transformation, that is, every case of causation, will appear as a most
miraculous and inexplicable event. To illustrate my view I said that
“_supposing we had no idea of the laws of form or only an incoherent and
fragmentary knowledge of them_,” it would be “a very wonderful thing”
that two congruent regular tetrahedrons when put together will form a
hexahedron—a body which is something new. And I added to this statement,
“_but the laws of form do perfectly and satisfactorily explain it_.”
How great was my astonishment to see Mr. Peirce with great complacency
take up the problem and explain it! Indeed, it is true. That the
combination of two congruent regular tetrahedrons will make a hexahedron,
is wonderful _only_ to him who does not understand the laws of form.
Otherwise, it is not wonderful. I was amused at Mr. Peirce’s ingenuity to
prove to me that it is a case of 8-2=6.—
There is a difference between the combination of two tetrahedrons and
of the atoms _H₂O_. Mr. Peirce tells me, that the one is ideal, the
other real—“a difference which to his Scotistic mind is very important.”
Did Mr. Peirce think, indeed, that I was not aware of this difference,
or does he mean to establish a rule never to compare the relations as
developed in the sciences of pure forms to the relations that obtain in
reality?—
Says Mr. Peirce in one passage, there is a difference between the ideal
and the real, which to his Scotistic mind is very important. In another
passage he declares that “the nominalist alone makes a sharp distinction
between the abstract and the concrete.”—
Mr. Peirce smiles at the endeavor of reconciling religion with science.
For he thinks:
“It is a thing which will come to pass of itself when time is
ripe, and that our efforts to hasten it have just that slight
effect that our efforts to hasten the ripening of apples on a
tree may have.” (P. 545.)
Mr. Peirce forgets that the religious fruits of the conciliation between
religion and science are our own sentiments. He who says that man should
be indifferent about working out the truth, on the plea that truth will
take care of itself, is comparable to the apple-tree, that refuses to
work out the ripening of the apples. The proposition to let religion and
science work out their destinies, one of which is their mutual agreement,
of themselves, is irreligious and also unscientific. Truth will not take
care of itself if we do not strain all our efforts to find truth; and the
kingdom of heaven will never come unless (as Christ taught, Matt. 11, 12)
“it suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”—
The same Mr. Peirce who says that our efforts to hasten the conciliation
of religion with science are useless, believes in miracles and proposes a
theory that prayer can work miracles.—
Several philosophers, such as Locke and Hegel, have complained of the
uselessness of the logical law of identity _A_ = _A_, and also of its
barrenness for any practical purpose. The law of identity has been
invented nevertheless, because there is a want for it; and this want, in
my opinion, was felt because the statement of sameness (as set forth in
_The Monist_, Vol. III, p. 70, et seqq.) is one of the most elementary
and important forms of reasoning, being indispensable, for instance, in
mathematics where it appears as equations. We may simply laugh at the old
logicians
“Who whirl in narrow circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails.”
We may impatiently discard the whole proceeding as empty talk, yet
I submit that we had better try to understand the meaning of their
unprofitable exertions and the drift of their apparently meaningless
argumentations. If we regard the principle of absolute identity as the
formula of sameness (in the sense explained in the quoted passage, _The
Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, p. 70, et seqq.) emptied of its contents we
shall understand why logicians wasted so much energy on an entirely
barren subject. We shall readily condone their mistakes in consideration
of the importance of the subject. It is difficult to say how much we have
profited by their blunders.—
Mr. Peirce uses the terms analytical and synthetical in a new sense for
reasons which he explains at greater length in his “Theory of Probable
Inferences.” He says, “analytical reasoning depends upon associations
of similarity; synthetical reasoning upon associations of contiguity.”
