At present the relation of religion to morality is an object of much

controversy. There are many who hold that morality without religion is

not only possible but also very desirable; since they are of the opinion

that moral strength is weakened, the will is without freedom, and its

motives corrupted on account of religious conceptions. On the other

hand, the Church, considering the experience of history, finds that

religion has ever proved itself to be the strongest and most necessary

aid to morality. In this contest the philosophy of religion occupies the

position of a judge who is called upon to adjust the relative rights of

the parties. The philosophy of religion brings to light the historical

fact that from the very beginnings of human civilization, social life

and morality were closely connected with religious conceptions and

usages, and indeed always so interchangeable in their influence that the

position of social civilization on the one side corresponded with the

position of religious civilization on the other, just as the water-level

in two communicating pipes. Therefore it follows that it is unjust and

not historical to blame religion on account of the defects of a national

and temporal morality; for these defects of morality, with the

corresponding errors of religion, find a common ground in a low stage of

development of the entire civilization of the people of the time and

age. Further, it becomes the task of the philosophy of religion to

examine whether this correspondence of religion and morality, recognized

in history, is also found in the very nature of morality and religion.

This question in the main is answered without doubt in the affirmative,

for it is clear that the religious feeling of dependence upon one

all-ruling power is well adapted not only to make keen the moral

consciousness of obligation and to deepen the feeling of responsibility,

but also to endow moral courage with power and to strengthen the hope of

the solution of moral purposes. The clearer religious faith comprehends

the relation of man to God, so much the more will that faith prove

itself as a strong motive and a great incentive of the moral life. Such

a conception will not make the moral will unfree but truly free, not in

the sense of a selfish choice, but in the sense of a love that serves,

knowing itself as an instrument of the divine will, who binds us all

into a social organism, the kingdom of God. And, on the other hand, the

more ideal the moral view of life, the higher and greater its aims, the

more it recognizes its great task to care for the welfare not only of

the individual but of all, to coöperate in the welfare and development

of all forms of society, the more earnestly the moral mind will need a

sincere faith that this is God's world, that above all the changes of

time an eternal will is on the throne, whose all-wise guidance causes

everything to be for the best unto those who love him.

A like middle position of arbitration falls to the philosophy of

religion in the matter of the relation of religion to science. The first

demand of science is freedom of thought, according to its own logical

laws, and its fundamental assumption is the possibility of the knowledge

of the world on the basis of the unchangeable laws of all existence and

events. With this fundamental demand science places itself in opposition

to the formal character of ecclesiastical doctrine so far as the

doctrine claims infallible authority resting upon a divine revelation.

And the fundamental assumption of the regular law of the course of the

world is in opposition to the contents of ecclesiastical doctrine

concerning the miraculous interposition in the course of nature and of

history. To the superficial observer there appears therefore to exist an

irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. Here is the work

of the philosophy of religion, to take away the appearance of an

irreconcilable opposition between science and religion, in that the

philosophy of religion teaches first of all to distinguish between the

essence of religion and the ecclesiastical doctrines of a certain

religion, and to comprehend the historical origin of these doctrines in

the forms of thought of past times. To this purpose the method of

psychological analysis and of historical comparison mentioned above is

of service. When, then, by this critical process religion is traced to

its real essence in the emotional consciousness of God, to which the

dogmatic doctrines stand as secondary products and varied symbols, then

it remains to show that between the essence of religion and that which

science demands and presupposes, there exists not conflict but harmony.

When the idea of God is recognized as the synthesis of the ideas of the

true and the good, so then must all truth as sought by science, even as

the highest good, which the system of ethics places as the purpose of

all action--these must be recognized as the revelation of God in his

eternal reason and goodness. The laws of our rational thinking then

cannot be in conflict with divine revelation in history, and the laws of

the natural order of the world can no more stand in conflict with the

world-governing Omnipotence; but both, the laws of our thinking and

those of the real world, reveal themselves as the harmonious revelations

of the creative reason of God, which, according to Plato's fitting word,

is the efficient ground of being as well as of knowing. It is therefore

not merely a demand of religious belief that there is real truth in our

God-consciousness, that there should be an activity and revelation of

God himself in the human mind; it is also in the same manner a demand of

science considering its last principles, that the world, in order to be

known by us as a rational, regulated order, must have for its principle

an eternal creative reason. Long ago the old master of thinking,

Aristotle, recognized this fact clearly, when he said that order in the

world without a principle of order could be as little thinkable as the

order of an army without a commanding general.

But while it is true that science, as the ground of the possibility of

its knowledge of the truth, must presuppose the same general principle

of intellectual knowledge which religion has as the object of its

practical belief, then by principle the apprehension is excluded that

any possible progress on the part of science in its knowledge of the

world can ever destroy religion. We are rather the more justified in the

hope that all true knowledge of science will be a help to religion, and

will serve as the means of purifying religion from the dross of

superstition.

Truly it can easily be shown that a divine government of the world

breaking through, and now and then suspending the regular order of

nature through miraculous intervention, would not be more majestic, but

far more limited and human, than such a government which reveals itself

as everywhere and always the same in and through its own ordained laws

in the world. And again, that a revelation prescribing secret and

incomprehensible doctrines and rites, demanding from humanity a blind

faith, would far less be in harmony with the guiding wisdom and love of

God, and far less could work for the intellectual liberty and perfection

of humanity, than such a revelation which is working in and through the

reason and conscience of humanity, and is realizing its purpose in the

progressive development of our intellectual and moral capacities and

powers. When therefore science raises critical misgivings against the

supernatural and irrational doctrines of positive religion, then the

real and rightly understood interests of religion are not harmed but

rather advanced; for this criticism serves religion in helping it to

become free from the unintellectual inheritance of its early days, in

helping religion to consider its true intellectual and moral essence,

and to bring to a full display all the blessed powers which are

concealed within its nature, to press through the narrow walls of an

ecclesiasticism out into the full life of humanity, and to work as

leaven for the ennoblement of humanity. Not in conflict with science and

moral culture, but only in harmony with these, can religion come nearer

to the attainment of its ideal, which consists in the worship of God in

spirit and in truth. Even though they may not be conscious of their

purpose, but nevertheless in fact all honest work of science and all the

endeavors of social and ethical humanity have part in the attainment of

this ideal.

It is the work of the philosophy of religion to make clear that all work

of the thinking and striving spirit of humanity, in its deepest meaning,

is a work in the kingdom of God, as service to God, who is truth and

goodness. It is the work of the philosophy of religion to explain

various misunderstandings, to bring together opposing sides, and so to

prepare the way for a more harmonious coöperation of all, and for an

always hopeful progress of all on the road to the high aims of a

humanity fraternally united in the divine spirit.

MAIN PROBLEMS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: PSYCHOLOGY AND THEORY OF

KNOWLEDGE IN THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

BY PROFESSOR ERNST TROELTSCH

(_Translated from the German by Dr. J. H. Woods, Harvard University._)

[Ernst Troeltsch, Professor of Systematic Theology,

University of Heidelberg, since 1894. b. February 17 1865,

Augsburg, Bavaria. Doctor of Theology. Professor University

of Bonn, 1892-94. Author of _John Gerhard and Melanchthon_;

_Richard Rubbe_; _The Scientific Attitude and its Demands on

Theology_; _The Absoluteness of Christianity, and of the

History of Religion_; _Political Ethics and Christianity_;

_The Historic Element in Kant's Religious Philosophy_.]

The philosophy of religion of to-day is philosophy of religion so far

only, and in such a sense, as this word means science of religion or

philosophy with reference to religion. The science of religion of former

days was first dogmatic theology, deriving its dogmas from the Bible and

from Church tradition, expounding them apologetically with the

metaphysical speculation of the later period of antiquity, and regarding

the non-Christian religions as sinful derangements and obscure fragments

of the primitive revelation. This lasted sixteen centuries, and is

confined to-day to strictly ecclesiastical circles. Next, science of

religion became natural theology, which proved the existence of God by

the nature of thought and by the constitution of reality, and also the

immortality of the soul by the concept of the soul and by moral demands,

thus constructing natural or rational dogmas and putting these dogmas

into more or less friendly relations with traditional Christianity. This

lasted about two centuries, and is to-day of the not strictly

ecclesiastical or pietistic circles, which still wish to hold fast to

religion. Both kinds of science of religion exist no longer for the

strict science. The first was, in reality, supernaturalistic dogmatics,

the second was, in reality, a substitution of philosophy for religion.

The first was demolished by the criticism of miracles in the eighteenth

century, the second by the criticism of knowledge in the nineteenth

century, which, in its turn, rests upon Hume and Kant.

The science of religion of to-day keeps in touch with that which without

doubt factually exists and is an object of actual experience, _the

subjective religious consciousness_. The distrust of ecclesiastical and

rationalistic dogmas has made, in the thought of the present, every

other treatment impossible. So the spirit of empiricism has here as at

other points completely prevailed. But empiricism in this field means

psychological analysis. This analysis is pursued by the present to the

widest extent: on the one side by anthropologists and archæologists, who

investigate the life of the soul in primitive peoples and thus indicate

the particular function and condition of religion in these states; on

the other side, by the modern experimental psychologists and

psychological empiricists, who, by self-observation, and especially by

the collection of observations by others and of personal testimony,

study religion, and then, from the point of view of the concepts of

experimental psychology, examine the main phenomena thus found.

Now, such an empirical psychology of religion has been constructed with

considerable success. In this German literature, it is true, has

coöperated to a slight degree only. The German theologians have held to

the older statements of the psychology of Kant, of Schleiermacher, of

Hegel, and of Fries, alone, which, in principle, were on the right path,

but which combined the purely psychological with metaphysical and

epistemological problems to such a degree that it was impossible to

reach a really unprejudiced attitude. German psychologists remain,

furthermore, under the spell of psycho-physiology and of quantitative

statements of measure, and have, consequently, not liked to advance into

this field, which is inaccessible to such statements. More productive

than the German psychology for this subject is the French, which has

attacked the complex facts far more courageously. Here, however, under

the predominance of positivism, there prevails, on the whole, the

tendency to regard religion, in its essence, anthropologically or

medically and pathologically in connection with bodily conditions. This

is the confusion of conditions and origins with the essence of the thing

itself, which can be determined only by the thing, and is, by no means,

bound exclusively to these conditions. Notwithstanding, the works of

Marillier, Murisier, and Flournoy have considerably aided the problem.

More impartially than all of these, the English and American psychology

has investigated our subject. Here we have a masterpiece in the Gifford

Lectures of William James, which collects into a single reservoir

similar investigations such as have been carried on by Coe and Starbuck.

