CHAPTER I

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_Elements of Metaphysics_

========

A. E. TAYLOR

_Late Professor of Moral Philosophy

in the University of Edinburgh_

πατρὶς δὴ ἡμῖν ὅθενπερ ἤλθομεν καὶ πατὴρ ἐκεῖ

UNIVERSITY PAPERBACKS

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METHUEN : LONDON

First published by Methuen & Co Ltd in 1903

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TO

F. H. BRADLEY

_In heartfelt acknowledgment of all that

his example and his writings have been

to the men of my generation_

Ante Ararim Parthus bibet, aut Germania Tigrim,

Quam nostro illius labatur pectore vultus.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ELEMENTS

OF METAPHYSICS

PREFACE

In acknowledging my indebtedness to recent writers for many of the ideas

contained in the following pages, I have in the first place to express

my deep and constant obligations to the various works of Mr. F. H.

Bradley. My chief debt to other recent English-speaking philosophers is

to Professor Royce and Professor Ward, and I am perhaps scarcely less

indebted to Professor Stout. My chief obligations to Continental writers

are to Avenarius and to Professor Münsterberg. I trust, however, that

there is not one of the authors with whose views I have dealt in the

course of my work from whom I have not learned something. At the same

time I ought perhaps to say here once for all that I make no claim to

represent the views of any one author or school, and I shall not be

surprised if the thinkers to whom I owe most find themselves unable to

endorse all that I have written.

With respect to the references given at the end of the several chapters,

I may note that their aim is simply to afford the reader some

preliminary guidance in the further prosecution of his studies. They

make no pretence to completeness, and are by no means exclusively drawn

from writers who support my own conclusions.

One or two important works of which I should have otherwise been glad to

make extended use have appeared too recently for me to avail myself of

them. I may mention especially the late Professor Adamson’s _Lectures on

the Development of Modern Philosophy_, Professor Ostwald’s _Vorlesungen

über Naturphilosophie_, and Mr. B. Russell’s _Principles of

Mathematics_, vol. 1.

Finally, I have to express my gratitude to my friends Professor S.

Alexander and Mr. P. J. Hartog for their kindness in reading large

portions of my proofs and offering many valuable corrections and

suggestions.

1903

--------------

The sudden demand for a re-issue of this volume prevents my making any

alterations beyond the correction of a number of misprints. Had the

opportunity offered, I should have been glad, while leaving the main

argument essentially as it stands, to have attempted certain

improvements in details. I may mention in particular, as the most

important of the changes I could have wished to make, that the treatment

of the problem of infinite regress and of the Kantian antinomies would

have been remodelled, and I trust improved, as a consequence of study of

the works of Mr. Bertrand Russell and M. Couturat.

I should like to take this opportunity of thanking all those who have

been kind enough to favour me with criticisms of the book.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

GENERAL NOTIONS

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM OF THE METAPHYSICIAN

PAGE

#§1. The generality and simplicity of the metaphysical

problem make it difficult to define the study. §2.

Problem is suggested by the presence of contradictions

in ordinary experience. §3.. By making a distinction

between reality and appearance the sciences remove some

of these contradictions, but themselves lead to further

difficulties of the same sort; hence the need for

systematic inquiry into the meaning of the distinction

between the real and the apparent, and the general

character of reality as such. §4.. Metaphysics, as an

inquiry into the ultimate meaning of “reality,” is akin

to poetry and religion, but differs from them in its

scientific character, from the mathematical and

experimental sciences in its method, from common

scepticism in the critical nature of its methods as well

as in its positive purpose. §5.. The study is difficult

(_a_) because of the generality of its problems, (_b_)

and because we cannot employ diagrams or physical

experiments. §6.. The objection that Metaphysics is an

impossibility may be shown in all its forms to rest upon

self-contradictory assumptions of a metaphysical kind.

§7.. The minor objections that, if possible, the science

is superfluous, or at least stationary, may be met with

equal ease. §8. Metaphysics is partly akin to the

mystical tendency, but differs from mysticism in virtue

of its positive interest in the world of appearances, as

well as by its scientific method. §9.. It agrees with

logic in the generality of its scope, but differs in

being concerned with the real, whereas logic is

primarily concerned with the inferrible. §10. The

problems of the so-called _Theory of Knowledge_ are

really metaphysical. 1

CHAPTER II

THE METAPHYSICAL CRITERION AND THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD

§ 1. In the principle that “Reality is not

self-contradictory” we have a universal and certain

criterion of reality which is not merely negative, but

implies the positive assertion that reality is a

consistent system. § 2. The validity of this criterion

is not affected by the suggestion that it may be merely

a _Logical_ Law; § 3. Nor by the raising of doubt

whether all our knowledge is not merely “relative,” a

doubt which is itself meaningless. § 4. As to the

material of the system, it is experience or immediate

psychical fact. § 5. It must be actual experience, not

mere “possibilities” of experience; but actual

experience must not be identified with “sensation.” § 6.

Nor must we assume that experience consists of subjects

_and_ their states; nor again, that it is a mere

succession of “states of consciousness.” § 7. The

_differentia_ of matter of experience is its

_immediacy_, _i.e._ its combination in a single whole of

the two aspects of _existence_ and _content_. §8. This

union of existence and content is broken up in

reflective knowledge or thought, but may be restored at

a higher level. § 9. Experience further always appears

to be implicitly complex in respect of its content. §

10. An adequate apprehension of reality would only be

possible in the form of a complete or “pure” experience,

at once all-inclusive, systematic, and direct. The

problem of Metaphysics is to ascertain what would be the

general or formal character of such an experience, and

how far the various provinces of our human experience

and knowledge approximate to it. The knowledge

Metaphysics can give us of the ultimate nature of

reality as it would be present in a complete experience,

though imperfect, is final as far as it goes. § 11. As

to the method of Metaphysics, it must be _analytical_,

_critical_, _non-empirical_, and _non-inductive_. It may

also be called _a priori_ if we carefully avoid

confusing the _a priori_ with the psychologically

primitive. Why our method cannot be the Hegelian

Dialectic 18

CHAPTER III

THE SUB-DIVISIONS OF METAPHYSICS

§ 1. The traditional sub-division of Metaphysics into

_Ontology_, _Cosmology_, _Rational Psychology_, common

to all the great modern constructive systems. § 2.

Precise sense in which we adopt these divisions for the

purposes of our own treatment of the subject. § 3.

Relation of _Cosmology_ and _Rational Psychology_ to the

empirical sciences 42

BOOK II

ONTOLOGY—THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF REALITY

CHAPTER I

REALITY AND EXPERIENCE

§ 1. In a sense “reality” for each of us means that of which

he must take account if his special purposes are to find

fulfilment. § 2. But ultimately the world must possess a

structure of which _all_ purposes, each in its own way,

must take account. This is the “Ultimate Reality” or

“Absolute” of Metaphysics. In Metaphysics we regard it

from the special standpoint of the scientific intellect.

There are other legitimate attitudes towards it, _e.g._,

that of practical religion. § 3. The inseparability of

reality from immediate experience involves the

recognition of it as teleological and as uniquely

individual. § 4. The experience within which all reality

falls cannot be my own, nor yet the “collective”

experience of the aggregate of conscious beings. It must

be an individual experience which apprehends the

totality of existence as the harmonious embodiment of a

single “purpose.” The nearest analogue our own life

presents to such a type of experience is to be found in

the satisfied insight of personal love. § 5. The

experience of such an “Absolute” must not be thought of

as a mere reduplication of our own, or of the scientific

hypotheses by which we co-ordinate facts for the

purposes of inference. § 6. Our conception is closely

connected with that of Berkeley, from which it differs

by the stress it lays on the purposive and selective

aspect of experience. § 7. Realism, both of the Agnostic

and of the Dogmatic type, is incompatible with the

meaning we have been led to attach to “reality.” But

Agnosticism is justified in insisting on the limitations

of our knowledge of Reality, and Dogmatic Realism in

rejecting the identification of Reality with experience

as a merely cognitive function of finite percipients. §

8. Subjectivism, according to which all that I know is

states of my own “consciousness,” is irreconcilable with

the admitted facts of life, and arises from the

psychological fallacy of “introjection” 50

CHAPTER II

THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF REALITY

§ 1. The problem whether Reality is ultimately One or Many is

inevitably suggested to us by the diverse aspects of our

own direct experience of the world. The different

theories may be classed, according to their solution of

this problem, as Monistic, Pluralistic, and Monadistic.

§2. Pluralism starts from the presumed fact of the

mutual independence of human selves, and teaches that

this independence of each other belongs to all real

beings. But (_a_) the independence with which experience

presents us is never complete, nor the unity of the

“selves” perfect. (_b_) The theory is inconsistent with

the systematic character of all reality as presupposed

in both knowledge and action. § 3. Monadism again makes

the systematic unity of the real either an illusion or

an inexplicable accident. § 4. Reality, because

systematic, must be the expression of a single principle

in and through a multiplicity. The unity and

multiplicity must both be real, and each must

necessarily involve the other. § 5. If both are to be

equally real, the whole system must be a single

experience, and its constituents must also be

experiences. A perfect systematic whole can be neither

an aggregate, nor a mechanical whole of parts, nor an

organism. The whole must exist for the parts, and they

for it. § 6. This may also be expressed by saying that

Reality is a subject which is the unity of subordinate

subjects, or an individual of which the constituents are

lesser individuals. § 7. The nearest familiar analogue

to such a systematic whole would be the relation between

our whole “self” and the partial mental systems or

lesser “selves.” § 8. The nearest historic parallel to

this view is to be found in Spinoza’s theory of the

relation of the human mind to the “infinite intellect of

God” 84

CHAPTER III

REALITY AND ITS APPEARANCES—THE DEGREES OF REALITY

§ 1. Reality being a single systematic whole, the nature of

its constituent elements is only finally intelligible in

the light of the whole system. Hence each of its

“appearances,” if considered as a whole in itself, must

be more or less contradictory. § 2. But some

“appearances” exhibit the structure of the whole more

adequately than others, and have therefore a higher

degree of reality. § 3. This conception of degree of

reality may be illustrated by comparison with the

successive orders of infinites and infinitesimals in

Mathematics. It would be the task of a complete

Philosophy to assign the contents of the world to their

proper place in the series of “orders” of reality. § 4.

In general any subordinate whole is real in proportion

as it is a self-contained whole. And it is a

self-contained whole in proportion as it is (_a_)

comprehensive, (_b_) systematic; that is, a thing is

real just so far as it is truly individual. § 5. The two

criteria of individuality, though ultimately coincident,

tend in particular cases to fall apart for our insight,

owing to the limitation of human knowledge. § 6.

Ultimately only the whole system of experience is

completely individual, all other individuality is

approximate. § 7. In other words, the whole system of

experience is an infinite individual, all subordinate

individuality is finite. Comparison of t“his position

with the doctrines of Leibnitz. § 8. Recapitulatory

statement of the relation of Reality to its Appearances 104

CHAPTER IV

THE WORLD OF THINGS—(1) SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND RELATION

§ 1. The natural or pre-scientific view of the world regards

it as a plurality of “things,” each possessing

_qualities_, standing in _relation_ to others, and

interacting with them. § 2. Hence arise four problems:

those of the Unity of the Thing, of Substance and

Quality, of Relation, of Causality. § 3. No simple

answer can be given to the question, _What is one

thing?_ The Unity of the Thing is one of teleological

structure, and this is a matter of degree, and also

largely of our own subjective point of view. § 4.

_Substance and Quality._ The identification of the

substance of things with their primary qualities, though

useful in physical science, is metaphysically

unjustifiable. § 5. Substance as an “unknowable

substratum of qualities” adds nothing to our

understanding of their connection. § 6. The thing cannot

be a mere collection of qualities without internal

unity. § 7. The conception of a thing as the law or mode

of relation of its states useful but metaphysically

unsatisfactory. Ultimately the many can be contained in

the one only by “representation”; the unity in things

must be that of an individual experience. § 8.

_Relation._ We can neither reduce qualities to relations

nor relations to qualities. § 9. Again, the attempt to

conceive Reality as qualities in relation leads to the

indefinite regress. §10. We cannot escape this

difficulty by taking all relations as “external.” And

Professor Royce’s vindication of the indefinite regress

seems to depend on the uncriticised application of the

inadequate category of whole and part to ultimate

Reality. The union of the one and the many in concrete

experience is ultra-relational. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE: Dr.

Stout’s reply to Mr. Bradley 120

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD OF THINGS—(2) CHANGE AND CAUSALITY

§ 1. The conception of things as interacting leads to the two

problems of Change and Causality. The paradoxical

character of change due to the fact that only what is

permanent can change. § 2. Change is succession within

an identity; this identity, like that of Substance, must

be teleological, _i.e._ must be an identity of plan or

end pervading the process of change. § 3. Thus all

change falls under the logical category of Ground and

Consequence, which becomes in its application to

succession in time the Principle of Sufficient Reason. §

4. _Causality._ Cause—in the modern popular and

scientific sense—means the ground of a change when taken

to be completely contained in preceding changes. That

every change has its complete ground in preceding

changes is neither an axiom nor an empirically

ascertained truth, but a postulate suggested by our

practical needs. § 5. In the last resort the postulate

cannot be true; the dependence between events cannot be

one-sided. The real justification for our use of the

postulate is its practical success. § 6. Origin of the

conception of Cause anthropomorphic. § 7. Puzzles about

Causation. (1) _Continuity_. Causation must be

continuous, and yet in a continuous process there can be

no distinction of cause from effect. Cause must be and

yet cannot be _prior_ in time to effect. § 8. (2) _The

indefinite regress_ in causation. § 9. (3) _Plurality of

Causes_. Plurality of Causes is ultimately a logical

contradiction, but in any form in which the causal

postulate is of practical use it must recognise

plurality. § 10. The “necessity” of the causal relation

psychological and subjective. § 11. Immanent and

Transeunt Causality: Consistent Pluralism must deny

transeunt Causation; but cannot do so successfully. §

12. Both transeunt and immanent Causality are ultimately

appearance 158

BOOK III

COSMOLOGY—THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

§ 1. Distinction between the experimental sciences and a

Philosophy of Nature and Mind. The former concerned with

the description, the latter with the interpretation of

facts. § 2. Cosmology is the critical examination of the

special characteristics of the physical order. Its main

problems are: (1) The problem of the nature of Material

Existence; (2) problem of the justification of the

concept of the Mechanical Uniformity of Nature; (3)

problems of Space and Time; (4) problem of the

Significance of Evolution; (5) problem of the Place of

descriptive Physical Science in the system of Human

Knowledge 191

CHAPTER II

THE PROBLEM OF MATTER

§ 1. The physical order, because dependent for its perceived

qualities on the sense-organs of the percipient, must be

the appearance of a more ultimate reality which is

non-physical. § 2. Berkeley’s criticism is fatal to the

identification of this reality with “material

substance.” The logical consequence of Berkeley’s

doctrine that the _esse_ of sensible things is

_percipi_, would be the subjectivist view that the

physical order is _only_ a complex of presentations. §

3. But this is clearly not the case with that part of

the physical order which consists of the bodies of my

fellow-men. These have an existence, as centres of

feeling, over and above their existence as presentations

to my senses. § 4. As the bodies of my fellows are

connected in one system with the rest of the physical

order, that order as a whole must have the same kind of

reality which belongs to them. It must be the

presentation to our sense of a system or complex of

systems of experiencing subjects; the apparent absence

of life and purpose from inorganic nature must be due to

our inability to enter into a direct communion of

interest with its members. § 5. Some consequences of

this view 198

CHAPTER III

THE MEANING OF LAW

§ 1. The popular conception of the physical order as

exhibiting a rigid mechanical conformity to general

_laws_, conflicts with our metaphysical interpretation.

§ 2. Our interpretation would, however, admit of the

establishment of averages or approximately realised

uniformities by the statistical method, which deals with

occurrence _en bloc_ to the neglect of their individual

detail. § 3. “Uniformity” in nature is neither an axiom

nor an empirically verifiable fact, but a postulate. A

consideration of the methods actually employed for the

establishment of such uniformities or “laws” of nature

shows that we have no guarantee that actual concrete

cases exhibit _exact_ conformity to law. § 4. Uniformity

is a _postulate_ arising from our need of practical

rules for the control of nature. It need not for this

purpose be exact, and in point of fact our scientific

formulæ are only exact so long as they remain abstract

and hypothetical. They do not enable us to determine the

actual course of an individual process with certainty. §

5. The concept of the physical order as _mechanical_ is

the abstract expression of the postulate, and is

therefore essential to the empirical sciences which deal

with the physical order. § 6. Consideration of the

character of genuine machines suggests that the

mechanical only exists as a subordinate aspect of

processes which, in their full nature, are intelligent

and purposive 216

CHAPTER IV

SPACE AND TIME

§ 1. Are time and space ultimately real or only phenomenal? §

2. The space and time of _perception_ are limited,

sensibly continuous, and consist of a quantitative

element together with a _qualitative_ character

dependent on relation to the _here_ and _now_ of

immediate individual feeling. § 3. _Conceptual_ space

and time are created from the perceptual data by a

combined process of synthesis, analysis, and

abstraction. § 4. They are unlimited, infinitely

divisible, and there is valid positive ground for

regarding them as mathematically continuous. Thus they

form infinite continuous series of positions. They

involve abstraction from all reference to the _here_ and

_now_ of immediate feeling, and are thus homogeneous,

_i.e._ the positions in them are indistinguishable. They

are also commonly taken to be unities. § 5. Perceptual

space and time cannot be ultimately real, because they

involve reference to the _here_ and _now_ of a finite

experience; conceptual space and time cannot be

ultimately real, because they contain no principle of

internal distinction, and are thus not individual. § 6.

The attempt to take space and time as real leads to the

difficulty about qualities and relations, and so to the

indefinite regress. § 7. Space and time contain no

principle of unity; there may be many space and time

orders in the Absolute which have no spatial or temporal

connection with each other. § 8. The antinomies of the

infinite divisibility and extent of space and time arise

from the indefinite regress involved in the scheme of

qualities and relations, and are insoluble so long as

the space and time construction is taken for Reality. §

9. The space and time order is an imperfect phenomenal

manifestation of the logical relation between the inner

purposive lives of finite individuals. Time is an

inevitable aspect of finite experience. _How_ space and

time are transcended in the Absolute experience we

cannot say 241

CHAPTER V

SOME CONDITIONS OF EVOLUTION

§ 1. The concept of _evolution_ an attempt to interpret

natural processes in terms of individual growth. § 2.

Evolution means change culminating in an end which is

the result of the process and is qualitatively new. The

concept is thus teleological. § 3. Evolution, being

teleological, is essentially either progress or

degeneration. If it is more than illusion, there must be

real _ends_ in the physical order. And ends can only be

real as subjective interests of sentient beings which

are actualised by the process of change. § 4. Thus all

evolution must take place within an _individual_

subject. § 5. Further, the subject of evolution must be

a _finite_ individual. All attempts to make “evolution”

a property of the whole of Reality lead to the infinite

regress. § 6. The distinction between progressive

evolution and degeneration has an “objective” basis in

the metaphysical distinction between higher and lower

degrees of individuality. § 7. In the evolutionary

process, old individuals disappear and fresh ones

originate. Hence evolution is incompatible with the view

that Reality consists of a plurality of ultimately

independent finite individuals 265

CHAPTER VI

THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE

§ 1. Scientific _description_ may be contrasted with

philosophical or teleological _interpretation_, but the

contrast is not absolute. § 2. The primary end of all

scientific description is intercommunication with a view

to active co-operation. Hence all such description is

necessarily restricted to objects capable of being

experienced in the same way by a plurality of

individuals. § 3. A second end of scientific description

is the _economising_ of intellectual labour by the

creation of _general_ rules for dealing with typical

situations in the environment. In the course of

evolution this object becomes partially independent of

the former. § 4. From the interest in formulating

_general_ rules arise the three fundamental postulates

of physical science, the postulates of _Uniformity_,

_Mechanical Law_, and _Causal Determination_. § 5. The

mechanical view of physical Nature determined by these

three postulates is systematically carried out only in

the abstract science of _Mechanics_; hence the logical

completion of the descriptive process would mean the

reduction of all descriptive science to Mechanics. That

the chemical, biological, and psychological sciences

contain elements which cannot be reduced to mechanical

terms, is due to the fact that their descriptions are

inspired by æsthetic and historical as well as by

primarily “scientific” interests. § 6. The analysis of

such leading concepts of mechanical Physics as the

Conservation of Mass and of Energy shows them to have

only _relative_ validity 279

BOOK IV

RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY—THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE

CHAPTER I

THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

§ 1. The various sciences which deal with the interpretation

of human life all avail themselves of the fundamental

categories of Psychology. Hence we must ask how the

concepts of Psychology are related to actual experience.

§ 2. Psychology is a body of abstract descriptive

formulæ, not a direct transcript of the individual

processes of real life. It presupposes the previous

construction of the physical order. § 3. The

psychological conception of conscious life as a

succession of “mental states” or “images” is a

transformation of actual experience devised primarily to

account for the experience of other subjects, and

subsequently extended to my own. The transformation is

effected by the hypothesis of “introjection.” §§ 4, 5.

The logical justification of the psychological

transformation of facts is twofold. The psychological

scheme serves partly to fill up the gaps in our theories

of physiological Mechanism, and also, in respect of the

teleological categories of Psychology, to describe the

course of human conduct in a form capable of ethical and

historical appreciation. Psychology may legitimately

employ both mechanical and teleological categories. § 6.

The objections sometimes brought against the possibility

of (_a_) psychological, (_b_) teleological description

are untenable 294

CHAPTER II

THE PROBLEM OF SOUL AND BODY

§ 1. The problem of psychophysical connection has to do with

the correlation of scientific abstractions, not of given

facts of experience. § 2. The “consciousness” of

Psychology is thus not the same thing as the finite

individual subject of experience, and Reality must not

be said to consist of “minds” in the psychologist’s

sense. Again, we must not assume _a priori_ that there

can be only _one_ working hypothesis of psychophysical

connection. § 3. The possible hypotheses may be reduced

to three, Epiphenomenalism, Parallelism, and

Interaction. § 4. _Epiphenomenalism_ is legitimate as a

methodological principle in Physiology; it is untenable

as a basis for Psychology because it implies the

reduction of psychical facts to mechanical law. § 5.

_Parallelism._ The arguments for Parallelism as

necessarily valid to Psychophysics because of its

congruity with the postulates of mechanical Physics, are

fallacious. We cannot assume that Psychology must

necessarily conform to these postulates. § 6. As a

working hypothesis Parallelism is available for many

purposes, but breaks down when we attempt to apply it to

the case of the initiation of fresh purposive reactions.

A teleological and a mechanical series cannot ultimately

be “parallel.” § 7. We are thus thrown back on the

hypothesis of _Interaction_ as the only one which

affords a consistent scheme for the correlation of

Physiology and Psychology. We have, however, to remember

that what the hypothesis correlates is scientific

symbols, not actual facts. The actuality represented by

both sets of symbols is the same thing, though the

psychological symbolism affords a wider and more

adequate representation of it than the physiological 313

CHAPTER III

THE PLACE OF THE “SELF” IN REALITY

§ 1. The “self” is (1) a teleological concept, (2) implies a

contrasted not-self (where this contrast is absent from

an experience there is no genuine sense of self); (3)

but the limits which divide self and not-self are not

fixed but fluctuating. The not-self is not a merely

external limit, but consists of discordant elements

within the individual, which are extruded from it by a

mental construction. (4) The self is a product of

development, and has its being in the time-series. (5)

The self is never given complete in a moment of actual

experience, but is an ideal construction; probably

self-hood implies some degree of _intellectual_

development. § 2. The Absolute or Infinite Individual,

being free from all internal discord, can have no

not-self, and therefore cannot properly be called a

self. § 3. Still less can it be a person. § 4. In a

_society_ of selves we have a more genuinely

self-determined individual than in the single self.

Hence it would be nearer the truth to think of the

Absolute as a Society, though no finite whole adequately

expresses the Absolute’s full nature. We must remember,

however, (_a_) that probably the individuals in the

Absolute are not all in _direct_ relation, and (_b_)

that in thinking of it as a Society we are not denying

its real individuality. § 5. The self is not in its own

nature imperishable; as to the particular problem of its

continuance after death, no decision can be arrived at

on grounds of Metaphysics. Neither the negative

presumption drawn from our inability to understand the

conditions of continuance, nor the lack of empirical

evidence, is conclusive; on the other hand, there is not

sufficient metaphysical reason for taking immortality as

certain 334

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM OF MORAL FREEDOM

§ 1. The metaphysical problem of free will has been

historically created by extra-ethical difficulties,

especially by theological considerations in the early

Christian era, and by the influence of mechanical

scientific conceptions in the modern world. §§ 2, 3. The

analysis of our moral experience shows that true

“freedom” means teleological determination. Hence to be

“free” and to “will” are ultimately the same thing.

Freedom or “self-determination” is genuine but limited,

and is capable of variations of degree. § 4.

_Determinism_ and _Indeterminism_ both arise from the

false assumption that the mechanical postulate of

_causal_ determination by antecedents is an ultimate

fact. The question then arises whether mental events are

an exception to the supposed principle. § 5.

_Determinism._ The determinist arguments stated. § 6.

They rest partly upon the false assumption that

mechanical determination is the one and only principle

of rational connection between facts; § 7. Partly upon

fallacious theories of the actual procedure of the

mental sciences. Fallacious nature of the argument that

complete knowledge of character and circumstances would

enable us to predict human conduct. The assumed data are

such as, from their own nature, could not be known

_before the event_. § 8. _Indeterminism._ The psychical

facts to which the indeterminist appeals do not warrant

his conclusion, which is, moreover, metaphysically

absurd, as involving the denial of rational connection.

§ 9. Both doctrines agree in the initial error of

confounding teleological unity with causal determination 359

CHAPTER V

SOME METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF ETHICS AND RELIGION

§ 1. If Reality is a harmonious system, it must somehow make

provision for the gratification of our ethical,

religious, and æsthetic interests. § 2. But we cannot

assume that ethical and religious postulates are

necessarily _true_ in the forms in which our practical

interests lead us to make them. § 3. Thus, while

morality would become impossible unless on the whole

there is coincidence between virtue and happiness, and

unless social progress is a genuine fact, “perfect

virtue,” “perfect happiness,” “infinite progress” are

logically self-contradictory concepts. § 4. But this

does not impair the practical usefulness of our ethical

ideals. § 5. In religion we conceive of the ideal of

perfection as already existing in individual form. Hence

ultimately no part of the temporal order can be an

adequate object of religious devotion. § 6. This leads

to the _Problem of Evil_. “God” cannot be a finite being

within the Absolute, because, if so, God must contain

evil and imperfection as part of His nature, and is thus

_not_ the already existing realisation of the ideal. §

7. This difficulty disappears when we identify “God”

with the Absolute, because in the Absolute evil can be

seen to be mere illusory appearance. It may, however, be

true that religious feeling, to be practically

efficient, may need to imagine its object in an

ultimately incorrect anthropomorphic form. § 8. The

existence, within the Absolute, of finite “divine”

personalities, can neither be affirmed nor denied on

grounds of general Metaphysics. § 9. Proofs of the

“being of God.” The principle of the “ontological” and

“cosmological” proofs can be defended against the

criticism of Hume and Kant only if we identify God with

the Absolute. The “physicotheological proof” could only

establish the reality of finite superhuman

intelligences, and its force depends purely upon

empirical considerations of evidence 381

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

§ 1. Can our Absolute Experience be properly called the

“union of Thought and Will”? The Absolute is certainly

the final realisation of our intellectual and our

practical ideals. But (1) it includes aspects, such as,

_e.g._, æsthetic feeling, pleasure, and pain, which are

neither Thought nor Will. (2) And it cannot possess

either Thought or Will _as such_. Both Thought and Will,

in their own nature, presuppose a Reality which

transcends _mere_ Thought and _mere_ Will. § 2. Our

conclusion may in a sense be said to involve an element

of Agnosticism, and again of Mysticism. But it is only

agnostic in holding that we do not know the precise

nature of the Absolute Experience. It implies no

distrust of the validity of knowledge, so far as it

goes, and bases its apparently agnostic result on the

witness of knowledge itself. Similarly, it is mystical

in transcending, not in refusing to recognise, the

constructions of understanding and will. § 3.

Metaphysics adds nothing to our information, and yields

no fresh springs of action. It is finally only justified

by the persistency of the impulse to speculate on the

nature of things as a whole 408

INDEX 417

ELEMENTS OF METAPHYSICS

BOOK I

GENERAL NOTIONS

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM OF THE METAPHYSICIAN

§ 1. The generality and simplicity of the metaphysical problem make it

difficult to define the study. § 2. Problem is suggested by the

presence of contradictions in ordinary experience. § 3. By making a

distinction between reality and appearance the sciences remove some

of these contradictions, but themselves lead to further difficulties

of the same sort; hence the need for systematic inquiry into the

meaning of the distinction between the real and the apparent, and

the general character of reality as such. § 4. Metaphysics, as an

inquiry into the ultimate meaning of “reality,” is akin to poetry

and religion, but differs from them in its scientific character,

from the mathematical and experimental sciences in its method, from

common scepticism in the critical nature of its methods as well as

in its positive purpose. § 5. The study is difficult (_a_) because

of the generality of its problems, (_b_) and because we cannot

employ diagrams or physical experiments. § 6. The objection that

Metaphysics is an impossibility may be shown in all its forms to

rest upon self-contradictory assumptions of a metaphysical kind. §

7. The minor objections that, if possible, the science is

superfluous, or at least stationary, may be met with equal ease. §

8. Metaphysics is partly akin to the mystical tendency, but differs

from mysticism in virtue of its positive interest in the world of

appearances, as well as by its scientific method. § 9. It agrees

with logic in the generality of its scope, but differs in being

concerned with the real, whereas logic is primarily concerned with

the inferrible. §10. The problems of the so-called _Theory of

Knowledge_ are really metaphysical.

§ 1. It is always difficult, in treating of any branch of knowledge, to

put before the beginner a correct preliminary notion of the nature and

scope of the study to which he is to be introduced, but the difficulty

is exceptionally great in the case of the body of investigations

traditionally known as Metaphysics.[1] The questions which the science

seeks to answer are, indeed, in principle of the simplest and most

familiar kind, but it is their very simplicity and familiarity which

constitute the chief difficulty of the subject. We are naturally slow to

admit that there is anything we do not understand in terms and ideas

which we are constantly using, not only in the special sciences, but in

our non-systematised everyday thought and language about the course of

the world. Hence, when the metaphysician begins to ask troublesome

questions about the meaning and validity of these common and familiar

notions, ordinary practical men, and even intelligent students of the

special sciences, are apt to complain that he is wasting his time by

raising idle and uncalled-for difficulties about the self-evident.

Consequently the writer on Metaphysics is almost inevitably compelled to

begin by rebutting the natural and current prejudice which regards his

science as non-existent and its problems as illusory. The full

vindication of metaphysical inquiry from this charge of futility can

only be furnished by such a systematic examination of the actual

problems of the study as will be attempted, in outline, in the

succeeding chapters of this work. All that can be done in an

Introduction is to present such a general description of the kind of

questions to be subsequently discussed, and their relation to the more

special problems of the various sciences, as may incline the reader to

give an impartial hearing to what is to follow.

§ 2. The course of our ordinary experience, as well as our education in

the rudiments of the sciences, has made us all familiar with the

distinction between what really _is_ or _exists_ and what merely

_appears_ to be. There is no opposition more thoroughly enshrined in the

language and literature of civilised races than the contrast of

_seeming_ with _reality_, of _substance_ with _show_. We come upon it

alike in our study of the processes of nature and our experience of

human character and purpose. Thus we contrast the seeming stability of

the earth with its real motion, the seeming continuity and sameness of a

lump of solid matter with the real discontinuity and variety of its

chemical constituents, the seeming friendliness of the hypocritical

self-seeker with his real indifference to our welfare. In all these

cases the motive which leads us to make the distinction is the same,

namely, the necessity to escape from the admission of a contradiction in

experience. So long as our various direct perceptions are not felt to

conflict with one another, we readily accept them all as equally real

and valid, and no question arises as to their relative truth or

falsehood. Were all our perceptions of this kind, there would be no need

for the correction, by subsequent reflection, of our first immediate

impressions about the nature of ourselves and the world; error would be

a term of no meaning for us, and science would have no existence. But

when two immediate perceptions, both apparently equally authenticated by

our senses, stand in direct conflict with one another,[2] we cannot,

without doing violence to the fundamental law of rational thinking,

regard both as equally and in the same sense true. Unless we abandon

once for all the attempt to reconcile the course of our experience with

the demand of our intellect for consistency in thinking, we are driven

to make a momentous distinction. We have to recognise that things are

not always what they seem to be; what appears to us is, sometimes at any

rate, not real, and what really is does not always appear. Of our two

conflicting perceptions, only one at best can be a correct

representation of the real course of things; one of them at least, and

possibly both, must be mere seeming or appearance, and we are thus cast

upon the problem which every science tries, in its own sphere and its

own way, to solve: what part of our conceptions about the world gives us

reality and what part only appearance?[3] It is because of the

importance of these puzzles of immediate perception as stimulating to

such scientific reflection that Plato and Aristotle called philosophy

the child of Wonder, and it is because the processes of change present

them in a peculiarly striking form that the problem of change has always

been a central one in Metaphysics.

§ 3. The attempt to harmonise by reflection the contradictions which

beset immediate perception in all its forms is one which is not confined

to a single science; the common task of all sciences is to say what, in

some special department and for special purposes, must be taken as

reality and what as mere appearance, and, by degrading the contradictory

to the level of appearance, to satisfy the instinctive demand of our

intellect for coherency and consistency of thought. But the development

of scientific reflection itself in its turn, while it solves some of our

difficulties, is constantly giving rise to fresh perplexities of a

higher order. Our scientific principles themselves frequently seem to

present us with contradictions of a peculiarly distressing kind. Thus we

find ourselves forced in some of our geometrical reasonings to treat a

curve as absolutely continuous, in others to regard it as made up of a

number of points. Or, again, we are alternately compelled to regard the

particles of matter as inert and only capable of being moved by impact

from without, and yet again as endowed with indwelling “central forces.”

Both the opposing views, in such a case, clearly cannot be ultimately

true, and we are therefore compelled either to give up the effort to

think consistently, or to face the question, Is either view ultimately

true, and if so, which? Again, the principles of one branch of study may

appear to contradict those of another. For instance, the absolute

determination of every movement by a series of antecedent movements

which we assume as a principle in our mechanical science, appears, at

least, to conflict with the freedom of human choice and reality of human

purpose which are fundamental facts for the moralist and the historian;

and we have thus once more to ask, which of the two, mechanical

necessity or intelligent freedom, is the reality and which the mere

appearance? Finally, the results of our scientific reflection sometimes

seem to be in violent disagreement with our deepest and most

characteristic aspirations and purposes, and we cannot avoid the

question, which of the two have the better title to credit as witnesses

to the inmost nature of reality?

In all these cases of perplexity there are, short of the refusal to

think about our difficulties at all, only two courses open to us. We may

answer the question at haphazard and as it suits our momentary caprice,

or we may try to answer it on an intelligible principle. If we choose

the second course, then clearly before we formulate our principle we

must undertake a systematic and impartial inquiry as to what we really

mean by the familiar distinction between “seems” and “is,” that is to

say, a scientific inquiry into the general characteristics by which

reality or real being is distinguished from mere appearance, not in some

one special sphere of study, but universally. Now, such an inquiry into

the general character of reality, as opposed to more or less unreal

appearance, is precisely what is meant by Metaphysics. Metaphysics sets

itself, more systematically and universally than any other science, to

ask what, after all, is meant by being _real_, and to what degree our

various scientific and non-scientific theories about the world are in

harmony with the universal characteristics of real existence. Hence

Metaphysics has been called “an attempt to become aware of and to doubt

all preconceptions”; and again, “an unusually resolute effort to think

consistently.” As we cannot, so long as we allow ourselves to think at

all, avoid asking these questions as to what “is” and what only “seems,”

it is clear that the attempt to dispense with metaphysical speculation

altogether would be futile. We have really no choice whether we shall

form metaphysical hypotheses or not, only the choice whether we shall do

so consciously and in accord with some intelligible principle, or

unconsciously and at random.

