The remarkable fact in the intellectual life of to-day is the
contradiction in which it is entangled. On one hand we have an enormous
development of science, both in specialisation of method and accumulation
of material; its extension and thorough-going application to all ranges
of experience. What we should expect from such a movement, would seem to
be confidence of intelligence in itself; and a corresponding organisation
of knowledge, giving some guide and support to life. The strange thing
is that instead of this we have, probably, the greatest apparent
disorganisation of authority as to intellectual matters that the world
has ever seen; while the prevalent attitude and creed of scientific men
is philosophic agnosticism, or disbelief in their own method when it
comes to fundamental matters. Such a typical representative of modern
science as Mr. Huxley virtually laughs to scorn the suggestion of Mr.
Frederic Harrison that science should or could become so organised as to
give any support, any authoritative stay, to life.
Now I do not intend to discuss this apparent contradiction. It seems
to me obvious enough that the contradiction is due to the fact that
science has got far enough along so that its negative attitude towards
previous codes of life is evident, while its own positive principle of
reconstruction is not yet evident. But without urging this view upon the
reader, I wish to ask how and where in the prevailing confusion logical
theory, as a synopsis of the methods and typical forms of intelligence,
stands. Logical theory at once reflects and transforms the existing
status of matters intellectual at any period. It reflects it, for
logical theory is only the express, the overt consciousness on the part
of intelligence of its own attitude, prevailing spirit. It transforms
it, because this express consciousness makes intelligence know where
it stands, makes it aware of its strength and of its weakness, and by
defining it to itself forces it to take up a new and more adequate place.
It is obvious, then, that as the prevailing influence in the intellectual
world to-day is science, so the prevailing influence in logical theory
must be the endeavor to account for, to justify, or at least to reckon
with this scientific spirit. And yet if there is such confusion as we
have indicated, then there is also manifested some chaos in logical
theory, as to the true nature and method of science. Were it otherwise,
were there at present a logical theory adequate to the specific and
detailed practical results of science, science and scientific men would
be conscious of themselves, and would be confident in their work and
attitude.
The especial problem of logic, as the theory of scientific method, is the
relation of fact and thought to each other, of reality and thought. It
is, however, differentiated from the metaphysical theory of knowledge.
Logic does not inquire into the ultimate _meaning_ of fact and thought,
nor into their _ultimate_ relations to one another. It simply takes
them from the attitude of science itself, its business being, not the
justification nor refutation of this attitude, but its development into
explicit doctrine. Fact means to logic no more, but certainly no less,
than it means to the special sciences: it is the subject-matter under
investigation, under consideration; it is that which we are trying to
make out. Thought too means to logic what it means to science: method.
It is the attitude and form which intelligence takes in reference to
fact—to its subject-matter, whether in inquiry, experiment, calculation,
or statement.
Logic, then, would have for its essential problem the consideration of
the various typical methods and guiding principles which thought assumes
in its effort to detect, master, and report fact. It is presupposed here
that there is some sort of fruitful and intrinsic connection of fact and
thought; that thinking, in short, is nothing but the fact in its process
of translation from brute impression to lucent meaning.
But the moment such a presupposition is stated, ninety-nine persons out
of a hundred think that we have plunged, _ex abrupto_, from the certainty
of science into the cloudland of metaphysic. And yet just this conception
of the relation of thought (method) to fact (subject-matter) is taken
for granted in every scientific investigation and conclusion. Here,
then, we have in outline the present position of logic. It is that any
attempt to state, in general, or to work out, in detail, the principle of
the intrinsic and fruitful relation of fact and thought which science,
without conscious reflection, constantly employs in practice, seems
“metaphysical” or even absurd. Why is this? The answer to this question
will give the filling-up of the outline just presented.