There is here no tendency to a mechanism of consciousness, or to the

dogma of the causal and necessary structure of consciousness. And to

just this is due the freshness and impartiality of the analyses which

James gives out of his enviable knowledge of characteristic cases. James

rightly emphasizes the endlessly different intensity of religious

experiences, and the great number of points of view and of judgments

which thereby results. He also rightly emphasizes the connection of this

different intensity with irreducible typical constitutions of the soul's

life, with the optimistic and the melancholy disposition; hence there

arise constantly, even within the same religion, essentially different

types of religiousness. Limiting himself, then, to the most intense

experiences, he decides that the characteristic of religious states is

the sense of presence of the divine, which one might perhaps describe in

other terms, but which still continues the specifically divine, with the

opposed emotional effects of a solemn sense of contrast and of

enthusiastic exaltation. He pictures these senses of presence, and

illustrates them by visionary and hallucinatory representations of the

abstract. With this are connected impulsive and inhibitive conditions

for the appearance of these senses of presence and of reality,

descriptions of the effects upon the emotional life and action, and,

above all, the analysis of the event usually called conversion, in which

the religious experience out of subconscious antecedents becomes, in

various ways, the centre of the soul's life. All this is description,

but it is based upon a mass of examples and explained by general

psychological categories which, by the occurrence of the religious event

only, receive a thoroughly specific coloring. It is a description after

the manner of Kirchhoff's mechanics; permanent and similar types, and,

likewise, similar conditions for their relations to the rest of the

soul's life are sought out everywhere, without maintaining to have

proven at the same time, in this way, an intellectual necessity for the

connection. But the characteristic peculiarity of religious phenomena is

thus conceived as in no other previous analysis.

All this is still, however, nothing more than psychologic. For the

science of religion it accomplishes nothing more than the psychological

determination of the peculiarity of the phenomenon, of its environment,

its relations and consequences. It is evident that the phenomenon occurs

in an indefinite number of varieties; and the chosen point of departure,

in unusual and excessive cases, frequently diffuses over religion itself

the character of the bizarre and abnormal. Consequently nothing whatever

is said about the amount of truth or of reality in these cases. This, by

the very principles of such a psychology, is impossible. It analyzes,

produces types and categories, points out comparatively constant

connections and interactions. But this cannot be the last word for the

science of religion. It demands, above all, empirical knowledge of the

phenomenon; but it demands this only in order, on the basis of this

knowledge, to be able to answer the question of the amount of truth. But

this leads to an entirely different problem, that of the _theory of

knowledge_, which has its own conditions of solution. It is impossible

to stop at a merely empirical psychology. The question is not merely of

given facts, but of the amount of knowledge in these facts. But pure

empiricism will not succeed in answering this question. The question

with regard to the amount of truth is always a question of validity. The

question with regard to validity can, however, be decided only by

logical and by general, conceptual investigations. Thus we pass over

from the ground of empiricism to that of rationalism, and the question

is, what the theory of knowledge or rationalism signifies for the

science of religion.

Such a synthesis of the rational and irrational, of the psychological

and the theory of knowledge, is the main problem raised by the teaching

of Kant, and the significance of Kant is that he clearly and once for

all raised the problem in this way. He had the same strong mind for the

empirical and actual as for the rational and conceptual elements of

human knowledge, and constructed science as a balance between the two.

(He destroyed forever the _a priori_ speculative rationalism of the

necessary ideas of thought, and the analytical deductions from them,

which undertakes to call reality out of the necessity of thought as

such. He restricted regressive rationalism to metaphysical hypotheses

and probabilities, the evidence for which rests upon the inevitability

of the logical operations which leads to them, which, however, apply

general concepts without reference to experience, and therefore become

empty, and thus afford no real knowledge.) On the other hand, he

proclaimed the formal, immanent rationalism of experience, in attempting

to unite Hume's truth with the truth of Leibnitz and of Plato. In this

way he succeeded in grasping the great problem of thought by the root,

and in putting attempts at solutions on the right basis. So it is not a

mere national custom of German philosophizing, if we take our bearings,

for the most part, from this greatest of German thinkers, but it is,

absolutely, the most fruitful and keenest way of putting the problem. It

is true, the solutions which Kant made, and which are closely connected

with the classical mechanics of that time, with the undeveloped

condition of the psychology of that time, and with the incompleteness of

historical thinking then just beginning, have been, meantime, more than

once given up again. A simple return to him is therefore impossible. But

the problem was put by him in a fundamental way, and his solutions need

nothing more than modification and completion.

Now all this is especially true in the case of the science of religion.

Here also Kant took the same course, which seemed to me right for the

theoretical knowledge of the natural sciences and for anthropology. In

practical philosophy also, to which he rightly counts philosophy of

religion, he seeks laws of the practical reason analogous to the laws of

theoretical reason, axioms of the ethical, æsthetic, and religious

consciousness which are already contained _a priori_ in the elementary

appearances in these fields, and, in application to concrete reality,

produce just these activities of the reason. Here also one should grasp

reason only as contained in life itself, the _a priori_ law itself

already effective in the diversity of the appearances should make one's

self clear-sighted and so competent for a criticism of the stream of the

soul's appearances. Seizing upon itself in the practical reality, the

practical reason criticises the psychological complex, rejects as

illusion and error that which cannot be comprehended in an _a priori_

law, selects that part of the same which needs basis and centre and

requires only clearness with regard to itself, clears the way for

revelations of a life consciousness of its own legality and becomes

capable of the development of critically purified experience.

If this is, in principle, valid, the Kantian thought, in the further

detail, is maintained in principle only and as a whole. The elaboration

itself will have to be quite different from that of his own. Even by

Kant himself, on this very point, the synthesis of empiricism and

rationalism is far from being elaborated with the necessary rigor and

consistency. And to-day we have a quite differently developed psychology

of religion, in contrast with which that presupposed by Kant is bare and

thin. Finally, there remain in the whole method of the critical system

unsolved problems; by failure to solve these, or by too hasty solution,

science of religion, especially, is affected.

To make clear the present condition of the problem, one ought, above

all, to indicate the modifications to which the Kantian theory of

religion must submit,--must submit, especially, by reason of a more

delicate psychology, such as we have, with remarkable richness, in James

and the American psychologists connected with him. There are _four_

points with regard to this question.

The first is the question of the relation of psychology and theory of

knowledge in the very establishment of the laws of the theory of

knowledge. Are not the search for and discovery of the laws of the

theory of knowledge themselves possible only by way of psychological

ascertainment of facts, itself then a psychological undertaking and

consequently dependent upon all its conditions? It is the much discussed

question of the circle which itself lies at the outset of the critical

system. The answer to this is that this circle lies in the very being of

all knowledge, and must therefore be resolutely committed. It signifies

nothing more than the presupposition of all thought, the trust in a

reason which establishes itself only by making use of itself. The

unmistakable elements of the logical assert themselves as logical in

distinction from the psychological, and from this point on reason must

be trusted in all its confusions and entanglements to recognize itself

within the psychological. It is the courage of thought, as Hegel says,

which may presuppose that the self-knowledge of reason may trust itself,

presuppose that reason is contained within the psychological; or it is

the ethical and teleological presupposition of all thought, as Lotze

says, which believes in knowledge and the validity of its laws for the

sake of a connected meaning for reality, and which, therefore, trusts to

recognize itself out of the psychological mass. The establishment,

therefore, of the laws of the theory of knowledge is not itself a

psychological analysis, but a knowledge of self by the logical by virtue

of which it extricates itself out of the psychological mass. Theory of

knowledge, like every rationalism, includes, it is true, very real

presuppositions with regard to the significant, rational, and

teleologically connective character of reality, and without this

presupposition it is untenable; in it lies its root. It is insight of

former days, the importance of which, however, must constantly be

emphasized anew, that discusses the validity of the rational as opposed

to the merely empirical. But still more important than this thesis are

several _inferences_ which are given with it.

The establishment of the laws of consciousness, in which we produce

experience, is a selection of the laws out of experience itself, a

knowledge of itself by the reason contained in the very experience by

way of the analysis which extracts it. It is then an endless task,

completed by constantly renewed attacks, and always only approximately

solvable. The complete separation of the merely psychological and actual

and of the logical and necessary will never be completely accomplished,

but will always be open to doubt; one can only attempt always to limit

more vigorously the field of what is doubtful. And with this something

further is connected.

The inexhaustible production of life becomes constantly, in the latent

amount of reason, richer than the analysis discerns, or, in other words,

the laws which are brought into the light of logic will always be less

the amount of reason not brought into consciousness, and conscious logic

will always be obliged to correct itself and enrich itself out of the

unartificial logical operations arising in contact with the object. So a

finished system of _a priori_ principles, but this system will always be

in growth, will be obliged unceasingly to correct itself, and to contain

open spaces.

Finally, and above all, in case of this separation, there remains within

the psychologically conditioned appearance, a residuum, which is either

not conceived, but is later reduced to law and thereby a conceived

phenomenon, or which never can be so, and is therefore illusion and

error. If the psychological and the theoretical for knowledge are to be

separated, then that can occur, not merely to show that both must always

be together, and form real experience only when together, but there must

also be a rejection of that which is merely psychological and not

rational since it is illusion and error. The distinction between the

apparent and the real was the point of departure which made the whole

theory necessary, and, accordingly, the merely psychological must remain

appearance and error side by side with that which is psychological and,

at the same time, theoretical for knowledge. There always remains in

consciousness a residuum of the inconceivable, that is, inconceivable

since it is illusion and error. This amounts to saying that reality is

never fully rational, but is engaged in a struggle between the rational

and anti-rational. The anti-rational or irrational, in the sense of

psychological illusion and error, belongs also to the real, and strives

against the rational. The true and rational reality to be attained by

thought is always in conjunction with the untrue reality, the

psychological, that containing illusion and error.

All this signifies that the rationalism of the theory of knowledge must

be conditional, partly owing to the corrective and enriching fecundation

by primitive and naïve thought, partly owing to never quite separable

admixture of illusion and error. So, long ago, the system of categorical

forms, as Kant constructed it for theoretical and practical reason,

began to change, and can never again acquire the rigidity which Kant's

rationalism intended to give it forevermore. And thus the critical

system's rational reality of law produced by reason always contains

below itself and beside itself the merely psychological reality of the

factual, to which also illusion and error belong,--a reality which can

never be rationalized, but only set aside. This, too, is also true for

the philosophy of religion: the rational reduction of the psychological

facts of religion to the general laws of consciousness which prevail

among them is a task constantly to be resumed anew by the study of

reality, and follows the movements of primitive religion in order to

find there first the rational basis; the reduction is, however, always

approximate, can comprehend the main points only, and must leave much

open, the rational ground for which is not or not yet evident; finally

it has unceasingly to reckon with the irrational as illusion and error,

which attaches to the rational, and yet is not explainable by it. The

two realities, which the critical system must recognize at its very

foundation, continue in strife with each other, and this strife as the

strife of divine truth with human illusion is for the science of

religion of still more importance.

