From the acceptance of such a definition two important consequences

would follow. (1) The first is that metaphysics is at once sharply

discriminated from any study of the psychical _process_ of knowledge, if

indeed, there can be any such study distinct from the psychology of

conception and belief, which is clearly not itself the science we have

in view. For the psychological laws of the formation of concepts and

beliefs are exemplified equally in the discovery and propagation of

truth and of error. And thus it is in vain to look to them for any

explanation of the difference between the two. Nor does the otherwise

promising extension of Darwinian conceptions of the "struggle for

existence" and the "survival of the fittest" to the field of opinions

and convictions appear to affect this conclusion. Such considerations

may indeed assist us to understand how true convictions in virtue of

their "usefulness" gradually come to be established and extended, but

they require to presume the truth of these convictions as an antecedent

condition of their "usefulness" and consequent establishment. I should

infer, then, that it is a mistake in principle to seek to replace

ontology by a "theory of knowledge," and should even be inclined to

question the very possibility of such a theory as distinct from

metaphysics on the one hand and empirical psychology on the other. (2)

The second consequence is of even greater importance. The inquiry into

the general character by which the contents of true assertions are

discriminated from the contents of false assertions must be carefully

distinguished from any investigation into the truth or falsehood of

special assertions. To ask how in the end truth differs from falsehood

is to raise an entirely different problem from that created by asking

whether a given statement is to be regarded as true or false. The

distinction becomes particularly important when we have to deal with

what Locke would call assertions of "real existence," _i. e._,

assertions as to the occurrence of particular events in the temporal

order. All such assertions depend, in part at least, upon the admission

of what we may style "empirical" evidence, the immediate unanalyzed

witness of simple apprehension to the occurrence of an alleged matter of

fact. Thus it would follow from our proposed conception of metaphysics

that metaphysics is in principle incapable either of establishing or

refuting any assertion as to the details of our immediate experience of

empirical fact, though it may have important bearings upon any theory of

the general nature of true Being which we may seek to found upon our

alleged experiences. In a word, if our conception be the correct one,

the functions of a science of metaphysics in respect of our knowledge of

the temporal sequence of events psychical and physical must be purely

critical, never constructive,--a point to which I shall presently have

to recur.

One more general reflection, and we may pass to the consideration of the

relation of metaphysics to the various alreadyorganized branches of

human knowledge more in detail. The admission that there is, or may be,

such a study as we have described, seems of itself to involve the

recognition that definite knowledge about the character of what really

"is," is attainable, and thus to commit us to a position of sharp

opposition both to consistent and thorough-going agnosticism and also to

the latent agnosticism of Kantian and neo-Kantian "critical philosophy."

In recognizing ontology as a legitimate investigation, we revert in

principle to the "dogmatist" position common, _e. g._, to Plato, to

Spinoza and to Leibniz, that there is genuine truth which can be known,

and that this genuine truth is not confined to statements about the

process of knowing itself. In fact, the "critical" view that the only

certain truth is truth about the process of knowing seems to be

inherently self-contradictory. For the knowledge that such a proposition

as, _e. g._, "I know only the laws of my own apprehending activity," is

true, would itself be knowledge not about the process of knowing but

about the content known. Thus metaphysics, conceived as the science of

the general character which distinguishes truth from falsehood,

presupposes throughout all knowledge the presence of what we may call a

"transcendent object," that is, a content which is never identical with

the process by which it is apprehended, though it may no doubt be

maintained that the two, the process and its content, if distinct, are

yet not ultimately separable. That they are in point of fact not

ultimately separable would seem to be the doctrine which, under various

forms of statement, is common to and characteristic of all the

"idealistic" systems of metaphysics. So much then in defense of a

metaphysical point of view which seems to be closely akin to that of Mr.

Bradley and of Professor Royce, to mention only two names of

contemporary philosophers, and which might, I think, for the purpose of

putting it in sharp opposition to the "neo-Kantian" view, not unfairly

be called, if it is held to need a name, "neo-Leibnizian."

In passing on to discuss in brief the nature of the boundary lines which

divide metaphysics from other branches of study, it seems necessary to

start with a clear distinction between the "pure" or "formal" and the

"applied" or "empirical" sciences, the more so as in the loose current

employment of language the name "science" is frequently given

exclusively to the latter. In every-day life, when we are told that a

certain person is a "man of science," or as the detestable jargon of our

time likes to say, a "scientist," we expect to find that he is, _e. g._,

a geologist, a chemist, a biologist, or an electrician. We should be a

little surprised to find on inquiry that our "man of science" was a pure

mathematician, and probably more than a little to learn that he was a

formal logician. The distinction between the pure and the empirical

sciences may be roughly indicated by saying that the latter class

comprises all those sciences which yield information about the

particular details of the temporal order of events physical and

psychical, whereas the pure sciences deal solely with the general

characteristics either of all truths, or of all truths of some

well-defined class. More exactly we may say that the marks by which an

empirical is distinguished from a pure science are two. (1) The

empirical sciences one and all imply the presence among their premises

of empirical propositions, that is, propositions which assert the actual

occurrence of some temporal fact, and depend upon the witness of

immediate apprehension, either in the form of sense perception or in

that of what is commonly called self-consciousness. In the vague

language made current by Kant, they involve an appeal to some form of

unanalyzed "intuition." The pure sciences, on the other hand, contain no

empirical propositions either among their premises or their conclusions.

The principles which form their premises are self-evidently true

propositions, containing no reference to the actual occurrence of any

event in the temporal order, and thus involving no appeal to any form of

"intuition." And the conclusions established in a pure science are all

rigidly logical deductions from such self-evident premises. That the

universality of this distinction is still often overlooked even by

professed writers on scientific method seems explicable by two simple

considerations. On the one hand, it is easy to overlook the important

distinction between a principle which is self-evident, that is, which

cannot be denied without explicit falsehood, and a proposition affirmed

on the warrant of the senses, because, though its denial cannot be seen

to be obviously false, the senses appear on each fresh appeal to

substantiate the assertion. Thus the Euclidean postulate about parallels

was long falsely supposed to possess exactly the same kind of

self-evidence as the _dictum de omni_ and the principle of identity

which are part of the foundations of all logic. And further Kant,

writing under the influence of this very confusion, has given wide

popularity to the view that the best known of the pure sciences, that of

mathematics, depends upon the admission of empirical premises in the

form of an appeal to intuition of the kind just described. Fortunately

the recent developments of arithmetic at the hands of such men as

Weierstrass, Cantor, and Dedekind seem to have definitely refuted the

Kantian view as far as general arithmetic, the pure science of number,

is concerned, by proving that one and all of its propositions are

_analytic_ in the strict sense of the word, that is, that they are

capable of rigid deduction from self-evident premises, so that, in what

regards arithmetic, we may say with Schröder that the famous Kantian

question "how are synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?" is now known

to be meaningless. As regards geometry, the case appears to a

non-mathematician like myself more doubtful. Those who hold with

Schröder that geometry essentially involves, as Kant thought it did, an

appeal to principles not self-evident and dependent upon an appeal to

sensuous "intuition," are logically bound to conclude with him that

geometry is an "empirical," or as W. K. Clifford called it, a "physical"

science, different in no way from mechanics except in the relative

paucity of the empirical premises presupposed, and to class it with the

applied sciences. On the other hand, if Mr. Bertrand Russell should be

successful in his promised demonstration that all the principles of

geometry are deducible from a few premises which include nothing of the

nature of an appeal to sensuous diagrams, geometry too would take its

place among the pure sciences, but only on condition of our recognizing

that its truths, like those of arithmetic, are one and all, as Leibniz

held, strictly analytical. Thus we obtain as a first distinction between

the pure and the empirical sciences the principle that the propositions

of the former class are all analytical, those of the latter all

synthetic. It is not the least of the services which France is now

rendering to the study of philosophy that we are at last being placed by

the labors of M. Couturat in a position to appreciate at their full

worth the views of the first and greatest of German philosophers on this

distinction, and to understand how marvelously they have been confirmed

by the subsequent history of mathematics and of logic.

(2) A consequence of this distinction is that only the pure or formal

sciences can be matter of rigid logical demonstration. Since the

empirical or applied sciences one and all contain empirical premises,

_i. e._, premises which we admit as true only because they have always

appeared to be confirmed by the appeal to "intuition," and not because

the denial of them can be shown to lead to falsehood, the conclusions to

which they conduct us must one and all depend, in part at least, upon

induction from actual observation of particular temporal sequences. This

is as much as to say that all propositions in the applied sciences

involve somewhere in the course of the reasoning by which they are

established the appeal to the calculus of Probabilities, which is our

one method of eliciting general results from the statistics supplied by

observation or experiment. That this is the case with the more concrete

among such applied sciences has long been universally acknowledged. That

it is no less true of sciences of such wide range as mechanics may be

said, I think, to have been definitely established in our own day by the

work of such eminent physicists as Kirchhoff and Mach. In fact, the

recent developments of the science of pure number, to which reference

has been made in a preceding paragraph, combined with the creation of

the "descriptive" theory of mechanics, may fairly be said to have

finally vindicated the distinction drawn by Leibniz long ago between the

truths of reason and the truths of empirical fact, a distinction which

the Kantian trend of philosophical speculation tended during the greater

part of the nineteenth century to obscure, while it was absolutely

ignored by the empiricist opponents of metaphysics both in England and

in Germany. The philosophical consequences of a revival of the

distinction are, I conceive, of far-reaching importance. On the one

side, recognition of the empirical and contingent character of all

general propositions established by induction appears absolutely fatal

to the current mechanistic conception of the universe as a realm of

purposeless sequences unequivocally determined by unalterable "laws of

nature," a result which has in recent years been admirably illustrated

for the English-speaking world by Professor Ward's well-known Gifford

lectures on "Naturalism and Agnosticism." Laws of physical nature, on

the empiristic view of applied science, can mean no more than observed

regularities, obtained by the application of the doctrine of

chances,--regularities which we are indeed justified in accepting with

confidence as the basis for calculation of the future course of temporal

sequence, but which we have no logical warrant for treating as ultimate

truths about the final constitution of things. Thus, for example, take

the common assumption that our physical environment is composed of a

multitude of particles each in every respect the exact counterpart of

every other. Reflection upon the nature of the evidence by which this

conclusion, if supported at all, has to be supported, should convince us

that at most all that the statement ought to mean is that individual

differences between the elementary constituents of the physical world

need not be allowed for in devising practical formulae for the

intelligent anticipation of events. When the proposition is put forward

as an absolute truth and treated as a reason for denying the ultimate

spirituality of the world, we are well within our rights in declining

the consequence on the logical ground that conclusions from an empirical

premise must in their own nature be themselves empirical and contingent.

