[1] The word relation suffers from ambiguity. I am speaking here of
_connexion_, dynamic and functional interaction. "Relation" is a term
used also to express logical reference. I suspect that much of the
controversy about internal and external relations is due to this
ambiguity. One passes at will from existential connexions of things to
logical relationship of terms. Such an identification of existences with
_terms_ is congenial to idealism, but is paradoxical in a professed
realism.
[2] There is some gain in substituting a doctrine of flux and
interpenetration of psychical states, _a la_ Bergson, for that of rigid
discontinuity. But the substitution leaves untouched the fundamental
misstatement of experience, the conception of experience as directly and
primarily "inner" and psychical.
[3] Mathematical science in its formal aspects, or as a branch of formal
logic, has been the empirical stronghold of rationalism. But an
empirical empiricism, in contrast with orthodox deductive empiricism,
has no difficulty in establishing its jurisdiction as to deductive
functions.
[4] It is a shame to devote the word idealism, with its latent moral,
practical connotations, to a doctrine whose tenets are the denial of the
existence of a physical world, and the psychical character of all
objects--at least as far as they are knowable. But I am following usage,
not attempting to make it.
[5] See Dr. Kallen's essay, below.
[6] The "they" means the "some" of the prior sentence--those whose
realism is epistemological, instead of being a plea for taking the facts
of experience as we find them without refraction through epistemological
apparatus.
[7] It is interesting to note that some of the realists who have
assimilated the cognitive relation to other existential relations in the
world (instead of treating it as an unique or epistemological relation)
have been forced in support of their conception of knowledge as a
"presentative" or spectatorial affair to extend the defining features of
the latter to all relations among things, and hence to make all the
"real" things in the world pure "simples," wholly independent of one
another. So conceived the doctrine of external relations appears to be
rather the doctrine of complete externality of _things_. Aside from this
point, the doctrine is interesting for its dialectical ingenuity and for
the elegant development of assumed premises, rather than convincing on
account of empirical evidence supporting it.
[8] In other words, there is a general "problem of error" only because
there is a general problem of evil, concerning which see Dr. Kallen's
essay, below.
[9] Compare the paper by Professor Bode.
[10] As the attempt to retain the epistemological problem and yet to
reject idealistic and relativistic solutions has forced some
Neo-realists into the doctrine of isolated and independent simples, so
it has also led to a doctrine of Eleatic pluralism. In order to maintain
the doctrine the subject makes no difference to anything else, it is
held that _no_ ultimate real makes any difference to anything else--all
this rather than surrender once for all the genuineness of the problem
and to follow the lead of empirical subject-matter.
[11] There is almost no end to the various dialectic developments of the
epistemological situation. When it is held that all the relations of the
type in question are cognitive, and yet it is recognized (as it must be)
that many such "transformations" go unremarked, the theory is
supplemented by introducing "unconscious" psychical modifications.
[12] Conception-presentation has, of course, been made by many in the
history of speculation an exception to this statement; "pure" memory is
also made an exception by Bergson. To take cognizance of this matter
would, of course, accentuate, not relieve, the difficulty remarked upon
in the text.
[13] Cf. _Studies in Logical Theory_, Chs. I and II, by Dewey; also
"Epistemology and Mental States," Tufts, _Phil. Rev._, Vol. VI, which
deserves to rank as one of the early documents of the "experimental"
movement.
[14] Cf. "The Definition of the Psychical," G. H. Mead, _Decennial
Publications of the University of Chicago_.
[15] Cf. _The Logic of Hegel-Wallace_, p. 117.
[16] _Bosanquet's Logic_, 2nd Ed., p. 171. The identification of
induction and procedure by hypothesis occurs on p. 156.
[17] _Ibid._, p. 14 (italics mine).
[18] Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the breakdown of formal
logic considered as an account of the operation of thought apart from
its subject-matter is to be found in Schiller's _Formal Logic_.
[19] Cf. Stuart on "Valuation as a Logical Process" in _Studies in
Logical Theory_.
[20] _The New Realism_, pp. 40-41.
[21] Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell, _The Problems of_
_Philosophy_, pp. 27-65-66, _et passim_; and Holt's _Concept of
Consciousness_, pp. 14ff., discussed below.