The chief cause is that superstition which still holds enthralled
so much of modern thought—I mean formal logic. And if this seems
like applying a hard name to what, at best and at worst, is only an
intellectual gymnastic, I can only say that formal logic seems to me
to be, at present, _fons et origo malorum_ in philosophy. It is true
enough that nobody now takes the technical subject of formal logic very
seriously—unless here and there some belated “professor.” It is true that
it is generally relegated to the position of a subject which, for some
unclear reason, is regarded as “disciplinary” in a young man’s education;
just as certain other branches are regarded as elegant accomplishments
in a young woman’s finishing. But while the subject itself as a doctrine
or science hardly ranks very high, the conception of thought which is at
the bottom of formal logic still dominates the _Zeitgeist_, and regulates
the doctrine and the method of all those who draw their inspiration
from the _Zeitgeist_. Any book of formal logic will tell us what this
conception of thought is: that thought is a faculty or an entity existing
in the mind, apart from facts, and that it has its own fixed forms, with
which facts have nothing to do—except in so far as they pass under the
yoke. Jevons puts it this way: “Just as we thus familiarly recognise
the difference of form and substance in common tangible things, so we
may observe in logic, that the form of an argument is one thing, quite
distinct from the various subjects or matter which may be treated in that
form.”[1]
Professor Stock varies the good old tune in this way: “In every act of
thought we may distinguish two things—(1) the object thought about, (2)
the way in which the mind thinks of it. The first is called the Matter;
the second the Form of Thought. Now formal ... logic is concerned only
with the way in which the mind thinks, and has nothing to do with the
particular objects thought about.”[2]
It is assumed, in fine, that thought has a nature of its own independent
of facts or subject-matter; that this thought, _per se_, has certain
forms, and that these forms are not forms which the facts themselves
take, varying with the facts, but are rigid frames, into which the facts
are to be set.
Now all of this conception—the notion that the mind has a faculty of
thought apart from things, the notion that this faculty is constructed,
in and of itself, with a fixed framework, the notion that thinking is
the imposing of this fixed framework on some unyielding matter called
particular objects, or facts—all of this conception appears to me as
highly scholastic, as the last struggle of mediævalism to hold thought in
subjection to authority. Nothing is more surprising than the fact that
while it is fashionable to reject, with great scorn, all the results
and special methods of scholasticism, its foundation-stone should still
be accepted as the corner-stone of the edifice of modern doctrine. It
is still more surprising when we reflect that the foundation-stone is
coherent only with the mediæval superstructure. The scholastics when they
held that the method of thought was a faculty pursuing its own method
apart from the course of things, were at least consistent. They did not
conceive that thought was free, that intelligence had rights, nor that
there was possible science independent of data authoritatively laid down.
Really believing what they professed,—that thought was something _in
se_,—they held that it must be supplied with a fixed body of dogmatic
fact, from tradition, from revelation—from external authority. They
held that thought in its workings is confined to extracting from this
dogmatic body of fact what is already contained in it, and to rearranging
the material and its implications. To examine the _material_, to test
its truth; to suppose that intelligence could cut loose from this body
of authority and go straight to nature, to history itself, to find
the truth; to build up a free and independent science—to this point
of incoherency mediæval scholasticism never attained. To proclaim the
freedom of thought, the rejection of all external authority, the right
and the power of thought to get at truth for itself, and yet continue
to define thought as a faculty apart from fact, was reserved for modern
enlightenment! And were it not somewhat out of my present scope, I should
like to show that modern culture is thus a prepared victim for the
skilful dialectician of the reactionary army. If the modern _Zeitgeist_
does not fall a prey to the cohorts of the army of external authority, it
is not because it has any recognised methods or any recognised criterion
by which it can justify its raising the “banner of the free spirit.” It
is simply the obstinate bulwark of outer fact, built up piecemeal by
science, that protects it.
The two main forces, which have been at work against the formulæ of
formal logic, are “inductive” or empirical logic on one side, and the
so-called “transcendental” logic, on the other. Of these two, the
influence of inductive logic in sapping in practical fashion and popular
results the authority of syllogistic logic has undoubtedly been much
the greater. I propose, briefly, to give certain reasons for holding,
however, that the inductive logic does not furnish us with the needed
theory of the relation of thought and fact. To show this adequately would
demand the criticism of inductive logic in the detail of its methods, in
order to show where it comes short. As this is impossible, I shall now
confine myself to a couple of general considerations.
To begin with, then, the empirical logic virtually continues the
conception of thought as in itself empty and formal which characterizes
scholastic logic. It thus has really no theory which differentiates it,
as regards the nature of thought itself, from formal logic. I cannot see,
for example, what quarrel the most stringent upholder of formal logic
can have with Mill as to the latter’s theory of the syllogism. Mill’s
theory is virtually simply a theory regarding the formation of the major
premiss—regarding the process by which we formulate the statement that
All _S_ is _P_. Now, if we once accept the syllogistic position, this
process lies outside the scope and problem of formal logic. It is not an
affair of what Jevons calls the form of argument at all, but simply of
the matter, the particular facts which make the filling of the argument.