On the other hand, the extreme empiricism which treats all knowledge

whatsoever as merely relative to the total psychical state of the

knower, and therefore in the end problematic, must, I apprehend, go down

before any serious investigation into the nature of the analytic truths

of arithmetic, a consequence which seems to be of some relevance in

connection with the philosophic view popularly known as Pragmatism. Thus

I should look to the coming regeneration of metaphysics, of which there

are so many signs at the moment, on the one hand, for emphatic

insistence on the right, _e. g._, of physics and biology and psychology

to be treated as purely empirical sciences, and as such freed from the

last vestiges of any domination by metaphysical presuppositions and

foregone conclusions, and on the other, for an equally salutary

purgation of formal studies like logic and arithmetic from the taint of

corruption by the irrelevant intrusion of considerations of empirical

psychology.

We cannot too persistently bear in mind that there is, corresponding to

the logical distinction between the analytic and the synthetic

proposition, a deep and broad general difference between the wants of

our nature ministered to by the formal and the applied sciences

respectively. The formal sciences, incapable of adding anything to our

detailed knowledge of the course of events, as we have seen, enlighten

us solely as to the general laws of interconnection by which all

conceivable systems of true assertions are permeated and bound together.

In a different connection it would be interesting to develop further the

reflection that the necessity of appealing to such formal principles in

all reasoning about empirical matters of fact contains the explanation

of the famous Platonic assertion that the "Idea of Good" or supreme

principle of organization and order in the universe, is itself not an

existent, but something eti epekeina tês ousias, "transcending even

existence," and the very similar declaration of Hegel that the question

whether "God"--in the sense of such a supreme principle--exists is

frivolous, inasmuch as existence (_Dasein_) is a category entirely

inadequate to express the Divine nature. For my present purpose it is

enough to remark that the need to which the formal sciences minister is

the demand for that purely speculative satisfaction which arises from

insight into the order of interconnection between the various truths

which compose the totality of true knowledge. Hence it seems a mistake

to say, as some theorists have done, that were we born with a complete

knowledge of the course of temporal sequences throughout the universe,

and a faultless memory, we should have no need of logic or metaphysics,

or in fact of inference. For even a mind already in possession of all

true propositions concerning the course of events, would still lack one

of the requisites for complete intellectual satisfaction unless it were

also aware, not only of the individual truths, but of the order of their

interdependence. What Aristotle said long ago with reference to a

particular instance may be equally said universally of all our empirical

knowledge; "even if we stood on the moon and saw the earth intercepting

the light of the sun, we should still have to ask for the reason _why_."

The purposes ministered to by the empirical sciences, on the other hand,

always include some reference to the actual manipulation in advance by

human agency of the stream of events. We study mechanics, for instance,

not merely that we may perceive the interdependence of truths, but that

we may learn how to maintain a system of bodies in equilibrium, or how

to move masses in a given direction with a given momentum. Hence it is

true of applied science, though untrue of science as a whole, that it

would become useless if the whole past and future course of events were

from the first familiar to us. And, incidentally it may be observed, it

is for the same reason untrue of inference, though true of inductive

inference, that it is essentially a passage from the known to the

unknown.

In dealing with the relation of metaphysics to the formal sciences

generally, the great difficulty which confronts us is that of

determining exactly the boundaries which separate one from another.

Among such pure sciences we have by universal admission to include at

least two, pure formal logic and pure mathematics, as distinguished from

the special applications of logic and mathematics to an empirical

material. Whether we ought also to recognize ethics and æsthetics, in

the sense of the general determination of the nature of the good and the

beautiful, as non-empirical sciences, seems to be a more difficult

question. It seems clear, for instance, that ethical discussions, such

as bulk so largely in our contemporary literature, as to what is the

right course of conduct under various conditions, are concerned

throughout with an empirical material, namely, the existing

peculiarities of human nature as we find it, and must therefore be

regarded as capable only of an empirical and therefore problematic

solution. Accordingly I was at one time myself tempted to regard ethics

as a purely empirical science, and even published a lengthy treatise in

defense of that point of view and in opposition to the whole Kantian

conception of the possibility of a constructive _Metaphysik der Sitten_.

It seems, however, possible to hold that in the question "What do we

mean by good?" as distinguished from the question "What in particular is

it right to do?" there is no more of a reference to the empirical facts

of human psychology than in the question "What do we mean by truth?" and

that there must therefore be a non-empirical answer to the problem. The

same would of course hold equally true of the question "What _is_

beauty?" If there are, however, such a pure science of ethics and again

of æsthetics, it must at least be allowed that for the most part these

sciences are still undiscovered, and that the ethical and æsthetical

results hitherto established are in the main of an empirical nature, and

this must be my excuse for confining the remarks of the next two

paragraphs to the two great pure sciences of which the general

principles may be taken to be now in large measure known.

That metaphysics and logic should sometimes have been absolutely

identified, as for instance by Hegel, will not surprise us when we

consider how hard it becomes on the view here defended to draw any hard

and fast boundary line between them. For metaphysics, according to this

conception of its scope, deals with the formulation of the self-evident

principles implied, in there being such a thing as truth and the

deductions which these principles warrant us in drawing. Thus it might

be fairly said to be the supreme science of _order_, and it would not be

hard to show that all the special questions commonly included in its

range, as to the nature of space, time, causation, continuity, and so

forth, are all branches of the general question, how many types of order

among concepts are there, and what is their nature. A completed

metaphysics would thus appear as the realization of Plato's splendid

conception of dialectic as the ultimate reduction of the contents of

knowledge to order by their continuous deduction from a supreme

principle (or, we may add, principles). Now such a view seems to make it

almost impossible to draw any ultimate distinction between logic and

metaphysics. For logic is strictly the science of the mutual implication

of propositions, as we see as soon as we carefully exclude from it all

psychological accretions. In the question what are the conditions under

which one proposition or group of propositions imply another, we exhaust

the whole scope of logic pure and proper, as distinguished from its

various empirical applications. This is the important point which is so

commonly forgotten when logic is defined as being in some way a study of

"psychical processes," or when the reference to the presence of "minds"

in which propositions exist, is intended into logical science. We cannot

too strongly insist that for logic the question so constantly raised in

a multitude of text-books, what processes actually take place when we

pass from the assertion of the premises to the assertion of the

conclusion, is an irrelevant one, and that the only logical problem

raised by inference is whether the assertion of the premises as true

_warrants_ the further assertion of the conclusion, supposing it to be

made. (At the risk of a little digression I cannot help pointing out

that the confusion between a logical and a psychological problem is

committed whenever we attempt, as is so often done, to make the

self-evidence of a principle identical with our psychological inability

to believe the contradictory. From the strictly logical point of view,

all that is to be said about the two sides of such an ultimate

contradiction is that the one is true and the other is false. Whether it

is or is not possible, as a matter of psychical fact for me to affirm

with equal conviction, both sides of a contradiction, knowing that I am

doing so, is a question of empirical psychology which is possibly

insoluble, and at any rate seems not to have received from the

psychologists the attention it deserves. But the logician, so far as I

can see, has no interest as a logician in its solution. For him it would

still be the case even though all mankind should actually and

consciously affirm both sides of a given contradiction, that one of the

affirmations would be true, and the other untrue.) Logic thus seems to

become either the whole or an integral part of the science of order, and

there remain only two possible ways of distinguishing it from

metaphysics. It might be suggested that logical order, the order of

implication between truths, is only one species of a wider genus, order

in general by the side, for example, of spatial, temporal, and numerical

order, and thus that logic is one subordinate branch of the wider

science of metaphysics. Such a view, of course, implies that there are a

plurality of ultimately independent forms of order irreducible to a

single type. Whether this is the case, I must confess myself at present

incompetent to decide, though the signal success with which the

principles of number have already been deduced from the fundamental

definitions and axioms of symbolic logic, and number itself defined, as

by Mr. Russell, in terms of the purely logical concept of

class-relation, seems to afford some presumption to the contrary. Or it

may be held that the difference is purely one of the degree of

completeness with which the inquiry into order is pursued. Thus the

ordinary symbolic logic of what Schröder has called the "identical

calculus," or "calculus of domains," consists of a series of deductions

from the fundamental concepts of class and number, identical equality,

totality or the "logical 1," zero or the null-class, and the three

principles of identity, subsumption, and negation. The moment you cease

to accept these data in their totality as the given material for your

science, and to inquire into their mutual coherence, by asking for

instance whether any one of them could be denied, and yet a body of

consistent results deduced from the rest, your inquiry, it might be

said, becomes metaphysics. So, again, the discussion of the well-known

contradictions which arise when we try to apply these principles in

their entirety and without modification to classes of classes instead of

classes of individuals, or of the problem raised by Peano and Russell,

whether the assertions "Socrates is a man" and "the Greeks are men"

affirm the same or a different relation between their subject and

predicate (which seems indeed to be the same question differently

stated), would generally be allowed to be metaphysical. And the same

thing seems to be equally true of the introduction of time relations

into the interpretation of our symbols for predication employed by Boole

in his treatment of hypotheticals, and subsequently adopted by his

successors as the foundation of the "calculus of equivalent statements."

However we may decide such questions, we seem at least driven by their

existence to the recognition of two important conclusions. (1) The

relation between logical and metaphysical problems is so close that you

cannot in consistency deny the possibility of a science of metaphysics

unless you are prepared with the absolute skeptic to go the length of

denying the possibility of logic also, and reducing the first principles

of inference to the level of formulae which have happened hitherto to

prove useful but are, for all we know, just as likely to fail us in

future application as not. (Any appeal to the doctrine of chances would

be out of place here, as that doctrine is itself based on the very

principles at stake.) (2) The existence of fundamental problems of this

kind which remained almost or wholly unsuspected until revealed in our

own time by the creation of a science of symbolic logic should console

us if ever we are tempted to suspect that metaphysics is at any rate a

science in which all the main constructive work has already been

accomplished by the great thinkers of the past. To me it appears, on the

contrary, that the recent enormous developments in the purely formal

sciences of logic and mathematics, with the host of fundamental problems

they open up, give promise of an approaching era of fresh speculative

construction which bids fair to be no less rich in results than any of

the great "golden" periods in the past history of our science. Indeed,

but that I would avoid the slightest suspicion of a desire to advertise

personal friends, I fancy I might even venture to name some of those to

whom we may reasonably look for the work to be done.

Of the relation of metaphysics to pure mathematics it would be

impertinent for any but a trained mathematician to say very much. I must

therefore be content to point out that the same difficulty in drawing

boundary lines meets us here as in the case of logic. Not so long ago

this difficulty might have been ignored, as it still is by too many

writers on the philosophy of science. Until recently mathematics would

have been thought to be adequately defined as the science of numerical

and quantitative relations, and adequately distinguished from

metaphysics by the non-quantitative and non-numerical character of the

latter, though it would probably have been admitted that the problem of

the definition of quantity and number themselves is a metaphysical one.