[22] Cf. Angell, "Relations of Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial
Publications of University of Chicago_, Vol. III; also Castro, "The
Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic," _Philosophic Studies,
University of Chicago_, No. 4.
[23] I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he alone
appears to have had the courage to develop the full consequences of the
premises of analytic logic.
[24] _The Concept of Consciousness_, pp. 14-15.
[25] It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the account of
consciousness further on. As "psychological" this act of onlooking must
be an act of consciousness. But consciousness is a cross-section or a
projection of things made by their interaction with a nervous system.
Here consciousness is a function of all the interacting factors. It is
in the play. It _is_ the play. It is not in a spectator's box. How can
consciousness be a function of all the things put into the cross-section
and yet be a mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that
makes any particular, spectacle, or cross-section "logical"? If it be
said all are "logical" what significance has the term?
[26] Cf. Russell's _Scientific Methods in Philosophy_, p. 59.
[27] Holt, _op. cit._, pp. 128-30.
[28] In fact, Newton, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure notions
in mind.
[29] Holt, _op. cit._, p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry's _Present
Philosophical Tendencies_, pp. 108 and 311.
[30] The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have been
discussed in the preceding section.
[31] _Ibid._, p. 275.
[32] _Ibid._, p. 275.
[33] This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of the
nervous system and its other functions accounts for the strange paradox
in the logic of neo-realism of an act of knowing which is "subjective"
and yet is the act of so palpably an objective affair as a nervous
system. The explanation is that the essence of all deprecated
subjectivity is, as before pointed out, functional isolation. That this
sort of subjectivity should be identified with the "psychical" is not
strange, since a living organism is very difficult to isolate, while the
term "psychical," in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little
else than just this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the
nervous system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of
its functions with each other and with its environment should not have
suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the prepossession of
mathematical atomism in analytic logic can account for its failure to do
so.
[34] But it would be better to use the term "logically-practical"
instead of "subjective" with the psychical implications of that term.
[35] An analysis which has been many times carried out has made it clear
that scientific data never do more than approximate the laws and
entities upon which our science rests. It is equally evident that the
forms of these laws and entities themselves shift in the reconstructions
of incessant research, or where they seem most secure could consistently
be changed, or at least could be fundamentally different were our
psychological structure or even our conventions of thought different. I
need only refer to the _Science et Hypothese_ of Poincare and the
_Problems of Science_ of Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to
carry the structure of the world back to the data of observation, and
the uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing
sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data which
must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research science; nor
are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate elements of points
and instants which our pure mathematics assumes and implicitly defines,
and in connection with which it has worked out the modern theory of the
number and continuous series, its statements of continuity and infinity.
[36] In other words, science assumes that every error is _ex post facto_
explicable as a function of the real conditions under which it really
arose. Hence, "consciousness," set over against Reality, was not its
condition.
[37] C. Judson Herrick, "Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance
of the Cerebral Cortex," _Journal of Animal Behavior_, Vol. III, pp.
228-233.
[38] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 256.
[39] H. C. Warren, _Psychological Review_, Vol. XXI, Page 93.
[40] _Principles of Psychology_, I, p. 241, note.
[41] _Ibid._, p. 258.
[42] _Psychology. Briefer Course._ P. 468.
[43] Angell, _Psychology_, p. 65.
[44] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 251.
[45] Thorstein Veblen: _The Instinct of Workmanship_, p. 316.
[46] It may still be argued that we must depend upon analogy in our
acceptance or rejection of a new commodity. For any element of novelty
must surely suggest something to us, must _mean_ something to us, if it
is to attract or repel. Thus, the motor-car will whirl us rapidly over
the country, the motor-boat will dart over the water without effort on
our part. And in such measure as we have had them hitherto, we have
always enjoyed experiences of rapid motion. These new instruments simply
promise a perfectly well-known _sort_ of experience in fuller measure.
So the argument may run. And our mental process in such a case may
accordingly be held to be nothing more mysterious than a passing by
analogy from the _old_ ways in which we got rapid motion in the past to
the _new_ way which now promises more of the same. And more of the same
is what we want.
