

letzte Angelpunkt für alle Wirklichkeit, also alle Erkenntniss."

The world of living realities as contrasted with unrealities is thus

anchored in the Ego, considered as an active and emotional term.[302]

That is the hook from which the rest dangles, the absolute support.

And as from a painted hook it has been said that one can only hang

a painted chain, so conversely, from a real hook only a real chain

can properly be hung. _Whatever things have intimate and continuous

connection with my life are things of whose reality I cannot doubt._

Whatever things fail to establish this connection are things which are

practically no better for me than if they existed not at all.

In certain forms of melancholic perversion of the sensibilities and

reactive powers, nothing touches us intimately, rouses us, or wakens

natural feeling. The consequence is the complaint so often heard from

melancholic patients, that nothing is believed in by them as it used to

be, and that all sense of reality is fled from life. They are sheathed

in india-rubber; nothing penetrates to the quick or draws blood, as it

were. According to Griesinger, "I see, I hear!" such patients say, "but

the objects do not reach me, it is as if there were a wall between me

and the outer world!"

"In such patients there often is an alteration of the cutaneous

sensibility, such that things feel indistinct or sometimes rough

and woolly. But even were this change always present, it would not

completely explain the psychic phenomenon... which reminds us more

of the alteration in our psychic relations to the outer world which

advancing age on the one hand, and on the other emotions and passions,

may bring about. In childhood we feel ourselves to be closer to the

world of sensible phenomena, we live immediately with them and in

them; an intimately vital tie binds us and them together. But with

the ripening of reflection this tie is loosened, the warmth of our

interest cools, things look differently to us, and we act more as

foreigners to the outer world, even though we know it a great deal

better. Joy and expansive emotions in general draw it nearer to us

again. Everything makes a more lively impression, and with the quick

immediate return of this warm receptivity for sense impressions, joy

makes us feel young again. In depressing emotions it is the other

way. Outer things, whether living or inorganic, suddenly grow cold

and foreign to us, and even our favorite objects of interest feel as

if they belonged to us no more. Under these circumstances, receiving

no longer from anything a lively impression, we cease to turn

towards outer things, and the sense of inward loneliness grows upon

us.... Where there is no strong intelligence to control this _blasé_

condition, this psychic coldness and lack of interest, the issue of

these states in which all seems so cold and hollow, the heart dried

up, the world grown dead and empty, is often suicide or the deeper

forms of insanity."[303]

THE PARAMOUNT REALITY OF SENSATIONS.

But now we are met by questions of detail. What does this stirring,

this exciting power, this interest, consist in, which some objects

have? which _are_ those 'intimate relations' with our life which give

reality? And what things stand in these relations immediately, and

what others are so closely connected with the former that (in Hume's

language) we 'carry our disposition' also on to them?

In a simple and direct way these questions cannot be answered at all.

The whole history of human thought is but an unfinished attempt to

answer them. For what have men been trying to find out, since men were

men, but just those things: "Where do our true interests lie--which

relations shall we call the intimate and real ones--which things shall

we call living realities and which not?" A few psychological points

can, however, be made clear.

_Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger

relation, suffices to make an object real._ The barest appeal to our

attention is enough for that. Revert to the beginning of the chapter,

and take the candle entering the vacant mind. The mind was waiting for

just some such object to make its spring upon. It makes its spring

and the candle is believed. But when the candle appears at the same

time with other objects, it must run the gauntlet of their rivalry,

and then it becomes a question which of the various candidates for

attention shall compel belief. As a rule we believe as much as we

can. We would believe everything if we only could. When objects are

represented by us quite unsystematically they conflict but little with

each other, and the number of them which in this chaotic manner we

can believe is limitless. The primitive savage's mind is a jungle in

which hallucinations, dreams, superstitions, conceptions, and sensible

objects all flourish alongside of each other, unregulated except by the

attention turning in this way or in that. The child's mind is the same.

It is only as objects become permanent and their relations fixed that

discrepancies and contradictions are felt and must be settled in some

stable way. As a rule, the success with which a contradicted object

maintains itself in our belief is proportional to several qualities

which it must possess. Of these the one which would be put first by

most people, because it characterizes objects of sensation, is its--

(1) Coerciveness over attention, or the mere power to possess

consciousness: then follow--

(2) Liveliness, or sensible pungency, especially in the way of exciting

pleasure or pain;

(3) Stimulating effect upon the will, i.e., capacity to arouse active

impulses, the more instinctive the better;

(4) Emotional interest, as object of love, dread, admiration, desire,

etc.;

(5) Congruity with certain favorite forms of contemplation--unity,

simplicity, permanence, and the like;

(6) Independence of other causes, and its own causal importance.

These characters run into each other. Coerciveness is the result of

liveliness or emotional interest. What is lively and interesting

stimulates _eo ipso_ the will; congruity holds of active impulses as

well as of contemplative forms; causal independence and importance

suit a certain contemplative demand, etc. I will therefore abandon all

attempt at a formal treatment, and simply proceed to make remarks in

the most convenient order of exposition.

* * * * *

As a whole, sensations are more lively and are judged more real than

conceptions; things met with every hour more real than things seen

once; attributes perceived when awake, more real than attributes

perceived in a dream. But, owing to the _diverse relations contracted

by the various objects with each other,_ the simple rule that the

lively and permanent is the real is often enough disguised. A conceived

thing may be deemed more real than a certain sensible thing, if it only

be intimately related to other sensible things more vivid, permanent,

or interesting than the first one. Conceived molecular vibrations,

e.g., are by the physicist judged more real than felt warmth, because

so intimately related to all those other facts of motion in the world

which he has made his special study. Similarly, a rare thing may be

deemed more real than a permanent thing if it be more widely related

to other permanent things. All the occasional crucial observations of

science are examples of this. A rare experience, too, is likely to be

judged more real than a permanent one, if it be more interesting and

exciting. Such is the sight of Saturn through a telescope; such are the

occasional insights and illuminations which upset our habitual ways of

thought.

But no mere floating conception, no mere disconnected rarity, ever

displaces vivid things or permanent things from our belief. A

conception, to prevail, must _terminate_ in the world of orderly

sensible experience. A rare phenomenon, to displace frequent ones,

must belong with others more frequent still. The history of science

is strewn with wrecks and ruins of theory--essences and principles,

fluids and forces--once fondly clung to, but found to hang together

with no facts of sense. And exceptional phenomena solicit our belief in

vain until such time as we chance to conceive them as of kinds already

admitted to exist. What science means by 'verification' is no more

than this, that no object of conception shall be believed which sooner

or later has not some permanent and vivid object of sensation for its

_term_. Compare what was said on pages 3-7, above.

_Sensible objects are thus either our realities or the tests of our

realities. Conceived objects must show sensible effects or else

be disbelieved._ And the effects, even though reduced to relative

unreality when their causes come to view (as heat, which molecular

vibrations make unreal), are yet the things on which our knowledge

of the causes rests. Strange mutual dependence this, in which the

appearance needs the reality in order to exist, but the reality needs

the appearance in order to be known!

_Sensible vividness or pungency is then the vital factor in reality

when once the conflict between objects, and the connecting of them

together in the mind, has begun._ No object which neither possesses

this vividness in its own right nor is able to borrow it from anything

else has a chance of making headway against vivid rivals, or of rousing

in us that reaction in which belief consists. On the vivid objects we

_pin_, as the saying is, our faith in all the rest; and out belief

returns instinctively even to those of them from which reflection has

led it away. Witness the obduracy with which the popular world of

colors, sounds, and smells holds its own against that of molecules and

vibrations. Let the physicist himself but nod, like Homer, and the

world of sense becomes his absolute reality again.[304]

That things originally devoid of this stimulating power should be

enabled, by association with other things which have it, to compel our

belief as if they had it themselves, is a remarkable psychological

fact, which since Hume's time it has been impossible to overlook.

"The vividness of the first conception," he writes, "diffuses itself

along the relations and is conveyed, as by so many pipes or channels,

to every idea that has any communication with the primary one....

Superstitious people are fond of the relics of saints and holy men,

for the same reason that they seek after types and images, in order

to enliven their devotion and give them a more intimate and strong

conception of those exemplary lives.... Now, 'tis evident one of

the best relics a devotee could procure would be the handiwork of a

saint, and if his clothes and furniture are ever to be considered in

this light, 'tis because they were once at his disposal, and were

moved and affected by him; in which respect they are... connected

with him by a shorter train of consequences than any of those from

which we learn the reality of his existence. This phenomenon clearly

proves that a present impression, with a relation of causation,

may enliven any idea, and consequently produce belief or assent,

according to the precedent definition of it.... It has been remarked

among the Mahometans as well as Christians that those pilgrims who

have seen Mecca or the Holy Land are ever after more faithful and

zealous believers than those who have not had that advantage. A man

whose memory presents him with a lively image of the Red Sea and the

Desert and Jerusalem and Galilee can never doubt of any miraculous

events which are related either by Moses or the Evangelists. The

lively idea of the places passes by an easy transition to the facts

which are supposed to have been related to them by contiguity, and

increases the belief by increasing the vivacity of the conception. The

remembrance of those fields and rivers has the same influence as a new

argument.... The ceremonies of the Catholic religion may be considered

as instances of the same nature. The devotees of that strange

superstition usually plead in excuse for the mummeries with which they

are upbraided that they feel the good effect of external motions and

postures and actions in enlivening their devotion and quickening their

fervor, which otherwise would decay, if directed entirely to distant

and immaterial objects. We shadow out the objects of our faith, say

they, in sensible types and images, and render them more present to us

by the immediate presence of these types than it is possible for us to

do merely by an intellectual view and contemplation."[305]

Hume's cases are rather trivial; and the things which associated

sensible objects make us believe in are supposed by him to be unreal.