I willingly grant to the scientist and the philosopher the liberty to
change the historical meaning of terms if the traditional usage is
not helpful in our dealings with the facts which they were invented to
describe. However, we must not change a term without good and sufficient
reasons. In the present case, I still prefer the traditional usage of the
terms “analytical” and “synthetic.”—
Mr. Peirce takes the liberty of changing terms for himself, but he
resents it in others.—
Mr. Peirce disapproves of the usage of the word “construction” in the
sense of systems of formal thought, such as the decimal system, etc.,
etc. “Because,” he says, “the word is imperatively required in the
theory of cognition to denote a mathematical diagram framed according to
a general precept.” On the strength of this argument we might as well
disapprove of calling churches, mosques, houses, cottages, or any kind of
edifice, “building,” because the word “building” is imperatively required
to denote business-buildings.—
Mr. Peirce says that according to my statement (in ¶ 163) “every element
of compulsion is to be excluded from the conception of necessity.” Having
never made such a statement, I looked up the passage, which is the last
but one paragraph in _The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, page 86, and find
that Mr. Peirce must have misread the sentence, “compulsion excludes
free will, and necessity does not,” which, of course, has an entirely
different meaning.—
Mr. Peirce identifies evolution with real growth, regarding it as opposed
to the law of the conservation of energy. He regards everything as a
product of such growth, or _Erzeugung_, and adds, “I fancy it is this
cautious reflectiveness of my procedure which especially displeases Dr.
Carus.” Mr. Peirce does not use the word “bold.” He says, “cautious
reflectiveness.”—
I did not say that causation is to be explained from the law of the
conservation of matter and energy. I said (_The Monist_, Vol. II, No.
4, p. 566) that the law of the conservation of matter and energy throws
light upon the problem of causation. The law of the conservation of
matter and energy and the law of causation describe the same thing under
two different aspects. If we understand the one, it will help us to
understand the other.—
Kant’s chapter on the Architectonic of Pure Reason is well known to me,
but I think that Kant was possessed of a peculiar love of architectonic
which has contributed not a little to rendering the system of his
philosophy unnecessarily labyrinthine.—
It is surprising to find a man whom I always regarded as a Kant scholar
of first degree saying that “Kant makes space a necessary form of
thought.” Now, as a matter of fact, Kant does not make space a form of
_thought_, but of _Anschauung_ or intuition. We cannot understand Kant
unless we understand this distinction.[139]—
Kant conceives of causation as a necessary sequence. Mill, who objects to
the idea of necessity, replaces Kant’s words “universal” and “necessary”
by “invariable” and “unconditioned,” a substitution which was made with
the outspoken intention of radically changing the meaning of the phrase.
Mill’s terms are _not_ “more exact,” as Mr. Peirce says, but different.
They are worse than less exact to a Kantian, and can appear more exact
only to those who take Mill’s view, which is nominalistic. And this
substitution of Mill’s is regarded by realistic Mr. Peirce as a mere
“rewording of Kant’s definition”!—
Mr. Peirce makes too much of the idea of “_Erzeugung_, which,” as he
correctly says, “is Kant’s word for the sequence of effect from cause.”
Yet Kant’s idea of _Erzeugung_ does not conflict with “the modern
mechanical doctrine.” Kant says in that very same chapter, “_Aller
Wechsel (Succession) der Erscheinungen ist nur Veränderung_,” i. e., “All
change (succession) of phenomena is only transformation.” (!) Does not
Mr. Peirce know that Kant calls every world-conception that stands in
contradiction to the mechanical principle “a philosophy of indolence,” or
“_faule Weltweisheit_”?—
The same Kant who proposed a mechanical explanation of the evolution of
the starry heavens, objected very strongly to that kind of explanations
“which derive all order from chance”; and speaking of Epicurus’s
“absolute chance”(!) he adds: “Epicurus was even so reckless (_so
unverschämt_) as to demand that the atoms should deviate from their
straight course without any cause.” Mr. Peirce has either overlooked in
Kant these passages, or, if he has read them, he has never taken them to
heart.—
Mr. Peirce objects to my statement that according to his philosophy the
domain of mind is characterised by absence of law. He argues: “Is not one
of my papers entitled ‘The Law of Mind?’” Yet this law of mind, he states
two lines further on, “requires its own violation.” (P. 552.)—
The “sporting” of the primeval chance, Mr. Peirce says on page 552
of this number, is “not undetermined and indeterminable,” because
“its ultimate result must be an entire elimination of chance from the
universe.” Shall we understand that the “arbitrary sporting” of the
primeval chaos, with which Mr. Peirce (according to _The Monist_, Vol. I,
No. 2, p. 175) begins his cosmogony, was determined? If absolute chance
is determined, why not call such a philosophy “determined Indeterminism”?