But in the present state of our knowledge such an account seems doubly

unsatisfactory. On the one hand, we have to recognize the existence of

branches of mathematics, such as the so-called descriptive geometry,

which are neither quantitative nor numerical, and, on the other,

quantity as distinct from number appears to play no part in mathematical

science, while number itself, thanks to the labors of such men as Cantor

and Dedekind, seems, as I have said before, to be known now to be only a

special type of order in a series. Thus there appears to be ground for

regarding serial order as the fundamental category of mathematics, and

we are thrown back once more upon the difficult task of deciding how

many ultimately irreducible types of order there may be before we can

undertake any precise discrimination between mathematical and

metaphysical science. However we may regard the problem, it is at least

certain that the recent researches of mathematicians into the meaning of

such concepts as continuity and infinity have, besides opening up new

metaphysical problems, done much to transfigure the familiar ones, as

all readers of Professor Royce must be aware. For instance I imagine all

of us here present, even the youngest, were brought up on the

Aristotelian doctrine that there is and can be no such thing as an

actually existing infinite collection, but which of us would care to

defend that time-honored position to-day? Similarly with continuity all

of us were probably once on a time instructed that whereas "quantity" is

continuous, number is essentially "discrete," and is indeed the typical

instance of what we mean by the non-continuous. To-day we know that it

is in the number series that we have our one certain and familiar

instance of a perfect continuum. Still a third illustration of the

transforming light which is thrown upon old standing metaphysical

puzzles by the increasing formal development of mathematics may be found

in the difficulties attendant upon the conception of the "infinitely

little," once regarded as the logical foundation of the so-called

Differential Calculus. With the demonstration, which maybe found in Mr.

Russell's important work, that "infinitesimal," unlike "infinite," is a

purely relative term, and that there are no infinitesimal real numbers,

the supposed logical significance of the concept seems simply to

disappear. Instances of this kind could easily be multiplied almost

indefinitely, but those already cited should be sufficient to show how

important are the metaphysical results which may be anticipated from

contemporary mathematical research, and how grave a mistake it would be

to regard existing metaphysical construction, _e. g._, that of the

Hegelian system, as adequate in principle to the present state of our

organized knowledge. In fact, all the materials for a new

_Kategorienlehre_, which may be to the knowledge of our day what Hegel's

_Logic_ was to that of eighty years ago, appear to lie ready to hand

when it may please Providence to send us the metaphysician who knows how

to avail himself of them. The proof, given since this address was

delivered, by E. Zermelo, that every assemblage can be well ordered, is

an even more startling illustration of the remarks in the text.

It remains to say something of the relation of metaphysical speculation

to the various sciences which make use of empirical premises. On this

topic I maybe allowed to be all the more brief, as I have quite recently

expressed my views at fair length in an extended treatise (_Elements of

Metaphysics_, Bks. 3 and 4), and have nothing of consequence to add to

what has been there said. The empirical sciences, as previously defined,

appear to fall into two main classes, distinguished by a difference

which corresponds to that often taken in the past as the criterion by

which science is to be separated from philosophy. We may study the facts

of temporal sequence either with a view to the actual control of future

sequences or with a view to detecting under the sequence some coherent

purpose. It is in the former way that we deal with facts in mechanics,

for instance, or in chemistry, in the latter that we treat them when we

study history for the purpose of gaining insight into national aims and

character. We may, if we please, with Professor Royce, distinguish the

two attitudes toward fact as the attitude respectively of description

and of appreciation or evaluation. Now as regards the descriptive

sciences, the position to which, as I believe, metaphysicians are more

and more tending is that here metaphysics has, strictly speaking, no

right at all to interfere. Just because of the absence from metaphysics

itself of all empirical premises, it can be no business of the

metaphysician to determine what the course of events will be or to

prescribe to the sciences what methods and hypotheses they shall employ

in the work of such determination. Within these sciences any and every

hypothesis is sufficiently justified, whatever its nature, so long as it

enables us more efficiently than any other to perform the actual task of

calculation and prediction. And it was owing to neglect of this caution

that the _Naturphilosophie_ of the early nineteenth century speedily

fell into a disrepute fully merited by its ignorant presumption. As

regards the physical sciences, the metaphysician has indeed by this time

probably learned his lesson. We are not likely to-day to repeat the

mistake of supposing that it is for us as metaphysicians to dictate what

shall be the physicist's or chemist's definition of matter or mass or

elementary substance or energy, or how he shall formulate the laws of

motion or of chemical composition. Here, at any rate, we can see that

the metaphysician's work is done when his analysis has made it clear

that we are dealing with no self-evident truths such as the laws of

number, but with inductive, and therefore problematic and provisional

results of empirical assumptions as to the course of facts, assumptions

made not because of their inherent necessity, but because of their

practical utility for the special task of calculation. It is only when

such empirical assumptions are treated as self-evident axioms, in fact

when mechanical science gives itself out as a mechanistic philosophy,

that the metaphysician obtains a right to speak, and then only for the

purpose of showing by analysis that the presence of the empirical

postulates which is characteristic of the natural sciences of itself

excludes their erection into a philosophy of first principles.

What is important in this connection is that we should recognize quite

clearly that psychology stands in this respect on precisely the same

logical footing as physics or chemistry. It is tempting to suppose that

in psychology, at any rate, we are dealing throughout with absolute

certainties, realities which "consciousness" apprehends just as they are

without any of that artificial selection and construction which, as we

are beginning to see, is imposed upon the study of physical nature by

the limitations of our purpose of submitting the course of events to

calculation and manipulation. And it is a natural consequence of this

point of view to infer that since psychology deals directly with

realities, it must be taken as the foundation of the metaphysical

constructions which aim at understanding the general character of the

real as such. The consequence, indeed, disappears at once if the views

maintained in this address as to the intimate relation of metaphysics

and logic, and the radical expulsion from logic of all discussion of

mental processes as such, be admitted. But it is still important to note

that the premises from which the conclusion in question was drawn are

themselves false. We must never allow ourselves to forget that, as the

ever-increasing domination of psychology by the highly artificial

methods of observation and experiment introduced by Fechner and Wundt is

daily making more apparent, psychology itself, like physics, deals not

directly with the concrete realities of individual experience, but with

an abstract selected from that experience, or rather a set of artificial

symbols only partially corresponding with the realities symbolized, and

devised for the special object of submitting the realm of mental

sequences to mathematical calculation. We might, in fact, have based

this inference upon the single reflection that every psychological "law"

is obtained, like physical laws, by the statistical method of

elimination of individual peculiarities, and the taking of an average

from an extended series of measurements. For this very reason, no

psychological law can possibly describe the unique realities of

individual experience. We have in psychology, as in the physical

sciences, the duty of suspecting _exact_ correspondence between the

single case and the general "law" to be of itself proof of error

somewhere in the course of our computation. These views, which I suppose

I learned in the first instance from Mr. F. H. Bradley's paper called _A

Defence of Phenomenalism in Psychology_, may now, I think, be taken as

finally established beyond doubt by the exhaustive analysis of Professor

Münsterberg's _Grundzüge der Psychologie_. They possess the double

advantage of freeing the psychologist once for all from any interference

by the metaphysician in the prosecution of his proper study, and

delivering metaphysics from the danger of having assumptions whose sole

justification lies in their utility for the purpose of statistical

computation thrust upon it as self-evident principles. For their full

discussion I may perhaps be allowed to refer to the first three chapters

of the concluding book of my _Elements of Metaphysics_.

When we turn to the sciences which aim at the appreciation or evaluation

of empirical fact, the case seems rather different. It may fairly be

regarded as incumbent on the metaphysician to consider how far the

general conception he has formed of the character of reality can be

substantiated and filled in by our empirical knowledge of the actual

course of temporal sequence. And thus the way seems to lie open to the

construction of what may fairly be called a Philosophy of Nature and

History. For instance, a metaphysician who has rightly or wrongly

convinced himself that the universe can only be coherently conceived as

a society of souls or wills may reasonably go on to ask what views seem

best in accord with our knowledge of human character and animal

intelligence as to the varying degrees of organized intelligence

manifested by the members of such a hierarchy of souls, and the nature

and amount of mutual intercourse between them. And again, he may fairly

ask what general way of conceiving what we loosely call the inanimate

world would at once be true to fundamental metaphysical principles and

free from disagreement with the actual state of our physical hypotheses.

Only he will need to bear in mind that since conclusions on these points

involve appeal to the present results of the inductive sciences, and

thus to purely empirical postulates, any views he may adopt must of

necessity share in the problematic and provisional character of the

empirical sciences themselves, and can have no claim to be regarded as

definitely demonstrated in respect of their details. I will here only

indicate very briefly two lines of inquiry to which these reflections

appear applicable. The growth of evolutionary science, with the new

light it has thrown upon the processes by which useful variations may be

established without the need for presupposing conscious preëxisting

design, naturally gives rise to the question whether such unconscious

factors are of themselves sufficient to account for the actual course of

development so far as it can be traced, or whether the actual history of

the world offers instances of results which, so far as we can see, can

only have issued from deliberate design. And thus we seem justified in

regarding the problem of the presence of ends in Nature as an

intelligible and legitimate one for the philosophy of the future. I

would only suggest that such an inquiry must be prosecuted throughout by

the same empirical methods, and with the same consciousness of the

provisional character of any conclusions we may reach which would be

recognized as in place if we were called on to decide whether some

peculiar characteristic of an animal group or some singular social

practice in a recently discovered tribe does or does not indicate

definite purpose on the part of breeders or legislators.

The same remarks, in my opinion, apply to the familiar problems of

Natural Theology relative to the existence and activity of such

non-human intelligences as are commonly understood by the names "God" or

"gods." Hume and Kant, as it seems to me, have definitely shown between

them that the old-fashioned attempts to demonstrate from self-evident

principles the existence of a supreme personal intelligence as a

condition of the very being of truth all involve unavoidable logical

paralogisms. I should myself, indeed, be prepared to go further, and to

say that the conception of a single personality as the ground of truth

and reality can be demonstrated to involve contradiction, but this I

know is a question upon which some philosophers for whom I entertain the

profoundest respect hold a contrary opinion. The more modest question,

however, whether the actual course of human history affords probable

ground for believing in the activity of one or more non-human

personalities as agents in the development of our species I cannot but

think a perfectly proper subject for empirical investigation, if only it

be borne in mind that any conclusion upon such a point is inevitably

affected by the provisional character of our information as to empirical

facts themselves, and can claim in consequence nothing more than a

certain grade of probability. With this proviso, I cannot but regard the

question as to the existence of a God or of gods as one upon which we

may reasonably hope for greater certainty as our knowledge of the

empirical facts of the world's history increases. And I should be

inclined only to object to any attempt to foreclose examination by

forcing a conclusion either in the theistic or in the atheistic sense on

alleged grounds of _a priori_ metaphysics. In a word, I would maintain

not only with Kant that the "physico-theological" argument is specially

deserving of our regard, but with Boole that it is with it that Natural

Theology must stand or fall.

NOTE ON EXTENSION AND INTENSION OF TERMS

Among the numerous difficulties which beset the teaching of the elements

of formal logic to beginners, one of the earliest is that of deciding

whether all names shall be considered to have meaning both in extension

and intension. As we all know, the problem arises in connection with two

classes of names, (1) proper names of individuals, (2) abstract terms. I

should like to indicate what seems to me the true solution of the

difficulty, though I do not remember to have seen it advocated anywhere

in just the form I should prefer.