"More of the same" means here intensive magnitude and in this connection
at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic seems perfectly
valid against such a use of the notion. But kept in logical terms the
case seems clearer. It is said that we reason in such a case by
"analogy." We do, indeed; but what is analogy? The term explains nothing
until the real process behind the term is clearly and realistically
conceived. What I shall here suggest holds true, I think, as an account
of analogical inference generally and not simply for the economic type
of case we have here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as
proceeding from given independent premises--as here (1) the fact that
hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we have most
enjoyed have been _fast_ and (2) the fact that the motor-car is _fast_.
But do we accept the conclusion because the premises suggest it in a way
we cannot resist? On the contrary, stated thus, the premises clearly do
_not_ warrant the conclusion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such
a statement of the premises is wholly formal and _ex post facto_. What,
then, is our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think,
that we simply--yes, "psychologically"--wish to try _that promised
unheard-of rate of speed_! That comes first and foremost. But we mean to
be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are avowedly adventurous
just now in this particular direction! We, therefore, ransack our memory
for _other fast things_ we have known, to see whether they have
encouragement to give us. We try to supply ourselves with a major
premise because the new proposal in its own right interests us--instead
of having the major premise already there to coerce us by a purely
"logical" compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And
confessedly, in point of "logic," there is no such compulsion in the
second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a mere
"not proven."
Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in
seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic,
turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never
been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap"
is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen
only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the
impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about
for an illusive assurance in some "law of thought," or some
question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not
see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our
initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of
a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only
hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason
by analogy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the
radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to
that interest.
[47] Aristotle's _Nicomachaean Ethics_ (Welldon's transl.), Book VIII.
[48] Cf. Aristotle's _Politics_ (Jowett's trans.) III. 9. Sec.6 ff. and
elsewhere; _Nicom. Ethics_, I, Chap. III (end).
[49] Cf. Veblen: _op. cit._
[50] W. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ (Ed. 1912, pp. 358 ff.)
recognizes "incomplete anticipation of the end of action" as a genuine
type of preliminary situation in human behavior, but appears to regard
this as in so far a levelling-down of man to the blindness of the
"brutes." But "incompleteness" is a highly ambiguous term and seems here
to beg the question. "Incompleteness" may be given an emphasis in which
it imports conjecture and hypothesis--almost anything, in fact, but
blindness. Rather do the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as
those McDougall cites.
[51] take _routine_ to be the essence and meaning of hedonism. There are
two fundamental types of conduct--routine and constructiveness.
Reference may be made here to Boehm-Bawerk's pronouncement on hedonism in
_Kapital und Kapitalzins_, 1912 (II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love
and hate, strive towards or fight off--whether only pleasure and pain or
other 'lovable' and 'hatable' things as well,--is a matter of entire
indifference to the economist. The only thing important is that they do
love and hate certain things.... The deductions of marginal utility
theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends (dependent for
their realization upon a supply of goods inadequate to the fulfillment
of all ends without limit) are held to have the character not of
pleasure but of something else. The marginal utility may be a least
pleasure or a competing least utility of some other sort...." (p. 317).
This is a not uncommon view. As W. C. Mitchell has suggested, it is too
obvious to be wholly convincing. (_Journ. Pol. Ec._, Vol. XVIII. "The
Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it perfectly clear
that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of
hedonism. (_Journ. Pol. Ec._, Vol. XVII, _Quart. Journ. Econ._, Vol.
XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too complex for a footnote, but I think
it of little consequence whether "pleasure" be in any case regarded as
substantively the end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of
words. What is important is the practical question whether a thing is
_so habitual with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not
give it up and take an interest in something new_ the "utility" of which
I cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me to
create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or the
avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and egoism are in
the end convertible terms. There is conduct wearing the outward aspect
of altruism that is egotistic in fact--not because it was from the first
insincere or self-delusive, but because it has become habitual and may
in a crisis be held to for the sake of the satisfaction it affords.
Genuine altruism, on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.
[52] Until after this essay was finished I had not seen John A. Hobson's
book entitled _Work and Wealth, A Human Valuation_ (London, 1914). My
attention was first definitely called to this work by a friend among the
economists who read my finished MS. late in 1915, and referred me in
particular to the concluding chapter on "Social Science and Social Art."