We try hard to understand Mr. Peirce, but sometimes we really have to
give it up.—
Physiology teaches that memory alone changes feeling into consciousness,
but the consciousness of Mr. Peirce’s original Chance is without memory
and habit.—
Chance, a being living and conscious, has, according to Mr. Peirce,
created the world, but the ultimate result of evolution must be an
entire elimination of Chance from the universe. Thus it appears that the
creation of the world is an act of divine suicide. The world-process is a
slow degeneration of God, finally ending in his complete annihilation.
RETROSPECT.
In summing up the result of the whole battle, we find that there is not
a single question on which we have to yield or even modify our position.
Our position remains the same, while Mr. Peirce’s position has become
glaringly untenable. There is one point, however, in which justice
demands that we should recognise that he is right. I should not have
called Hamilton “Mr.,” but “Sir William.” I can, however, assure Mr.
Peirce that this mistake of mine (which in all my allusions to Hamilton
occurs only once) was a mere slip of the pen; it was not ignorance on my
part and still less was it any disregard of the rules of politeness.
We are obliged to reject the favorite ideas of Mr. Peirce, and have only
to add that our esteem for him has not been lessened, in spite of all
disagreements, and notwithstanding the flaws we have detected in his
reasoning. On the contrary, our admiration for him as a dialectitian
has been greatly increased, for, in truth, we have never before seen
propositions so untenable in their nature, so odd and almost bizarre, as
those of “absolute chance,” of “matter as effete mind,” of “feeling as
being the inner aspect of chance,” and of “real growth as opposed to the
conservation of energy,” defended with greater adroitness.
Mr. Peirce is unusually familiar with certain branches of learning, of
which he has made a specialty, and also with general philosophy; but he
has original ideas, and he prizes them too highly. Where he makes no use
of his originality, he does extraordinarily good Work. Thus, most of his
papers on logic, published in sundry magazines, are, in their critical
as well as constructive parts, strictly scientific and almost free from
apocryphal speculations. Only slight hints in them have been a puzzle to
me and other readers of his essays. Of late, however, Mr. Peirce has come
out more explicitly with his peculiar philosophy, and we regret to say
that the more he allows his original ideas to enter into his thoughts,
the more warped are his theories.
While we regard Mr. Peirce’s original ideas as erroneous, we must
say that they are nevertheless highly interesting and stimulating.
His propositions are presented so vigorously, so attractively, so
brilliantly, that while perusing his articles, we find them remarkably
suggestive; we enjoy them as we do poetry. They read like a romance of
the origin of the world or a fairy-tale of metaphysics.
Mr. Peirce’s views should receive the consideration of all earnest
students of philosophy; for he goes to the root of its main problems, and
his very errors are instructive.
EDITOR.
FOOTNOTES:
[125] Kepler’s scheme is, that all the regular solids, icosahedron,
dodecahedron, octohedron, tetrahedron, and cube should be placed one
within the other at such distances that spheres could be described
between them so as to touch the corners of each respective interior and
the planes of each respective exterior solid. He found, by placing the
sun in the centre and allowing the planets to move in great circles on
the spheres, (making the circle between the icosahedron and dodecahedron
equal to the orbit of the earth,) that then the distances between the
planets would, upon the whole, agree with astronomical observations.
This theory is as ingenious, as fascinating, and as original as Mr.
Peirce’s propositions. It has only one little fault; it does not agree
with facts. And Kepler afterwards abandoned his original theory.