The second correction of the Kantian teaching is only a further

consequence from this state of things. If the attitude of psychology and

theory of knowledge requires a strict separation, it requires it only

for the purpose of more correct relation. The laws of the theory of

knowledge are separated from the merely psychological actuality, but

still can be produced only out of it. Thus, as a matter of fact,

psychological analysis is always the presupposition for the correct

conception of all these laws. Psychology is the entrance gate to theory

of knowledge. This is true for theoretical logic as well as for the

practical logic of the moral, the æsthetical, and the religious. But

just at this point the present, on the basis of its psychological

investigation, presses far beyond the original form of the Kantian

teaching. This is not the place to describe this, more closely, with

reference to the first of the subjects just mentioned. But it is

important to insist that this is especially true with respect to the

Kantian doctrine of religion. The Kantian doctrine of religion is

founded on the moral and religious psychology of Deism, which had made

the connection, frequent in experience, of moral feelings with religious

emotion the sole basis of the philosophy of religion, and had, in the

manner of the psychology of the eighteenth century, immediately changed

this connection into intellectual reflections, in accord with which the

moral law demands its originator and guarantee. Kant accepted this

psychology of religion without proof and built upon it his main law of

the religious consciousness, in accordance with which a synthetic

judgment _a priori_ is operative in religion (arising in the moral

experience of freedom), which requires that the world be regarded as

subject to the purposes of freedom. It is, however, extremely one-sided,

to give religion its place just between the elements, and a rather

violent translation of the religious constitution into reflection. The

error of this psychology of religion had been discovered and corrected

already by Schleiermacher. But Schleiermacher, for his part too, also

failed to deny himself an altogether too sudden metaphysical

interpretation of the religious _a priori_ which he had demonstrated,

since he not only described the _a priori_ judgment of things, from the

point of view of absolute dependence upon God, as a vague feeling, but

raised this feeling, by reason of the supposed lack of difference, in

it, between thought and will, reason and being, to a world-principle,

and interpreted the idea of God contained in this feeling in the terms

of his Spinozism, the lack of difference between God and Nature within

the Absolute. A real theory of knowledge of religion must keep itself

much more independent of all metaphysical presuppositions and

inferences, and must admit that the essence of the religious _a priori_

is extorted from a thoroughly impartial psychological analysis. And this

is always the place where works, such as those of James, come into play.

Religion as a special category or form of psychical constitution, the

result of a more or less vague presence of the divine in the soul, the

feeling of presence and reality with reference to the superhuman or

infinite, that is without any doubt a much more correct point of

departure for the analysis of the rational _a priori_ of religion, and

it remains to make this new psychology fruitful for the theory of

knowledge of religion. That will be one of the chief tasks of the

future.

The third change relates to the distinction of the empirical and

intelligible Ego, which Kant connected closely, almost indissolubly with

his main epistemological thought of the formal rationalisms immanent in

experience. Kant rationalized the whole outer and inner experience, by

means of _a priori_ laws, into a totality, conforming to law, appearing

in intuitive forms of space and time, causally and necessarily rigidly

connected. The freedom autonomously determining itself out of the

logical idea, and contrasting itself with the psychological stream,

produces out of the confused psycholican reality this scientific

formation of the true reality. The product of thought, however, swallows

its own maker. For the same acts of freedom, which autonomously produced

the formation of the reality of law, remain themselves in the temporal

sequence of psychical events, and, therefore, themselves, with that

formation, lapse into the sequence which is under mechanical law. The

intelligible Ego creates the world of law, and finds itself therein,

with its activity, as empirical Ego, that is, as product of the great

world-mechanism and of its causal sequence. It is an intolerable,

violent contradiction, and it is no solution of this contradiction to

refer the empirical Ego to appearance, and the intelligible Ego to

actuality existing in itself, if the operations of the intelligible Ego,

also a constituent part of what takes place in the soul, occur in time

and so relapse irrecoverably into phenomenality and its mechanism. All

the ingenuity of modern interpretation of Kant has not succeeded in

making this circle more tolerable, all shifting of one and the same

thing to different points of view has only enriched scientific

terminology with masterpieces of parenthetical caution, but not removed

the objection that two different points of view do not, as a matter of

fact, exist side by side, but conflict within the same object.

This circle is especially intolerable for the psychology of religion and

its application to the theory of knowledge. The psychology of religion

certainly shows us that the deeper feeling of all religion is not a

product of the mechanical sequence, but an effect of the supersensuous

itself as it is felt there; it believes that it arises in the

intelligible Ego by way of some kind of connection with the

supersensuous world. This, however, becomes completely impossible for

the Kantian theory of the empirical Ego, and all distinctions of a

double point of view in no wise change the fact that these points of

view are mutually absolutely exclusive. Here we have the results of

psychology which the expression of religious emotion confirms, in that

religion can be causally reduced to nothing else, totally opposed to the

consequences of such a theory of knowledge. Kant had himself often

enough practically felt this, and spoke then of freedom as an experience

of communion with the supersensuous as a possible but unprovable affair,

while all that, in case of a strict adherence to the phenomenality of

time and of the theory of the empirical Ego, which is a consequence of

it, is completely impossible. Nothing can be of any assistance here

except a decisive renunciation of those epistemological positions which

contradict the results of psychology, and which are themselves only

doctrinaire consequences from other positions. Nothing else is possible

but the modification of the phenomenality of time, in such a way that by

no means everything which belongs to time belongs also as a matter of

course to phenomenality, but that the autonomous rational acts which

occur in the time series of consciousness possess their own intelligible

time-form. At the same time the concept of causality closely connected

with the concept of time is to be modified so that there should be not

only an immanent and phenomenal causal connection, but also a regular

interaction between phenomenal and intelligible, psychological and

rational, conscious reality. At the same time the conclusion is also

given up, that the Ego submits unconditionally and directly to

phenomenality and to causal necessity, while the same Ego, once more, in

the same way, as a whole, from another point of view, is subordinate to

freedom and autonomy, that is, self-constitutive through ideas. The two

Egos must lie not side by side, but in and over one another. It must be

possible that, within the phenomenal Ego by a creative act of the

intelligible Ego in it, the personality should be formed and developed

as a realization of the autonomous reason, so that the intelligible

issues from the phenomenal, the rational from the psychological, the

former elaborates and shapes the latter, and between both a relation of

regular interaction, but not of causal constraint, takes place. This

rather deep, incisive modification is, in its turn, an approach of the

Kantian teaching to empiricism, but still at the same time, in the

destruction and subordination of the phenomenal and intelligible world,

in the emphasis upon the single personality issuing from the act of

reason, an adherence to rationalism. But since the distinction and the

interrelation between the rational and the empirical forms the point of

departure for the critical system, and this point of departure requires

at the same time the moulding and shaping of the empirical by the

rational and the rejection of the psychological appearance; a mere

parallelism is altogether impossible, but an interrelation is included,

and a task set for the effort and labor which constantly makes the

rational penetrate the empirical. At the very outset we have the

exclusion of the parallelism and the assertion of the interrelation. The

interrelation, by its very nature, asserts the interruption of the

causal necessity and the penetration of autonomous reason in this

sequence, without being itself produced by this sequence, although it

can be stimulated and helped or inhibited and weakened by it. Thus, in

such a case as this, the irrational is recognized by the side of and in

the rational. In this case the irrational of the event without causal

compulsion by some antecedent, or of the self-determination by the

autonomous idea alone, is the irrational of freedom. It is the

irrational of the creative procedure which constitutes the idea out of

itself and produces the consequences of the reason out of the

constituted idea. But this irrational plays everywhere in the whole life

of the soul an essential part, and is not less than decisive in the case

of religion, which must be quite different from what it is if it did not

have the right to maintain that which it declares to be true of itself,

namely, that it is an act of freedom and a gift of grace, an effect of

the supersensuous permeating the natural phenomenal life of the soul and

an act of free devotion the natural motivation.

The fourth problem arises, when we examine the rational law of the

religious nature or of the having of religion which lies in the being

and organization of the reason. The having of religion may be

demonstrated as a law of the normal consciousness from the immanent

feeling of necessity and obligation which properly belongs to religion,

and from its organic place in the economy of consciousness, which

receives its concentration and its relation to an objective world-reason

only from religion. But precisely because religion is reduced to this,

it is clear that this is only a reduction which abstracts from the

empirical actuality just as the categories of pure reason do. This

abstraction, then, should under no circumstances itself be regarded as

the real religion. It is only the rational _a priori_ of the psychical

appearances, but not the replacement of appearances by the truth free

from confusion. The psychical reality in which alone the truth is

effective should never be forgotten out of regard for the truth. This

is, however, the fact in the Kantian theory of religion in _two_

directions.

It is always noticeable that the _a priori_ of the practical reason is

treated by Kant quite differently from the theoretical. In case of the

latter the main idea of the synthesis, immanent in experience, of

rationalism and empiricism, is retained, and the _a priori_ of the pure

forms of intuition and of the pure categories is nothing without the

contents of concrete reality which become shaped in it. It may be very

difficult actually to grasp the coöperation of the _a priori_ and the

empirical in the single case, and Kant's theory of the categories may

have to be entirely reshaped and approximated to _a priori_ hypotheses

requiring verification, but the principle itself is always the

disposition of the real and genuine problem of all knowledge. In case of

the practical _a priori_ Kant did, it is true, firmly emphasize the

formal character of the ethical, æsthetical, and religious law, but, in

doing this, does not lose quite out of sight the psychical reality. They

appear not as empty forms which attain to their reality only when filled

with the concrete ethical tasks, the artistic creations, and the

religious states, but as abstract truths of reason, which have to take

the place of the intricacies of usual consciousness. At this point one

has always been right in feeling a relapse on the part of Kant into the

abstract, analytical, conceptual, rationalism, and for this very reason

Kant's statements about these things are of great sublimity and rigor of

principle, but scanty in content. It is more important in case also of

this _a priori_ of the practical reason to keep in mind that it is a

purely formal _a priori_ and in reality must constantly be in relation

with the psychical content, in order to give this content the firm core

of the real and the principle of the critical regulation of self. So the

_a priori_ of morals is not to be represented abstractly merely by

itself, but it is to be conceived in its relation to all the tasks which

we feel as obligatory, and it extends itself from that point outwards

over the total expanse of the activity of reason. Likewise the _a

priori_ of art is not to be denoted in the abstract idea of the unity of

freedom and necessity, but to be shown in the whole expanse which is

present to the soul as artistic form or conception. Thus, in especial

degree, religion is not to be reduced to the belief of reason in a moral

world-order, and simply contrasted with all supposed religion of any

other kind, but the religious _a priori_ should only serve in order to

establish the essential in the empirical appearance, but without

stripping off this appearance altogether, and from this point of the

essential to correct the intricacies and narrowness, the errors and

false combinations of the psychical situation. Kant, by his original

thought of the _a priori_, was urged in different ways to such a view,

and construed epistemologically the empirical psychological religion as

imaginary illustrations of the _a priori_. But that is occasional only

and does not dominate Kant's real view of religion. This is and still

remains only a translation of the usual moral and theological

rationalism from the formula of Locke and Wolff into the formula of the

critical philosophy.