§ 4. Our preliminary account of the general character of the

metaphysician’s problem will enable us to distinguish Metaphysics from

some other closely related forms of human thought, and to give it at

least a provisional place in the general scheme of knowledge. (_a_)

Clearly, Metaphysics, as an inquiry into the meaning of reality, will

have some affinity with religion as well as with imaginative literature,

both of which aim at getting behind mere appearances and interpreting

the reality which lies beneath them. In one important respect its

relation to both is closer than that of any other department of

knowledge,—inasmuch as it, like them, is directly concerned with

_ultimate_ reality, whereas the special sciences deal each with some one

particular aspect of things, and avowedly leave all ultimate questions

on one side. Where it differs from both is in its spirit and method.

Unlike religion and imaginative literature, Metaphysics deals with the

ultimate problems of existence in a purely scientific spirit; its object

is _intellectual_ satisfaction, and its method is not one of appeal to

immediate intuition or unanalysed feeling, but of the critical and

systematic analysis of our conceptions. Thus it clearly belongs, in

virtue of its spirit and method, to the realm of science. (_b_) Yet it

differs widely in method from the other types of science with which most

of us are more familiar. It differs from the mathematical sciences in

being non-quantitative and non-numerical in its methods. For we cannot

employ the numerical and quantitative methods of Mathematics except on

things and processes which admit of measurement, or, at least, of

enumeration, and it is for Metaphysics itself, in the course of its

investigations, to decide whether what is ultimately real, or any part

of it, is numerical or quantitative, and if so, in what sense. It

differs, again, from the experimental sciences in that, like Logic and

Ethics, it does nothing to increase the stock of our knowledge of

particular facts or events, but merely discusses the way in which facts

or events are to be interpreted if we wish to think consistently. Its

question is not what in detail we must regard as the reality of any

special set of processes, but what are the _general_ conditions to which

all reality, as such, conforms. (Just in the same way, it will be

remembered, Logic does not discuss the worth of the evidence for

particular scientific theories, but the general conditions to which

evidence must conform if it is to prove its conclusion.) Hence Aristotle

correctly called Metaphysics a science of being _quà_ being, ὄντα ᾖ

ὄντα, (as opposed, for instance, to Mathematics, which only studies

existence in so far as it is quantitative or numerical).

Again, as an attempt to discover and get rid of baseless preconceptions

about reality, Metaphysics may, in a sense, be said to be “sceptical.”

But it differs profoundly from vulgar scepticism both in its method and

in its moral purpose. The method of vulgar scepticism is _dogmatic_,—it

takes it for granted without inquiry that two perceptions or two

speculative principles which conflict with one another must be equally

false. Because such contradictions can be detected in all fields of

knowledge and speculation, the sceptic dogmatically assumes that there

is no means of getting behind these contradictory appearances to a

coherent reality. For the metaphysician, on the contrary, the assumption

that the puzzles of experience are insoluble and the contradictions in

our knowledge irreconcilable is itself just one of those preconceptions

which it is the business of his study to investigate and test. Until

after critical examination, he refuses to pronounce which of the

conflicting views is true, or, supposing both false, whether one may not

be nearer the truth than the other. If he does not assume that truth can

be got and reality known by our human faculties, he does at any rate

assume that it is worth our while to make the attempt, and that nothing

but the issue can decide as to its chances of success. Again, the

metaphysician differs from the sceptic in respect of moral purpose. Both

in a sense preach the duty of a “suspense of judgment” in the face of

ultimate problems. The difference is that the sceptic treats “suspense,”

and the accompanying mental indolence, as an end in itself; the

metaphysician regards it as a mere preliminary to his final object, the

attainment of determinate truth.

§ 5. We can now see some of the reasons which make the science of

Metaphysics a peculiarly difficult branch of study. It is difficult, in

the first place, from the very simplicity and generality of its

problems. There is a general conviction that every science, if it is to

be anything more than a body of disputes about mere words, must deal

with some definite subject-matter, and it is not easy to say precisely

_what_ is the subject dealt with by the metaphysician. In a certain

sense this difficulty can only be met by admitting it; it is true, as we

have already seen, that Metaphysics deals in some way with everything;

thus it is quite right to say that you cannot specify any particular

class of objects as its exclusive subject-matter. This must not,

however, be understood to mean that Metaphysics is another name for the

whole body of the sciences. What it does mean is that precisely because

the distinction between the real and the apparent affects every

department of our knowledge and enters into every one of the special

sciences, the general problem as to the meaning of this distinction and

the principle on which it rests cannot be dealt with by any one special

science, but must form the subject of an independent inquiry. The

parallel with Logic may perhaps help to make this point clearer. It is

just because the principles of reasoning and the rules of evidence are,

in the last resort, the same for all the sciences, that they have to be

made themselves the subject of a separate investigation. Logic, like

Metaphysics, deals with everything, not in the sense of being another

name for the whole of our knowledge, but in the sense that it, unlike

the special sciences, attacks a problem which confronts us in every

exercise of our thought. The question of the difference between the two

sciences will be discussed in a later section of this chapter.

There are two other minor sources of difficulty, arising out of the

universality of the metaphysical problem, which ought perhaps to be

mentioned, as they present a serious obstacle to the study of

Metaphysics by minds of a certain stamp. In Metaphysics we have no such

helps to the imagination as the figures and diagrams which are so useful

in many branches of Mathematics; and again, we are, by the nature of the

problem, entirely cut off from the aid of physical experiment. All our

results have to be reached by the unassisted efforts of thought in the

strictest sense of the word, that is, by the rigid and systematic mental

analysis of conceptions. Thus Metaphysics stands alone among the

sciences, or alone with Logic, in the demand it makes on the student’s

capacity for sheer hard continuous thought This may help to explain why

men who are capable of excellent work in the domain of mathematical or

experimental science sometimes prove incompetent in Metaphysics; and

again, why eminent metaphysical ability does not always make its

possessor a sound judge of the results and methods of the other

sciences.

§ 6. It is now time to consider one or two objections which are very

commonly urged against the prosecution of metaphysical studies. It is

often asserted, either that (1) such a science is, in its very nature,

an impossibility; or (2) that, if possible, it is useless and

superfluous, since the other sciences together with the body of our

practical experience give us all the truth we need; or, again, (3) that

at any rate the science is essentially unprogressive, and that all that

can be said about its problems has been said long ago. Now, if any of

these popular objections are really sound, it must clearly be a waste of

time to study Metaphysics, and we are therefore bound to discuss their

force before we proceed any further.

(1) To the objection that a science of Metaphysics is, from the nature

of the case, impossible, it would be in principle correct to reply that,

as the proverb says, “You never can tell till you try,” and that few, if

any, of those who urge this objection most loudly have ever seriously

made the trial. If any one thinks the task not worth his while, he is

not called on to attempt it; but his opinion gives him no special claim

to sit in judgment on those who think differently of the matter. Still,

the anti-metaphysical prejudice is so common, and appears in so many

different forms, that it is necessary to exhibit its groundlessness

rather more in detail.

(_a_) It is sometimes maintained that Metaphysics is an impossibility

because the metaphysician’s problems, in their own nature, admit of no

solution. To a meaningless question, of course, there can be no

intelligible answer, and it is occasionally asserted, and often

insinuated, that the questions of Metaphysics are of this kind. But to

call the metaphysician’s question a senseless one is as much as to say

that there is no meaning in the distinction, which we are all constantly

making, between the real and the apparent. If there is any meaning at

all in the distinction, it is clearly a necessary as well as a proper

question precisely by what marks the one may be distinguished from the

other. Our right to raise this question can in fairness only be

challenged by an opponent who is prepared to maintain that the

contradictions which lead us to make the distinction may themselves be

the ultimate truth about things. Now, whether this view is defensible or

not, it is clearly not one which we have the right to assume without

examination as self-evident; it is itself a metaphysical theory of first

principles, and would have to be defended, if at all, by an elaborate

metaphysical analysis of the meaning of the concepts “truth” and

“reality.” Again, the objection, if valid, would tell as much against

experimental and mathematical science as against Metaphysics. If the

self-contradictory can be true, there is no rational ground for

preferring a coherent scientific theory of the world to the wildest

dreams of superstition or insanity. Thus we have no escape from the

following dilemma. Either there is no rational foundation at all for the

distinction between reality and appearance, and then all science is an

illusion, or there is a rational foundation for it, and then we are

logically bound to inquire into the principle of the distinction, and

thus to face the problems of Metaphysics.[4]

(_b_) What is essentially the same objection is sometimes put in the

following form. Metaphysics, it is said, can have no place in the scheme

of human knowledge, because all intelligible questions which we can ask

about reality must fall within the province of one or other of the

“sciences.” There are no facts with which some one or other of the

sciences does not deal, and there is therefore no room for a series of

“metaphysical” inquiries over and above those inquiries which constitute

the various sciences. Where there are facts to investigate and

intelligible questions to be put, we are, it is contended, in the domain

of “science”; where there are none, there can be no knowledge. Plausible

as this argument can be made to appear, it is easy to see that it is

fallacious. From the point of view of pure Logic it manifestly contains

a flagrant fallacy of _petitio principii_. For it simply assumes that

there is no “science,” in the most universal acceptation of the

term—_i.e._ no body of reasoned truth—besides those experimental

sciences which have for their object the accumulation and

systematisation of facts, and this is the very point at issue between

the metaphysician and his critics. What the metaphysician asserts is not

that there are facts with which the various special branches of

experimental science cannot deal, but that there are questions which can

be and ought to be raised about the facts with which they do deal other

than those which experimental inquiry can solve. Leaving it entirely to

the special sciences to tell us what in particular are the true facts

about any given part of the world’s course, he contends that we still

have to ask the more general question, what we mean by “real” and

“fact,” and how in general the “real” is to be distinguished from the

unreal. To denounce the raising of this question as an attempt to

exclude certain events and processes from the “province of science,” is

simply to misrepresent the issue at stake. Incidentally it may be added,

the objection reveals a serious misunderstanding of the true principle

of distinction between different sciences. The various sciences differ

primarily, not as dealing with different _parts_ of the world of

reality, but as dealing with the whole of it so far as it can be brought

under different _aspects_. They are different, not because they deal

with different sets of facts, but because they look at the facts from

different points of view. Thus it would be quite wrong to suppose that

the difference between, _e.g._, Physics, Physiology, and Psychology, is

primarily that each studies a different group of facts. The facts

studied may in great part be the same; it is the point of view from

which they are regarded by which each of the three sciences is

distinguished from the others. Thus every voluntary movement may be

looked at either as a link in a series of displacements of

mass-particles (Physics), as a combination of muscular contractions

initiated from a centre in the cortex of the brain (Physiology), or as a

step to the satisfaction of a felt want (Psychology). So Metaphysics

does not profess to deal with a certain group of facts lying outside the

province of the “sciences,” but to deal with the same facts which form

that province from a point of view which is not that of the experimental

sciences. Its claim to do so can only be overthrown by proving what the

criticism we are considering assumes, that there is no intelligible way

of looking at the facts besides that of experimental science.

(_c_) More commonly still the intrinsic intelligibility of the

metaphysician’s problem is admitted, but our power to solve it denied.

There may be, it is said, realities which are more than mere appearance,

but at any rate with our human faculties we can know nothing of them.

All our knowledge is strictly limited to appearances, or, as they are

often called, _phenomena_.[5] What lies behind them is completely

inaccessible to us, and it is loss of time to speculate about its

nature. We must therefore content ourselves with the discovery of

general laws or uniformities of the interconnection of phenomena, and

dismiss the problem of their real ground as insoluble. This doctrine,

technically known as Phenomenalism, enjoys at the present time a

widespread popularity, which is historically very largely due to an

imperfect assimilation of the negative element in the philosophy of

Kant. Its merits as a philosophical theory we may leave for later

consideration; at present we are only concerned with it as the alleged

ground of objection against the possibility of a science of Metaphysics.

As such it has really no cogency whatever. Not only do the supporters of

the doctrine constantly contradict their own cardinal assumption (as,

for instance, when they combine with the assertion that we can know

nothing about ultimate reality, such assertions as that it is a certain

and ultimate truth that all “phenomena” are connected by general laws,

or that “the course of nature is, without exception, uniform”), but the

assumption itself is self-contradictory. The very statement that “we

know only phenomena” has no meaning unless we know at least enough about

ultimate realities to be sure that they are unknowable. The

phenomenalist is committed to the recognition of at least one

proposition as an absolute and ultimate truth, namely, the proposition,

“I know that whatever I know is mere appearance.” And this proposition

itself, whatever we may think of its value as a contribution to

Philosophy, is a positive theory as to first principles the truth or

falsity of which is a proper subject for metaphysical investigation.

Thus the arguments by which it has been sought to demonstrate the

impossibility of Metaphysics themselves afford unimpeachable evidence of

the necessity for the scientific examination of the metaphysical

problem.[6]

§ 7. With the other two anti-metaphysical contentions referred to at the

beginning of the last section we may deal much more briefly. (2) To the

objector who maintains that Metaphysics, if possible, still is useless,

because the sciences and the practical experience of life between them

already supply us with a coherent theory of the world, devoid of

contradictions, we may reply: (_a_) The fact is doubtful. For, whatever

may be said by the popularisers of science when they are engaged in

composing metaphysical theories for the multitude, the best

representatives of every special branch of mathematical and experimental

science seem absolutely agreed that ultimate questions as to first

principles are outside the scope of their sciences. The scope of every

science, they are careful to remind us, is defined by certain initial

assumptions, and what does not fall under those assumptions must be

treated by the science in question as non-existent. Thus Mathematics is

in principle restricted to dealing with the problems of number and

quantity; whether there are realities which are in their own nature

non-numerical and non-quantitative[7] or not, the mathematician, as

mathematician, is not called upon to pronounce; if there are such

realities, his science is by its initial assumptions debarred from

knowing anything of them. So again with Physics; even if reduced to pure

Kinematics, it deals only with displacements involving the dimensions of

length and time, and has no means of ascertaining whether or not these

dimensions are exhibited by all realities. The notion that the various

sciences of themselves supply us with a body of information about

ultimate reality is thus, for good reasons, rejected by their soundest

exponents, who indeed are usually so impressed with the opposite

conviction as to be prejudiced in favour of the belief that the

ultimately real is unknowable. (_b_) Again, as we have already seen, the

results of physical science, and the beliefs and aspirations which arise

in the course of practical experience and take shape in the teachings of

poetry and religion, often appear to be in sharp antagonism. “Science”

frequently seems to point in one direction, our deepest ethical and

religious experience in another. We cannot avoid asking whether the

contradiction is only apparent or, supposing it real, what degree of

authority belongs to each of the conflicting influences. And, apart from

a serious study of Metaphysics, this question cannot be answered. (_c_)

Even on the most favourable supposition, that there is no such

contradiction, but that science and practical experience together afford

a single ultimately coherent theory of the world, it is only after we

have ascertained the general characteristics of ultimate reality, and

satisfied ourselves by careful analysis that reality, as conceived in

our sciences, possesses those characteristics, that we have the right to

pronounce our theory finally true. If Metaphysics should tum out in the

end to present no fresh view as to the nature of the real, but only to

confirm an old one, we should still, as metaphysicians, have the

advantage of knowing where we were previously only entitled to

conjecture.

(3) The charge of unprogressiveness often brought against our science is

easily disproved by careful study of the History of Philosophy. The

problems of the metaphysician are no doubt, in a sense, always the same;

but this is equally true of the problems of any other science. The

methods by which the problems are attacked and the adequacy of the

solutions they receive vary, from age to age, in close correspondence

with the general development of science. Every great metaphysical

conception has exercised its influence on the general history of

science, and, in return, every important movement in science has

affected the development of Metaphysics. Thus the revived interest in

mechanical science, and the great progress made in that branch of

knowledge which is so characteristic of the seventeenth century, more

than anything else determined the philosophical method and results of

Descartes; the Metaphysics of Leibnitz were profoundly affected by such

scientific influences as the invention of the calculus, the recognition

of the importance of _vis viva_ in dynamics, the contemporary

discoveries of Leuwenhoeck in embryology; while, to come to our own

time, the metaphysical speculation of the last half-century has

constantly been revolving round the two great scientific ideas of the

conservation of energy and the origin of species by gradual

differentiation. The metaphysician could not if he would, and would not

if he could, escape the duty of estimating the bearing of the great

scientific theories of his time upon our ultimate conceptions of the

nature of the world as a whole. Every fundamental advance in science

thus calls for a restatement and reconsideration of the old metaphysical

problems in the light of the new discovery.[8]

§ 8. This introductory chapter is perhaps the proper place for a word on

the relation of Metaphysics to the widely diffused mental tendency known

as Mysticism.[9] Inasmuch as the fundamental aim of the mystic is to

penetrate behind the veil of appearance to some ultimate and abiding

reality, there is manifestly a close community of purpose between him

and the metaphysician. But their diversity of method is no less marked

than their partial community of purpose. Once in touch with his reality,

wherever he may find it, the mere mystic has no longer any interest in

the world of appearance. Appearance as such is for him merely the untrue

and ultimately non-existent, and the peculiar emotion which he derives

from his contemplation of the real depends for its special quality on an

ever-present sense of the contrast between the abiding being of the

reality and the non-entity of the appearances. Thus the merely mystical

attitude towards appearance is purely negative. The metaphysician, on

the contrary, has only half completed his task when he has, by whatever

method, ascertained the general character of the real as opposed to the

merely apparent. It still remains for him to re-examine the realm of

appearance itself in the light of his theory of reality, to ascertain

the relative truth which partial and imperfect conceptions of the

world’s nature contain, and to arrange the various appearances in the

order of their varying approximation to truth. He must show not only

what are the marks of reality, and why certain things which are

popularly accepted as real must, for Philosophy be degraded to the rank

of appearance, but also how far each appearance succeeds in revealing

the character of the reality which is its ground. Equally marked is the

difference between the mystic’s and the metaphysician’s attitude towards

ultimate reality itself. The mystic’s object is primarily emotional

rather than intellectual. What he wants is a feeling of satisfaction

which he can only get from immediate contact with something taken to be

finally and abidingly real. Hence, when he comes to put his emotions

into words, he is always prone to use the language of vague imaginative

symbolism, the only language suitable to suggest feelings which, because

immediate and unanalysed, cannot be the subject of logical description

in general terms. For the metaphysician, whose object is the attainment

of intellectual consistency, such a method of symbolism is radically

unsuitable.

A symbol is always a source of danger to the intellect. If you employ it

for what you already understand, and might, if you chose, describe in

scientific language, it is a mere substitution of the obscure for the

clear. If you use it, as the mystic commonly does, for what you do not

understand, its apparent precision, by blinding you to the vagueness of

its interpretation, is positively mischievous. Hence, though some of the

greatest metaphysicians, such as Plotinus and Spinoza, and to a certain

extent Hegel, have been personally mystics, their philosophical method

has invariably been scientific and rationalistic. At the same time, it

is probably true that, apart from the mystic’s need for the satisfaction

of emotion by the contemplation of the eternal and abiding, the

intellect would be prone to exercise itself in less arid and more

attractive fields than those of abstract Metaphysics. The philosopher

seeks, in the end, the same goal as the mystic; his peculiarity is that

he is so constituted as to reach his goal only by the route of

intellectual speculation.

§ 9. We have compared Metaphysics more than once with Logic in respect

of the universality of its scope and the analytical character of its

methods. It remains briefly to indicate the difference between the two

sciences. There is, indeed, a theory, famous in the history of

Philosophy, and not even yet quite obsolete, according to which no

distinction can be drawn. Hegel held that the successive steps by which

the human mind gradually passes from less adequate to more adequate, and

ultimately to a fully adequate, conception of the nature of reality

necessarily correspond, step for step, with the stages of a process by

which the reality itself is manifested with ever-increasing adequacy in

an ascending order of phenomena. Hence in his system the discussion of

the general characteristics of reality and the general forms of

inference constitutes a single department of Philosophy under the name

of _Logic_. Our motive in dissenting from this view cannot be made fully

intelligible at the present stage of our inquiry, but we may at least

follow Lotze in giving a preliminary reason for the separation of the

two sciences. Logic is clearly in a sense a more general inquiry than

Metaphysics. For in Logic we are concerned with the universal conditions

under which thinking, or, to speak more accurately, inference, is

possible. Now these conditions may be fulfilled by a combination of

propositions which are materially false. The same relations which give

rise to an inference materially true from true premisses may yield a

false inference where the premisses are materially false. Valid

reasoning thus does not always lead to true conclusions. Hence we may

say that, whereas Metaphysics deals exclusively with the characteristics

of reality, Logic deals with the characteristics of the validly

inferrible, whether real or unreal. The distinction thus established,

however, though real as far as it goes, is not necessarily absolute. For

it may very well be that in the end the conditions upon which the

possibility of inference depends are identical with or consequent upon

the structure of reality. Even the fact that, under certain conditions,

we can imagine an unreal state of things and then proceed to reason

validly as to the results which would follow if this imaginary state

were actual, may itself be a consequence of the actual nature of things.

And, as a matter of fact, logicians have always found it impossible to

inquire very deeply into the foundations and first principles of their

own science without being led to face fundamental issues of Metaphysics.

The distinction between the two studies must thus, according to the

well-known simile of Bacon, be compared rather with a vein in a

continuous block of marble than with an actual line of cleavage. Still

it is at least so far effectual, that while many metaphysical questions

have no direct bearing on Logic, the details of the theory of evidence

are likewise best studied as an independent branch of knowledge.

§ 10. In recent years considerable prominence has been attained by a

branch of study known as _Epistemology_, or the _Theory of Knowledge_.

The _Theory of Knowledge_, like Logic, is primarily concerned with the

question of the conditions upon which the validity of our thinking, as a

body of knowledge about reality, depends. It differs from ordinary Logic

in not inquiring into the details of the various processes of proof, but

confining its attention to the most general and ultimate conditions

under which valid thinking is possible, and discussing these general

principles more thoroughly and systematically than common Logic usually

does. Since the conditions under which truth is obtainable depend, in

the last resort, on the character of that reality which knowledge

apprehends, it is clear that the problems of the _Theory of Knowledge_,

so far as they do not come under the scope of ordinary Logic (the theory

of the estimation of evidence), are metaphysical in their nature. As

actually treated by the writers who give this name to their discussions,

the study appears to consist of a mixture of Metaphysics and Logic, the

metaphysical element predominating. There is perhaps no serious harm in

our giving, if we choose, the name _Epistemology_ or _Theory of

Knowledge_ to our discussions of ultimate principles, but the older

title Metaphysics seems on the whole preferable for two reasons. The

discussion of the implications of knowledge is only one part of the

metaphysician’s task. The truly real is not only the knowable, it is

also that which, if we can obtain it, realises our aspirations and

satisfies our emotions. Hence the theory of the real must deal with the

ultimate implications of practical conduct and æsthetic feeling as well

as those of knowledge. The Good and the Beautiful, no less than the

True, are the objects of our study.

Again, if the name _Theory of Knowledge_ is understood, as it sometimes

has been, to suggest that it is possible to study the nature and

capabilities of the knowing faculty apart from the study of the contents

of knowledge, it becomes a source of positive and dangerous mistake. The

capabilities and limitations of the knowing faculty can only be

ascertained by inquiring into the truth of its knowledge, regarded as an

apprehension of reality; there is no possible way of severing the

faculty, as it were, by abstraction from the results of its exercise,

and examining its structure, as we might that of a mechanical appliance,

before investigating the value of its achievements. The instrument can

only be studied in its work, and we have to judge of its possibilities

by the nature of its products. It is therefore advisable to indicate, by

our choice of a name for our subject, that the theory of Knowing is

necessarily also a theory of Being.

_Consult further_:—F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_,

Introduction; L. T. Hobhouse, _The Theory of Knowledge_, Introduction;

H. Lotze, _Metaphysic_, Introduction (Eng. trans., vol. i. pp. 1-30)

-----

Footnote 1:

The name simply means “what comes after Physics,” and probably owes

its origin to the fact that early editors of Aristotle placed his

writings on ultimate philosophical questions immediately after his

physical treatises.

Footnote 2:

For an example of these puzzles, compare the passage (_Republic_, 524)

where Plato refers to cases in which an apparent contradiction in our

sensations is corrected by _counting_.

Footnote 3:

Of course we must not assume that “_every_ appearance is _only_

appearance,” or that “nothing is both reality and appearance.” This is

just the uncritical kind of preconception which it is the business of

Metaphysics to test. Whether “every appearance is only appearance” is

a point we shall have to discuss later.

Footnote 4:

Cf. F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 1-4.

Footnote 5:

I may be pardoned for reminding the reader who may be new to our

subject, that “facts” and “processes” are only properly called

_phenomena_ when it is intended to imply that as they stand they are

_not_ genuine realities but only the partially misleading appearance

of reality which is non-phenomenal or ultra-phenomenal. (We shall do

well to avoid the pretentious error of calling the ultra-phenomenal,

_as such_, “_noumenal_.”)

Footnote 6:

_Appearance and Reality_, chap. 12, p. 129 (ed. 1).

Footnote 7:

As, for instance, all mental states are, according to certain

psychologists, non-quantitative.

Footnote 8:

The student will find Höffding’s _History of Modern Philosophy_

(English translation in 2 vols., Macmillan) particularly valuable for

the way in which the author brings out the intimate historical

connection between the development of Metaphysics and the general

progress of science.

Footnote 9:

For further discussion the reader may be referred to Royce, _The World

and the Individual_, First Series, Lects. 2 and 4. See also _infra_,

Bk. IV. chap. 6, § 2.

-----

CHAPTER II

THE METAPHYSICAL CRITERION AND THE

METAPHYSICAL METHOD

§ 1. In the principle that “Reality is not self-contradictory” we have a

universal and certain criterion of reality which is not merely

negative, but implies the positive assertion that reality is a

consistent system. § 2. The validity of this criterion is not

affected by the suggestion that it may be merely a _Logical_ Law. §

3. Nor by the raising of doubt whether all our knowledge is not

merely “relative,” a doubt which is itself meaningless. § 4. As to

the material of the system, it is experience or immediate psychical

fact. § 5. It must be actual experience, not mere “possibilities” of

experience; but actual experience must not be identified with

“sensation.” § 6. Nor must we assume that experience consists of

subjects _and_ their states; nor, again, that it is a mere

succession of “states of consciousness.” § 7. The _differentia_ of

matter of experience is its _immediacy_, _i.e_, its combination in a

single whole of the two aspects of _existence_ and _content_. § 8.

This union of existence and content is broken up in reflective

knowledge or thought, but may be restored at a higher level. § 9.

Experience further always appears to be implicitly complex in

respect of its content. §10. An adequate apprehension of reality

would only be possible in the form of a complete or “pure”

experience, at once all-inclusive, systematic, and direct. The

problem of Metaphysics is to ascertain what would be the general or

formal character of such an experience, and how far the various

provinces of our human experience and knowledge approximate to it.

The knowledge Metaphysics can give us of the ultimate nature of

reality as it would be present in a complete experience, though

imperfect, is final as far as it goes. §11. As to the method of

Metaphysics, it must be _analytical_, _critical_, _non-empirical_,

and _non-inductive_. It may also be called _a priori_ if we

carefully avoid confusing the _a priori_ with the psychologically

primitive. Why our method cannot be the Hegelian Dialectic.

§ 1. If we are, in the end, to attach any definite intelligible meaning

to the distinction between things as they really are and things as they

merely appear to be, we must clearly have some universal criterion or

test by which the distinction may be made. This criterion must be, in

the first place, infallible; that is, must be such that we cannot doubt

its validity without falling into a contradiction in our thought; and,

in the next, it must be a characteristic belonging to all reality, as

such, and to nothing else. Thus our criterion must, in the technical

language of Logic, be the predicate of an exclusive proposition of which

reality is the subject; we must be able to say, “Only the real possesses

the quality or mark _X_.” The argument of our last chapter should

already have suggested that we have such a criterion in the principle

that “what is real is not self-contradictory, and what is

self-contradictory is not real.” Freedom from contradiction is a

characteristic which belongs to everything that is real and ultimately

to nothing else, and we may therefore use it as our test or criterion of

reality. For, as we have seen in the last chapter, it is precisely our

inability, without doing violence to the fundamental structure of our

intellect, to accept the self-contradictory as real which first leads to

the drawing of a distinction between the real and the merely apparent;

on the other hand, where we find no contradiction in thought or

experience, we have no valid ground for doubting that the contents of

our experience and thinking are truly real. In every application, even

the most simple and rudimentary, of the distinction between what really

is and what only seems, we are proceeding upon the assumption that, if

things as we find them are self-contradictory, we are not yet in

possession of the truth about them; while, on the other hand, we may

legitimately treat the results of our thinking and experience as fully

true until they are shown to involve contradiction. Thus, in setting up

the proposition “What is real is never self-contradictory” as a

universal criterion, we are only putting into explicit form, and

proposing to apply universally, a principle involved in all rational

reflection on the course of things. Audacious as the attempt to make

such a general statement about the whole universe of being appears, it

is an audacity to which we are fully committed from the first moment of

our refusing to accept both sides of a contradiction as true.

The principle that “Reality is not self-contradictory” at first sight

might appear to be merely negative; we might object that it only tells

us what reality is _not_, and still leaves us quite in the dark as to

what it _is_. This would, however, be a serious misconception. As we

learn from modern scientific Logic, no true and significant negative

judgment is merely negative; all significant negation is really

exclusion resting upon a positive basis. I can never, that is, truly

declare that _A is not B_, except on the strength of some piece of

positive knowledge which is inconsistent with, or excludes, the

possibility of A being B.[10] My own ignorance or failure to find

sufficient ground for the assertion _A is B_ is never of itself logical

warrant for the judgment _A is not B_; that _A is not B_ I can never

truly assert, except on the ground of some other truth which would be

contradicted if A were affirmed to be B. Hence to say “Reality is not

self-contradictory” is as much as to say that we have true and certain

knowledge that reality is positively self-consistent or coherent; that

is to say that, whatever else it may be, it is at least a systematic

whole of some kind or other. How much further our knowledge about

reality goes, what kind of a whole we can certainly know it to be, it

will be the business of succeeding portions of this work to discuss; but

even at the present stage of the inquiry we can confidently say that

unless the distinction between the real and the apparent is purely

meaningless, it is positively certain that Reality,[11] or the universe,

is a self-consistent systematic whole.

§ 2. Our declaration that the principle of the self-consistency of the

real affords a certain and infallible criterion of reality, may probably

provoke a sceptical doubt which is of such importance that we must give

it full consideration before making any further advance. I state the

difficulty in what appears to me its most reasonable and telling form.

“Your alleged criterion,” it will be said, “is simply the logical Law of

Contradiction expressed in a novel and misleading way. Now, the Law of

Contradiction, like all purely logical laws, is concerned not with real

things, but exclusively with the concepts by which we think of them.

When the logician lays it down as a fundamental truth of his science

that _A cannot be both B and not B_, his A and B stand not for things

“in the real world to which our thoughts have reference,” but for

concepts which we frame about the things. His law is thus purely what he

calls it, a Law of Thought; he says, and says truly, “you cannot, at the

same time, and in the same sense, _think_ both that A is B, and that it

is not B”; as to whether such a state of things, though unthinkable to

us, may be real “as a fact,” he makes no assertion. You take this law of

our thinking, silently assume that it is also a law of the things about

which we think, and go on to set it up as an infallible criterion of

their reality. Your procedure is thus illegitimate, and your pretended

criterion a thing of nought.”[12]

Our reply to this common sceptical objection will incidentally throw an

interesting light on what was said in the last chapter of the close

connection between the problems of Logic and those of Metaphysics. In

the first place, we may at least meet the sceptic with an effective _tu

quoque_. It is you yourself, we may say, who are most open to the charge

of illegitimate assumption. Your whole contention rests upon the

assumption, for which you offer no justification, that because the Law

of Contradiction is admittedly a law of thought, it is therefore _only_

a law of thought; if you wish us to accept such a momentous conclusion,

you ought at least to offer us something in the nature of a reason for

it. Nor shall we stop here; we shall go on to argue that the sceptic’s

interpretation of the Law of Contradiction rests on a positive

confusion. By a Law of Thought may be meant either (_a_) a

_psychological_ law, a true general statement as to the way in which we

actually do think, or (_b_) a _logical_ law, a true general statement as

to the conditions under which our thinking is valid; the plausibility of

the sceptical argument arises from an unconscious confusion between

these two very different senses of the term. Now, in the first place, it

seems doubtful whether the principle of contradiction is even true, if

it is put forward as a psychological law. It would be, at least, very

hard to say whether a human being is capable or not of holding at once

and with equal conviction the truth of two contradictory propositions.

Certainly it is not uncommon to meet persons who do fervently profess

equal belief in propositions which _we_ can see to be inconsistent; on

the other hand, they are usually themselves unaware of the

inconsistency. Whether, in all cases, they would, if made aware of the

inconsistency, revise their belief, is a question which it is easier to

ask than to answer. But it is at any rate certain that the logician does

not intend his Law of Contradiction to be taken as a psychological

proposition as to what I can or cannot succeed in believing. He means it

to be understood in a purely logical sense, as a statement about the

conditions under which any thought is valid. What he says is not that I

cannot at once think that A is B and that it is not B, but that, if I

think so, my thinking cannot be _true_. Now, to think truly about things

is to think in accord with their real nature, to think of them as they

really are, not as they merely appear to an imperfect apprehension to

be; hence to say that non-contradiction is a fundamental condition of

true thinking is as much as to say that it is a fundamental

characteristic of real existence. Just because the Law of Contradiction

is a logical law, it cannot be _only_ a logical law, but must be a

metaphysical law as well. If the sceptic is to retain his sceptical

position, he must include Logic along with Metaphysics in the compass of

his doubts, as the thorough-going sceptics of antiquity had the courage

to do.

§ 3. But now suppose the sceptic takes this line. All our truth, he may

say, is only relatively truth, and even the fundamental conditions of

true thought are only valid _relatively_ and for us. What right have you

to assume their _absolute_ validity, and to argue from it to the real

constitution of things? Now, what does such a doubt mean, and is it

rational? The answer to this question follows easily from what we have

already learnt about the logical character of denial. Doubt, which is

tentative denial, like negation, which is completed denial, logically

presupposes positive knowledge of some kind or other. It is never

rational to doubt the truth of a specific proposition except on the

strength of your possession of positive truth with which the suggested

judgment appears to be in conflict. This is, of course, obvious in cases

where we hesitate to accept a statement as true on the ground that we do

not see how to reconcile it with another specific statement already

known, or believed, to be true. It is less obvious, but equally clear on

reflection, in the cases where we suspend our judgment on the plea of

insufficient evidence. Apart from positive knowledge, however defective,

as to the kind and amount of evidence which _would_, if forthcoming, be

sufficient to prove the proposition, expressions of doubt and of belief

are equally impertinent; unless I know, to some extent at least, what

evidence is wanted, how indeed am I to judge whether the evidence

produced is sufficient or not?[13] Thus we see that the paradox of Mr.

Bradley, that rational doubt itself logically implies infallibility in

respect of some part of our knowledge, is no more than the simple truth.

We see also that the doubt whether the ultimate presuppositions of valid

thinking may not be merely “relatively” valid, has no meaning. If the

sceptic’s doubt whether Reality is ultimately the self-consistent system

that it must be if any of our thinking can be true is to lay any claim

to rationality, it must take the form of the assertion, “I positively

know something about the nature of Reality which makes it reasonable to

think that Reality is incoherent,” or “Self-consistency is inconsistent

with what I positively know of the nature of Reality.” Thus the sceptic

is forced, not merely to lay claim to absolute and certain knowledge,

but to use the test of consistency itself for the purpose of disproving

or questioning its own validity. Our criterion of Reality, then, has

been proved infallible by the surest of methods; we have shown that its

truth has to be assumed in the very process of calling it in question.

