CHAPTER XIII
REALISM AND IDEALISM
52. REALISM.--The plain man is a realist. That is to say, he believes
in a world which is not to be identified with his own ideas or those of
any other mind. At the same time, as we have seen (section 12), the
distinction between the mind and the world is by no means clear to him.
It is not difficult, by judicious questioning, to set his feet upon the
slippery descent that shoots a man into idealism.
The vague realism of the plain man may be called _Naïve_ or
_Unreflective Realism_. It has been called by some _Natural Realism_,
but the latter term is an unfortunate one. It is, of course, natural
for the unreflective man to be unreflective, but, on the other hand, it
is also natural for the reflective man to be reflective. Besides, in
dubbing any doctrine "natural," we are apt to assume that doctrines
contrasted with it may properly be called "unnatural" or "artificial."
It is an ancient rhetorical device, to obtain sympathy for a cause in
which one may happen to be interested by giving it a taking name; but
it is a device frowned upon by logic and by good sense.
One kind of realism is, then, naïve realism. It is the position from
which we all set out, when we begin to reflect upon the system of
things. It is the position to which some try to come back, when their
reflections appear to be leading them into strange or unwelcome paths.
We have seen how Thomas Reid (section 50) recoiled from the conclusions
to which the reasonings of the philosophers had brought him, and tried
to return to the position of the plain man. The attempt was a failure,
and was necessarily a failure, for Reid tried to come back to the
position of the plain man _and still be a philosopher_. He tried to
live in a cloud and, nevertheless, to see clearly--a task not easy to
accomplish.
It should be remarked, however, that he tried, at least, to insist that
we know the external world _directly_. We may divide realists into two
broad classes, those who hold to this view, and those who maintain that
we know it only indirectly and through our ideas.
The plain man belongs, of course, to the first class, if it is just to
speak of a man who says inconsistent things as being wholly in any one
class. Certainly he is willing to assert that the ground upon which he
stands and the staff in his hand are perceived by him directly.
But we are compelled to recognize that there are subdivisions in this
first class of realists. Reid tried to place himself beside the plain
man and failed to do so. Hamilton (section 50) tried also, and he is
not to be classed precisely either with the plain man or with Reid. He
informs us that the object as it appears to us is a composite something
to the building up of which the knowing mind contributes its share, the
medium through which the object is perceived its share, and the object
in itself its share. He suggests, by way of illustration, that the
external object may contribute one third. This seems to make, at
least, _something_ external directly known. But, on the other hand, he
maintains that the mind knows immediately only what is in immediate
contact with the bodily organ--with the eyes, with the hands, etc.; and
he believes it knows this immediately because it is actually present in
all parts of the body. And, further, in distinguishing as he does
between existence "as it is in itself" and existence "as it is revealed
to us," and in shutting us up to the latter, he seems to rob us even of
the modicum of externality that he has granted us.
I have already mentioned Herbert Spencer (section 50) as a man not
without sympathy for the attempt to rehabilitate the external world.
He is very severe with the "insanities" of idealism. He is not willing
even to take the first step toward it.
He writes:[1] "The postulate with which metaphysical reasoning sets out
is that we are primarily conscious only of our sensations--that we
certainly know we have these, and that if there be anything beyond
these serving as cause for them, it can be known only by inference from
them.
"I shall give much surprise to the metaphysical reader if I call in
question this postulate; and the surprise will rise into astonishment
if I distinctly deny it. Yet I must do this. Limiting the proposition
to those epiperipheral feelings produced in us by external objects (for
these are alone in question), I see no alternative but to affirm that
the thing primarily known is not that a sensation has been experienced,
but that there exists an outer object."
According to this, the outer object is not known through an inference;
it is known directly. But do not be in haste to class Spencer with the
plain man, or with Reid. Listen to a citation once before made
(section 22), but worth repeating in this connection: "When we are
taught that a piece of matter, regarded by us as existing externally,
cannot be really known, but that we can know only certain impressions
produced on us, we are yet, by the relativity of thought, compelled to
think of these in relation to a cause--the notion of a real existence
which generated these impressions becomes nascent. If it be proved
that every notion of a real existence which we can frame is
inconsistent with itself,--that matter, however conceived by us, cannot
be matter as it actually is,--our conception, though transfigured, is
not destroyed: there remains the sense of reality, dissociated as far
as possible from those special forms under which it was before
represented in thought."
It is interesting to place the two extracts side by side. In the one,
we are told that we do not know external objects by an inference from
our sensations; in the other we are taught that the piece of matter
which we regard as existing externally cannot be really known; that we
can know only certain impressions produced on us, and must refer them
to a cause; that this cause cannot be what we think it. It is
difficult for the man who reads such statements not to forget that
Spencer regarded himself as a realist who held to a direct knowledge of
something external.
There are, as it is evident, many sorts of realists that may be
gathered into the first class mentioned above--men who, however
inconsistent they may be, try, at least, to maintain that our knowledge
of the external world is a direct one. And it is equally true that
there are various sorts of realists that may be put into the second
class.
These men have been called _Hypothetical Realists_. In the last
chapter it was pointed out that Descartes and Locke belong to this
class. Both of these men believed in an external world, but believed
that its existence is a thing to be inferred.
Now, when a man has persuaded himself that the mind can know directly
only its own ideas, and must infer the world which they are supposed to
represent, he may conceive of that external world in three different
ways.
(1) He may believe that what corresponds to his idea of a material
object, for example, an apple, is in very many respects like the idea
in his mind. Thus, he may believe that the odor, taste, color,
hardness, etc., that he perceives directly, or as ideas, have
corresponding to them real external odor, taste, color, hardness, etc.
It is not easy for a man to hold to this position, for a very little
reflection seems to make it untenable; but it is theoretically possible
for one to take it, and probably many persons have inclined to the view
when they have first been tempted to believe that the mind perceives
directly only its ideas.
(2) He may believe that such things as colors, tastes, and odors cannot
be qualities of external bodies at all, but are only effects, produced
upon our minds by something very different in kind. We seem to
perceive bodies, he may argue, to be colored, to have taste, and to be
odorous; but what we thus perceive is not the external thing; the
external thing that produces these appearances cannot be regarded as
having anything more than "solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest,
and number." Thus did Locke reason. To him the external world as it
really exists, is, so to speak, a paler copy of the external world as
we seem to perceive it. It is a world with fewer qualities, but,
still, a world with qualities of some kind.
(3) But one may go farther than this. One may say: How can I know that
even the extension, number, and motion of the things which I directly
perceive have corresponding to them extension, number, and motion, in
an outer world? If what is not colored can cause me to perceive color,
why may not that which is not extended cause me to perceive extension?
And, moved by such reflections, one may maintain that there exists
outside of us that which we can only characterize as an Unknown Cause,
a Reality which we cannot more nearly define.
This last position resembles very closely one side of Spencer's
doctrine--that represented in the last of the two citations, as the
reader can easily see. It is the position of the follower of Immanuel
Kant who has not yet repudiated the noumenon or thing-in-itself
discussed in the last chapter (section 51).
I am not concerned to defend any one of the varieties of Direct or of
Hypothetical Realism portrayed above. But I wish to point out that
they all have some sort of claim to the title _Realism_, and to remind
the reader that, when we call a man a realist, we do not do very much
in the way of defining his position. I may add that the account of the
external world contained in Chapter IV is a sort of realism also.
If this last variety, which I advocate, _must_ be classified, let it be
placed in the first broad class, for it teaches that we know the
external world directly. But I sincerely hope that it will not be
judged wholly by the company it keeps, and that no one will assign to
it either virtues or defects to which it can lay no just claim.
Before leaving the subject of realism it is right that I should utter a
note of warning touching one very common source of error. It is
fatally easy for men to be misled by the names which are applied to
things. Sir William Hamilton invented for a certain type of
metaphysical doctrine the offensive epithet "nihilism." It is a type
which appeals to many inoffensive and pious men at the present day,
some of whom prefer to call themselves idealists. Many have been
induced to become "free-willists" because the name has suggested to
them a proper regard for that freedom which is justly dear to all men.
We can scarcely approach with an open mind an account of ideas and
sensations which we hear described as "sensationalism," or worse yet,
as "sensualism." When a given type of philosophy is set down as
"dogmatism," we involuntarily feel a prejudice against it.
He who reads as reflectively as he should will soon find out that
philosophers "call names" much as other men do, and that one should
always be on one's guard. "Every form of phenomenalism," asseverated a
learned and energetic old gentleman, who for many years occupied a
chair in one of our leading institutions of learning, "necessarily
leads to atheism." He inspired a considerable number of students with
such a horror for "phenomenalism" that they never took pains to find
out what it was.
I mention these things in this connection, because I suspect that not a
few in our own day are unduly influenced by the associations which
cling to the words "realism" and "idealism." Realism in literature, as
many persons understand it, means the degradation of literature to the
portrayal of what is coarse and degrading, in a coarse and offensive
way. Realism in painting often means the laborious representation upon
canvas of things from which we would gladly avert our eyes if we met
them in real life. With the word "idealism," on the other hand, we are
apt to connect the possession of ideals, a regard for what is best and
noblest in life and literature.