(1) As to proper names. It seems clear that those who regard the true

proper name as a meaningless label are nearer the truth than those who

assert with Jevons that a proper name has for its intension all the

predicates which can be truly ascribed to the object named. As has often

been observed, it is a sufficient proof that, for example, John does not

_mean_ "a human being of the male sex," to note that he who names his

daughter, his dog, or his canoe John, makes no false assertion, though

he may commit a solecism. So far the followers of Mill seem to have a

satisfactory answer to Jevons, when they say, for example, that he

confuses the intension of a term with its accidental or acquired

associations. (So, again, we can see that Socrates cannot _mean_ "the

wisest of the Greek philosophers," by considering that I may perfectly

well understand the statement "there goes Socrates" without being aware

that Socrates is wise or a Greek or a philosopher.) And if we objected

that no proper name actually in use is ever without some associations

which in part determine its meaning by restricting its applicability, it

would be a valid rejoinder that in pure logic we have to consider not

the actual usages of language, but those that would prevail in an ideal

language purged of all elements of irrelevancy. In such an ideal

scientific language, it might be said, the proper name would be reduced

to the level of a mere mark serviceable for identification, but

conveying no implication whatever as to the special nature of the thing

identified. Thus it would be indifferent _what_ mark we attach to any

particular individual, just as in mathematics it is indifferent what

alphabetical symbol we appropriate to stand for a given class or number.

I think, however, that even in such an ideal scientific language the

proper name would have a certain intension. In the first place, the use

of proper name seems to inform us that the thing named is not unique, is

not the only member of a class. To a monotheist, for instance, the name

"God" is no true proper name, nor can he consistently give a proper name

to his Deity. It is only where one member of a class has to be

distinguished from others that the bestowal of a proper name has a

meaning. And, further, to give a thing a proper name seems to imply that

the thing is itself not a class. In logic we have, of course, occasion

to form the concept of classes which have other classes for their

individual members. But the classes which compose such classes of

classes could not themselves be identified by means of proper names.

Thus the employment of a proper name seems to indicate that the thing

named is not the only member of its class, and further that it is not

itself a class of individuals. Beyond this it seems to be a mere

question of linguistic convention what information the use of a proper

name shall convey. Hence it ought to be said, not that the proper name

has no intension, but that it represents a limiting case in which

intension is at a minimum.

(2) As to abstract terms. Ought we to say, with so many English formal

logicians, that an abstract term is always singular and non-intensional?

The case for asserting that such terms are all singular, I own, seems

unanswerable. For it is clear that if the name of an attribute or

relation is equally the name of another attribute or relation, it is

ambiguous and thus not properly one term at all. To say, for example,

that whiteness means two or more distinct qualities seems to amount to

saying that it has no one definite meaning. Of course, it is true that

milk is white, paper is white, and snow is white, and yet the

color-tones of the three are distinct. But what we assert here is, not

that there are different whitenesses, but only that there are different

degrees of approximation to a single ideal standard or type of

whiteness. It is just because the whiteness we have in view is one and

not many that we can intelligibly assert, for example, that newly fallen

snow is _whiter_ than any paper. All the instances produced by Mill to

show that abstract terms may be general seem to me either to involve

confusion between difference of kind and difference in degree of

approximation to type, or else to depend upon treating as abstract a

term which is really concrete. Thus when we say red, blue, green, are

different kinds of color, surely what we mean is different kinds of

colored surface. Quà colored, they are not different; I mean just as

much and no more when I say "a red thing is colored," or "has color," as

when I say "a green thing is colored." If Mill were right, the

proposition "red is a color" ought to mean exactly the same as "red is

red." Or, to put it in another way, it would become impossible to form

in thought any concept of a single class of colored things.

But need we infer because abstract terms are singular that therefore

they have no intension and are mere meaningless marks? Commonly as this

inference is made, it seems to me clearly mistaken. It seems, in fact,

to rest upon the vague and ill-defined principle that an attribute can

have no attributes of its own. That it is false is shown, I think, by

the simple reflection that scientific definitions are one and all

statements as to the meaning of abstract names of attributes and

relations. For example, the definition of a circle is a statement as to

the meaning of circularity, the legal definition of responsible persons

a statement as to the meaning of the abstraction "responsibility," and

so on. (We only evade the point if we argue that abstract terms when

used as the subjects of propositions are really being employed

concretely. For "cruelty is odious," for instance, does not merely mean

that cruel acts are odious acts, but that they are odious _because_ they

are cruel.) In fact, the doctrine that abstract terms have no intension

would seem, if thought out, to lead to the view that there are only

classes of individuals, but no classes of classes. Thus to say "cruel

acts are odious because cruel" implies, not only that I can form the

concept of a class of cruel acts, but also that of classes of odious

acts of which the class of cruel acts in its turn is a member. And to

admit as much as this is to admit that the class of cruel acts,

considered as a member of the class of odious acts, shares the common

predicate of odiousness with the other classes of acts composing the

higher class. Hence the true account of abstract terms seems to me to be

that we have in them another limiting case, a case in which the

extension and the intension are coincident. Incidentally, by

illustrating the ambiguity of the principle that attributes have no

attributes of their own, our discussion seems to indicate the advantage

of taking the purely extensional view is opposed to the predicative view

of the import of propositions as the basis of an elementary treatment of

logical doctrine.

THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSICS

BY ALEXANDER T. ORMOND

[Alexander Thomas Ormond, McCosh Professor of Philosophy,

Princeton University, since 1897. b. 1847, Punxsutawney,

Pennsylvania. Mental Science Fellow, Princeton, 1877-78;

Post-grad. Bonn and Berlin, 1884-85; Ph.D. Princeton, 1880;

A.B. _ibid._ 1877; LL.D. Miami, 1899. Professor of

Philosophy and History, University of Minnesota, 1880-83;

Professor of Mental Science and Logic, Princeton University,

1883-97. Member American Philosophical Association, American

Psychological Association.]

I

THE PRELIMINARY QUESTION

The living problems of any science arise out of two sources: (1) out of

what men may think of it, in view of its nature and claims, and (2) the

problems that at any period are vital to it, and in the solution of

which it realizes the purpose of its existence. Now if we distinguish

the body of the sciences which deal with aspects of the world's

phenomena--and here I would include both the psychic and the

physical--from metaphysics, which professes to go behind the phenomenon

and determine the world in terms of its inner, and, therefore,

_ultimate_ reality, it may be truly said of the body of the sciences

that they are in a position to disregard in a great measure questions

that arise out of the first source, inasmuch as the data from which they

make their departure are obvious to common observation. Our world is all

around us, and its phenomena either press upon us or are patent to our

observation. Lying thus within the field of observation, it does not

occur to the average mind to question either the legitimacy or the

possibility of that effort of reflection which is devoted to their

investigation and interpretation. Metaphysics, however, enjoys no such

immunity as this, but its claims are liable to be met with skepticism or

denial at the outset, and this is due partly to the nature of its

initial claims, and partly to the fact that its real data are less open

to observation than are those of the sciences. I say partly to the

nature of the initial claims of metaphysics, for it is characteristic of

metaphysics that it refuses to regard the distinction between phenomena

and ground or inner nature, on which the sciences rest, as final, and is

committed from the outset to the claim that the real is in its inner

nature one and to be interpreted in the light of, or in terms of, its

inner unity; whereas, science has so indoctrinated the modern mind with

the supposition that only the outer movements of things are open to

knowledge, while their inner and real nature must forever remain

inaccessible to our powers; I say that the modern mind has been so

imbued with this pretension as to have almost completely forgotten the

fact that the distinction of phenomenon and ground is one of science's

own making. Neither the plain man nor the cultured man, if he happens

not to be tinctured with science, finds his world a duality. The things

he deals with are the realities, and it is only when his naïve realism

begins to break down before the complex demands of his growing life,

that the thought occurs to him that his world may be more complex than

he has dreamed. It is clear, then, that the distinction of our world

into phenomena and ground, on which science so largely rests, is a first

product of reflection, and not a fact of observation at all.

If this be the case, it may be possible and even necessary for

reflection at some stage to transcend this distinction. At least, there

can be no reason except an arbitrary one for taking this first step of

reflection to be a finality. And there would be the same justification

for a second step that would transcend this dualism, as for the initial

step out of which the distinction arose; provided, it should be found

that the initial distinction does not supply an adequate basis for a

rational interpretation of the world that can be taken as final. Now, it

is precisely because the dualistic distinction of the sciences does fail

in this regard, that a further demand for a reflective transformation of

the data arises. Let us bear in mind that the data of the sciences are

not the simple facts of observation, but rather those facts transformed

by an act of reflection by virtue of which they become phenomena

distinguished from a more fundamental nature on which they depend and

which itself is not open to observation. The real data of science are

found only when the world of observation has been thus transformed by an

act of reflection. If then at some stage in our effort to interpret our

world it should become clear that the sciences of phenomena, whatever

value their results may possess, are not giving us an interpretation in

terms that can be taken as final, and that in order to ground such an

interpretation a further transformation of our data becomes necessary, I

do not see why any of the sciences should feel that they have cause to

demur. In truth, it is out of just such a situation as this that the

metaphysical interpretation arises (as I propose very briefly here to

show), a situation that supplies a genuine demand in the light of which

the effort of metaphysics to understand its world seems to possess as

high a claim to legitimacy as that of the sciences of phenomena. Let us

take our stand with the plain man or the child, within the world of

unmodified observation. The things of observation, in this world, are

the realities, and at first we may suppose have undergone little

reflective transformation. The first reflective effort to change this

world in any way will, no doubt, be an effort to _number_ or _count_ the

things that present themselves to observation, and out of this effort

will arise the transformation of the world that results from considering

it under the concepts and categories of number. In short, to

mathematical reflection of this simple sort, the things of observation

will resolve themselves into a plurality of countable things, which the

numbering reflection becoming explicit in its ordinal and cardinal

moments will translate into a system that will be regarded as a whole

made up of the sum of its parts. The very first step, then, in the

reflective transformation of things resolves them into a dual system,

the world conceived as a cardinal whole that is made up of its ordinal

parts, and exactly equal to them. This mathematical conception is

moreover purely quantitative; involving the exact and stable equivalence

of its parts or units and that of the sum of the parts with the whole.

Now it is with this purely quantitative transformation that mathematics

and the mathematical sciences begin. We may ask, then, why should there

be any other than mathematical science,[1] and what ground can

non-mathematical science point to as substantiating its claims? I

confess I can see no other final reason than this, that mathematical

science does not meet the whole demand we feel obliged to make on our

world. If mathematics were asked to vindicate itself, it no doubt would

do so by claiming that things present quantitative aspects on which it

founds its procedure. In like manner non-mathematical, or, as we may

call it, physical or natural science, will seek to substantiate its

claims by pointing to certain ultra-quantitative or qualitative aspects

of things. It is true that, so far as things are merely _numerable_,

they are purely quantitative; but mathematics abstracts from the content

and character of its units and aggregates, which may and do change, so

that a relation of stable equivalence is not maintained among them. In

fact, the basis of these sciences is found in the tendency of things to

be always changing and becoming different from what they were before.