§ 4. Reality, then, in spite of the sceptic’s objections, is truly known

to be a connected and self-consistent, or internally coherent, system;

can we with equal confidence say anything of the data of which the

system is composed? Reflection should convince us that we can at least

say as much as this: all the materials or data of reality consist of

_experience_, experience being provisionally taken to mean psychical

matter of fact, what is given in immediate feeling. In other words,

whatever forms part of presentation, will, or emotion, must in some

sense and to some degree possess reality and be a part of the material

of which reality, as a systematic whole, is composed; whatever does not

include, as part of its nature, this indissoluble relation to immediate

feeling, and therefore does not enter into the presentation, will, and

emotion of which psychical life is composed, is not real. The real is

experience, and nothing but experience, and experience consists of

“psychical matter of fact.”[14]

Proof of this proposition can only be given in the same way as of any

other ultimate truth, by making trial of it; if you doubt it you may be

challenged to perform the experiment of thinking of anything whatever,

no matter what, as real, and then explaining what you mean by its

reality. Thus suppose you say “I can think of A as real,” A being any

thing in the universe; now think, as you always can, of an imaginary or

unreal A, and then try to state the difference between the A which is

thought of as real and the A which is thought of as merely imaginary. As

Kant proved, in the famous case of the real and the imagined hundred

dollars, the difference does not lie in any of the qualities or

properties of the two A’s; the qualities of the imagined hundred dollars

are precisely the same as those of the real sum, only that they are

“imaginary.” Like the real dollars, the imagined dollars are thought of

as possessing such and such a size, shape, and weight; stamped with such

and such an effigy and inscription; containing such and such a

proportion of silver to alloy; having such and such a purchasing power

in the present condition of the market, and so forth. The only

difference is that the real dollars are, or under specified and known

conditions may be, the objects of direct perception, while the imaginary

ones, because imaginary, cannot be given in direct perception. You

cannot see or handle them; you can only imagine yourself doing so. It is

in this connection with immediate psychical fact that the reality of the

real coins lies. So with any other instance of the same experiment. Show

me, we might say, anything which you regard as real,—no matter what it

is, a stone wall, an æsthetic effect, a moral virtue,—and I will ask you

to think of an unreal and imaginary counterpart of that same thing, and

will undertake to prove to you that what makes the difference between

the reality and the imagination is always that the real thing is

indissolubly connected with the psychical life of a sentient subject,

and, as so connected, is psychical matter of fact.

§ 5. Two points should be carefully noted if we wish to avoid serious

misapprehension. It might be objected, by a disciple of Kant or of Mill,

that a thing may be real without ever being given as actual psychical

fact in immediate apprehension, so long as its nature is such that it

_would_ be psychical fact under known and specified conditions. Many, if

not most, of the objects of scientific knowledge, it may be said, are of

this kind; they have never entered, possibly never will enter, into the

contents of any man’s direct apprehension, yet we rightly call them

real, in the sense that they would be apprehended under certain known

conditions. Thus I have never seen, and do not expect that any one ever

will see, the centre of the earth, or, to take a still stronger case, no

one has ever seen his own brain. Yet I call the centre of the earth or

my own brain real, in the sense that _if_ I could, without ceasing to

live, penetrate to a certain depth below the soil, I _should_ find the

centre of the earth; _if_ an opening were made in my skull, and a

suitable arrangement of mirrors devised, I _should_ see the reflection

of my own brain. A comet may be rushing through unpeopled space entirely

unbeheld; yet it does not cease for all that to be real, for _if_ I were

there I _should_ see it, and so forth. Hence the Kantian will tell us

that reality is constituted by relation to _possible_ experience; the

follower of Mill, that it means “a permanent _possibility_ of

sensation.”

Now, there is, of course, an element of truth in these arguments. It is

true that what immediately enters into the course of my own direct

perception is but a fragment of the full reality of the universe. It is

true, again, that there is much which in its own nature is capable of

being perceived by human beings, but will, as far as we can judge, never

be perceived, owing to the physical impossibility of placing ourselves

under the conditions requisite for perception; there are other things

which could only be perceived if some modification could be effected in

the structure of our perceptive organs. And it may therefore be quite

sufficient for the purposes of some sciences to define these unperceived

realities as “possibilities of sensation,” processes which we do not

perceive but might perceive under known or knowable conditions. But the

definition, it will be seen, is a purely negative one; it takes note of

the fact that we do not actually perceive certain things, without

telling us anything positive as to their nature. In Metaphysics, where

we are concerned to discover the very meaning of reality, we cannot

avoid asking whether such a purely negative account of the reality of

the greater part of the universe is finally satisfactory. And we can

easily see that it is not. For what do we mean when we talk of the

“possible”? Not simply “that which is not actual,” for this includes the

merely imaginary and the demonstrably impossible. The events of next

week, the constitution of Utopia, and the squaring of the circle are all

alike in not being actual. Shall we say, then, that the possible differs

from the imaginary in being what would, under known conditions, be

actual? But again, we may make correct inferences as to what would be

actual under conditions suspected, or even known, to be merely

imaginary, and no one will maintain that such consequences are

realities. If I were at the South Pole I should see the Polar ice, and

it is therefore real, you say, though no one actually sees it; but if

wishes were horses, beggars would ride, yet you do not say that the

riding of beggars is real. Considerations of this kind lead us to modify

our first definition of the “possible” which is to be also real. We are

driven to say that, in the case of the unperceived real thing, all the

conditions of perception except the presence of a percipient with

suitable perceptive organs, _really exist_. Thus the ice at the South

Pole really exists, because the only unfulfilled condition for its

perception is the presence at the Pole of a being with sense-organs of a

certain type. But once more, what do we mean by the distinction between

conditions of perception which are imaginary and conditions which really

exist? We come back once more to our original experiment, and once more,

try as we will, we shall find that by the real condition as

distinguished from the imaginary we can mean nothing but a state of

things which is, in the last resort, guaranteed by the evidence of

immediate apprehension. If we take the term “actual” to denote that

which is thus indissoluble from immediate apprehension, or is psychical

matter of fact, we may sum up our result by saying we have found that

the real is also actual, or that there is no reality which is not at the

same time an actuality. We shall thus be standing on the same ground as

the modern logicians who tell us that there is no possibility outside

actual existence, and that statements about the possible, when they have

any meaning at all, are always an indirect way of imparting information

about actualities.[15] Thus “There really exists ice at the South Pole,

though no human eye beholds it,” if it is to mean anything, must mean

_either_ that the ice itself, as we should perceive it if we were there,

or that certain unknown conditions which, combined with the presence of

a human spectator, would yield the perception of the ice, actually exist

as part of the contents of an experience which is not our own.[16]

The second point to which we must be careful to attend may be dismissed

more briefly. In defining experience as “immediate feeling” or “the

content of immediate feeling” or “apprehension,”[17] we must not be

understood to mean that it is in particular _sensation_. Sensation is

only one feature of immediate feeling or apprehension, a feature which

we only distinguish from others by means of a laborious psychological

analysis. A pleasure or pain, an emotion of any kind, the satisfaction

of a craving while actually present, are felt or apprehended no less

immediately than a sense-perception. I am aware of the difference

between actually feeling pleasure or pain, actually being moved by love

or anger, actually getting the satisfaction of a want, and merely

thinking of these processes, in precisely the same way in which I am

aware of the difference between actually seeing a blue expanse and

merely thinking of seeing it. A real emotion or wish differs from an

imagined one precisely as a real sensation differs from an imaginary

sensation. How exactly the difference is to be described is a question,

and unfortunately at present an unduly neglected question, for

Psychology; for our present purpose we must be content to indicate it as

one which can be experienced at will by any reader who will take the

trouble to compare an actual state of mind with the mere thought of the

same state. Of the epistemological or metaphysical interpretation of the

distinction more will be said in the course of the next few paragraphs.

As an instance of its applicability to other aspects of mind than the

purely sensational, we may take Kant’s own example of the hundred

dollars. The real hundred dollars may be distinguished from the

imaginary, if we please, by the fact that they can be actually touched

and seen; but we might equally make the distinction turn on the fact

that the real coins will enable us to satisfy our desires, while the

imaginary will not.[18]

§ 6. In the present state of philosophical opinion, the proposition that

“whatever is real consists of experience,” or again, “of psychical

matter of fact,” is in danger not so much of being rejected, as of being

accepted in a fundamentally false sense. If we are to avoid the danger

of such misunderstanding, we must be careful to insist that our

principle does not assert that _mere_ actuality is a complete and

sufficient account of the nature of reality. When we say that there is

nothing real outside the world of psychical fact, we are not saying that

reality is _merely_ psychical fact as such. What we do say is that,

however much more it may be, it is at least that. How much more we can

say of reality, beyond the bare statement that it is made up of

experiences or psychical matters of fact, it is the task of our

metaphysical science to determine; at present our problem, though given

to us in its general elements, still awaits solution. In particular, we

must take care not to fall into the error of so-called “Subjective

Idealism.” We must not say that reality consists of “_the states of

consciousness of sentient subjects_” or of “_subjects, and their

states_.” We must not falsify our data as metaphysicians by starting

with the assumption that the psychical facts of which reality is made up

are directly experienced as “states” or “modifications” of “subjects”

which are their possessors. Such a theory would in fact contradict

itself, for the “subject” or “I,” who am by the hypothesis the owner of

the “states,” is never itself given as a “state of consciousness.” Hence

Hume was perfectly correct when he argued from the principle that

nothing exists but states of consciousness, to the conclusion that the

thinker or “subject,” not being himself a state of consciousness, is an

illusion. Yet, on the other hand, if there is no thinker or subject to

“own” the passing states, they are not properly “states” or

“modifications” of anything. Apart from this explicit contradiction in

the formulation of the theory that all things are “states of

consciousness,” we must also object that the theory itself is not a

statement of the data of experience, but a hypothesis about their

connection. The division of experience into the self or the subject on

the one side and its states on the other is not given in our immediate

apprehension, but made in the progress of reflection on the contents of

apprehension. Sensible things and their properties never appear to us in

our direct apprehension of them to be states or modifications of

ourselves; that they really are this and nothing more is simply one

hypothesis among others which we devise to meet certain difficulties in

our thought. Reality comes to us from the first in the guise of pieces

of psychical fact; we feel certain, again, that these pieces must

somehow form part of a coherent whole or system. We try to understand

and account for this systematic character of the real on the supposition

that the matters of fact of which it consists are connected with one

another through the permanent character of the “subjects” to which they

belong as temporary “states” or “modifications.” But this special

interpretation of the way in which the facts of experience form a system

is no part of our initial postulate as to the general nature of the

real; it is simply one among other theories of the concrete character of

the universe, and it is for Metaphysics itself to test its merits.

Similarly, we should be making an unwarranted addition to our initial

postulate about Reality if we identified it with the doctrine of Hume

and his followers, according to whom what really exists is _merely_ a

series of “impressions and ideas” connected by certain psychological

laws of succession, any profounder structural unity of experience being

dismissed as a “fiction of the mind.” The secret of the fallacy here

lies in the _petitio principii_ committed by the introduction of the

word “merely” into our statement. From the identification of reality

with psychical facts which somehow form a systematic unity, it does not

in the least follow that the _only_ unity possessed by the facts is that

of conformity to a certain law or laws of sequence. _That_ all reality

consists of psychical facts, and _that_ these facts must form a system,

we are, as we have already seen, entitled to assert as a fundamental

metaphysical principle which cannot be doubted without falling into

contradiction; _how_ they do so we have yet to discover, if we can.

The merits of the Humian solution of the problem will come before us for

consideration at a later stage; the impossibility of assuming it without

inquiry as a principle, may perhaps be brought home to the mind of the

reader by a simple illustration. Take the case of any æsthetic whole,

such as, for instance, the play of _Hamlet_. The play of _Hamlet_

consists, for the student who reads it in his closet, of a succession of

printed words. These words form the whole material of the play; it is

composed of them all and of nothing else. Again, the words which are the

material of the play are connected by the grammatical and euphonic laws

which regulate the construction of English sentences, and the metrical

laws of English dramatic versification. Thus it would be a true

description of the play, as far as it goes, to say that it is a series

of words put together in accordance with grammatical and metrical laws.

It would, however, be positively false to say that _Hamlet_ is nothing

more than such a succession of words; its character as a work of art

depends entirely on the fact that it possesses, as a whole, a further

unity of structure and aim, that the words and sentences which are its

material embody an internally coherent representation of human character

and purpose. Apart from this inner unity of meaning, mere uniformity of

grammatical and metrical construction would not of themselves constitute

a work of art. It will be one object of our later discussions to show

that what is thus obviously true of an æsthetic whole is universally

true of every genuine system or totality.

§ 7. The data or material of reality, then, are facts of experience, and

nothing but facts of experience.[19] And experience, we have said, means

for our purposes _immediate_ feeling or apprehension. What _immediacy_

means, as we have already seen, we cannot further explain in

psychological terms, except by saying that it is what distinguishes an

actual mental state from the mere thought of that state. The reason why,

in Psychology, we have to be content with such an account is manifest.

To characterise immediate feeling further, we should have to identify

the _qualities_ by which it is universally marked off from what is not

immediate. We should, in fact, have to describe it in general terms, and

before we can do this we must cease to feel or apprehend directly, and

go on to reflect upon and analyse the contents of our apprehension. What

our psychological description depicts is never the experience as it

actually was while we were having it, but the experience as it appears

from the point of view of subsequent reflection, interpreted in the

light of all sorts of conscious or unconscious hypotheses about its

conditions and its constituents. Thus our psychological descriptions

depend for their very possibility upon the recognition of distinctions

which are not present, as such, in the experience itself as directly

presented to us but created by later reflection about it From the point

of view of Metaphysics, however, it is possible to specify one universal

characteristic of immediate feeling, which is of the utmost importance

for our theories of reality and of knowledge. When we reflect upon any

psychical fact whatever, we may distinguish within it two very different

aspects. There is, in the first place, the fact that it _does_ happen,

that it is a genuine psychical occurrence,—the existence or _that_, as

we may call it, of the piece of psychical fact in question; and there is

also the peculiar character or quality which gives _this_ mental

occurrence its unique nature as distinguished from any other which might

conceivably have been presented in its stead,—the content or _what_ of

the psychical fact. Thus a simple colour-sensation, say that of green,

has its _that_,—it is actually present, and is thus distinguished from a

merely remembered or anticipated sensation; it has also its _what_,—the

peculiar quality by which it is distinguished, for example, from a

sensation of blue. So again with an imagined sensation; it is actually

imagined, the imagining of it is an actual occurrence with its

particular place in the course of the occurrences which together make up

my mental life; and again, it is the imagination of some content with

qualities of its own by which it is distinguished from any other

content.

The most striking illustration of the presence of these distinguishable

aspects in all psychical occurrences is, of course, afforded by the case

of error or illusion, the essence of which is the false apprehension of

the _what_. Thus, when an ignorant villager sees a ghost, or a

hypochondriac is tormented by “imaginary” symptoms of disease, the ghost

or the malady is not simply non-existent; something is actually seen or

felt, but the error consists in a mistake as to the nature of what is

seen or felt. Now, the peculiarity by which direct and immediate

apprehension is distinguished, for the metaphysician, from subsequent

reflection about the contents of apprehension, is that in immediate

apprehension itself we are not conscious of the distinction between

these two aspects of psychical fact. The immediately experienced is

always a _this-what_ or process-content[20] in which the distinction of

the _this_ from the _what_ does not enter into consciousness. In any act

of reflection, on the other hand, the _what_ is explicitly distinguished

from the _that_, and then ascribed to it as something which can be truly

said about it. The judgment or proposition, which is the characteristic

form in which the result of reflection finds its expression, consists,

in its most rudimentary shape, of the embodiment of this distinction in

the separation of predicate from subject, and the subsequent affirmation

of the first about the second. The work of thought or knowledge in

making our world more intelligible to us essentially consists in the

progressive analysis of a content or _what_, considered in abstraction

from the _this_ to which it belongs. The _this_ may, as in the singular

judgment or the particular judgment of perception, actually appear in

our propositions as the subject to which the _what_ is explicitly

ascribed; or again, as in the true universals of science, both the

predicate and the ostensible subject of the proposition may belong to

the content analysed, and the _this_, or directly apprehended reality of

which the content forms an attribute, may not appear in the proposition

at all. This is why the true universal judgment has long been seen by

logicians to be essentially hypothetical, and why, again, thought or

knowledge always appears to the common-sense man to be dealing with

realities which have previously been given independently of the “work of

the mind.” He is only wrong in this view because he forgets that what is

given in this way is merely the _that_ or existence of the world of real

being, not its _what_ or content in its true character as ultimately

ascertained by scientific thought.[21]

§ 8. The fundamental characteristic of experience, then, for the

metaphysician, is its immediacy: the fact that in experience as such the

existence and the content of what is apprehended are not mentally

separated. This immediacy may be due, as in the case of mere

uninterpreted sensation, to the absence of reflective analysis of the

given into its constituent aspects or elements. But it may also be due,

as we shall have opportunities to see more fully later on, to the fusion

at a higher level into a single directly apprehended whole of results

originally won by the process of abstraction and reflection. There is an

immediacy of experience which is below mediate reflective knowledge but

there is also a higher immediacy which is above it. To explain and

justify this statement will be the work of subsequent chapters; for the

present we may be content to illustrate it by a simple example. A work

of art with an intricate internal structure, such, for instance, as a

musical composition or a chess problem, as directly presented to the

artistically uncultivated man, is little more than a mere succession of

immediately given data in which the aspects of existence and content are

as yet hardly separated; it has no significance or meaning, but merely

_is_. As education in the perception of artistic form proceeds, the

separation becomes at first more and more prominent. Each subordinate

part of the structure now acquires a meaning or significance in virtue

of its place in the whole, and this meaning is at first something over

and above the directly presented character of the part, something which

has to be grasped by reflective analysis and comparison of part with

part. The individual part has now, through analysis of its content, come

to mean or stand for something outside itself, namely, its relation to

all the other parts. But with the completion of our æsthetic education

the immediacy thus destroyed is once more restored. To the fully trained

perception the meaning of the composition or the problem, its structure

as an artistic whole, is no longer something which has to be pieced

together and inferred by reflective comparison: it is now directly

apprehended as a structural unity. The composition has a meaning, and

thus the results of the intermediate stage of reflection and comparison

are not lost, but taken up into the completed experience. But the

meaning is no longer external to the existence of the composition; it is

what it means, and it means what it is.[22] We may subsequently see that

what is thus strikingly illustrated by the case of artistic perception

holds good, to a greater or less degree, of all advance in the

understanding of reality. It is perhaps the fundamental philosophical

defect of what is popularly called Mysticism that it ignores this

difference between a higher and a lower immediacy, and thus attempts to

restore the direct contact with felt reality which scientific reflection

inevitably loosens by simply undoing the work of analytic thought and

reverting to the standpoint of mere uninterpreted feeling.[23]

§ 9. We may perhaps specify one further characteristic which seems, at

least, to belong to every datum of immediate experience. Every

experience seems to be implicitly complex, that is, its aspect of

_content_ appears never to be absolutely simple, but always to contain a

plurality of aspects, which, as directly felt, are not distinct, but are

at the same time distinguishable as soon as we begin by reflection to

describe and analyse it. From the nature of the case this complexity

cannot be directly ascertained by inspection, for the inspection itself

presupposes that we are dealing with the experience not as immediately

felt, but as already sufficiently analysed and reflected upon to be

described in general terms. Indirectly, however, our result seems to be

established by the consideration that, as soon as we reflect upon the

given at all, we find these distinguishable aspects within its content,

and that, unless they were there implicitly from the first, it is hard

to see how the mere process of reflection could have given birth to

them. Thus, for instance, in even the most rudimentary experience there

would appear to be something answering to the distinction between the

presentational quality of a sensation and its accompanying tone of

pleasure or pain. It is difficult, again, not to think that in any

sentient experience there must be some difference between elements which

correspond to more or less stable conditions of the sentient organism

itself (“organic sensation”) and those which correspond to relatively

novel and infrequent features of the environment. Some philosophers

would indeed be prepared to go further, and to maintain that a more or

less explicit consciousness of distinction between self and not-self, or

again between subject and object, is logically involved in the very

possibility of an experience. The question, as a psychological one, need

not be raised here; it must, however, be carefully remarked that

whatever view we may adopt as to the number and character of the aspects

which analysis reveals within the contents of the simplest experience,

those aspects, as directly apprehended, originally constitute an

unanalysed whole. Our various subsequent analyses all presuppose

theories as to the ultimate _what_ of experience which it is the

business of Metaphysics to test.

§ 10. Our foregoing discussion of the metaphysical criterion will

suggest a fairly definite ideal of what a completely adequate

apprehension of the whole of reality would be. A completely adequate

apprehension of reality would be one which contained all reality and

nothing but reality, and thus involved no element whatever of deceptive

appearance. As such it would, in the first place, be all-embracing; it

would include in itself every datum of direct experience, and, since

nothing but data of experience, or, as we have also called them, matters

of psychical fact, are the materials of reality, it would contain

nothing else. In the second place, it would contain all its data without

contradiction or discrepancy as part of a single system with a

harmonious internal structure of its own. For wherever there is

discrepancy, as we have already seen, there is imperfect and therefore

partially false appearance. And, in the third place, such an

all-embracing harmonious apprehension of the whole data of experience

would clearly transcend that separation of existence from content which

is temporarily effected by our own efforts to restate _our_ experience

in a consistent form. It would, because complete in itself, involve at a

higher level that immediacy which, at a lower level, we know as

characteristic of feeling. It would thus experience the whole of real

existence directly as a system with internal consistency and structure,

but without any reference to anything beyond itself. As we said of the

artistic whole, so we may say of the whole of existence as it might be

apprehended by a completed insight, it would be what it meant, and mean

what it was. To such an ideally complete experience of reality as a

single system, by way of marking its exclusively experiential nature, we

may give the name, introduced into Philosophy by Avenarius, of a “pure”

experience, that is, an experience which is in all its parts experience

and nothing else. Of course, in adopting the name, we are not

necessarily identifying ourselves with the further views of Avenarius as

to what in particular the structure of such an experience would be.

Our own human experience clearly falls far short of such an ideal, and

that for two reasons. To begin with, our experience is incomplete in

respect of its data: there is much in reality which never directly

enters into the structure of our experience at all. Of much of what

falls within the scope of our knowledge we can only say, in a general

way, how it would appear to ourselves supposing certain conditions of

its perceptibility to be realised, and even these conditions are usually

only most imperfectly known. What the actual matters of psychical fact

corresponding to these conditions and to the appearance which they would

determine for us are, we are totally unable to say. Again, there may

well be much in the real world which never, even in this indirect way,

enters into the structure of human knowledge at all. Hence our human

experience and the intellectual constructions by which we seek to

interpret it have always the character of being piecemeal and

fragmentary. Perfect apprehension of systematic reality as a whole would

be able to deduce from any one fact in the universe the nature of every

other fact. Or rather, as the whole would be presented at once in its

entirety, there would be no need for the deduction; every fact would be

directly seen as linked with every other by the directly intuited nature

of the system to which all facts belong. But in our imperfect human

apprehension of the world our facts appear to be largely given us in

isolation and independence of one another as bare “casual conjunctions”

or “collocations,” and the hypotheses by which we seek to weld them into

a system, however largely determined by the character of our data, never

quite get rid of an element of arbitrary “free” construction. They are

never fully necessitated as to their entirety by the nature of the facts

they serve to connect. Hence we can never be certain that our

hypothetical constructions themselves are true in the sense of

consisting of statements of what for a completed experience would be

matters of fact. Our ideal is to connect our presented facts by

constructions in which each link is itself matter of fact, or

experience, in the sense that it would under known conditions form the

content of a direct apprehension. But it is an ideal which, owing to the

fragmentary character of our own experience, we are never able

adequately to realise. In all our sciences we are constantly compelled

to use hypothetical constructions, which often are, and for all we know

always may be, merely “symbolic,” in the sense that, though useful in

the co-ordination of experienced data, they could never themselves

become objects of direct experience, because they conflict either with

the general nature of experience as such, or with the special nature of

the particular experiences in which they would have to be presented. Our

scientific hypotheses thus present a close analogy with the

uninterpretable stages in the application of an algebraical calculus to

a numerical or geometrical subject-matter. Their usefulness in enabling

us to co-ordinate and predict facts of direct experience need no more

guarantee their own reality, than the usefulness of such a calculus

guarantees our ability to find an intelligible interpretation for all

the symbolic operations it involves.[24] In a pure or completed

experience, at once all-comprehending and systematic, where existence

and content, fact and construction, were no longer separated, there

could of course be no place for such ultimately uninterpretable

symbolism.

Our fundamental metaphysical problem, then, is that of discovering, if

we can, the general or formal characteristics of such a complete or

“pure” experience, _i.e._ those characteristics which belong to it

simply in virtue of its all-containing and completely systematic nature.

Further, it would be the work of a completed Metaphysic to ascertain

which among the universal characteristics of our own human experience of

the world are such as must belong to any coherent experience in virtue

of its nature, and are thus identifiable with the formal characteristics

of a “pure” experience. Also, our science would have to decide what

features of human experience, among those which do not possess this

character, approximate most nearly to it, and would thus require least

modification in order to enable them to take their place in an

absolutely complete and harmonious experience of reality. If we could

completely carry out our programme, we should, in the first place, have

a general conception of what in outline the constitution of experienced

reality as a systematic whole is; and, in the second, we should be able

to arrange the various concepts and categories by which we seek, alike

in everyday thinking and in the various sciences, to interpret the world

of our experience, in an ascending order of degrees of truth and

reality, according to the extent to which they would require to be

modified before they could become adequate to express the nature of a

systematic experienced reality. The knowledge conveyed by such a science

would, of course, not be itself the pure or all-embracing experience of

Reality, but merely mediate knowledge about the general nature of such

an experience, and would therefore, so far, be like all mere knowledge

about an object, abstract and imperfect. It would still refer to

something beyond itself, and thus have a meaning other than its own

existence. But, unlike all other knowledge, our metaphysical knowledge

of the formal character of an all-inclusive experienced whole would be

_final_, in the sense that no addition of fresh knowledge could modify

it in principle. Fresh knowledge, which in all other cases involves at

least the possibility of a transformation of existing theories, would

here do no more than fill in and make more concrete our conception of

the system of Reality, without affecting our insight into its general

structure.

We may perhaps illustrate this conception of a knowledge which, though

imperfect, is yet final, by an instance borrowed from elementary

Mathematics. We know absolutely and precisely, _e. g._, what the symbol

π stands for. π is completely determined for us by the definition that

it is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. And

again, we can define unequivocally both the terms, circumference and

diameter of the circle, which we have employed in our definition of π.

Thus our knowledge of the meaning of the symbol is clearly final; no

fresh accretion to our knowledge will make any modification in it. At

the same time, our knowledge of π, though final, is imperfect. For the

quantity π is incommensurable, and thus we can never precisely evaluate

it. All we can do is to assign its value correctly within any desired

degree of approximation. Again, while no approximation gives an

absolutely correct value for the quantity, one approximation is, of

course, closer than another. Because no approximation is more than

approximately the truth, it by no means follows that all are equally

wide of the mark. Similarly, it may well be that, though we can say with

finality what the general nature of experience and experienced Reality

as a systematic whole is, yet, when we come to ask after the character

of the system in detail, we have to depend on sciences which are merely

approximate in their results; it will not follow, as is sometimes

assumed, that the categories of one science do not present us with a

nearer approximation to the absolute truth than those of another.[25]

§ 11. We may end this chapter with some general reflections on the

_method_ required for such a science of Metaphysics as we have described

in the preceding paragraphs. The true character of any scientific method

can, of course, only be discovered by the actual use of it; a

preliminary disquisition on the nature of a method not previously

exhibited in actual use is apt to be at best sterile, and at worst a

positive source of prejudices which may subsequently seriously hamper

the process of investigation. Still, there are certain general

characteristics of the method imposed on us by our conception of the

problems to be solved which may conveniently be pointed out at this

stage of our inquiry. Our method will, in the first place, clearly be

_analytical_ and _critical_ in its character. We analyse experience with

a view to discovering its implications, and we analyse our various

scientific and unscientific theories of the contents of the world-system

for the same purpose. Also, once having determined what are the formal

characteristics of an all-embracing, systematic whole of experienced

fact, we criticise our various concepts and theories by reference to

these characteristics as an ultimate standard of reality and truth.

Negatively, we may add that our method is _non-empirical_, and also

_non-inductive_, in the same sense in which pure Mathematics, for

instance, may be called non-inductive. It is non-empirical inasmuch as

we are called upon to analyse all our data and criticise all our

pre-conceived theories. We are not allowed to accept any fact without

analysis, or any concept without criticism, as an unchallenged datum

upon which we may build without preliminary justification. Hence our

method is non-empirical. Also, as our analysis is concerned entirely

with the internal character and self-consistency of the data analysed,

it is, like the reasonings of pure Mathematics, independent of external

confirmation outside the analysed data themselves, and is therefore

non-inductive.[26] In precisely the same sense our method and its

results may be called, if we please, _a priori_; that is to say, we

proceed entirely by internal analysis of certain data, and are, alike in

procedure and result, independent of experience outside the experience

we are concerned with analysing. We can, of course, add that our method

is _constructive_, that is, if successfully carried out it would

culminate in an intellectual attitude towards the world which, as an

intellectual attitude, we did not possess before entering on our study

of Metaphysics; but as construction, in this sense, is characteristic of

all scientific method, it does not seem necessary to specify it as a

peculiarity of metaphysical procedure in particular.

Historically, our conception of metaphysical method as fundamentally

analytical and directed to the detection and removal of internal

contradictions in the categories of ordinary thought, is perhaps

nearer to the view of Herbart than to that of any other great

philosopher of the past. In our insistence upon the non-empirical and,

in a sense, _a priori_ character of Metaphysics, we are again, of

course, largely in agreement with the position of Kant. There is,

however, a most important difference between our own and the Kantian

conception of the _a priori_ upon which it is essential to insist.

A-priority, as we have used the term, stands merely for a peculiarity

of the _method_ of Metaphysics; by an _a priori_ method we understood

one which is confined to the internal analysis of a datum and

independent of external reference to outside facts. With Kant the _a

priori_ is a name for certain forms of perception and thought which,

because revealed by analysis as present in every experience, are

supposed to be given _independently of all experience_ whatsoever, and

so come to be identified by him as “the work of the mind,” in

opposition to the empirical factor in experience, which is held to be

the product of an external system of “things-in-themselves.” Hence

Kant’s whole discussion of the _a priori_ is vitiated by a constant

confusion between what is metaphysically _necessary_ (_i.e._ implied

in the existence of knowledge) and what is psychologically

_primitive_. This confusion, perplexing enough in Kant, reaches a

climax in the works of writers like Mr. Spencer, who appear to think

that the whole question of the presence of a non-empirical factor in

knowledge can be decided by an appeal to genetic Psychology. It is

clear that, from our point of view, the identification of the _a

priori_ with the “work of the mind” would involve a metaphysical

theory as to the constitution of experience which we are not entitled

to adopt without proof.[27]

A word ought perhaps to be said about our attitude towards the

“dialectical” method as employed by Hegel and his followers. It was

Hegel’s conviction that the whole series of concepts or categories by

which the mind attempts to grasp the nature of experienced Reality as a

whole, from the most rudimentary to the most adequate, can be exhibited

in a fixed order which arises from the very nature of thought itself. We

begin, he held, by the affirmation of some rude and one-sided conception

of the character of what is; the very imperfection of our concept then

forces us on to affirm its opposite as equally true. But the opposite,

in its turn, is no less one-sided and inadequate to express the full

character of concrete reality. Hence we are driven to negate our first

negation by affirming a concept which includes both the original

affirmation and its opposite as subordinate aspects. The same process

repeats itself again at a higher stage with our new category, and thus

we gradually pass by a series of successive triads of categories, each

consisting of the three stages of affirmation, negation, and negation of

the negation, from the beginning of an intellectual interpretation of

the world of experience, the thought of it as mere a “Being,” not

further defined, to the apprehension of it as the “Absolute Idea,” or

concrete system of spiritual experience. It was the task of abstract

Metaphysics (called by Hegel, Logic) to exhibit the successive stages of

this process as a systematic orderly advance, in which the nature of

each stage is determined by its place in the whole. As Hegel also held

that this “dialectic” process is somehow not confined to the

“subjective” or private intelligence of the student of Philosophy, but

also realised in the structure of the “objective” universe, it followed

that its successive stages could be detected in physical nature and in

History in the same order in which they occur in “Logic,” and many of

Hegel’s best-known works are devoted to exhibiting the facts of Physics,

Ethics, Religion, and History in the light of this doctrine. The

subsequent advances of the various sciences have so completely proved

the arbitrariness and untrustworthiness of the results obtained by these

“deductions” that some of the best exponents of the Hegelian type of

Philosophy are now agreed to abandon the claim of the Dialectic to be

more than a systematisation of the stages through which the individual

mind must pass in its advance towards a finally satisfactory conception

of Reality. But even within these limits its pretensions are probably

exaggerated. No satisfactory proof can be produced that, even in

abstract Metaphysics, the succession of categories must be precisely

that adopted by Hegel. There are some categories of the first

importance, _e.g._, that of _order_ in Mathematics, which hardly get any

recognition at all in his system, and others, such as those of

“Mechanism” and “Chemism,” which play a prominent part, are obviously

largely dependent for their position upon the actual development of the

various sciences in Hegel’s own time. Hence the method seems unsuitable

for the original attainment of philosophical truth. At best it might

serve, as Lotze has remarked, as a convenient method for the arrangement

of truth already obtained by other means, and even for this purpose it

seems clear that the succession of categories actually adopted by Hegel

would require constant modification to adapt the general scheme to later

developments of the various special sciences.

_Consult further_:—F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chaps. 13,

14; B. Bosanquet, _Essentials of Logic_, Lect. 2; Shadworth Hodgson,

_Metaphysic of Experience_, bk. i. chap. 1; J. S. Mackenzie, _Outlines

of Metaphysics_, bk. i. chaps. 2 and 4. And for criticism of the

Hegelian dialectic: J. E. M‘Taggart, _Studies in Hegelian Dialectic_,

chaps. 1-3; J. B. Baillie, _The Origin and Significance of Hegel’s

Logic_, chaps. 8-12, especially chap. 12; and also Adamson, _Development

of Modern Philosophy_, bk. i. pp. 271 ff.

-----

Footnote 10:

See Bosanquet, _Essentials of Logic_, Lect. 8. As an illustration we

may take an extreme case: “The Jabberwock was not killed yesterday.”

What is the ground of this denial? At first sight it appears to be

merely negative, “there are no such things as Jabberwocks to kill.”

But before I can say “there are no such things as Jabberwocks” with

confidence, I must have enough positive information about the

structure and habits of animals to be aware that the qualities

ascribed to the Jabberwock conflict with the laws of animal life. Or,

if I deny the existence of Jabberwocks simply on the ground that I

have never come across a specimen, this involves a positive judgment

as to the relation between the animal world and the part of it I have

examined, such as, “if there were Jabberwocks, I should have come

across one”; or, “my acquaintance with the varieties of animals is

sufficiently exhaustive to afford ground for a valid generalisation.”

The fact that symbolic Logic finds it _convenient_ to treat the

universal affirmative as a double negative must not mislead us as to

its actual priority in thought.

Footnote 11:

To meet the kind of criticism which finds it humorous to jest at the

expense of those who “take consolation from spelling Reality with a

big R,” may I once for all say that when I spell Reality thus it is

simply as a convenient way of distinguishing the ultimately from the

merely relatively real?

