This description of experience would be but a rhapsodic celebration of
the commonplace were it not in marked contrast to orthodox philosophical
accounts. The contrast indicates that traditional accounts have not been
empirical, but have been deductions, from unnamed premises, of what
experience _must_ be. Historic empiricism has been empirical in a
technical and controversial sense. It has said, Lord, Lord, Experience,
Experience; but in practice it has served ideas _forced into_
experience, not _gathered from_ it.
The confusion and artificiality thereby introduced into philosophical
thought is nowhere more evident than in the empirical treatment of
relations or dynamic continuities. The experience of a living being
struggling to hold its own and make its way in an environment, physical
and social, partly facilitating and partly obstructing its actions, is
of necessity a matter of ties and connexions, of bearings and uses. The
very point of experience, so to say, is that it doesn't occur in a
vacuum; its agent-patient instead of being insulated and disconnected is
bound up with the movement of things by most intimate and pervasive
bonds. Only because the organism is in and of the world, and its
activities correlated with those of other things in multiple ways, is it
susceptible to undergoing things and capable of trying to reduce objects
to means of securing its good fortune. That these connexions are of
diverse kinds is irresistibly proved by the fluctuations which occur in
its career. Help and hindrance, stimulation and inhibition, success and
failure mean specifically different modes of correlation. Although the
actions of things in the world are taking place in one continuous
stretch of existence, there are all kinds of specific affinities,
repulsions, and relative indifferencies.
Dynamic connexions are qualitatively diverse, just as are the centers of
action. _In this sense_, pluralism, not monism, is an established
empirical fact. The attempt to establish monism from consideration of
the very nature of a relation is a mere piece of dialectics. Equally
dialectical is the effort to establish by a consideration of the nature
of relations an ontological Pluralism of Ultimates: _simple and
independent beings._ To attempt to get results from a consideration of
the "external" nature of relations is of a piece with the attempt to
deduce results from their "internal" character. Some things are
relatively insulated from the influence of other things; some things are
easily invaded by others; some things are fiercely attracted to conjoin
their activities with those of others. Experience exhibits every kind
of connexion[1] from the most intimate to mere external juxtaposition.
Empirically, then, active bonds or continuities of all kinds, together
with static discontinuities, characterize existence. To deny this
qualitative heterogeneity is to reduce the struggles and difficulties of
life, its comedies and tragedies to illusion: to the non-being of the
Greeks or to its modern counterpart, the "subjective." Experience is an
affair of facilitations and checks, of being sustained and disrupted,
being let alone, being helped and troubled, of good fortune and defeat
in all the countless qualitative modes which these words pallidly
suggest. The existence of genuine connexions of all manner of
heterogeneity cannot be doubted. Such words as conjoining, disjoining,
resisting, modifying, saltatory, and ambulatory (to use James'
picturesque term) only hint at their actual heterogeneity.
Among the revisions and surrenders of historic problems demanded by this
feature of empirical situations, those centering in the
rationalistic-empirical controversy may be selected for attention. The
implications of this controversy are twofold: First, that connexions are
as homogeneous in fact as in name; and, secondly, if genuine, are all
due to thought, or, if empirical, are arbitrary by-products of past
particulars. The stubborn particularism of orthodox empiricism is its
outstanding trait; consequently the opposed rationalism found no
justification of bearings, continuities, and ties save to refer them in
gross to the work of a hyper-empirical Reason.
Of course, not all empiricism prior to Hume and Kant was
sensationalistic, pulverizing "experience" into isolated sensory
qualities or simple ideas. It did not all follow Locke's lead in
regarding the entire content of generalization as the "workmanship of
the understanding." On the Continent, prior to Kant, philosophers were
content to draw a line between empirical generalizations regarding
matters of fact and necessary universals applying to truths of reason.
But logical atomism was implicit even in this theory. Statements
referring to empirical fact were mere quantitative summaries of
particular instances. In the sensationalism which sprang from Hume (and
which was left unquestioned by Kant as far as any strictly empirical
element was concerned) the implicit particularism was made explicit. But
the doctrine that sensations and ideas are so many separate existences
was not derived from observation nor from experiment. It was a logical
deduction from a prior unexamined concept of the nature of experience.
From the same concept it followed that the appearance of stable objects
and of general principles of connexion was but an appearance.[2]
Kantianism, then, naturally invoked universal bonds to restore
objectivity. But, in so doing, it accepted the particularism of
experience and proceeded to supplement it from non-empirical sources. A
sensory manifold being all which is really empirical in experience, a
reason which transcends experience must provide synthesis. The net
outcome might have suggested a correct account of experience. For we
have only to forget the apparatus by which the net outcome is arrived
at, to have before us the experience of the plain man--a diversity of
ceaseless changes connected in all kinds of ways, static and dynamic.
This conclusion would deal a deathblow to both empiricism and
rationalism. For, making clear the non-empirical character of the
alleged manifold of unconnected particulars, it would render unnecessary
the appeal to functions of the understanding in order to connect them.
With the downfall of the traditional notion of experience, the appeal to
reason to supplement its defects becomes superfluous.
The tradition was, however, too strongly entrenched; especially as it
furnished the subject-matter of an alleged science of states of mind
which were directly known in their very presence. The historic outcome
was a new crop of artificial puzzles about relations; it fastened upon
philosophy for a long time the quarrel about the _a priori_ and the _a
posteriori_ as its chief issue. The controversy is to-day quiescent. Yet
it is not at all uncommon to find thinkers modern in tone and intent
who regard any philosophy of experience as necessarily committed to
denial of the existence of genuinely general propositions, and who take
empiricism to be inherently averse to the recognition of the importance
of an organizing and constructive intelligence.
The quiescence alluded to is in part due, I think, to sheer weariness.
But it is also due to a change of standpoint introduced by biological
conceptions; and particularly the discovery of biological continuity
from the lower organisms to man. For a short period, Spencerians might
connect the doctrine of evolution with the old problem, and use the long
temporal accumulation of "experiences" to generate something which, for
human experience, is _a priori_. But the tendency of the biological way
of thinking is neither to confirm or negate the Spencerian doctrine, but
to shift the issue. In the orthodox position _a posteriori_ and _a
priori_ were affairs of knowledge. But it soon becomes obvious that
while there is assuredly something _a priori_--that is to say, native,
unlearned, original--in human experience, that something is _not_
knowledge, but is activities made possible by means of established
connexions of neurones. This empirical fact does not solve the orthodox
problem; it dissolves it. It shows that the problem was misconceived,
and solution sought by both parties in the wrong direction.
Organic instincts and organic retention, or habit-forming, are
undeniable factors in actual experience. They are factors which effect
organization and secure continuity. They are among the specific facts
which a description of experience cognizant of the correlation of
organic action with the action of other natural objects will include.
But while fortunately the contribution of biological science to a truly
empirical description of experiencing has outlawed the discussion of the
_a priori_ and _a posteriori_, the transforming effect of the same
contributions upon other issues has gone unnoticed, save as pragmatism
has made an effort to bring them to recognition.