The same revision occurs in quite a different direction. If religion is

an _a priori_ of reason, it is, once for all, established together with

reason, and all religion is everywhere and always religious in the same

proposition as it is in any way realized. Schleiermacher expressly

stated this in his development of the Kantian theory, and, in so far as

the practical reason is always penetrated with freedom, and consequently

religion itself is established with the act of moral freedom, this was

also asserted by Kant himself. Such an assertion, however, contradicts

every psychological observation whatsoever. It is true such observation

can prove that religious emotions adjust themselves easily to all

activities of reason, but it must sharply distinguish what is nothing

more than the religiousness of vague feeling of supersensual

regulations, which usually are joined with art and morals, from real and

characteristic religiousness, in which, each single time, a purely

personal relation of presence to the supersensuous takes place. But this

whole problem signifies nothing else than the actualizing of the

religious _a priori_, which actualizing always occurs in quite specific

and, in spite of all difference, essentially similar psychical

experiences and states. This problem of the actualizing of the religious

_a priori_ and of its connection with concrete individual psychical

phenomena, Kant completely overlooked in his abstract concept of

religion, or rather, deliberately ignored, because, as he wrote to

Jacobi, he saw all the dangers of mysticism lurking in it. This fear was

justified; for, as a matter of fact, all the specific occurrences of

mysticism, from conversion, prayer, and contemplation to enthusiasm,

vision, and ecstasy, do lurk in it. But without this mysticism there is

no real religion, and the psychology of religion shows most clearly how

the real pulse of religion beats in the mystical experiences. A religion

without it is only a preliminary step, or a reverberation of real and

actual religion. Moreover, the states are easily conceived in a theory

of knowledge, if one sees in them the actualizing of the religious _a

priori_, the production of actual religion in the fusion of the rational

law with the concrete individual psychical fact. The mysticism

recognized as essential by the psychology of religion must find its

place in the theory of knowledge, and it finds it as the psychological

actualizing of the religious _a priori_, in which alone that interlacing

of the necessary, the rational, the conformable to law, and the factual

occurs, which characterizes real religion. The dangers of such a

mysticism, which are recognized a thousandfold in experience, cannot be

dispelled altogether by the displacement of mysticism, for that would

mean to displace religion itself. It would be the same, if one should

try to avoid the dangers of illusion and error, by keeping to the pure

categories alone, and ceasing to employ them in the actual thinking of

experience. Rather, they can be dispelled only in that the actualizing

of the rational _a priori_ is recognized in the mystical occurrences,

and thus the intricacies and one-sidedness of the mere psychological

stream of religiousness be avoided. The psychological reality of

religion must always remember the rational substance of religion, and

always bring religion as central in the system of consciousness into

fruitful and adjusted contact with the total life of the reason. Thus

the psychological reality corrects and purifies itself out of its own _a

priori_, without, however, destroying itself; or rather, the actual

religion in the psychical category of the mystical occurrences will

subside to a more or less degree. Thus we have the irrational prevailing

here in its third form, which like the two others was contained in the

very outset of the critical system, in the form of the once-occurring,

factual, and individual, which, of course, has a rational basis or a

rational element in itself, but is besides a pure fact and reality. Just

this is the excellence of the rationalism immanent in experience (the

critical system), that it makes room for this feature beside the general

and conceptual rationality. It did not make room for it to the extent

really required, and it especially left no space for it in its abstract

philosophy of religion. This space must again be opened by the theory of

the actualizing of the religious _a priori_, and there again lies

another improvement of the critical system under the influence of modern

psychology.

If we summarize all this, we have a quantity of concessions by the

formal epistemological rationalism to the irrationality of the

psychological facts and a repeated breaking down of the over-rigorous

Kantian rationalism. Contrariwise, however, the pure psychological

investigation is also compelled to withdraw from the unlimited quantity

and the absolute irrationality of the multifarious (and of the confusion

of appearance and truth) to a rational criterium, which can be found in

the rational _a priori_ of the reason only, and in the organic position

of this _a priori_ in the system of consciousness in general. By this

rationalism alone may the true validity of religion be founded, and by

this alone the uncultivated psychical life may be critically regulated.

Religion will be conceived in its concrete vitality and not mutilated;

it will constantly be brought out of the jumble of its distortions,

blendings, one-sidedness, narrowness, and exuberance back again to its

original content, and to its organic relations to the totality of the

life of reason, to the scientific moral and artistic accomplishments.

That is everything that science can do for it, but is not this service

great enough and indispensable enough to justify the work of such a

science? We do not stop with nothing more than "varieties of religious

experience" which is the result of James's method; but neither do we

stop with nothing more than a rational idea of religion, which

overpowers experience, as was still so in the case of Kant. But we must

learn how intimately to combine the empirical and psychological with the

critical and normative. The ideas of Hume and of Leibnitz must once more

be brought into relation with the continuations of Kant's work, and the

combination of the Anglo-Saxon sense for reality with the German spirit

of speculation is still the task for the new century as well as for the

century past.

SHORT PAPERS

A short paper was contributed to this Section by Professor Alexander T.

Ormond, of Princeton University, on "Some Roots and Factors of

Religion." The speaker said that religion, like everything else human,

has its rise in man's experience. It has also doubtless had a history

that will present the outlines of a development, if but the course of

that development can be traced. "But in the case of religion our theory

of development will be largely qualified by our judgment as to its

origin; while, regarding origin itself, we have to depend on hypotheses

constructed from our more or less imperfect acquaintance with the races,

and especially the savage races, of the present. The primitive

pre-religious man is a construction from present data, and will always

remain more or less hypothetical. This will partially explain, and at

the same time partially excuse, what we will agree is the unsatisfactory

character of the anthropological theories as accounts of the origin of

religion. But there are other reasons for this partial failure that are

less excusable. One of these is the rather singular failure of the

leading anthropologists, in dealing with the origin of religion, to

distinguish between _fundamental_ and merely tributary causes. For

instance, if we suppose that man has in some way come into possession of

a germ of religiousness, many things will become genuine tributaries to

its development that when urged as explanations of the germ itself would

be obviously futile. There must be a cause for the pretty general

failure to note this distinction which is vital to religious theory, and

I am convinced that the principal cause is a certain lack of

psychological insight and of philosophical grasp in dealing with the

problem of the first data and primary roots of religion in man's nature.

"In the first place, it is needful in dealing with the religion of the

hypothetical man that we should have some idea of what constitutes

religion in the actual man. Now, back of all the outward manifestations

of religion, will stand the religious consciousness of the man and the

community, and it will be this that will determine the idea of religion

in its most essential form. The developed idea of religion, therefore,

arising out of this germinal impression, would take the form of a sense

(we may now call it concept) of relatedness to some being _akin_ to man

himself, and yet transcending him in some real though undetermined

respects. Anything short of this would, I think, leave religion in some

respects unaccounted for; while anything more would perhaps exclude some

genuine manifestations of religion.

"If the idea of religion arises out of an _impression_, then it will not

be possible to deny to it an intellectual root. I make this statement

with some diffidence, because if I do not misinterpret them, some recent

psychologists have practically denied the intellectual root in their

doctrine that religion can have no original intellectual content. If I

am not further misled, however, these writers would admit that a content

is achieved by the symbolic use of experience. This is perhaps all I

need argue for here; since our epistemology is teaching us that the

distinction between symbolism and perception is only that between the

direct and the indirect; while here it is clear that its use in

developing the significance of the religious impression would have all

the directness and, therefore, all the cogency of an immediate

inference.

"Let us now restore the intellectual and emotional elements of religion

to their place in a synthesis; we will then have a concrete religious

experience out of which may be analyzed at least two fundamental

factors. The first of these is what we may call the _personal_ factor in

religion. We are treading in the footsteps of the anthropologists when

we find among the most undeveloped savages a tendency to personify the

objects of their worship. When it comes to the question of determining

the rôle that this personalizing tendency has actually played in the

development of religion, the anthropologists divide into two camps, one

of these, led by Max Müller, regarding it as a symbolic interpretation

put upon the impression of some great natural or cosmic object or

phenomenon; while others, including Herbert Spencer and Mr. Tylor,

prefer to seek the originals of religion in ancestral dream-images and

ghostly apparitions. These writers thus start with completely

anthropomorphic terms, and their problem is to de-anthropomorphize the

elements to the extent necessary to constitute them data of religion.

The second factor standing over against the personal, as its opposite,

is that of transcendence. By transcendence I mean that deifying,

infinitating process that is ever working contra to the anthropomorphic

influence in the sphere of religious conceptions. The School of Spencer

regard this as the only legitimate tendency in religion. We do not argue

this point here, but agree that it is as legitimate and real a factor as

that of personality. The root of this factor, if our diagnosis of the

idea of religion be correct, is to be sought in the original impression

of religion, and it no doubt has its origin in man's feeling-reaction

from that impression. We have pointed to submission as one of the

religious emotions. Now submission rests on some deeper

feeling-attitude, which some have translated into the feeling or sense

of dependence. This, however, is not adequate, since men have the sense

of social dependence on finite beings, and we have it with reference to

the floor we are standing on. Rather, it seems to me, we must translate

it into the stronger and more unconditional feeling of helplessness. One

real ground of our religious consciousness is the sense or feeling of

helplessness toward God; the sense that we have no standing in being as

against the Deity. This radical feeling utters itself in every note of

the religious scale, from the lowest superstitious terror to the highest

mystical self-annihilation.

"These two factors, the forces of personalization and transcendence, are

inseparable. They constitute the terms of a dialectic within the

religious consciousness, by virtue of which in one phase our religious

conceptions are becoming ever more adequate and satisfying, while from

another point of view their insufficiency grows more and more apparent.

And, on the broader field of religious history, they embody themselves

in a law of tendency, which Spencer has only half-expressed, by virtue

of which the objects of religion are on one hand becoming ever more

intelligible; on the other, ever more transcendent of our conceptions."

* * * * *

A short paper was read by Professor F. C. French, Professor of

Philosophy in the University of Nebraska, on "The Bearing of Certain

Aspects of the Newer Psychology on the Philosophy of Religion." The

speaker said in part:

"The relation of science to religion has received, to be sure, much

study, but to most minds hitherto this has meant the relation of only

the physical sciences to religion. The older psychology was largely

speculative and metaphysical in character. There were, of course, some

who employed the empirical method in psychology, but they were so far

from comprehending the full scope of mental phenomena that, at best,

their work gave the promise of a science rather than a science itself.