The reader must have seen that realism in the philosophic sense of the
word has nothing whatever to do with realism in the senses just
mentioned. The word is given a special meaning, and it is a weakness
to allow associations drawn from other senses of the word to color our
judgment when we use it.
And it should be carefully held in view that the word "idealism" is
given a special sense when it is used to indicate a type of doctrine
contrasted with the doctrine of the realist. Some forms of
philosophical idealism have undoubtedly been inspiring; but some have
been, and are, far from inspiring. They should not be allowed to
posture as saints merely because they are cloaked with an ambiguous
name.
53. IDEALISM.--Idealism we may broadly define as the doctrine that all
existence is mental existence. So far from regarding the external
world as beyond and independent of mind, it maintains that it can have
its being only in consciousness.
We have seen (section 49) how men were led to take the step to
idealism. It is not a step which the plain man is impelled to take
without preparation. To say that the real world of things in which we
perceive ourselves to live and move is a something that exists only in
the mind strikes him as little better than insane. He who becomes an
idealist usually does so, I think, after weighing the arguments
presented by the hypothetical realist, and finding that they seem to
carry one farther than the latter appears to recognize.
The type of idealism represented by Berkeley has been called
_Subjective Idealism_. Ordinarily our use of the words "subjective"
and "objective" is to call attention to the distinction between what
belongs to the mind and what belongs to the external order of things.
My sensations are subjective, they are referred to my mind, and it is
assumed that they can have no existence except in my mind; the
qualities of things are regarded as objective, that is, it is commonly
believed that they exist independently of my perception of them.
Of course, when a man becomes an idealist, he cannot keep just this
distinction. The question may, then, fairly be raised: How can he be a
_subjective idealist_? Has not the word "subjective" lost its
significance?
To this one has to answer: It has, and it has not. The man who, with
strict consistency, makes the desk at which he sits as much his "idea"
as is the pain in his finger or his memory of yesterday, cannot keep
hold of the distinction of subjective and objective. But men are not
always as consistent as this. Remember the illustration of the
"telephone exchange" (section 14). The mind is represented as situated
at the brain terminals of the sensory nerves; and then brain, nerves,
and all else are turned into ideas in this mind, which are merely
"projected outwards."
Now, in placing the mind at a definite location in the world, and
contrasting it with the world, we retain the distinction between
subjective and objective--what is in the mind can be distinguished from
what is beyond it. On the other hand, in making the whole system of
external things a complex of ideas in the mind, we become idealists,
and repudiate realism. The position is an inconsistent one, of course,
but it is possible for men to take it, for men have taken it often
enough.
The idealism of Professor Pearson (section 14) is more palpably
subjective than that of Berkeley, for the latter never puts the mind in
a "telephone exchange." Nevertheless, he names the objects of sense,
which other men call material things, "ideas," and he evidently
assimilates them to what we commonly call ideas and contrast with
things. Moreover, he holds them in some of the contempt which men
reserve for "mere ideas," for he believes that idolaters might be
induced to give over worshiping the heavenly bodies could they be
persuaded that these are nothing more than their own ideas.
With the various forms of subjective idealism it is usual to contrast
the doctrine of _Objective Idealism_. This does not maintain that the
world which I perceive is my "idea"; it maintains that the world is
"idea."
It is rather a nice question, and one which no man should decide
without a careful examination of the whole matter, whether we have any
right to retain the word "idea" when we have rubbed out the distinction
which is usually drawn between ideas and external things. If we
maintain that all men are always necessarily selfish, we stretch the
meaning of the word quite beyond what is customary, and selfishness
becomes a thing we have no reason to disapprove, since it characterizes
saint and sinner alike. Similarly, if we decide to name "idea," not
only what the plain man and the realist admit to have a right to that
name, but also the great system which these men call an external
material world, it seems right to ask; Why use the word "idea" at all?
What does it serve to indicate? Not a distinction, surely, for the
word seems to be applicable to all things without distinction.
Such considerations as these lead me to object to the expression
"objective idealism": if the doctrine is really _objective_, _i.e._ if
it recognizes a system of things different and distinct from what men
commonly call ideas, it scarcely seems to have a right to the title
_idealism_; and if it is really _idealism_, and does not rob the word
idea of all significance, it can scarcely be _objective_ in any proper
sense of the word.
Manifestly, there is need of a very careful analysis of the meaning of
the word "idea," and of the proper significance of the terms
"subjective" and "objective," if error is to be avoided and language
used soberly and accurately. Those who are not in sympathy with the
doctrine of the objective idealists think that in such careful analysis
and accurate statement they are rather conspicuously lacking.
We think of Hegel (1770-1831) as the typical objective idealist. It is
not easy to give an accurate account of his doctrine, for he is far
from a clear writer, and he has made it possible for his many admirers
to understand him in many ways. But he seems to have accepted the
system of things that most men call the real external world, and to
have regarded it as the Divine Reason in its self-development. And
most of those whom we would to-day be inclined to gather together under
the title of objective idealists appear to have been much influenced,
directly or indirectly, by his philosophy. There are, however, great
differences of opinion among them, and no man should be made
responsible for the opinions of the class as a class.
I have said a few pages back that some forms of idealism are inspiring,
and that some are not.
Bishop Berkeley called the objects of sense ideas. He regarded all
ideas as inactive, and thought that all changes in ideas--and this
includes all the changes that take place in nature--must be referred to
the activity of minds. Some of those changes he could refer to finite
minds, his own and others. Most of them he could not, and he felt
impelled to refer them to a Divine Mind. Hence, the world became to
him a constant revelation of God; and he uses the word "God" in no
equivocal sense. It does not signify to him the system of things as a
whole, or an Unknowable, or anything of the sort. It signifies a
spirit akin to his own, but without its limitations. He writes:[2]--
"A human spirit or person is not perceived by sense, as not being an
idea; when, therefore, we see the color, size, figure, and motions of a
man, we perceive only certain sensations or ideas excited in our own
minds; and these being exhibited to our view in sundry distinct
collections serve to mark out unto us the existence of finite and
created spirits like ourselves. Hence, it is plain we do not see a
man,--if by _man_ is meant that which lives, moves, perceives, and
thinks as we do,--but only such a certain collection of ideas as
directs us to think there is a distinct principle of thought and
motion, like to ourselves, accompanying and represented by it. And
after the same manner we see God; all the difference is that, whereas
some one finite and narrow assemblage of ideas denotes a particular
human mind, whithersoever we direct our view, we do at all times and in
all places perceive manifest tokens of the Divinity--everything we see,
hear, feel, or any wise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect of
the power of God; as is our perception of those very motions which are
produced by men."
With Berkeley's view of the world as a constant revelation of God, many
men will sympathize who have little liking for his idealism as
idealism. They may criticise in detail his arguments to prove the
nonexistence of a genuinely external world, but they will be ready to
admit that his doctrine is an inspiring one in the view that it takes
of the world and of man.
With this I wish to contrast the doctrine of another idealist, Mr.
Bradley, whose work, "Appearance and Reality," has been much discussed
in the last few years, in order that the reader may see how widely
different forms of idealism may differ from each other, and how absurd
it is to praise or blame a man's philosophy merely on the ground that
it is idealistic.
Mr. Bradley holds that those aspects of our experience which we are
accustomed to regard as real--qualities of things, the relations
between things, the things themselves, space, time, motion, causation,
activity, the self--turn out when carefully examined to be
self-contradictory and absurd. They are not real; they are
unrealities, mere appearances.
But these appearances exist, and, hence, must belong to reality. This
reality must be sentient, for "there is no being or fact outside of
that which is commonly called psychical existence."
Now, what is this reality with which appearances--the whole world of
things which seem to be given in our experience--are contrasted? Mr.
Bradley calls it the Absolute, and indicates that it is what other men
recognize as the Deity. How shall we conceive it?
We are told that we are to conceive it as consisting of the contents of
finite minds, or "centers of experience," subjected to "an
all-pervasive transfusion with a reblending of all material." In the
Absolute, finite things are "transmuted" and lose "their individual
natures."
What does this mean in plain language? It means that there are many
finite minds of a higher and of a lower order, "centers of experience,"
and that the contents of these are unreal appearances. There is not a
God or Absolute outside of and distinct from these, but rather one that
in some sense _is their reality_. This mass of unrealities transfused
and transmuted so that no one of them retains its individual nature is
the Absolute. That is to say, time must become indistinguishable from
space, space from motion, motion from the self, the self from the
qualities of things, etc., before they are fit to become constituents
of the Absolute and to be regarded as real.
As the reader has seen, this Absolute has nothing in common with the
God in which Berkeley believed, and in which the plain man usually
believes. It is the night in which all cats are gray, and there
appears to be no reason why any one should harbor toward it the least
sentiment of awe or veneration.
Whether such reasonings as Mr. Bradley's should be accepted as valid or
should not, must be decided after a careful examination into the
foundations upon which they rest and the consistency with which
inferences are drawn from premises. I do not wish to prejudge the
matter. But it is worth while to set forth the conclusions at which he
arrives, that it may be clearly realized that the associations which
often hang about the word "idealism" should be carefully stripped away
when we are forming our estimate of this or that philosophical doctrine.