I do not see that it is any part of the business of formal logic to tell
where the major premiss comes from, nor how it is got. And, on the other
hand, when it comes to the manipulation of the data contained in the
premiss, Mill must fall back upon the syllogistic logic. Mill’s theory,
so far as the thought-element is concerned, presupposes the syllogistic
theory. And if this theory, on its side, does not presuppose something
like Mill’s inductive theory, it is simply because the logician, as a
_philosopher_, may prefer “intuitionalism” to “empiricism.” He may hold,
that is, that the content of some major premisses is given by direct
“intuition” rather than gathered from experience. But in either case,
this consideration of the source of the content of the premiss belongs
not to formal logic, but to metaphysics.
If, then, the theory of the syllogism is incorrect in its assumptions
as to the relation of fact and thought, the inductive logic must be
similarly in error. Its great advantage over the old scholastic logic
lies not in its logic as such, but in something back of the logic—in
its account of the derivation of the material of judgment. Whatever the
defects of Locke’s or Mill’s account of experience, any theory which
somehow presupposes a first-hand contact of mind and fact (though it be
only in isolated, atomic sensations) is surely preferable to a theory
which falls back on tradition, or on the delivery of dogma irresponsible
to any intellectual criticism. But in its account of the derivation
of the material of judgment, inductive logic is still hampered by the
scholastic conception of thought. Thought, being confined to the rigid
framework in which the material is manipulated after being obtained, is
excluded from all share in the gathering of material. The result is that
this material, having no intrinsic thought-side, shrinks into a more
or less accidental association of more or less shifting and transitory
mental states.
I shall not stop to argue that, on this ground, the “inductive” logic
deprives science of its most distinctive scientific features—the
permanence and objectivity of its truths. I think no one can deny that
there is at least an _apparent_ gap between the actual results of
concrete science and these results as they stand after the touch of
the inductive logic—that the necessity and generality of science seem
rather to have been explained away, than explained. I think most of the
inductive logicians themselves (while endeavoring to account for this
apparent necessity as generated through association) would admit that
something of science _seems_, at least, to have been lost, and that the
great reason for putting-up with this loss is that the inductive logic
is the sole alternative to a dogmatic intuitionalism and to arbitrary
spinning-out of _a priori_ concepts.
Certainly as long as thought is conceived after the fashion of
syllogistic logic, as a scheme furnished and fixed in itself, apart from
reality, so long scientific men must protest against allowing thought any
part or lot in scientific procedure. So long some such _modus operandi_
as that given by Mill must be resorted to in order to explain scientific
methods and results. But, on the other hand, if the scholastic idea
of thought as this something having its character apart from fact is
once given up, the cause which at present cramps the logic of science
into the logic of sensationalism and empiricism is also given up. And
this brings us to the other point in general regarding the inductive or
empirical logic. It is not strictly a logic at all but a metaphysic. It
does not begin with the fact of science, the fact of the fruitful inquiry
into fact by intelligence, at all. It does not, starting from this fact
analyse the various methods and types which thought must take upon itself
in order to maintain this fruitful inquiry. On the contrary, it begins
with sensations, and endeavors by a theory of knowledge on the basis
of sensationalism to build up the structure of cognition, ordinary and
scientific. I am not concerned here with the truth of sensationalism as
a metaphysical theory of knowledge, nor with the adequacy of the notion
of sensation advanced by Mill. It is enough from the logical point of
view to point out that such a theory is not logic—that logic does not
deal with something _back_ of the fact of science, but with the analysis
of scientific method as such. And is it forcing matters to indicate that
this retreat from logic to metaphysic is also caused by the syllogistic
notion of thought? Formal thought, with its formulæ for simply unfolding
a given material, is of no use in science. There is, therefore, the
need of some machinery to take the place of thought. And this is found
in sensation and in “experience” according to the peculiar notion of
experience current in the inductive logic.
In a word, then (without attempting to show the insufficiency of
inductive logic as the theory of science by reference to its treatment
of specific points) inductive logic does not meet our needs because it
is not a free, unprejudiced inquiry into the special forms and methods
of science, starting from the actual sciences themselves. It is founded
and built up with constant reference to the scholastic notion of thought.