"It is not the fact that the newer psychology takes account of the

physiological conditions of mental life; it is not the fact that the

subject is now pursued in laboratories with instruments of precision,

that gives it its full standing as a science: it is much more the fact

that the psychology of to-day has found a place in the natural system of

mental things for those strange and relatively unusual phenomena of

consciousness which to the scientifically minded seemed totally unreal

and to the superstitious manifestations of the supernatural....

"In showing that the abnormal can be explained in terms of the normal,

psychology does now for the phenomena of mind what the physical sciences

have long done for the phenomena of nature....

"Psychology as a science postulates the reign of natural law in the

subjective sphere just as rigorously as physics postulates the reign of

law in the objective sphere....

"It is not in the unusual and the abnormal that the reflective mind is

to see God. It is not through gaps in nature that we are to get glimpses

of the supernatural. Rather is it in the very nature of nature,

rational, harmonious, law-conforming, subject to scientific

interpretation, that we have the best evidence that the world is made

mind-wise, that it is the work of an intelligent mind, that there is a

rational spirit at the care of the universe.

"For science the transcendent does not enter into the perceptual realm

external or internal. It is, indeed, hard for the religious mind to

admit this fact in all its fullness. Until it does, however, religion

must always stand more or less in fear of science. Once give up the

perceptual, in all its bearings, to science, and religion will find that

it has lost a weak support only to gain a stronger one. Ultimately, I

believe, we shall find that the full acceptance of science in the mental

domain as well as in the physical will strengthen the rational grounds

of theistic belief."

SECTION C--LOGIC

SECTION C--LOGIC

(_Hall 6, September 22, 10 a. m._)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR GEORGE M. DUNCAN, Yale University.

SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, Cornell University.

PROFESSOR FREDRICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE, Columbia University.

SECRETARY: DR. W. H. SHELDON, Columbia University.

The Chairman of this Section, Professor George M. Duncan, Professor of

Logic and Mathematics at Yale University, in introducing the speakers

spoke briefly of the scope and importance of the subject assigned to the

Section; expressed, on behalf of those in attendance, regret at the

inability of Professor Wilhelm Windelband to be present and take part in

the work of the Section, as had been expected; congratulated the Section

on the papers to be presented and the speakers who were to present them;

and announced the final programme of the Section.

THE RELATIONS OF LOGIC TO OTHER DISCIPLINES

BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. HAMMOND

[William Alexander Hammond, Assistant Professor of Ancient

and Medieval Philosophy and Æsthetics, Cornell University.

b. May 20, 1861, New Athens, Ohio. A.B. Harvard, 1885; Ph.D.

Leipzig, 1891. Lecturer on Classics, King's College,

Windsor, N. S., 1885-88; Secretary of the University

Faculty, Cornell; Member American Psychological Association,

American Philosophical Association. Author of _The

Characters of Theophrastus_, translated with Introduction;

_Aristotle's Psychology_, translated with Introduction.]

In 1787, in the preface to the second edition of the _Kr. d. r. V._,

Kant wrote the following words: "That logic, from the earliest times,

has followed that secure method" (namely, the secure method of a science

witnessed by the unanimity of its workers and the stability of its

results) "may be seen from the fact that since Aristotle it has not had

to retrace a single step, unless we choose to consider as improvements

the removal of some unnecessary subtleties, or the clearer definition of

its matter, both of which refer to the elegance rather than to the

solidity of the science. It is remarkable, also, that to the present

day, it has not been able to make one step in advance, so that to all

appearances it may be considered as completed and perfect. If some

modern philosophers thought to enlarge it, by introducing

_psychological_ chapters on the different faculties of knowledge

(faculty of imagination, wit, etc.), or _metaphysical_ chapters on the

origin of knowledge or different degrees of certainty according to the

difference of objects (idealism, skepticism, etc.), or, lastly,

_anthropological_ chapters on prejudices, their causes and remedies,

this could only arise from their ignorance of the peculiar nature of

logical science. We do not enlarge, but we only disfigure the sciences,

if we allow their respective limits to be confounded; and the limits of

logic are definitely fixed by the fact that it is a science which has

nothing to do but fully to exhibit and strictly to prove the formal

rules of all thought (whether it be _a priori_ or empirical, whatever be

its origin or its object, and whatever be the impediments, accidental or

natural, which it has to encounter in the human mind)."--[Translated by

Max Müller.] Scarcely more than half a century after the publication of

this statement of Kant's, John Stuart Mill (Introduction to _System of

Logic_) wrote: "There is as great diversity among authors in the modes

which they have adopted of defining logic, as in their treatment of the

details of it. This is what might naturally be expected on any subject

on which writers have availed themselves of the same language as a means

of delivering different ideas.... This diversity is not so much an evil

to be complained of, as an inevitable, and in some degree a proper

result of the imperfect state of those sciences" (that is, of logic,

jurisprudence, and ethics). "It is not to be expected that there should

be agreement about the definition of anything, until there is agreement

about the thing itself." This remarkable disparity of opinion is due

partly to the changes in the treatment of logic from Kant to Mill, and

partly to the fact that both statements are extreme. That the science of

logic was "completed and perfect" in the time of Kant could only with

any degree of accuracy be said of the treatment of syllogistic proof or

the deductive logic of Aristotle. That the diversity was so great as

pictured by Mill is not historically exact, but could be said only of

the new epistemological and psychological treatment of logic and not of

the traditional formal logic. The confusion in logic is no doubt largely

due to disagreement in the delimitation of its proper territory and to

the consequent variety of opinions as to its relations to other

disciplines. The rise of inductive logic, coincident with the rise and

growth of physical science and empiricism, forced the consideration of

the question as to the relation of formal thought to reality, and the

consequent entanglement of logic in a triple alliance of logic,

psychology, and metaphysics. How logic can maintain friendly relations

with both of these and yet avoid endangering its territorial integrity

has not been made clear by logicians or psychologists or metaphysicians,

and that, too, in spite of persistent attempts justly to settle the

issue as to their respective spheres of influence. Until modern logic

definitely settles the question of its aims and legitimate problems, it

is difficult to see how any agreement can be reached as to its relation

to the other disciplines. The situation as it confronts one in the

discussion of the relations of logic to allied subjects may be analyzed

as follows:

1. The relation of logic as science to logic as art.

2. The relation of logic to psychology.

3. The relation of logic to metaphysics.

The development of nineteenth century logic has made an answer to the

last two of the foregoing problems exceedingly difficult. Indeed, one

may say that the evolution of modern epistemology has had a centrifugal

influence on logic, and instead of growth towards unity of conception we

have a chaos of diverse and discordant theories. The apple of discord

has been the theory of knowledge. A score of years ago when Adamson

wrote his admirable article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (article

"Logic," 1882), he found the conditions much the same as I now find

them. "Looking to the chaotic state of logical text-books at the present

time, one would be inclined to say that there does not exist anywhere a

recognized currently received body of speculations to which the title

logic can be unambiguously assigned, and that we must therefore resign

the hope of attaining by any empirical consideration of the received

doctrine a precise determination of the nature and limits of logical

theory." I do not, however, take quite so despondent a view of the

logical chaos as the late Professor Adamson; rather, I believe with

Professor Stratton (_Psy. Rev._ vol. III) that something is to be gained

for unity and consistency by more exact delimitation of the

subject-matter of the philosophical disciplines and their

interrelations, which precision, if secured, would assist in bringing

into clear relief the real problems of the several departments of

inquiry, and facilitate the proper classification of the disciplines

themselves.

The attempt to delimit the spheres of the disciplines, to state their

interrelations and classify them, was made early in the history of

philosophy, at the very beginning of the development of logic as a

science by Aristotle. In Plato's philosophy, logic is not separated from

epistemology and metaphysics. The key to his metaphysics is given

essentially in his theory of the reality of the concept, which offers an

interesting analogy to the position of logic in modern idealism. Before

Plato there was no formulation of logical theory, and in his dialogues

it is only contained in solution. The nearest approach to any

formulation is to be found in an applied logic set forth in the precepts

and rules of the rhetoricians and sophists. Properly speaking, Aristotle

made the first attempt to define the subject of logic and to determine

its relations to the other sciences. In a certain sense logic for

Aristotle is not a science at all. For science is concerned with some

_ens_, some branch of reality, while logic is concerned with the

methodology of knowing, with the formal processes of thought whereby an

_ens_ or a reality is ascertained and appropriated to knowledge. In the

sense of a method whereby all scientific knowledge is secured, logic is

a propædeutic to the sciences. In the idealism of the Eleatics and

Plato, thought and being are ultimately identical, and the laws of

thought are the laws of being. In Aristotle's conception, while the

processes of thought furnish a knowledge of reality or being, their

formal operation constitutes the technique of investigation, and their

systematic explanation and description constitute logic. Logic and

metaphysics are distinguished as the science of being and the doctrine

of the thought processes whereby being is known. Logic is the doctrine

of the organon of science, and when applied is the organon of science.

The logic of Aristotle is not a purely formal logic. He is not

interested in the merely schematic character of the thought processes,

but in their function as mediators of apodictic truth. He begins with

the assumption that in the conjunction and disjunction of correctly

formed judgments the conjunction or disjunction of reality is mirrored.

Aristotle does not here examine into the powers of the mind as a whole;

that is done, though fragmentarily, in the _De Anima_ and _Parva

Naturalia_, where the mental powers are regarded as phases of the

processes of nature without reference to normation; but in his logic he

inquires only into those forms and laws of thinking which mediate proof.

Scientific proof, in his conception, is furnished in the form of the

syllogism, whose component elements are terms and propositions. In the

little tract _On Interpretation_ (_i. e._ on the judgment as

_interpreter_ of thought), if it is genuine, the proposition is

considered in its logical bearing. The treatise on the _Categories_,

which discusses the nature of the most general terms, forms a connecting

link between logic and metaphysics. The categories are the most general

concepts or universal modes under which we have knowledge of the world.