But all the more manifest for that is the fact of their psychological

influence. Who does not 'realize' more the fact of a dead or distant

friend's existence, at the moment when a portrait, letter, garment or

other material reminder of him is found? The whole notion of him then

grows pungent and speaks to us and shakes us, in a manner unknown at

other times. In children's minds, fancies and realities live side by

side. But however lively their fancies may be, they still gain help

from association with reality. The imaginative child identifies its

_dramatis personæ_ with some doll or other material object, and this

evidently solidifies belief, little as it may resemble what it is held

to stand for. A thing not too interesting by its own real qualities

generally does the best service here. The most useful doll I ever saw

was a large cucumber in the hands of a little Amazonian-Indian girl;

she nursed it and washed it and rocked it to sleep in a hammock, and

talked to it all day long--there was no part in life which the cucumber

did not play. Says Mr. Tylor:

"An imaginative child will make a dog do duty for a horse, or a

soldier for a shepherd, till at last the objective resemblance almost

disappears, and a bit of wood may be dragged about, resembling a ship

on the sea or a coach on the road. Here the likeness of the bit of

wood to a ship or coach is very slight indeed; but it is a thing, and

can be moved about,... and is an evident assistance to the child in

enabling it to arrange and develop its ideas.... Of how much use...

may be seen by taking it away, and leaving the child nothing to play

with.... In later years and among highly educated people the mental

process which goes on in a child's playing with wooden soldiers and

horses, though it never disappears, must be sought for in more complex

phenomena. Perhaps nothing in after-life more closely resembles the

effect of a doll upon a child than the effect of the illustrations

of a tale upon a grown reader. Here the objective resemblance is

very indefinite... yet what reality is given to the scene by a good

picture.... Mr. Backhouse one day noticed in Van Diemen's Land a woman

arranging several stones that were flat, oval, and about two inches

wide, and marked in various directions with black and red lines.

These, he learned, represented absent friends, and one larger than the

rest stood for a fat native woman on Flinder's Island, known by the

name of Mother Brown. Similar practices are found among far higher

races than the ill-fated Tasmanians. Among some North American tribes

a mother who has lost a child keeps its memory ever present to her by

filling its cradle with black feathers and quills, and carrying it

about with her for a year or more. When she stops anywhere, she sets

up the cradle and talks to it as she goes about her work, just as she

would have done if the dead body had been still alive within it. Here

we have an image; but in Africa we find a rude doll representing the

child, kept as a memorial.... Bastian saw Indian women in Peru who

had lost an infant carrying about on their backs a wooden doll to

represent it."[306]

To many persons among us, photographs of lost ones seem to be fetishes.

They, it is true, resemble; but the fact that the mere materiality of

the reminder is almost as important as its resemblance is shown by

the popularity a hundred years ago of the black taffeta 'silhouettes'

which are still found among family relics, and of one of which Fichte

could write to his affianced: '_Die Farbe fehlt, das Auge fehlt, es

fehlt der himmlische Ausdruck deiner lieblichen Züge_'--and yet go on

worshipping it all the same. The opinion so stoutly professed by many,

that language is essential to thought, seems to have this much of truth

in it, that all our inward images tend invincibly to attach themselves

to something sensible, so as to gain in corporeity and life. Words

serve this purpose, gestures serve it, stones, straws, chalk-marks,

anything will do. As soon as anyone of these things stands for the

idea, the latter seems to be more real. Some persons, the present

writer among the number, can hardly lecture without a blackboard:

the abstract conceptions must be symbolized by letters, squares or

circles, and the relations between them by lines. All this symbolism,

linguistic, graphic, and dramatic, has other uses too, for it abridges

thought and fixes terms. But one of its uses is surely to rouse the

believing reaction and give to the ideas a more living reality. As,

when we are told a story, and shown the very knife that did the murder,

the very ring whose hiding-place the clairvoyant revealed, the whole

thing passes from fairy-land to mother-earth, so here we believe all

the more, if only we see that 'the bricks are alive to tell the tale.'

* * * * *

So much for the prerogative position of sensations in regard to our

belief. But among the sensations themselves all are not deemed equally

real. The more practically important ones, the more permanent ones,

and the more æsthetically apprehensible ones are selected from the

mass, to be believed in most of all; the others are degraded to the

position of mere signs and suggestions of these. This fact has already

been adverted to in former chapters.[307] The real color of a thing

is that one color-sensation which it gives us when most favorably

lighted for vision. So of its real size, its real shape, etc.--these

are but optical sensations selected out of thousands of others, because

they have æsthetic characteristics which appeal to our convenience

or delight. But I will not repeat what I have already written about

this matter, but pass on to our treatment of tactile and muscular

sensations, as 'primary qualities,' more real than those 'secondary'

qualities which eye and ear and nose reveal. Why do we thus so markedly

select the _tangible_ to be the real? Our motives are not far to seek.

The tangible qualities are the least fluctuating. When we get them at

all we get them the same. The other qualities fluctuate enormously

as our relative position to the object changes. Then, more decisive

still, the tactile properties are those most intimately connected with

our weal or woe. A dagger hurts us only when in contact with our skin,

a poison only when we take it into our mouths, and we can only use

an object for our advantage when we have it in our muscular control.

It is as tangibles, then, that things concern us most; and the other

senses, so far as their practical use goes, do but warn us of what

tangible things to expect. They are but organs of anticipatory touch,

as Berkeley has with perfect clearness explained.[308]

Among all sensations, the _most_ belief-compelling are those productive

of pleasure or of pain. Locke expressly makes the _pleasure_- or

_pain_-giving quality to be the ultimate human criterion of anything's

reality. Discussing (with a supposed Berkeleyan before Berkeley) the

notion that all our perceptions may be but a dream, he says:

"He may please to dream that I make him this answer... that I believe

he will allow a very manifest difference between dreaming of being in

the fire and being actually in it. But yet if he be resolved to appear

so sceptical as to maintain that what I call being actually in the

fire is nothing but a dream, and that we cannot thereby certainly know

that any such thing as fire actually exists without us, I answer that

we, certainly finding that pleasure or pain [or emotion of any sort]

follows upon the application of certain objects to us, whose existence

we perceive, or dream that we perceive by our senses, _this certainly

is as great as our happiness or misery,_ beyond which we have no

concernment to know or to be."[309]

THE INFLUENCE OF EMOTION AND ACTIVE IMPULSE ON BELIEF.

The quality of arousing emotion, of shaking, moving us or inciting us

to action, has as much to do with our belief in an object's reality

as the quality of giving pleasure or pain. In Chapter XXIV I shall

seek to show that our emotions probably owe their pungent quality to

the bodily sensations which they involve. Our tendency to believe

in emotionally exciting objects (objects of fear, desire, etc.) is

thus explained without resorting to any fundamentally new principle

of choice. Speaking generally, the more a conceived object _excites_

us, the more reality it has. The same object excites us differently

at different times. Moral and religious truths come 'home' to us far

more on some occasions than on others. As Emerson says, "There is a

difference between one and another hour of life in their authority

and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments,... yet there is

a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more

reality to them than to all other experiences." The 'depth' is partly,

no doubt, the insight into wider systems of unified relation, but far

more often than that it is the emotional thrill. Thus, to descend to

more trivial examples, a man who has no belief in ghosts by daylight

will temporarily believe in them when, alone at midnight, he feels his

blood curdle at a mysterious sound or vision, his heart thumping, and

his legs impelled to flee. The thought of falling when we walk along a

curbstone awakens no emotion of dread; so no sense of reality attaches

to it, and we are sure we shall not fall. On a precipice's edge,

however, the sickening emotion which the notion of a possible fall

engenders makes us believe in the latter's imminent reality, and quite

unfits us to proceed.

The greatest proof that a man is _sui compos_ is his ability to suspend

belief in presence of an emotionally exciting idea. To give this power

is the highest result of education. In untutored minds the power does

not exist. _Every exciting thought in the natural man carries credence

with it. To conceive with passion is eo ipso to affirm._ As Bagehot

says:

"The Caliph Omar burnt the Alexandrian Library, saying: 'All books

which contain what is not in the Koran are dangerous. All which

contain what is in it are useless!' Probably no one ever had an

intenser belief in anything than Omar had in this. Yet it is

impossible to imagine it preceded by an argument. His belief in

Mahomet, in the Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, probably

came to him in spontaneous rushes of emotion; there may have been

little vestiges of argument floating here and there, but they did

not justify the strength of the emotion, still less did they create

it, and they hardly even excused it.... Probably, when the subject

is thoroughly examined, conviction will be found to be one of the

intensest of human emotions, and one most closely connected with the

bodily state,... accompanied or preceded by the sensation that Scott

makes his seer describe as the prelude of a prophecy:

'At length the fatal answer came,

In characters of living flame--

Not spoke in words, nor blazed in scroll,

But borne and branded on my soul.'

A hot flash seems to burn across the brain. Men in these intense

states of mind have altered all history, changed for better or worse

the creed of myriads, and desolated or redeemed provinces or ages. Nor

is this intensity a sign of truth, for it is precisely strongest in

those points in which men differ most from each other. John Knox felt

it in his anti-Catholicism; Ignatius Loyola in his anti-Protestantism;

and both, I suppose, felt it as much as it is possible to feel

it."[310]

The reason of the belief is undoubtedly the bodily commotion which the

exciting idea sets up. 'Nothing which I can feel like _that_ can be

false.' All our religious and supernatural beliefs are of this order.

The surest warrant for immortality is the yearning of our bowels for

our dear ones; for God, the sinking sense it gives us to imagine no

such Providence or help. So of our political or pecuniary hopes and

fears, and things and persons dreaded and desired. "A grocer has a

full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete theory of the

sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt.... A girl in a country

parsonage will be sure that Paris never can be taken, or that Bismarck

is a wretch"--all because they have either conceived these things at

some moment with passion, or associated them with other things which

they have conceived with passion.

M. Renouvier calls this belief of a thing for no other reason than that

we conceive it with passion, by the name of _mental vertigo_.[311]

Other objects whisper doubt or disbelief; but the object of passion

makes us deaf to all but itself, and we affirm it unhesitatingly.

Such objects are the delusions of insanity, which the insane person

can at odd moments steady himself against, but which again return to

sweep him off his feet. Such are the revelations of mysticism. Such,

particularly, are the sudden beliefs which animate mobs of men when

frenzied impulse to action is involved. Whatever be the action in

point--whether the stoning of a prophet, the hailing of a conqueror,

the burning of a witch, the baiting of a heretic or Jew, the starting

of a forlorn hope, or the flying from a foe--the fact that to believe

a certain object will _cause that action to explode_ is a sufficient

reason for that belief to come. The motor impulse sweeps it unresisting

in its train.

The whole history of witchcraft and early medicine is a commentary

on the facility with which anything which chances to be conceived

is believed the moment the belief chimes in with an emotional mood.