[1] "Principles of Psychology," Part VII, Chapter VI, section 404.
[2] "Principles," section 148.
CHAPTER XIV
MONISM AND DUALISM
54. THE MEANING OF THE WORDS.--In common life men distinguish between
minds and material things, thus dividing the things, which taken
together make up the world as we know it, into two broad classes. They
think of minds as being very different from material objects, and of
the latter as being very different from minds. It does not occur to
them to find in the one class room for the other, nor does it occur to
them to think of both classes as "manifestations" or "aspects" of some
one "underlying reality." In other words, the plain man to-day is a
_Dualist_.
In the last chapter (section 52) I have called him a Naïve Realist; and
here I shall call him a _Naïve Dualist_, for a man may regard mind and
matter as quite distinct kinds of things, without trying to elevate his
opinion, through reflection, into a philosophical doctrine. The
reflective man may stand by the opinion of the plain man, merely trying
to make less vague and indefinite the notions of matter and of mind.
He then becomes a _Philosophical Dualist_. There are several varieties
of this doctrine, and I shall consider them a little later (section 58).
But it is possible for one to be less profoundly impressed by the
differences which characterize matter and mind. One may feel inclined
to refer mental phenomena to matter, and to deny them the prominence
accorded them by the dualist. On the other hand, one may be led by
one's reflections to resolve material objects into mere ideas, and to
claim that they can have no existence except in a mind. Finally, it is
possible to hold that both minds and material things, as we know them,
are only manifestations, phenomena, and that they must be referred to
an ulterior "reality" or "substance." One may claim that they are
"aspects" of the one reality, which is neither matter nor mind.
These doctrines are different forms of _Monism_. In whatever else they
differ from one another, they agree in maintaining that the universe
does not contain two kinds of things fundamentally different. Out of
the duality of things as it seems to be revealed to the plain man they
try to make some kind of a unity.
35. MATERIALISM.--The first of the forms of monism above mentioned is
_Materialism_. It is not a doctrine to which the first impulse of the
plain man leads him at the present time. Even those who have done no
reading in philosophy have inherited many of their ways of looking at
things from the thinkers who lived in the ages past, and whose opinions
have become the common property of civilized men. For more than two
thousand years the world and the mind have been discussed, and it is
impossible for any of us to escape from the influence of those
discussions and to look at things with the primitive simplicity of the
wholly untutored.
But it was not always so. There was a time when men who were not
savages, but possessed great intellectual vigor and much cultivation,
found it easy and natural to be materialists. This I have spoken of
before (section 30), but it will repay us to take up again a little
more at length the clearest of the ancient forms of materialism, that
of the Atomists, and to see what may be said for and against it.
Democritus of Abdera taught that nothing exists except atoms and empty
space. The atoms, he maintained, differ from one another in size,
shape, and position. In other respects they are alike. They have
always been in motion. Perhaps he conceived of that motion as
originally a fall through space, but there seems to be uncertainty upon
this point. However, the atoms in motion collide with one another, and
these collisions result in mechanical combinations from which spring
into being world-systems.
According to this doctrine, nothing comes from nothing, and nothing can
become nonexistent. All the changes which have ever taken place in the
world are only changes in the position of material particles--they are
regroupings of atoms. We cannot directly perceive them to be such, for
our senses are too dull to make such fine observations, but our reason
tells us that such is the case.
Where, in such a world as this, is there room for mind, and what can we
mean by mind? Democritus finds a place for mind by conceiving it to
consist of fine, smooth, round atoms, which are the same as the atoms
which constitute fire. These are distributed through the whole body,
and lie among the other atoms which compose it. They are inhaled with
and exhaled into the outer air. While they are in the body their
functions are different according as they are located in this organ or
in that. In the brain they give rise to thought, in the heart to
anger, and in the liver to desire.
I suppose no one would care, at the present time, to become a
Democritean. The "Reason," which tells us that the mind consists of
fine, round atoms, appears to have nothing but its bare word to offer
us. But, apart from this, a peculiar difficulty seems to face us; even
supposing there are atoms of fire in the brain, the heart, and the
liver, what are the _thought_, _anger_, and _desire_, of which mention
is made?
Shall we conceive of these last as atoms, as void space, or as the
motion of atoms? There really seems to be no place in the world for
them, and _these are the mind so far as the mind appears to be
revealed_--they are _mental phenomena_. It does not seem that they are
to be identified with anything that the Atomistic doctrine admits as
existing. They are simply overlooked.
Is the modern materialism more satisfactory? About half a century ago
there was in the scientific world something like a revival of
materialistic thinking. It did not occur to any one to maintain that
the mind consists of fine atoms disseminated through the body, but
statements almost as crude were made. It was said, for example, that
the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.
It seems a gratuitous labor to criticise such statements as these in
detail. There are no glands the secretions of which are not as
unequivocally material as are the glands themselves. This means that
such secretions can be captured and analyzed; the chemical elements of
which they are composed can be enumerated. They are open to inspection
in precisely the same way as are the glands which secrete them.
Does it seem reasonable to maintain that thoughts and feelings are
related to brains in this way? Does the chemist ever dream of
collecting them in a test tube, and of drawing up for us a list of
their constituent elements? When the brain is active, there are, to be
sure, certain material products which pass into the blood and are
finally eliminated from the body; but among these products no one would
be more surprised than the materialist to discover pains and pleasures,
memories and anticipations, desires and volitions. This talk of
thought as a "secretion" we can afford to set aside.
Nor need we take much more seriously the seemingly more sober statement
that thought is a "function" of the brain. There is, of course, a
sense in which we all admit the statement; minds are not disembodied,
and we have reason to believe that mind and brain are most intimately
related. But the word "function" is used in a very broad and loose
sense when it serves to indicate this relation; and one may employ it
in this way without being a materialist at all. In a stricter sense of
the word, the brain has no functions that may not be conceived as
mechanical changes,--as the motion of atoms in space,--and to identify
mental phenomena with these is inexcusable. It is not theoretically
inconceivable that, with finer senses, we might directly perceive the
motions of the atoms in another man's brain; it is inconceivable that
we should thus directly perceive his melancholy or his joy; they belong
to another world.
56. SPIRITUALISM.--The name _Spiritualism_ is sometimes given to the
doctrine that there is no existence which we may not properly call mind
or spirit. It errs in the one direction as materialism errs in the
other.
One must not confound with this doctrine that very different one,
Spiritism, which teaches that a certain favored class of persons called
mediums may bring back the spirits of the departed and enable us to
hold communication with them. Such beliefs have always existed among
the common people, but they have rarely interested philosophers. I
shall have nothing to say of them in this book.
There have been various kinds of spiritualists. The name may be
applied to the idealists, from Berkeley down to those of our day; at
some of the varieties of their doctrine we have taken a glance
(sections 49, 53). To these we need not recur; but there is one type
of spiritualistic doctrine which is much discussed at the present day
and which appears to appeal strongly to a number of scientific men. We
must consider it for a moment.
We have examined Professor Clifford's doctrine of Mind-stuff (section
43). Clifford maintained that all the material things we perceive are
our perceptions--they are in our consciousness, and are not properly
external at all. But, believing, as he did, that all nature is
animated, he held that every material thing, every perception, may be
taken as a revelation of something not in our consciousness, of a mind
or, at least, of a certain amount of mind-stuff. How shall we conceive
the relation between what is in our mind and the something
corresponding to it not in our mind?
We must, says Clifford, regard the latter as the _reality_ of which the
former is the _appearance_ or _manifestation_. "What I perceive as
your brain is really in itself your consciousness, is You; but then
that which I call your brain, the material fact, is merely my
perception."
This doctrine is _Panpsychism_, in the form in which it is usually
brought to our attention. It holds that the only real existences are
minds, and that physical phenomena must be regarded as the
manifestations under which these real existences make us aware of their
presence. The term panpsychism may, it is true, be used in a somewhat
different sense. It may be employed merely to indicate the doctrine
that all nature is animated, and without implying a theory as to the
relation between bodies perceived and the minds supposed to accompany
them.
What shall we say to panpsychism of the type represented by Clifford?
It is, I think, sufficiently answered in the earlier chapters of this
volume:--
(1) If I call material facts my perceptions, I do an injustice to the
distinction between the physical and the mental (Chapter IV).
(2) If I say that all nature is animated, I extend illegitimately the
argument for other minds (Chapter X).
(3) If I say that mind is the reality of which the brain is the
appearance, I misconceive what is meant by the distinction between
appearance and reality (Chapter V).
57. THE DOCTRINE OF THE ONE SUBSTANCE.--In the seventeenth century
Descartes maintained that, although mind and matter may justly be
regarded as two substances, yet it should be recognized that they are
not really independent substances in the strictest sense of the word,
but that there is only one substance, in this sense, and mind and
matter are, as it were, its attributes.
His thought was that by attribute we mean that which is not
independent, but must be referred to something else; by substance, we
mean that which exists independently and is not referred to any other
thing. It seemed to follow that there could be only one substance.