[126] Like Mr. Peirce, Kepler had, in his days, too, thought of the
possibility of making the world evolve from chance. When, in 1604, a new
and brilliant fixed star suddenly appeared in Ophiuchos, he took up the
problem of star-evolution. We will let Kepler tell the story in his own
words as it appears in his treatise on the new star:
“Yesterday, while pondering over the problem, I was called to dinner, and
my young wife served the salad. ‘Do you think,’ I asked her, ‘if since
the origin of creation, pewter platters, salad leaves, oil and vinegar,
and also hard-boiled eggs had been flying in a chaotic mixture through
space that _Chance_ would have been able to collect them to-day in a
salad?’ ‘Certainly not in such a good mixture as this is,’ was the reply
of my beautiful wife.”
Kepler rejected the idea that the world could have evolved by chance.
[127] The philosophical articles of the _Century Dictionary_ do not
seem to be free of party spirit. An extraordinary amount of praise is
given to the mediæval realists which, considering the vagaries of their
propositions, they do not deserve. On the other hand, the blame for
the discredit into which scholasticism has fallen is heaped upon the
nominalists.
[128] I said in _Fundamental Problems_, page 142, “The introduction of
the word positivism into philosophy is the merit of M. Auguste Comte.
Although we cannot accept much of M. Comte’s conception of positivism
we gratefully adopt the name.” There are plenty of other passages in
which my usage of the term positivism, as distinguished from the French
positivism, is set forth, so that there could be little danger of being
misunderstood.
[129] My main objection to the term Absolute is to forestall any
hypostatising of a vague abstract notion which can only serve the purpose
of mystification. I suffer the term Absolute in a loose sense when it is
understood that it is used loosely. I do not say, as Mr. Peirce seems
to believe, “absolutely universal” or “absolutely necessary.” The words
universal and necessary are sufficiently significant to me without any
additional emphasis.
Reality is relative throughout. Absolute existences are, if the term is
taken seriously, nonentities; and the expression “The Absolute” for the
whole of existence or for those features of existence which are universal
and necessary is, to say the least, misleading. These are my reasons for
rejecting the Absolute as a philosophical term. There is, of course,
no objection to the term in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and other
sciences, where it has acquired technical meanings.
[130] Mr. Peirce correctly says that the axioms of geometry are now
exploded. This, however, does not overthrow the reliability of formal
mathematics; on the contrary, it places it on a safer basis than that of
unprovable assumptions, which must be taken for granted.
We look upon the whole system of geometry as a _product of mental
operations_. We perform some operations and note what their products are.
We do something and mind the consequences of what we do. The problem
of modern geometry is to invent a method by which we can construct in
the simplest manner possible a straight line and a plane. Euclid still
presupposes the existence of the plane and assumes it to be such that
parallel lines do not meet. When we are able to construct the plane of
Euclidean geometry, we can dispense with the axiom of parallels, for, in
that case, the plane will possess the qualities it has by construction.
We can very well execute other constructions in which parallel lines
possess other qualities, and we shall on the basis of such an altered
plan of operation be able to produce entirely different systems of
geometry.
We must distinguish between the space of our mathematicians and real
space. Experience teaches us that real space has three dimensions
which means that from a given point every other point is determinable
by three magnitudes. We might doubt (although I think there is little
occasion to do so) whether the real space of our experience is truly
three-dimensional, but we cannot doubt that the truths developed in the
one-dimensional system of numbers, in the two-dimensional system of plane
geometry, in the three-dimensional system of solid geometry, and also in
_n_-dimensional systems each in their respective domain are perfectly
reliable, for they are unequivocally determined, they are _eindeutig
bestimmt_. There is no application of the theory of probabilities in a
field where the products are not due to chance but result with certainty.
[131] I wonder why the _Century Dictionary_ does not mention the
scholastic usage of the word _univocus_ as the root of univocal.
Similarly we are not told that the word _incompossibilitas_ is an
invention of the schoolmen. Duns Scotus, Mr. Peirce’s favorite
philosopher, uses the terms _univoce_ and _incompossibilitas_ freely.
[132] We accept in this argument Mr. Peirce’s solutions, which, however,
are his own. A simpler example would have been more appropriate.