'The cause of sickness?' When a savage asks the cause of anything he

means to ask exclusively 'What is to blame?' The theoretic curiosity

starts from the practical life's demands. Let some one then accuse a

necromancer, suggest a charm or spell which has been cast, and no more

'evidence' is asked for. What evidence is required beyond this intimate

sense of the culprit's responsibility, to which our very viscera and

limbs reply?[312]

Human credulity in the way of therapeutics has similar psychological

roots. If there is anything intolerable (especially to the heart of a

woman), it is to do nothing when a loved one is sick or in pain. To do

anything is a relief. Accordingly, whatever remedy may be suggested is

a spark on inflammable soil. The mind makes its spring towards action

on that cue, sends for that remedy, and for a day at least believes the

danger past. Blame, dread, and hope are thus the great belief-inspiring

passions, and cover among them the future, the present, and the past.

These remarks illustrate the earlier heads of the list on page

292. Whichever represented objects give us sensations, especially

interesting ones, or incite our motor impulses, or arouse our hate,

desire, or fear, are real enough for us. Our requirements in the way

of reality terminate in our own acts and emotions, our own pleasures

and pains. These are the ultimate fixities from which, as we formerly

observed, the whole chain of our beliefs depends, object hanging to

object, as the bees, in swarming, hang to each other until, _de proche

en proche,_ the supporting branch, the Self, is reached and held.

BELIEF IN OBJECTS OF THEORY.

Now the merely conceived or imagined objects which our mind represents

as hanging to the sensations (causing them, etc.), filling the gaps

between them, and weaving their interrupted chaos into order are

innumerable. Whole systems of them conflict with other systems, and

our choice of which system shall carry our belief is governed by

principles which are simple enough, however subtle and difficult may

be their application to details. _The conceived system, to pass for

true, must at least include the reality of the sensible objects in

it, by explaining them as effects on us, if nothing more. The system

which includes the most of them, and definitely explains or pretends

to explain the most of them, will, ceteris paribus, prevail._ It is

needless to say how far mankind still is from having excogitated such

a system. But the various materialisms, idealisms, and hylozoisms show

with what industry the attempt is forever made. It is conceivable

that several rival theories should equally well include the actual

order of our sensations in their scheme, much as the one-fluid and

two-fluid theories of electricity formulated all the common electrical

phenomena equally well. The sciences are full of these alternatives.

Which theory is then to be believed? _That theory will be most

generally believed which, besides offering us objects able to account

satisfactorily for our sensible experience_, _also offers those which

are most interesting, those which appeal most urgently to our æsthetic,

emotional, and active needs._ So here, in the higher intellectual life,

the same selection among general conceptions goes on which went on

among the sensations themselves. First, a word of their relation to our

emotional and active needs--and here I can do no better than quote from

an article published some years ago:[313]

"A philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either

of two defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First,

its ultimate principle must not be one that essentially baffles

and disappoints our dearest desires and most cherished powers.

A pessimistic principle like Schopenhauer's incurably vicious

Will-substance, or Hartmann's wicked jack-at-all-trades, the

Unconscious, will perpetually call forth essays at other philosophies.

Incompatibility of the future with their desires and active tendencies

is, in fact, to most men a source of more fixed disquietude than

uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to overcome the 'problem of

evil,' the 'mystery of pain.' There is no problem of 'good.'

"But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of

contradicting our active propensities is to give them no Object

whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so

incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all

relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at

one blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism. Better face

the enemy than the eternal Void! This is why materialism will always

fail of universal adoption, however well it may fuse things into an

atomistic unity, however clearly it may prophesy the future eternity.

For materialism denies reality to the objects of almost all the

impulses which we most cherish. The real _meaning_ of the impulses, it

says, is something which has no emotional interest for us whatever.

But what is called extradition is quite as characteristic of our

emotions as of our sense. Both point to an Object as the cause of the

present feeling. What an intensely objective reference lies in fear!

In like manner an enraptured man, a dreary-feeling man, are not simply

aware of their subjective states; if they were, the force of their

feelings would evaporate. Both believe there is outward cause _why_

they should feel as they do: either 'It is a glad world! how good

is life!' or 'What a loathsome tedium is existence!' Any philosophy

which annihilates the validity of the reference by explaining away

its objects or translating them into terms of no emotional pertinency

leaves the mind with little to care or act for. This is the opposite

condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely brought home to

consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In nightmare we have

motives to act, but no power; here we have powers, but no motives.

A nameless _Unheimlichkeit_ comes over us at the thought of there

being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the objects of those

loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies. The monstrously

lopsided equation of the universe and its knower, which we postulate

as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled by the no less

lopsided equation of the universe and the _doer_. We demand in it

a _character_ for which our emotions and active propensities shall

be a match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the

Cosmos impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that

his reaction at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast

whole, that he balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do

what it expects of him. But as his abilities to 'do' lie wholly in

the line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reaction with such

emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the

like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair,

or doubt,--a philosophy which should legitimate only emotions of the

latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and

craving.

"It is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built

up of practical interests. The theory of Evolution is beginning to do

very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of

reflex action. Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a

cross-section at a certain point of what in its totality is a motor

phenomenon. In the lower forms of life no one will pretend that

cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action. The

germinal question concerning things brought for the first time before

consciousness is not the theoretic 'What is that?' but the practical

'Who goes there?' or rather, as Horwicz has admirably put it, 'What

is to be done?'--'_Was fang' ich an_?' In all our discussions about

the intelligence of lower animals the only test we use is that of

their _acting_ as if for a purpose. Cognition, in short, is incomplete

until discharged in act. And although it is true that the later mental

development, which attains its maximum through the hypertrophied

cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of theoretic activity

over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice,

yet the earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the active

nature asserts its rights to the end.

"If there be any truth at all in this view, it follows that however

vaguely a philosopher may define the ultimate universal datum,

he cannot be said to leave it unknown to us so long as he in the

slightest degree pretends that our emotional or active attitude

towards it should be of one sort rather than another. He who says,

'Life is real, life is earnest,' however much he may speak of the

fundamental mysteriousness of things, gives a distinct definition to

that mysteriousness by ascribing to it the right to claim from us the

particular mood called seriousness, which means the willingness to

live with energy, though energy bring pain. The same is true of him

who says that all is vanity. Indefinable as the predicate vanity may

be _in se_, it is clearly enough something which permits anæsthesia,

mere escape from suffering, to be our rule of life. There is no more

ludicrous incongruity than for agnostics to proclaim with one breath

that the substance of things is unknowable, and with the next that

the thought of it should inspire us with admiration of its glory,

reverence, and a willingness to add our co-operative push in the

direction towards which its manifestations seem to be drifting. The

unknowable may be unfathomed, but if it make such distinct demands

upon our activity, we surely are not ignorant of its essential quality.

"If we survey the field of history and ask what feature all great

periods of revival, of expansion of the human mind, display in common,

we shall find, I think, simply this: that each and all of them

have said to the human being, 'The inmost nature of the reality is

congenial to _powers_ which you possess.' In what did the emancipating

message of primitive Christianity consist, but in the announcement

that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had

so rudely overlooked? Take repentance: the man who can do nothing

rightly can at least repent of his failures. But for paganism this

faculty of repentance was a pure supernumerary, a straggler too late

for the fair. Christianity took it and made it the one power within

us which appealed straight to the heart of God. And after the night

of the Middle Ages had so long branded with obloquy even the generous

impulses of the flesh, and defined the Reality to be such that only

slavish natures could commune with it, in what did the _Sursum corda!_

of the Renaissance lie but in the proclamation that the archetype

of verity in things laid claim on the widest activity of our whole

æsthetic being? What were Luther's mission and Wesley's but appeals

to powers which even the meanest of men might carry with them, faith

and self-despair, but which were personal, requiring no priestly

intermediation, and which brought their owner face to face with God?

What caused the wild-fire influence of Rousseau but the assurance he

gave that man's nature was in harmony with the nature of things, if

only the paralyzing corruptions of custom would stand from between?

How did Kant and Fichte, Goethe and Schiller, inspire their time

with cheer, except by saying, 'Use all your powers; that is the only

obedience which the universe exacts'? And Carlyle with his gospel of

Work, of Fact, of Veracity, how does he move us except by saying that

the universe imposes no tasks upon us but such as the most humble can

perform? Emerson's creed that everything that ever was or will be is

here in the enveloping Now; that man has but to obey himself--'He who

will rest in what he _is_, is a part of Destiny'--is in like manner

nothing but an exorcism of all scepticism as to the pertinency of

one's natural faculties.

"In a word, 'Son of Man, _stand upon thy feet_ and I will speak unto

thee!' is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs

have helped the disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the

greater part of his rational need. _In se_ and _per se_ the universal

essence has hardly been more defined by any of these formulæ than by

the agnostic _x_; but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they

are, are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent, that it speaks to them

and will in some way recognize their reply, that I can be a match for

it if I will, and not a footless waif, suffices to make it rational

to my feeling in the sense given above. Nothing could be more absurd

than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should

refuse to legitimate, and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the

more powerful of our emotional and practical tendencies. Fatalism,

whose solving word in all crises of behavior is 'All striving is

vain,' will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life

strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak

to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency,

vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule

for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him."

After the emotional and active needs come the intellectual and æsthetic

ones. The two great æsthetic principles, of richness and of ease,

dominate our intellectual as well as our sensuous life. And, _ceteris

paribus_, no system which should not be rich, simple, and harmonious

would have a chance of being chosen for belief, if rich, simple,

and harmonious systems were also there. Into the latter we should

unhesitatingly settle, with that welcoming attitude of the will in

which belief consists. To quote from a remarkable book:

"This law that our consciousness constantly tends to the minimum of

complexity and to the maximum of definiteness, is of great importance

for all our knowledge.... Our own activity of attention will thus

determine what we are to know and what we are to believe. If things

have more than a certain complexity, not only will our limited powers

of attention forbid us to unravel this complexity, but we shall

strongly desire to believe the things much simpler than they are.