Spinoza modified Descartes' doctrine in that he refused to regard mind
and matter as substances at all. He made them unequivocally attributes
of the one and only substance, which he called God.
The thought which influenced Spinoza had impressed many minds before
his time, and it has influenced many since. One need not follow him in
naming the unitary something to which mind and matter are referred
substance. One may call it Being, or Reality, or the Unknowable, or
Energy, or the Absolute, or, perhaps, still something else. The
doctrine has taken many forms, but he who reads with discrimination
will see that the various forms have much in common.
They agree in maintaining that matter and mind, as they are revealed in
our experience, are not to be regarded as, in the last analysis, two
distinct kinds of thing. They are, rather, modes or manifestations of
one and the same thing, and this is not to be confounded with either.
Those who incline to this doctrine take issue with the materialist, who
assimilates mental phenomena to physical; and they oppose the idealist,
who assimilates physical phenomena to mental, and calls material things
"ideas." We have no right, they argue, to call that of which ideas and
things are manifestations either mind or matter. It is to be
distinguished from both.
To this doctrine the title of _Monism_ is often appropriated. In this
chapter I have used the term in a broader sense, for both the
materialist and the spiritualist maintain that there is in the universe
but one kind of thing. Nevertheless, when we hear a man called a
monist without qualification, we may, perhaps, be justified in
assuming, in the absence of further information, that he holds to some
one of the forms of doctrine indicated above. There may be no logical
justification for thus narrowing the use of the term, but logical
justification goes for little in such matters.
Various considerations have moved men to become monists in this sense
of the word. Some have been influenced by the assumption--one which
men felt impelled to make early in the history of speculative
thought--that the whole universe must be the expression of some unitary
principle. A rather different argument is well illustrated in the
writings of Professor Höffding, a learned and acute writer of our own
time. It has influenced so many that it is worth while to delay upon
it.
Professor Höffding holds that mental phenomena and physical phenomena
must be regarded as parallel (see Chapter IX), and that we must not
conceive of ideas and material things as interacting. He writes:[1]--
"If it is contrary to the doctrine of the persistence of physical
energy to suppose a transition from the one province to the other, and
if, nevertheless, the two provinces exist in our experience as
distinct, then the two sets of phenomena must be unfolded
simultaneously, each according to its laws, so that for every
phenomenon in the world of consciousness there is a corresponding
phenomenon in the world of matter, and conversely (so far as there is
reason to suppose that conscious life is correlated with material
phenomena). The parallels already drawn point directly to such a
relation; it would be an amazing accident, if, while the characteristic
marks repeated themselves in this way, there were not at the foundation
an inner connection. Both the _parallelism_ and the _proportionality_
between the activity of consciousness and cerebral activity point to an
_identity_ at bottom. The difference which remains in spite of the
points of agreement compels us to suppose that one and the same
principle has found its expression in a double form. We have no right
to take mind and body for two beings or substances in reciprocal
interaction. We are, on the contrary, impelled to conceive the
material interaction between the elements composing the brain and
nervous system _as an outer form of the inner ideal unity of
consciousness_. What we in our inner experience become conscious of as
thought, feeling, and resolution, is thus represented in the material
world by certain material processes of the brain, which as such are
subject to the law of the persistence of energy, although this law
cannot be applied to the relation between cerebral and conscious
processes. It is as though the same thing were said in two languages."
Some monists are in the habit of speaking of the one Being to which
they refer phenomena of all sorts as the "Absolute." The word is a
vague one, and means very different things in different philosophies.
It has been somewhat broadly defined as "the ultimate principle of
explanation of the universe." He who turns to one principle of
explanation will conceive the Absolute in one way, and he who turns to
another will, naturally, understand something else by the word.
Thus, the idealist may conceive of the Absolute as an all-inclusive
Mind, of which finite minds are parts. To Spencer, it is the
Unknowable, a something behind the veil of phenomena. Sometimes it
means to a writer much the same thing that the word God means to other
men; sometimes it has a significance at the farthest remove from this
(section 53). Indeed, the word is so vague and ambiguous, and has
proved itself the mother of so many confusions, that it would seem a
desirable thing to drop it out of philosophy altogether, and to
substitute for it some less ambiguous expression.
It seems clear from the preceding pages, that, before one either
accepts or rejects monism, one should very carefully determine just
what one means by the word, and should scrutinize the considerations
which may be urged in favor of the particular doctrine in question.
There are all sorts of monism, and men embrace them for all sorts of
reasons. Let me beg the reader to bear in mind;--
(1) The monist may be a materialist; he may be an idealist; he may be
neither. In the last case, he may, with Spinoza, call the one
Substance God; that is, he may be a Pantheist. On the other hand, he
may, with Spencer, call it the Unknowable, and be an Agnostic. Other
shades of opinion are open to him, if he cares to choose them.
(2) It does not seem wise to assent hastily to such statements as; "The
universe is the manifestation of one unitary Being"; or: "Mind and
matter are the expression of one and the same principle." We find
revealed in our experience mental phenomena and physical phenomena. In
what sense they are one, or whether they are one in any sense,--this is
something to be determined by an examination of the phenomena and of
the relations in which we find them. It may turn out that the universe
is one only in the sense that all phenomena belong to the one orderly
system. If we find that this is the case, we may still, if we choose,
call our doctrine monism, but we should carefully distinguish such a
monism from those represented by Höffding and Spencer and many others.
There seems little reason to use the word, when the doctrine has been
so far modified.
58. DUALISM.--The plain man finds himself in a world of physical things
and of minds, and it seems to him that his experience directly
testifies to the existence of both. This means that the things of
which he has experience appear to belong to two distinct classes.
It does not mean, of course, that he has only two kinds of experiences.
The phenomena which are revealed to us are indefinitely varied; all
physical phenomena are not just alike, and all mental phenomena are not
just alike.
Nevertheless, amid all the bewildering variety that forces itself upon
our attention, there stands out one broad distinction, that of the
physical and the mental. It is a distinction that the man who has done
no reading in the philosophers is scarcely tempted to obliterate; to
him the world consists of two kinds of things widely different from
each other; minds are not material things and material things are not
minds. We are justified in regarding this as the opinion of the plain
man even when we recognize that, in his endeavor to make clear to
himself what he means by minds, he sometimes speaks as though he were
talking about something material or semi-material.
Now, the materialist allows these two classes to run together; so does
the idealist. The one says that everything is matter; the other, that
everything is mind. It would be foolish to maintain that nothing can
be said for either doctrine, for men of ability have embraced each.
But one may at least say that both seem to be refuted by our common
experience of the world, an experience which, so far as it is permitted
to testify at all, lifts up its voice in favor of _Dualism_.
Dualism is sometimes defined as the doctrine that there are in the
world two kinds of substances, matter and mind, which are different in
kind and should be kept distinct. There are dualists who prefer to
avoid the use of the word substance, and to say that the world of our
experiences consists of physical phenomena and of mental phenomena, and
that these two classes of facts should be kept separate.
The dualist may maintain that we have a direct knowledge of matter and
of mind, and he may content himself with such a statement, doing little
to make clear what we mean by matter and by mind. In this case, his
position is little different from that of the plain man who does not
attempt to philosophize. Thomas Reid (section 50) belongs to this
class.
On the other hand, the dualist may attempt to make clear, through
philosophical reflection, what we mean by the matter and mind which
experience seems to give us. He may conclude:--
(1) That he must hold, as did Sir William Hamilton, that we perceive
directly only physical and mental phenomena, but are justified in
inferring that, since the phenomena are different, there must be two
kinds of underlying substances to which the phenomena are referred.
Thus, he may distinguish between the two substances and their
manifestations, as some monists distinguish between the one substance
and its manifestations.
(2) Or he may conclude that it is futile to search for substances or
realities of any sort _behind_ phenomena, arguing that such realities
are never revealed in experience, and that no sound reason for their
assumption can be adduced. In this case, he may try to make plain what
mind and matter are, by simply analyzing our experiences of mind and
matter and coming to a clearer comprehension of their nature.
As the reader has probably remarked, the philosophy presented in the
earlier chapters of this book (Chapters III to XI) is _dualistic_ as
well as _realistic_. That is to say, it refuses to rub out the
distinction between physical phenomena and mental phenomena, either by
dissolving the material world into ideas; by calling ideas secretions
or functions of the brain; or by declaring them one in a fictitious
entity behind the veil and not supposed to be exactly identical with
either. And as it teaches that the only reality that it means anything
to talk about must be found in experience, it is a dualism of the type
described in the paragraph which immediately precedes.
Such a philosophy does not seem to do violence to the common experience
of minds and of physical things shared by us all, whether we are
philosophers or are not. It only tries to make clear what we all know
dimly and vaguely. This is, I think, a point in its favor. However,
men of great ability and of much learning have inclined to doctrines
very different; and we have no right to make up our minds on such a
subject as this without trying to give them an attentive and an
impartial hearing.
59. SINGULARISM AND PLURALISM.--There are those who apply to the
various forms of monism the title _Singularism_, and who contrast with
this _Pluralism_, a word which is meant to cover the various doctrines
which maintain that there is more than one ultimate principle or being
in the universe.