They are not simply logical relations; they are existential forms, being

not only the modes under which thought regards being, but the modes

under which being exists. Aristotle's theory of the methodology of

science is intimately connected with his view of knowledge. Scientific

knowledge in his opinion refers to the essence of things; for example,

to those universal aspects of reality which are given in particulars,

but which remain self-identical amidst the variation and passing of

particulars. The universal, however, is known only through and after

particulars. There is no such thing as innate knowledge or Platonic

reminiscence. Knowledge, if not entirely empirical, has its basis in

empirical reality. Causes are known only through effects. The universals

have no existence apart from things, although they exist _realiter_ in

things. Empirical knowledge of particulars must, therefore, precede in

time the conceptual or scientific knowledge of universals. In the

evolution of scientific knowledge in the individual mind, the body of

particulars or of sense-experience is to its conceptual transformation

as potentiality is to actuality, matter to form, the completed end of

the former being realized in the latter. Only in the sense of this power

to transform and conceptualize, does the mind have knowledge within

itself. The genetic content is experiential; the developed concept,

judgment, or inference is _in form_ noëtic. Knowledge is, therefore, not

a mere "precipitate of experience," nor is Aristotle a complete

empiricist. The conceptual form of knowledge is not immediately given in

things experienced, but is a product of noëtic discrimination and

combination. Of a sensible object as such there is no concept; the

object of a concept is the generic essence of a thing; and the concept

itself is the thought of this generic essence. The individual is

generalized; every concept does or can embrace several individuals. It

is an "aggregate of distinguishing marks," and is expressed in a

definition. The concept as such is neither true nor false. Truth first

arises in the form of a judgment or proposition, wherein a subject is

coupled with a predicate, and something is said about something. A

judgment is true when the thought (whose inward process is the judgment

and the expression in vocal symbols is the proposition) regards as

conjoined or divided that which is conjoined or divided in actuality; in

other words, when the thought is congruous with the real. While

Aristotle does not ignore induction as a scientific method, (how could

he when he regards the self-subsistent individual as the only real?) yet

he says that, as a method, it labors under the defect of being only

proximate; a complete induction from _all_ particulars is not possible,

and therefore cannot furnish demonstration. Only the deductive process

proceeding syllogistically from the universal (or essential truth) to

the particular is scientifically cogent or apodictic. Consequently

Aristotle developed the science of logic mainly as a syllogistic

technique or instrument of demonstration. From this brief sketch of

Aristotle's logical views it will be seen that the epistemological and

metaphysical relations of logic which involve its greatest difficulty

and cause the greatest diversity in its modern exponents, were present

in undeveloped form to the mind of the first logician. It would require

a mighty optimism to suppose that this difficulty and diversity, which

has increased rather than diminished in the progress of historical

philosophy, should suddenly be made to vanish by some magic of

restatement of subject-matter, or theoretical delimitation of the

discipline. As Fichte said of philosophy, "The sort of a philosophy that

a man has, depends on the kind of man he is;" so one might almost say of

logic, "The sort of logic that a man has, depends on the kind of

philosopher he is." If the blight of discord is ever removed from

epistemology, we may expect agreement as to the relations of logic to

metaphysics. Meanwhile logic has the great body of scientific results

deposited in the physical sciences on which to build and test, with some

assurance, its doctrine of methodology; and as philosophy moves forward

persistently to the final solution of its problems, logic may justly

expect to be a beneficiary in its established theories.

After Aristotle's death logic lapsed into a formalism more and more

removed from any vital connection with reality and oblivious to the

profound epistemological and methodological questions that Aristotle had

at least raised. In the Middle Ages it became a highly developed

exercise in inference applied to the traditional dogmas of theology and

science as premises, with mainly apologetic or polemical functions. Its

chief importance is found in its application to the problem of realism

and nominalism, the question as to the nature of universals. At the

height of scholasticism realism gained its victory by syllogistically

showing the congruity of its premises with certain fundamental dogmas of

the Church, especially with the dogma of the unity and reality of the

Godhead. The heretical conclusion involved in nominalism is equivalent

(the accepted dogma of the Church being axiomatic) to _reductio ad

absurdum_. A use of logic such as this, tending to conserve rather than

to increase the body of knowledge, was bound to meet with attack on the

awakening of post-renaissance interest in the physical world, and the

acquirement of a body of truth to which the scholastic formal logic had

no relation. The anti-scholastic movement in logic was inaugurated by

Francis Bacon, who sought in his _Novum Organum_ to give science a real

content through the application of induction to experience and the

discovery of universal truths from particular instances. The syllogism

is rejected as a scientific instrument, because it does not lead _to_

principles, but proceeds only _from_ principles, and is therefore not

useful for discovery. It permits at most only refinements on knowledge

already possessed, but cannot be regarded as creative or productive. The

Baconian theory of induction regarded the accumulation of facts and the

derivation of general principles and laws from them as the true and

fruitful method of science. In England this empirical view of logic has

been altogether dominant, and the most illustrious English exponents of

logical theory, Herschel, Whewell, and Mill, have stood on that ground.

Since the introduction of German idealism in the last half century a new

logic has grown up whose chief business is with the theory of knowledge.

Kant's departure in logic is based on an epistemological examination of

the nature of judgment, and on the answer to his own question, "How are

synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?" The _a priori_ elements in

knowledge make knowledge of the real nature of things impossible. Human

knowledge extends to the phenomenal world, which is seen under the _a

priori_ forms of the understanding. Logic for Kant is the science of the

formal and necessary laws of thought, apart from any reference to

objects. Pure or universal logic aims to understand the forms of thought

without regard to metaphysical or psychological relations, and this

position of Kant is the historical beginning of the subjective formal

logic.

In the metaphysical logic of Hegel, which rests on a panlogistic basis,

being and thought, form and content, are identical. Logical necessity is

the measure and criterion of objective reality. The body of reality is

developed through the dialectic self-movement of the idea. In such an

idealistic monism, formal and real logic are by the metaphysical

postulate coincident.

Schleiermacher in his dialectic regards logic from the standpoint of

epistemological realism, in which the real deliverances of the senses

are conceptually transformed by the spontaneous activity of reason. This

spirit of realism is similar to that of Aristotle, in which the

one-sided _a priori_ view of knowledge is controverted. Space and time

are forms of the existence of things, and not merely _a priori_ forms of

knowing. Logic he divides into dialectic and technical logic. The former

regards the idea of knowledge as such; the formal or technical regards

knowledge in the process of becoming or the idea of knowledge in motion.

The forms of this process are induction and deduction. The Hegelian

theory of the generation of knowledge out of the processes of pure

thought is emphatically rejected.

Lotze, who is undoubtedly one of the most influential and fruitful

writers on logic in the last century, attempts to bring logic into

closer relations with contemporary science, and is an antagonist of

one-sided formal logics. For him logic falls into the three parts of (1)

pure logic or the logic of thought; (2) applied logic or the logic of

investigation; (3) the logic of knowledge or methodology; and this

classification of the matter and problems of logic has had an important

influence on subsequent treatises on the discipline. His logic is

formal, as he describes it himself, in the sense of setting forth the

modes of the operation of thought and its logical structure; it is real

in the sense that these forms are dependent on the nature of things and

not something independently given in the mind. While he aims to maintain

the distinct separation of logic and metaphysics, he says (in the

discussion of the relations between formal and real logical meaning) the

question of meaning naturally raises a metaphysical problem: "Ich thue

besser der Metaphysik die weitere Erörterung dieses wichtigen Punktes zu

überlassen." (_Log._ 2d ed. p. 571.) How could it be otherwise when his

whole view of the relations and validity of knowledge is inseparable

from his realism or teleological idealism, as he himself characterizes

his own standpoint?

Drobisch, a follower of Herbart, is one of the most thoroughgoing

formalists in modern logical theory. He attempts to maintain strictly

the distinction between thought and knowledge. Logic is the science of

thought. He holds that there may be formal truth, for example, logically

valid truth, which is materially false. Logic, in other words, is purely

formal; material truth is matter for metaphysics or science. Drobisch

holds, therefore, that the falsity of the judgment expressed in the

premise from which a formally correct syllogism may be deduced, is not

subject-matter for logic. The sphere of logic is limited to the region

of inference and forms of procedure, his view of the nature and function

of logic being determined largely by the bias of his mathematical

standpoint. The congruity of thought with itself, judgments,

conclusions, analyses, etc., is the sole logical truth, as against

Trendelenburg, who took the Aristotelian position that logical truth is

the "agreement of thought with the object of thought."

Sigwart looks at logic mainly from the standpoint of the technology of

science, in which, however, he discovers the implications of a

teleological metaphysic. Between the processes of consciousness and

external changes he finds a causal relation and not parallelism.

Inasmuch as thought sometimes misses its aim, as is shown by the fact

that error and dispute exist, there is need of a discipline whose

purpose is to show us how to attain and establish truth and avoid error.

This is the practical aim of logic, as distinguished from the

psychological treatment of thought, where the distinction between true

and false has no more place than the distinction between good and bad.

Logic presupposes the impulse to discover truth, and it therefore sets

forth the criteria of true thinking, and endeavors to describe those

normative operations whose aim is validity of judgment. Consequently

logic falls into the two parts of (1) critical, (2) technical, the

former having meaning only in reference to the latter; the main value of

logic is to be sought in its function as art. "Methodology, therefore,

which is generally made to take a subordinate place, should be regarded

as the special, final, and chief aim of our science." (_Logic_, vol. i,

p. 21, Eng. Tr.) As an art, logic undertakes to determine under what

conditions and prescriptions judgments are valid, but does not undertake

to pass upon the validity of the content of given judgments. Its

prescriptions have regard only to formal correctness and not to the

material truth of results. Logic is, therefore, a formal discipline. Its

business is with the due procedure of thought, and it attempts to show

no more than how we may advance in the reasoning process in such way

that each step is valid and necessary. If logic were to tell us _what_

to think or give us the content of thought, it would be commensurate

with the whole of science. Sigwart, however, does not mean by formal

thought independence of content, for it is not possible to disregard the

particular manner in which the materials and content of thought are

delivered through sensation and formed into ideas. Further, logic having

for its chief business the methodology of science, the development of

knowledge from empirical data, it ought to include a theory of

knowledge, but it should not so far depart from its subjective limits as

to include within its province the discussion of metaphysical

implications or a theory of being. For this reason, Sigwart relegates to

a postscript his discussion of teleology, but he gives an elaborate

treatment of epistemology extending through vol. I and develops his

account of methodology in vol. II. The question regarding the relation

between necessity, the element in which logical thought moves, and

freedom, the postulate of the will, carries one beyond the confines of

logic and is, in his opinion, the profoundest problem of metaphysics,

whose function is to deal with the ultimate relation between "subject

and object, the world and the individual, and this is not only basal for

logic and all science, but is the crown and end of them all."