For our thoughts about them will have a constant tendency to become

as simple and definite as possible. Put a man into a perfect chaos

of phenomena--sounds, sights, feelings--and if the man continued to

exist, and to be rational at all, his attention would doubtless soon

find for him away to make up some kind of rhythmic regularity, which

he would impute to the things about him, so as to imagine that he had

discovered some laws of sequence in this mad new world. And thus, in

every case where we fancy ourselves sure of a simple law of Nature, we

must remember that a great deal of the fancied simplicity may be due,

in the given case, not to Nature, but to the ineradicable prejudice of

our own minds in favor of regularity and simplicity. All our thoughts

are determined, in great measure, by this law of least effort, as it

is found exemplified in our activity of attention.... The aim of the

whole process seems to be to reach as complete and united a conception

of reality as possible, a conception wherein the greatest fulness of

data shall be combined with the greatest simplicity of conception. The

effort of consciousness seems to be to combine the greatest richness

of content with the greatest definiteness of organization."[314]

The richness is got by including all the facts of sense in the

scheme; the simplicity, by deducing them out of the smallest possible

number of permanent and independent primordial entities: the definite

organization, by assimilating these latter to ideal objects between

which relations of an inwardly rational sort obtain. What these ideal

objects and rational relations are will require a separate chapter

to show.[315] Meanwhile, enough has surely been said to justify the

assertion made above that no general off-hand answer can be given as

to which objects mankind shall choose as its realities. The fight is

still under way. Our minds are yet chaotic; and at best we make a

mixture and a compromise, as we yield to the claim of this interest

or that, and follow first one and then another principle in turn. It

is undeniably true that materialistic, or so-called 'scientific,'

conceptions of the universe have so far gratified the purely

intellectual interests more than the mere sentimental conceptions

have. But, on the other hand, as already remarked, they leave the

emotional and active interests cold. _The perfect object of belief

would be a God or 'Soul of the World,' represented both optimistically

and moralistically (if such a combination could be), and withal so

definitely conceived as to show us why our phenomenal experiences

should be sent to us by Him in just the very way in which they come._

All Science and all History would thus be accounted for in the deepest

and simplest fashion. The very room in which I sit, its sensible

walls and floor, and the feeling the air and fire within it give me,

no less than the 'scientific' conceptions which I am urged to frame

concerning the mode of existence of all these phenomena when my back

is turned, would then all be corroborated, not de-realized, by the

ultimate principle of my belief. The World-soul sends me just those

phenomena in order that I may react upon them; and among the reactions

is the intellectual one of spinning these conceptions. What is beyond

the crude experiences is not an _alternative_ to them, but something

that _means_ them for me here and now. It is safe to say that, if ever

such a system is satisfactorily excogitated, mankind will drop all

other systems and cling to that one alone as real. Meanwhile the other

systems coexist with the attempts at that one, and, all being alike

fragmentary, each has its little audience and day.

* * * * *

I have now, I trust, shown sufficiently what the psychologic sources of

the sense of reality are. Certain postulates are given in our nature;

and whatever satisfies those postulates is treated as if real.[316]

I might therefore finish the chapter here, were it not that a few

additional words will set the truth in a still clearer light.

DOUBT.

There is hardly a common man who (if consulted) would not say that

things come to us in the first instance _as ideas_; and that if we take

them for realities, it is because we _add something to them_, namely,

the predicate of having also '_real existence outside of our thought_.'

This notion that a higher faculty than the mere _having_ of a conscious

content is needed to make us know anything real by its means has

pervaded psychology from the earliest times, and is the tradition of

Scholasticism, Kantism, and Common-sense. Just as sensations must come

as inward affections and then be 'extradited;' as objects of memory

must appear at first as presently unrealities, and subsequently be

'projected' backwards as past realities; so conceptions must be _entia

rationis_ till a higher faculty uses them as windows to look beyond

the ego, into the real _extra_-mental world;--so runs the orthodox and

popular account.

And there is no question that this is a true account of the way in

which many of our later beliefs come to pass. The logical distinction

between the bare thought of an object and belief in the object's

reality is often a chronological distinction as well. The having

and the crediting of an idea do not always coalesce; for often we

first suppose and then believe; first play with the notion, frame the

hypothesis, and then affirm the existence, of an object of thought.

And we are quite conscious of the succession of the two mental acts.

But these cases are none of them _primitive_ cases. They only occur

in minds long schooled to doubt by the contradictions of experience.

_The primitive impulse is to affirm immediately the reality of all

that is conceived._[317] When we do doubt, however, in what does the

subsequent resolution of the doubt consist? It either consists in a

purely verbal performance, the coupling of the adjectives 'real' or

'outwardly existing' (as predicates) to the thing originally conceived

(as subject); or it consists in the perception in the given case of

_that for which these adjectives_, abstracted from other similar

concrete cases, _stand_. But what these adjectives stand for, we now

know well. They stand for certain relations (immediate, or through

intermediaries) to ourselves. Whatever concrete objects have hitherto

stood in those relations have been for us 'real,' 'outwardly existing.'

So that when we now abstractly admit a thing to be 'real' (without

perhaps going through any definite perception of its relations), it is

as if we said "it belongs in the same world with those other objects."

Naturally enough, we have hourly opportunities for this summary process

of belief. All remote objects in space or time are believed in this

way. When I believe that some prehistoric savage chipped this flint,

for example, the reality of the savage and of his act makes no direct

appeal either to my sensation, emotion, or volition. What I mean by

my belief in it is simply my dim sense of a _continuity_ between the

long dead savage and his doings and the present world of which the

flint forms part. It is pre-eminently a case for applying our doctrine

of the 'fringe' (see Vol I. p. 258). When I think the savage with one

fringe of relationship, I believe in him; when I think him without

that fringe, or with another one (as, e.g., if I should class him with

'scientific vagaries' in general), I disbelieve him. The word 'real'

itself is, in short, a fringe.

RELATIONS OF BELIEF AND WILL.

We shall see in Chapter XXV that will consists in nothing but a

manner of attending to certain objects, or consenting to their stable

presence before the mind. The objects, in the case of will, are those

whose existence depends on our thought, movements of our own body

for example, or facts which such movements executed in future may

make real. Objects of belief, on the contrary, are those which do not

change according as we think regarding them. I _will_ to get up early

to-morrow morning; I _believe_ that I got up late yesterday morning; I

_will_ that my foreign bookseller in Boston shall procure me a German

book and write to him to that effect. I _believe_ that he will make me

pay three dollars for it when it comes, etc. Now the important thing to

notice is that this difference between the objects of will and belief

is entirely immaterial, as far as the relation of the mind to them

goes. All that the mind does is in both cases the same; it looks at the

object and consents to its existence, espouses it, says 'it shall be my

reality.' It turns to it, in short, in the interested active emotional

way. The rest is done by nature, which in some cases _makes_ the

objects real which we think of in this manner, and in other cases does

not. Nature cannot change the past to suit our thinking. She cannot

change the stars or the winds; but she _does_ change our bodies to suit

our thinking, and through their instrumentality changes much besides;

so the great practical distinction between objects which we may will or

unwill, and objects which we can merely believe or disbelieve, grows

up, and is of course one of the most important distinctions in the

world. Its roots, however, do not lie in psychology, but in physiology;

as the chapter on Volition will abundantly make plain. _Will and

Belief, in short, meaning a certain relation between objects and the

Self, are two names for one and the same_ PSYCHOLOGICAL _phenomenon_.

All the questions which arise concerning one are questions which

arise concerning the other. The causes and conditions of the peculiar

relation must be the same in both. The free-will question arises as

regards belief. If our wills are indeterminate, so must our beliefs

be, etc. The first act of free-will, in short, would naturally be to

believe in free-will, etc. In Chapter XXVI, I shall mention this

again.

* * * * *

A practical observation may end this chapter. If belief consists in

an emotional reaction of the entire man on an object, how _can_ we

believe at will? We cannot control our emotions. Truly enough, a man

cannot believe at will abruptly. Nature sometimes, and indeed not very

infrequently, produces instantaneous conversions for us. She suddenly

puts us in an active connection with objects of which she had till

then left us cold. "I realize for the first time," we then say, "what

that means!" This happens often with moral propositions. We have often

heard them; but now they shoot into our lives; they move us; we feel

their living force. Such instantaneous beliefs are truly enough not

to be achieved by will. But _gradually_ our will can lead us to the

same results by a very simple method: _we need only in cold blood_ ACT

_as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were

real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with

our life that it will become real._ It will become so knit with habit

and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize

belief. Those to whom 'God' and 'Duty' are now mere names can make

them much more than that, if they make a little sacrifice to them every

day. But all this is so well known in moral and religious education

that I need say no more.[318]

* * * * *

[287] Reprinted, with additions, from 'Mind' for July 1889.

[288] Compare this psychological fact with the corresponding logical

truth that all negation rests on covert assertion of something else

than the thing denied. (See Bradley's Principles of Logic, bk. i. ch.

3.)

[289] See that very remarkable little work, 'The Anæsthetic Revelation

and the Gist of Philosophy,' by Benj. P. Blood (Amsterdam, N. Y.,

1874). Compare also Mind, vii. 206.

[290] "To one whose mind is healthy thoughts come and go unnoticed;

with me they have to be faced, thought about in a peculiar fashion, and

then disposed of as finished, and this often when I am utterly wearied

and would be at peace; but the call is imperative. This goes on to the

hindrance of all natural action. If I were told that the staircase was

on fire and I had only a minute to escape, and the thought arose--'Have

they sent for fire-engines? Is it probable that the man who has the

key is on hand? Is the man a careful sort of person? Will the key be

hanging on a peg? Am I thinking rightly? Perhaps they don't lock the

depot'--my foot would be lifted to go down; I should be conscious to

excitement that I was losing my chance; but I should be unable to

stir until all these absurdities were entertained and disposed of. In

the most critical moments of my life, when I ought to have been so

_engrossed as to leave no room for any secondary thoughts_, I have been

oppressed by the inability to be at peace. And in the most ordinary

circumstances it is all the same. Let me instance the other morning

I went to walk. The day was biting cold, but I was unable to proceed

except by jerks. Once I got arrested, my feet in a muddy pool. One foot

was lifted to go, knowing that it was not good to be standing in water,

but there I was fast, the cause of detention being the discussing

with myself the reasons why I should not stand in that pool." (T. S.

Clouston, Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, 1883, p. 43. See also

Berger, in Archiv f. Psychiatrie, vi. 217.)

[291] Note to Jas. Mill's Analysis, i. 412-428.

[292] For an excellent account of the history of opinion on this

subject see A. Marty, in Vierteljahrsch. f. wiss. Phil., viii. 181 ff.

(1884).

[293] We saw near the end of Chapter XIX that a candle-image taking

exclusive possession of the mind in this way would probably acquire the

sensational vividness. But this physiological accident is logically

immaterial to the argument in the text, which ought to apply as well to

the dimmest sort of mental image as to the brightest sensation.