On now tardily reading this chapter I find that, as any reader will
readily perceive, it distinctly anticipates, almost _verbatim_ in parts,
what I have tried, with far less success, to say in the foregoing two
paragraphs above. Hobson argues, with characteristic clearness and
effect, for the qualitative uniqueness and the integral character of
personal budgets, holding that the logic of marginality is "an entirely
illusory account of the psychical process by which a man lays out his
money, or his time, or his energy" (p. 331). "So far as it is true that
the last sovereign of my expenditure in bread equals in utility the last
sovereign of my expenditure in books, that fact proceeds not from a
comparison, conscious, or unconscious, of these separate items at this
margin, but from the parts assigned respectively to bread and books in
the organic plan of my life. Quantitative analysis, inherently incapable
of comprehending qualitative unity or qualitative differences, can only
pretend to reduce the latter to quantitative differences. What it
actually does is to ignore alike the unity of the whole and the
qualitativeness of the parts" (p. 334). Hobson not only uses the analogy
of the artist and the picture (p. 330) precisely as I have done, but
offers still other illustrations of the principle that seem to me even
more apt and telling. Though not indebted to him for what I have put
into the above paragraphs, I am glad to be able to cite the authority of
so distinguished an economist and sociologist for conclusions to which I
found my own way. Other parts as well _of Work and Wealth_ (e.g.,
Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production") seem to have a close
relation to the main theme of the present discussion.
[53] It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of illustration
at an ethical view of preference parallel with the economic logic above
contested. "The act which is right in that it promotes one interest, is,
by the same principle," writes R. B. Perry, "wrong in that it injures
another interest. There is no contradiction in this fact ... simply
because it is possible for the same thing to possess several relations,
the question of their compatibility or incompatibility being in each
case a question of empirical fact. Now ... an act ... may be doubly
right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two interests. Hence
arises the conception of comparative goodness. If the fulfillment of one
interest is good, the fulfillment of two is better; and the fulfillment
of all interests is best.... Morality, then, is _such performance as
under the circumstances, and in view of all the interests affected,
conduces to most goodness_. In other words, that act is morally right
which is most right." (_Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 334. Cf.
also _The Moral Economy_). It is evident that constructive change in the
underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets no
recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact of the
agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the meaning of freedom
to lie in the fact that "_interests operate_," i.e., that interests
exist as a certain class of operative factors in the universe along with
factors of _other_ sorts. "I can and do, within limits, _act as I will_.
Action, in other words, is governed by desires and intentions." (pp. 342
ff.). The cosmical heroics of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the
last word in Ethics (p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perry's
view, apparently must get on with the interests that once for all
initially defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 343).
[54] In a recent interesting discussion of "Self-interest" (T. N.
Carver, _Essays in Social Justice_, 1915, Chap. III) occurs the
following: "We may conclude ... that even after we eliminate from our
consideration all other beings than self, there is yet a possible
distinction between one's present and one's future self. It is always,
of course, the present self which esteems or appreciates all interests
whether they be present or future. And the present self estimates or
appreciates present interests somewhat more highly than it does future
interests. In this respect the present self appreciates the interests of
the future self according to a law quite analogous to, if indeed it be
not the same law as that according to which it appreciates the interests
of others" (p. 71). This bit of "subjective analysis" (p. 60), a
procedure rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the
following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be bettered,
I think, in only one point. Must the future self "of course" and
"always" get license to live by meeting the standards of the present
self? Has the present self no modesty, no curiosity, no "sense of
humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and fast, how can a self new and
qualitatively different ever get upon its feet in a man? In some men no
such thing can happen--but must it be in all men impossible and
impossible "of course"? And what of the other self? Carver has not
applied the "methods of subjective analysis" to _change_ from self _to_
self or from interest in self _to_ interest in others. The present tense
of formal logic governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.
If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of
view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to
the undervaluation of future goods.
[55] Fite, _Introductory Study of Ethics_, pp. 3-8.
[56] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 205-11.