Where it is not affected positively by it, it is still affected by its
reaction from it. Instead of denying once for all validity or even sense
to the notion of thinking as a special, apart process, and then beginning
a free, unhampered examination with an eye single to the fact of science
itself, it retains this conception of thought as valid in a certain
department, and then sets out to find something to supply the gap in
another department. And thus we have the usual division of inductive and
deductive logic, inductive being interpreted as empirical and particular,
deductive as syllogistic and formal. They are counterpart and correlative
theories, the two sides of the notion of the separateness of fact and
thought; they stand and fall together.
“Transcendental” logic, while usually conceived as utterly opposed in
spirit and in results to inductive logic, has yet been one with it
in endeavoring to abolish formal logic as the sufficient method and
criterion of scientific truth. I say this although well aware that
inductive logic is usually conceived as specifically “scientific,” while
the transcendental movement is regarded as the especial foe of science—as
a belated attempt to restore an _a priori_ scholasticism, and to find
a scheme for evolving truth out of pure thought. This is because when
the “transcendental” school talks of thought, of the synthetic and
objective character of thought, of the possibility of attaining absolute
truth through thought, and of the ontological value of thought, it is
understood as meaning thought in the old, scholastic sense, a process
apart and fixed in itself, and yet somehow evolving truth out of its own
inner being, out of its own enclosed ruminations. But on the contrary,
the very meaning of “transcendentalism” is not only that it is impossible
to get valid truth from the evolution of thought in the scholastic sense,
but that there is no such thought at all. Processes of intelligence which
have their nature fixed in themselves, apart from fact and having to
be externally applied to fact, are pure myths to his school. Types of
thought are simply the various forms which reality progressively takes
as it is progressively mastered as to its meaning,—that is, understood.
Methods of thought are simply the various active attitudes into which
intelligence puts itself in order to detect and grasp the fact. Instead
of rigid moulds, they are flexible adaptations. Methods of thought fit
fact more closely and responsively than a worn glove fits the hand. They
are only the ideal evolution _of_ the fact,—and by “ideal” is here meant
simply the evolution of fact into meaning.
If this is a fair description of what the “transcendental” school means
by thought, it is evident that it is a co-worker with the spirit and
intent of “inductive” logic. Its sole attempt is to get hold of and
report the presupposition and rationale of science; its practical aim
is to lay bare and exhibit the method of science so that the true seat
of authority—that is, the authority, the _backing_, of truth—shall be
forever manifest. It has simply gone a step further than “inductive”
logic, and thrown overboard once for all the scholastic idea of thought.
This has enabled it to start anew, and to form its theory of thought
simply by following the principles of the actual processes by which man
has, thus far in history, discovered and possessed fact.
I shall not attempt here any defence of the “transcendental” logic; I
shall not even attempt to show that the interpretation of it which I
have given above is correct. It must go, for the present, simply as
my individual understanding of the matter. Simply taking this view of
“transcendental” logic for granted, I wish, in order to complete our
notion of the present position of logic, to consider the reasons which
have thus far prevented, say, the Hegelian logic from getting any popular
hold—from getting recognition from scientific men as, at least in
principle, a fair statement of their own basic presupposition and method.
The first of these reasons is that the popular comprehension of the
“transcendental” movement is arrested at Kant and has never gone on to
Hegel. Hegel, it is true, overshadowed Kant entirely for a considerable
period. But the Hegelian régime was partly pyrotechnical rather than
scientific in character; and, partly, so far as it was scientific, it
exhausted itself in stimulating various detailed scientific movements—as
in the history of politics, religion, art, etc. In these lines, if
we trust even to those who have no faith in the Hegelian method or
principles, the movement found some practical excuse for being. But
the result of the case was—and its present status is—that because
the principle of Hegel was, for the time, lost either in display of
dialectical fireworks, or in application to specific subjects, the
principle itself has never met with any _general_ investigation. The
immense amount of labor spent on Kant during the past twenty years has
made method and principle familiar, if not acceptable, to the body of
men calling themselves educated. And thus, so far as its outcome is
concerned, the transcendental movement still halts with Kant.