[294] In both existential and attributive judgments a synthesis is

represented. The syllable _ex_ in the word Existence, _da_ in the word

_Dasein_, express it. 'The candle exists' is equivalent to 'The candle

is _over there_.' And the 'over there' means real space, space related

to other reals. The proposition amounts to saying: 'The candle is in

the same space with other reals.' It affirms of the candle a very

concrete predicate--namely, this relation to other particular concrete

things. _Their_ real existence, as we shall later see, resolves

itself into their peculiar relation to _ourselves_. Existence is thus

no substantive quality when we predicate it of any object; it is a

relation, ultimately terminating in ourselves, and at the moment when

it terminates, becoming a _practical_ relation. But of this more anon.

I only wish now to indicate the superficial nature of the distinction

between the existential and the attributive proposition.

[295] I define the scientific universe here in the radical mechanical

way. Practically, it is oftener thought of in a mongrel way and

resembles in more points the popular physical world.

[296] It thus comes about that we can say such things as that Ivanhoe

did not _really_ marry Rebecca, as Thackeray _falsely_ makes him do.

The real Ivanhoe-world is the one which Scott wrote down for us. _In

that world_ Ivanhoe does _not_ marry Rebecca. The objects within that

world are knit together by perfectly definite relations, which can be

affirmed or denied. Whilst absorbed in the novel, we turn our backs

on all other worlds, and, for the time, the Ivanhoe-world remains our

absolute reality. When we wake from the spell, however, we find a

still more real world, which reduces Ivanhoe, and all things connected

with him, to the Active status, and relegates them to one of the

sub-universes grouped under No. 5.

[297] The world of dreams is our real world whilst we are sleeping,

because our attention then lapses from the sensible world. Conversely,

when we wake the attention usually lapses from the dream-world and that

becomes unreal. But if a dream haunts us and compels our attention

during the day it is very apt to remain figuring in our consciousness

as a sort of sub-universe alongside of the waking world. Most people

have probably had dreams which it is hard to imagine not to have been

glimpses into an actually existing region of being, perhaps a corner

of the 'spiritual world.' And dreams have accordingly in all ages been

regarded as revelations, and have played a large part in furnishing

forth mythologies and creating themes for faith to lay hold upon. The

'larger universe,' here, which helps us to believe both in the dream

and in the waking reality which is its immediate reductive, is the

_total_ universe, of Nature _plus_ the Supernatural. The dream holds

true, namely, in one half of that universe; the waking perceptions in

the other half. Even to-day dream-objects figure among the realities

in which some 'psychic-researchers' are seeking to rouse our belief.

All our theories, not only those about the supernatural, but our

philosophic and scientific theories as well, are like our dreams in

rousing such different degrees of belief in different minds.

[298] Distinguishes realities from unrealities, the essential from the

rubbishy and neglectable.

[299] Inquiry concerning Hum. Understanding, sec. v. pt. 2 (slightly

transposed in my quotation).

[300] Note to Jas. Mill's Analysis, i. 394.

[301] Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Müller, ii. 515-17. Hume also:

"When, after the simple conception of anything, we would conceive it

as existent, we in reality make no addition to, or alteration of,

our first idea. Thus, when we affirm that God is existent, we simply

form the idea of such a being as He is represented to us; nor is the

existence which we attribute to Him conceived by a particular idea,

which we join to His other qualities, and can again separate and

distinguish from them.... The belief of the existence joins no new

idea to those which compose the ideas of the object. When I think of

God, when I think of Him as existent, and when I believe Him to be

existent, my idea of Him neither increases nor diminishes. But as 'tis

certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of

the existence of an object and the belief of it, and as this difference

lies not in the facts or compositions of the idea which we conceive,

it follows that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it."

(Treatise of Human Nature, pt. iii. sec. 7.)

[302] I use the notion of the Ego here, as common-sense uses it.

Nothing is prejudged as to the results (or absence of results) of

ulterior attempts to analyze the notion.

[303] Griesinger, Mental Diseases, §§ 50, 98. The neologism we so often

hear, that an experience 'gives us a _realising sense_' of the truth of

some proposition or other, illustrates the dependence of the sense of

reality upon _excitement_. Only what stirs us is 'realized.'

[304] The way in which sensations are pitted against systematized

conceptions, and in which the one or the other then prevails

according as the sensations are felt by ourselves or merely known

by report, is interestingly illustrated at the present day by the

state of public belief about 'spiritualistic' phenomena. There exist

numerous narratives of movement without contact on the part of

articles of furniture and other material objects, in the presence

of certain privileged individuals called mediums. Such movement

violates our memories, and the whole system of accepted physical

'science.' Consequently those who have not seen it either brand the

narratives immediately as lies or call the phenomena 'illusions' of

sense, produced by fraud or due to hallucination. But one who has

actually seen such a phenomenon, under what seems to him sufficiently

'test-conditions,' will hold to his sensible experience through thick

and thin, even though the whole fabric of 'science' should be rent in

twain. That man would be a weak-spirited creature indeed who should

allow any fly-blown generalities about 'the liability of the senses to

be deceived' to bully him out of his adhesion to what for him was an

indubitable experience of sight. A man may err in this obstinacy, sure

enough, in any particular case. But the spirit that animates him is

that on which ultimately the very life and health of Science rest.

[305] Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i. pt. iii. sec. 7.

[306] Early Hist. of Mankind, p. 108.

[307] See Vol. I. pp. 285-6; Vol. II. pp. 237 ff.

[308] See Theory of Vision, § 59.

[309] Essay, bk. iv. chap. 2, § 14. In another place: "He that sees a

candle burning and hath experimented the force of its flame by putting

his finger into it, will little doubt that this is something existing

without him, which does him harm and puts him to great pain.... And if

our dreamer pleases to try whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace

be barely a wandering imagination in a drowsy man's fancy by putting

his hand into it, he may, perhaps, be awakened into a certainty greater

than he could wish, that it is something more than bare imagination.

So that the evidence is as great as we can desire, being as certain to

us as our pleasure or pain, i.e. happiness or misery; beyond which we

have no concernment, either of knowledge or being. Such an assurance of

the existence of things without us is sufficient to direct us in the

attaining the good and avoiding the evil which is caused by them, which

is the important concernment we have of being made acquainted with

them," (_Ibid._ bk. iv. chap. 11, § 8.)

[310] W. Bagehot, 'The Emotion of Conviction,' Literary Studies, i.

412-17.

[311] Psychologie Rationnelle, ch. 12.

[312] Two examples out of a thousand:

Reid, Inquiry, ch. ii. § 9: "I remember, many years ago, a white ox

was brought into the country, of so enormous size that people came

many miles to see him. There happened, some months after, an uncommon

fatality among women in child-hearing. Two such uncommon events,

following one another, gave a suspicion of their connection, and

occasioned a common opinion among the country people that the white ox

was the cause of this fatality."

H. M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, ii. 388: "On the third day

of our stay at Mowa, feeling quite comfortable amongst the people, on

account of their friendly bearing, I began to write in my note-book the

terms for articles, in order to improve my already copious vocabulary

of native words. I had proceeded only a few minutes when I observed a

strange commotion amongst the people who had been flocking about me,

and presently they ran away. In a short time we heard war-cries ringing

loudly and shrilly over the table-land. Two hours afterwards a long

line of warriors were seen descending the table-land and advancing

towards our camp. There may have been between five and six hundred

of them. We, on the other hand, had made but few preparations except

such as would justify us replying to them in the event of the actual

commencement of hostilities. But I had made many firm friends among

them, and I firmly believed that I should be able to avert an open

rupture. When they had assembled at about a hundred yards in front of

our camp, Safeni and I walked up towards them and sat down midway. Some

half-dozen of the Mowa people came near, and the shauri began.

"'What is the matter, my friends?' I asked. 'Why do you come with guns

in your hands, in such numbers, as though you were coming to fight?

Fight? fight us, your friends! Tut! this is some great mistake, surely.'

"'Mundele,' replied one of them,... 'our people saw you yesterday make

marks on some tara-tara [paper]. This is very bad. Our country will

waste, our goats will die, our bananas will rot, and our women will

dry up. What have we done to you that you should wish to kill us? We

have sold you food and we have brought you wine each day. Your people

are allowed to wander where they please without trouble. Why is the

Mundele so wicked? We have gathered together to fight you if you do not

burn that tara-tara now before our eyes. If you burn it we go away, and

shall be your friends as heretofore.'

"'I told them to rest there, and left Safeni in their hands as a pledge

that I should return. My tent was not fifty yards from the spot, but

while going towards it my brain was busy in devising some plan to foil

this superstitious madness. My note-book contained a vast number of

valuable notes.... I could not sacrifice it to the childish caprice

of savages. As I was rummaging my book-box, I came across a volume of

Shakespeare [Chandos edition] much worn, and well thumbed, and which

was of the same size as my field-book; its cover was similar also, and

it might be passed for the field-book, provided that no one remembered

its appearance too well. I took it to them. 'Is this the tara-tara,

friends, that you wish burned?'

"'Yes, yes, that is it.'

"'Well, take it, and burn it, or keep it.'

"'M--m. No, no, no. We will not touch it. It is fetish. You must burn

it.'

"'I! Well, let it be so. I will do anything to please my good friends

of Mowa.'

"'We walked to the nearest fire. I breathed a regretful farewell to

my genial companion, which, during my many weary hours of night, had

assisted to relieve my mind when oppressed by almost intolerable woes,

and then gravely consigned the innocent Shakespeare to the flames,

heaping the brush fuel over it with ceremonious care.

"'A-h-h,' breathed the poor deluded natives sighing their relief....

'There is no trouble now.'... And something approaching to a cheer was

shouted among them, which terminated the episode of the burning of

Shakespeare."

[313] 'Rationality, Activity, and Faith' (Princeton Review, July 1882,

pp. 64-9).

[314] J. Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (Boston, 1885). pp.

317-57.

[315] Chapter XXVII.

[316] Prof. Royce puts this well in discussing idealism and the reality

of an 'external' world. "If the history of popular speculation on these

topics could be written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would be

found in the behavior of the natural mind before the question, 'How

dost thou know of an external reality?' Instead of simply and plainly

answering: 'I mean by the external world in the first place something

that I accept or demand, that I posit, postulate, actively construct

on the basis of sense-data,' the natural man gives us all kinds of

vague compromise answers.... Where shall these endless turnings and

twistings have an end?... All these lesser motives are appealed to, and

the one ultimate motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the man

of every-day life is the _will to have an external world._ Whatever

consciousness contains, reason will persist in spontaneously adding the

thought: 'But there _shall be_ something beyond this.'... The popular

assurance of an external world is the _fixed determination to make

one,_ now and henceforth." (Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 304--the

italics are my own.) This immixture of the will appears most flagrantly

in the fact that although external matter is doubted commonly enough,

minds external to our own are never doubted. We need them too much, are

too essentially social to dispense with them. Semblances of matter may

suffice to react upon, but not semblances of communing souls. A psychic

solipsism is too hideous a mockery of our wants, and, so far as I know,

has never been seriously entertained.--Chapters ix and x of Prof.