[133] The belief in a duality of truth appears quite rational from the
dualistic standpoint of the middle ages, and the arguments of Scotus are
cleverly devised, being based upon the supposition that the fall of man
had changed the entire order of the world, so that the laws of nature
prior to the Fall were different to those which obtain now.
[134] Duns Scotus was a very zealous advocate of ecclesiastical
supremacy, even advising, for instance, the prosecution of the Jews in
order to convert them. It is a strange irony of fate that the author of
the _Fons vitæ_, upon whose authority Scotus so largely depends and from
whom he derived some of his most important ideas was an Israelite. Scotus
did not know that Avicebron was a pseudonym of the Spanish Jew Salomon
ben Gebirol.
[135] I omit here a discussion as to whether or not the conservation
of energy is true or not. I need not mention that the views of our
physicists, such men as Helmholtz, Mach, Maxwell, Tait, and others differ
widely from Mr. Peirce’s presentation of the subject. Mr. Peirce rejects
the law of the conservation of energy, but retains the conservation,
or (as he prefers to say) perduration of matter. I waive the question,
whether this is consistent, and call attention only to another, most
flagrant contradiction. Mr. Peirce states that, “not only the total
amount [of matter] remains constant, but all the different parts preserve
their identity”; and yet he says that “matter is effete mind.” Thus when
mind becomes effete, the amount of matter increases; however, when the
habits of matter are broken up, mind originates, and the amount of matter
decreases. This, it seems, would make any perduration of matter and of
the identity of its different parts impossible.
[136] That my view of the _a priori_, as Mr. Peirce claims, is
“Schleiermacherian” is new to me.
[137] It is a matter of course that frequently several events coöperate
to bring about an effect. In that case we have our choice, either to
speak of several causes, or to treat the coöperation of all of them as
_the_ cause, or to select one of them to be called the cause, while the
others may be counted among the conditions.
The limitation of a system of causation depends entirely upon the purpose
of our inquiry, and we must here, as in many other things, use discretion.
Mr. Peirce concludes, that according to my view of causation we can,
in a relatively uniform motion, such as the flight of a cannon ball,
regard the motion of every moment as the cause for the motion of the
next moment. I say “relatively,” for absolutely uniform motion does not
exist. I grant this, but I do not grant what Mr. Peirce regards as a
contradiction of mine, that in that case the cause would be equal to the
effect. A man who knows the artifices of the hair-splitting Eleates and
the other conundrums of logic, should know that every second of time is
different from every other second; 12 o’clock is different from 1 second
past 12. He who denies this, has only to miss a train in order to be
converted. And how much more different than the moments of time are the
various moments of real motion, for in every moment the moving body is in
another place, with changed relations; and if that does not constitute a
difference, we should have to deny the existence of motion.
[138] See my article on “The Continuity of Evolution” in _The Monist_,
Vol. II, No 1; and also “Monism and Meliorism,” p. 73, where “the
struggle for the ideal” is contrasted with “the struggle for life.”
[139] For details see, in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4, page 518, et
seqq., and 527, et seqq., my articles, “Mr. Spencer on the Ethics of
Kant,” heading iv, and “What Does Anschauung Mean?”
I now forgive Mr. Spencer; for if a Kant scholar like Mr. Peirce can
fall into this unpardonable mistake, why should not Mr. Spencer, whose
knowledge of Kant’s writings is, as he confesses himself, extremely
limited, have the same privilege?
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THEISM.
I. THE REALISM OF THEISM.
It is commonly alleged that there is deeply seated in the human mind
a belief in the existence of a supreme being, and that the prevalence
of such belief is evidence that it has a basis in supernatural
revelation. It is urged in reply to this assertion, that this belief
is not universal, and that in any case its presence cannot be regarded
as satisfactory evidence that is well founded. It is known that the
disposition to worship is aroused by grand and beautiful objects; and as
Darwin well remarks in one of his letters, the natural sentiments of the
sublime and the beautiful easily assume a personal direction. Scientific
explanations, moreover, push a personal source of things ever further
from us, and it is becoming apparently more easy to doubt or deny any
such source whatever.