It is argued that we should have some word under which we may bring
such a doctrine, for example, as that of the Greek philosopher
Empedocles (born about 490 B.C.). This thinker made earth, water,
fire, and air the four material principles or "roots" of things. He
was not a monist, and we can certainly not call him a dualist.
Again. The term pluralism has been used to indicate the doctrine that
individual finite minds are not parts or manifestations of one
all-embracing Mind,--of God or the Absolute,--but are relatively
independent beings. This doctrine has been urged in our own time, with
eloquence and feeling, by Professor Howison.[2] Here we have a
pluralism which is idealistic, for it admits in the universe but one
_kind_ of thing, minds; and yet refuses to call itself monistic. It
will readily be seen that in this paragraph and in the one preceding
the word is used in different senses.
I have added the above sentences to this chapter that the reader may
have an explanation of the meaning of a word sometimes met with. But
the title of the chapter is "Monism and Dualism," and it is of this
contrast that it is especially important to grasp the significance.
[1] "Outlines of Psychology," pp. 64-65, English translation, 1891.
[2] "The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays," revised edition. New
York, 1905.
CHAPTER XV
RATIONALISM, EMPIRICISM, CRITICISM, AND CRITICAL EMPIRICISM
60. RATIONALISM.--As the content of a philosophical doctrine must be
determined by the _initial assumptions_ which a philosopher makes and
by the _method_ which he adopts in his reasonings, it is well to
examine with some care certain broad differences in this respect which
characterize different philosophers, and which help to explain how it
is that the results of their reflections are so startlingly different.
I shall first speak of _Rationalism_, which I may somewhat loosely
define as the doctrine that the reason can attain truths independently
of observation--can go beyond experienced fact and the deductions which
experience seems to justify us in making from experienced fact. The
definition cannot mean much to us until it is interpreted by a concrete
example, and I shall turn to such. It must, however, be borne in mind
that the word "rationalism" is meant to cover a great variety of
opinions, and we have said comparatively little about him when we have
called a man a rationalist in philosophy. Men may agree in believing
that the reason can go beyond experienced fact, and yet may differ
regarding the particular truths which may be thus attained.
Now, when Descartes found himself discontented with the philosophy that
he and others had inherited from the Middle Ages, and undertook a
reconstruction, he found it necessary to throw over a vast amount of
what had passed as truth, if only with a view to building up again upon
a firmer foundation. It appeared to him that much was uncritically
accepted as true in philosophy and in the sciences which a little
reflection revealed to be either false or highly doubtful.
Accordingly, he decided to clear the ground by a sweeping doubt, and to
begin his task quite independently.
In accordance with this principle, he rejected the testimony of the
senses touching the existence of a world of external things. Do not
the senses sometimes deceive us? And, since men seem to be liable to
error in their reasonings, even in a field so secure as that of
mathematical demonstration, he resolved further to repudiate all the
reasonings he had heretofore accepted. He would not even assume
himself to be in his right mind and awake; might he not be the victim
of a diseased fancy, or a man deluded by dreams?
Could anything whatever escape this all-devouring doubt? One truth
seemed unshakable: his own existence, at least, emerged from this sea
of uncertainties. I may be deceived in thinking that there is an
external world, and that I am awake and really perceive things; but I
surely cannot be deceived unless I exist. _Cogito, ergo sum_--I think,
hence I exist; this truth Descartes accepted as the first principle of
the new and sounder philosophy which he sought.
As we read farther in Descartes we discover that he takes back again a
great many of those things that he had at the outset rejected as
uncertain. Thus, he accepts an external world of material things. How
does he establish its existence? He cannot do it as the empiricist
does it, by a reference to experienced fact, for he does not believe
that the external world is directly given in our experience. He thinks
we are directly conscious only of our _ideas_ of it, and must somehow
prove that it exists over against our ideas.
By his principles, Descartes is compelled to fall back upon a curious
roundabout argument to prove that there is a world. He must first
prove that God exists, and then argue that God would not deceive us
into thinking that it exists when it does not.
Now, when we come to examine Descartes' reasonings in detail we find
what appear to us some very uncritical assumptions. Thus, he proves
the existence of God by the following argument:--
I exist, and I find in me the idea of God; of this idea I cannot be the
author, for it represents something much greater than I, and its cause
must be as great as the reality it represents. In other words, nothing
less than God can be the cause of the idea of God which I find in me,
and, hence, I may infer that God exists.
Where did Descartes get this notion that every idea must have a cause
which contains as much external reality as the idea does represented
reality? How does he prove his assumption? He simply appeals to what
he calls "the natural light," which is for him a source of all sorts of
information which cannot be derived from experience. This "natural
light" furnishes him with a vast number of "eternal truths", these he
has not brought under the sickle of his sweeping doubt, and these help
him to build up again the world he has overthrown, beginning with the
one indubitable fact discussed above.
To the men of a later time many of Descartes' eternal truths are simply
inherited philosophical prejudices, the results of the reflections of
earlier thinkers, and in sad need of revision. I shall not criticise
them in detail. The important point for us to notice is that we have
here a type of philosophy which depends upon truths revealed by the
reason, independently of experience, to carry one beyond the sphere of
experience.
I again remind the reader that there are all sorts of rationalists, in
the philosophical sense of the word. Some trust the power of the
unaided reason without reserve. Thus Spinoza, the pantheist, made the
magnificent but misguided attempt to deduce the whole system of things
physical and things mental from what he called the attributes of God,
Extension and Thought.
On the other hand, one may be a good deal of an empiricist, and yet
something of a rationalist, too. Thus Professor Strong, in his recent
brilliant book, "Why the Mind has a Body," maintains that we know
intuitively that other minds than our own exist; know it without
gathering our information from experience, and without having to
establish the fact in any way. This seems, at least, akin to the
doctrine of the "natural light," and yet no one can say that Professor
Strong does not, in general, believe in a philosophy of observation and
experiment.
61. EMPIRICISM.--I suppose every one who has done some reading in the
history of philosophy will, if his mother tongue be English, think of
the name of John Locke when empiricism is mentioned.
Locke, in his "Essay concerning Human Understanding," undertakes "to
inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge,
together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent."
His sober and cautious work, which was first published in 1690, was
peculiarly English in character; and the spirit which it exemplifies
animates also Locke's famous successors, George Berkeley (1684-1753),
David Hume (1711-1776), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Although
Locke was a realist, Berkeley an idealist, Hume a skeptic, and Mill
what has been called a sensationalist; yet all were empiricists of a
sort, and emphasized the necessity of founding our knowledge upon
experience.
Now, Locke was familiar with the writings of Descartes, whose work he
admired, but whose rationalism offended him. The first book of the
"Essay" is devoted to the proof that there are in the mind of man no
"innate ideas" and no "innate principles." That is to say, Locke tries
to show that one must not seek, in the "natural light" to which
Descartes turned, a distinct and independent source of information,
"Let us, then," he continues, "suppose the mind to be, as we say, white
paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be
furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and
boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless
variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To
this I answer in one word, from experience; in that all our knowledge
is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our
observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about
the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by
ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the
materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from
whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring." [1]
Thus, all we know and all we ever shall know of the world of matter and
of minds must rest ultimately upon observation,--observation of
external things and of our own mind. We must clip the erratic wing of
a "reason" which seeks to soar beyond such knowledge; which leaves the
solid earth, and hangs suspended in the void.
"But hold," exclaims the critical reader; "have we not seen that Locke,
as well as Descartes (section 48), claims to know what he cannot prove
by direct observation or even by a legitimate inference from what has
been directly observed? Does he not maintain that the mind has an
immediate knowledge or experience only of its own ideas? How can he
prove that there are material extended things outside causing these
ideas? And if he cannot prove it by an appeal to experience, to direct
observation, is he not, in accepting the existence of the external
world at all, just as truly as Descartes, a rationalist?"
The objection is well taken. On his own principles, Locke had no right
to believe in an external world. He has stolen his world, so to speak;
he has taken it by violence. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in the
section above referred to, Locke is not a rationalist of _malice
prepense_. He _tries_ to be an empiricist. He believes in the
external world because he thinks it is directly revealed to the
senses--he inconsistently refers to experience as evidence of its
existence.
It has often been claimed by those who do not sympathize with
empiricism that the empiricists make assumptions much as others do, but
have not the grace to admit it. I think we must frankly confess that a
man may try hard to be an empiricist and may not be wholly successful.
Moreover, reflection forces us to the conclusion that when we have
defined empiricism as a doctrine which rests throughout upon an appeal
to "experience" we have not said anything very definite.
What is _experience_? What may we accept as directly revealed fact?
The answer to such questions is far from an easy one to give. It is a
harder matter to discuss intelligently than any one can at all realize
until he has spent some years in following the efforts of the
philosophers to determine what is "revealed fact." We are supposed to
have experience of our own minds, of space, of time, of matter. What
are these things as revealed in our experience? We have seen in the
earlier chapters of this book that one cannot answer such questions
off-hand.