Royce's work are on the whole the clearest account of the psychology of

belief with which I am acquainted.

[317] "The leading fact in Belief, according to my view of it, is our

Primitive Credulity. We begin by believing everything; whatever is, is

true.... The animal born in the morning of a summer day proceeds upon

the fact of daylight; assumes the perpetuity of that fact. Whatever

it is disposed to do, it does without misgivings. If in the morning

it began a round of operations continuing for hours, under the full

benefit of daylight, it would unhesitatingly begin the same round

in the evening. Its state of mind is practically one of unbounded

confidence; but, as yet, it does not understand what confidence means.

"The pristine assurance is soon met by checks; a disagreeable

experience leading to new insight. To be thwarted and opposed is one

of our earliest and most frequent pains. It develops the sense of a

distinction between free and obstructed impulses; the unconsciousness

of an open way is exchanged for consciousness; we are now said properly

to believe in what has never been contradicted, as we disbelieve in

what has been contradicted. We believe that, after the dawn of day,

there is before us a continuance of light; we do not believe that this

light is to continue forever.

"Thus, the vital circumstance in belief is never to be

contradicted--never to lose _prestige_. The number of repetitions

counts for little in the process: we are as much convinced after ten as

after fifty; we are more convinced by ten unbroken than by fifty for

and one against." (Bain: The Emotions and the Will, pp. 511, 512.)

[318] _Literature._ D. Hume: Treatise on Human Nature, part iii. §§

vii-x. A. Bain: Emotions and Will, chapter on Belief (also pp. 20

ff.). J. Sully: Sensation and Intuition, essay iv. J. Mill: Analysis

of Human Mind, chapter xi. Ch. Renouvier: Psychologie Rationnelle,

vol. ii. pt. ii. and Esquisse d'une Classification systématique des

Doctrines Philosophiques, part vi. J. H. Newman: The Grammar of Assent.

J. Venn: Some Characteristics of Belief. V. Brochard: De l'Erreur,

part ii. chap. vi, ix; and Revue Philosophique, xxviii. 1. E. Rabier:

Psychologie, chap xxi. Appendix. Ollé Laprune: La Certitude Morale

(1881). G. F. Stout: On Genesis of Cognition of Physical Reality,

in 'Mind,' Jan. 1890. J. Pikler: The Psychology of the Belief in

Objective Existence (London, 1890).--Mill says that we believe present

sensations; and makes our belief in all other things a matter of

_association_ with these. So far so good; but as he makes no mention

of emotional or volitional reaction, Bain rightly charges him with

treating belief as a purely intellectual state. For Bain belief is

rather an incident of our active life. When a thing is such as to

make us _act_ on it, then we believe it, according to Bain. "But how

about past things, or remote things, upon which no reaction of ours is

possible? And how about belief in things which _check_ action?" says

Sully; who considers that we believe a thing only when "the idea of it

has an inherent tendency to approximate in character and intensity to a

sensation." It is obvious that each of these authors emphasizes a true

aspect of the question. My own account has sought to be more complete,

sensation, association, and active reaction all being acknowledged to

be concerned. The most compendious possible formula perhaps would be

that _our belief and attention_ are the same fact. For the moment, what

we attend to is reality; Attention is a motor reaction; and we are so

made that sensations force attention from us. On Belief and Conduct see

an article by Leslie Stephen, Fortnightly Review, July 1888.

A set of facts have been recently brought to my attention which I

hardly know how to treat, so I say a word about them in this foot-note.

I refer to a type of experience which has frequently found a place

amongst the 'Yes' answers to the 'Census of Hallucinations,' and

which is generally described by those who report it as an 'impression

of the presence' of someone near them, although no sensation either

of sight, hearing, or touch is involved. From the way in which this

experience is spoken of by those who have had it, it would appear to

be an extremely definite and positive state of mind, coupled with a

belief in the reality of its object quite as strong as any direct

sensation ever gives. And yet _no_ sensation seems to be connected with

it at all. Sometimes the person whose nearness is thus impressed is a

known person, dead or living, sometimes an unknown one. His attitude

and situation are often very definitely impressed, and so, sometimes

(though not by way of hearing), are words which he wishes to say.

The phenomenon would seem to be due to a pure _conception_ becoming

saturated with the sort of stinging urgency which ordinarily only

sensations bring. But I cannot yet persuade myself that the urgency

in question consists in concomitant emotional and motor impulses.

The 'impression' may come quite suddenly and depart quickly; it may

carry no emotional suggestions, and wake no motor consequences beyond

those involved in attending to it. Altogether, the matter is somewhat

paradoxical, and no conclusion can be come to until more definite data

are obtained.

Perhaps the most curious case of the sort which I have received is the

following. The subject of the observation, Mr. P., is an exceptionally

intelligent witness, though the words of the narrative are his wife's.

"Mr. P. has all his life been the occasional subject of rather singular

delusions or impressions of various kinds. If I had belief in the

existence of latent or embryo faculties, other than the five senses,

I should explain them on that ground. Being totally blind, his other

perceptions are abnormally keen and developed, and given the existence

of a rudimentary sixth sense, it would be only natural that this also

should be more acute in him than in others. One of the most interesting

of his experiences in this line was the frequent apparition of a corpse

some years ago, which may be worth the attention of your Committee

on that subject. At the time Mr. P. had a music-room in Boston on

Beacon Street, where he used to do severe and protracted practice

with little interruption. Now, all one season it was a very familiar

occurrence with him while in the midst of work to feel a cold draft of

air suddenly upon his face, with a prickling sensation at the roots

of his hair, when he would turn from the piano, and a figure which he

knew to be dead would come sliding under the crack of the door from

without, flattening itself to squeeze through and rounding out again to

the human form. It was of a middle-aged man, and drew itself along the

carpet on hands and knees, but with head thrown back till it reached

the sofa, upon which it stretched itself. It remained some moments,

but vanished always if Mr. P. spoke or made a decided movement. The

most singular point in the occurrence was its frequent repetition. He

might expect it on any day between two and four o'clock, and it came

always heralded by the same sudden cold shiver, and was invariably the

same figure which went through the same movements. He afterwards traced

the whole experience to strong tea. He was in the habit of taking cold

tea, which always stimulates him, for lunch, and on giving up this

practice he never saw this or any other apparition again. However, even

allowing, as is doubtless true, that the event was a delusion of nerves

first fatigued by overwork and then excited by this stimulant, there

is one point which is still wholly inexplicable and highly interesting

to me. Mr. P. has no memory whatever of sight, nor conception of it.

It is impossible for him to form any idea of what we mean by light

or color, consequently he has no cognizance of any object which does

not reach his sense of hearing or of touch, though these are so acute

as to give a contrary impression sometimes to other people. When he

becomes aware of the presence of a person or an object, by means which

seem mysterious to outsiders, he can always trace it naturally and

legitimately to slight echoes, perceptible only to his keen ears, or

to differences in atmospheric pressure, perceptible only to his acute

nerves of touch; but with the apparition described, for the only time

in his experience, he was aware of presence, size, and appearance,

without the use of either of these mediums. The figure never produced

the least sound nor came within a number of feet of his person, yet he

knew that it was a man, that it moved, and in what direction, even that

it wore a full beard, which, like the thick curly hair, was partially

gray; also that it was dressed in the style of suit known as 'pepper

and salt.' These points were all perfectly distinct and invariable each

time. If asked how he perceived them, he will answer he cannot tell, he

simply knew it, and so strongly and so distinctly that it is impossible

to shake his opinion as to the exact details of the man's appearance.

It would seem that in this delusion of the senses he really _saw_, as

he has never done in the actual experiences of life, except in the

first two years of childhood."

On cross-examining Mr. P., I could not make out that there was anything

like visual imagination involved, although he was quite unable to

describe in just what terms the false perception was carried on. It

seemed to be more like an intensely definite _conception_ than anything

else, a conception to which the feeling of _present reality_ was

attached, but in no such shape as easily to fall under the heads laid

down in my text.

CHAPTER XXII.[319]

REASONING.

We talk of man being the rational animal; and the traditional

intellectualist philosophy has always made a great point of treating

the brutes as wholly irrational creatures. Nevertheless, it is by no

means easy to decide just what is meant by reason, or how the peculiar

thinking process called reasoning differs from other thought-sequences

which may lead to similar results.

Much of our thinking consists of trains of images suggested one by

another, of a sort of spontaneous revery of which it seems likely

enough that the higher brutes should be capable. This sort of thinking

leads nevertheless to rational conclusions, both practical and

theoretical. The links between the terms are either 'contiguity' or

'similarity,' and with a mixture of both these things we can hardly be

very incoherent. As a rule, in this sort of irresponsible thinking,

the terms which fall to be coupled together are empirical concretes,

not abstractions. A sunset may call up the vessel's deck from which

I saw one last summer, the companions of my voyage, my arrival into

port, etc.; or it may make me think of solar myths, of Hercules' and

Hector's funeral pyres, of Homer and whether he could write, of the

Greek alphabet, etc. If habitual contiguities predominate, we have a

prosaic mind; if rare contiguities, or similarities, have free play, we

call the person fanciful, poetic, or witty. But the thought as a rule

is of matters taken in their entirety. Having been thinking of one,

we find later that we are thinking of another, to which we have been

lifted along, we hardly know how. If an abstract quality figures in

the procession, it arrests our attention but for a moment, and fades

into something else; and is never very abstract. Thus, in thinking of

the sun-myths, we may have a gleam of admiration at the gracefulness of

the primitive human mind, or a moment of disgust at the narrowness of

modern interpreters. But, in the main, we think less of qualities than

of whole things, real or possible, just as we may experience them.

The upshot of it may be that we are reminded of some practical duty:

we write a letter to a friend abroad, or we take down the lexicon

and study our Greek lesson. Our thought is rational, and leads to a

rational act, but it can hardly be called reasoning in a strict sense

of the term.

There are other shorter flights of thought, single couplings of terms

which suggest one another by association, which approach more to what

would commonly be classed as acts of reasoning proper. Those are

where a present sign suggests an unseen, distant, or future reality.