The problem of these sciences is how to ground a rational scheme of

knowledge in connection with a fickle world like that of qualitative

change. It is here that reflection finds its problem, and noticing that

the tendency of this world of change is for _a_ to pass into _b_ and

thus to lose its own identity, the act of reflection that rationalizes

the situation is one that connects _a_ and _b_ by relating them to a

common ground _x_ of which they stand as successive manifestations or

symbols. _X_ thus supplies the thread of identity that binds the two

changes _a_ and _b_ into a relation to which the name causation may be

applied. And just as quantitative equivalence is the principle of

relationship among the parts of the simple mathematical world, so here

in the world of the dynamic or natural sciences, the principle of

relation is natural causation.[2] We find, then, that the

non-mathematical sciences rest on a basis that is constituted by a

_second act of reflection_; one that translates our world into a system

of phenomena causally inter-related and connected with their underlying

grounds.

[Footnote 1: I do not raise the question of qualitative

mathematics at all. It is clear that the first mathematical

reflection will be quantitative.]

[Footnote 2: By natural causation I mean such a relationship

between _a_ and _b_ in a phenomenal system as enables _a_

through its connection with its ground to determine _b_.]

We have now reached a point where it will be possible in a few sentences

to indicate the rise of the metaphysical reflection and the ground on

which it rests. If we consider both the mathematical and the physical

ways of looking at things, we will find that they possess this feature

in common,--they are purely external, having nothing to say respecting

the _inner_ and, therefore, _real_ nature of the things with which they

deal. Or, if we concede the latest claims of some of the physical

speculators and agree that the aim of physics is an ultimate physical

explanation of reality, it will still be true that the whole standpoint

of this explanation will be external. Let me explain briefly what I mean

substantially by the term _external_ as I use it here. Every

interpretation of a world is a function of some knowing consciousness,

and consequently of some knowing self. This is too obvious to need

proof. A system will be _external_ to such a knower just to the extent

that the knower finds it dominated and determined by categories that are

different from those of its own determination. A world physically

interpreted is one that is brought completely under the rubrics of

physics and mathematics; whose movements yield themselves completely,

therefore, to a mechanical calculus that gives rise to purely

descriptive formulæ; _or_ to the control of a dynamic principle; that of

natural causation, by virtue of which everything is determined without

thought of its own, by the impulse of another, which impulse itself is

not directly traceable to any thought or purpose. Now, the occasion for

the metaphysical reflection arises when this situation that brings us

face to face, with, nay, makes us part and parcel of, an alien system of

things, becomes intolerable, and the knower begins to demand a closer

kinship with his world. The knower finds the categories of his own

central and characteristic activity in experience. Here he is conscious

of being an agent going out in forms of activity for the realization of

his world. The determining categories of the activity he is most fully

conscious of, are interest, idea, prevision, purpose, and that selective

activity which goes to its termination in some achieved end. The

metaphysical interpretation arises out of the demand that the world

shall be brought into bonds of kinship with the knower. And this is

effected by generalizing the categories of consciousness and applying

them as principles of interpretation to the world. The act of reflection

on which the metaphysical interpretation proceeds is one, then, in which

the world of science is further transformed by bringing the inner nature

of things out of its isolation and translating the world-movements into

process the terms of which are no longer _phenomena and hidden ground_,

but rather inception and realization, or, more specifically, _Idea_ and

_Reality_. And the point to be noted here is the fact that these

metaphysical categories are led up to positivity by an act of reflection

that has for its guiding aim an interpretation of the world that will be

more ultimately satisfactory to the knower than that of the physical or

natural sciences; while negatively, it is led up to by the refusal of

the knowing consciousness to rest in a world alien to its own nature and

in which it is subordinated to the physical and made a mere

epiphenomenon.

II

QUESTIONS OF POINT OF VIEW, PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF METAPHYSICS

It is clear from what has been said that the metaphysical interpretation

proceeds on a presupposition radically different from that of

mathematical and physical science. The presumption of these sciences is

that the world is physical, that the physical categories supply the

norms of reality, and that consciousness and the psychic, in general,

are subordinate and phenomenal to the physical. On the contrary,

metaphysics arises out of a revolt from these presumptions toward the

opposite presumption, namely, that _consciousness itself is the great

reality_, and that the norms of an ultimate interpretation of things are

to be sought in its categories. This is the great transformation that

conditions the possibility and value of all metaphysics. It is the

Copernican revolution which the mind must pass through, a revolution in

which matter and the physical world yields the primacy to mind; a

revolution in which consciousness becomes central, its categories and

analogies supplying the principles of final world-interpretation. Let us

consider then, in the light of this great Copernican revolution, the

questions of the _point of view_, _principle_, and _method_ of

metaphysics. And here the utmost brevity must be observed. If

consciousness be the great reality, then its own central activity, that

effort by which it realizes its world, will determine for us the _point

of view_ or departure of which we are in quest. This will be _inner_

rather than _outer_; it will be motived by _interest_, will shape itself

into interest-directed effort. This effort will be cognitive; dominated

by an _idea_ which will be an anticipation of the _goal_ of the effort.

It will, therefore, become _directive_, _selective_, and will stand as

the _end_ or _aim_ of the completed effort. The whole movement will thus

take the form, genetically, of a developing _purpose informed by an

idea_, or _teleologically_, of a _purpose going on to its fulfillment_

in some _aim_ which is also its _motive_. Now, metaphysics determines

its point of view in the following reasoning: if in consciousness we

find the type of the inner nature of things, then the point of view for

the interpretation of this inner nature will be to seek by generalizing

the standpoint of consciously determined effort and asserting that this

is the true point of view from which the _meaning_ of the world is to be

sought.

Having determined the metaphysical point of view, the next question of

vital importance is that of its _principle_. And we may cut matters

short here by saying at once that the principle we are seeking is that

of _sufficient reason_, and we may say that a reason will be sufficient

when it adequately expresses the world-view or concept under which an

investigation is being prosecuted. Let us suppose that this world-view

is that of simple mathematics, the principle of sufficient reason here

will be that of _quantitative equivalence_ of parts; or, from the

standpoint of the whole, that of _infinite divisibility_. Whereas, if we

take the world of the ultra-mathematical science, which is determined by

the notion of _phenomena depending on underlying ground_, we will find

that the sufficient reason in this sphere takes the form of _adequate

cause or condition_. The determining condition or causes of any physical

phenomenon supply, from that point of view, the _ratio sufficiens_ of

its existence. We have seen that the sufficiency of a reason in the

above cases has been determined in view of that notion which defines the

kind of world the investigation is dealing with. Let us apply this

insight to the problem of the principle of metaphysics, and we will soon

conclude that no reason can be metaphysically sufficient that does not

satisfy the requirements of a world conceived under the notion of

_inception_ and _realization_; or, more specifically, _idea_ and

_reality_. In short, the _reason_ of metaphysics will refuse to regard

its world as a mechanism that is devoid of thought and intention; that

lacks, in short, the motives of internal determination and movement, and

will in all cases insist that an explanation or interpretation can be

metaphysically adequate only when its ultimate reference is to an idea

that is in the process of _purposive_ fulfillment. Such an explanation

we call _teleological_ or _rational_, rather than merely mechanical, and

such a principle is alone adequate to embody the _ratio sufficiens_ of

metaphysics.

Having determined the point of view and principle of metaphysics, the

question of metaphysical _method_ will be divested of some of its

greatest difficulties. It will be clear to any one who reflects that the

very first problem in regard to the method of metaphysics will be that

of its starting-point and the kind of results it is to look for. And

little can be accomplished here until it has been settled that

consciousness is to have the primacy, and that its prerogative is to

supply both standpoint and principle of the investigation. We have gone

a long way toward mastering our method when we have settled these

points: (1) that the metaphysical world is a world of consciousness; (2)

that the conscious form of effort rather than the mechanical is the

species of activity or movement with which we have to deal; and, (3)

that the world it is seeking to interpret is ultimately one of _idea_

and _reality_ in which the processes take the _purposive_ form. In view

of this, the important steps of method (and we use the term method here

in the most fundamental sense) will be (1) the question of the _form_ of

metaphysical activity or agency as contrasted with that of the physical

sciences. This may be brought out in the contrast of the two terms

_finality_ and _mere efficiency_, in which by mere efficiency is meant

an agency that is presumed to be thoughtless and purposeless, and

consequently without _foresight_. All this is embodied in the term

_force_ or physical energy, and less explicitly in that of _natural

causation_. Contrasted with this, _finality_ is a term that involves the

forward impulse of _idea_, _prevision_, and _purpose_. Anything that is

capable of any sort of _foretaste_ has in it a principle of prevision,

selection, choice, and purpose. The impulse that motives and runs it,

that also stands out as the _end_ of its fulfillment, is a foretaste, an

_Ahnung_, an anticipation, and the whole process or movement, as well as

every part of it, will take on this character. (2) The second question

of method will be that of the nature of this category of which

_finality_ is the form. What is its content, pure idea or pure will, or

a synthesis that includes both? We have here the three alternatives of

_pure rationalism_, _voluntarism_, and a doctrine hard to characterize

in a single word; that rests on a _synthesis_ of the norms of both

rationalism and voluntarism. Without debating these alternatives, I

propose here briefly to characterize the _synthetic_ concept as

supplying what I conceive to be the most satisfactory doctrine. The

principle of _pure rationalism_ is one of insight but is lacking in

practical energy, whereas, that of _voluntarism_ supplies practical

energy, but is lacking in insight. Pure voluntarism is _blind_, while

pure rationalism is _powerless_. But the synthesis of _idea_ and _will_,

provided we go a step further (as I think we must) and presuppose also a

germ of _feeling_ as _interest_, supplies both _insight_ and _energy_.

So that the spring out of which our world is to arise may be described

as either the _idea informed with purposive energy_, or _purpose or will

informed and guided by the idea_. It makes no difference which form of

conception we use. In either case if we include feeling as interest we

are able to conceive movements originating in some species of

apprehension, taking the dynamic form of purpose, and motived and

selected, so to speak, by interest; and in describing such activity we

are simply describing these normal movements of consciousness with which

our experience makes us most familiar. (3) The third question of method

involves the relation or correlation of the metaphysical interpretation

with that of the natural or physical science. Two points are fundamental

here. In the first place, it must be borne in mind that it is the same

world with which the plain man, the man of science, and the

metaphysician are concerned. We cannot partition off the external world

to the plain man, the atoms and ethers to the man of science, leaving

the metaphysician in exclusive and solitary possession of the world of

consciousness. It is the same world for all. The metaphysician cannot

shift the physical world, with its oceans and icebergs, its vast

planetary systems and milky ways, on to the shoulders of the physicist.