Footnote 12:

We shall meet this same difficulty again later on as the principle of

the famous Kantian objection to the “ontological proof” of God’s

existence. _Infra_, Bk. IV. chap. 5. § 8.

Footnote 13:

Take a concrete example. A theory as to the early religious history of

the Hebrews, let us say, is put forward upon grounds derived from

Semitic philology. Though unacquainted with Semitic philology in

particular, I may be able to form some sort of estimate of the cogency

of the professed reasoning if I already have an adequate acquaintance

with the use and value of philological evidence in parallel cases,

say, in the study of Greek antiquities. But if I have no positive

acquaintance at all with the use of philology in antiquarian research,

it would be the merest impertinence for me to offer any opinion

whatever.

Footnote 14:

What follows must be regarded as a mere outline which awaits

subsequent filling up by the more concrete results of Bk II. chap. 1.

Footnote 15:

For the modern logical doctrine of possibility consult Bradley,

_Principles of Logic_, 192-201; Bosanquet, _Logic_, i. chap. 9.

Footnote 16:

This is—apart from non-essential theological accretions—the principle

of Berkeley’s argument for the existence of God (_Principles of Human

Knowledge_, §§ 146, 147).

Footnote 17:

I should explain that I use “feeling” and “apprehension” indifferently

for immediate and non-reflective awareness of any psychical content.

The exclusive restriction of the term to awareness of pleasure and

pain seems to me to rest on a serious mistake in psychology, and I

therefore avoid it.

Footnote 18:

In fact, we shall see in Bk. II. chap. 1 that in virtue of its unity

with immediate _feeling_, all experience is essentially connected with

purpose.

Footnote 19:

I take “fact” as equivalent to “what is directly apprehended in a

single moment of consciousness.” In a previous work (_The Problem of

Conduct_, chap. 1) I used the word in a different sense for “the

contents of a _true_ description of experience.” This employment of

the word, however, seems at variance with established philosophical

usage, and I therefore abandon it as likely to lead to

misapprehension.

Footnote 20:

Of course, the apprehended “content” may itself be a “process,” as is

the case in all instances of the apprehension of _change_; but the

apprehended process is always distinguishable from the process of

apprehension.

Footnote 21:

We shall see in Bk. II. chap. 1 that the “that” of an experience

implies relation to a unique individual interest or purpose.

Footnote 22:

Of course this is only partly true. As we shall see in the sequel, to

“be what it means and mean what it is” is an ideal never _fully_

realised in the structure of any finite piece of reality, precisely

because the finite, as its name implies, is never a completely

systematic whole.

Footnote 23:

On the psychological processes by which meaning is acquired, see

Stout, _Manual of Psychology_^3, bk. i. chap. 3; and on the

apprehension of form, the same author’s _Analytic Psychology_, bk. i.

chap. 3. Much interesting discussion of the difference between

“external” and “internal” meaning will be found in Royce, _The World

and the Individual_, First Series.

Footnote 24:

For some good observations on the fallacy of assuming that

mathematical symbolism must always be interpretable, see B. Russell,

_Foundations of Geometry_, p. 45-46; or Whitehead, _Universal

Algebra_, vol. i p. 10 ff. For a further elaboration of the argument

of the foregoing section I may refer to my _Problem of Conduct_, pp.

14-21. I need hardly warn the reader against confusing a “symbolic”

concept in my sense of the word, _i.e._ one which cannot be fully

interpreted in terms of direct experience, with a “symbolic” idea in

Mr. Spencer’s sense, _i.e._ one which is not, psychologically, a copy

of the presentations for which it stands. Our use of the word is, of

course, purely logical, and has nothing to do with the psychological

character of mental images, but only with their meaning.

Footnote 25:

Compare my _Problem of Conduct_, pp. 22-39.

Footnote 26:

The fundamental peculiarity of “inductive” procedure, in fact, is

that, while its object is the internal analysis of its data, which, if

completed, would permit of a universal conclusion being drawn from the

single case, it is never able to effect the analysis, and is driven to

reinforce it by external comparison with “similar” cases.

Footnote 27:

On the confusion between the metaphysical and psychological standpoint

in Kant’s own treatment of the _a priori_, see B. Russell,

_Foundations of Geometry_, pp. 1-4, and Adamson, _Development of

Modern Philosophy_, bk. i. pp. 244-247.

-----

CHAPTER III

THE SUB-DIVISIONS OF METAPHYSICS

§ 1. The traditional sub-division of Metaphysics into _Ontology_,

_Cosmology_, _Rational Psychology_, common to all the great modern

constructive systems. § 2. Precise sense in which we adopt these

divisions for the purposes of our own treatment of the subject. § 3.

Relation of _Cosmology_ and _Rational Psychology_ to the empirical

sciences.

§ 1. English philosophers, who have usually been imbued with a wholesome

distrust of deliberate system-making, have commonly paid comparatively

little attention to the question of the number and character of the

sub-divisions of metaphysical philosophy. They have been content to

raise the questions which interested them in the order of their

occurrence to their own minds, and have gladly left it to the systematic

historians of Philosophy, who have rarely been Englishmen, to discuss

the proper arrangement of the parts of the subject. Continental

thinkers, who are naturally more prone to conscious systematisation,

have bestowed more thought on the problem of method and order, with the

result that each great independent philosopher has tended to make his

own special arrangement of the parts of his subject. The different

arrangements, however, seem all to agree in conforming to a general

type, which was most clearly exhibited by the otherwise rather arid

Wolffian dogmatism of the eighteenth century. All the constructive

systems (those, _e.g._, of Hegel, Herbart, Lotze,) feel the necessity of

giving the first place to a general discussion of the most universal

characteristics which we find ourselves constrained to ascribe in

thought to any reality which is to be an intelligible and coherent

system and not a mere chaos. This division of the subject is commonly

known by the title it bears alike in the Wolffian Metaphysic and the

systems of Herbart and Lotze, as _Ontology_,[28] or the general doctrine

of Being; with Hegel it constitutes, as a whole, the contents of the

science of _Logic_, as distinguished from the other two great

departments of speculative thought, the Philosophies of _Nature_ and

_Mind_; and its most formal and general parts, again, compose, within

the Hegelian Logic itself, the special first section entitled “Doctrine

of Being.”

Further, every system of metaphysical philosophy is bound to deal with

more special problems, which readily fall into two principal classes. It

has to consider the meaning and validity of the most universal

conceptions of which we seek to understand the nature of the individual

objects which make up the experienced physical world, “extension,”

“succession,” “space,” “time,” “number,” “magnitude,” “motion,”

“change,” “quality,” and the more complex categories of “matter,”

“force,” “causality,” “interaction,” “thinghood,” and so forth. Again,

Metaphysics has to deal with the meaning and validity of the universal

predicates by which we seek to interpret the nature of the experiencing

mind itself, and its relation both to other minds and to the objects of

the physical world, “the soul,” “the self,” “the subject,”

“self-consciousness,” “ethical purpose,” and so forth. Hence it has been

customary to recognise a second and third part of Metaphysics, dealing

respectively with the most general characteristics of external Nature

and of conscious Mind. These sections of the subject are commonly known

as _Cosmology_ and _Rational Psychology_. In Hegel’s system they appear

in a double form: in their most abstract generality they constitute the

“Doctrine of Essence,” and the “Doctrine of the Notion” in the Hegelian

_Logic_; in their more concrete detail they form the second and third

parts of his complete system or “Encyclopædia” of the philosophical

sciences, the previously mentioned Philosophies of _Nature_ and _Mind_.

In the pre-Kantian eighteenth century it was not unusual to add yet a

fourth division to Metaphysics, _Rational Theology_, the doctrine of the

existence and attributes of God, so far as they can be deduced from

general philosophical principles apart from the appeal to specific

revelation. Kant’s onslaught on the whole Wolffian scheme in the

“Dialectic of Pure Reason,” while profoundly modifying for the future

the view taken by metaphysicians of Cosmology and Rational Psychology,

proved annihilating so far as eighteenth-century Deism and its

philosophical offspring, Rational Theology, were concerned, and that

sub-division may fairly be said to have disappeared from subsequent

philosophical systems.[29]

§ 2. There are good and obvious reasons why we should adhere, in the

form of our inquiry, to the main outlines of this traditional scheme. It

is true that it is largely a question of simple convenience what order

we adopt in a systematic metaphysical investigation. A genuinely

philosophical survey of the general character of knowledge and

experience would exhibit so complete a systematic unity, that you might

start from any point in it and reach the same results, much as you may

go round a circle equally well from any point of the periphery. But for

the beginner, at any rate, it is advantageous to start with the general

question what we mean by Being or Reality, and what character is to be

ascribed to the whole of Being as such, before attacking the problem of

the particular kind of Being which belongs to the various “realities” of

common life and the special sciences. Thus we have to discuss in the

first part of our programme such questions as the relation of Being in

general to experience, the sense in which Being may be said to be

inseparable from, and yet again to transcend, experience; the problem of

the existence of different kinds or degrees of Being; the question

whether Being is ultimately one or many; the relation between Real Being

and its appearances. All these problems correspond with reasonable

closeness to the contents of what was traditionally known as Ontology.

It is only when we have reached some definite conclusion on these most

fundamental questions that we shall be in a position to deal with the

more special problems suggested by the various departments of science

and common life; hence we shall do well to acquiesce in the arrangement

by which Ontology was made to precede the other divisions of the

subject. Again, in dealing with the more complex special problems of

Metaphysics, it is natural to recognise a distinction corresponding to

the separation of Cosmology from Rational Psychology. Common language

shows that for most of the purposes of human thought and action the

contents of the world of experience tend to fall into the two groups of

mere things and things which are sentient and purposive—Physical Nature

on the one hand, and Minds or Spirits on the other. We must, of course,

be careful not to confuse this division of the objects of experience

with the distinction between an experienced object as such and the

subject of experience. We are to start, in our critical investigation,

not with the artificial point of view of Psychology, which sets the

“subject” of presentations over-against the presentations considered as

conveying information about “objects of knowledge,” but with the

standpoint of practical life, in which the individual agent is opposed

to an environment itself consisting largely of similar individual

agents. It is not “Nature” on the one side and a “perceiving mind” on

the other, but an environment composed partly of physical things, partly

of other human and animal minds, that furnishes the antithesis on which

the distinction of Cosmology from Rational Psychology is founded. There

is no confusion against which we shall need to be more on our guard than

this fallacious identification of Mind or Spirit with the abstract

subject of psychological states, and of the “environment” of the

individual with Physical Nature. Of course, it is true that we

necessarily interpret the inner life of other minds in terms of our own

incommunicably individual experience, but it is equally true that our

own direct experience of ourselves is throughout determined by

interaction with other agents of the same type as ourselves. It is a

pure delusion to suppose that we begin by finding ourselves in a world

of mere physical things to some of which we afterwards come by an

after-thought, based on “analogy,” to ascribe “consciousness” akin to

our own. Hence, to avoid possible misunderstandings, it would be better

to drop the traditional appellations “Cosmology” and “Rational

Psychology,” and to call the divisions of applied Metaphysics, as Hegel

does, the _Philosophy_ of _Nature_ and of _Spirit_ or _Mind_

respectively.[30]

In recognising this sub-division of applied Metaphysics into two

sections, dealing respectively with Physical Nature and with Mind or

Spirit, we do not mean to suggest that there is an absolute disparity

between these two classes of things. It is, of course, a matter for

philosophical criticism itself to decide whether this difference may not

in the end turn out to be merely apparent. This will clearly be the case

if either minds can be shown, as the materialist holds, to be simply a

peculiar class of highly complex physical things, or physical things to

be, as the idealist contends, really minds of an unfamiliar and

non-human type. It is sufficient for us that the difference, whether

ultimate or not, is marked enough to give rise to distinct classes of

problems, which have to be treated separately and on their own merits.

We may feel convinced on general philosophical grounds that minds and

physical things are ultimately existences of the same general type,

whether we conceive that type after the fashion of the materialist or of

the idealist, but this conviction does not in the least affect the fact

that the special metaphysical problems suggested by our experience of

physical things are largely different from those which are forced on us

by our interest in the minds of our fellows. In the one connection we

have, for instance, to discuss the questions connected with such

categories as those of uniform spatial extension, uniform obedience to

general law, the constitution of a whole which is an aggregate of parts;

in the other, those connected with the meaning and value of ethical,

artistic, and religious aspiration, the concept of moral freedom, the

nature of personal identity. Even the categories which seem at first

sight most readily applicable both to physical things and to minds, such

as those of quality and number, lead to special difficulties in the two

contrasted cases. This consideration seems to justify us in separating

the metaphysics of Mind from the metaphysics of Nature, and the superior

difficulty of many of the problems which belong to the former is a

further reason for following the traditional order of the two

sub-divisions, and placing Rational Psychology after Cosmology. In so

far as the problems of Rational Theology can be separated from those of

general Ontology, the proper place for them seems to be that section of

Rational Psychology which deals with the meaning and worth of our

religious experiences.

§ 3. It remains, in concluding the present chapter, to utter a word of

caution as to the relation between the two divisions of applied

Metaphysics and the body of the empirical sciences. It is perhaps hardly

necessary to warn the student that Rational Cosmology and Psychology

would become worse than useless if conceived of as furnishing in any

sense a substitute for the experimental study of the physical,

psychological, and social sciences. They are essentially departments of

Metaphysics, and for that very reason are incapable of adding a single

fact to the sum of our knowledge of ascertained fact. No doubt the

discredit into which Metaphysics—except in the form of tacit and

unconscious assumption—has fallen among students of positive science, is

largely due to the unfortunate presumption with which Schelling, and to

a less degree Hegel, attempted to put metaphysical discussion in the

place of the experimental investigation of the facts of nature and of

mind. At the present day this mistake is less likely to be committed;

the danger is rather that applied Metaphysics may be declared purely

valueless because it is incapable of adding to our store of facts. The

truth is, that it has a real value, but a value of a different kind from

that which has sometimes been ascribed to it. It is concerned not with

the accumulation of facts, but with the interpretation of previously

ascertained facts, looked at broadly and as a whole. When the facts of

physical Nature and of Mind and the special laws of their connection

have been discovered and systematised by the most adequate methods of

experiment, observation, and mathematical calculation at our disposal,

the question still remains, how we are to conceive of the whole realm of

such facts consistently with the general conditions of logical and

coherent thought. If we choose to define positive science as the

systematic establishment of the special laws of connection between

facts, we may say that over and above the _scientific_ problem of the

systematisation of facts there is the further _philosophical_ problem of

their interpretation. This latter problem does not cease to be

legitimate because it has been illegitimately confounded by certain

thinkers with the former.

Or we may put the case in another way. The whole process of scientific

systematisation involves certain assumptions as to the ultimate nature

of the facts which are systematised. Thus the very performance of an

experiment for the purpose of verifying a suggested hypothesis involves

the assumption that the facts with which the hypothesis is concerned

conform to general laws, and that these laws are such as to be capable

of formulation by human intelligence. If “nature” is not in some sense

“uniform,” the conclusive force of a successful experiment is logically

_nil_. Hence the necessity for an inquiry into the character of the

presuppositions involved in scientific procedure, and the amount of

justification which can be found for them. For practical purposes, no

doubt, the presuppositions of inductive science are sufficiently

justified by its actual successes. But the question for us as

metaphysicians, as we have already seen, is that not of their usefulness

but of their truth.

It may be said that the inquiry ought in any case to be left to the

special student of the physical and psychological sciences themselves.

This, however, would involve serious neglect of the great principle of

division of labour. It is true, of course, that, other things being

equal, the better stored the mind of the philosopher with scientific

facts, the sounder will be his judgment on the interpretation and

implications of the whole body of facts. But, at the same time, the

gifts which make a successful experimentalist and investigator of facts

are not altogether the same which are required for the philosophical

analysis of the implications of facts, nor are both always conjoined in

the same man. There is no reason, on the one hand, why the able

experimenter should be compelled to desist from the discovery of facts

of nature until he can solve the philosophical problems presented by the

very existence of a world of physical facts, nor, on the other, why the

thinker endowed by nature with powers of philosophical analysis should

be forbidden to exercise them until he has mastered all the facts which

are known by the specialists. What the philosopher needs to know, as the

starting-point for his investigation, is not the specialist’s facts as

such, but the general principles which the specialist uses for their

discovery and correlation. His study is a “science of sciences,” not in

the sense that it is a sort of universal encyclopædia of instructive and

entertaining knowledge, but in the more modest sense of being a

systematised reflection upon the concepts and methods with which the

sciences, and the less methodical thought of everyday practical life

work, and an attempt to try them by the standard of ultimate coherence

and intelligibility.

_Note._—If we retain _Psychology_, as is done, _e.g._, by Lotze, as the

title of our Metaphysic of Mind, we ought in consistency to give the

word a greatly extended sense. The facts which the Metaphysic of Mind

attempt to interpret, comprise not only those of Psychology in the

stricter sense (the abstract study of the laws of mental process), but

those of all the various sciences which deal with the concrete

manifestation of mind in human life (Ethics, Æsthetics, Sociology, the

study of Religion, etc.). This is one reason for preferring the Hegelian

designation “Philosophy of Mind” to the traditional one of _Rational

Psychology_. The associations of the word Philosophy in English are,

however, so vague that the adoption of the Hegelian title might perhaps

be understood as identifying this division of Metaphysics with the whole

content of the mental sciences. But for the unfamiliarity of the

expression, I should recommend some such phrase as Metaphysics of Human

Society as the most adequate description of this branch of our science.

-----

Footnote 28:

The name is ultimately derived from Aristotle’s definition of “First

Philosophy”—which along with Mathematics and Physics constitutes

according to his system, the whole of Theoretical Science—as the

knowledge of ὄντα ᾖ ὄντα, _i.e._ of the general character of the real

_as_ real, as distinguished from the knowledge of the mathematician

and the physicist, who only deal with the real in so far as it

exhibits number and magnitude, and sensible change respectively.

Footnote 29:

Less effective in immediate results, but no less thorough and acute

than the Kantian “Critique of Speculative Theology,” were Hume’s

posthumous _Dialogues on Natural Religion_, a work which has hardly

received its full meed of consideration from the professional

historians of Philosophy.

Footnote 30:

The fallacy of the assumption that our environment is directly given

in experience as merely physical is best brought out by Avenarius in

his masterly little work _Der Menschliche Weltbegriff_, which should

be familiar to all students of Philosophy who are able to read German.

The purely English reader will find many fruitful suggestions in Ward,

_Naturalism and Agnosticism_, pt. iv., “Refutation of Dualism.” Much

confusion is caused in philosophical discussion by the unscholarly use

of the epistemological term “object” (which properly signifies “object

of _cognition_”) instead of the more familiar “thing” to denote the

constituent elements of our environment as it is actually experienced

in practical life. In strictness the elements of the environment are

“objects” only for an imaginary consciousness which is thought of as

merely cognisant of presented fact, a point which Prof. Münsterberg

has emphasised. For practical life the essential character of the

environment is not merely that it is “presented,” but that it

interacts with our own purposive activity; it thus consists not of

“objects,” but of “things.”

In including the minds of our fellows among the things which

constitute our environment, we must not commit the mistake of

supposing “minds” as factors in immediate experience to be

“incorporeal realities,” or “complexes of states of consciousness.”

The distinction between mind and body, and the concept of mind as

“within the body,” or again as a “function” of the body, are

psychological hypotheses which only arise in the course of subsequent

reflective analysis of experience. Of the worth of these hypotheses we

shall have to speak later. At present it is enough to note that for

direct experience a “mind” means simply a thing with individual

purpose. What for my direct experience distinguishes my fellow-man

from a stock or stone, is not the presence within him of an

incorporeal “soul” or “consciousness,” but the fact that I must take

account of his individual purposes and adapt myself to them if I wish

to achieve my own. Here again the reader of German will do well to

consult Prof. Münsterberg (_Grundzüge der Psychologie_, vol. i. chaps.

1-3). See also a paper on “Mind and Nature” by the present writer in

_International Journal of Ethics_ for October 1902.

-----

BOOK II

ONTOLOGY—THE GENERAL

STRUCTURE OF REALITY

CHAPTER I

REALITY AND EXPERIENCE

§ 1. In a sense “reality” for each of us means that of which he must

take account if his special purposes are to find fulfilment. § 2.

But ultimately the world must possess a structure of which _all_

purposes, each in its own way, must take account. This is the

“Ultimate Reality” or “Absolute” of Metaphysics. In Metaphysics we

regard it from the special standpoint of the scientific intellect.

There are other legitimate attitudes towards it, _e.g._, that of

practical religion. § 3. The inseparability of reality from

immediate experience involves the recognition of it as teleological

and as uniquely individual. § 4. The experience within which all

reality falls cannot be my own, nor yet the “collective” experience

of the aggregate of conscious beings. It must be an individual

experience which apprehends the totality of existence as the

harmonious embodiment of a single “purpose.” The nearest analogue

our own life presents to such a type of experience is to be found in

the satisfied insight of personal love. § 5. The experience of such

an “Absolute” must not be thought of as a mere reduplication of our

own, or of the scientific hypotheses by which we co-ordinate facts

for the purposes of inference. § 6. Our conception is closely

connected with that of Berkeley, from which it differs by the stress

it lays on the purposive and selective aspect of experience. § 7.

Realism, both of the Agnostic and of the Dogmatic type, is

incompatible with the meaning we have been led to attach to

“Reality.” But Agnosticism is justified in insisting on the

limitations of our knowledge of Reality, and Dogmatic Realism in

rejecting the identification of Reality with experience as a merely

cognitive function of finite percipients. § 8. Subjectivism,

according to which all that I know is states of my own

“consciousness,” is irreconcilable with the admitted facts of life,

and arises from the psychological fallacy of “introjection.”

§ 1. In the preceding book we have seen that the very nature of the

metaphysical problem predetermines the general character of the answer

we are to give to it. What our intellect can accept as finally real, we

saw, must be indissolubly one with actual experience, and it must be an

internally coherent system. In the present book we have to discuss more

in detail the structure which must belong to any reality possessing

these general characteristics. The present chapter, then, will be

devoted to an examination of the implications of the experiential

character of real Being; in the next, we shall deal with the nature of

its unity as a single system.

We may perhaps most conveniently begin our discussion with a

re-definition of some of our principal terms. We have hitherto spoken of

the object of metaphysical knowledge indifferently as “Being,” “What

is,” “What truly exists,” and as “Reality,” “the ultimately real.” So

far as it is possible to draw a distinction between these two sets of

names for the same thing, we may say that each series lays special

stress on a somewhat different aspect of our object. When we say that a

thing “is” or “has Being,” we seem primarily to mean that it is an

_object_ for the knowing consciousness, that it has its place in the

system of objects which coherent thought recognises. When we call the

same object “real” or a “reality,” we lay the emphasis rather on the

consideration that it is something of which we categorically _must_ take

account, whether we like it or not, if some purpose of our own is to get

its fulfilment.[31] Thus again the “non-existent” primarily means that

which finds no place in the scheme of objects contemplated by consistent

scientific thought; the “unreal,” that with which we have not, for any

human purpose, to reckon.

This is what is often expressed by saying that reality means what is

independent of our own will, what exercises resistance, what constrains

or compels our recognition, whether we like it or not. Philosophers have

pointed out that this way of putting the case is only half the truth.

The “stubborn” facts or realities which, as we commonly say, force us to

recognise them, only do so in consequence of the presence in us of

definite interests and purposes which we cannot effect without adapting

ourselves to the situation expressed by our statement of the “facts.”

What lies entirely outside my interests and plans gets no kind of

recognition from me; it is “unreal” for me precisely because I have no

need to take account of it as a factor to be reckoned with in the

pursuit of my special ends. Thus, so long as we use the term in a

relative sense and with reference to the special ends of this or that

particular agent, there may be as many different orders of “reality” as

there are special purposes, and what is “real” for the agent inspired by

one purpose may be unreal for his fellows whose purposes are different.

Thus, for example, to an English Christian living at home in England the

rules of “caste” in India are usually for all practical purposes unreal;

he has no need to take their existence into account as a condition of

the successful prosecution of any of his aims and interests; for him

they have no more significance than the rules of legal procedure adopted

in Wonderland. But for the historian of Indian society, the native Hindu

Christian, and the devout worshipper of Shiva, the rules of caste are a

true reality. Not one of the three can execute _his_ special purposes

without taking them into account and allowing them to operate in

determining his way of proceeding to his goal. Again, the kind of

reality which the rules of caste possess for each of our three men is

different, in accord with the differences in their characteristic

purposes. For the historian, they are real as a system of ideas which

have influenced and do influence the conduct of the society of which he

is writing the history, in such a way that without understanding them he

cannot get a clear insight into the social structure of Hinduism. To the

native Christian, they are real as a standing source of difficulty and a

standing temptation to be false to his highest ideals of conduct. To the

Shivaite, they are real as the divinely appointed means to bodily and

spiritual purification from the evil that is in the world.

§ 2. So far, then, it might seem that “reality” is a purely relative

term, and that our previous choice of ultimate freedom from

contradiction as our standard of reality was an arbitrary one, due to

the mere accident that _our_ special purpose in sitting down to study

Metaphysics is to think consistently. Of course, it might be said,

whatever game you choose to play at, the rules of that particular game

must be your supreme reality, so long as you are engaged in it. But it

depends on your own choice what game you will play and how long you will

keep at it. There is no game at which we all, irrespective of personal

choice, have to play, and there is therefore no such thing as an

ultimate reality which we must all recognise as such; there are only the

special realities which correspond to our special individual purposes.

You have no right to set up the particular rules of the game of

scientific thought as a reality unconditionally demanding recognition

from those who do not choose to play that particular game.[32]

Such an argument would, however, be beside the point. It is true that

the special nature of the facts which any one of us recognises as real

depends on the special nature of his individual purposes. And it is true

that, precisely because we are, to some extent, genuine individuals, no

two men’s abiding purposes are identically the same. It is therefore

true, so far as it goes, that Reality wears a different and an

individual aspect for each of us. But it is emphatically not true that

there is no identical character at all about the purposes and interests

of different individuals. The very recognition of the fact that any one

individual purpose or interest can only get expression by accommodating

itself to a definite set of conditions, which constitute the reality

corresponding to that purpose, carries with it the implication that the

world is ultimately a system and not a chaos, or, in other words, that

there is ultimately a certain constitution of things which, under one

aspect or another, is of moment for all individuals, and must be taken

into account by every kind of purpose that is to get fulfilment. If the

world is systematic at all,—and unless it is so there is no place in it

for definite purpose of any kind,—it must finally have a structure of

such a kind that any purpose which ignores it will be defeated. All

coherent pursuit of purpose, of whatever type, must therefore in the end

rest on the recognition of some characteristics of the world-order which

are unconditionally and absolutely to be taken into account by all

individual agents, no matter what the special nature of their particular

purposes. This is all that is meant when it is said that the reality

investigated by Metaphysics is absolute, or when the object of

metaphysical study is spoken of as the Absolute.

We may, in fact, conveniently define the Absolute as that structure of

the world-system which any and every internally consistent purpose must

recognise as the condition of its own fulfilment To deny the existence

of an Absolute, thus defined, is in principle to reduce the world and

life to a mere chaos. It is important, however, to bear in mind that in

Metaphysics, though we are certainly concerned with the ultimate or

absolute Reality, we are concerned with it from a special point of view.

Our special purpose is to _know_, or to think coherently, about the

conditions which all intelligent purpose has to recognise. Now this

attitude of scientific investigation is clearly not the only one which

we can take up towards the ultimately real. We may, for instance, seek

to gain emotional harmony and peace of mind by yielding up the conduct

of our practical life to the unquestioned guidance of what we directly

feel to be the deepest and most abiding elements in the structure of the

universe. This is the well-known attitude of practical religion. _Primâ

facie_, while it seems to be just as permissible as the purely

scientific attitude of the seeker after truth, the perennial “conflict

of religion and science” is sufficient to show that the two are not

identical. How they are related is a problem which we shall have, in

outline, to consider towards the end of our inquiry; at present it is

enough for our purpose to recognise them as divergent but _primâ facie_

equally justified attitudes towards what must in the end be thought of

as the same ultimate reality. As Mr. Bradley well says, there is no sin

which is metaphysically less justifiable than the metaphysician’s own

besetting sin of treating his special way of regarding the “Absolute” as

the only legitimate one.

§ 3. To return to our detailed investigation of the connection between

Reality as now defined for the metaphysician, and Experience. We can now

see more completely than before why it is only in _immediate_ experience

that reality is to be found. Our reason for identifying reality with

immediate experience has nothing to do with the theory according to

which “sensations,” being the product of a something “without the mind,”

are supposed to carry with them a direct certificate of the independent

existence of their “external” cause. For we have seen: (1) that

immediacy means simply indissoluble union with a whole of feeling, and

that this immediacy belongs to every mental state as actually lived

through; (2) that the dependence of sensations in particular on an

“external” cause, is in no sense an immediate datum of experience, but a

reflective hypothesis which, like all such hypotheses, demands

examination and justification before it can be pronounced legitimate;

(3) that it is a philosophical blunder to identify the real with the

merely “independent” of ourselves. What is merely independent, as we

have now seen, would for us be the merely unreal. Presence in immediate

experience is a universal character of all that is real, because it is

only in so far as anything is thus presented in immediate unity with the

concrete life of feeling that it can be given as a condition or fact of

which an individual interest must take account, on pain of not reaching

accomplishment. Actual life, as we have already learned, is always a

concrete unity of feeling in which the two distinguishable aspects of a

psychical fact, its existence and its content, the that and the what,

though distinguishable, are inseparable. Scientific reflection on the

given we found to be always abstract, in the sense that its very essence

is the mental separation of the content from the process. By such

separation we mediately get to know the character of the separated

content better, but our knowledge, with all its fulness, still remains

abstract; it is still knowledge referring to and about an object outside

itself. It is only when, as a result of the reflective process, we find

fresh meaning in the individual process-content on its recurrence that

we return once more to the concrete actuality of real existence.

Now, we may express this same result in another and an even more

significant way. To say that reality is essentially one with immediate

feeling, is only another way of saying that the real is essentially that

which is of significance for the attainment of purpose. For feeling is

essentially teleological, as we may see even in the case of simple

pleasure and pain. Amid all the confusion and complexity of the

psychological problems which can be raised about these most simple forms

of feeling, one thing seems clear, that pleasure is essentially

connected with unimpeded, pain with impeded, discharge of nervous

activity. Pleasure seems to be inseparable from successful, pain from

thwarted or baffled, tendency.[33] And if we consider not so much the

abstractions “pleasure in general,” “pain in general,” as a specific

pleasure or pain, or again a complex emotional state, the case seems

even clearer. Only a being whose behaviour is consciously or

unconsciously determined by ends or purposes seems capable of finding

existence, according as those purposes are advanced or hindered,

pleasant or painful, glad or wretched, good or bad. Hence our original

decision that reality is to be found in what is immediately experienced,

as opposed to what is severed by subsequent reflective analysis from its

union with feeling, and our later statement that that is real of which

we are constrained to take account for the fulfilment of our purposes,

fully coincide.

This point may perhaps be made clearer by a concrete example. Suppose

that some purpose of more or less importance requires my immediate

presence in the next town. Then the various routes by which I may reach

that town become at once circumstances of which I have to take note and

to which I must adapt my conduct, if my important purpose is not to be

frustrated. It may be that there are alternative routes, or it may be

that there is only one. In any case, and this is fundamental for us, the

number of alternatives which my purpose leaves open to me will be

strictly limited. I can, as a matter of mere mathematical possibility,

go from A to B in an indefinite number of ways. If I have to make the

journey in actual fact on a given day, and with existing means of

transit, the theoretical infinity of possible ways is speedily reduced

to, at the outside, two or three. For simplicity’s sake we will consider

the case in which there happens to be only one available way. This one

available way is “real” to me, as contrasted with the infinity of

mathematically possible routes, precisely because the execution of my

purpose restricts me to it and no other. The mathematically possible

infinity of routes remain unreal just because they are thought of as all

alike mere possibilities; no actual purpose limits me to some one or

some definite number out of the infinity, and compels me to adapt myself

to their peculiarities or fail of my end. They are “imaginary” or

“merely possible” just for want of specific relation to an experience

which is the expression of a definite purpose.

This illustration may lead us on to a further point of the utmost

importance, for it illustrates the principle that the real as opposed to

the merely “possible” or “merely thought of” is always individual. There

was an indefinite number of mathematically conceivable ways from A to B;

there was only one, or at least a precisely determinate number, by which

I could fulfil a concrete individual purpose. (Thus, if I have to make

the journey to B in a given time, I _must_ take the route followed by

the railway.) So universally it is a current common-place that while

thought is general, the reality about which we think and of which we

predicate the results of our thought is always individual. Now, what is

the source or principle of this individuality of the real as opposed to

the generality of the merely conceivable? It is precisely that

connection of reality with actual purpose of which we have spoken. The

results of thought are general because for the purposes of scientific

thinking we isolate the _what_ of experience from its _that_; we

consider the character of what is presented to us apart from the unique

purpose expressed in the experience in which it comes to us. In other

words, the problems of scientific thought are all of the form, “How must

our general purpose to make our thought and action coherent be carried

out under such and such typical conditions?” never of the form, “Of what

must I take account for the execution of this one definite purpose?” The

reason for this difference is at once apparent. In making “this definite

purpose” a topic for reflection, I have _ipso facto_ abstracted its what

from its that and converted it into a mere instance or example of a

certain type. It was only while it remained this purpose as actually

immanent in and determining the immediate experience of actual life that

it was a completely determinate unique _this_; as reflected on it

becomes a type of an indefinite number of similar possibilities.

Now, it is necessary here to observe very carefully that it is from the

unique individuality of the purpose expressed in an actual experience

that the objects or facts of immediate experience derive the

individuality in virtue of which we contrast them with the generalities

or abstract possibilities of science. It is the more necessary to dwell

explicitly on this point, because there is a common but erroneous

doctrine that the individuality of actual existence is derived from its

occupying a particular place in the space and time orders. Scientific

truth is general, it is often said, because it refers alike to all

places and times; actual “fact” is individual because it is what is

_here_ and _now_. But we should be able to see that such an account

directly inverts the real order of logical dependence. Mere position in

space and time can never be a true “principle of individuation,” for the

simple reason that one point in space and one moment in time, considered

apart from the things and events which fill them, are, at any rate for

our perception,[34] indistinguishable from all other points and moments.

It is, on the other hand, precisely by their correlation with unique

stages in lives which are the embodiment of unique and individual

purpose, that places and times and the things and events which occupy

them become for us themselves unique and individual. _Here_, for me,

means where I now am, and _now_, this unique and determinate stage in

the execution of the purposes which, by their uniqueness, make me unique

in the world. Thus we seem to have reached the significant conclusion

that to say “Reality is experience” involves the further propositions,

“Reality is through and through purposive” and “Reality is uniquely

individual.”

§ 4. We have already seen that to identify reality with experience does

not mean identifying it with my own experience just as it comes to me in

actual life, still less with my own experience as I mentally reconstruct

it in the light of some conscious or unconscious philosophical theory.

My own experience, in fact, is very far from satisfying the conditions

of completeness and harmony which we found in our last book to be

essential to a “pure” or perfect experience. Its defectiveness is

principally manifested in three ways. (1) As we have already seen, its

contents are always fragmentary. It never contains more than the poorest

fragment of the whole wealth of existence. The purposes or interests

which make up my conscious life are narrowly limited. The major portion

of the facts of the universe, _i.e._ of the conditions of which note has

to be taken by its inhabitants if their aims are to be fulfilled, lie

outside the range of my individual interests—at least, of those which I

ever become explicitly aware. Hence, being without significance for my

individual purposes, they do not directly enter into my special

experience. I either know nothing of them at all, or know of them only

indirectly and through the testimony of others for whose lives they have

real and direct significance. And these others again are, in virtue of

the individual interests which differentiate them from me, only

partially cognisant of the same factual reality as I am.