Where the sign and what it suggests are both concretes which have

been coupled together on previous occasions, the inference is common

to both brutes and men, being really nothing more than association by

contiguity. A and B, dinner-bell and dinner, have been experienced in

immediate succession. Hence A no sooner falls upon the sense than B

is anticipated, and steps are taken to meet it. The whole education

of our domestic beasts, all the cunning added by age and experience

to wild ones, and the greater part of our human knowingness consists

in the ability to make a mass of inferences of this simplest sort.

Our 'perceptions,' or recognitions of what objects are before us,

are inferences of this kind. We feel a patch of color, and we say 'a

distant house,' a whiff of odor crosses us, and we say 'a skunk,' a

faint sound is heard, and we call it 'a railroad train.' Examples are

needless; for such inferences of sensations not presented form the

staple and tissue of our perceptive life, and our Chapter XIX was full

of them, illusory or veracious. They have been called _unconscious

inferences_. Certainly we are commonly unconscious that we are

inferring at all. The sign and the signified melt into what seems to us

the object of a single pulse of thought. _Immediate inferences_ would

be a good name for these simple acts of reasoning requiring but two

terms,[320] were it not that formal logic has already appropriated the

expression for a more technical use.

'RECEPTS.'

In these first and simplest inferences the conclusion may follow so

continuously upon the 'sign' that the latter is not discriminated

or attended to as a separate object by the mind. Even now we can

seldom define the optical signs which lead us to infer the shapes

and distances of the objects which by their aid we so unhesitatingly

perceive. The objects, too, when thus inferred, are _general_ objects.

The dog crossing a scent thinks of a deer in general, or of another dog

in general, not of a particular deer or dog. To these most primitive

abstract objects Dr. G. J. Romanes gives the name of _recepts_ or

_generic_ ideas, to distinguish them from concepts and general ideas

properly so called.[321] They are not analyzed or defined, but only

imagined.

"It requires but a slight analysis of our ordinary mental processes

to prove that all our simpler ideas are group-arrangements which

have been formed spontaneously or without any of that intentionally

comparing, sifting, and combining process which is required in the

higher departments of ideational activity. The comparing, sifting,

and combining is here done, as it were, _for_ the conscious agent,

not _by_ him. Recepts are received; it is only concepts that require

to be conceived.... If I am crossing a street and hear behind me a

sudden shout, I do not require to wait in order to predicate to myself

that there is probably a hansom-cab just about to run me down: a cry

of this kind, and in those circumstances, is so intimately associated

in my mind with its purpose, that the idea which it arouses need

not rise above the level of a recept; and the adaptive movements on

my part which that idea immediately prompts are performed without

any intelligent reflection. Yet, on the other hand, they are neither

reflex actions nor instinctive actions; they are what may be termed

receptual actions, or actions depending on recepts."[322]

"How far can this kind of unnamed or non-conceptional ideation extend?"

Dr. Romanes asks; and answers by a variety of examples taken from the

life of brutes, for which I must refer to his book. One or two of them,

however, I will quote:

"Houzeau writes that while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas,

his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty

and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. The

hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any

other difference in the vegetation; and as they were absolutely dry,

there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if

they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of

finding water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behavior in

other animals....

"Mr. Darwin writes: 'When I say to my terrier in an eager voice (and

I have made the trial many times), "Hi! hi! where is it?" she at once

takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally first

looks quickly all round, and then rushes into the nearest thicket,

to scout for any game, but finding nothing she looks up into any

neighboring tree for a squirrel. Now do not these actions clearly show

that she had in her mind a general idea, or concept, that some animal

is to be discovered and hunted?'"[323]

They certainly show this. But the idea in question is of an object

_about_ which nothing farther may be articulately known. The thought of

it prompts to activity, but to no theoretic consequence. Similarly in

the following example:

"Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon land, or

even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting upon water;

and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns and gannets)

never do so upon land or upon ice. These facts prove that the animals

have one recept answering to a solid surface, and another answering

to a fluid. Similarly a man will not dive from a height over hard

ground or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same way as

he jumps upon dry land. In other words, like the water-fowl he has

two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the

other to an unresisting fluid. But unlike the water-fowl he is able

to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them

both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of

locomotion are concerned, it is of course immaterial whether or not he

thus raises his recepts into concepts; but ... for many other purposes

it is of the highest importance that he is able to do this."[324]

IN REASONING, WE PICK OUT ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.

The chief of these purposes is _predication_, a theoretic function

which, though it always leads eventually to some kind of action,

yet tends as often as not to inhibit the immediate motor response

to which the simple inferences of which we have been speaking give

rise. In reasoning, A may suggest B; but B, instead of being an

idea which is simply _obeyed_ by us, is an idea which suggests the

distinct additional idea C. And where the train of suggestion is one

of reasoning distinctively so called as contrasted with mere revery or

'associative' sequence, the ideas bear certain inward relations to each

other which we must proceed to examine with some care.

The result C yielded by a true act of reasoning is apt to be a

thing voluntarily _sought_, such as the means to a proposed end,

the ground for an observed effect, or the effect of an assumed

cause. All these results may be thought of as concrete things, but

they are _not suggested immediately by other concrete things_, as

in the trains of simply associative thought. They are linked to

the concretes which precede them by intermediate steps, and these

steps are formed by _general characters_ articulately denoted and

expressly analyzed out. A thing inferred by reasoning need neither

have been an habitual associate of the datum from which we infer it,

nor need it be similar to it. It may be a thing entirely unknown to

our previous experience, something which no simple association of

concretes could ever have evoked. The great difference, in fact,

between that simpler kind of rational thinking which consists in the

concrete objects of past experience merely suggesting each other,

and reasoning distinctively so called, is this, that whilst the

empirical thinking is only reproductive, reasoning is productive. An

empirical, or 'rule-of-thumb,' thinker can deduce nothing from data

with whose behavior and associates in the concrete he is unfamiliar.

But put a reasoner amongst a set of concrete objects which he has

neither seen nor heard of before, and with a little time, if he is a

good reasoner, he will make such inferences from them as will quite

atone for his ignorance. Reasoning helps us out of unprecedented

situations--situations for which all our common associative wisdom, all

the 'education' which we share in common with the beasts, leaves us

without resource.

* * * * *

_Let us make this ability to deal with_ NOVEL _data the technical

differentia of reasoning._ This will sufficiently mark it out from

common associative thinking, and will immediately enable us to say just

what peculiarity it contains.

_It contains analysis and abstraction._ Whereas the merely empirical

thinker stares at a fact in its entirety, and remains helpless, or gets

'stuck,' if it suggests no concomitant or similar, the reasoner breaks

it up and notices some one of its separate attributes. This attribute

he takes to be the essential part of the whole fact before him. This

attribute has properties or consequences which the fact until then was

not known to have, but which, now that it is noticed to contain the

attribute, it must have.

Call the fact or concrete datum S;

the essential attribute M;

the attribute's property P.

Then the reasoned inference of P from S cannot be made without M's

intermediation. The 'essence' M is thus that third or middle term in

the reasoning which a moment ago was pronounced essential. _For his

original concrete S the reasoner substitutes its abstract property, M._

What is true of M, what is coupled with M, then holds true of S, is

coupled with S. As M is properly one of the _parts_ of the entire S,

_reasoning may then be very well defined as the substitution of parts

and their implications or consequences for wholes_. And the art of the

reasoner will consist of two stages:

First, _sagacity_,[325] or the ability to discover what part, M, lies

embedded in the whole S which is before him;

Second, _learning_, or the ability to recall promptly M's consequences,

concomitants, or implications.[326]

If we glance at the ordinary syllogism--

M is P;

S is M;

Therefore S is P

--we see that the second or minor premise, the 'subsumption' as it is

sometimes called, is the one requiring the sagacity; the first or major

the one requiring the fertility, or fulness of learning. Usually the

learning is more apt to be ready than the sagacity, the ability to

seize fresh aspects in concrete things, being rarer than the ability to

learn old rules; so that, in most actual cases of reasoning, the minor

premise, or the way of conceiving the subject, is the one that makes

the novel step in thought. This is, to be sure, not always the case;

for the fact that M carries P with it may also be unfamiliar and now

formulated for the first time.

The perception that S is M is a _mode of conceiving S_. The statement

that M is P is an _abstract or general proposition_. A word about both

is necessary.

WHAT IS MEANT BY A MODE OF CONCEIVING.

When we conceive of S merely as M (of vermilion merely as a

mercury-compound, for example), we neglect all the other attributes

which it may have, and attend exclusively to this one. We mutilate the

fulness of S's reality. Every reality has an infinity of aspects or

properties. Even so simple a fact as a line which you trace in the air

may be considered in respect to its form, its length, its direction,

and its location. When we reach more complex facts, the number of ways

in which we may regard them is literally endless. Vermilion is not only

a mercury-compound, it is vividly red, heavy, and expensive, it comes

from China, and so on, _in infinitum_. All objects are well-springs of

properties, which are only little by little developed to our knowledge,

and it is truly said that to know one thing thoroughly would be to know

the whole universe. Mediately or immediately, that one thing is related

to everything else; and to know _all_ about it, all its relations need

be known. But each relation forms one of its attributes, one angle by

which some one may conceive it, and while so conceiving it may ignore

the rest of it. A man is such a complex fact. But out of the complexity

all that an army commissary picks out as important for his purposes is

his property of eating so many pounds a day; the general, of marching

so many miles; the chair-maker, of having such a shape; the orator,

of responding to such and such feelings; the theatre-manager, of

being willing to pay just such a price, and no more, for an evening's

amusement. Each of these persons singles out the particular side of the

entire man which has a bearing on _his_ concerns, and not till this

side is distinctly and separately conceived can the proper practical

conclusions _for that reasoner_ be drawn; and when they are drawn the

man's other attributes may be ignored.

All ways of conceiving a concrete fact, if they are true ways at all,

are equally true ways. _There is no property_ ABSOLUTELY _essential to

any one thing_. The same property which figures as the essence of a

thing on one occasion becomes a very inessential feature upon another.

