réel,' ought, if I rightly understand him, positively to deny that in
the actual world the logical axioms hold good without qualification.
Not only, according to him, do terms change, so that after a certain
time the very elements of things are no longer what they were, but
relations also change, so as no longer to obtain in the same identical
way between the new things that have succeeded upon the old ones. If
this were really so, then however indefinitely sames might still
be substituted for sames in the logical world of nothing but pure
sameness, in the world of real operations every line of sameness
actually started and followed up would eventually give out, and cease
to be traceable any farther. Sames of the same, in such a world, will
not always (or rather, in a strict sense will never) be the same
as one another, for in such a world there _is_ no literal or ideal
sameness among numerical differents. Nor in such a world will it be
true that the cause of the cause is unreservedly the cause of
the effect; for if we follow lines of real causation, instead of
contenting ourselves with Hume's and Kant's eviscerated schematism, we
find that remoter effects are seldom aimed at by causal intentions,[1]
that no one kind of causal activity continues indefinitely, and that
the principle of skipt intermediaries can be talked of only _in
abstracto_.[2]
Volumes i, ii, and iii of the _Monist_ (1890-1893) contain a number of
articles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which
has apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but
which, if I mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers
of the coming generation. Mr. Peirce's views, tho reached so
differently, are altogether congruous with Bergson's. Both
philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is
genuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes,
novelty can appear only as so much 'chance'; to one who stands inside
it is the expression of 'free creative activity.' Peirce's 'tychism'
is thus practically synonymous with Bergson's 'devenir réel.' The
common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly
in, _ex nihilo_, they shatter the world's rational continuity. Peirce
meets this objection by combining his tychism
[Footnote 1: Compare the douma with what Perry aimed at.]
[Footnote 2: Compare Appendix B, as to what I mean here by 'real'
casual activity.]
with an express doctrine of 'synechism' or continuity, the two
doctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the
name of 'agapasticism (_loc. cit._, iii, 188), which means exactly the
same thing as Bergson's 'évolution créatrice.' Novelty, as empirically
found, doesn't arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibly, for
adjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum
being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being
realized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. The
intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and
all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous
infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut.
Just so, in a curve, the same direction is _never_ followed, and the
conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by
supposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an
'infinitesimal' tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion
of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same
and yet the nascent other, of an identity that won't _keep_ except so
far as it keeps _failing_, that won't _transfer_, any more than the
serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality
instead of applying them to concepts alone.
A friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified
scale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that
I will mention it here. He thinks that nothing more is needed to make
history 'scientific' than to get the content of any two epochs (say
the end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century)
accurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the
change that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to
prolong the line of that direction into the future. So prolonging the
line, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state
of things at any future date we please. We all feel the essential
unreality of such a conception of 'history' as this; but if such a
synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what
really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest,
would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter
pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or
statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality.
I can give no further account of Mr. Peirce's ideas in this note, but
I earnestly advise all students of Bergson to compare them with those
of the french philosopher.
INDEX
INDEX TO THE LECTURES
Absolute, the, 49, 108-109, 114 ff., 173, 175, 190 ff., 203, 271, 292 ff.,
311; not the same as God, 111, 134; its rationality, 114 f.; its
irrationality, 117-129; difficulty of conceiving it, 195.
Absolutism, 34, 38, 40, 54, 72 f, 79, 122, 310. See Monism.
Achilles and tortoise, 228, 255.
All-form, the, 34, 324.
Analogy, 8, 151 f.
Angels, 164.
Antinomies, 231, 239.
ARISTIDES, 304.
BAILEY, S., 5.
BERGSON, H., Lecture VI, _passim_. His characteristics, 226 f, 266.
'Between,' 70.
Block-universe, 310, 328.
BRADLEY, F.H., 46, 69, 79, 211, 220, 296.
Brain, 160.
CAIRD, E., 89, 95, 137.
CATO, 304.
Causation, 258. See Influence.
Change, 231, 253.
CHESTERTON, 203, 303.
Compounding of mental states, 168, 173, 186 f., 268, 281, 284, 292, 296.
Concepts, 217, 234 f.
Conceptual method, 243 f., 246, 253.
Concrete reality, 283, 286.
Confluence, 326.
Conflux, 257.
Consciousness, superhuman, 156, 310 f.; its compound nature, 168, 173,
186 f., 289.
Continuity, 256 f., 325.
Contradiction, in Hegel, 89 f.
Creation, 29, 119.
Death, 303.
Degrees, 74.
Dialectic method, 89.
Difference, 257 f.
Diminutive epithets, 12, 24.
Discreteness of change, 231.