Now, at the expense of seeming to plunge myself deeper in absurdity than
I have already gone, I must say that the Kantian principle is by far
more “transcendental” in the usual interpretation of that term—more _a
priori_, more given to emphasising some special function of some special
thought-power—than the Hegelian. As against the usual opinion that while
some compromise between science and Kant is possible, the scientific
spirit and Hegel are at antipodes, it appears to me that it is Kant who
does violence to science, while Hegel (I speak of his essential method
and not of any particular result) is the quintessence of the scientific
spirit. Let me endeavor to give some reasons for this belief. Kant
starts from the accepted scholastic conception of thought. Kant never
dreams, for a moment, of questioning the existence of a special faculty
of thought with its own peculiar and fixed forms. He states and restates
that thought in itself exists apart from fact and occupies itself with
fact given to it from without. Kant, it is true, gives the death-blow
to scholasticism by pointing out that such a faculty of thought is
purely analytic—that it simply unfolds the material given, whether that
material be true or false, having no method of arriving at truth, and no
test for determining truth. This fact once clearly recognised, dogmatic
rationalism, or the attempt to get truth from the “logical” analysis of
concepts was forever destroyed. The way was opened for an independent
examination of the actual method of science.
But while Kant revealed once for all the impossibility of getting truth,
of laying hold of reality, by the scholastic method, he still retained
that conception of thought. He denied, not its existence, but its worth
as relates to truth. What was the result? Just this: when he came to his
examination (criticism) of knowledge, it fell apart at once into two
separate factors, an _a priori_ and _a posteriori_. For if Kant finds,
as against the dogmatic rationalist, that formal thought cannot give
knowledge, he also finds, as against the sceptical empiricist, that
unrelated sensation cannot give knowledge. Here too, instead of denying,
_in toto_, the existence of unrelated sensation, he contented himself
with denying its functional value for knowledge. Unrelated sensation and
formal thought are simply the complementary halves of each other. Admit
the one, and the other is its necessary counterpart.
Kant must now piece together his two separated factors. Sensation,
unrelated manifold of sensation, is _there_, thought, isolated, analytic
thought, is _here_. Neither is knowledge in itself. What more natural
than to put them together, and hold that knowledge is the union of a
matter or stuff, of sensations, atomic in themselves, on one hand, and a
form, or regulating principle of thought, empty in itself, on the other?
We have two elements, both existing in isolation, and yet both useless
for all purposes of knowledge. Combine them, and presto, there is science.
Such a “transcendentalism” as this may well stick in the crop of
scientific men. For consider what is involved in it: an _a priori_
factor, on one side, and an _a posteriori_, on the other. Kant, from
one point of view, seems thus to have simply combined the weaknesses of
empiricism and rationalism. He still continues to talk of experience
itself as particular and contingent, and denies that it gives a basis
for any universal laws. Aside from his effort in the “Kritik der
Urtheilskraft” to overcome his original separation, special scientific
laws are to him only more or less extensive generalisations from
experience—as much so to him as to Locke, or Mill. Scientific men indeed,
have accustomed themselves to this derogation of their own methods and
results, and, as “inductive” logicians, indulge in it quite freely
themselves. But an _a priori_ element, supplied by a thought fixed and
separate, scientific men cannot do away with. Nor do I know any reason
why they should.
It is coming short, in my opinion, of the full stature of science to
treat it as a quantitative and varying generalisation of contingent
particulars, but this, at least, leaves what science there is free and
unhindered. But _a priori_ elements supplied from outside the fact
itself, _a priori_ elements somehow entering into the fact from without
and controlling it—this is to give up the very spirit of science. For
if science means anything, it is that our ideas, our judgments may in
some degree reflect and report the fact itself. Science means, on one
hand, that thought is free to attack and get hold of its subject-matter,
and, on the other, that fact is free to break through into thought; free
to impress itself—or rather to express itself—in intelligence without
vitiation or deflection. Scientific men are true to the instinct of
the scientific spirit in fighting shy of a distinct _a priori_ factor
supplied to fact from the mind. Apriorism of this sort must seem like an
effort to cramp the freedom of intelligence and of fact, to bring them
under the yoke of fixed, external forms.