Now that I am writing, it is essential that I conceive my paper as a

surface for inscription. If I failed to do that, I should have to stop

my work. But if I wished to light a fire, and no other materials were

by, the essential way of conceiving the paper would be as combustible

material; and I need then have no thought of any of its other

destinations. It is really _all_ that it is: a combustible, a writing

surface, a thin thing, a hydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches

one way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain

stone in my neighbor's field, an American thing, etc., etc., _ad

infinitum_. Whichever one of these aspects of its being I temporarily

class it under, makes me unjust to the other aspects. But as I always

am classing it under one aspect or another, I am always unjust, always

partial, always exclusive. My excuse is necessity--the necessity which

my finite and practical nature lays upon me. My thinking is first and

last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing

at a time. A God, who is supposed to drive the whole universe abreast,

may also be supposed, without detriment to his activity, to see all

parts of it at once and without emphasis. But were our human attention

so to disperse itself we should simply stare vacantly at things at

large and forfeit our opportunity of doing any particular act. Mr.

Warner, in his Adirondack story, shot a bear by aiming, not at his eye

or heart, but 'at him generally.' But we cannot aim 'generally' at

the universe; or if we do, we miss our game. Our scope is narrow, and

we must attack things piecemeal, ignoring the solid fulness in which

the elements of Nature exist, and stringing one after another of them

together in a serial way, to suit our little interests as they change

from hour to hour. In this, the partiality of one moment is partly

atoned for by the different sort of partiality of the next. To me now,

writing these words, emphasis and selection seem to be the essence of

the human mind. In other chapters other qualities have seemed, and will

again seem, more important parts of psychology.

Men are so ingrainedly partial that, for common-sense and scholasticism

(which is only common-sense grown articulate), the notion that there

is no one quality genuinely, absolutely, and exclusively essential to

anything is almost unthinkable. "A thing's essence makes it _what_ it

is. Without an exclusive essence it would be nothing in particular,

would be quite nameless, we could not say it was this rather than that.

What you write on, for example,--why talk of its being combustible,

rectangular, and the like, when you know that these are mere accidents,

and that what it really is, and was made to be, is just _paper_ and

nothing else?" The reader is pretty sure to make some such comment as

this. But he is himself merely insisting on an aspect of the thing

which suits his own petty purpose, that of _naming_ the thing; or else

on an aspect which suits the manufacturer's purpose, that of _producing

an article for which there is a vulgar demand_. Meanwhile the reality

overflows these purposes at every pore. Our usual purpose with it, our

commonest title for it, and the properties which this title suggests,

have in reality nothing sacramental. They characterize _us_ more than

they characterize the thing. But we are so stuck in our prejudices,

so petrified intellectually, that to our vulgarest names, with their

suggestions, we ascribe an eternal and exclusive worth. The thing must

be, essentially, what the vulgarest name connotes; what less usual

names connote, it can be only in an 'accidental' and relatively unreal

sense.[327]

Locke undermined the fallacy. But none of his successors, so far as

I know, have radically escaped it, or seen that _the only meaning of

essence is teleological, and that classification and conception are

purely teleological weapons of the mind_. The essence of a thing is

that one of its properties which is so _important for my interests_

that in comparison with it I may neglect the rest. Amongst those other

things which have this important property I class it, after this

property I name it, as a thing endowed with this property I conceive

it; and whilst so classing, naming, and conceiving it, all other

truths about it become to me as naught.[328] The properties which are

important vary from man to man and from hour to hour.[329] Hence divers

appellations and conceptions for the same thing. But many objects of

daily use--as paper, ink, butter, horse-car--have properties of such

constant unwavering importance, and have such stereotyped names, that

we end by believing that to conceive them in those ways is to conceive

them in the only true way. Those are no truer ways of conceiving them

than any others; they are only more important ways, more frequently

serviceable ways.[330]

So much for what is implied, when the reasoner conceives of the fact

S before him as a case of which the essence is to be M. One word now

as to what is involved in M's having properties, consequences, or

implications, and we can go back to the study of the reasoning process

again.

WHAT IS INVOLVED IN GENERAL PROPOSITIONS.

M is not a concrete, or 'self-sufficient,' as Mr. Clay would say. It is

an abstract character which may exist, embedded with other characters,

in many concretes. Whether it be the character of being a writing

surface, of being made in America or China, of being eight inches

square, or of being in a certain part of space, this is always true

of it. Now we might conceive of this being a world in which all such

general characters were independent of each other, so that if any one

of them were found in a subject S, we never could be sure what others

would be found alongside of it. On one occasion there might be P with

M, on another Q, and so on. In such a world there would be no _general_

sequences or coexistences, and no universal laws. Each grouping would

be _sui generis_; from the experience of the past no future could

be predicted; and reasoning, as we shall presently see, would be an

impossibility.

But the world we live in is not one of this sort. Though many general

characters seem indifferent to each other, there remain a number of

them which affect constant habits of mutual concomitance or repugnance.

They involve or imply each other. One of them is a sign to us that

the other will be found. They hunt in couples, as it were; and such a

proposition as that M is P, or includes P, or precedes or accompanies

P, if it prove to be true in one instance, may very likely be true in

every other instance which we meet. This is, in fact, a world in which

general laws obtain, in which universal propositions _are_ true, and in

which reasoning is therefore possible. Fortunately for us: for since

we cannot handle things as wholes, but only by conceiving them through

some general character which for the time we call their essence, it

would be a great pity if the matter ended there, and if the general

character, once picked out and in our possession, helped us to no

farther advance. In Chapter XXVIII we shall have again to consider

this harmony between our reasoning faculty and the world in which its

lot is cast.[331]

To revert now to our symbolic representation of the reasoning process:

M is P

S is M

------

S is P

M is discerned and picked out for the time being to be the essence of

the concrete fact, phenomenon, or reality, S. But M in this world of

ours is inevitably conjoined with P; so that P is the next thing that

we may expect to find conjoined with the fact S. We may conclude or

infer P, through the intermediation of the M which our sagacity began

by discerning, when S came before it, to be the essence of the case.

Now note that if P have any value or importance for us, M was a very

good character for our sagacity to pounce upon and abstract. If, on the

contrary, P were of no importance, some other character than M would

have been a better essence for us to conceive of S by. Psychologically,

as a rule, P overshadows the process from the start. We are _seeking_

P, or something like P. But the bare totality of S does not yield it

to our gaze; and casting about for some point in S to take hold of,

which will lead us to P, we hit, if we are sagacious, upon M, because

M happens to be just the character which is knit up with P. Had we

wished Q instead of P, and were N a property of S conjoined with Q, we

ought to have ignored M, noticed N, and conceived of S as a sort of N

exclusively.

Reasoning is always for a subjective interest, to attain some

particular conclusion, or to gratify some special curiosity. It not

only breaks up the datum placed before it and conceives it abstractly;

it must conceive it _rightly_ too; and conceiving it rightly means

conceiving it by that one particular abstract character which leads

to the one sort of conclusion which it is the reasoner's temporary

interest to attain.[332]

The _results_ of reasoning may be hit upon by accident, The stereoscope

was actually a result of reasoning; it is conceivable, however, that

a man playing with pictures and mirrors might accidentally have hit

upon it. Cats have been known to open doors by pulling latches, etc.

But no cat, if the latch got out of order, could open the door again,

unless some new accident of random fumbling taught her to associate

some new total movement with the total phenomenon of the closed door.

A reasoning man, however, would open the door by first analyzing the

hindrance. He would ascertain what particular feature of the door was

wrong. The lever, e.g., does not raise the latch sufficiently from its

slot--case of insufficient elevation--raise door bodily on hinges! Or

door sticks at top by friction against lintel--press it bodily down!

Now it is obvious that a child or an idiot might without this reasoning

learn the _rule_ for opening that particular door. I remember a clock

which the maid-servant had discovered would not go unless it were

supported so as to tilt slightly forwards. She had stumbled on this

method after many weeks of groping. The reason of the stoppage was the

friction of the pendulum-bob against the back of the clock-case, a

reason which an educated man would have analyzed out in five minutes.

I have a student's lamp of which the flame vibrates most unpleasantly

unless the collar which bears the chimney be raised about a sixteenth

of an inch. I learned the remedy after much torment by accident, and

now always keep the collar up with a small wedge. But my procedure is a

mere association of two totals, diseased object and remedy. One learned

in pneumatics could have named the _cause_ of the disease, and thence

inferred the remedy immediately. By many measurements of triangles

one might find their area always equal to their height multiplied by

half their base, and one might formulate an empirical law to that

effect. But a reasoner saves himself all this trouble by seeing that

it is the essence (_pro hac vice_) of a triangle to be the half of a

parallelogram whose area is the height into the entire base. To see

this he must invent additional lines; and the geometer must often draw

such to get at the essential property he may require in a figure. The

essence consists in some _relation of the figure to the new lines_,

a relation not obvious at all until they are put in. The geometer's

sagacity lies in the invention of the new lines.

THUS, THERE ARE TWO GREAT POINTS IN REASONING:

_First, an extracted character is taken as equivalent to the entire

datum from which it comes; and,_

_Second, the character thus taken suggests a certain consequence more

obviously than it was suggested by the total datum as it originally

came._ Take them again, successively.

* * * * *

1. Suppose I say, when offered a piece of cloth, "I won't buy that;

it looks as if it would fade," meaning merely that something about

it suggests the idea of fading to my mind,--my judgment, though

possibly correct, is not reasoned, but purely empirical; but, if I

can say that into the color there enters a certain dye which I know

to be chemically unstable, and that _therefore_ the color will fade,

my judgment is reasoned. The notion of the dye which is one of the

parts of the cloth, is the connecting link between the latter and the

notion of fading. So, again, an uneducated man will expect from past

experience to see a piece of ice melt if placed near the fire, and the

tip of his finger look coarse if he views it through a convex glass.

In neither of these cases could the result be anticipated without full

previous acquaintance with the entire phenomenon. It is not a result of

reasoning.

But a man who should conceive heat as a mode of motion, and

liquefaction as identical with increased motion of molecules; who

should know that curved surfaces bend light-rays in special ways, and

that the apparent size of anything is connected with the amount of

the 'bend' of its light-rays as they enter the eye,--such a man would

make the right inferences for all these objects, even though he had

never in his life had any concrete experience of them; and he would

do this because the ideas which we have above supposed him to possess

would mediate in his mind between the phenomena he starts with and the

conclusions he draws. But these ideas or reasons for his conclusions

are all mere extracted portions or circumstances singled out from the

mass of characters which make up the entire phenomena. The motions

which form heat, the bending of the light-waves, are, it is true,

excessively recondite ingredients; the hidden pendulum I spoke of above

is less so; and the sticking of a door on its sill in the earlier

example would hardly be so at all. But each and all agree in this, that

they bear a _more evident relation_ to the conclusion than did the

immediate data in their full totality.