62. CRITICISM.--I have in another chapter (section 51) given a brief
account of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He called his doctrine
"Criticism," and he distinguished it from "Dogmatism" and "Empiricism."
Every philosophy that transcends experience, without first critically
examining our faculty of knowledge and determining its right to spread
its wings in this way, Kant calls "dogmatism." The word seems rather
an offensive one, in its usual signification, at least; and it is as
well not to use it. As Kant used the word, Descartes was a dogmatist;
but let us rather call him a rationalist. He certainly had no
intention of proceeding uncritically, as we shall see a little later.
If we call him a dogmatist we seem to condemn him in advance, by
applying to him an abusive epithet.
Empiricism, according to Kant, confines human knowledge to experience,
and thus avoids the errors which beset the dogmatist. But then, as
Hume seemed to have shown, empiricism must run out into skepticism. If
all our knowledge has its foundations in experience, how can we expect
to find in our possession any universal or necessary truths? May not a
later experience contradict an earlier? How can we be sure that what
has been will be? Can we _know_ that there is anything fixed and
certain in our world?
Skepticism seemed a forlorn doctrine, and, casting about for a way of
escape from it, Kant hit upon the expedient which I have described. So
long as we maintain that our knowledge has no other source than the
experiences which the world imprints upon us, so to speak, from
without, we are without the power of prediction, for new experiences
may annihilate any generalizations we have founded upon those already
vouchsafed us; but if we assume that the world upon which we gaze, the
world of phenomena, is made what it is by the mind that perceives it,
are we not in a different position?
Suppose, for example, we take the statement that there must be an
adequate cause of all the changes that take place in the world. Can a
mere experience of what has been in the past guarantee that this law
will hold good in the future? But, when we realize that the world of
which we are speaking is nothing more than a world of phenomena, of
experiences, and realize further that this whole world is constructed
by the mind out of the raw materials furnished by the senses, may we
not have a greater confidence in our law? If it is the nature of the
mind to connect the phenomena presented to it with one another as cause
and effect, may we not maintain that no phenomenon can possibly make
its appearance that defies the law in question? How could it appear
except under the conditions laid upon all phenomena? If it is our
nature to think the world as an orderly one, and if we can know no
world save the one we construct ourselves, the orderliness of all the
things we can know seems to be guaranteed to us.
It will be noticed that Kant's doctrine has a negative side. He limits
our knowledge to phenomena, to experiences, and he is himself, in so
far, an empiricist. But in that he finds in experience an order, an
arrangement of things, not derived from experience in the usual sense
of the word, he is not an empiricist. He has paid his own doctrine the
compliment of calling it "criticism," as I have said.
Now, I beg the reader to be here, as elsewhere, on his guard against
the associations which attach to words. In calling Kant's doctrine
"the critical philosophy," we are in some danger of uncritically
assuming and leading others to believe uncritically that it is free
from such defects as may be expected to attach to "dogmatism" and to
empiricism. Such a position should not be taken until one has made a
most careful examination of each of the three types of doctrine, of the
assumptions which it makes, and of the rigor with which it draws
inferences upon the basis of such assumptions. That we may be the
better able to withstand "undue influence," I call attention to the
following points:--
(1) We must bear in mind that the attempt to make a critical
examination into the foundations of our knowledge, and to determine its
scope, is by no means a new thing. Among the Greeks, Plato, Aristotle,
the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics, all attacked the problem.
It did not, of course, present itself to these men in the precise form
in which it presented itself to Kant, but each and all were concerned
to find an answer to the question: Can we know anything with certainty;
and, if so, what? They may have failed to be thoroughly critical, but
they certainly made the attempt.
I shall omit mention of the long series of others, who, since that
time, have carried on the tradition, and shall speak only of Descartes
and Locke, whom I have above brought forward as representatives of the
two types of doctrine that Kant contrasts with his own.
To see how strenuously Descartes endeavored to subject his knowledge to
a critical scrutiny and to avoid unjustifiable assumptions of any sort,
one has only to read that charming little work of genius, the
"Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason."
In his youth Descartes was, as he informs us, an eager student; but,
when he had finished the whole course of education usually prescribed,
he found himself so full of doubts and errors that he did not feel that
he had advanced in learning at all. Yet he had been well tutored, and
was considered as bright in mind as others. He was led to judge his
neighbor by himself, and to conclude that there existed no such certain
science as he had been taught to suppose.
Having ripened with years and experience, Descartes set about the task
of which I have spoken above, the task of sweeping away the whole body
of his opinions and of attempting a general and systematic
reconstruction. So important a work should be, he thought, approached
with circumspection; hence, he formulated certain Rules of Method.
"The first," he writes, "was never to accept anything for true which I
did not clearly know to be such; that is, carefully to avoid haste and
prejudice, and to include nothing more in my judgments than what was
presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all reason
for doubt."
Such was our philosopher's design, and such the spirit in which he set
about it. We have seen the result above. It is as if Descartes had
decided that a certain room full of people did not appear to be free
from suspicious characters, and had cleared out every one, afterwards
posting himself at the door to readmit only those who proved themselves
worthy. When we examine those who succeeded in passing muster, we
discover he has favored all his old friends. He simply _cannot_ doubt
them; are they not vouched for by the "natural light"? Nevertheless,
we must not forget that Descartes sifted his congregation with much
travail of spirit. He did try to be critical.
As for John Locke, he reveals in the "Epistle to the Reader," which
stands as a preface to the "Essay," the critical spirit in which his
work was taken up. "Were it fit to trouble thee," he writes, "with the
history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends
meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from
this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that
rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without
coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it
came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course; and that before we
set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to
examine our own abilities, and to see what objects our understandings
were, or were not, fitted to deal with."
This problem, proposed by himself to his little circle of friends,
Locke attacked with earnestness, and as a result he brought out many
years later the work which has since become so famous. The book is
literally a critique of the reason, although a very different critique
from that worked out by Kant.
"If, by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding," says Locke,
"I can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things
they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us; I suppose
it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more
cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop
when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a
quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination are found to be
beyond the reach of our capacities." [2]
To the difficulties of the task our author is fully alive: "The
understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all
other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains
to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. But whatever be
the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry, whatever it be
that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves, sure I am that all the
light we can let in upon our own minds, all the acquaintance we can
make with our own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but
bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search, of
other things." [3]
(2) Thus, many men have attempted to produce a critical philosophy, and
in much the same sense as that in which Kant uses the words. Those who
have come after them have decided that they were not sufficiently
critical, that they have made unjustifiable assumptions. When we come
to read Kant, we will, if we have read the history of philosophy with
profit, not forget to ask ourselves if he has not sinned in the same
way.
For example, we will ask;--
(a) Was Kant right in maintaining that we find in experience synthetic
judgments (section 51) that are not founded upon experience, but yield
such information as is beyond the reach of the empiricist? There are
those who think that the judgments to which he alludes in evidence of
his contention--the mathematical, for instance--are not of this
character.
(b) Was he justified in assuming that all the ordering of our world is
due to the activity of mind, and that merely the raw material is
"given" us through the senses? There are many who demur against such a
statement, and hold that it is, if not in all senses untrue, at least
highly misleading, since it seems to argue that there is no really
external world at all. Moreover, they claim that the doctrine is
neither self-evident nor susceptible of proper proof.
(c) Was Kant justified in assuming that, even if we attribute the
"form" or arrangement of the world we know to the native activity of
the mind, the necessity and universality of our knowledge is assured?
Let us grant that the proposition, whatever happens must have an
adequate cause, is a "form of thought." What guarantee have we that
the "forms of thought" must ever remain changeless? If it is an
assumption for the empiricist to declare that what has been true in the
past will be true in the future, that earlier experiences of the world
will not be contradicted by later; what is it for the Kantian to
maintain that the order which he finds in his experience will
necessarily and always be the order of all future experiences?
Transferring an assumption to the field of mind does not make it less
of an assumption.
Thus, it does not seem unreasonable to charge Kant with being a good
deal of a rationalist. He tried to confine our knowledge to the field
of experience, it is true; but he made a number of assumptions as to
the nature of experience which certainly do not shine by their own
light, and which many thoughtful persons regard as incapable of
justification.
Kant's famous successors in the German philosophy, Fichte (1762-1814),
Schelling (1775-1854), Hegel (1770-1831), and Schopenhauer (1788-1860),
all received their impulse from the "critical philosophy," and yet each
developed his doctrine in a relatively independent way.
I cannot here take the space to characterize the systems of these men;
I may merely remark that all of them contrast strongly in doctrine and
method with the British philosophers mentioned in the last section,
Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mill. They are _un-empirical_, if one may
use such a word; and, to one accustomed to reading the English
philosophy, they seem ever ready to spread their wings and hazard the
boldest of flights without a proper realization of the thinness of the
atmosphere in which they must support themselves.
However, no matter what may be one's opinion of the actual results
attained by these German philosophers, one must frankly admit that no
one who wishes to understand clearly the development of speculative
thought can afford to dispense with a careful reading of them. Much
even of the English philosophy of our own day must remain obscure to
those who have not looked into their pages. Thus, the thought of Kant
and Hegel molded the thought of Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) and of
the brothers Caird; and their influence has made itself widely felt
both in England and in America. One cannot criticise intelligently
books written from their standpoint, unless one knows how the authors
came by their doctrine and out of what it has been developed.