(2) Again, my insight even into my own aims and interests is of a very

limited kind. For one thing, it is only a fragment of them which is ever

given in the form of what is immediately felt in an actual moment of

experience. I have largely to interpret the actually felt by theoretical

intellectual constructions which reach, in the form of memory, into the

past, and, in the form of anticipation, into the future. And both these

types of intellectual construction, though indispensable, are

notoriously vitiated by fallacies. For another, even with the fullest

aid of such intellectual construction, I never succeed in completely

grasping the whole meaning of my life as the embodiment of a single

coherent purpose. Many of my purposes never rise sufficiently into clear

consciousness to be distinctly realised, and those that do often wear

the appearance of having no systematic connection with one another.

Small wonder, then, that the realities or “facts” of which I learn to

take note for the execution of my aims more often than not appear to

belong to a chaos rather than to the orderly system which we cannot help

believing the world to be, could we see it as it truly is.

(3) Finally, I have the gravest grounds for the conviction that even of

the realities of which I do take note I never perceive more than just

those aspects which attract my attention just because they happen to be

significant for my special interests. What startling experiences teach

us in the case of our fellow-men may be true everywhere, namely, that

everything that is has an infinity of sides to it, over and above those

of which we become aware because of their special importance for our own

purposes; there may be an infinite wealth of character in the most

familiar things, to which we are blind only because, so to speak, it has

no “economic value” for the human market. For all these reasons we are

absolutely forbidden to identify our own limited experience with the

experience of which we have said, that to be real is to be bound up with

it, and to be bound up with it is to be real. Neither, again, can we

identify this experience with the “collective experience” of the

aggregate of human or other finite sentient beings in the universe. This

is obvious for more reasons than one. To begin with, “collective

experience,” if it has any meaning at all, is a contradictory

expression. For experience, as we have seen, is essentially

characterised by unique individuality of aim and interest; in this sense

at least, a true experience must be that of an individual subject, and

no collection or aggregate can be an individual subject. The so-called

“collective experience” is not one experience at all, but simply an

indefinite multiplicity of experience, thrown together under a single

designation. And even if we could get over this difficulty, there

remains a still more formidable one. The various experiences of finite

individuals are all, we have said, fragmentary and more or less

incoherent. You cannot, therefore, get an experience which is

all-comprehensive and all-harmonious by adding them together. If their

defect were merely their fragmentariness, it would be conceivable that,

given an outside observer who could see all the fragments at once, they

might constitute a whole by merely supplementing one another’s

deficiencies. But our finite experiences are not only fragmentary, but

also largely contradictory and internally chaotic. We may indeed believe

that the contradictions are only apparent, and that _if_ we could become

fully conscious of our own inmost aims and purposes we should at the

same moment be aware of all Reality as a harmonious system; but we never

do, and we shall see later that just because of our finitude we never

can, attain this completed insight into the significance of our own

lives. Hence the experience for which all reality is present as a

harmonious whole cannot be any mere duplicate of the partial and

imperfect experiences which we possess.

We thus seem driven to assert the necessary existence of a superhuman

experience to which the whole universe of being is directly present as a

complete and harmonious system. For “reality” has been seen to have no

meaning apart from presence in a sentient experience or whole of

feeling, while it has also been seen infinitely to transcend all that

can be given as directly present to any limited experience. If this

conclusion is sound, our “Absolute” can now be said to be a conscious

life which embraces the totality of existence, all at once, and in a

perfect systematic unity, as the contents of its experience. Such a

conception clearly has its difficulties; how such an all-containing

experience must be thought to be related to the realm of physical

nature, and again to our own finite experiences, are problems which we

shall have to take up in our two succeeding books. We shall find them

far from simple, and it is as well for us from the first to face the

possibility that our knowledge of the character of the absolute

experience may prove to be very limited and very tentative. That it is

we seem compelled to assert by the very effort to give a coherent

meaning to our notion of reality, but of what it is we may have to

confess ourselves largely ignorant.

But we may at least go so far as this, at the present stage of our

argument. However different an all-containing coherent experience may be

in its detailed structure from our own piecemeal and largely incoherent

experience, if it is to be experience at all, it must apprehend its

contents in the general way which is characteristic of direct experience

as such. It must take note or be aware of them, and it must—if it is to

be a direct experience at all—be aware of them as exhibiting a

structural unity which is the embodiment of a consistent plan or

purpose. We have to think of it as containing in a systematic unity not

only all the “facts” of which our various experiences have to take note,

but all the purposes which they express. Hence it is natural for us,

when we attempt to form some approximate concept of such an ultimate

experience in terms of our own conscious life, to conceive it as the

union of perfected knowledge in an indivisible whole with supreme will.

We must, however, remember that, for such an experience, precisely

because of its all-comprising character, the what and the that are

inseparable. Hence its knowledge must be of the nature of direct insight

into the individual structure of the world of fact, not of

generalisation about possibilities, and its will must have the form of a

purpose which, unlike our own, is always consciously expressed with

perfect harmony and completeness in the “facts” of which it is

aware.[35] Hence knowledge and will, involving as they do for us

discrepancy between the what and the that of experience, are not wholly

satisfactory terms by which to characterise the life of the

Absolute.[36] The most adequate analogue to such a life will probably be

found in the combination of direct insight with satisfied feeling which

we experience in the relation of intimate and intelligent love between

persons. The insight of love may be called “knowledge,” but it is

knowledge of a quite other type than the hypothetical universals of

science. I know my friend, not as one case of this or that general class

about which certain propositions in Physiology, Psychology, or Ethics

can be made, but as—for me at least—a unique individual centre of

personal interest. Again, in my relations with my friend, so far as they

remain those of satisfied love, my individual interests find their

fullest embodiment. But the will to love is not first there in an

unsatisfied form, and the embodiment afterwards added as the result of a

process through means to an end. The purpose and its embodiment are

throughout present together in an unbroken unity, and where this is not

so, true mutual friendship does not as yet exist.[37] After some such

general fashion we shall best represent to ourselves the kind of

consciousness which we must attribute to an all-embracing

world-experience. Only, we must bear in mind that, owing to the

fragmentariness of our own lives, the identity of purpose on which human

friendship rests can never be close and intimate enough to be an

adequate representative of the ultimate unity of all experience in the

Absolute.[38]

§ 5. It may be well to add a word of caution against a plausible fallacy

here. If there is such an Absolute Experience as we have demanded, all

the realities that we know as the contents of our environment must be

present to it, and present to it as they really are in their

completeness. But we must be careful not to suppose that “our”

environment, as it appears to an experience which apprehends it as it

really is, is a mere replica or reduplication of the way in which it

appears to us. For example, I must not assume that what I perceive as a

physical thing, made up of separable parts external to one another and

apparently combined in a mechanical way into a whole which is a mere

collection or aggregate of parts, is necessarily apprehended by the

Absolute Experience as an aggregate of similar or corresponding parts.

The thing as it appears to my limited insight may be no less different

from the thing as apprehended in its true nature by such an experience,

than your body, as it exists for my perception from your body as you

apprehend it in organic sensation. In particular, we must not assume

that things exist for the Absolute Experience in the form into which we

analyse them for the purpose of general scientific theory, for instance,

that physical things are for it assemblages of atoms or individual minds

successions of “mental states.” In fact, without anticipating the

results of succeeding books, we may safely say at once that this would

be in principle impossible. For all scientific analysis is in its very

nature general and hypothetical. It deals solely with types and abstract

possibilities, never with the actual constitution of individual things.

But all real existence is individual.

To put the same thing in a different way, scientific theory deals always

with those features of the _what_ of things of which we take note

because of their significance for our human purposes. And in dealing

with these features of things, it seeks to establish general laws of

linkage between them of which we may avail ourselves, for the practical

purpose of realising our various human interests. This practical motive,

though often not apparent, implicitly controls our whole scientific

procedure from first to last. Hence the one test of a scientific

hypothesis is its success in enabling us to infer one set of facts from

another set, Whether the intermediate links by which we pass from the

one set to the other have any counterpart in the world of real

experience or are mere creations of theory, like the “uninterpretable”

symbols in a mathematical calculus, is from this point of view a matter

of indifference. All we require of our hypothesis is that when you start

with facts capable of experimental verification, the application of it

shall lead to other facts capable of experimental verification. For this

reason we may justifiably conclude that to any experience which is aware

of things in their concrete individuality they must present aspects

which are not represented in our scientific hypotheses, and again cannot

appear to it as the precise counterpart of the schemes according to

which we quite legitimately reconstruct them for the purpose of

scientific investigation. We shall need to bear this in mind in future

when we come to discuss the real character of what appears to us as the

world of physical nature.[39]

§ 6. The conclusion we have reached so far is largely identical with

that of the anti-materialistic argument of Berkeley’s well-known

_Principles of Human Knowledge_ and _Three Dialogues between Hylas and

Philonous_. But there is one important difference between the two

results which will lead to momentous consequences. Berkeley’s argument

against the independent existence of unperceived matter proceeds

throughout on the principle that to be means to be present in an

experience, and his exhibition of the contradictions into which the

denial of this principle leads the supporter of scientific materialism

remains the classic demonstration of the truth of the opposing or

“idealistic” view. But it is to be noted that he works throughout with

an inadequate conception of “experience” and “presence in experience.”

He treats experience as equivalent to mere passive “awareness” of a

quality presented to perception. To experience with him means simply to

be conscious of a presented quality; experience is treated as having, in

psychological terminology, a merely presentational character. Hence he

is led to infer that the things with which experience confronts us are

nothing more than complexes of presented qualities, or, as he phrases

it, that their whole being consists in being perceived.

The full extent of the paradox which this identification of the _esse_

of material things with _percipi_ involves, will be more apparent when

we come to deal in our next book with the problem of matter. At present

I merely wish to call attention to one of its many aspects. On the

theory that experience is purely passive and presentational, consisting

merely in the reception of certain sensations, the question at once

arises, What determines what in particular the sensations we at any

given moment receive shall be? On the Berkeleian view, their order must

be determined altogether from without by a principle foreign to the

experience which, he assumes, has nothing to do but to cognise the

qualities put before it. Hence he is led to appeal to the agency of God,

whom he supposes directly and immediately to cause perceptions to

succeed one another in my experience in a certain definite order. Now,

apart from further difficulties of detail, this doctrine at once leads

to the result that the attitude of God to the world of things is totally

different from that of us who experience it. Experience is to me a

purely passive receptivity of presentations; God’s relation to the

presented objects, on the other hand, is one of active production. There

is no common element in these fundamentally contrasted relations; hence

it is really a paralogism when Berkeley allows himself to bring God

under the same categories which he applies to the interpretation of

human experience, and to attribute to Him a consciousness of the things

which have been declared to be only the presentations His agency raises

in the human mind.[40]

Berkeley is, in fact, inconsistently combining two conflicting lines of

thought. He argues, on the one hand, that since there must be some

reason for the order in which presentations succeed one another in my

mental life, that reason is to be found in a source independent of

myself. This source he identifies with God, but, as far as the argument

goes, it might equally well have been found, as by Locke, in the

original constitution of matter; all that the argument requires is that

it shall be placed in something outside the succession of presentations

themselves. On the other hand, he also argues that since the existence

of the physical world means simply the fact of its being presented to

consciousness, when its contents cease to be present to my consciousness

they must be present to that of God. And here again the objection might

be suggested, that if presence to my own experience, while it lasts, is

an adequate account of the _esse_ of a thing, it does not appear why I

should recognise the reality of any other experience. If I am to hold

that disappearance from my experience does not destroy the reality of

anything, I must logically also hold that its being, while I perceive

it, is not exhausted by _my_ awareness of it. Its _esse_ cannot be

merely _percipi_.

The complete solution of Berkeley’s difficulty would be premature at

this point of our discussion. But we may at once point out its principal

source. It arises from his failure to take adequate account of the

purposive aspect of experience. Experience, as we have seen, is not mere

awareness of a succession of presented objects, it is awareness of a

succession determined by a controlling interest or purpose. The order of

my experiences is not something simply given me from without, it is

controlled and determined by subjective interest from within. Berkeley,

in fact, omits selective attention from his psychological estimate of

the contents of the human mind. He forgets that it is the interests for

which I take note of facts that in the main determine which facts I

shall take note of, an oversight which is the more remarkable, since he

expressly lays stress on “activity” as the distinguishing property of

“spirits.”[41] When we make good the omission by emphasising the

teleological aspect of experience, we see at once that the radical

disparity between the relation of the supreme and the subordinate mind

to the world of facts disappears. I do not simply receive my presented

facts passively in an order determined for me from without by the

supreme mind; in virtue of my power of selective attention, on a limited

scale, and very imperfectly, I recreate the order of their succession

for myself.

Again, recognition of the teleological aspect of all experience goes far

to remove the dissatisfaction which we may reasonably feel with the

other half of Berkeley’s argument. When I conceive of the “facts” of

experience as merely objects presented to my apprehension, there seems

no sufficient reason for holding that they exist except as so presented.

But the moment I think of the succession of presented facts as itself

determined by the subjective interests expressed in selective attention,

the case becomes different. The very expression “selective attention”

itself carries with it a reminder that the facts which respond to my

interests are but a selection out of a larger whole. And my practical

experience of the way in which my own most clearly defined and conscious

purposes depend for their fulfilment upon connection with the interests

and purposes of a wider social whole possessed of an organic unity,

should help me to understand how the totality of interests and purposes

determining the selective attention of different percipients can form,

as we have held that it must, the harmonious and systematic unity of the

absolute experience. The fuller working out of this line of thought must

be left for later chapters, but it is hardly too much to say that the

teleological character which experience possesses in virtue of its unity

with feeling is the key to the idealistic interpretation of the

universe.[42]

Idealism, _i.e._ the doctrine that all reality is mental, as we shall

have repeated opportunities of learning, becomes unintelligible when

mental life is conceived of as a mere awareness of “given”

presentations.

§ 7. We may now, before attempting to carry out in detail our general

view of what is involved in being real, enumerate one or two

philosophical doctrines about the nature of real existence which our

conclusion as to the connection of reality with experience justifies us

in setting aside. And, first of all, we can at once see that our

previous result, if sound, proves fatal to all forms of what is commonly

known as _Realism_. By Realism is meant the doctrine that the

fundamental character of that which really is, as distinguished from

that which is only imagined to be, is to be found in its independence of

all relation to the experience of a subject. What exists at all, the

realist holds, exists equally whether it is experienced or not. Neither

the fact of its existence nor the kind of existence it possesses depends

in any way upon its presence to an experience. Before it was experienced

at all it had just the same kind of being that it has now you are

experiencing it, and it will still be the same when it has passed out of

experience. In a word, the circumstance that a mind—whether yours or

mine or God’s is indifferent to the argument—is aware of it as one of

the constituents of its experience, makes no difference to the reality

of the real thing; experience is what is technically called a relation

of one-sided dependence. That there may be experience at all, and that

it may have this or that character, there must be real things of

determinate character, but that there may be real things, it is not

necessary that there should be experience. This is, in brief, the

essence of the realist contention, and any philosophy which accepts it

as valid is in its spirit a realist philosophy.

As to the number and nature of the supposed independent real things,

very different views may be held and have been held by different

representatives of Realism. Thus some realists have maintained the

existence of a single ultimate reality, others of an indefinite

plurality of independent “reals.” Parmenides, with his doctrine that the

real world is a single uniform unchanging material sphere, is an

instance in the ancient, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with his Unknowable,

an instance in the modern world of a realist of the former or “monistic”

type. The ancient atomists, and in more recent times Leibnitz with his

infinite plurality of independent and disconnected monads, and Herbart

with his world of simple “reals,” afford the best known instances of a

doctrine of pluralistic Realism. So again, the most diverse theories

have been propounded as to the nature of the “reals.” Ancient and modern

atomists have thought of them as material, and this is perhaps the form

of realistic doctrine which appeals most readily to the ordinary

imagination. But though a materialistic metaphysician is necessarily a

realist, a realist need not be a materialist. Herbart thought of the

independent “reals” as qualitatively simple beings of a nature not

capable of further definition, Leibnitz as minds, while Agnostic

philosophers of the type of Spencer conceive their ultimate reality as a

sort of neutral _tertium quid_, neither mental nor material. The only

point on which all the theories agree is that the reality of that which

they recognise as true Being consists in its not depending for its

existence or its character on relation to an experience. The differences

of detail as to the number and nature of independent “reals,” though of

great importance for our complete estimate of an individual realist’s

philosophical position, do not affect our general verdict on the

tenability of the first principle of Realism.

The one point of divergence among realists which may be considered as of

more than secondary importance for our present purpose, is the

difference between what we may call Agnostic and Dogmatic Realism.

Agnostic Realism, while asserting the ultimate dependence of our

experience upon a reality which exists independently of experience,

denies that we can have any knowledge of the nature of this independent

reality. The independent reality by which all experience is conditioned

is, on this view, an Unknowable or Thing-in-itself,[43] of which we are

only logically entitled to say _that_ it certainly is, but that we do

not in the least know _what_ it is. The doctrine of Agnostic Realism has

probably never been carried out by any thinker with rigid consistency,

but it forms a leading feature of the philosophy of Kant as expounded in

his First Critique, and through Kant has passed into English thought as

the foundation of the systems of Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Herbert

Spencer.[44]

Dogmatic Realism, of which Leibnitz and, at a later date, Herbart are

the most important representatives in modern philosophy, on the

contrary, while maintaining that real being is independent of

experience, at the same time holds that it is possible to have positive

knowledge not only of its existence but of its nature. In principle,

both these forms of Realism have been already excluded by the argument

of Book I. chap. 2, § 4. The supreme importance of the principle on

which the argument rests may perhaps warrant us in once more briefly

recurring to it. Our reasoning, it will be remembered, took the form of

a challenge. Produce any instance you please, we said to the realist,

whom we had not then learned to know by that name, of what you

personally regard as reality, and we will undertake to show that it

derives its reality for you from the very fact that it is not ultimately

separable from the experience of a subject. A thing is real for you, and

not merely imaginary, precisely because in some aspect of its character

it enters into and affects your own experience. Or, what is the same

thing in other words, it is real for you because it affects favourably

or otherwise some subjective interest of your own. To be sure, the thing

as it enters into your experience, as it affects your own subjective

interests, is not the thing as it is in its fulness; it only touches

your life through some one of its many sides. And this may lead you to

argue that the real thing is the unexperienced “condition” of a

modification of your experience. But then we had again to ask what you

mean by saying that facts which you do not experience are real as

“conditions” of what you do experience. And we saw that the only meaning

we could attach to the reality of the “condition” was presence to an

experience which transcends your own.

To this general argument we may add two corollaries or supplementary

considerations, which, without introducing anything fresh, may help to

make its full force more apparent.

(1) The argument, as originally presented, was concerned directly with

the _that_ of reality, the mere fact of its existence. But we may also

state it, if we please, from the side of the _what_, the nature

possessed by the real. You cannot affirm any doctrine about the real

existence of anything without at the same time implying a doctrine about

its nature. Even if you say “Reality is unknowable,” you are attributing

something beyond mere independence of experience to your reality; you

are asserting that what is thus independent possesses the further

positive quality of transcending cognition. Now what, in logic, must be

your ground for attributing this rather than any other quality to your

independent reality? It can only be the fact or supposed fact—which is

indeed regularly appealed to by the Agnostic as the foundation of his

belief—that our experiences themselves are all found to be

self-contradictory. There is no ground for taking the unknowability of

Reality to be true unless you mean by it a character which belongs not

to something which stands outside all experience, but to experience

itself. The same contention applies to any other predicate which the

realist affirms as true of his ultimate reality.

(2) Again, we may with effect present our argument in a negative form.

Try, we may say, to think of the utterly unreal, and see how you will

have to conceive it. Can you think of sheer unreality otherwise than as

that of which no mind is ever aware, of which no purpose has ever to

take account as a condition of its fulfilment? But to think of it thus

is to attribute to it, as its definition, precisely that independence in

which the realist finds the mark of ultimate reality. And if

“independence” constitutes unreality, presence to and union with

experience must be what constitutes reality.

Yet, however fatal this line of argument may be to the principle of the

realistic contention, we ought not to be satisfied with such a mere

general refutation. We must try to see what is the element of truth in

the realistic views to which they owe the plausibility they have always

possessed for minds of a certain type. In Philosophy we are never really

rid of an error until we have learned how it arises and what modicum of

truth it contains.

(1) _Agnostic Realism._ We may begin with Agnosticism, with which we

ought now to have no serious difficulty. Agnostic Realism, as we have

seen, is in principle a doubly self-contradictory theory. For it

combines in one breath the irreconcilable declarations that the reality

of things is unknowable and that it knows it to be so.[45] Further, as

we have just said, it makes alleged contradictions which only exist in

and for experience, its sole ground for affirming that something, of

which we can only specify that it is _outside_ all experience,

transcends cognition. To have grasped these two points is to have

disposed of Agnosticism as a metaphysical theory.

Yet with all its defects Agnosticism still enshrines one piece of truth

which the metaphysician is peculiarly prone to forget. Of all men the

metaphysician, just because his special interest is to know something

final and certain about Reality, is the most apt to exaggerate the

amount of his certain knowledge. It is well to be reminded that the

certainty with which we may say that Reality is experience is compatible

with a very imperfect and limited theoretical insight into experience

itself. In actual life this is a far from unfamiliar fact; the

literature of common sense is full of observations to the effect that we

never really know our own hearts, that the most difficult task of the

sage is to understand himself, and so forth,—complaints which all turn

on the point that even our own limited direct experience of our own

meanings and purposes goes far beyond what we can at any moment express

in the form of reflective knowledge. Yet it is easy, when we come to

deal in Metaphysics with the nature of ultimate Reality, to forget this,

and to suppose that the certainty with which we can say that the

ultimately Real is an experience justifies us in wholesale dogmatising

about the special character of that experience. As a protest against

such exaggerated estimates of the extent of our theoretical knowledge of

the nature of Reality, Agnosticism thus contains a germ of genuine and

important truth, and arises from a justifiable reaction against the

undue emphasising of the merely intellectual side of our experience, of

which we have already seen, and shall hereafter still more fully see,

ground to complain as a besetting weakness of the metaphysically minded.

(2) _Dogmatic Realism_, that is, Realism with admittedly knowable

independent “reals,” is a much more workable doctrine, and in one of its

forms, that of the so-called “naïve realism” which supposes the world of

experienced things with all its perceived qualities to exist

independently of any relation to an experiencing subject in precisely

the same form in which we experience it, fairly represents the ordinary

views of unphilosophical “common-sense” men. Nothing seems more obvious

to “common sense” than that my perception of a thing does not bring it

out of nothing into existence, and again does not create for it new

qualities which it had not before. It is because the thing is already

there, and has already such and such a nature, says “common sense,” that

I perceive it as I do. Therefore the whole world of perceived things

must exist independently in the same form in which they are perceived,

as a condition of my perception of them.

When this view comes to be worked out as a philosophical theory, it

usually undergoes some transformation. The fact of illusion, and the

experimentally ascertained subjective differences between individual

percipients,[46] or between different states of the same percipient,

make it hard for the realist who wishes to be scientific to maintain

that _all_ the perceived qualities of experienced things are equally

independent of the experiencing subject. Reflection usually substitutes

for the “naïve” realism of everyday life, a theory of “scientific”

realism according to which the existence and some of the known

properties of the experienced world are independent of the experiencing

subject, while others are regarded as mere secondary effects arising

from the action of an independent reality on the subject’s

consciousness. With the further differences between the various types of

scientific realism, according to the special properties which are held

to belong to things independently of the percipient subject, we are not

at present concerned.[47]

It is, of course, clear that our general argument against the existence

of any reality except as in an experience tells just as much against

“naïve” realism and its more reflective outgrowth “scientific” realism

as against Agnosticism. But the very plausibility and wide diffusion of

realistic views of this type make it all the more necessary to reinforce

our contention by showing what the truth Realism contains is, and just

where it diverges from truth into fallacy. Nor is it specially difficult

to do this. The important elements of truth contained in Realism seem to

be in the main two. (i) It is certain that a thing may be real without

being consciously present as a distinguishable aspect in my experience.

Things do not begin to exist when I begin to be aware of them, or cease

to exist when I cease to be aware of them. And again, the fact that I

make mistakes and am subject to illusion shows that the qualities of

things are not necessarily in reality what I take them to be. (2)

Further, as is shown by the fact of my imperfect understanding of my own

feelings and purposes, something may actually be an integral part of my

own life as an experiencing subject without my clearly and consciously

recognising it as such when I reflect on the contents of my experience.

But precisely how much do these two considerations prove? All that is

established by the first is the point on which we have already insisted,

that it is not _my_ experience which constitutes Reality; and all that

is established by the second, that experience, as we have already

repeatedly seen, is not merely cognitive. But the admission of both

these positions brings us not one step nearer the conclusion which the

realist draws from them, that real existence is independent of all

experience. Because it is easy to show that the reality of a thing does

not depend on its being explicitly recognised by any one finite

percipient or any aggregate of finite percipients, and again, that there

is more in any experience of finite percipients than those percipients

know, the realist thinks he may infer that there are realities which

would still be real though they entered into no experience at all. But

there is really no logical connection whatever between the premisses of

this inference and the conclusion which is drawn from them.

This may be made clearer by a couple of examples. Take, to begin with,

the case of the mental life of my fellow human beings. And, to state the

case in the form in which it appears most favourable to the realist

conclusion, let us imagine an Alexander Selkirk stranded on a barren

rock in the midst of the ocean. The hopes and fears of our Selkirk are

independent of my knowledge of them just as completely and in just the

same sense in which the existence and conformation of the rock on which

he is stranded are so. I and all other inhabitants of the earth may be

just as ignorant of Selkirk’s existence and of what is passing in his

mind as we are of the existence and geological structure of his rock.

And again, what Selkirk explicitly cognises of his own inner life may

bear as small a proportion to the whole as what he explicitly cognises

of the properties of his rock to the whole nature of the rock. Yet all

this in no wise shows that Selkirk’s hopes and fears and the rest of his

mental life are not experience or have a reality “independent of

experience.” Hopes and fears which are not experience, not psychical

matter of fact, would indeed be a contradiction in set terms. And what

the argument fails to prove of Selkirk’s mental life, it fails, for the

same reason, to prove of Selkirk’s rock.

We may pass from the case of the mental life of a fellow-man to the case

of unperceived physical reality. A recent realist philosopher, Mr. L. T.

Hobhouse, has brought forward as a clear instance of an independent

physical reality, the case of a railway train just emerging from a

tunnel. I do not perceive the train, he says, until it issues from the

tunnel, but it was just as real while it was running through the tunnel.

Its reality is therefore independent of the question whether it is

perceived or not. But, in the first place, the argument requires that

the train shall be empty; it must be a runaway train without driver,

guard, or passengers, if the conditions presumed in the premisses are to

be fulfilled. And, in the second place, we may retort that even an empty

runaway train must have been despatched from somewhere by somebody. It

must stand in some relation to the general scheme of purposes and

interests expressed in our system of railway traffic, and it is

precisely this connection, with a scheme of purposes and interests,

which makes the runaway train a reality and not a mere fiction of an

ingenious philosopher’s imagination. If Mr. Hobhouse’s argument proves

the independent reality of the train in the tunnel, it ought equally to

prove, and does equally prove, the independent existence of Selkirk’s

fluctuations from hope to despair and back again on his isolated rock.

And precisely because it proves both conclusions equally, the sort of

independence it establishes cannot be independence of experience. Like

all realist arguments, it turns on the identification of experience with

the cognitive aspect of experience, an identification too often

suggested by the language of the “idealists” themselves.[48]

§ 8. The persistent vitality of Realism is due to its protest against

the fallacies of an opposing theory which has of late especially found

favour with some distinguished students of natural science, and which we

may conveniently call Subjectivism.[49] Realism, as we saw, started from

the true premisses, that there are real facts of which my experience

does not make me explicitly aware, and that my cognition even of my own

experience is incomplete, and argued to the false conclusion that there

are therefore realities independent of any experience. Subjectivism

reasons in the opposite way. It asserts truly that there is no reality

outside experience, and then falsely concludes that I can know of no

reality except my own cognitive states. Its favourite formula are

expressions such as, “We know only the modifications of our own

consciousness,” “All we know is our own perceptions,” “Nothing exists

but states of consciousness.” These formulæ are not all obviously

identical in meaning, but the exponents of Subjectivism seem to use them

without any conscious distinction, and we shall probably do the theory

no injustice if we criticise it on the assumption that the expressions

are meant to be of identical signification.

Now it is clear that the logical consequences of the subjectivist

doctrine are so subversive of all the practical assumptions upon which

daily life is based, that they should require the most stringent proof

before we give our assent to them. If Subjectivism is true, it follows

immediately that not merely the “whole choir of heaven and furniture of

earth,” but the whole of humanity, so far as I have any knowledge of its

existence, is a mere subjective affection of my own “consciousness,” or,

as the scientific subjectivist usually, for some not very obvious

reason, prefers to say, of my own brain. Every argument which the

subjectivist can produce to show that “things” are, for my knowledge at

any rate, “modifications of my own consciousness,” applies to the case

of my fellow-men with as much force as to the case of the inorganic

world. The logical inference from the subjectivist’s premisses, an

inference which he is rarely or never willing to draw, would be that he

is himself the sole real being in a world of phantoms, not one of which

can with any certainty be said to correspond to a real object. And

conversely, any valid ground for recognising the existence of my

fellow-men as more than “states of my own consciousness,” must equally

afford ground for admitting the reality, in the same general sense, of

the rest of the world of things familiar to us from the experiences of

everyday life.[50] For if any one of the things composing the world of

practical life has a reality which is not dependent upon its presence to

my particular experience, then there is the same reason for believing

that every other such thing has a like reality, unless there happen to

be special grounds for regarding the perception to which it is present

as an hallucination.

We must not, however, simply dismiss the subjectivist theory in this

summary way. We must examine the doctrine in detail sufficiently to

discover where the fallacy comes in, how it arises, and what modicum of

sound philosophic insight it may possibly contain. To take these three

points in logical order—

(_a_) The current arguments for Subjectivism are often so stated as to

confuse together two quite distinct positions. When it is said that what

we perceive is “our own subjective states,” the meaning intended may be

either that there is, at least so far as I am able to know, no real

existence in the universe except that of my “states of consciousness”;

or again, that there are such realities, but that the _properties_ which

I perceive do not belong to them in their own nature but are only

subjective effects of their action upon my “consciousness,” or, if you

prefer to speak in physiological language upon my nervous system. Now,

many of the arguments commonly urged by the subjectivist would at most

only prove the second conclusion, in which the subjectivist agrees to a

large extent with the scientific realist. Thus it is an _ignoratio

elenchi_ to reason as if the facts of hallucination, illusion, and

discrepancy between the reports of different percipients or different

sense-organs of the same percipient gave any support to the special

doctrine of Subjectivism. These facts, which, as we have seen, are

equally appealed to by scientific realists, prove no more than that we

do not always perceive the world of things as it is, and as it must be

thought of if we would think truly,—in other words, that there is such a

thing as error.

Now the problem “How is it possible for us to think or perceive

falsely?” is, as the student of Greek philosophy knows, both difficult

and important. But the existence of error in no way shows that the

things which I perceive are “states of my own consciousness”; on the

contrary, error is harder to explain on the subjectivist theory than on

any other. For if what I perceive has some kind of existence distinct

from the mere fact of my perceiving it, there is at least a possibility

of understanding how the reality and my perception of it may be

discrepant; but if the existence of a thing is only another name for the

fact that I perceive it, it seems impossible that I should perceive

anything except as it is. On the subjectivist theory, as Plato showed in

the _Theaetetus_, every percipient being ought, at every moment of his

existence, to be infallible.

We may confine our attention, then, to the grounds which the

subjectivist alleges for the former conclusion, that nothing can be

known to exist except my own “states of consciousness,” and may dismiss

the whole problem of erroneous perception as irrelevant to the question.

Now the general argument for Subjectivism, however differently it may be

stated by different writers, consists, in principle, of a single

allegation. It is alleged as a fact in the Psychology of cognition, that

things are immediately perceived by us as modifications of our own

sensibility, or “states of our own consciousness,” and that it is

therefore impossible to get behind this ultimate condition of all

perception. Against this psychological doctrine we have to urge (1) that

it is in flagrant contradiction with the certain facts of actual life;

and (2) that, as a doctrine in Psychology, it is demonstrably false.

(1) There are certain realities, admitted by the subjectivist himself,

which are manifestly _not_ “states of my consciousness,” and of which I

yet, as the subjectivist himself admits, have a genuine though imperfect

knowledge; such realities are, _e.g._, the ends and purposes of my

fellow-men, and again many of my own ends and purposes. It is allowed on

all hands that I can know not only the fact of the existence of other

men, but also, to some extent at least, the character of their various

purposes and interests. This is involved, for instance, in the simple

fact that when I read a letter it is normally possible for me to

understand the writer’s meaning. It is equally involved in the fact that

I can know the truth of any ordinary historical matter of fact, _e.g._,

the date of the great fire of London. Neither the date of the fire of

London nor the meaning of my correspondent’s sentences is a “state of my

consciousness” in any intelligible sense of the words, yet both are

typical instances of the kind of facts of which our ordinary knowledge

of the world of everyday life and practice wholly consists. And what is

true of facts relating to the deeds and purposes of others is equally

true of my own deeds and purposes. The facts which make up my own life

cannot, without violence to language, be reduced to “states of my

consciousness.” For instance, I may know that I have a certain

temperament or disposition, _e.g._, that I am irascible by temperament

or of a sentimental disposition; but though my knowing these truths

about myself may in a sense be called a state of my consciousness, the

truths themselves cannot be called “states of my consciousness” without

a serious logical fallacy of equivocal middle term.

(2) This will be made clearer by a consideration of the psychological

principle invoked by the subjectivist. What the subjectivist means when

he says that in perception I am aware only of the states, or subjective

modifications, of my own consciousness, is that the object of which each

perceptive state is aware is simply itself as a perceptive state; the

perception perceives itself and nothing else. _E.g._, when I say I see

red, what I am really aware of is that I am in a state of perceiving

red; when I say I hear a noise, what I am aware of is that I am in a

state of hearing a noise, and so universally. Now this is so far from

being a truth, that it is absolutely and demonstrably false. We may, in

fact, definitely lay it down that the one thing of which no one, except

the introspective psychologist, is ever aware is his own perceptive

state in the act of perceiving, and that, even in the case of the

psychologist who sets himself purposely to study his own states, no

perceptive state ever perceives itself. What I am aware of when I look

at a red surface is not “myself-as-perceiving-red,” but the splash

of red colour itself. When I see a man, I do not perceive

“myself-as-seeing-a-man,” but I perceive the other man. So when I

take a resolution to act in a certain way or realise that I

am in a certain mood, what I am directly aware of is not

“myself-as-forming-the-resolution” or “myself-as-in-the-mood,” but the

resolution or the mood. Even when, as an introspective psychologist, I

sit down to study the formation of resolutions or the peculiarities of

emotional moods by reflection on my own experience, the state in which I

study the formation of a resolution or the nature of a mood is not

itself the state of resolving or of experiencing the mood in question.

We cannot too strongly insist that, if by “self-consciousness” is meant

a cognitive state which is its own object, _there is no such thing, and

it is a psychological impossibility that there should be any such thing,

as self-consciousness. No cognitive state ever has itself for its own

object. Every cognitive state has for its object something other than

itself._[51]

Even where I make an assertion about my subjective condition, as when I

say “I know I am very angry,” the state of knowing about my feeling is

as distinct from the feeling itself as the state of knowing that I see

red is from the red colour that I see. What the subjectivist does is to

confuse the two. Because the act of knowing is itself a state of the

knowing subject, and because in some cases the knowledge may again have

reference to some other state of the same subject, he infers that what I

know at any moment is my own subjective condition in the act of knowing.