This is the metaphysician's own recalcitrant world, which will doubtless

task all his resources to explain. In the _second_ place, though it is

the same world that is clamoring for interpretation, it is a world that

passes through successive transformations, in order to adapt itself to

progressive modes of interpretation. The plain man is called to pass

through a species of Copernican revolution that subordinates the

phenomenon to its ground, before he can become a man of science. In

turn, the man of science must go through the Copernican process, and

learn to subordinate his atoms and ethers to consciousness before he can

become a metaphysician. And it is this transformation that marks one of

the most fundamental steps in the method of metaphysics. The world must

experience this transformation, and it must become habitual to the

thinker to subordinate the physical to the mental before the

metaphysical point of view can be other than foreign to him. If, then,

it be the same content with which the sciences and metaphysics are

called on to deal, it is clear that we have on our hands another problem

on the answer to which the fate of metaphysics vitally depends; the

question of the _correlation_ of its method with that of the sciences so

that it may stand vindicated as the final interpretation of things.

III

QUESTION OF THE CORRELATION OF METAPHYSICS WITH THE SCIENCES

We have reached two conclusions that are vital here: (1) that the

metaphysical way of looking at the world involves a transformation of

the world of physical science; (2) that it is the same world that lies

open to both science and metaphysics. Out of this arises the problem of

the _correlation_ of the two views; the two interpretations of the

world. If science be right in conceiving the world under such categories

as quantity and natural causation; if science be right in seeking a

mechanical explanation of phenomena (that is, one that excludes

prevision, purpose, and aim); and if metaphysics be right in refusing to

accept this explanation as final and in insisting that the principle of

ultimate interpretation is teleological, that it falls under the

categories of prevision, purpose, and aim; then it is clear that the

problem of correlation is on our hands. In dealing with this problem, it

will be convenient to separate it into two questions: (1) that of the

fact; (2) that of its rationale. The fact of the correlation is a thing

of common experience. We have but to consider the way in which this

Congress of Science has been brought about in order to have an

exhibition of the method of correlation. Originating first in the sphere

of thought and purpose, the design has been actualized through the

operation of mechanical agencies which it has somehow contributed to

liberate. On the scale of individual experience we have the classic

instance of the arm moving through space in obedience to a hidden will.

There can be no question as to the fact and the great difficulty of

metaphysics does not arise in the task of generalizing the fact and

conceiving the world as a system of thought-purposes working out into

forms of the actual through mechanical agencies. This generalization

somehow lies at the foundation of all metaphysical faith, and, this

being the case, the real task here, aside from the profounder question

of the _rationale_, is that of exhibiting the actual points of

correlation; those points in the various stages of the sciences from

physics to ethics and religion, at which the last category or result of

science is found to hold as its immediate implication some first term of

the more ultimate construction of metaphysics. The working out of this

task is of the utmost importance, inasmuch as it makes clear to both the

man of science and the metaphysician the intrinsic necessity of the

correlation. It is a task analogous to the Kantian deduction of the

categories.

IV

QUESTIONS OF THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY

We come, then, to the question of the rationale of this correlation, and

it is clear here that we are dealing with a phase of the problem of the

ultimate nature of reality. For the question of the correlation now is

how it is possible that our thoughts should affect things so that they

move in response; how mind influences body or the reverse, how, when we

will, the arm moves through space. And without going into details of

discussion here, let us say at once, that whatever the situation may be

for any science,--and it may be that some form of _dualism_ is a

necessary presupposition of science,--for metaphysics it is clear that

no dualism of substances or orders can be regarded as final. The life of

metaphysics depends on finding the one for the many; the one that when

found will also ground the many. If, then, the phenomenon of _mind and

body_ presents the appearance of a correspondence of two different and,

so far as can be determined, mutually exclusive agencies, the problem of

metaphysics is the reduction of these agencies to one species. Here we

come upon the issue between materialism and immaterialism. But inasmuch

as the notion of metaphysics itself seems to exclude materialism, the

vital alternative is that of immaterialism. Again, if psycho-physics

presents as its basal category a _parallelism_ between two orders of

phenomena, psychic and physical, it is the business of metaphysics to

seek the explanation of this dualism in some more ultimate and unitary

conception. Now, since the very notion of metaphysics again excludes the

physical alternative from the category of finality, we are left with the

psychic term as the one that, by virtue of the fact that it embodies a

form of _conscious_ activity, promises to be most fruitful for

metaphysics. From one point of view, then, we have reduced our world to

immaterialism; from another, to some form or analogue of the psychic.

Now it is not necessary here to carry the inquiry further in this

direction. For what metaphysics is interested in, specially, is the fact

that the world must be reduced to one kind of being and one type of

agency. If this be done, it is clear that the dualism of _body and mind_

and the _parallel orders_ of psycho-physics cannot be regarded as final,

but must take their places as phenomena that are relative and reducible

to a more fundamental unity. The metaphysician will say that the arm

moves through space in response to the will, and that everywhere the

correlation between mechanical and teleological agency takes place

because in the last analysis _there is only one type of agency_; an

agency that finds its initiative in interest, thought, purpose, design,

and thus works out its results in the fields of space and mechanical

activities.

Furthermore, on the question to which these considerations lead up; that

of the ultimate interpretation we are to put on the reality of the

world, the issue is not so indeterminate as it might seem from some

points of view. Taking it that the very notion of metaphysics excludes

the material and the physical as ultimate types of the real, we are left

with the notions of the immaterial and the psychic; and while the former

is indefinite, it is a fact that in the psychic and especially in the

form of it which man realizes in his own experience, he finds an

intelligible type and the only one that is available to him for the

definition of the immaterial. He has his choice, then, either to regard

the world as _absolutely opaque_, showing nothing but its phenomenal

dress which ceases to have any meaning; or to apply to the world's inner

nature the intelligible types and analogies of his own form of being.

That this is the alternative that is embodied in the existence of

metaphysics is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the metaphysical

interpretation embodies itself in the categories of _reason_, _design_,

_purpose_, and _aim_. Whatever difficulties we may encounter, then, in

the _use_ and application of the _psychic analogy_ in determining the

nature of the real, it is clear that its employment is inevitable and

indispensable. Let us, then, employ the term _rational_ to that

characterization of the nature of things which to metaphysics is thus

inevitable and indispensable. The world must in the last analysis be

_rational_ in its constitution, and its agencies and forms of being must

be construed as _rational_ in their type.

And here we come upon the last question in this field, that of the

_ultimate being of the world_. We have already concluded that the _real_

is in the last analysis rational. But we have not answered the question

whether there shall be one rational or many. Now it has become clear

that with metaphysics _unity_ is a cardinal interest; that, therefore,

the world must be _one_ in _thought_, _purpose_, _aim_. And it is on

this insight that the metaphysical doctrine of the _absolute_ rests.

There must be _one_ being whose thought and purpose are all-inclusive,

in order that the world may be one and that it may have meaning as a

whole. But the world presents itself as a plurality of finite

_existents_ which our metaphysics requires us to reduce in the last

analysis to the psychic type. What of this plurality of psychic

existents? It is on this basis that metaphysics constructs its doctrine

of _individuality_. Allowing for latitude of opinion here, the trend of

metaphysical reflection sets strongly toward a doctrine of reality that

grounds the world in an Absolute whose all-comprehending thought and

purpose utters or realizes itself in the plurality of finite individuals

that constitutes the world; the degree of reality that shall be ascribed

to the plurality of individuals being a point in debate, giving rise to

the contemporary form of the issue between idealism and realism.

Allowing for minor differences, however, there is among metaphysicians a

fair degree of assent to the doctrine that in order to be completely

rational the world of individual plurality must be regarded as implying

an _Absolute_, which, whether it is to be conceived as an individual or

not, is the author and bearer of the thought and design of the world as

a whole.

V

QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ULTIMATE CRITERIA OF TRUTH

We have only time to speak very briefly, in conclusion, of two vital

problems in metaphysics: (1) that of the nature and limits of

metaphysical knowledge; (2) that of the ultimate criteria of truth. In

regard to the question of knowledge, we may either _identify thought

with reality_, or we may regard thought as _wholly inadequate to

represent the real_; in one case we will be _gnostic_, in the other

_agnostic_. Now whatever may be urged in favor of the gnostic

alternative, it remains true that _our_ thought, in order to follow

along intelligible lines, must be guided by the categories and analogies

of our own experience. This fixes a limit, so that the thought of man is

never in a position to grasp the real completely. Again, whatever may be

urged in behalf of the agnostic alternative, it is to be borne in mind

that our experience does supply us with intelligible types and

categories; and that under the impulse of the _infinite_ and _absolute_,

or the transcendent, to which our thought responds (to put it no

stronger), a dialectical activity arises; on the one hand, the

application of the experience-analogies to determine the real; on the

other, the incessant removal of limits by the impulse of transcendence

(as we may call it). Thus arises a _movement of approximation_ which

while it never completely compasses its goal, yet proceeds along

intelligent lines; constitutes the mind's effort to know; and results in

an _approximating series of intelligible and relatively adequate

conceptions_. Metaphysically, we are ever approximating to ultimate

knowledge; though it can never be said that we have attained it. The

type of metaphysical knowledge cannot be characterized, therefore, as

either gnostic or agnostic.

As to the question of ultimate _criteria_, it is clear that we are here

touching one of the living issues of our present-day thought. Shall the

judgment of truth, on which certitude must found, exclude practical

considerations of value, or shall the consideration of value have weight

in the balance of certitude? On this issue we have at the opposite

extremes (1) the _pure rationalist_ who insists on the rigid exclusion

from the epistemological scale of every consideration except that of

pure logic. The truth of a thing, he urges, is always a purely logical

consideration. On the other hand, we have (2) the _pure pragmatist_, who

insists on the "_will to believe_" as a legitimate datum or factor in

the determination of certitude. The pragmatic platform has two planks:

(1) the _ontological_--we select our world that we call real at the

behest of our interests; (2) the _ethical_--in such a world practical

interest has the right of way in determining what we are to accept as

true as well as what we are to choose as good. It is my purpose in thus

outlining the extremes of doctrine to close with a suggestion or two

toward less ultra-conclusions. It is a sufficient criticism on the _pure

rationalist's_ position to point out the fact that his separation of

practical and theoretic interests is a pure fiction that is never

realized anywhere. The motives of science and the motives of practice

are so blended that interest in the conclusion always enters as a factor

in the process. A conclusion reached by the pure rationalist's method

would be one that would only interest the pure rationalist in so far as

he could divest himself of all motives except the bare love of fact for

its own sake. The _pure pragmatist_ is, I think, still more vulnerable.

He must, to start with, be a pure subjective idealist, otherwise he

would find his world at many points recalcitrant to his ontology.

Furthermore, the mere _will to believe_ is arbitrary and involves the

suppression of reason. In order that the will to believe may work _real_

conviction, the point believed must at least amount to a postulate of

the practical reason; it must become somehow evident that the refusal to

believe would create a situation that would be theoretically unsound or

irrational; as, for instance, if we assume that the immortality of the

soul is a _real postulate_ of practical reason, it must be so because

the negative of it would involve the irrationality of our world; and

therefore a degree of theoretic imperfection or confusion. Personally I

believe the lines here converge in such a way that the ideal of truth

will always be found to have practical value; and _conversely_, as to

practical ideals, that a sound practical postulate will have weight in

the theoretic scales. And it is doubtless true, as Professor Royce urges

in his presidential address on _The Eternal and The Practical_, that all

judgments must find their final warrant at the Court of the Eternal

where, so far as we can see, the theoretical and practical coalesce into

one.