Now in Hegel there is no such conception of thought and of _a priori_, as
is found in Kant. Kant formulated the conception of thought as objective,
but he interpreted this as meaning that thought subjective in itself
_becomes_ objective when synthetic of a given sense-manifold. When Hegel
calls thought objective he means just what he says: that there is no
special, apart faculty of thought belonging to and operated by a mind
existing separate from the outer world. What Hegel means by objective
thought is the meaning, the significance of the fact itself; and by
methods of thought he understands simply the processes in which this
meaning of fact is evolved.
There has been, of late, considerable discussion of the place and
function of “relations” in knowledge. This discussion in English
speculation, at least, tends to turn largely about Thomas Hill Green’s
reconstruction of Kantianism. I consider it unfortunate that this
discussion has taken the form of a debate between empiricism and
Kantianism. The question of knowledge has thus come to be whether or
not certain relations are supplied by thought to sensations in order to
make an orderly whole out of the latter, chaotic in themselves. Now when
Hegel talks of relations of thought (not that he makes much use of just
this term) he means no such separate forms. Relations of thought are, to
Hegel, the typical forms of meaning which the subject-matter takes in
its various progressive stages of being understood. And this is what _a
priori_ means from a Hegelian standpoint. It is not some element _in_
knowledge; some addition of thought to experience. It is experience
itself in its skeleton, in the main features of its framework.
“Refutations” of Hegel, then, which attempt to show that “thought” in
itself is empty, that it waits for content from experience, that it
cannot by any manipulation evolve truth out of itself are, if taken as
having relevance to Hegel, simply meaningless. Hegel begins where these
arguers leave off. Accepting all that they can say, he goes one step
further, and denies that there is any such “thought” at all anywhere in
existence. The question of the relations or “categories of thought” is
just the question of the broad and main aspects of fact as that fact
comes to be understood.
For example, Kant would prove the _a priori_ character and validity
of the principle of causation by showing that without it science is
impossible, that it helps “make experience.” Now, in terms, Hegel’s
justification of this relation would be the same; he too would show
that the fabric of experience implies and demands the causal relation.
But in Kant’s case, the justification of the principle of causality
by reference to the possibility of experience means that thought must
continually inject this principle _into_ experience to keep it from
disappearing: that experience must be constantly braced and reinforced
by the synthetic action of thought or it will collapse. In short, the
need of experience for this principle of causation means its need for
a certain support outside itself. But Hegel’s demonstration of the
validity of the causal principle is simply pointing out that the whole
supports the part, while the part helps make the whole. That is to say,
Hegel’s reference is not to some outside action of thought in maintaining
fact as an object of knowledge; it is to the entire structure of fact
itself. His contention is simply that the structure of fact itself,
of the subject-matter of knowledge, is such that in one of its phases
it presents necessarily the aspect of causality. And if this word
“necessarily” gives pause, it must be remembered what the source of this
necessity is. It does _not_ lie in the principle of causation _per se_;
it lies in the whole fact, the whole subject-matter of knowledge. It is
the same sort of necessity as when we say that a complete man _must_ have
an eye; i. e., it is the nature of the human organism to develop and
sustain this organ, while the organ, in turn, contributes to and thus
helps constitute the organism.
It is then evident that the question upon which the “refutation” of
Hegel turns is not in showing that formal “thought” cannot give birth to
truth except through the fructifying touch of experience. The question
is simply whether fact—the subject-matter of knowledge—is such as Hegel
presents it. Is it, in general, a connected system as he holds it to
be? And, if a system, does it, in particular, present such phases
(such relations, categories) as Hegel shows forth? These are objective
questions pure and simple; questions identical, in kind, with the
question whether the constitution of glucose is what some chemist claims
to have found it.
This, then, is why I conceive Hegel—entirely apart from the value of any
special results—to represent the quintessence of the scientific spirit.
He denies not only the possibility of getting truth out of a formal,
apart thought, but he denies the existence of any faculty of thought
which is other than the expression of fact itself. His contention is
not that “thought,” in the scholastic sense, has ontological validity,
but that fact, reality is significant. Even, then, if it were shown
that Hegel is pretty much all wrong as to the special meanings which he
finds to make up the significance of reality, his main principle would
be unimpeached until it were shown that fact has not a systematic, or
interconnected, meaning, but is a mere hodgepodge of fragments. Whether
the scientific spirit would have any interest in such a hodgepodge may,
at least, be questioned.