63. CRITICAL EMPIRICISM.--We have seen that the trouble with the
rationalists seemed to be that they made an appeal to "eternal truths,"
which those who followed them could not admit to be eternal truths at
all. They proceeded on a basis of assumptions the validity of which
was at once called in question.
Locke, the empiricist, repudiated all this, and then also made
assumptions which others could not, and cannot, approve. Kant did
something of much the same sort; we cannot regard his "criticism" as
wholly critical.
How can we avoid such errors? How walk cautiously, and go around the
pit into which, as it seems to us, others have fallen? I may as well
tell the reader frankly that he sets his hope too high if he expects to
avoid all error and to work out for himself a philosophy in all
respects unassailable. The difficulties of reflective thought are very
great, and we should carry with us a consciousness of that fact and a
willingness to revise our most cherished conclusions.
Our initial difficulty seems to be that we must begin by assuming
_something_, if only as material upon which to work. We must begin our
philosophizing _somewhere_. Where shall we begin? May we not fall
into error at the very outset?
The doctrine set forth in the earlier chapters of this volume maintains
that we must accept as our material the revelation of the mind and the
world which seems to be made in our common experience, and which is
extended and systematized in the sciences. But it insists that we must
regard such an acceptance as merely provisional, must subject our
concepts to a careful criticism, and must always be on our guard
against hasty assumptions.
It emphasizes the value of the light which historical study casts upon
the real meaning of the concepts which we all use and must use, but
which have so often proved to be stones of stumbling in the path of
those who have employed them. Its watchword is analysis, always
analysis; and a settled distrust of what have so often passed as
"self-evident" truths. It regards it as its task to analyze
experience, while maintaining that only the satisfactory carrying out
of such an analysis can reveal what experience really is, and clear our
notions of it from misinterpretations.
No such attempt to give an account of experience can be regarded as
fundamentally new in its method. Every philosopher, in his own way,
criticises experience, and seeks its interpretation. But one may,
warned by the example of one's predecessors, lay emphasis upon the
danger of half-analyses and hasty assumptions, and counsel the
observance of sobriety and caution.
For convenience, I have called the doctrine _Critical Empiricism_. I
warn the reader against the seductive title, and advise him not to
allow it to influence him unduly in his judgment of the doctrine.
64. PRAGMATISM.--It seems right that I should, before closing this
chapter, say a few words about Pragmatism, which has been so much
discussed in the last few years.
In 1878 Mr. Charles S. Peirce wrote an article for the _Popular Science
Monthly_ in which he proposed as a maxim for the attainment of
clearness of apprehension the following: "Consider what effects, which
might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of
our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the
whole of our conception of the object."
This thought has been taken up by others and given a development which
Mr. Peirce regards with some suspicion. He refers[4] especially to the
development it has received at the hands of Professor William James, in
his two essays, "The Will to Believe" and "Philosophical Conceptions
and Practical Results." [5] Professor James is often regarded as
foremost among the pragmatists.
I shall not attempt to define pragmatism, for I do not believe that the
doctrine has yet attained to that definiteness of formulation which
warrants a definition. We seem to have to do not so much with a
clear-cut doctrine, the limits and consequences of which have been
worked out in detail, as with a tendency which makes itself apparent in
the works of various writers under somewhat different forms.
I may roughly describe it as the tendency to take that to be _true_
which is _useful_ or _serviceable_. It is well illustrated in the two
essays to which reference is made above.
Thus, Professor James dwells upon the unsatisfactoriness and
uncertainty of philosophical and scientific knowledge: "Objective
evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but
where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?"
Now, among those things regarding which it appears impossible to attain
to intellectual certitude, there are matters of great practical moment,
and which affect deeply the conduct of life; for example, the doctrines
of religion. Here a merely skeptical attitude seems intolerable.
In such cases, argues Professor James, "we have the right to believe at
our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will."
It is important to notice that there is no question here of a logical
right. We are concerned with matters regarding which, according to
Professor James, we cannot look for intellectual evidence. It is
assumed that we believe simply because we choose to believe--we believe
arbitrarily.
It is further important to notice that what is a "live" hypothesis to
one man need not tempt the will of another man at all. As our author
points out, a Turk would naturally will to believe one thing and a
Christian would will to believe another. Each would will to believe
what struck him as a satisfactory thing to believe.
What shall we say to this doctrine? I think we must say that it is
clearly not a philosophical _method of attaining to truth_. Hence, it
has not properly a place in this chapter among the attempts which have
been made to attain to the truth of things.
It is, in fact, not concerned with truths, but with assumptions, and
with assumptions which are supposed to be made on the basis of no
evidence. It is concerned with "seemings."
The distinction is a very important one. Our Turk cannot, by willing
to believe it, make his hypothesis true; but he can make it _seem_
true. Why should he wish to make it seem true whether it is true or
not? Why should he strive to attain to a feeling of subjective
certainty, not by logically resolving his doubts, but by ignoring them?
The answer is given us by our author. He who lives in the midst of
doubts, and refuses to cut his knot with the sword of belief, misses
the good of life. This is a practical problem, and one of no small
moment. In the last section of this book I have tried to indicate what
it is wise for a man to do when he is confronted by doubts which he
cannot resolve.
Into the general question whether even a false belief may not, under
some circumstances, be more serviceable than no belief at all, I shall
not enter. The point I wish to emphasize is that there is all the
difference in the world between _producing a belief_ and _proving a
truth_.
We are compelled to accept it as a fact that men, under the influence
of feeling, can believe in the absence of evidence, or, for that
matter, can believe in spite of evidence. But a truth cannot be
established in the absence of evidence or in the face of adverse
evidence. And there is a very wide field in which it is made very
clear to us that beliefs adopted in the absence of evidence are in
danger of being false beliefs.
The pragmatist would join with the rest of us in condemning the Turk or
the Christian who would simply will to believe in the rise or the fall
of stocks, and would refuse to consult the state of the market. Some
hypotheses are, in the ordinary course of events, put to the test of
verification. We are then made painfully aware that beliefs and truths
are quite distinct things, and may not be in harmony.
Now, the pragmatist does not apply his principle to this field. He
confines it to what may not inaptly be called the field of the
unverifiable. The Turk, who wills to believe in the hypothesis that
appeals to him as a pious Turk, is in no such danger of a rude
awakening as is the man who wills to believe that stocks will go up or
down. But mark what this means: it means that _he is not in danger of
finding out what the truth really is_. It does not mean that he is in
possession of the truth.
So I say, the doctrine which we are discussing is not a method of
attaining to truth. What it really attempts to do is to point out to
us how it is prudent for us to act when we cannot discover what the
truth is.[6]
[1] "An Essay concerning Human Understanding," Book II, Chapter I,
section 2.
[2] Book I, Chapter I, section 4.
[3] Book I, Chapter I, section 1.
[4] "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology," article "Pragmatism."
[5] Published in 1897 and 1898.
[6] For references to later developments of pragmatism, see the note on
page 312.
V. THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
CHAPTER XVI
LOGIC
65. INTRODUCTORY: THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES.--I have said in the first
chapter of this book (section 6) that there is quite a group of
sciences that are regarded as belonging peculiarly to the province of
the teacher of philosophy to-day. Having, in the chapters preceding,
given some account of the nature of reflective thought, of the problems
touching the world and the mind which present themselves to those who
reflect, and of some types of philosophical theory which have their
origin in such reflection, I turn to a brief consideration of the
philosophical sciences.
Among these I included logic, psychology, ethics, and aesthetics,
metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. I did not include
epistemology or "the theory of knowledge" as a separate discipline, and
my reasons for this will appear in Chapter XIX. I remarked that, to
complete the list, we should have to add the philosophy of religion and
an investigation into the principles and methods of the sciences
generally.
Why, it was asked, should this group of disciplines be regarded as the
field of the philosopher, when others are excluded? The answer to this
question which finds the explanation of the fact to lie in a mere
historical accident was declared unsatisfactory, and it was maintained
that the philosophical sciences are those in which we find ourselves
carried back to the problems of reflective thought.
With a view to showing the truth of this opinion, I shall take up one
by one the philosophical sciences. Of the history of philosophy I
shall not speak in this part of the work, but shall treat of it in
Chapter XXIII.
66. THE TRADITIONAL LOGIC.--Most of us begin our acquaintance with
logic in the study of some such elementary manual as Jevons' "Lessons
in Logic."
In such books we are shown how terms represent things and classes of
things or their attributes, and how we unite them into propositions or
statements. It is indicated at length what statements may be made on a
basis of certain other statements and what may not; and emphasis is
laid upon the dangers which arise out of a misunderstanding of the
language in which we are forced to express our thoughts. Finally,
there are described for us the experimental methods by which the
workers in the sciences have attained to the general information about
the world which has become our heritage.