In other and more technical words, he confuses the cognitive act or

state with its own object. To what absurd results this confusion would

lead him, if he were logical in the inferences he makes from it, we have

already seen. We can now see that psychologically the confusion is a

double one. (1) The subjectivist confuses experience with mere awareness

of a presented content. He ignores the presence of the true “subjective”

factor of selective attention throughout experience, and is thus led to

forget that all experiences imply an element which is in the

experiencing mind but not _presented to it_. (2) And in confining his

attention to the presentational aspect of experience, he goes on to

confound the presented content with the fact of its presentation. As

against this second confusion it is essential to a true theory of

knowledge to emphasise three points of distinction between the presented

content or object of a cognitive state and the state itself, considered

as a process in the history of an experiencing subject. (1) The

cognitive state is never its own object, it _refers_ to or _cognises_ an

object distinct from its own existence as a psychical occurrence. This

is the truth which Realism distorts into the doctrine that the object of

knowledge must have a reality of “independent of” experience. (2) The

object of knowledge is never created by the occurrence of the psychical

state in which a particular percipient becomes aware of its existence.

This is just as true of so-called “merely ideal” objects as of physical

things. The properties of the natural logarithms or of the circular

functions in trigonometry are just as independent of my knowledge of

them as the qualities of the trees and animals I should see if I turned

from my writing desk and looked out at the window. (3) The object of

knowledge has always a character of which only a fragment is ever

presented to my perception or reflection in any cognitive state. Every

cognitive state _refers to_ or _stands for_ a great deal more than it

directly means to me.

(3) The origin of the subjectivist fallacy, as has been brilliantly

shown by Avenarius,[52] is to be found in the “intrasubjective

intercourse” of a plurality of percipients capable of communicating

their experience to each other. So long as I am dealing solely with

myself as an experiencing being and my relation to my own environment,

there is no possibility of a subjectivist interpretation. In my own

direct experience I have to do neither with “mental states” nor with

mere “objects of cognition,” but with _things_ which in various ways by

their interference assist or hinder the accomplishment of my various

purposes, and of which I have therefore to take note, so as to adapt my

ways of reaching my ends to their ways of behaviour. Hence the “natural”

view of the world, for a single experiencing being, would be that of

“naïve realism,” to which the things forming my environment are real in

precisely the same sense in which I am real myself. But as soon as I

have to take account of the experiences of other percipients, there

arises an inevitable fallacy which leads to philosophical consequences

of the gravest kind. Starting with the assumption that the things I

perceive are the real things, I feel a difficulty as to how the same

things can be perceived by the other percipients around me. _E.g._, if

the sun I see is the real sun, what about the sun seen by some one else?

Instead of finding the true explanation, that all the percipients are in

relation to a common environment which is independent of its presence to

any one percipient’s experience, I very naturally fall into the mistake

of thinking the things perceived by other men to be “ideas” or

“percepts” of the real things perceived by me. These perceptual copies

of the real things I, for obvious reasons, locate somewhere “in” the

organisms of my fellow-percipients. Then I go on to interpret my own

experience in terms of the theory I originally devised to meet the case

of my fellow-men, and infer that what I myself perceive is a set of

“percepts” or “ideas” produced “in” my organism by a reality “outside”

all experience. And it is then an easy step to the final conclusion

that, inasmuch as all known and knowable things are mere “ideas in some

one’s head,” nothing else exists. Subjectivism is thus the last step in

the development of the fallacy which begins with what Avenarius calls

“introjection.” Just as we learned that the existence of our fellow-men

is the cardinal fact of experience which affords the most immediate

refutation of the subjectivist theory, so the original source of the

subjectivist fallacy is failure to recognise their experience as being

on the same level of reality as our own.

(4) We need not say much on the element of truth which Subjectivism

preserves in a distorted form. We have seen that, as against Realism,

Subjectivism is right in maintaining the indissoluble unity of real

being with experience, though it twists this truth into an absurdity by

first identifying experience with my own limited and imperfect

experience and then giving a false psychological interpretation of the

nature of that experience itself. How a reality can be independent of

presentation in _my_ experience and yet be in its very nature dependent

upon experience for its existence and character, has already been

sufficiently illustrated. But we may perhaps say that even in the

identification of experience with my own experience there is an

underlying substratum of genuine philosophic truth. For, as we have more

than once insisted, there is manifestly a great deal more in my own

experience than what is at any time present as the object of conscious

cognition. Or, as Mr. Bradley is fond of putting it, there is always

more _in_ my mind than _before_ it. I am never fully aware at any moment

even of the full nature of my own purposes and feelings. This is why the

deceitfulness of my own heart has become a common-place of religious

self-examination as well as of worldly wisdom.

Again, every increase of insight into our own real feelings and purposes

involves increased insight into the feelings and purposes of the other

feeling beings with whom we stand in the various relations of social

intercourse.[53] Hence it might fairly be contended that fully to know

your own meaning, fully to understand what you want, would imply

complete insight into the structure of the whole world of reality,—in

fact, that self-knowledge and knowledge of the universe must ultimately

be the same thing. The systematic unity of the whole world of experience

may be so complete that there is nothing in it anywhere which does not

correspond to some element in the experience of every one of its

members. Each member may, like the monads of Leibnitz, represent the

whole system though at very different levels of coherency and from very

different points of view. But such a conception, though it would concede

to Subjectivism that whatever forms a part of the system of real being

somehow falls within my individual experience, would take as the

foundation of its assertion that very distinction between what is

implicitly present _in_ my experience and what is explicitly _before_ it

which Subjectivism consistently ignores. Whether the doctrine as thus

re-stated can be affirmed as more than a fascinating possibility, we

shall be better able to judge when we have discussed in our next chapter

the systematic unity of Reality.

_Consult further_:—F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chaps. 13,

14; T. Case, _Physical Realism_, pt. 1; L. T. Hobhouse, _The Theory of

Knowledge_, pt. 3, chap. 3, _The Conception of External Reality_; H.

Lotze, _Metaphysic_, bk. i. chap. 7 (pp. 207-231 of vol. i. in Eng.

trans.); J. S. Mackenzie, _Outlines of Metaphysics_, bk. i. chap. 3,

_Theories of Metaphysics_; J. Royce, _The World and the Individual_,

First Series (Lecture on the First Conception of Being).

-----

Footnote 31:

See, in particular, Royce, _The World and the Individual_, Second

Series, Lecture 1, for a telling elaboration of this thought. I should

note that I do not myself use the term “existence,” as is sometimes

done, with special restriction to the sense of presence as a sensible

event at a particular point of space and time. When so used, it is, of

course, much narrower in scope than the term “Being.”

Footnote 32:

Compare the brilliant but not altogether convincing argument of

Professor James, in _The Will to Believe_.

Footnote 33:

See the whole treatment of question of feeling in Dr. Stout’s _Manual

of Psychology_. I do not, of course, mean that “consciousness of

activity” successful or thwarted as a fact precedes and conditions

pleasure-pain. On the contrary, it is a familiar fact of experience

that we often learn what our purposes are for the first time by the

pain which attends their defeat. _E.g._, a man may first realise that

he is, and has been, in love by his pain at his mistress’s preference

of a rival suitor. And nothing seems more certain than that many

pleasures are quite independent of “actual conation,” as Plato long

ago recognised.

I must take this opportunity to guard once for all against some

plausible misconceptions. (_a_) When I speak of feeling as “purposive”

or “teleological,” I do not mean to make what, to my own mind, would

be the monstrous assumption, that it necessarily presupposes

_conscious_ anticipation of its guiding end or purpose. All that I

mean is that the processes of conscious life are as a matter of fact

only intelligible with reference to the results in which they

culminate and which they serve to maintain; or again, that they all

involve the kind of continuity of interest which belong to attention.

(_b_) If attentive interest is not necessarily actual conation, actual

conscious effort, still less is it necessarily actual _will_. For me,

as for Mr. Bradley (see his article in _Mind_ for October 1902), where

there is no ideal anticipation of the result of a process there is

neither actual desire nor actual will. And since I cannot see that all

attention implies ideal anticpation, I certainly could not agree with

Prof. Royce that ultimate Reality is simply the “internal meaning of

an _idea_.”

My own meaning will be made clearer by reference to the illustration

given at the beginning of this note. A man first realises that he has

been in love because he feels pained at a rival’s success. So far as

this is so, I should say, there has been no actual conation, and _a

fortiori_, no actual will or desire. But—and this is my point—he would

not feel the pain unless the success of the rival thwarted the

successful issue of a specific psychophysical tendency of an

essentially forward-reaching or teleological kind. The failure may for

the first time make him aware of the presence of the tendency, but it

must previously have been there as a condition of its own failure.

Footnote 34:

This qualification has to be added to avoid prejudging the very

difficult question whether “position” itself is “relative” or

“absolute.” Fortunately our argument is independent of the

determination of the problem. Even if there should be differences

between points as “absolute” as the difference between red and blue,

our contention would retain its force.

Footnote 35:

For otherwise the facts which lay outside the purposes or interests of

the Absolute would be “foreign” facts “given” from without and not in

systematic harmony with its experience as a whole. The complete

systematic unity of all facts would thus fall outside what was to be,

_ex hypothesi_, an all-containing experience. _Q.E.A._

Footnote 36:

For further reflections upon the unsatisfactoriness of such a

conception of the Absolute as the “union of Thought and Will,” see Bk.

IV. chap. 6, § 1, where it is shown that knowledge and will alike, as

actual knowledge and actual will, belong only to finite beings.

Footnote 37:

_I.e._ if _will_ be taken strictly to mean an actual volition, love

and a “will to love” cannot co-exist; if we take will improperly to

mean a “standing” interest of purpose, the case is different.

Footnote 38:

The student of the history of Philosophy will be reminded of the

grounds on which Spinoza objects to ascribe “intellect” and “will” in

the proper sense of the terms to his God, as well as of the “knowledge

of the third or intuitive kind” and the “infinite intellectual love”

of God for Himself which are so prominent in the fifth part of the

_Ethics_. Similar considerations have sometimes led to a preference

for the term “organic” rather than “purposive” or “teleological,” as

expressive of the ultimate unity of experience. The word “organic,”

however, might suggest biological conceptions of growth, dependence on

an external environment, etc., which would be out of place. But the

student may compare with what has been said of the “purposive”

character of individuality Spinoza’s conception of the being of a

thing as a _conatus in suo esse perseverandi_.

Footnote 39:

For a full examination of the relation between reality and scientific

symbolism, consult Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, part 1. The

more clearly it is realised that scientific hypotheses are essentially

a system of mathematical symbolism, the more impossible it becomes to

suppose that they deal directly with the concrete nature of things.

Footnote 40:

In _Principles of Human Knowledge_, §§ 70-75, Berkeley indeed seems on

the very verge of denying that God Himself “perceives” the “ideas”

which by His action He excites in us. But at § 139 we find that a

“spirit” means “that which perceives ideas, and wills and reasons

about them,” and in the third Dialogue it is expressly stated that

sensible things are “perceived by God” [Works, Edit. in Bohn’s

Libraries, vol. i. p. 368]. In fact, from the psychological standpoint

of Berkeleian sensationalism, to deny God’s possession of “ideas”

(_i.e._ sense-contents) would have been tantamount to denying His

spirituality.

Footnote 41:

Unfortunately Berkeley, like so many philosophers, thought of

“activity” as primarily an external relation between a “cause” and the

material on which it “works.” This is probably why he failed to

realise the “active” character of the perceptual process.

Footnote 42:

The reader will do well to compare with the whole of the foregoing

section the treatment of perception as essentially teleological in Dr.

Stout’s _Manual of Psychology_,^3 bk. iii. pt. 1, chap. 2.

I need hardly observe that recognition of the fundamental significance

of purpose and selection for mental life does not of itself entail the

adoption of “voluntarist” views in Psychology. What is fundamental for

real mental life may perfectly well admit of analysis into

hypothetical simpler elements for the purpose of the psychologist.

Thus the admission that all mental life is teleological and selective

need not involve the adoption of such metaphysical theories of

activity as are adversely criticised by Mr. Bradley in his _Appearance

and Reality_, chap. 7, or the introduction of a peculiar

“consciousness of activity” as an unanalysable datum into Psychology.

The antithesis between the actualities of life and the data of

Psychology maintained by Prof. Münsterberg in his _Psychology and

Life_, and _Grundzüge der Psychologie_, if untenable in the extreme

form in which he states it, is important as a corrective of the

opposite tendency to treat as ultimate for psychological analysis

whatever is of supreme importance for life.

Footnote 43:

Thing-_in-itself_, _i.e._ not affected by the—according to this

doctrine—extraneous conditions imposed upon it by relation to an

experiencing mind.

Footnote 44:

The inconsistencies of both Kant and Spencer will illustrate the

reluctance of the human mind to acquiesce in a genuine Agnosticism. In

the _Critique of Pure Reason_ itself Kant so far contradicts himself

as to treat the Thing-in-itself as the cause of sensation, though it

is a fundamental doctrine of his system that the concept of causal

relation can only be legitimately applied to connect facts inside

experience; and in a later work, the _Critique of Judgment_, he

tentatively suggests its identity with Will. Of Mr. Spencer it has

been truly said (I believe by Mr. F. C. S. Schiller in _Riddles of the

Sphinx_) that in the course of his ten volumes of Synthetic Philosophy

he speaks much more positively about the nature of the Unknowable than

dogmatic theology ventures to speak about the nature of God.

Footnote 45:

The sceptics of antiquity, who were more alive to this contradiction

than most of our modern Agnostics, tried to evade the difficulty by

saying that they maintained the unknowability of things not as a

demonstrated certainty, but as a “probable opinion.” But this

distinction is itself illogical, for unless some propositions are

certain there is no ground for considering any one proposition more

probable than another. _E.g._ if I know that a die with six faces has

four pips on each of two faces, and five pips on only one, I can

logically say “it is probable that with this die four will be thrown

oftener than five.” If I am totally uncertain what number of pips is

marked on the various faces, I cannot regard one throw as more

probable than another.

Footnote 46:

_E.g._, peculiarities of the individual’s colour-spectrum, total and

partial colour-blindness, variations in sensibility to musical pitch,

etc., etc.

Footnote 47:

The best known and most popular version of the theory is that of Locke

and of a great deal of our popular science, according to which the

“primary” qualities of matter, _i.e._ those which have to be treated

as fundamental in the physical sciences, are independently real, while

the rest are mere effects produced by their action on our

sense-organs. The more thorough-going metaphysical doctrines of

realists like Leibnitz and Herbart, being much further removed from

the “naïve realism” of unreflective common sense, have never enjoyed

the same currency.

Footnote 48:

Compare Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii. p. 178 ff., and

Royce, _World and Individual_, First Series, Lect. 3. Prof. Royce’s

treatment of Realism, though interesting and suggestive, is perhaps a

little too much of a “short and easy way” with the antagonist to be

quite convincing. Mr. Hobhouse’s anti-idealistic argument (_Theory of

Knowledge_, 517-539) seems to me only to hold good against the

“Subjectivism” discussed in our next section, but the reader will do

well to examine it thoroughly for himself.

Footnote 49:

We might also suitably call it Presentationism, if the name were not

already appropriated in a different sense as distinctive of certain

psychological theories. The English reader will find a confused but

typical exposition of Subjectivism in the opening chapters of Prof.

Karl Pearson’s _Grammar of Science_. Subjectivist writers usually call

themselves “idealists,” and regard themselves as disciples of Berkeley

and Hume. Berkeley was, however, a subjectivist, if at all, only in

respect to the physical world, while Hume’s conclusions are purely

sceptical. The reader of Prof. Pearson must carefully observe that the

“descriptive” theory of physical science has no special connection

with Subjectivism, and is, in fact, held by philosophers like Profs.

Ward and Royce, who are not subjectivists.

Footnote 50:

On the existence of my fellow-men as the one real proof of the

objective existence of the physical world, see Royce, _Studies in Good

and Evil_, essay on “Nature, Consciousness, and Self-Consciousness,”

and “Mind and Nature,” by the present writer, in _International

Journal of Ethics_ for October 1902. In the latter essay I have, I

think, sufficiently exposed the flimsy reasoning by which

subjectivists attempt to justify belief in the existence of other

human beings from the subjectivist point of view.

Footnote 51:

The self-knowledge which is a fact in real life, as distinguished from

the fictitious self-consciousness of some psychologists, is quite a

different thing and involves two distinct acts of cognition: (1) the

awareness of certain objects of cognition, and (2) the recognition of

those objects as in some way qualifying my “self.” And the “self”

which I recognise as thus qualified is again no immediate datum of

experience, but a largely hypothetical intellectual construction, as

we shall have opportunity to see later on.

This is perhaps the place to add the further remark, that if we would

be rigidly accurate in psychological terminology, we ought to banish

the very expression “consciousness” or “state of consciousness” from

our language. What are really given in experience are attentive

processes with a certain common character. We abstract this character

and give it the name of “consciousness,” and then fall into the

blunder of calling the concrete processes “states” or “modifications”

of this abstraction, just as in dealing with physical things we first

make abstraction of their common properties, under the name of

“matter,” and then talk as if the things themselves were “forms” of

“matter”. _Properly speaking, there are physical things and there are

minds, but there are no such things in the actual world as “matter”

and “consciousness,”_ and we do well to avoid using the words where we

can help it.

Footnote 52:

See _Der Menschliche Weltbegriff_, pp. 21-62; and, for the merely

English reader, Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii p. 168 ff.

Footnote 53:

This is true even in what seems at first the the exceptional case of

advance in mere theoretical insight. The more clearly you realise the

character of the problems which your own intellectual pursuits lead up

to and the nature of their solution, the clearer becomes your insight

into the problems and purposes of other workers in the same field.

-----

CHAPTER II

THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF REALITY

§ 1. The problem whether Reality is ultimately One or Many is inevitably

suggested to us by the diverse aspects of our own direct experience

of the world. The different theories may be classed, according to

their solution of this problem, as Monistic, Pluralistic, and

Monadistic. § 2. Pluralism starts from the presumed fact of the

mutual independence of human selves, and teaches that this

independence of each other belongs to all real beings. But (_a_) the

independence with which experience presents us is never complete,

nor the unity of the “selves” perfect. (_b_) The theory is

inconsistent with the systematic character of all reality as

presupposed in both knowledge and action. § 3. Monadism again makes

the systematic unity of the real either an illusion or an

inexplicable accident. § 4. Reality, because systematic, must be the

expression of a single principle in and through a multiplicity. The

unity and multiplicity must both be real, and each must necessarily

involve the other. § 5. If both are to be equally real, the whole

system must be a single experience, and its constituents must also

be experiences. A perfect systematic whole can be neither an

aggregate, nor a mechanical whole of parts, nor an organism. The

whole must exist for the parts, and they for it. § 6. This may also

be expressed by saying that Reality is a subject which is the unity

of subordinate subjects, or an individual of which the constituents

are lesser individuals. § 7. The nearest familiar analogue to such a

systematic whole would be the relation between our whole “self” and

the partial mental systems or lesser “selves.” § 8. The nearest

historic parallel to this view is to be found in Spinoza’s theory of

the relation of the human mind to the “infinite intellect of God.”

§ 1. The problem of the One and the Many is as old as Philosophy itself,

and inevitably arises from the earliest and simplest attempts to think

in a consistent way about the nature of the world in which we play our

part. On the one hand, our experience, in the piecemeal shape in which

it first appears as we begin to reflect on it, seems to exhibit an

indefinite plurality of more or less independent things, each pursuing

its own course and behaving in its own way, and connected at best with

only a few of the other members of our environment. There is, for

instance, no obvious connection between one man’s career and those of

most of his contemporaries, to say nothing of the innumerable host of

his predecessors and successors in the race of life. And, similarly, the

behaviour of one inanimate thing seems at first sight to be unaffected

by that of most of the other things around it. The world seems to us at

times to be made up of an indefinite multiplicity of beings who merely

happen to be actors on the same stage, but have, in the majority of

cases, no influence upon each other’s parts.

Yet, on the other hand, there are equally strong _primâ facie_ reasons

for regarding the world as a single unity. Every addition to our

theoretical insight into the structure of things adds to our recognition

of the intimate connection between things and processes which previously

seemed merely disconnected. Physical science, as it grows, learns more

and more to look upon nature as a realm of interconnected events where

no one fact is ultimately entirely independent of any other fact;

political experience and social science alike reveal the intimate

interdependence of human lives and purposes. And, over and above the

ascertained empirical facts which point to the ultimate unity of the

world, there is another potent influence which we might call the

“instinctive” basis for the belief in unity. However discontinuous my

environment may appear, it is never a mere disconnected multiplicity.

The very circumstance that it is throughout _my_ environment, and thus

relative to the ends by which my attention is determined, gives it to a

certain degree the character of a coherent system. At the lowest level

of philosophic reflection, we cannot permanently fail to apprehend our

world as in principle one, precisely because it is _our_ world, and we

ourselves are all in some degree beings of steady systematic purpose,

not mere bundles of disconnected and conflicting impulses. While yet

again, it is the very limitation of our own interests and our lack of

clear insight into their full import which leads us at other times to

find apparent disconnected multiplicity and lack of cohesion in our

world.

The problem of Philosophy in dealing with these rival aspects of the

world of experience then becomes that of deciding whether either of them

can be adopted as the truth in isolation from the other. Or if neither

is the whole truth, we must ask ourselves in what way the world can be

at once One and Many, how the characters of systematic unity and of

indefinite variety can be consistently thought of as belonging to the

same Reality. Is Reality, we have to ask, One or is it Many, and if it

is both, how are the unity and multiplicity connected?

The answers which different philosophical systems have given to this

question may conveniently be classified under three general

denominations. There are (1) the _Monistic_ views, which lay the

principal stress upon the unity of the real, and tend to treat the

aspect of plurality and variety as illusory, or at least as of secondary

importance; (2) the various forms of _Pluralism_, according to which the

variety and multiplicity of real beings is the primary fact, and their

systematic unity either an illusion, or at any rate a subordinate aspect

of their nature; (3) _Monadism_, which aims at harmonising the positions

of the monist and pluralist, by treating the world as a multiplicity of

really independent things or “monads,” which are somehow combined from

without into a system. From this last point of view the plurality and

the systematic unity are alike real and alike important for the

understanding of the world, but are of different origin, the plurality

being inherent in the things themselves, the unity external to them and

coming from a foreign source. Within each of the three main types of

theory there is, of course, room for the greatest divergence of view as

to the special nature of the real. A monistic system may be purely

materialistic, like that of Parmenides, who taught that the world is a

single homogeneous solid sphere, or idealistic like that, _e.g._, of

Schopenhauer; or again, it may treat mind and “matter” as “aspects” of a

common reality. A pluralist or monadist, again, may conceive of each of

his independent real things as a physical atom, as a soul of any degree

of organisation, or even, in the fashion of some contemporary thought,

as a person.

With regard to the relation between this classification of philosophical

theories and that of the last chapter, I may just observe that, while a

monist is not necessarily an idealist, a consistent pluralist or

monadist ought logically to be a realist. For the mutual independence of

the various real things cannot exist without involving in itself their

independence of experience. If A and B are two completely independent

things, then the existence and character of A must be independent of

presence to the experience of B, and similarly A must be equally

independent of presence to the experience of C, or of anything in the

world but itself. And we have already seen that there is always more in

the nature of any finite percipient than can be present to his own

experience. Thus ultimately the existence and qualities of A must be

independent of all experience, including A’s own.[54] For this reason I

cannot but think that the various attempts to combine Pluralism with

Idealism by maintaining that the universe consists of a number of

independent “souls” or “persons,” rest on confusion of thought. These

doctrines appear to be essentially realist in their spirit.

§ 2. We may conveniently attempt to construct our own theory of the One

and the Many by first excluding views which appear mistaken in

principle, and thus gradually narrowing the issues. Among these mistaken

views I am forced to reckon all forms of consistent and thorough-going

Pluralism. Pluralism, so far at least as I am able to see, begins by

misapprehending the facts upon which it professes to base itself, and

ends by giving an interpretation of them which is essentially

irrational. The fundamental fact from which Pluralism starts as an

ultimate datum of all experiences is the familiar one that there are

other men in the world besides myself. My world is not simply a theatre

for the execution of my own aims and the satisfaction of my own wants.

There are interests in it which are not mine, and to which I must adapt

myself if I mean to achieve my own purposes. The world thus contains

minds other than my own, and what makes them _other_ is that the

interests and purposes by which their lives are determined are, like my

own, unique and incommunicable. Now, Pluralism bids us take the facts,

as thus stated, as the model for our conception of the universe. The

pattern upon which the pluralist views of Reality are constructed is

that of a community consisting of a great number of selves or persons,

each with its own unique interests, and each therefore at once

internally simple and indivisible and exclusive of all the rest. In

whatever special form the pluralist thinks of his ultimate realities,

whether as physically indivisible particles, as mathematical points, or

as sentient beings, it is always from the facts of human social life

conceived in this ultra-individualist way that he in the last resort

derives his concept of their simplicity and mutual repulsion.

But (_a_) the facts themselves are not correctly stated. The human

experiences upon which the pluralist relies for his conclusion present

at once too much and too little unity for the purposes of his theory. On

the one hand, the selves or persons composing society are not themselves

simple, undifferentiated unities. Just as your interests and mine may

often collide, so within what the pluralist assumes as the indivisible

unit of my own personality there may be a similar collision. What I call

my “own interests” or my own “apperceptive systems” or “trains of

thought” may exhibit the same kind of incompatibility and the same sort

of conflict for superiority as is found where your ideas and mine clash.

Thus Ethics and Psychology are led to distinguish between my “true” self

and the false selves by which it may on occasion be dominated, between

my “higher” self and the “lower” selves which, in morality, have to be

repressed by the higher, my “permanent” self, and the temporary

interests by which it is often overpowered, to say nothing of

“subliminal” consciousness and “dual” or “alternating personality.” The

“self” is so far from being a mere unit, that the variety and, what is

more, the incompatibility of its contents is a matter of everyday

experience.[55]

Pluralism may, of course, and often does, verbally admit this. The units

of the pluralist, we are often told, are not mere units devoid of

variety, but wholes which are the union of differences. But to concede

this is to cut away the ground from under the pluralist’s feet. If the

variety and the mutual struggle between the elements of the self are not

enough to destroy its unity, by parity of reasoning the multiplicity of

selves in the world and their mutual repulsions are not enough to prove

that the whole of Reality is not, in spite of its multiplicity of

detail, a unity more complete than any of the partial unities to be met

with in our experience. In fact, the pluralist has to meet the following

dilemma. Either his units are mere units without internal variety, and

then it is easy to show that they are the merest nothings, or they have

internal variety of their own, and therefore simply repeat within

themselves the problem they are supposed to solve.

On the other hand, just as the facts of experience show us internal

struggle and repulsion within the supposed units, so they also exhibit

other relations than that of mutual exclusion between the different

units. Human personal interests, for instance, are never merely mutually

exclusive. No society consists of individuals whose purposes and

interests are simply reciprocally repellent. My aims and purposes may

never completely coincide with those of other members of the same

community, yet they have no meaning and could get no realisation but for

the fact that they are, partially at any rate, comprised in the wider

whole of social interests and purposes which makes up the life of the

social organisations to which I belong. As the very etymology of such

words as “society” and “community” shows—to say nothing of the results

of psychological inquiry into the process of learning by imitation—the

conception of human selves as independent units which somehow happen to

stand in merely accidental or external relations is in flagrant conflict

with the most fundamental facts of our social experience. It is only by

the systematic suppression of fact that personal and social life can be

made to support the hypothesis of Pluralism.

(_b_) Again, even if we could accept the pluralist account of the facts,

the theory which Pluralism puts forward to account for them is in the

end unintelligible. What Pluralism does, consciously or unconsciously,

is to separate the unity of the world from its multiplicity. The

multiplicity is supposed to be grounded in the ultimate nature of the

real things themselves, their unity as a system, if they really are a

system, to be imposed upon them from without. We are, in fact, left to

choose between two alternatives. Either the world is not a systematic

whole at all, but a mere chaos of purely independent atoms, in which

case the whole of our thought, with its indispensable presupposition of

the systematic unity of the object of knowledge, is an illusion, or else

the world really is a system, but a system, so to say, by accident. The

things of which the system is composed are real as detached separate

units, but by a fortunate chance they happen all to possess some common

relation to an external _tertium quid_ (for instance, to God), by which

they are combined into a system and thus become knowable as a connected

whole.

Now we cannot, if we are intellectually conscientious, rest finally

content with a statement of this kind, which leaves the plurality and

the systematic unity of the real world side by side as two independent

unconnected facts. If the contents of the world really form a system at

all, in any way whatever, that is itself one fact among others which a

sound metaphysical theory must recognise, and of which it must offer

some intelligible account. _E.g._, suppose you say, with some recent

pluralists, that the world consists of a number of independent persons

or spirits, who nevertheless form a connected system or “moral kingdom,”

in virtue of the fact that they all find their moral ideal in God, the

most perfect among them. You have now not one ultimate fact before you,

the multiplicity of independent selves, but two, this multiplicity and

the relation of each element in it to God. Unless you are going to treat

this second fact as an “ultimate inexplicability,” _i.e._ a fortunate

accident, you are now bound to treat the systematic relation of the

selves to God and through God to each other as no less a part of their

ultimate nature than their distinction from each other. Their

separateness and independence is thus no longer for you the ultimate

truth; they are just as truly one by your account as they are many.

Their union in a system is no longer an external relation foreign to

their own nature, but the deepest truth about that nature itself.

I will repeat the essence of this argument in another form. Any genuine

Pluralism must be resolute enough to dismiss the idea of a systematic

interconnection between its independent realities as an illusion of the

human mind. But in doing so it must, to be consistent, deny the

possibility of their mutual knowledge of each other’s states. Each real

thing must be a little world to itself, shut up within the closed circle

of its own internal content. And thus, supposing Pluralism to be true,

and supposing myself to be one of the real things of the pluralist

scheme, I should have no means of knowing it to be true. Pluralism is

unable to stand the question propounded by Mr. Bradley as the test of a

philosophical doctrine, “Is the truth of this theory consistent with the

fact that I know it to be true?”

The persistent popularity of Pluralism in many quarters is in fact due

to the intrusion into Metaphysics of other than genuinely philosophical

interests. It is maintained, not on its philosophical merits as a

consistent theory, but because it is believed by its adherents to

safeguard certain interests of morality and religion. It gives us, we

are told, a “real God” and “real moral freedom.” But, apart from the

question whether these claims are justified by candid examination of the

doctrine,[56] we must protest against their being allowed any place at

all in a metaphysical discussion. Metaphysics is, from first to last, a

purely speculative activity; its one concern is to think logically about

the constitution of Reality, and the only interests it has a right to

consider are those of consistent logical thought. If consistent logical

thought about ethical and religious problems involves the recognition of

a “real God” and “real freedom,” and if these again are only possible on

the pluralistic theory, then the mere process of consistent thought is

bound in the end to lead us to a pluralistic result, and it is

superfluous to appeal to extra-logical interests in the matter. But if

those who defend Pluralism on the ground that it gives us a “real God”

and “real freedom” mean that, apart from the question of their

intellectual justification, these beliefs ought to be maintained in

Metaphysics because certain persons will be less moral or less happy

without them, we must answer that Metaphysics has nothing to do with

making us moral or happy. It is no proof of the truth of a belief that

it increases my personal virtue or happiness, nor of its falsity that it

diminishes them. And if the study of Metaphysics could be shown to make

certain persons less virtuous or less happy, Metaphysics would still be

in no worse case than Ethics or Medicine. There may be persons for whom

it is undesirable, on grounds of happiness or morality, to devote

themselves to the pursuit of speculative truth, but it is none the less

a lapse from intellectual single-mindedness for the man who has elected

to play the game of speculation to violate its rules by indulging in

constant appeals to speculatively irrelevant issues.[57]

§ 3. The _Monadism_ of Leibnitz was an attempt to effect a compromise

between Pluralism and Monism. According to this view, the universe

consists of an infinite plurality of fundamentally separate beings.

These beings are at once simple and indivisible, and at the same time

each of them contains an infinite variety of internal states. Being

mutually independent, the monads have no genuine relations with each

other; each is conscious only of the succession of its own states. As

Leibnitz expressed it in a metaphor which has become classic, the monad

has no windows. So far the system is pure Pluralism. But at the same

time the unity of the whole system of monads, though “ideal” and not

“real,” is to be genuine. They form a system “ideally,”—_i.e._ for the

understanding of an omniscient spectator,—inasmuch as the internal

states of each monad are adjusted to those of all the rest, or, as

Leibnitz also puts it, inasmuch as each monad “represents” the same

systematic structure from its own special point of view. Hence, though

no monad really perceives or acts upon any other, every monad behaves as

it would _if_ there were mutual perception and interaction between all.

When we ask after the source of this “pre-established harmony,” we meet

with a double answer. On the one hand, its actual _existence_ as a fact

is due to the creative will of God. On the other, it was precisely the

complete adjustment of the internal states of its various monads which

determined God to will the existence of the actual world-order in

preference to that of any other of the indefinitely numerous logically

possible arrangements which He foresaw and might have chosen. This

relation between God and the world-order is further complicated by the

fact that on occasion Leibnitz treats God as simply one, though the

supreme one, among the monads.

Now a system of this kind seems to exhibit all the defects of Pluralism

with certain superadded difficulties of its own. We might reasonably

object that experience presents us with no example of a genuine system

in which all the elements are actually independent. The nearest approach

to such a case seems to be found in the classes of an “artificial

classification,” in which things standing in no relation of interaction

among themselves are put together by us because it is convenient for

some extraneous purpose of our own to comprehend them under a single

point of view. But, apart from the impossibility of constructing a

classification which shall be more than relatively artificial, such a

mere aggregate or collection is not a real system. In a true system, as

distinct from a mere collection, the principle of unity has always some

sort of significance for the members of the system themselves. It

represents, at the least, the way in which the members interact with

each other. (Thus, to take an extreme case, the serial arrangement of

cutting implements in a museum, from the flaked stone of the Palæolithic

age to the latest specimen of Sheffield cutlery, is more than a merely

“artificial” classification, precisely because it is more than a mere

grouping of separate objects according to their likeness and unlikeness;

it represents the stages of a continuous historical evolution.) Now, it

is essential to Monadism that the monads, because ultimately

independent, shall only seem to interact. They appear to form a single

world with a history in which each distinct state of each monad is a

stage. But really, while the successive states of the individual monad

are, what they seem to be, a connected process of development, the

various processes do not make up a single-world history at all. They

only seem to do so by an inevitable illusion. Hence the unity of the

whole system must after all be not only ideal, but, strictly speaking,

imaginary.

Similar difficulties arise from the ambiguous position accorded to God

in the scheme. If the “pre-established harmony” between the states of

the individual monads were simply due to a creative fiat of God, we

should be thrown back upon mere arbitrary chance as the reason, if it

can be called a reason, why existence is not a chaos. But if God’s

choice to create this scheme of things rather than another was due to

the superior attraction which a world with at least the appearance of

connected system had for the divine intellect, then it is ultimately in

the constitution of the divine mind that we have to find the reason why

the alternative possibilities before creation were what they were;[58]

and again, why just this one was preferred to all the rest. And thus the

monads cease to be any longer ultimate and independent, and the nature

of God becomes the single determinate ground of all reality.

It is scarcely necessary to add that Monadism suffers besides from all

the defects which we found in Pluralism. If the monad be made into a

mere unit without internal variety, it ceases to be a thing with a

definite nature at all; and if its unity is compatible with the variety

of its states, there seems to be no special reason why the wealth of

varied existence in the world should lead us to assume a plurality of

independent principles as its ground. It has been pointed out that

Leibnitz was apparently determined in favour of Monadism against Monism

by the assumption that individual human selves are internally simple

units and externally entirely exclusive of each other, an assumption we

have already seen reason to reject.