* * * * *

At the close of the work of this Section and upon the invitation of Dr.

Armstrong, a number of distinguished members in attendance joined freely

in the discussion, to the great pleasure of the many specialists who

were present. Among those participating were Professor Boltzmann of

Vienna, Professor Hoeffding of Copenhagen, Professor Calkins of

Wellesley, and Professor French of the University of Nebraska, to whom

replies were made by the principal speakers, Messrs. Taylor and Ormond.

SHORT PAPERS

A short paper was contributed to the work of the Section by Professor W.

P. Montague of Columbia University, on the "Physical Reality of

Secondary Qualities." The speaker said that from the beginning of modern

philosophy there has existed a strong tendency among all schools of

thought--monists of the idealistic or materialistic types, as well as

outspoken dualists--to treat the distinction between primary and

secondary qualities as coincident, so far as it goes, with the

distinction between physical and psychical. Colors, sounds, odors, etc.,

are regarded as purely subjective or mental in their nature, and as

having no true membership in the physical order; while correlatively all

special forms and relations have been in their turn extruded from the

field of the psychical. Let it be noted that introspection offers little

or nothing in support of this view. There is nothing, for example, about

the color red that would make it appear more distinctively psychical or

subjective than a figure or a motion. The perception of a square or a

triangle is not a square or triangular perception; but neither is the

perception of red or blue a red or blue perception. Now with the

affective or emotional contents of experience the case is quite

different.

A feeling of pain is a painful feeling, a consciousness of anger is an

angry consciousness. Pains are more and less painful, according as we

are more and less aware of them. With feelings and volitions _esse_ is

indeed _percipi_. Colors and other secondary qualities, however, do not

seem thus to increase or diminish in their reality concomitantly with

our perceptions of them. Red is red, neither more nor less, regardless

of the amount to which we attend to it. And yet it remains true that,

notwithstanding this seeming objectivity, the secondary qualities have

long been contrasted with the primary, and classed along with the

affective and volitional states as purely subjective facts. It has

always seemed curious that a view so important as this in its

consequences, and so radically at variance, not only with Pre-Cartesian

philosophy, but also with our instinctive beliefs, should have won its

way to the position of an accepted dogma; and the purpose of this paper

was first to examine the grounds upon which this belief rests, and

second to show that the problem of the independent reality of the

physical world and the problem of the relation of physical and psychical

appear in a clearer and more hopeful light when disentangled from the

quite different problem of the relation of primary and secondary

qualities.

There were two reasons why the older or Pre-Cartesian view of this

question should give place to the modern doctrine. First, because of the

rediscovery of the idea of mechanism, without which predictive science

had been virtually impossible. The second reason for reducing the

secondary qualities to a merely subjective status lay in the fact that

they are much more dependent than the primary qualities upon the bodily

organism of the one who perceives them. In closing Professor Montague

said:--

"I wish in closing to point out two consequences of the view which I

have been opposing. First, the present paradoxical status of the eternal

world; second, the equally paradoxical status of the relation of that

world to the world of mind. Berkeley was the first thinker clearly to

perceive the unsubstantial nature of a world made up solely of primary

qualities. Indeed, in the last analysis, a world of primary qualities,

and nothing else, is a world of relations without terms, a geometrical

fiction, the objective (or, for that matter, the subjective) existence

of which the idealist would be right in denying. In Biology we have

abandoned obscurantist methods, and no longer attribute the distinctive

vital functions of growth and reproduction to a vital force or vital

substance, but solely to the peculiar configuration of the material

elements of a cell. Why may we not in psychology with equal propriety

attribute the distinctively psychical functions of subjectivity or

consciousness, not to the action of a hyper-psychical soul-substance,

nor to the presence of a transcendental ego, but simply to that peculiar

configuration of sensory elements which constitutes a what we call

psychosis?"

SECTION B--PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

SECTION B

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

(_Hall 1, September 21, 3 p. m._)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR THOMAS C. HALL, Union Theological Seminary, N. Y.

SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER, University of Berlin.

PROFESSOR ERNST TROELTSCH, University of Heidelberg.

SECRETARY: DR. W. P. MONTAGUE, Columbia University.

THE RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO THE OTHER SCIENCES

BY PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER

[D. Otto Pfleiderer, Professor of Theology, University of

Berlin since 1875. b. September 1, 1839, Stetten,

Würtemberg. Grad. Tübingen, 1857-61. Post-grad. _ibid._

1864-68. City Professor, Heilbronn, 1868-69; Superintendent,

Jena, 1869-70; Professor of Theology, Jena, 1870-75. Author

of _Religion and its Essential Characteristics_; _Religious

Philosophy upon Historical Foundation_; and many other works

and papers on Theology.]

In order to answer this question, we need to consider a preliminary

question, namely, whether religion can be regarded as the object of

scientific knowledge in the same manner as other processes of the

intellectual life of the race, such as law, history, and art. It is well

known that this question has not always received an affirmative answer,

and indeed it can never be answered in the affirmative so long as the

position is maintained that the only religion is that of the Christian

Church, whose doctrines and teachings rest upon an immediate divine

revelation, and that these must be accepted by men in blind belief.

Under the position of an authoritative ecclesiastical faith there can

indeed exist a theoretical consideration of the doctrines of faith, as

it was the case with the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages, which

with great earnestness sought to harmonize faith and knowledge;

nevertheless, no one of the present day would give to the scholastic

theology the name of science with the modern meaning of the term

science. The scholastic theology used great formal acuteness and skill

in the work of defining and defending ecclesiastical traditions, still

there was lacking that which for us is the essential condition of

scientific knowledge, the free examination of tradition according to the

laws of human thought and the analogy of the general experience of

humanity. The great hindrance to the progress of the knowledge of

religion was the accepted position that the truth of the ecclesiastical

doctrines was beyond human reason and outside of human examination,

since their truth rested upon an immediate divine revelation. Whether

this supernatural authority was ascribed to the Church or the Bible

makes very little difference, for in either case the assumption of such

an authority is a hindrance to the free examination of that which claims

to be the divine revealed truth.

But is this assumption really justifiable in the nature of the case? Do

the doctrines of the Church rest upon a supernatural divine revelation?

So soon as this question was really earnestly considered, and the

thinking mind could not always avoid the consideration, then there was

revealed the inadequacy of the assumption. Two ways of examination led

to a common critical result, the philosophical analysis of the religious

consciousness and the historical comparison of various religions. The

first to enter upon these ways and at the same time to become the

founder of the modern science of religion was the keen Scotch thinker

David Hume. Truly the thought of Hume was still a one-sided,

disorganizing skepticism; even as his theory of knowledge disturbed the

truth of all our previous commonsense opinions and conceptions, so also

his philosophy of religion sought to demonstrate that all religion

cannot be proved and is full of doubt, and that the origin of religion

was neither to be found in divine revelation nor in the reason of man,

but in the passions of the heart and in the illusions of imagination. As

unsatisfactory as this result was, nevertheless it gave an important

advance to the rational study of religion in two directions, in that of

religion being an experience of the inner life of the soul and in that

of religion being a fact of human history.

Kant added the positive criticism of reason to the negative skepticism

of Hume; that is, Kant showed that the human intellect moved

independently in the formation of theoretical and practical judgments,

and that the various materials of thought, desire, and feelings were

regulated by the intellect according to innate original ideas of the

true and good and beautiful. Thus as a natural result there came the

conception that the doctrines of belief arose not as complete truths,

given by divine revelation, but, like every other form of conscious

knowledge, these came to us through the activity of our own mind, and

that therefore these doctrines cannot be regarded as of absolute

authority for all time, but that we are to seek to understand their

origin in historical and psychical motives. So far as one looked at the

ceremonial forms of positive religion, these motives indeed were found

according to Kant in irrational conceptions, but as far as the essence

of religion was concerned they were rather found to be rooted in the

moral nature of man. This is the consciousness of obligation of the

practical reason or of the conscience, which raises man to a faith in

the moral government of the world, in immortality and God. With the

reduction of religion from all external forms, doctrines, and ceremonies

and the finding of the real essence of religion in the human mind and

spirit, the way was opened to a knowledge of religion free from all

external authority. Those philosophers who came after Kant followed

essentially this course, though here and there they may separate in

their opinions according to their thought of the psychological function

of religion. When Kant had emphasized the close connection between

religion and the moral obligation, then came Schleiermacher, who

emphasized the feeling of our dependence upon the Eternal, and who

sought to find the explanation of all religious thoughts and conceptions

in the many relations of the feeling to religious experience. Hegel on

the other hand sought the truth of religion in the thought of the

absolute spirit as found in the finite spirit. Thus Hegel made religion

a sort of popular philosophy.

At present all agree that all sides of the soul-life have part in

religion; now one side may be the more prominent, now another, according

to the peculiarity of certain religions or the individual temperaments.

The philosophy of religion has, in common with scientific psychology,

the question of the relation of feeling to the intellect and the will,

and as yet there may be many views of this question. Altogether the

philosophy of religion is looking for important solutions to many of its

problems from the realm of the present scientific psychology.

Experiences, such as religious conversions, appear under this point of

view as ethical changes in which the aim of a personal life is changed

from a carnal and selfish end to that of a spiritual and altruistic

purpose. These are extraordinary and seemingly supernatural processes;

nevertheless in them there can still be found a certain development of

the soul-life according to law. Modern psychology especially has thrown

light upon the abnormal conditions of consciousness which have so often

been made manifest in the religious experience of all times. That which

religious history records concerning inspiration, visions, ecstasy, and

revelation, we now classify with the well-known appearances of

hypnotism, the induction of conceptions and motives of the will through

foreign suggestion or through self-suggestion, of the division of

consciousness in different egos, and in the union of several

consciousnesses into one common mediumistic fusion of thought and will.

The explanation of these experiences may not yet be satisfactory, but

nevertheless we do not doubt the possibility of a future explanation

from the general laws controlling the life of the soul. The fact that we

can through psychological experiments produce such abnormal conditions

of consciousness justifies us in taking the position, that certain

psychical laws are at the foundation of these conditions which in their

kind are as natural and regular in their functions as the physical laws

which we observe in physical experiments. These solutions which modern

psychology so far has given, and hopes still further to give, are of

great importance to the philosophy of religion. They are an indorsement

of the general principle which one hundred years ago had been advanced

by critical speculation, namely, that in all experiences of the

religious life the same principles which control the human mind in all

other intellectual and emotional fields shall hold sway. Nothing

therefore should hinder us in scientific research from following the

well-defined maxims of thought, and unreservedly applying the same

methods of scientific analysis in theology as is done generally in the

other sciences.