Wundt's psychological and methodological treatment of logic stands

midway between the purely formal treatises on the one hand, and the

metaphysical treatises on the other hand. The general standpoint of

Wundt is similar to that of Sigwart, in that he discovers the function

of logic in the exposition of the formation and methods of scientific

knowledge; for example, in epistemology and methodology. Logic must

conform to the conditions under which scientific inquiry is actually

carried on; the forms of thought, therefore, cannot be separate from or

indifferent to the content of knowledge; for it is a fundamental

principle of science that its particular methods are determined by the

nature of its particular subject-matter. Scientific logic must reject

the theory that identifies thought and being (Hegel) and the theory of

parallelism between thought and reality (Schleiermacher, Trendelenburg,

and Ueberweg), in which the ultimate identity of the two is only

concealed. Both of these theories base logic on a metaphysics, which

makes it necessary to construe the real in terms of thought, and logic,

so divorced from empirical reality, is powerless to explain the methods

of scientific procedure. One cannot, however, avoid the acceptance of

thought as a competent organ for the interpretation of reality, unless

one abandons all question of validity and accepts agnosticism or

skepticism. This interpretative power of thought or congruity with

reality is translated by metaphysical logic into identity. Metaphysical

logic concerns itself fundamentally with the content of knowledge, not

with its evidential or formal logical aspects, but with being and the

laws of being. It is the business of metaphysics to construct its

notions and theories of reality out of the deliverances of the special

sciences and inferences derived therefrom. The aim of metaphysics is the

development of a world-view free from internal contradictions, a view

that shall unite all particular and plural knowledges into a whole.

Logic stands in more intimate relation to the special sciences, for here

the relations are reciprocal and immediate; for example, from actual

scientific procedure logic abstracts its general laws and results, and

these in turn it delivers to the sciences as their formulated

methodology. In the history of science the winning of knowledge precedes

the formulation of the rules employed, that is, precedes any scientific

methodology. Logic, as methodology, is not an _a priori_ construction,

but has its genesis in the growth of science itself and in the discovery

of those tests and criteria of truth which are found to possess an

actual heuristic or evidential value. It is not practicable to separate

epistemology and logic, for such concepts as causality, analogy,

validity, etc., are fundamental in logical method, and yet they belong

to the territory of epistemology, are epistemological in nature, as one

may indeed say of all the general laws of thought. A formal logic that

is merely propædeutic, a logic that aims to free itself from the

quarrels of epistemology, is scientifically useless. Its norms are

valueless, in so far as they can only teach the arrangement of knowledge

already possessed, and teach nothing as to how to secure it or test its

real validity. While formal logic aims to put itself outside of

philosophy, metaphysical logic would usurp the place of philosophy.

Formal logic is inadequate, because it neither shows how the laws of

thought originate, why they are valid, nor in what sense they are

applicable to concrete investigation. Wundt, therefore, develops a logic

which one may call epistemological methodological, and which stands

between the extremes of formal logic and metaphysical logic. The laws of

logic must be derived from the processes of psychic experience and the

procedure of the sciences. "Logic therefore needs," as he says,

"epistemology for its foundation and the doctrine of methods for its

completion."

Lipps takes the view outright that logic is a branch of psychology;

Husserl in his latest book goes to the other extreme of a purely formal

and technical logic, and devotes almost his entire first volume to the

complete sundering of psychology and logic.

Bradley bases his logic on the theory of the judgment. The logical

judgment is entirely different from the psychological. The logical

judgment is a qualification of reality by means of an idea. The

predicate is an adjective or attribute which in the judgment is ascribed

to reality. The aim of truth is to qualify reality by general notions.

But inasmuch as reality is individual and self-existent, whereas truth

is universal, truth and reality are not coincident. Bradley's

metaphysical solution of the disparity between thought and reality is

put forward in his theory of the unitary Absolute, whose concrete

content is the totality of experience. But as thought is not the whole

of experience, judgments cannot compass the whole of reality. Bosanquet

objects to this, and maintains that reality must not be regarded as an

ideal construction. The real world is the world to which our concepts

and judgments refer. In the former we have a world of isolated

individuals of definite content; in the latter, we have a world of

definitely systematized and organized content. Under the title of the

Morphology of Knowledge Bosanquet considers the evolution of judgment

and inference in their varied forms. "Logic starts from the individual

mind, as that within which we have the actual facts of intelligence,

which we are attempting to interpret into a system" (_Logic_, vol. i, p.

247). The real world for every individual is _his_ world. "The work of

intellectually constituting that totality which we call the real world

is the work of knowledge. The work of analyzing the process of this

constitution or determination is the work of logic, which might be

described ... as the reflection of knowledge upon itself" (_Logic_, vol.

i, p. 3). "The relation of logic to truth consists in examining the

characteristics by which the various phases of the one intellectual

function are fitted for their place in the intellectual totality which

constitutes knowledge" (_ibid._). The real world is the intelligible

world; reality is something to which we attain by a constructive

process. We have here a type of logic which is essentially a metaphysic.

Indeed, Bosanquet says in the course of his first volume: "I entertain

no doubt that in content logic is one with metaphysics, and differs, if

at all, simply in mode of treatment--in tracing the evolution of

knowledge in the light of its value and import, instead of attempting to

summarize its value and import apart from the details of its evolution"

(_Logic_, vol. i, 247).

Dewey (_Studies in Logical Theory_, p. 5) describes the essential

function of logic as the inquiry into the relations of thought as such

to reality as such. Although such an inquiry may involve the

investigation of psychological processes and of the concrete methods of

science and verification, a description and analysis of the forms of

thought, conception, judgment, and inference, yet its concern with these

is subordinate to its main concern, namely, the relation of "thought at

large to reality at large." Logic is not reflection on thought, either

on its nature as such or on its forms, but on its relations to the real.

In Dewey's philosophy, logical theory is a description of thought as a

mode of adaptation to its own conditions, and validity is judged in

terms of the efficiency of thought in the solution of its own problems

and difficulties. The problem of logic is more than epistemological.

Wherever there is striving there are obstacles; and wherever there is

thinking there is a "material-in-question." Dewey's logic is a theory of

reflective experience regarded functionally, or a pragmatic view of the

discipline. This logic of experience aims to evaluate the significance

of social research, psychology, fine and industrial art, and religious

aspiration in the form of scientific statement, and to accomplish for

social values in general what the physical sciences have done for the

physical world. In Dewey's teleological pragmatic logic the judgment is

essentially instrumental, the whole of thinking is functional, and the

meaning of things is identical with valid meaning (_Studies in Logical

Theory_, cf. pp. 48, 82, 128). The real world is not a self-existent

world outside of knowledge, but simply the totality of experience; and

experience is a complex of strains, tensions, checks, and attitudes. The

function of logic is the redintegration of this experience. "Thinking is

adaptation _to_ an end _through_ the adjustment of particular objective

contents" (_ibid._ p. 81). Logic here becomes a large part, if not the

whole, of a metaphysics of experience; its nature and function are

entirely determined by the theory of reality.

In this brief and fragmentary _résumé_ are exhibited certain

characteristic movements in the development of logical theory, the

construction put upon its subject-matter and its relation to other

disciplines. The _résumé_ has had in view only the making of the

diversity of opinion on these questions historically salient. There are

three distinct types of logic noticed here: (1) formal, whose concern is

merely with the structural aspect of inferential thought, and its

validity in terms of internal congruity; (2) metaphysical logic whose

concern is with the functional aspect of thought, its validity in terms

of objective reference, and its relation to reality; (3) epistemological

and methodological logic, whose concern is with the genesis, nature, and

laws of logical thinking as forms of scientific knowledge, and with

their technological application to the sciences as methodology. I am not

at present concerned with a criticism of these various viewpoints,

excepting in so far as they affect the problem of the interrelationship

of logic and the allied disciplines.

For my present purpose I reject the extreme metaphysical and formal

positions, and assume that logic is a discipline whose business is to

describe and systematize the formal processes of inferential thought and

to apply them as practical principles to the body of real knowledge.

I wish now to take up _seriatim_ the several questions touching the

various relations of logic enumerated above, and first of all the

question of the relation of logic as science to logic as art.

I. _Logic as science and logic as art._

It seems true that the founder of logic, Aristotle, regarded logic not

as a science, but rather as propædeutic to science, and not as an end in

itself, but rather technically and heuristically as an instrument. In

other words, logic was conceived by him rather in its application or as

an art, than as a science, and so it continued to be regarded until the

close of the Middle Ages, being characterized indeed as the _ars

artium_; for even the _logica docens_ of the Scholastics was merely the

formulation of that body of precepts which are of practical service in

the syllogistic arrangement of premises, and the Port Royal Logic aims

to furnish _l'art de penser_. This technical aspect of the science has

clung to it down to the present day, and is no doubt a legitimate

description of a part of its function. But no one would now say that

logic _is_ an art; rather it is a body of theory which may be

technically applied. Mill, in his examination of Sir William Hamilton's

Philosophy (p. 391), says of logic that it "is the art of thinking,

which means of correct thinking, and the science of the conditions of

correct thinking," and indeed, he goes so far as to say (_System of

Logic_, Introd. § 7): "The extension of logic as a science is determined

by its necessities as an art." Strictly speaking, logic as a science is

purely theoretical, for the function of science as such is merely to

know. It is an organized system of knowledge, namely, an organized

system of the principles and conditions of correct thinking. But because

correct thinking is an art, it does not follow that a knowledge of the

methods and conditions of correct thinking is art, which would be a

glaring case of metabasis eis allo genos. The art-bearings of the

science are given in the normative character of its subject-matter. As a

science logic is descriptive and explanatory, that is, it describes and

formulates the norms of valid thought, although as science it is not

normative, save in the sense that the principles formulated in it may be

normatively or regulatively applied, in which case they become precepts.

What is principle in science becomes precept in application, and it is

only when technically applied that principles assume a mandatory

character. Validity is not created by logic. Logic merely investigates

and states the conditions and criteria of validity, being in this

reference a science of evidence. In the very fact, however, that logic

is normative in the sense of describing and explaining the norms of

correct thinking, its practical or applied character is given. Its

principles as known are science; its principles as applied are art.

There is, therefore, no reason to sunder these two things or to call

logic an art merely or a science merely; for it is both when regarded

from different viewpoints, although one must insist on the fact that the

rules for practical guidance are, so far as the science is concerned,

quite _ab extra_. Logic, ethics, and æsthetics are all commonly (and

rightly) called normative disciplines: they are all concerned with

values and standards; logic with validity and evidence, or values for

cognition; ethics with motives and moral quality in conduct, or values

for volition; æsthetics with the standards of beauty, or values for

appreciation and feeling. Yet none of them is or can be merely

normative, or indeed as science normative at all; if that were so, they

would not be bodies of organized knowledge, but bodies of rules. They

might be well-arranged codes of legislation on conduct, fine art, and

evidence, but not sciences. Strictly regarded, it is the descriptive and

explanatory aspect of logic that constitutes its scientific character,

while it is the specific normative aspect that constitutes its logical

character. Values, whether ethical or logical, without an examination

and formulation of their ground, relations, origin, and interconnection,

would be merely rules of thumb, popular phrases, or pastoral precepts.

The actual methodology of the sciences or applied logic is logic as art.