[57] The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry: _Present
Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 129 ff.) has had, for a philosophic term,
a remarkable literary success. But at best it conveys a partial view of
the situation it purports to describe. The "egocentricity" of our
experience, viewed in its relation to action, seems, rightly considered,
less a "predicament" than an opportunity, a responsibility and an
immunity. For in relation to _action_, it means (1) that an objective
complex situation has become, in various of its aspects, a matter of my
cognizance in terms significant to me. That so many of its aspects have
come into relations of conflict or reenforcement significant _for me_ is
_my_ opportunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself
of it. Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (_op. cit._, p. 129)
and am thus able to "report" upon the situation, I am (2) responsible,
in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy of my performance. And
finally (3) I cannot be held to account for failure to reckon with such
aspects of the situation as I cannot get hold of in the guise of "ideas,
objects of knowledge or experiences" (_Ibid._). Our egocentricity is,
then, a predicament only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no
obvious positive purpose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing
entitative complex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of
the blue, and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the
representative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W. Moore,
"Isolated Knowledge," _Journ. of Philos., etc._, Vol. XI). The way out
of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is to attack the
traditional subjective and representative aspects of knowledge. But,
this carried out, what remains of knowledge is a "cross-section of
neutral entities" which _still_ retains all the original
unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original intrinsic and
isolated self-sufficiency traditionally supposed to belong to knowledge.
The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is an alleged proof of its
ultimate self-validation or the meaninglessness of any suspicion of its
validity (because there is no uncontrolled and distorting intermediation
of "consciousness" in the case). But to wage strenuous war on
subjectivism and representationism and still to have on hand a problem
calling for the invention _ad hoc_ of an entire new theory of mind and
knowledge seems a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant
outworks. They might have been circumvented.
But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric
predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the
"altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is
obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his
own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all--perhaps in spite of
himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore
(_Principia Ethica_, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring
Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest and
_indefinable_, and by supplying a partial list of things thus
independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in
possession of objective _Good_, not because it accords with some habit
or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedly _one_ of the
good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in
this (_op. cit._, p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give
no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's
efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate"
apprehension of what things are good than he may already possess, just
as the objectivist theory of consciousness ( = knowledge) can supply no
clue as to how or whether a _more_ or a _less_ comprehensive or a
qualitatively _different_ "cross-section of entities" can or should be
got into one's "mind" as warrant or guidance ("stimulus") for a
contemplated response that is to meet a present emergency (cf. John
Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," _Psychol. Rev._, Vol.
IV). Thus neither sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of
egocentricity abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or
danger threatened by subjectivism.
[58] Cf. W. Jethro Brown, _The Underlying Principles of Modern
Legislation_ (3d ed., London, 1914), pp. 165-68.
[59] Bosanquet: _Principle of Individuality and Value_, pp. 13, 15, 20,
24, 27, 30.
[60] The case against the Austrian explanation of market-price in terms
of marginal utility has been well summed up and re-enforced by B. M.
Anderson in his monograph, _Social Value_ (Boston, 1911). Anderson finds
the fatal flaw in the Austrian account to consist in the psychological
particularism of the marginal utility theory. The only way, he holds, to
provide an adequate foundation for a non-circular theory of price is to
understand the marginal estimates people put upon goods as resultants of
the entire moral, legal, institutional, scientific, aesthetical, and
religious state of society at the time. This total and therefore
absolute state of affairs, if I understand the argument, is to be
regarded as focussed to a unique point in the estimate each man puts
upon a commodity. Thus, presumably, the values which come together,
summed up in the total demand and supply schedules for a commodity in
the market, are "social values" and the resultant market-price is a
"social price." This cross-sectional social totality of conditions is
strongly suggestive of an idealistic Absolute. The individual is a mere
focussing of impersonal strains and stresses in the Absolute. But the
real society is a radically temporal process. The real centers of
initiation in it are creatively intelligent individuals whose economic
character as such expresses itself not in "absolute" marginal
registrations but in price estimates.
On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the support of A.
A. Young, "Some Limitations of the Value Concept," _Quart. Journ.
Econ._, Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the
attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is called
_Werttheorie_ to be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and
misleading terminology.
[61] _Positive Theory of Capital_ (Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II. The
passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).