The claim of the Church to infallibility and divine inspiration of its

dogmas is weakened under this view of the work of the philosophy of

religion. Prophetical inspiration and ecstasy, which usually were

thought to be supernatural revelations, are now declared by the present

psychology to come under the category of other analogous experiences,

such as the action of mental powers which, under definite conditions of

individual gifts and on historical occasions, have manifested themselves

in extraordinary forms of consciousness. However, these enthusiastic

forms of prophetical consciousness cannot be accepted for a higher form

of knowledge or even as of divine origin and as an infallible

proclamation of the truth; on the contrary, these forms are to be judged

as pathological appearances, which may be more harmful than beneficent

for the ethical value of the prophetical intuition. At least, it has

come to pass that all forms of revelation must come under the

examination of a psychological analysis and of an analogical judgment.

Hence their traditional nimbus of unique, supernatural, and absolute

authority is for all time destroyed.

We are carried to the same result by the comparative study of the

history of religions. The study shows us that the Christian Church, with

its dogma of the divine inspiration of the Bible, does not stand alone;

that before and after Christianity other religions made exactly the same

claims for their sacred scriptures. By the pious Brahman the Veda is

regarded as infallible and eternal; he believes the hymns of the old

seers were not composed by the seers themselves, but were taken from an

original copy in heaven. The Buddhist sees in the sayings of his sacred

book "Dhammapadam" the exact inheritance of the infallible words of his

omniscient teacher Buddha. For the confessor of Ahuramazda the

Zendavesta contains the scriptural revelation of the good spirit unto

the prophet Zarathustra; according to the rabbis the laws revealed unto

Moses on Mount Sinai were even before the creation of the world the

object of the observation of God; for the faithful Mohammedan the Koran

is the copy of an ever-present original in heaven, the contents of which

were dictated word for word to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. Whoever

ponders the similar claims of all these religions for the infallibility

of their sacred books, to him it becomes difficult to hold the dogma of

the Christian Church concerning the inspiration and infallibility of the

Bible as alone true and the similar dogmas of other religions as being

false. Rather he will accept the view that in all these examples there

are found the same motives of the religious mind, that here is given an

expression to the same need common to all seeking for an absolute and

abiding basis for their faith.

The study of the comparison of religions has discovered in religions

other than that of Christianity many very striking parallels to many

narratives and teachings of the Bible. It may be well to recall very

briefly some of the important points. Owing to the fact that the

Assyrian cuneiform writings have now been deciphered, there has been

found a story of the creation which has many characteristics in common

with those of the Bible. There is found a story of a flood, which in its

very details can be regarded as the forerunner of the story of the flood

in the Bible. There have been found Assyrian penitential psalms, which,

in consciousness of guilt and in earnestness of prayer for forgiveness,

can well be compared with many psalms of the Bible. Recently the Code of

the Assyrian King Hammurabi, who reigned two thousand three hundred

years before Christ, has been discovered. The similarity of this Code

with many of the early Mosaic Laws has called general attention to this

fact. In the Persian religion there are found teachings of the Kingdom

of God, of the good spirits who surround the throne of God, of the

Spirit hostile to God and of an army of his demons, of the judgment of

each soul after death, of a heaven with eternal light and of the dark

abyss of hell, of the future struggle of the multitudes of good and bad

spirits and the victory over the bad through a divine hero and saviour,

of the general resurrection of the dead, of the awful destruction of the

world and the creation of a new and better world,--teachings which are

also found in the later Jewish theology and apocalypse, so that the

acceptance of a dependence of Jewish upon corresponding Persian teaching

can hardly be avoided. Also Grecian influence is observed in later

Jewish literature, in proverbs, in the wisdom of Solomon and the Son of

Sirach; especially in the Alexandrian Jewish theology are found Platonic

thoughts of an eternal, ideal world, of the heavenly home of the soul,

and the Stoic conception of a world-ruling divine Logos.

It is from this source that the Logos to which Philo had already

ascribed the meaning of the Son of God and the Bringer of a divine

revelation crossed over into Christian theology and became the

foundation of the dogma of the Church concerning the person of Christ.

Of still greater importance than even all this was the opening of the

Indian and especially the Buddhistic religious writings. In these we

have, five hundred years before Christianity, the revelation of

redemptive religion, resting upon the ethical foundation of the

abnegation of self and the withdrawal from the world. In the centre of

this religion is Gautama Buddha, the ideal teacher of redeeming truth,

whose human life was adorned by the faith of his followers with a crown

of wonderful legends; from an abode in heaven, out of mercy to the

world, he descended into the world, conceived and born of a virgin

mother, greeted and entertained by heavenly spirits, recognized

beforehand by a pious seer as the future redeemer of the world; as a

youth he manifested a wisdom beyond that of his teachers. Then after the

reception of an illuminating revelation, he victoriously overcomes the

temptation of the devil, who would cause him to become faithless to his

call to redemption. Then he begins to preach of the coming of the

Kingdom of Justice, and sends forth his disciples, two by two, as

messengers of his gospel to all people. Although he declares that it is

not his calling to perform miracles, nevertheless the legends indeed

tell how many sick were healed, how with the contents of a small basket

hundreds were fed, how possessed of all knowledge he reveals hidden

things; how overcoming the limitations of space and time, swaying in the

air, being transfigured in a heavenly light, he reveals himself to his

disciples just before his death. And at last, in the faith of his

followers, having passed from the position of a human teacher to that of

an eternal heavenly spirit and lord of the world, he is exalted as the

object of prayer and reverence, to many millions of the human race in

Southern and Eastern Asia.

It is hardly possible that the knowledge of this parallel from India to

the New Testament, and of the Babylonian and Persian parallel to the Old

Testament, can be without influence upon the religious thought of

Christian people. Although we may be ever so much convinced concerning

the essential superiority of our religion over all other religions,

nevertheless the dogmatic contrast between absolute truth on the one

side and complete falsity on the other can no more be maintained. In

place of this view there must enter the view of a relative grade of

differences between the higher and lower stages of development. No

longer can we see in other religions only mistakes and fiction, but

under the husk of their legends many precious kernels of truth must be

seen, expressions of inner religious feelings and of noble ethical

sentiments. One should therefore accept the position not to object to

the same discrimination between husk and kernel in the matter of one's

own religion, and to recognize in its inherited traditions and dogmas

legendary elements, the explanation of which is to be found in psychical

motives and in historical surroundings, even as they are found in the

corresponding parts of religions other than the Christian religion.

Therefore the historical comparison of religions takes us away from an

absolute dogmatic positivism to a relative evolutionary manner of study,

placing all religions without exception under the laws of time

progression and under the causal connection of the law of cause and

effect. The isolation of religion therefore is no more. It is regarded

as being a part of other human historical affairs, and must yield to the

test of a thorough unhindered research. The value of the Christian

religion can never suffer in the view of a reasonable man, when it is

not accepted in blind faith, but as the result of discriminating

comparison.

As the evolutionary philosophy of religion uses the method of science

without exception in the case of all historical religions, so also it

does not shrink from taking up the question of the beginning of

religion, but believes that here also is found the key in the

analytical, critical, and comparative method. And here is found the

assistance of the comparative study of languages, ethnology, and

paleontology.

The celebrated Sanscrit scholar, Max Müller, sought in the comparative

study of mythology to prove the etymological relation of many of the

Grecian gods and heroes with those of the mythology of India and to

trace the common origin of all these mythical beings and legends in the

personification of the movements of the heavenly bodies, the thunder and

lightning, the tempest and the rain. All mythical belief in gods of the

Indo-Germanic peoples seems to have arisen out of a poetical view and

dramatic personification of the powers of nature. Suggestive as this

hypothesis is, it is not by any means sufficient to give us a complete

explanation of the subject. In fact, others have shown that primitive

religion does not altogether consist in mythical conceptions, but mainly

in reverential actions, sacrifices, sacraments, vows, and other similar

cults, which have very little to do with the atmospherical powers of

nature, but rather with the social life of primitive people. And when

once the sight was clearly directed to the social meaning of the

religious rites, it was then observed that even the earliest legends

concerning the gods were connected far more closely with the habits and

customs of early society than with the facts of nature. Tyler's

celebrated book concerning "Primitive Civilization" is written from this

standpoint, an epoch-making book, showing the original close connection

of religion with the entire civilization of humanity, with the views of

life and death, the social customs, the forms of law, their strivings in

art and science; a book with a large amount of information, brought

together from observation on all sides. In this channel are found all

the researches which to-day are classified under the name of Folklore;

seeking to gather the still existing characteristic customs and forms,

legends, stories, and sayings, in order to compose these and to discover

the survivals of earliest religion, poetry, and civilization of

humanity. The gain of this study pursued with so great diligence is not

to be underrated. These studies show that all that, which at one time

existed as faith in the spirit of humanity, possessed within its very

nature the strongest power of continuance, so that in new and strange

conditions and in other forms it continued to remain. Under all changes

and progress of history there is still found an unbroken connection of

constant development.

As important, however, as the possession of a general knowledge of

historical forms of development is to the philosophy of religion,

nevertheless the possession of this knowledge is not wholly a

fulfillment of the purpose of the philosophy of religion. To understand

a development means not merely to know how one thing follows as the

result of the other, but also to understand the law which lies at the

foundation of all empirical changes and at the same time controls the

end of the development. If this principle holds good in the

understanding of the development in the processes of nature, much more

does the principle hold good in understanding the processes of

intellectual development of humanity, which have for us not only a

theoretical, but at the same time an eminently practical interest. The

philosopher of religion sees in religious history not merely the coming

together of similar forms, but an advance from the lowest stage of

childlike ignorance to an ever purer and richer realization of the idea

of religion, a divinely ordained progress for the education of humanity

from the slavery of nature to the freedom of the spirit. The question

now arises: where do we find the principle and law of this ever-rising

development? Where do we find the measure of judgment for the relative

value of religious appearances? It is clear that the general principle

of the complete development cannot be found in a single fact which is

only one of the many manifestations of the general principle, and it is

just as clear that the absolute norm of judgment is not found in a

single fact always relative, presenting to us the object of judgment and

therefore being impossible to stand as the norm of judgment. Therefore

the principle of religious development and the norm of its judgment can

only be found in the inner being of the spirit of humanity, namely, in

the necessary striving of the mind into an harmonious arrangement of all

our conceptions, or the idea of the truth, and into the complete order

of all our purposes, or the idea of the good. These ideas unite in the

highest unity, in the Idea of God. Therefore the consciousness of God is

the revelation of the original innate longing of reason after complete

unity as a principle of universal harmony and consistence in all our

thinking and willing. Hence, in the first place, arises the result that

the development of the consciousness of God in the history of religion

is always dependent upon the existing conditions of the two united

sides, the theoretical perception of the truth and the moral standard of

life. In the second place the result arises that the judgment of the

value of all appearances in the history of religion depends as to

whether and how far these appearances agree with the idea of the true

and the good, and correspond with the demands of reason and conscience.

That science which is engaged with the idea of the good we name Ethics;

that which is engaged with the last principles of the perception of

truth, using the expression of Aristotle, we may name Metaphysics, or

following Plato--Dialectic. Recognizing then in the idea of God the

synthesis of the idea of the true and the good, the philosophy of

religion is closely related with both, Ethics and Metaphysics.