II. _Relation of logic to psychology._

The differentiation of logic and psychology in such way as to be of

practical value in the discussion of the disciplines has always been a

difficult matter. John Stuart Mill was disposed to merge logic in

psychology, and Hobhouse, his latest notable apologete, draws no fixed

distinction between psychology and logic, merely saying that they have

different centres of interest, and that their provinces overlap. Lipps,

in his _Grundzüge der Logik_ (p. 2), goes the length of saying that

"Logic is a psychological discipline, as certainly as knowledge occurs

only in the Psyche, and thought, which is developed in knowledge, is a

psychical event." Now, if we were to take such extreme ground as this,

their ethics, æsthetics, and pure mathematics would become at once

branches of psychology and not coördinate disciplines with it, for

volitions, the feelings of appreciation, and the reasoning of pure

mathematics are psychical events. Such a theory plainly carries us too

far and would involve us in confusion. That the demarcation between the

two disciplines is not a chasmic cleavage, but a line, and that, too, an

historically shifting line, is apparent from the foregoing historical

_résumé_.

The four main phases of logical theory include: (1) the concept

(although some logicians begin with the judgment as temporally prior in

the evolution of language), (2) judgment, (3) inference, (4) the

methodology of the sciences. The entire concern of logic is, indeed,

with psychical processes, but with psychical processes regarded from a

specific standpoint, a standpoint different from that of psychology. In

the first place psychology in a certain sense is much wider than logic,

being concerned with the whole of psychosis as such, including the

feelings and will and the entire structure of cognition, whereas logic

is concerned with the particular cognitive processes enumerated above

(concept, judgment, inference), and that, too, merely from the point of

view of validity and the grounds of validity. In another sense

psychology is narrower than logic, being concerned purely with the

description and explanation of a particular field of phenomena, whereas

logic is concerned with the procedure of all the sciences and is

practically related to them as their formulated method. The compass and

aims of the two disciplines are different; for while psychology is in

different references both wider and narrower than logic, it is also

different in the problems it sets itself, its aim being to describe and

explain the phenomena of mind in the spirit of empirical science,

whereas the aim of logic is only to explain and establish the laws of

evidence and standards of validity. Logic is, therefore, selective and

particular in the treatment of mental phenomena, whereas psychology is

universal, that is, it covers the entire range of mental processes as a

phenomenalistic science; logic dealing with definite elements as a

normative science. By this it is not meant that the territory of

judgment and inference should be delivered from the psychologist into

the care of the logician; through such a division of labor both

disciplines would suffer. The two disciplines handle to some extent the

same subjects, so far as names are concerned; but the essence of the

logical problem is not touched by psychology, and should not be mixed up

with it, to the confusion and detriment of both disciplines. The field

of psychology, as we have said, is the whole of psychical phenomena; the

aim of individual psychology in the investigation of its field is: (1)

to give a genetic account of cognition, feeling, and will, or whatever

be the elements into which consciousness is analyzed; (2) to explain

their interconnections causally; (3) as a chemistry of mental life to

analyze its complexes into their simplest elements; (4) to explain the

totality structurally (or functionally) out of the elements; (5) to

carry on its investigation and set forth its results as a purely

empirical science; (6) psychology makes no attempt to evaluate the

processes of mind either in terms of false and true, or good and bad.

From this description of the field and function of psychology, based on

the expressions of its modern exponents, it will be found impossible to

shelter logic under it as a subordinate discipline. If one were to

enlarge the scope of psychology to mean rational psychology, in the

sense which Professor Howison advocates (_Psychological Review_, vol.

iii, p. 652), such a subordination might be possible, but it would

entail the loss of all that the new psychology has gained by the sharper

delimitation of its sphere and problems, and would carry us back to the

position of Mill, who appears to identify psychology with philosophy at

large and with metaphysics.

In contradistinction to the aims of psychology as described in the

foregoing, the sphere and problems of logic may be summarily

characterized as follows: (1) All concepts and judgments are

psychological complexes and processes and may be genetically and

structurally described; that is the business of psychology. They also

have a meaning value, or objective reference, that is, they may be

correct or incorrect, congruous or incongruous with reality. The

meaning, aspect of thought, or its content as truth is the business of

logic. This subject-matter is got by regarding a single aspect in the

total psychological complex. (2) Its aim is not to describe factual

thought or the whole of thought, or the natural processes of thought,

but only certain ideals of thinking, namely, the norms of correct

thinking. Its object is not a datum, but an ideal. (3) While psychology

is concerned with the natural history of reasoning, logic is concerned

with the warrants of inferential reasoning. In the terminology of

Hamilton it is the nomology of discursive thought. To use an often

employed analogy, psychology is the physics of thought, logic an ethics

of thought. (4) Logic implies an epistemology or theory of cognition in

so far as epistemology discusses the concept and judgment and their

relations to the real world, and here is to be found its closest

connection with psychology. A purely formal logic, which is concerned

merely with the internal order of knowledge and does not undertake to

show how the laws of thought originate, why they hold good as the

measures of evidence, or in what way they are applicable to concrete

reality, would be as barren as scholasticism. (5) While logic thus goes

back to epistemology for its bases and for the theoretical determination

of the interrelation of knowledge and truth, it goes forward in its

application to the practical service of the sciences as their

methodology. Apart of its subject-matter is therefore the actual

procedure of the sciences, which it attempts to organize into systematic

statements as principles and formulæ. This body of rules given

implicitly or explicitly in the workings and structure of the special

sciences, consisting in classification, analysis, experiment, induction,

deduction, nomenclature, etc., logic regards as a concrete deposit of

inferential experience. It abstracts these principles from the content

and method of the sciences, describes and explains them, erects them

into a systematic methodology, and so creates the practical branch of

real logic. Formal logic, therefore, according to the foregoing account,

would embrace the questions of the internal congruity and

self-consistency of thought and the schematic arrangement of judgments

to insure formally valid conclusions; real logic would embrace the

epistemological questions of how knowledge is related to reality, and

how it is built up out of experience, on the one hand, and the

methodological procedure of science, on the other. The importance of

mathematical logic seems to be mainly in the facilitation of logical

expression through symbols. It is rather with the machinery of the

science than with its content and real problem that the logical

algorithm or calculus is concerned. In these condensed paragraphs

sufficient has been said, I think, to show that logic and psychology

should be regarded as coördinate disciplines; for their aims and

subject-matter differ too widely to subordinate the former under the

latter without confusion to both.

I wish now to add a brief note on the relation of logic to another

discipline.

III. _Relation of logic to metaphysics._

As currently expounded, logic either abuts immediately on the territory

of metaphysics at certain points or is entirely absorbed in it as an

integral part of the metaphysical subject-matter. I regard the former

view as not only the more tenable theoretically, but as practically

advantageous for working purposes, and necessary for an intelligible

classification of the philosophical disciplines. The business of

metaphysics, as I understand it, is with the nature of reality; logic is

concerned with the nature of validity, or with the relations of the

elements of thought within themselves (self-consistency) and with the

relations of thought to its object (real truth), but not with the nature

of the objective world or reality as such. Further, metaphysics is

concerned with the unification of the totality of knowledge in the form

of a scientific cosmology; logic is concerned merely with the

inferential and methodological processes whereby this result is reached.

The former is a science of content; the latter is a science of procedure

and relations. Now, inasmuch as procedure and relations apply to some

reality and differ with different forms of reality, logic necessitates

in its implications a theory of being, but such implications are in no

wise to be identified with its subject-matter or with its own proper

problems. Their consideration falls within the sphere of metaphysics or

a broadly conceived epistemology, whose business it is to solve the

ultimate questions of subject and object, thought and thing, mind and

matter, that are implied and pointed to rather than formulated by logic.

Inasmuch as the logical judgment says something about something, the

scientific impulse drives us to investigate what the latter something

ultimately is; but this is not necessary for logic, nor is it one of

logic's legitimate problems, any more than it is the proper business of

the physicist to investigate the mental implications of his scientific

judgments and hypotheses or the ultimate nature of the theorizing and

perceiving mind, or of causality to his world of matter and motion,

although a general scientific interest may drive him to seek a solution

of these ultimate metaphysical problems. Scientifically the end of logic

and of every discipline is in itself; it is a territorial unity, and its

government is administered with a unitary aim. Logic is purely a science

of evidential values, not a science of content (in the meaning of

particular reality, as in the special sciences, or of ultimate reality,

as in metaphysics); its sole aim and purpose, as I conceive it, is to

formulate the laws and grounds of evidence, the principles of method,

and the conditions and forms of inferential thinking. When it has done

this, it has, as a single science, done its whole work. When one looks

at the present tendencies of logical theory, one is inclined to believe

that the discipline is in danger of becoming an "_Allerleiwissenschaft_,"

whose vast undefined territory is the land of "_Weissnichtwo_." The

strict delimitation of the field and problems of science is demanded in

the interest of a serviceable division of scientific labor and in the

interest of an intelligible classification of the accumulated products

of research.

THE FIELD OF LOGIC

BY FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE

[Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Johnsonian Professor of

Philosophy in Columbia University, New York, N. Y., since

1902. b. Windsor, Ontario, Canada, March 26, 1867. A.B.

Amherst College, 1889; Union Theological Seminary, 1892;

A.M. 1898, LL.D. 1903, Amherst College. Post-grad. Berlin

University. Instructor in Philosophy, University of

Minnesota, 1894-95; Professor of Philosophy and head of

department, 1895-1902. Member of American Association for

the Advancement of Science, American Philosophical

Association, American Psychological Association. Editor of

the _Journal of Philosophy_, _Psychology and Scientific

Methods_.]

Current tendencies in logical theory make a determination of the field

of logic fundamental to any statement of the general problems of the

science. In view of this fact, I propose in this paper to attempt such a

determination by a general discussion of the relation of logic to

mathematics, psychology, and biology, especially noting in connection

with biology the tendency known as pragmatism. In conclusion, I shall

indicate what the resulting general problems appear to be.

I

There may appear, at first, little to distinguish mathematics in its

most abstract, formal, and symbolic type from logic. Indeed, mathematics

as the universal method of all knowledge has been the ideal of many

philosophers, and its right to be such has been claimed of late with

renewed force. The recent notable advances in the science have done much

to make this claim plausible. A logician, a non-mathematical one, might

be tempted to say that, in so far as mathematics is the method of

thought in general, it has ceased to be mathematics; but, I suppose, one

ought not to quarrel too much with a definition, but should let

mathematics mean knowledge simply, if the mathematicians wish it. I

shall not, therefore, enter the controversy regarding the proper limits

of mathematical inquiry. I wish to note, however, a tendency in the

identification of logic and mathematics which seems to me to be

inconsistent with the real significance of knowledge. I refer to the

exaltation of the freedom of thought in the construction of conceptions,

definitions, and hypotheses.