§ 4. We seem driven, then, to reject the view that the ordered world of

experience can be the expression of a plurality of ultimately distinct

and heterogeneous principles. Because the world as known, or again as

providing for the coherent realisation of practical purposes, is an

orderly system, and on any other supposition coherent knowledge and

consistent action are alike impossible, the world must for Metaphysics

be regarded as the complete embodiment and expression of a single

ultimate principle. We are thus committed to some form of theory of the

type generally known as Monism. The _name_ Monism we may perhaps be

allowed to avoid, as it has gathered about it associations which are apt

to mislead. Among the doctrines most frequently spoken of as monistic

are some which treat the apparent variety and multiplicity of existence

as purely illusory. Again, the name has of late been widely used as the

self-chosen designation of the doctrine according to which “mind” and

“matter” are alike “aspects” or “manifestations” of a third principle

which is neither material nor mental. It should already be clear that

the doctrine indicated by our previous discussions differs widely from

both these types of Monism. We have insisted that the source of fallacy

in Pluralism and Monadism was one-sided emphasis upon one term in the

antithesis of the Many and the One to neglect of the other, and we have

no intention of repeating the mistake for ourselves. Also, we have

already come to the conclusion that Reality, whatever its detailed

structure, is mental in its general character; we can have nothing

therefore to do with a “neutral” or “agnostic” Monism. Our detailed

theory of the relation between the unity of the world and its

multiplicity must do equal justice to both, and it must be consistent

with our previous recognition of the experiential nature of the real.

We may perhaps work out our theory in detail as follows. The world for

knowledge must, we have seen, be an orderly whole or system. To be a

system at all, it must be the development or expression in detail of a

single principle. Therefore it must most certainly be one; it cannot be

a medley of independent elements which somehow luckily happen to form a

coherent collection. But again, because it is a system, it cannot be a

mere unit; it must be the expression of a single principle in and

through a multiplicity of terms or constituents. Not only must it be

both one and many, but it must be many precisely because it is truly

one, and one because it is truly many.[59] Further, we must add that

because the world-system is a perfectly systematic whole, not only is

multiplicity in general necessary to its unity, but each particular

element in the multiplicity is necessitated or logically implied by the

character of the unity. In a complete system no single member can be

missing or be other than it is without the fundamental law of

construction of the whole being changed. Also, we may incidentally

observe that in a complete system the number of distinct terms may be

actually endless, while the law of construction is perfectly

determinate. To think of the world as a single systematic unity, then,

means to think of it as the manifestation in a possibly infinite

multiplicity of detail of one perfectly determinate principle. And, of

course, what we have called the individual elements of the multiplicity

may on inspection themselves turn out to be systems of infinite

complexity determined by a law of construction derived in a determinate

way from that of the complete system, and so on literally _ad

infinitum_. Thus the unity of ultimate principle we demand for Reality

in no way excludes its possession of a wealth of detail infinitely

infinite.

§ 5. We may take a further most important step forward. In the

all-embracing systematic whole the unity and the multiplicity must be

equally real and each must be real through the other. How is this

possible? Only on condition that the whole system forms a single

experience, and that the constituent factors again are single

experiences. This will perhaps be best brought out by examining some

typical case of the kind of unity in multiplicity which is insufficient

for our purpose. (_a_) The unity of the world cannot be that of a mere

collection or aggregate. In a mere aggregate the elements are real

independently of their relation to one another as elements in this

aggregate. So long as we keep strictly to the case of what is no more

than an aggregate, the quality of the elements is entirely unaffected by

their inclusion in the aggregate. The aggregate has no unitary character

of its own which reveals itself in and through the behaviour of its

elements. Its unity consists in nothing more than the fact that we have

found it convenient to think of its elements together. An aggregate of

ten bricks, for instance, has no character as a whole beyond the mere

fact of being thought of in one mental act. It has not even a collective

weight until you put your ten bricks into the same cart, or on the same

scale-pan, and then they have ceased to be a _mere_ aggregate in the

very moment of exerting pressure upon the same surface, and have become

a true material system.

(_b_) Nor can the world of Reality be satisfactorily thought of as a

mere _whole of parts_. A whole of parts approaches indeed more nearly to

the ideal of a true systematic unity than a mere aggregate, inasmuch as

it has a determinate single character as a whole, which manifests itself

in the structure of the various parts. For this reason a geometrical

figure or a machine is much more than a mere aggregate; it has a

character as a whole, and this character is differently expressed by the

construction of the different parts. The figure or machine is thus a

true unity of differences. Yet in this case we cannot really say that

the unity and the variety are equally real. For the whole cannot exist

without the parts, whereas the parts may continue to exist, though not,

of course, _as_ parts of this whole, without the whole. The whole is

constituted by the successive generation or construction of the parts,

and thus may be said to be formed out of pre-existing parts, and the

parts again may survive the destruction of the whole. There is not that

equal reality and complete mutual implication of the two sides which we

have deemed necessary to a genuine systematic unity.

(_c_) An organism is in some respects a truer systematic unity than a

mere whole of parts. It has a systematic character of its own which

manifests itself in and through the difference of its various members.

And here, the whole is not historically subsequent to and generated by

the members. It is not their resultant but their living unity. The

members only come into being along with the whole, and in the course of

its growth as a whole; and though they may, in a sense, continue to

exist after severance from the whole, it is not with the same kind of

existence which belonged to them as members.[60] But an organism, like a

machine, fails to exhibit the perfect systematic unity of the One and

the Many of which we are in quest. In the machine the aspect of

multiplicity was relatively more real than that of unity; in the fully

evolved organism the unity seems more completely real than the

multiplicity. For the unity is a conscious one; in some degree at least

it exists for itself, and its members again for it. Whereas it must be

very doubtful whether the member exists for itself, and still more

doubtful whether the whole exists in any sense for the members. And

though the member cannot retain its peculiar form of existence except as

a member in the whole, yet in even the highest organism the unity is so

far relatively independent that it is unaffected by the removal of some

of the members.

Not every member is of vital significance for the life of the whole. But

in a complete systematic unity, as we saw, the unity and the

multiplicity of the system must be equally real and equally

interdependent. This can only be the case if the whole is for its

members as well as the members for the whole. And that this may be so,

just as the all-embracing whole of reality must, as we have learned, be

an experience, so each of its members must be itself an experience. And

because the members form a single system, just as there can be nothing

in the experience of any member which is not contained in the experience

which is the whole, so, on the other side, there can be nothing in the

whole which does not in some way affect the experience of every member.

Only in this way can we conceive of a systematic Reality in which the

unity and the multiplicity of the system are alike real and equally

real. Such a view is, strictly speaking, hardly to be called either

Pluralism or Monism. It is not Pluralism, for it does not make the unity

of the system an illusion or an inexplicable accident; it is not Monism,

in the current sense of the word, because it does not make the

multiplicity deceptive. If a name is wanted, we might perhaps agree to

call it Systematic Idealism.

§ 6. We may say, then, that Reality is a systematic Experience of which

the components are likewise experiences. It would be much the same thing

if we called it a subject which is the unity of subordinate subjects. It

is tempting again, at first sight, to say it is a self of selves. But

the extreme ambiguity of the term “self” as used in contemporary

Psychology makes it desirable to avoid an expression which is capable of

the gravest misuse.[61] It is scarcely possible to say with any

precision what we mean by one “self,” whereas it is possible in a

general way to say what we mean by one experience. An experience may be

called one and the same in so far as it is the systematised expression

of a single coherent purpose or interest, in so far, in fact, as it has

a teleological unity. In practice it may be impossible to say precisely

when this condition is fulfilled, but the slightest acquaintance with

the psychological facts of the struggle between competing systems of

ideas in normal, and of “dual” and “multiple” personality in abnormal,

mental life is sufficient to show that the limits thus set by our

definition to the single experience do not coincide with those ascribed

to my “self” or “personality” in any of the shifting senses of the

terms. The limits within which experience remains _one_ experience

according to our definition are, as the facts just alluded to show,

often narrower, but again, the definition suggests that they may also be

wider, than any which would currently be given to the “self.”

Moreover, what we have already said as to the possibility of each

“member” of our system being itself a system of lesser systems, forbids

us to identify our view with any doctrine which asserts merely atomic

and simple “selves” as the elements of Reality.

Another way of expressing the same thought would be to say that Reality

is an Individual of which the elements are lesser individuals. The

advantage of this form of expression is that it emphasises the

fundamentally teleological character of the unity of the real, and also

of each and all of its constituents. A thing, as we have already seen,

is individual just so far as it is unique, and only that which is the

embodiment of a single purpose or interest can be unique. A single whole

of experience, owing its unity as a whole precisely to the completeness

and harmony with which it expresses a single purpose or interest, is

necessarily an individual. The all-embracing experience which

constitutes Reality is thus in its inmost nature a complete individual.

And the lesser experiences which form the elements or material content

of Reality are each, just so far as each is truly one experience,

individual in the same sense as the whole. We may thus call Reality a

complete or perfect individual of minor or incomplete individuals.

What the fundamental distinction between the supreme individual whole

and the lesser individuals must be taken to consist in we shall discuss

in our next chapter. Meanwhile we may note two points:—(1) The important

thing about an individual is not its mere numerical unity, but its

qualitative uniqueness. Any experience which we can pronounce to be

individual must be called so, not merely because it is numerically one

and not many, but because it is the consistent and harmonious embodiment

of a coherent purpose. Numerically considered, every such individual is

necessarily many as well as one, precisely because it is a system. This

applies especially to the supreme or absolute individual, the complete

system of experience. It is individual primarily not because it is

numerically one, but because it is the complete expression of a coherent

idea or purpose. It has been the defect of too many monistic theories to

overlook this, and to lay the main stress on the numerical oneness of

the real.

(2) An experience individual in the sense already explained is what we

mean by a “spirit.” Spirit cannot be properly defined by

contradistinction from a supposed non-spiritual reality, such as

“matter,” for such a definition would only amount to the assertion that

spirit is what is not other than spirit; and would tell us nothing of

the term to be defined. Nor, again, is spirit properly defined as a

series of states or modifications of the abstraction “consciousness.”

The positive characteristic by which spiritual existence may be

recognised is that in it the _what_ and the _that_ are combined in the

unity of immediate feeling. And immediate feeling, as we have seen, is

essentially teleological. Where you have a connected system of factors

which can only be understood as a whole by reference to an explicit or

implicit end, which constitutes their unity, you have spirit, and where

you have spirit you have such a system. So that to call reality an

individual of individuals is the same thing as to say that it is a

spiritual system of which the elements, constituents, or terms, are in

their turn spiritual systems.[62] Our doctrine may thus be seen to be

fairly entitled to the name Idealism, which current usage has

appropriated to the view that all existence is ultimately mental.

§ 7. Such a relation as we have asserted between the individual whole of

Reality and the elements or terms within the whole is necessarily

unique, and cannot be adequately illustrated from any less perfect type

of systematic unity recognised by everyday or by scientific thought. In

particular, we must carefully avoid the mistake of conceiving the

relation of the elements to the totality in a mechanical way as that of

“parts” to a “whole of parts”; or, again, in a merely biological way, as

that of “members” to an organism. All such analogies lose sight of the

intimate character of a union in which the elements and the totality

exist not merely in and through, but also for each other.

The individual experiences which compose the supreme experience have a

genuine, if an imperfect and partial, individuality of their own. They

are not in it merely “ideally” or implicitly, as the points on a curve

may be said to be in the periphery. And the whole, again, is a real

individual, not a mere aggregate in which the parts are real but their

unity merely imaginary. We may, if we like, say that it is made up of

experiences or minds, but we must not say that it is a _collection_ of

minds. For a mere collection, as we have seen, in so far as it is a

collection and nothing more, cannot be said to have any genuine

individuality, precisely because it has no teleological unity of

structure beyond that which we arbitrarily, and with reference to ends

lying outside its own nature, impose upon it in the very act of counting

its members, _i.e._ arranging them in serial order. Whether we could

properly speak of the absolute whole as a _society_ of minds is a

further and a more difficult question. A society is much more than a

mere collection: it has a purposive unity of structure which exists not

merely for the sociological observer from without, but for its own

members as active in assigning to each of them his own special place in

relation to all the rest. How far society can be said to have such a

unity _for itself_ is a question which we cannot answer until we have

dealt more fully with the problem of the relation between selfhood and

individuality. And until we have answered it, we must defer the decision

as to whether the systematic individuality of the Absolute would be

adequately recognised if we thought of it as a society. (See _infra_,

Bk. IV. chap. 3.)

If we are to look at this stage for some analogue within our partial

experience for the kind of unity of individuals in a single supreme

individual which we have demanded for the system of Reality, we shall

probably do best to turn to what is after all the most familiar thing in

the world,—our own personal experience. If we consider the nature of any

coherent purpose or “mental system,” we shall find that, as the coherent

embodiment of a purpose, it possesses a degree of individuality of its

own. In proportion to the comprehensiveness, and again to the inner

harmony or systematic structure of the interest it embodies, it

constitutes a genuine self-existing individual whole of the kind which

psychologists recognise as a “self.” And again, in so far as my life

exhibits determinate character, so far do these systematic purposes or

minor “selves” form a larger system, also individual, which may be

called my “total self.” And both the many lesser “selves” and the larger

“self” are real in the same sense of the word. Neither exists merely in

or for the other; the wider or whole “self” is no mere collection or

resultant or product of the more special “selves,” nor are they again

mere results of a theoretical process of analysis and abstraction. In so

far as they are genuine systems at all, they are not mere “parts” of a

whole, but each is the expression, in a concrete conscious life, of the

nature of a larger whole from a special “point of view.” The whole, if

not equally in every part, is yet as a whole present in every part, and

precisely for that reason the category of part and whole is inadequate

to express their relation. Somewhat after this fashion we must conceive

the structure of any individual whole of lesser individuals. Why, in

spite of the analogy, it is desirable not to speak of the whole of

Reality as a “Self,” will be made clearer as we proceed.[63]

§ 8. The view we have formulated is perhaps more closely akin to

Spinoza’s conception of the relation of the human mind to the “infinite

intellect of God,” than to any other historically famous theory.

According to Spinoza, the individual human mind is an “eternal mode of

consciousness which, taken together with all other such ‘modes,’ makes

up the infinite intellect of God.” The meaning of the epithet “eternal”

we cannot, of course, enter into until we have discussed the relation of

the time-process to experience. The rest of the definition pretty

clearly coincides in its general sense with the view we have tried to

expound of the nature of the relation between the supreme experience and

its constituent experiences. For the “modes” of Spinoza are definitely

thought of as genuinely individual manifestations of the nature of his

ultimate reality, “substance” or “God.” Their individuality and their

infinite multiplicity is no result of illusion or illegitimate

abstraction. And, on the other hand, “substance” itself is genuinely

individual; it is no mere abstract name for the common properties of a

number of ultimately independent things.

Most of the adverse criticism which Spinozism has met with, as far at

least as regards its doctrine of the nature of the human mind, seems to

be based on misapprehension about the first of these points. From his

use of the numerical category of whole and part to express the relation

between substance and its modes, Spinoza has incorrectly been taken to

be denying the fact of the genuine individuality of the finite

experience, and therefore to be declaring the very existence of the

finite to be mere baseless illusion. With his doctrine as thus

misinterpreted, ours has, of course, no similarity. Nothing is explained

away by calling it “illusion”; the “illusory” fact is there in spite of

the hard names you choose to bestow on it, and demands explanation no

less than any other fact. Our theory aims not at dismissing finite

individuality as illusion, but at ascertaining what it means, what are

its limits, and how it stands related to the complete individual whole

of experience which Spinoza calls the _infinitus intellectus Dei_.[64]

The mention of Spinoza will no doubt suggest to the reader the famous

doctrine, which has played so large a part in the subsequent development

of philosophical Monism, of the double “aspects” or “attributes” of

Reality. It is from Spinoza that modern Monism has learned the view that

the mental and physical orders are related as two parallel but distinct

manifestations of a common underlying reality, so that to every member

of one order there corresponds a determinate member of the other. The

two are thus everywhere inseparable and everywhere irreducible

“parallel” expressions of a nature which is neither mental nor physical.

On this fundamental point our theory, as will have been seen already,

completely parts company with Spinozism. That the nature of one and the

same common whole should be _equally_ manifested in two entirely

irreducible forms, is a patent impossibility. Either the unity of the

whole or the absolute disparateness of its twin manifestations must be

surrendered if we are to think consistently. Hence we cannot avoid

asking in which of the two series the assumed common nature is more

adequately expressed. According as we answer this question we shall find

ourselves led in the end either to thorough-going Materialism or to

thorough-going Idealism. For our own part, the perception that Reality

is experience and nothing else has already committed us to the view that

both of the seemingly disparate series must in the end be mental. Thus

our doctrine may be said to be much what Spinoza’s would be if the

attribute of “extension” were removed from his scheme, and the whole of

Reality identified with the “infinite intellect of God.”[65]

_Consult further_:—B. Bosanquet, _Essentials of Logic_, lect. 2;

_Logic_, vol. ii. chap. 7; F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_,

chaps. 13, 14, 20; L. T. Hobhouse, _Theory of Knowledge_, pt. 3, chap.

6, “Reality as a System”; H. Lotze, _Metaphysic_, bk. i. chap. 6 (Eng.

trans., vol. i. pp. 163-191); J. S. Mackenzie, _Outlines of Metaphysic_,

bk. i. chaps. 2, 3; bk. iii. chap. 6; J. E. M‘Taggart, _Studies in

Hegelian Cosmology_, chap. 2.

-----

Footnote 54:

This consideration obviously influenced Leibnitz. It is a much-decried

doctrine in his system that every “monad,” or simple real thing,

perceives nothing but its own internal states; there are no “windows”

through which one monad can behold the states of another. It is easy

to show that this doctrine leads to extremely far-fetched and

fantastic hypotheses to account for the apparent communication between

different monads, but not so easy to show that Pluralism can afford to

dispense with it. See in particular Leibnitz’s _New System of the

Nature of Substances_ (Works, ed. Erdmann, 124 ff.; ed. Gerhardt, iv.

477 ff.; Eng. trans. in Latta’s _Leibnis: the Monadology_, etc., p.

297 ff.), especially §§ 13-17 and _Monadology_, §§ 7-9, 51.

Footnote 55:

See for a recent treatment of this point in its bearing upon the

theory of volition and moral accountability, Mr. Bradley’s article on

“Mental Conflict and Imputation” in _Mind_ for July 1902. There is

probably no part of Psychology which suffers more from an improper

over-simplification of awkward facts.

Footnote 56:

As the reader will readily collect from the preceding discussion, I do

not myself admit that they are justified. On the contrary, I should

hold that any consistent Pluralism must issue in what, if I held it

myself, I should feel compelled to describe as Atheism, and the

doctrine of blind chance as the arbiter of all things. In this matter

I should like to associate myself entirely with the emphatic protest

of Mr. Bradley, in _Mind_ July 1902, p. 313, and with the remarks of

Mr. B. Russell in his work on _The Philosophy of Leibniz_, p. 172. I

need not say that I do not make these remarks for the purpose of

disparagement. By all means, if Atheism is the logical outcome of

consistent thinking, let us say so; what I object to is the constant

appeal to theistic beliefs on the part of metaphysicians who, so far

as I can see, ought to be atheists if they were in earnest with their

own position.

Footnote 57:

For a popular exemplification of the kind of appeal to religious and

ethical interests here objected to, see the first essay in Prof.

James’s _Will to Believe_. I have never been able to understand why

these appeals, if legitimate, should not be allowed in Psychology or

any other science as readily as in Metaphysics. Would Prof. James

regard it as a valid argument for the “timeless self” or the

_Innervationsgefühle_, that some men may be better or happier for

believing in them? Or again, is it in itself an objection to the study

of Ethics that certain persons may become both less moral and less

happy as a consequence of studying it?

Footnote 58:

_N.B._—These possibilities, it must be remembered, though numerically

infinite, are assumed to be qualitatively determinate, being

constituted of the condition of conformity to the logical principle of

non-contradiction. Now there is no reason in the nature of a plurality

of _independent_ things why this principle should be recognised rather

than not.

Footnote 59:

A medley of independent things would not even be really “many.” For

until you can count “first, second, third....” you have not your Many.

And nothing but the terms of a coherent connected series can be

counted. What you can count as many is shown by the very fact of your

ability to count it to have a common nature or ground which permits of

its orderly arrangement, and thus to be part of one system. Compare

Plato, _Parmenides_, 164, 165.

Footnote 60:

As Aristotle more than once says, a human hand, for instance, is not

when severed from the rest of the body a “hand” at all, except

ὁμωνύμως “equivocally,” any more than the “hand” of a statue is a true

hand. (_I.e._ it is only a “true hand” so long as it _does the work_

of a hand. Captain Cuttle’s hook probably deserved the name of “hand”

better than the severed member it replaced).

Footnote 61:

I shall attempt to show in a later chapter (Bk. IV. chap. 3) that, in

any useful signification of the term “self,” Reality is not a “self”

nor yet a mere community of “selves.”

Footnote 62:

Again, I must remind the reader that this recognition of the

teleological character of mind does not in the least preclude the

necessity for psychological analysis of mental states. Still less does

it require us to include in our analysis a volitional element as one

distinguishable aspect or component of the isolated mental state by

the side of others, such as the presentational and emotional aspects.

It might even be contended that a “tripartite” or three-aspect

Psychology commits the mistake of counting in the whole psychical fact

as one of its own components.

Footnote 63:

See _infra_, Bk. IV. chap. 3, where we shall find that the relation of

the individual self to a social whole probably furnishes a still

better, though not altogether satisfactory, illustration of our

principle.

Footnote 64:

For Spinoza’s doctrine see especially _Ethics_, I. 15, 25; II. 11, 40;

III. 6-9; V. 22, 23, with the explanations of any good exposition of

his system, such as that of Pollock or Joachim.

Footnote 65:

See further on the “Parallelistic” doctrine, Bk. IV. chap. 2.

CHAPTER III

REALITY AND ITS APPEARANCES—THE

DEGREES OF REALITY

§ 1. Reality being a single systematic whole, the nature of its

constituent elements is only finally intelligible in the light of

the whole system. Hence each of its “appearances,” if considered as

a whole in itself, must be more or less contradictory. § 2. But some

“appearances” exhibit the structure of the whole more adequately

than others, and have therefore a higher degree of reality. § 3.

This conception of degree of reality may be illustrated by

comparison with the successive orders of infinites and

infinitesimals in Mathematics. It would be the task of a complete

Philosophy to assign the contents of the world to their proper place

in the series of “orders” of reality. § 4. In general any

subordinate whole is real in proportion as it is a self-contained

whole. And it is a self-contained whole in proportion as it is (_a_)

comprehensive, (_b_) systematic; that is, a thing is real just so

far as it is truly individual. § 5. The two criteria of

individuality, though ultimately coincident, tend in particular

cases to fall apart for our insight, owing to the limitation of

human knowledge. § 6. Ultimately only the whole system of experience

is completely individual, all other individuality is approximate. §

7. In other words, the whole system of experience is an infinite

individual, all subordinate individuality is finite. Comparison of

this position with the doctrines of Leibnitz. § 8. Recapitulatory

statement of the relation of Reality to its Appearances.

§ 1. Reality, we have seen, is to be thought of as a systematic whole

forming a single individual experience, which is composed of elements or

constituents which are in their turn individual experiences. In each of

these constituents the nature of the whole system manifests itself in a

special way. Each of them contributes its own peculiar content to the

whole system, and as the suppression or change of any one of them would

alter the character of the whole, so it is the nature of the whole which

determines the character of each of its constituents. In this way the

whole and its constituent members are in complete interpenetration and

form a perfect systematic unity. In the happy phrase of Leibnitz, we may

say that each of the partial experiences reflects the whole system from

its own peculiar “point of view.” If we call the completed system, as it

is for itself, Reality _par excellence_, we may appropriately speak of

the partial experiences in which its nature is diversely manifested as

its Appearances. We must remember, however, that to call them

appearances is not to stamp them as illusory or unreal. They will only

be illusory or unreal when we forget that they are one and all partial

aspects or manifestations of a whole of which none of them adequately

exhausts the contents.

When we forget this and treat any partial experience as though it were

the complete and adequate expression of the whole nature of Reality,—in

other words, when we try to apply to existence or the universe as a

whole conceptions which are only valid for special aspects of

existence,—we shall inevitably find ourselves led to contradictory and

absurd results. Each partial aspect of a total system can only be

ultimately understood by reference to the whole to which it belongs, and

hence any attempt to treat the part in abstraction as itself a

self-contained whole,—or, in other words, to treat the concepts with

which we have to work in dealing with some special aspect of the world

of experience as ultimately valid in their application to the whole

system,—is bound to issue in contradiction. Again, just because our

knowledge of the structure of the system as a whole is so imperfect as

it is, our insight into the structure of its constituents is also

necessarily limited. Hence it will commonly happen that, even within the

limits of their applicability, the special concepts of our various

sciences are not, when thought out, free from internal contradiction.

For instance, we are led to absurd results when we try, as Materialism

does, to interpret the whole system of experience in terms of the

concepts used in the purely physical sciences; and again, even in their

restricted use as physical categories, these concepts seem incapable of

being so defined as to involve no element of contradiction.

In both these senses all Appearance implies an element of contradiction;

only for an insight which could take in at once the whole system of

existence would its details be completely coherent and harmonious. But

this does not alter the fact that, so far as our insight into any part

of the whole and its connection with other parts is self-consistent, it

does convey genuine, though imperfect, knowledge of the whole. Though

our detailed insight into the structure of the whole may never reach the

ideal of perfect self-consistency, yet it may approximate to that ideal

in different degrees, at different stages, or with reference to

different aspects. And the closer the approximation the less the

modification which our knowledge would require to bring it into complete

harmony with itself, and the greater therefore the element of truth

about Reality which it contains.

In particular, we must carefully avoid falling into the mistake of

thinking of the Reality and the world of its appearances as though they

formed two distinct realms. In a systematic unity, we must remember, the

whole can exist only in so far as it expresses its nature in the system

of its parts, and again the parts can have no being except as the whole

expresses itself through them. To the degree to which this condition is

departed from by any of the types of system familiar to us, those

systems fall short of being perfectly systematic. Reality, then, being a

systematic whole, can have no being apart from its appearance, though

neither any of them taken singly, nor yet the sum of them thought of

collectively,[66] can exhaust its contents. And though no appearance is

the whole of Reality, in none of them all does the whole Reality fail to

manifest itself as a whole. The whole is truly, as a whole, present in

each and every part, while yet no part is the whole.[67]

We may once more illustrate by an appeal to our own direct experience.

Consider the way in which we set to work to execute any systematic

scheme or purpose, _e.g._ the mastery of a particular science or a

particular business. We have in such a case a central aim or purpose,

which in the process of execution spreads out into a connected system of

subordinate ideas and interests welded into one by the reference to a

common end which pervades the whole. The supreme or central aim is only

realised in the successive realisation of the subordinate stages; at the

same time, while it is what sustains all the members of the system, it

has no existence apart from them, though it is identical neither with

any one of them nor yet with their sum collectively considered.

§ 2. If our conviction that Reality is a single systematic unity

pervading and manifesting itself in lesser systematic unities is

correct, we shall expect to find that some of the lesser systematic

unities with which we have to deal in practical life and in the various

sciences exhibit more of the full character of the whole to which they

belong than others. The “points of view” from which each minor system

reflects the whole, though all true, need not be all equally true.

Though the whole, in a genuine system, must be present as a whole in

every part, it need not be equally present in all; it may well _not_ be

“_as_ full, _as_ perfect in a hair as heart.” To take a concrete

example, a cluster of mass-particles, a machine, a living organism, and

a human mind engaged in the conscious systematic pursuit of truth, are

all to some degree or other systematic unities, and all to some degree,

therefore, repeat the structure of the universal whole to which they all

belong. But it does not follow that all manifest the structure of that

whole with equal adequacy and fulness. Indeed, any philosophy which

admits development as a genuine feature of the world-process must

maintain that they do not, that the nature of the whole system of

Reality is exhibited with infinitely greater adequacy and clearness in

the working of the conscious mind than in the changes of configuration

of the system of mass-particles or even the vital processes of the

physical organism.

In practical life, too, one of our most ineradicable convictions is that

there are degrees of worth which coincide with degrees of the adequacy

with which partial systems exhibit the nature of the larger wholes to

which they belong. For instance, among the different mental systems

which may be called my partial “selves,” there are some which I call

“truer” than others, on the ground that they more fully reveal my whole

character as an individual human being. My whole character undoubtedly

appears in and determines all the subordinate systems which make up my

mental life. Each of them _is_ the whole character in a special aspect,

or as reacting upon a special system of suggestions, but some of them

contain the whole in a more developed and explicit form than others. I

am in one sense myself wherever I may be and whatever I may be doing,

and yet I am “more myself” in health than in sickness, in the free

pursuit of self-chosen studies than in the forced discharge of

uncongenial tasks imposed on me by the necessity of earning an income.

We ought, then, to be prepared to find the same state of things

universally in the relation of Reality to its Appearances. In a world

where “higher” and “lower,” “more” and “less” true have a meaning, some

of the lesser systems in which the nature of the whole is expressed must

be fuller and more adequate representations of that nature than others.

This is as much as to say that it would require comparatively little

transformation of some of the partial systems recognised by our

knowledge to show how the common nature of the whole system of Reality

is expressed in them; in other cases the amount of transformation

required to show how the whole repeats itself in the part would be much

more extensive. To take a single instance, if our preceding analysis of

the general nature of Reality is sound, we can see much more clearly how

that nature reappears in the structure of a human mind than how it is

exhibited in what we call a physical thing, and we may therefore say the

human mind expresses the fundamental character of the whole system much

more fully and adequately than physical nature, as it exists for our

apprehension. More briefly, the same thought may be expressed by saying

that Reality has degrees, and that the forms of Appearance in which its

common nature is most fully and clearly manifested have the highest

degrees of reality.

§ 3. This conception of Reality as capable of degrees may at first seem

paradoxical. How can anything, it will be asked, be more or less “real”

than anything else? Must not anything either be entirely real or not

real at all? But the same difficulty might be raised about the

recognition of degree in other cases where its validity is now

universally admitted. Thus to some minds it has appeared that there can

be no degrees of the infinite or the infinitesimal; all infinites, and

again all zeros, have been declared to be manifestly equal. Yet it

hardly seems possible to escape the conclusion that the concept of

successive orders of infinitely great, and again of infinitely small,

magnitudes is not only intelligible but absolutely necessary if our

thought on quantitative subjects is to be consistent (When the sides of

a rectangle, for instance, become infinitely great or infinitely small

relatively to whatever is our standard of comparison, it still remains a

rectangle, and its area therefore is still determined by the product of

its sides, and is therefore infinitely great or small, as the case may

be, in relation not only to our original standard but to the sides

themselves.[68]) What is in one sense not a matter of degree, may yet in

another not only admit but positively require the distinction of degrees

of more and less. And this is precisely the case with Reality as it

manifests itself in its various appearances. In the sense that it is the

same single experience-system which appears as a whole and in its whole

nature in every one of the subordinate experience-systems, they are all

alike real, and each is as indispensable as every other to the existence

of the whole. In the sense that the whole is more explicitly present in

one than in another, there is an infinity of possible degrees of reality

and unreality. We should be justified in borrowing a term from

mathematical science to mark this double relation of the appearances to

their Reality, and speaking of them as successive orders of Reality. And

we might then say that it is one of the principal problems of a complete

Philosophy to ascertain and arrange in their proper sequence, as far as

the limitations of our knowledge permit, the orders of Reality.

§ 4. Such a task as this could only be carried out by an intelligence

equally at home in metaphysical analysis and in the results of the

special sciences, and would form the proper work of applied Metaphysics.

In a discussion of general metaphysical principles it is sufficient to

indicate the general nature of the criteria by which the degree of

reality exhibited by any special partial system must be determined. Now,

this general nature has been already made fairly clear by the foregoing

inquiry into the unity of Reality. Reality, we have seen, is one in the

sense of being an individual self-contained whole of experience. And its

individuality means that it is the systematic embodiment of a single

coherent structure in a plurality of elements or parts, which depend for

their whole character upon the fact that they are the embodiment of

precisely this structure. If this is so, we may say that degrees of

reality mean the same thing as degrees of individuality, and that a

thing is real precisely to the same extent to which it is truly

individual.

A thing, that is, no matter of what kind, is really what it appears to

be, just in so far as the thing, as it appears for our knowledge, is

itself a self-contained and therefore unique systematic whole. Or, in

other words, just in so far as what we recognise as one thing shows

itself, in the face of philosophical criticism and analysis, to be a

self-contained systematic whole, so far are we truly apprehending that

thing as a manifestation of the fundamental character of Reality, of

seeing it as it really is, and so far does our knowledge give us genuine

Reality. On the other hand, just so far as what at first seemed a

self-contained whole is discovered by subsequent analysis not to be so,

so far have we failed to see the facts in their true place in the single

whole of Reality, and so far is our knowledge affected with error and

unreality. Or, again, the more truly anything is a self-contained

individual whole, the higher its place in the scale of Reality.

When we ask what are the marks by which one thing may be shown to be

more of a true individual whole than another, we shall find that they

may be reduced to two, both of which we can easily see to be in

principle the same, though, owing to the limitations of our insight,

they do not always appear to coincide in a given case. One thing is

_ceteris paribus_ more truly an individual whole than another: (1) when

the wealth of detailed content it embraces is greater; (2) when the

completeness of the unity with which it embraces that detail is greater.

Or, the degree of individuality possessed by any system depends: (1) on

its _comprehensiveness_; (2) on its _internal systematisation_. The more

a thing includes of existence and the more harmoniously it includes it,

the more individual it is.

It is manifest, of course, that these two characteristics of a

systematic whole are mutually interdependent. For, precisely because all

Reality is ultimately a single coherent system, the more there is

outside any partial system the greater must be the dependence of its

constituents for their character upon their connection with reality

outside, and the less capable must the system be of complete explanation

from within itself. The more the partial system embraces, the less will

its constituents be determined by relation to anything outside itself,

and the more completely will its organisation be explicable by reference

to its own internal principle of structure. That is, the greater the

comprehensiveness of the system, the completer in general will be its

internal coherence. And, conversely, the more completely the working of

the whole system in its details is explicable from within as the

expression of a single principle of internal structure, the less must be

the dependence of its contents on any external reality; and therefore,

seeing that _all_ reality is ultimately interconnected, the less must be

the extent of what lies outside the system in question. That is, the

greater the internal unity, the greater in general the comprehensiveness

of the system. Thus ultimately the two criteria of individuality

coincide.

§ 5. In practice, however, it constantly happens, as a consequence of

the fragmentary way in which our experiences come to us, that

comprehensiveness and thorough-going systematic unity seem to be opposed

to one another. Thus we can see, as a general principle, that the

systematic organisation of knowledge depends upon its extent. The wider

our knowledge, the greater on the whole the degree to which it exhibits

organic structure; the systematisation of science and its extension

ultimately go together. Yet at any one moment in the development of

knowledge the recognition of fresh truths may necessitate a temporary

introduction of disorganisation and discrepancy among the accepted

principles of science. Thus in the history of geometry the recognised

principles of the science were temporarily disorganised by the admission

of incommensurable magnitudes which was forced upon the early Greek

mathematicians by the discovery that the side and diagonal of a square

have no common measure, and the discrepancy was only removed when it

became possible to revise the principles of the theory of numbers

itself. So again at the present day there is a real danger that

premature anxiety to give the study of Psychology precise systematic

character by an exact definition of its subject and its relation to the

various physical and mental sciences, may stand in the way of the

extension of our knowledge of the facts of psychical life. We have often

to purchase an important extension of knowledge at the cost of temporary

confusion of principles, and to be content to wait for the future

readjustment of facts to principles in the course of subsequent

progress.