[62] It is pointed out (e.g., by Davenport in his _Economics of
Enterprise_, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where large
numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their respective
maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity this interval within
which price must fall becomes indefinitely small to the point of
vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with the law of probability, but
it would be an obvious fallacy to see in this any manner of proof or
presumption that therefore the assumptions as to the nature of the
individual valuations upon which such analysis proceeds _are true_. In a
large market where this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity
is there more or less higgling and bargaining than in a small market
where the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if there _is_ higgling
and bargaining (_op. cit._, pp. 96-97), what is it doing that is of
price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a critical
interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory is a good
example of the way in which mathematics may be used to cover the false
assumptions which have to be made in order to make a mathematical
treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter initially plausible as
description of concrete fact.
[63] As I have elsewhere argued ("Subjective and Exchange Value,"
_Journ. Pol. Econ._, Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same token, I confess
skepticism of the classical English doctrine that cost can affect price
only through its effect upon quantity produced. "If all the commodities
used by man," wrote Senior (quoted by Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 58),
"were supplied by nature without any interference whatever of human
labor, but were supplied in precisely the same amounts that they now
are, there is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be
valuable or would exchange at any other than the present proportions."
But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One wonders,
indeed, whether private property would ever have developed or how long
modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were the gift of nature
instead of only some of it (that part, of course, which requires no use
of produced capital goods for its appropriation).
[64] Certain points in this discussion have been raised in two papers,
entitled, "The Present Task of Ethical Theory," _Int. Jour. of Ethics_,
XX, and "Ethical Value," _Jour. of Phil., Psy., and Scientific Methods_,
V, p. 517.
[65] Cf. also John Dewey, _Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy_, and
Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, Ch. XVI.
[66] _International Journal of Ethics_, XXV, 1914, pp. 1-24.
[67]_ Dreams of a Spirit Seer._
[68] Cf. A. W. Moore, _Pragmatism and Its Critics_, 257-78.
[69] Croce, _Philosophy of the Practical_, pp. 312 f.
[70] G. E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_, p. 147.
[71] _Ethics_, ch. V.
[72] G. E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_, p. 149.
[73] Rashdall, _Is Conscience an Emotion?_ pp. 199 f.
[74] _Ibid._, 177.
[75] G.E. Moore, _Ethics_, Ch. III.
[76] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 334 f.
[77] _Methods of Ethics_, p. 380.
[78] _Individualism_, 55, 61, 62.
[79] Lectures III and IV, especially 175, 176, 235-39.
[80] Pp. 111 ff., 172-75, 329 ff.
[81] Pp. 73, 186, 236, 261 f., 267, 269.
[82] 124, 182, 301.
[83] 263 ff., 123.
[84] Pp. 180, 241.
[85] P. 180.
[86] Art and religion have doubtless their important parts in embodying
values, or in adding the consciousness of membership in a larger union
of spirits, or of relation to a cosmic order conceived as ethical, but
the limits of our discussion do not permit treatment of these factors.
[87] Cf. my paper, "Goodness, Cognition, and Beauty," _Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. IX, p. 253.
[88] Cf. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_; S. Freud, _Die
Traumdeutung_, _Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben_, etc.; McDougall,
_Social Psychology_.
[89] _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_,
Vol. IX, p. 256.
[90] Cf. Plato, _Republic_, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation
of Freud.
[91] This "new psychology" is not so very new.
[92] Cf. Hocking, _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, for the most
recent of these somnambulisms. But any idealistic system will do, from
Plato to Bradley.
[93] Cf. James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_.
[94] Cf. Jane Harrison, _Ancient Art and Ritual_.
[95] Cf. my paper, "Is Belief Essential in Religion?", _International
Journal of Ethics_, October, 1910.
[96] "Metaphysics," _Book Lambda_.
[97] This is accomplished usually by ignoring the differentia of the
term of religion, and using it simply as an adjective of eulogy, as in
the common practice the term "Christian" is made coextensive with the
denotation of "good," or "social." For example, a "Christian gentleman"
can differ in no discernible way from a gentleman not so qualified save
by believing in certain theological propositions. But in usage, the
adjective is simply tautologous. Compare R. B. Perry, _The Moral
Economy_; E. S. Ames, _The Psychology of Religious Experience_; J. H.
Leuba, _A Psychological Study of Religion_; H. M. Kallen, _Is Belief
Essential in Religion?_
[98] The condition of England and Germany in the present civil war in
Europe echoes this situation.
[99] Cf. _Republic_, Books V and VI.
[100] Cf. _Winds of Doctrine_ and _Reason in Common Sense_.