Having dealt at such length with the first reason why as yet the
“transcendental” movement has found no overt coalescence with the
scientific, we may deal briefly with the remaining reason.[3] In the
second place, then, the rationality of fact had not been sufficiently
realised in detail in the early decades of the century to admit of
the principle of the “transcendental” movement being otherwise than
misunderstood. That is to say, the development and, more particularly,
the application of science to the specific facts of the world was
then comparatively rudimentary. On account of this lack of scientific
discovery and application, the world presented itself to man’s
consciousness as a blank, or at least as only stuff _for_ meaning, and
not as itself significant. The result was that Hegel must be interpreted
subjectively. The difficulties in the way of conceiving a world, upon
which science had not yet expended its energies in detail, as an organism
of significant relations and bearings were so great, that Hegel’s attempt
to point out these significant types and functions as immanent in reality
was inevitably misconstrued as an attempt, on Hegel’s part, to prove that
a system of purely “subjective” thoughts could somehow be so manipulated
as to give objectively valid results.
Hegel, in other words, anticipated somewhat the actual outcome of the
scientific movement. However significant fact may be, however true it
may be that an apart faculty of thought is an absurdity, however certain
it may be that there are no real types or methods of thought at all
excepting those of the object-matter itself as it comes to be understood,
yet to man this objective significance cannot be real till he has made
it _out_ in the details of scientific processes, and _made_ it applied
science in invention. Hegel’s standpoint was, therefore, of necessity
obscure. When the significant character of fact was not yet opened up
in detail, a method which worked upon the basis that the only possible
thought is the reflection of the significance of fact, had no chance of
fair interpretation.. And thus it was (and largely is) that when Hegel
speaks of objective thought and its relations, he is understood as having
the ordinary conception of thought (that is, of thought as a purely
separate and subjective faculty), and yet as trying to prove that this
apart faculty has some mysterious power of evolving truth.
The question which now confronts us, therefore, as to the present place
of logic is just this: Has the application of scientific thought to the
world of fact gone far enough so that we can speak, without seeming
strained, of the rationality of fact? When we speak of the rationality,
of the intrinsic meaning of fact, can these terms be understood in their
direct and obvious sense, and not in any remote, or _merely_ metaphysical
sense? Has the theoretical consideration of nature in its detailed
study, has practical invention, as the manifestation of the rationality
of fact, gone far enough so that this significance has become, or could
become with some effort, as real and objective a material of study as are
molecules and vibrations?
It seems to me that we are already at this stage, or are at the point of
getting to it. Without arguing this question, however, (which, indeed,
can be proved only by acting upon it, only _ambulando_,) I would point
out that the constant detailed work of science upon the world in theory
and in invention, must in time give that world an evident meaning in
human consciousness. What prevents scientific men from now realising this
fact, is that they are still afraid of certain “transcendent” entities
and forces; afraid that if they relax their hostility to metaphysic,
some one will spring upon them the old scholastic scheme of external,
supernatural unrealities. To those who take the prevailing agnosticism
not as a thing, but as a symptom, this agnosticism means just this: The
whole set of external, or non-immanent entities, is now on the point of
falling away, of dissolving. We got just so far, popularly, as holding
that they are unknowable. In other words, they are crowded to the extreme
verge. One push more, and off they go. The popular consciousness will
hold not only that they are unknowable, but that they are not.
What then? Science freed from its fear of an external and dogmatic
metaphysic, will lose its fear of metaphysic. Having unquestioned and
free possession of its own domain, that of knowledge and of fact, it
will also be free to build up the intrinsic metaphysic of this domain.
It will be free to ask after the structure of meanings which makes
up the skeleton of this world of knowledge. The moment this point is
reached, the speculative critical logic worked out in the development of
Kantian ideas, and the positive, specific work of the scientific spirit
will be at one. It will be seen that this logic is no revived, redecked
scholasticism, but a complete abandonment of scholasticism; that it deals
simply with the inner anatomy of the realm of scientific reality, and has
simply endeavored, with however much of anticipation, to dissect and lay
bare, at large and in general, the features of the same subject-matter,
which the positive sciences have been occupying themselves with in
particular and in detail.
That we are almost at the point of such conflux, a point where the
general, and therefore somewhat abstract lines of critical logic will run
in to the particular, and therefore somewhat isolated, lines of positive
science, is, in my opinion, the present position of logical theory.