Such books are useful. It is surely no small profit for a student to
gain the habit of scrutinizing the steps by which he has come into the
possession of a certain bit of information, and to have a quick eye for
loose and inconsistent reasonings.
But it is worthy of remark that one may study such a book as this and
yet remain pretty consistently on what may be called the plane of the
common understanding. One seems to make the assumptions made in all
the special sciences, _e.g._ the assumption that there is a world of
real things and that we can know them and reason about them. We are
not introduced to such problems as: What _is_ truth? and Is _any_
knowledge valid? Nor does it seem at once apparent that the man who is
studying logic in this way is busying himself with a philosophical
discipline.
67. THE "MODERN LOGIC."--It is very puzzling for the student to turn
from such a text-book as the one above mentioned to certain others
which profess to be occupied with the same science, and which, yet,
appear to treat of quite different things.
Thus, in Dr. Bosanquet's little work on "The Essentials of Logic," the
reader is at once plunged into such questions as the nature of
knowledge, and what is meant by the real world. We seem to be dealing
with metaphysics, and not with logic, as we have learned to understand
the term. How is it that the logician comes to regard these things as
within his province?
A multitude of writers at the present day are treating logic in this
way, and in some great prominence is given to problems which the
philosopher recognizes as indisputably his own. The term "modern
logic" is often employed to denote a logic of this type; one which does
not, after the fashion of the natural sciences generally, proceed on
the basis of certain assumptions, and leave deeper questions to some
other discipline, but tries to get to the bottom of things for itself.
The tendency to run into metaphysics is peculiarly marked in those
writers who have been influenced by the work of the philosopher Hegel.
I shall not here ask why those who belong to one school are more
inclined to be metaphysical than are those who belong to another, but
shall approach the broader question why the logicians generally are
inclined to be more metaphysical than those who work in certain other
special sciences, such as mathematics, for example. Of the general
tendency there can be no question. The only problem is: Why does this
tendency exist?
68. LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY.--Let us contrast the science of arithmetic
with logic; and let us notice, regarding it, the following points:--
It is, like logic, a _general_ science, in that the things treated of
in many sciences may be numbered. It considers only a certain aspect
of the things.
Now, that things may be counted, added together, subtracted, etc., is
guaranteed by the experience of the plain man; and the methods of
determining the numerical relations of things are gradually developed
before his eyes, beginning with operations of great simplicity.
Moreover, verification is possible, and within certain limits
verification by direct inspection.
To this we may add, that there has gradually been built up a fine
system of unambiguous symbols, and it is possible for a man to know
just what he is dealing with.
Thus, a certain beaten path has been attained, and a man may travel
this very well without having forced on his attention the problems of
reflective thought. The knowledge of numbers with which he starts is
sufficient equipment with which to undertake the journey. That one is
on the right road is proved by the results one obtains. As a rule,
disputes can be settled by well-tried mathematical methods.
There is, then, a common agreement as to initial assumptions and
methods of work, and useful results are attained which seem to justify
both. Here we have the normal characteristics of a special science.
We must not forget, however, that, even in the mathematical sciences,
before a beaten path was attained, disputes as to the significance of
numbers and the cogency of proofs were sufficiently common. And we
must bear in mind that even to-day, where the beaten path does not seem
wholly satisfactory, men seem to be driven to reflect upon the
significance of their assumptions and the nature of their method.
Thus, we find it not unnatural that a man should be led to ask; What is
a minus quantity really? Can anything be less than nothing? or that he
should raise the questions: Can one rightly speak of an infinite
number? Can one infinite number be greater than another, and, if so,
what can greater mean? What are infinitesimals? and what can be meant
by different orders of infinitesimals?
He who has interested himself in such questions as these has betaken
himself to philosophical reflection. They are not answered by
employing mathematical methods.
Let us now turn to logic. And let us notice, to begin with, that it is
broader in its application than the mathematical sciences. It is
concerned to discover what constitutes _evidence_ in every field of
investigation.
There is, it is true, a part of logic that may be developed somewhat
after the fashion of mathematics. Thus, we may examine the two
statements: All men are mortal, and Caesar is a man; and we may see
clearly that, given the truth of these, we must admit that Caesar is
mortal. We may make a list of possible inferences of this kind, and
point out under what circumstances the truth of two statements implies
the truth of a third, and under what circumstances the inference cannot
be made. Our results can be set forth in a system of symbols. As in
mathematics, we may abstract from the particular things reasoned about,
and concern ourselves only with the forms of reasoning. This gives us
the theory of the _syllogism_; it is a part of logic in which the
mathematician is apt to feel very much at home.
But this is by no means all of logic. Let us consider the following
points:--
(1) We are not concerned to know only what statements may be made on
the basis of certain other statements. We want to know what is true
and what is false. We must ask: Has a man the right to set up these
particular statements and to reason from them? That some men accept as
true premises which are repudiated by others is an undoubted fact.
Thus, it is maintained by certain philosophers that we may assume that
any view of the universe which is repellant to our nature cannot be
true. Shall we allow this to pass unchallenged? And in ethics, some
have held that it is under all circumstances wrong to lie; others have
denied this, and have held that in certain cases--for example, to save
life or to prevent great and unmerited suffering--lying is permissible.
Shall we interest ourselves only in the deductions that each man makes
from his assumed premises, and pay no attention to the truth of the
premises themselves?
(2) Again. The vast mass of the reasonings that interest men are
expressed in the language that we all use and not in special symbols.
But language is a very imperfect instrument, and all sorts of
misunderstandings are possible to those who express their thoughts in
it.
Few men know exactly how much is implied in what they are saying. If I
say: All men are mortal, and an angel is not a man; therefore, an angel
is not mortal; it is not at once apparent to every one in what respect
my argument is defective. He who argues: Feathers are light; light is
contrary to darkness; hence, feathers are contrary to darkness; is
convicted of error without difficulty. But arguments of the same kind,
and quite as bad, are to be found in learned works on matters less
familiar to us, and we often fail to detect the fallacy.
Thus, Herbert Spencer argues, in effect, in the fourth and fifth
chapters of his "First Principles," as follows:--
We are conscious of the Unknowable,
The Unknowable lies behind the veil of phenomena,
Hence, we are conscious of what lies behind the veil of phenomena.
It is only the critical reader who notices that the Unknowable in the
first line is the "raw material of consciousness," and the Unknowable
in the second is something not in consciousness at all. The two senses
of the word "light" are not more different from one another. Such
apparent arguments abound, and it often requires much acuteness to be
able to detect their fallacious character.
When we take into consideration the two points indicated above, we see
that the logician is at every turn forced to reflect upon our knowledge
as men do not ordinarily reflect. He is led to ask: What is truth? He
cannot accept uncritically the assumptions which men make; and he must
endeavor to become very clearly conscious of the real meaning and the
whole meaning of statements expressed in words. Even in the simple
logic with which we usually begin our studies, we learn to scrutinize
statements in a reflective way; and when we go deeper, we are at once
in contact with philosophical problems. It is evidently our task to
attain to a clearer insight into the nature of our experience and the
meaning of proof than is attainable by the unreflective.
Logic, then, is a reflective science, and it is not surprising that it
has held its place as one of the philosophical sciences.
CHAPTER XVII
PSYCHOLOGY
69. PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.--I think I have said enough in Chapter
II (section 10) about what we mean when we speak of psychology as a
natural science and as an independent discipline. Certainly there are
many psychologists who would not care to be confused with the
philosophers, and there are some that regard philosophy with suspicion.
Nevertheless, psychology is commonly regarded as belonging to the
philosophical group. That this is the case can scarcely be thought
surprising when we see how the psychologist himself speaks of the
relation of his science to philosophy.
"I have kept," writes Professor James[1] in that delightful book which
has become the common property of us all, "close to the point of view
of natural science throughout the book. Every natural science assumes
certain data uncritically, and declines to challenge the elements
between which its own 'laws' obtain, and from which its own deductions
are carried on. Psychology, the science of finite individual minds,
assumes as its data (1) _thoughts and feelings_, and (2) _a physical
world_ in time and space with which they coexist, and which (3) _they
know_. Of course, these data themselves are discussable; but the
discussion of them (as of other elements) is called metaphysics and
falls outside the province of this book."
This is an admirable statement of the scope of psychology as a natural
science, and also of the relations of metaphysics to the sciences. But
it would not be fair to Professor James to take this sentence alone,
and to assume that, in his opinion, it is easy to separate psychology
altogether from philosophy. "The reader," he tells us in the next
paragraph, "will in vain seek for any closed system in the book. It is
mainly a mass of descriptive details, running out into queries which
only a metaphysics alive to the weight of her task can hope
successfully to deal with." And in the opening sentence of the preface
he informs us that some of his chapters are more "metaphysical" than is
suitable for students going over the subject for the first time.
That the author is right in maintaining that it is not easy to draw a
clear line between philosophy and psychology, and to declare the latter
wholly independent, I think we must concede. An independent science
should be sure of the things with which it is dealing. Where these are
vague and indefinite, and are the subject of constant dispute, it
cannot march forward with assurance. One is rather forced to go back
and examine the data themselves. The beaten track of the special
science has not been satisfactorily constructed.