'Each-form,' the, 34, 325.
Earth, the, in Fechner's philosophy, 156; is an angel, 164.
Earth-soul, 152 f.
Elan vital, 262.
Empiricism, 264, 277; and religion, 314; defined, 7.
Endosmosis, 257.
Epithets. See Diminutive.
Evil, 310.
Experience, 312; religious, 307.
Extremes, 67, 74.
'Faith-ladder,' 328.
'Fall,' the, 119, 310.
FECHNER, Lecture IV, _passim._ His life, 145-150; he reasons by analogy,
151; his genius, 154; compared with Royce, 173, 207; not a genuine
monist, 293; his God; and religious experience, 308.
FERRIER, Jas., 13.
Finite experience, 39, 48, 182, 192-193.
Finiteness, of God, 111, 124, 294.
Foreignness, 31.
German manner of philosophizing, 17.
GOD, 24 f., 111, 124, 193, 240, 294.
GREEN, T.H., 6, 24, 137, 278.
HALDANE, R.B., 138.
HEGEL, Lecture III, _passim_, 11, 85, 207, 211, 219, 296. His vision,
88, 98 f., 104; his use of double negation, 102; his vicious
intellectualism 106; Haldane on, 138; McTaggart on, 140; Royce on, 143.
HODGSON, S.H., 282.
Horse, 265.
HUME, 19, 267.
Idealism, 36. See Absolutism.
Identity, 93.
Immortality, Fechner's view of, 171.
'Independent' beings, 55, 58.
Indeterminism, 77.
Infinity, 229.
Influence, 258, 561.
Intellect, its function is practical, 247 f., 252.
Intellectualism, vicious, 60, 218.
Intellectualist logic, 216, 259, 261.
Intellectualist method, 291.
Interaction, 56.
Intimacy, 31.
Irrationality, 81; of the absolute, 117-129.
JACKS, L.P., 35.
JOACHIM, H., 121, 141.
JONES, H., 52.
KANT, 19, 199, 238, 240.
LEIBNITZ, 119.
Life, 523.
Log, 323.
Logic, 92, 211; Intellectualist, 217, 242.
LOTZE, 55, 120.
LUTHER, 304.
McTAGGART, 51, 74 f., 120, 140 f., 183.
Manyness in oneness, 322. See Compounding.
Mental chemistry, 185.
MILL, J.S., 242, 260.
Mind, dust theory, 189.
Mind, the eternal, 137. See Absolute.
Monism, 36, 117, 125, 201, 313, 321 f.; Fechner's, 153. See Absolutism.
Monomaniacs, 78.
Motion, 233, 238, 254; Zeno on, 228.
MYERS, F.W.H., 315.
Nature, 21, 286.
Negation, 93 f.; double, 102.
Newton, 260.
Other, 95, 312; 'its own other,' 108 f., 282.
Oxford, _3_, 313, 331.
Pantheism, 24, 28.
PAULSEN, 18, 22.
Personality, divided, 298.
Philosophers, their method, 9; their common desire, 11 f.; they must
reason, 13.
Philosophies, their types, 23, 31.
PHOCION, 304.
Plant-soul, 165 f.
Pluralism, 45, 76, 79, 311, 319, 321 f.
Polytheism, 310.
Practical reason, 329.
Psychic synthesis, 185. See Compounding.
Psychical research, 299.
'Quâ,' 39, 47, 267, 270.
'Quatenus,' 47, 267.
Rationalism defined, 7, 98; its thinness, 144, 237.
Rationality, 81, 112 f., 319 f.
Reality, 262 f., 264, 283 f.
Reason, 286, 312.
Relating, 7.
Relations, 70, 278 ff.; 'external,' 80.
Religious experiences, 305 f.
RITCHIE, 72.
ROYCE, 61 f., 115, 173, 182 f., 197, 207, 212, 265, 296.
Same, 269, 281.
Savage philosophy, 21.
Science, 145.
Sensations, 279.
Socialism, 78.
SOCRATES, 284.
Soul, 199, 209.
'Some,' 79.
Sphinx, 22.
SPINOZA, 47.
Spiritualistic philosophy, 23.
Sugar, 220, 232.
Synthesis, psychic. See Compounding.
TAYLOR, A.E., 76, 139, 212.
Theism, 24.
Thick, the, 136.
'Thickness' of Fechner's philosophy, 144.
Thin, the, 136.
Thinness of the current transcendentalism, 144, 174 f.
Time, 232.
Units of reality, 287.
Vision, in philosophy, 20.
WELLS, H.G., 78.
Will to believe, 328.
Witnesses, as implied in experience, 200.
WUNDT, W., 185.
ZENO, 228.