So in our moral life we judge one man’s character more individual than

another’s, either on the ground of the superior breadth of his

interests, or of the superior consistency with which his interests are

wrought into a self-consistent whole. The man of many interests has so

far a truer individuality than the man of few, and again the man of

steady purpose than the man whose energies are dissipated in seemingly

conflicting pursuits. But the two criteria do not always, for our

insight, coincide. An increase in variety and breadth of interests may

be accompanied by a diminution in coherency of aim, and a gain in

coherency of aim appears often to be bought by concentration upon a few

special objects. And we should find it hard or impossible to decide,

where the two aspects of individuality appear to fall thus apart,

whether the man of many interests and relatively dissipated energies, or

the man of few interests and intense concentration upon them, exhibits

the higher individuality. For what looked like self-dissipation in the

pursuit of disconnected objects might really be the systematic pursuit

of a consistent purpose too wide to be clearly apprehended in its unity

either by contemporary observers or by the actor himself, yet apparent

enough to the reflective historian reading the significance of a life by

its whole effect upon society, and what seemed at the time the single

object of the man of one idea might similarly be found in the light of

the sequel to be the hasty combination of radically inconsistent

aims.[69]

Such reflections, however, only show that our limited insight is

insufficient to assign to every appearance with certainty its own place

in the ordered system of appearances through which the single Reality

expresses itself. They do not touch our general position, that where

comprehensiveness and harmony _can_ be seen to go together, we are

justified in using them as the measure of the individuality and

therefore of the reality of the partial system in which we discover

them. It is on such grounds, for instance, that we may safely pronounce

that an organism, which is the living unity of its members, is more

individual and therefore a higher reality that a mere aggregate of

pre-existing units, in which the nature of the parts is wholly or mainly

independent of the structure of the whole; and again, that a mind

consciously and systematically pursuing a coherent self-chosen system of

ends is more individual, and therefore again a higher reality, than an

organism reacting according to the temporary character of its

environment or its momentary internal condition in ways which form no

systematic execution of a connected scheme of ends. And it is clear

that, if only on this ground, we should have to say that we are nearer

the truth in thinking of the individual whole of complete Reality as an

organism than in thinking of it as an aggregate, and nearer the truth

still in thinking of it as a mind. Similarly in our judgments upon our

own lives and character. So far as one life possesses more breadth and

again more conscious unity of aim than another, so far it is more truly

individual, and therefore a more adequate type of complete reality. Just

so far as I am individual, I am truly real. And just so far as I fall

short of systematic individuality, whether from the poverty of my

interests or their mutual incompatibility, the appearance of unity in my

life is illusory, and I must be pronounced an unreal appearance.

At this point we may observe our metaphysical criterion of reality

coincides with our ethical criterion of moral worth. For in morality too

we esteem one life worthier than another, either for the superior

comprehensiveness of its ideals or for the thoroughness with which they

are wrought into a harmonious whole of coherent purpose. The better man

is either the man of the wider ideal, or again the man of completer and

purer self-devotion to his ideal. And thus for Morality the measure of

our worth, as for Metaphysics the measure of our reality, lies in our

individuality. And for Morality no less than for Metaphysics

individuality is pre-eminently a thing of degrees. In both cases, again,

the same difficulty besets us as soon as we attempt to use our criterion

for application to particular cases. Its two aspects fall apart; it is

not always the more comprehensive ideal which is served with the higher

fidelity of purpose. And so our actual moral judgments on the worth of

particular men, like our metaphysical judgments on the order of reality

to which particular things belong, are often necessarily uncertain and

fluctuating. We rate one man morally high for the comprehensive

rationality of his ideals, though he suffers from a lack of concentrated

energy, another for the steady and earnest purpose with which he follows

what we perhaps deplore as a contracted ideal.

§ 6. One more point of supreme importance concerning the relation of the

lesser individuals to the perfect individual which is the absolute whole

of Reality. Now that we have learned what is meant by degrees of

individuality, we can see that there can, in the last resort, be only

one perfect and complete individual, the whole of Reality itself, and

that the subordinate individuals can never be wholly and entirely

individual in themselves. For to be a complete individual would be, as

we have seen, to be a whole system absolutely self-contained and

explicable solely by reference to internal structure. Whatever requires,

for the full understanding of its systematic character, reference to

existence outside itself, we have seen, must also, so long as it is

considered apart from the rest of existence, be internally wanting in

complete systematic harmony, and thus must fall doubly short of the

ideal of individuality.

And precisely because the whole of experience is a single system, no

lesser system within the whole is entirely explicable in terms of its

own internal structure. For a full understanding of the nature of the

lesser system, and of the way in which it manifests a common character

through the variety of its elements, you have always, in the last

resort, to go outside the system itself, and take into account its

relation to the rest of the whole system of existence. And for that very

reason no subordinate individual, considered in itself, is a completely

coherent self-determined whole. For a limited knowledge like our own,

which has in the main to deal with subordinate systems as we find them,

and without that complete understanding of the whole structure of

Reality which would enable us to see their precise place in the whole,

the subordinate systems themselves, when closely scanned by a resolute

philosophical analysis, will inevitably exhibit some degree of

discrepancy and want of systematic unity.

Consider, for instance, such a system as is formed by the life-work of a

man of marked “individuality.” On the whole, the life of such a man may

fairly be said to be the systematic working out of a consistent scheme

of purposes. But this is, after all, only approximately the truth. It is

not the case that the nature of the central or dominant purpose of the

scheme is of itself enough to determine the nature and order of the

successive stages by which it finds expression. We have to take into

account factors in the man’s “heredity,” and again in his social and

physical environment which form no part of the nature of his central

dominant ideal and yet influence the manner of its fulfilment. We are

thus thrown back for our full understanding of the “individual” system

in question upon circumstances which are, so far as that system is

concerned, “accidental,” _i.e._ which are equally with itself part of

the whole system of experienced fact, without our being able to see

_how_ it and they form a wider coherent whole. The subordinate

individual, because incapable of explication solely from within, is in

the end only approximately “individual,” and we therefore fall into

contradictions whenever we isolate it from the rest of Reality and treat

it as absolutely individual and self-contained.

In dealing with subordinate wholes, we always, if we go far enough, come

to a point where we have to recognise their dependence upon a realm of

external fact which _our_ knowledge fails to see in its systematic

relation with them, and has therefore to treat as accidental or as an

ultimate “collocation.” This is why, as has already been said, full

knowledge of our own aims and interests as a genuine systematic whole

would coincide with complete insight into the structure of the whole

universe. We may invert the sentiment of a hackneyed verse, and say with

equal truth that until you know what God and man is, you cannot really

know what the “flower in the crannied wall” is. This is as much as to

say that every appearance must involve some element of contradiction for

our philosophical analysis precisely because we cannot in the end see

fully _how_ any appearance is related to the whole of Reality. But we

must carefully remember that if appearances, taken by themselves, are

contradictory, this is not because they are appearances, but because, as

so taken, they are all to some extent _mere_ appearance. The conclusion

of the whole matter is, that the individuality of anything less than the

ultimate whole of being is a matter of degree and approximation. We

shall be equally in error if we assume that because no subordinate

system is fully individual, some are not more individual and therefore

more real than others or if we declare that, because whatever is real at

all must be in its degree individual, therefore every element of Reality

is completely real in its isolation. The first error is that of a

one-sided Monism, the second that of an equally one-sided Pluralism.

Once more we may note a point of coincidence between our general

metaphysical theory of individuality and our personal experience as

moral agents. In so far as each of us is truly an individual, his aims

and ends form a system with an internal unity pervading its structure,

and therefore capable of progressive realisation as a system. Yet again,

because each of us is less than the whole of Reality, or, what is the

same thing, because the systematic unity of our inner life is never

complete, and our totality of interests relations, and aspirations never

a completely self-contained ordered whole, our ideals will always be

found to contain aspects which will not fully harmonise, elements which

fall outside such a unity of structure as it is possible to effect

within the limit of our single personality. And thus all our victories

contain an inseparable element of defeat. The defeated aspects of the

self may no doubt, and in general do, in proportion to the degree of our

individuality, belong to the “lower” and relatively more “untrue” self,

yet they are elements in the whole self, and their suppression is a

genuine if necessary self-suppression. There is a sense in which an

aspect of failure is an inevitable feature in the life of every

subordinate and therefore imperfect individual. Human life, even in the

millennium, as we rightly feel, would not be human life if the note of

sadness were altogether absent from it. Only in the single experience of

the absolute whole can the discordant notes be finally resolved into a

faultless harmony.

§ 7. Technically, we may mark the distinction between complete and

approximate individuality by saying that the absolute whole is an

infinite individual, whereas all lesser wholes are but finite

individuals. And here it is important to note carefully the true meaning

of these often much-abused terms. The infinite must not be confounded

with the indefinite or unfinished. Its fundamental property is not the

merely negative one of having no end or “last term,” but the positive

one of having an internal structure which is the harmonious and complete

expression of a single self-consistent principle. The finite, again, is

finite not primarily merely because it has a “last term,” _i.e._ because

there is something else outside it, but because its “last term” is

arbitrarily determined, _i.e._ determined by something other than the

principles of its internal structure. In other words, the essential

defect of the finite is that it is not solely determined by its own

structural principle.

We can see this even in the simple case of the familiar “infinite

series” of arithmetic and algebra. Such a series as 1, 1/2, 1/4 ... is

“infinite” not merely because you never come to the last term, but

because its character is determined from _within_, solely by the

principle according to which each term is derived from the one before

it; that the series has no end is a simple consequence of this positive

property of self-determination. But suppose I take _n_ terms of this

series and no more, where _n_ is a specified number, the resulting

series is now _finite_, not primarily because there are more terms of

the same kind outside it, but because the number of terms to be taken is

not prescribed by the law of formation of the series, but fixed with

reference to some object independent of the principle of the series

itself. In other words, only the infinite is in the full sense of the

words a completely self-determined whole. The finite is the imperfect,

not primarily because there is something outside it, but because its

contents are not solely prescribed by the principle of structure which

they embody. I, for instance, am a finite being, not principally or

merely because there are other men in the world, but because my ideas

and purposes are not a fully coherent systematic whole in

themselves.[70]

The view we have taken of individuality and the distinction between

finite and infinite individuality is closely akin to some of the most

fundamental ideas in the philosophy of Leibnitz. It was the doctrine of

Leibnitz that each of his monads “represented” the nature of the whole

system of existence, _i.e._ repeated the structure of the whole in its

own special structure, from a particular “point of view.” According to

the fulness and clearness of the “representation,” _i.e._ the adequacy

with which the structure of the monad repeated the structure of the

whole system, the monads were classed as higher or lower in the scale of

existence. The clearer a monad’s representation of the whole within

itself, the greater the monad’s “activity”; the more confused the

representation, the greater its “passivity.” It followed that, inasmuch

as no created monad fully exhibits the systematic structure of the whole

of Reality within itself, every one contains some element of

“passivity,” and that to be “passive” primarily means not to be affected

by extraneous influences, but to contain internal “confusion.”

Thus the “activity” of Leibnitz exactly corresponds to what we have

called individuality, and his “passivity” to that want of complete

internal systematisation which we have found inseparable from finite

existence. The immense significance of this definition of activity and

passivity in terms of internal systematisation will be more apparent

when we come, in our concluding book, to discuss the meaning of human

freedom, and its connection with determination and “causality.” For the

present it is enough to note that our own doctrine is substantially that

of Leibnitz freed from the inconsistency which is introduced into it by

the monadistic assumption of the complete independence of the various

finite individuals. It is, of course, impossible to unite, as Leibnitz

tried to do, the two thoughts. Either there is ultimately only one

independent individual, the infinite individual whole, or there is no

meaning in speaking of higher and lower degrees of individuality.

Leibnitz’s inconsistency on this point seems due entirely to his desire

to maintain the absolute individuality of the particular human “soul,” a

desire which is explained, partly at least, by his anxiety not to come

into collision, as Spinoza and others had done, with the official

theology of the period.

§ 8. The definition of infinite and finite individuality completes the

general outline of our conception of Reality as a whole, and its

relation to its constituent elements. Recapitulating that doctrine, we

may now say that the real is a single all-embracing whole of experience

or psychical matter of fact, determined entirely from within by a

principle of internal structure, and therefore completely individual.

Because the matter of the system is in all its parts experience, the

principle of its structure must be teleological in character.[71] That

is, the system must be the embodiment, in a harmonious unity of

conscious feeling, of a consistent interest or mental attitude. As such

we may call it the realisation indifferently of a purpose or idea, and

we may speak of the absolute experience as the completed expression of

an absolute knowledge or an absolute will.

But if we do so, we must bear in mind that there can be here no question

of a thought which works upon and reconstructs into systematic harmony a

body of data originally supplied to it in a relatively unintelligible

and disconnected form from some foreign source, or of a volition which

gradually translates into reality an end or purpose originally present

to it as an unrealised idea. The processes of thought and volition can

clearly have no place in an experience for which the what and the that

are never disjoined; as we shall by and by see more fully, they involve

existence in time, and existence in time can belong only to the finite

and imperfect. Hence it is best, in the interest of intellectual clarity

and candour, to avoid the use of such expressions as knowledge and will

in speaking of the absolute experience; at best they are in large part

metaphorical, and at worst potent weapons of intellectual

dishonesty.[72] The constituents of the system, again, are lesser

experience systems of the same general type, in each of which the nature

of the whole manifests itself, though to different degrees. They are

thus all finite individuals of varying degrees of individuality. The

more comprehensive and the more internally unified by an immanent

principle of teleological structure such a system, the more fully

individual it is, and the more adequately does it reveal the structure

of the all-pervading whole. This is the intellectual justification for

our instinctive belief that what is for our human experience highest and

best is ultimately in the constitution of the universe most completely

real.

_Consult further_:—F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chap. 24,

“Degrees of Truth and Reality”; Plato, _Republic_, vi. 509 ff., with the

commentary in R. L. Nettleship’s _Lectures on Plato’s Republic_, or

Bosanquet’s _Companion to the Republic_.

-----

Footnote 66:

Not the sum of them, because the systematic whole of Reality is not a

sum but a single experience. To identify it with the _sum_ of its

appearances would be the same error which occurs in Ethics as the

identification of happiness (a qualitative whole) with the sum of

pleasures (a quantitative collection).

Footnote 67:

The reader will find it instructive to observe how Prof. Sidgwick

unconsciously assumes that the distinction between Reality and

Appearance means a distinction between two more or less independent

“worlds” or “things” (_Philosophy: its Scope and Relations_, Lectures

1 and 4), and thus deprives his own criticism of the antithesis of all

validity as against a view like our own.

Footnote 68:

So, again, a velocity which is already infinitesimal may receive an

acceleration which is infinitesimal in relation to the velocity

itself. The reader’s own studies will no doubt furnish him with

numerous other illustrations of the same kind.

Footnote 69:

See for illustrations of the impossibility of carrying out a single

principle in our actual judgments of particular cases, Mr. Bradley’s

already quoted article in _Mind_ for July 1902.

Footnote 70:

For a fuller exposition of the conception of infinity here adopted I

may refer the reader to the famous essay of Dedekind, _Was sind und

was sollen die Zahlen_, especially pp. 17-20. The English reader will

find an account of Dedekind’s work, with an acute discussion of its

metaphysical significance, in Royce, _The World and the Individual_,

First Series, Supplementary Essay. It does not seem necessary for the

purpose of this chapter to specify the points in which I find myself

unable to follow Professor Royce in his use of the theory. See

_infra_, chap. 4, § 10.

Footnote 71:

It would not be hard to show that in the end all systematic structure

is teleological. For all such structure in the last resort is a form

of order, and depends on the possibility of saying “here this is

first, that is second.” And wherever we predicate order we are

asserting the embodiment in detail of some dominant purpose.

Footnote 72:

In fact, it is clear that if we speak of “idea” or “volition” in

connection with the absolute individual, we cannot mean _actual_

“ideas” or _actual_ “volitions.” We must be using the psychological

terms improperly in something of the same sense in which we speak of a

man’s “guiding ideas” or “settled will” to denote what clearly,

whatever it may be, is _not_ actual ideational or volitional process.

See further, Bk. IV. chap. 6, § 1.

-----

CHAPTER IV

THE WORLD OF THINGS—(1) SUBSTANCE,

QUALITY, AND RELATION

§ 1. The natural or pre-scientific view of the world regards it as a

plurality of “things,” each possessing _qualities_, standing _in

relation_ to others, and interacting with them. § 2. Hence arise

four problems: those of the Unity of the Thing, of Substance and

Quality, of Relation, of Causality. § 3. No simple answer can be

given to the question, _What is one thing?_ The Unity of the Thing

is one of teleological structure, and this is a matter of degree,

and also largely of our own subjective point of view. § 4.

_Substance and Quality._ The identification of the substance of

things with their primary qualities, though useful in physical

science, is metaphysically unjustifiable. § 5. Substance as an

“unknowable substratum of qualities” adds nothing to our

understanding of their connection. § 6. The thing cannot be a mere

collection of qualities without internal unity. § 7. The conception

of a thing as the law or mode of relation of its states useful but

metaphysically unsatisfactory. Ultimately the many can be contained

in the one only by “representation;” the unity in things must be

that of an individual experience. § 8. _Relation._ We can neither

reduce qualities to relations nor relations to qualities. § 9.

Again, the attempt to conceive Reality as qualities in relation

leads to the indefinite regress. §10. We cannot escape this

difficulty by taking all relations as “external.” And Professor

Royce’s vindication of the indefinite regress seems to depend on the

uncriticised application of the inadequate category of whole and

part to ultimate Reality. The union of the one and the many in

concrete experience is ultra-relational. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE: Dr.

Stout’s reply to Mr. Bradley.

§ 1. When we turn from the inquiry into the structure of Reality as it

must be conceived by a consistent Philosophy, to consider the aspect in

which it appears to ordinary non-philosophical thought, the systematic

unity which has demanded our attention in the two preceding chapters

seems to be replaced by a bewildering and almost incalculable variety.

According to the naïve pre-scientific theory of existence to which the

experiences of practical life naturally give rise, and which serves as

the point of departure for all the more scientific and systematic

theories of the physicist, the psychologist, and the metaphysician, the

world is composed of a multitude of apparently independent things,

partly animated, like ourselves, partly inanimate. Each of these things,

while in some sense a unit, is thought of as possessing an indefinite

multiplicity of _qualities_ or _properties_, as capable of standing in a

variety of _relations_ to other things, and as _acting_ upon other

things and _being influenced_ by them in a variety of ways.

In all these respects, it should be observed, the naïvely realistic

thought of the pre-scientific mind treats what from a more developed

point of view would be distinguished as mental and physical existences

alike. Human persons, like the other things of which my environment is

composed, are thought of as being at once units and the possessors of

diverse properties, as capable of a variety of relations to one another

and to other things, and as interacting with each other and the rest of

the environment. The recognition of the psychical as an order distinct

from the physical, with its momentous consequences for general

metaphysical theory, belongs to a later and much more sophisticated

stage of intellectual development. Also, it must be noted, for the

naïvely realistic intelligence, I am myself thought of as simply one

object or thing in an environment of things of a similar nature, and my

relations to that environment are conceived as being of the same type as

the relations between its various component parts. I too am, for my own

thought, so long as it remains at this primitive level, simply a thing

with numerous properties, in various relations to other things, and

interacting with them in diverse ways.[73]

We have called this exceedingly primitive way of conceiving the nature

of existence “pre-scientific,” on the ground that both in the mental

development of the individual and in that of a community of individuals

it precedes even the most tentative conscious efforts to organise

thought about the world into a coherent whole. All scientific and

philosophical constructions may be regarded as so many artificial

modifications of this earlier point of view, instituted and carried out

for the purpose of rendering it more coherent and systematic. At the

same time, our use of the epithet “pre-scientific” must not be allowed

to mislead. The “pre-scientific” view may and does co-exist in the same

mind with the various modifications of it which arise in the effort to

think consistently. We are all of us habitually “naïve realists” in

respect of those aspects of the world of experience which lie outside

the limits of our personal scientific studies; and even as regards those

aspects of existence in respect of which our theoretical views may be of

a much more developed type, we habitually relapse into the

“pre-scientific” attitude when our immediate object is practical[74]

success in action rather than logical consistency in thinking. For the

purposes of everyday life, the most “advanced” man of science is content

to be a naïve realist outside his laboratory.

Again, pre-scientific as the primitive attitude towards existence is, in

the sense of being unaffected by the deliberate effort after system and

coherency of thought, it is so far scientific as to be a real though

rudimentary and unconscious product of our intellectual need for order

and system of some kind in our thought about things. It is a genuine

though an unconscious result of our earliest reflection on the course of

experience, and thus a true thought-construction, not a passive

reproduction of a merely “given” material. It performs in rudimentary

fashion, and without explicit purpose, the same task of systematising

experience which the various scientific and philosophical theories of

the more developed mind undertake more elaborately and with conscious

intent. It is thus pre-scientific, but not properly speaking

unscientific.

As the mass of ascertained fact accumulates and reflection upon it

becomes more systematic and deliberate, our primitive conception of the

systematic nature of the real inevitably proves unsatisfactory for two

reasons. New facts are discovered which we cannot fit into the old

scheme without modification of its structure, and, again, the concepts

in terms of which the scheme was originally constructed prove on

examination to be themselves obscure and ambiguous in their meaning.

There is thus a double motive perpetually operative in bringing about

reconstruction of the original scheme. To the various sciences it falls

in the main to devise such alteration of the old schematism as is

necessary for the inclusion of fresh facts; it is the special province

of metaphysical criticism to examine the various terms both of the

original scheme and its subsequent modifications, with a view to

determining how far they form an ultimately intelligible and coherent

system.

§ 2. When we scrutinise the original “pre-scientific” theory of the

world from this point of view, we shall find that its four leading

features give rise to four metaphysical problems of great generality and

considerable difficulty. The conception of the world as made up of a

multiplicity of things, each of which is one, gives rise to the problem

of the unity of the thing; the plurality of the qualities, and again of

the relations ascribed to the single thing, gives rise to the problems

of _Substance_ and _Quality_ and of _Relation_; the belief in the

interaction between different things finally gives rise to the

exceptionally important and difficult problem of _Causality_. The four

problems are not altogether disconnected; in particular, it is hard to

discuss the sense in which a thing can be spoken of as “one,” without at

the same time raising the question how the “one” thing stands to its

many properties, and again discussing the general meaning of relation.

And the problem of Causality may be raised in so general a form as to

include the other three. Still, for the sake of having a definite order

of discussion, it will be well to take them as far as may be separately,

and to proceed from the simpler to the more complex. When we have

indicated in outline our solution of these problems, we shall have to

ask what is the general conception of a thing which our results

establish, and whether and on what grounds we are warranted in believing

in the actual existence of things answering to our conception. The

present chapter will be devoted to the examination of the first three

problems; in the succeeding chapter we shall discuss the meaning of

Causality, and indicate our general conclusion as to the existence of

“things.” With this result our survey of the general structure of

Reality will be completed, and we shall then proceed in our third and

fourth books to examine the most important of the special problems

suggested by the existence of physical nature and conscious mind

respectively.

§ 3. _The Unity of the Thing._—The problem we have to face is as

follows: in what sense do we call any thing “one thing,” and what gives

it its character as a unity? It is obvious that we may attack this

question from either of two rather different points of view. We may ask

either, why do we mark off just this portion of our environment from all

the rest as a single thing among many things; or, again, how is the

oneness which we predicate of any part of the environment so marked off

compatible with the multiplicity of its properties? The question we

propose to deal with in this section is the former of the two just

propounded; the latter shall be dealt with next as the problem of

substance and its qualities. What, then, do we mean by the unity which

we ascribe to whatever we recognise as one thing among a multiplicity of

others? We have, in a way, implicitly answered this question already by

the result arrived at in our discussion of the character of the elements

or constituents of the system of Reality. But whereas, in our former

investigation, we started from the general notion of Reality as a

systematic whole of experience, and went on to ask what character is

imposed on the elements of such a system by their presence in it as its

elements, we have now to raise the same question from the other side;

starting with our everyday recognition of our environment as divided

into things, we have to ask how far these things possess the character

which must belong to the genuinely individual members of an individual

whole of subordinate individuals.

For the purpose of the inquiry we must begin by taking the term thing in

the same wide and ambiguous sense in which everyday thought and

discourse use it. We must reckon among the things which are the topic of

discussion, human persons, animals, plants, greater and smaller

inorganic masses, in a word, whatever the most matter-of-fact

common-sense thinking recognises as possessed of a character in virtue

of which it can as a whole determine the course of experience at a given

moment. The character or aspect in virtue of which such a whole

determines the course of experience in this one special way rather than

another, is by this definition excluded from our conception of a thing;

it is not the thing itself but its quality or property or relation to

some other thing, and forms the subject of our second and third

problems. Thus we may say of a thing, in the sense in which we are using

the term, that it is what has existence as a whole here and now in the

series of experiences, though in saying so we must be careful to bear in

mind that the here and now of the thing’s existence are not indivisible

points of space or time, but continuous stretches of extension and

duration. Now, when we ask in what sense such a thing is one, and why we

mark off the limits which separate the one thing from the other things

just where we do, it at once becomes apparent that the oneness is a

matter of degree. We seem at first sight able with comparatively little

difficulty to decide that the organism of a human being or of one of the

higher animals is one thing; when we come to deal with the lower

organisms which consist of loosely aggregated colonies of largely

independently functioning cells, we begin to feel more diffidence in

pronouncing what is one organism, though we still think we can say what

is one cell. So, in dealing with inanimate masses, while we might be

ready to say without much misgiving that a machine of our own

construction is one, we should find it much harder to decide whether

what we perceive as a mere inorganic mass is one or many, and harder

still to give reasons for our decision in a particular case. And even in

the cases where our decision is most unhesitatingly pronounced,

subsequent reflection will show that the matter may not be so obvious as

it seems. For instance, a pair of separated Siamese twins would

undoubtedly be generally held to be two organisms and not one; but

whether they were one or two before the severance is a question we

should find it easier to ask than to answer.

When we try to detect some common principle in our various judgments as

to whether a thing is one thing or several, the following results seem

to emerge:—(1) A thing is clearly not made _one_, as is sometimes

assumed, by the possession of an unbroken contour or an uninterrupted

temporal existence. The succession of my mental states may make up one

mental life, and again my organism from the cradle to the grave may be

pronounced in some sense one, though no one can prove that there are no

gaps in their temporal existence. Again, even if we leave out of account

the corpuscular theories of body according to which every thing that

looks to us like a spatially continuous whole with an unbroken contour

is really composed of discrete particles with interstices between them,

it is abundantly clear that common sense regards as one thing the parts

of a system which works as a connected whole, quite independently of the

existence or non-existence of immediate contact between them.

(2) Again, the unity of the one thing does not depend upon identity of

material, whatever that phrase may mean. My organism still remains one

thing, though its material is constantly changing by the loss of some

elements and the acquisition of others.

(3) On the positive side, it is clear that the unity we attribute to one

thing is that of teleological structure. A thing is one or many

according to the point of view from which you look at it, _i.e._

according to the idea or purpose in the light of which you study it.

That is one thing which functions as one, in other words, which is the

systematic embodiment of a coherent scheme of structure. Thus, when we

are considering the whole of an organism as subservient to the

realisation of a unique individual aim or interest, the organism is

necessarily judged to be one, because in respect of that interest it

behaves as a whole; when we are studying the specific mode of reaction

of a particular nerve, for instance, the same organism just as naturally

appears to us a multiplicity of distinct but interconnected things.

Similarly, a system of material particles appears one thing to us so

long as our interest in the system is directed to those ways in which it

behaves as one, _e.g._, the exchanges of energy between it and other

systems external to it. Generally we may say that whatever is called one

is called so because it is the systematic expression of a single aim or

interest. A thing, in fact, is one just in so far as it has the

character we ascribed, in our last chapter, to a finite individual. Its

unity is never _merely_ numerical, but always qualitative, the unity of

coherent structure.

Even in our rough-and-ready way of treating continuity of contour as

evidence of oneness in inanimate and apparently structureless masses, we

may detect the influence of this principle. We judge the sensibly

continuous mass to be one rather than many things, because in many

obvious respects it functions as one (_e.g._, in respect of its weight,

the simultaneous displacement of its parts in rotation or translation

through space). Also, no doubt, our judgment is influenced by the

analogy of our own bodies, which are sensibly continuous. We project in

imagination into the sensibly continuous inanimate mass the same kind of

teleological unity which we find in our own mental life. The sensibly

discontinuous, on the other hand (_e.g._, two inorganic masses separated

by an apparently empty interval), is judged to be many things rather

than one, because, in imagination, we project such an inner mental life

into each of the discontinuous parts.

If all this is so, it would follow that the line of demarcation between

one thing and another can never be drawn with hard and fast precision.

For if one thing ultimately means one individual, the embodiment of a

unique self-consistent idea, the only thing which is fully and

absolutely one will be the infinite individual Reality itself. The

extent to which any lesser portion of the whole can be pronounced one

thing will depend on the extent to which it exhibits self-contained

systematic individuality, and thus will be a matter of degree. The

highest kind of finite unity we can conceive will be that of a life

which is the conscious progressive realisation of coherent purpose. Such

a life is one not merely for the outside observer who detects its

underlying unity of aim, but for itself. Its oneness may thus be said to

be both objective and subjective. Thus the more completely our own inner

life is the systematic expression of consistent purpose, the greater the

right with which we may regard ourselves as being each truly “one thing”

and as such truly individual. But when we remember how far what any one

of us calls “his” inner life is from exhibiting such complete internal

coherency of structure, we shall realise that even in the highest case

the unity is still a matter of degree.

This is still more palpably the case with the lower forms of organic

life. Not to speak of the well-known puzzles which arise when we seek to

determine whether a creature which is a colony of largely independent

cells is one animal or many, our difficulties begin as soon as we have

to deal with any type of life below the most fully self-conscious. We

can say, to some extent, that a human character is one so long as it is

the conscious expression of systematic purpose, but it is less easy to

say in what sense we call an animal’s conscious life one. The absence of

anything like systematic unity of aim and interest from the life of

animal impulse makes it appear, at least at first sight, more reasonable

to speak of it as a bundle or collection of distinct impulses and

instincts rather than as one.[75] If, in spite of this, we still

habitually speak and think of the particular higher animal as _one_

rather than many, the reason no doubt is that we tacitly ascribe to it

something like the conscious unity of interest which we find in our own

mental life, though with a diminished clearness.

When we come to the inanimate world, it seems to become purely a matter

of our own subjective interest what we shall call one thing and what we

shall call many. That is one which may be regarded as acting as one

whole in respect of its bearing upon any interest of ours; that many

which, in respect of our interests, does not behave as a whole. Thus,

except where we are dealing with forms of life to which we can with more

or less plausibility ascribe some degree of conscious unity of aim and

interest, there seems no valid reason for drawing the line between

different things in one place rather than in another, except reasons of

convenience. It is important to bear this in mind in applying our

idealistic theory of existence to the case of the inanimate world. If

the foundations of the idealistic theory are sound, every real existence

must be a finite individual experience of some order of individuality,

and this must of course hold good of that part of existence which

appears to us as the inanimate world. The inanimate world must be—as we

shall see more fully in the succeeding book—a system of individual

experiences, which appears to us lifeless and purposeless merely because

the kind of life it possesses is too far removed from our own for us to

recognise it. But we must most carefully observe that the line of

demarcation between the different individual experiences which

constitute the reality of that world need not in the least coincide

everywhere with the line which we, for purposes of our own, draw between

different things.

§ 4. _The Problem of Substance and Quality._—More important, in the

history of metaphysical theory, has been the other aspect of the problem

of the unity of things. What we call one _thing_ is said, in spite of

its unity, to have many _qualities_. It is, _e.g._, at once round,

white, shiny, and hard, or at once green, soft, and rough. Now, what do

we understand by the _it_ to which these numerous attributes are alike

ascribed, and how does it possess them? To use the traditional technical

names, what is the _substance_ to which the several qualities belong or

in which they inhere, and what is the manner of their _inherence_? The

full difficulty of this problem may be most easily exhibited by

considering the ways in which popular thought commonly tries to solve

it.

(1) One of the commonest and most obvious solutions is to identify the

“substance” which has the qualities (or, to use the more general

scholastic expression, the _accidents_) with some one group of the

thing’s properties which we regard as specially important or permanent.

The “substance” is then taken to be just this group of “primary”

qualities, and is said to have or possess the less permanent “secondary

qualities.” For obvious reasons, the “primary” qualities have in modern

Philosophy usually been identified, as by Galileo, Descartes, and Locke,

with those mathematical properties of body which are of fundamental

importance for the science of mechanical Physics.[76] And usually,

though not always, the way in which the substance, as thus defined,

_has_ the secondary qualities, has been further explained by saying that

these latter are subjective changes in our sensibility produced by the

action of the primary qualities upon our various sense-organs. Neither

of these special views is, however, necessarily involved in the

identification of the substance of things with their fundamental

qualities. The essential principle of the theory consists simply in the

recognition of some groups of qualities as of primary importance, and

the identification of the one “substance” which has the many properties

with this group.

Now, it would be impertinent for us to raise any objection to the use of

such a theory as a working hypothesis in the physical sciences, so long

as it does in those sciences the work for which it is required. The

object of the physical sciences as a body is simply to enable us to

describe and calculate the course of events in nature with the highest

degree of accuracy and the least complicated set of formulæ. If this end

is most successfully attained by treating a certain group of the

properties of sensible things as of primary importance and all the rest

as mere derivatives of them, this fact of itself affords sufficient

justification for the scientific use of the distinction. For the special

objects of physical science any group of properties which thus lends

itself to the purposes of description and calculation is of primary

importance. But it is no less true that its importance for physical

purposes does not afford the least ground for regarding it as equally

valuable as a solution of the metaphysical problem of the meaning of

substance. For instance, one reason why the mathematical properties of

body are of such supreme importance for Physics is that in respect of

them bodies can be treated as differing not in kind but only in number.

This is why they are of such inestimable service as the basis of our

calculations as to the behaviour of things. But it might very well be

that the true nature of things is most fully manifested just in those

points in which they are different in kind; from the standpoint of the

metaphysician, a view of non-human nature, however serviceable, which

rests entirely upon the aspects in which things are most alike, may be

as superficial as the statistical sociologist’s view of human nature.

The true being of a concrete thing may be as inadequately expressed by

its mathematical properties as the true character of an individual man

by a list of anthropometrical results.[77]

In point of fact, we can readily see that the distinction between

“primary” and “secondary” qualities, when propounded as an answer to the

problem about substance, leaves us just where we were before. For (1) we

ascribe the primary qualities to the “substance” of the thing in just

the same fashion as the secondary. The thing _is_ of such and such a

configuration, _is_ of such and such a mass, _is_ solid, etc.; just as

it _is_ rough, or heavy, or green. Or, again, it _has_ configuration,

mass, solidity; just as it _has_ weight, taste, colour. Hence the old

problem breaks out again with respect to the primary qualities

themselves, however the list of them may be constructed. Again we have

to ask, what is the _it_ which possesses shape, mass, velocity, etc.?

(2) Moreover, the theory fails to explain the nature of that

“possession” of the secondary qualities which it ascribes to the group

of primary qualities. In what way, we ask, do the primary qualities have

or possess the secondary? The only serious attempt to answer this

question seems to be that of the numerous philosophers (Descartes,

Galileo, Locke, etc.) who treat the secondary qualities as “subjective”

effects of the primary qualities upon our sense-organs. Now, this

familiar solution of the problem seems deficient in logic. For the one

solid argument which has been advanced in favour of the subjectivity of

secondary qualities seems to be the contention that they cannot be

perceived without sense-organs of a special type. Colours, it is said,

exist only for an eye, sounds for an ear, taste for a tongue, and so

forth. And differences of structure or temporary condition in the

sense-organ lead to the perception of different secondary qualities, as

when, to take the stock examples, everything looks yellow to the

jaundiced eye, the same water feels warm to one hand and cold to the

other, and so forth.

But these considerations seem just as applicable to the supposed

“primary” as to the “secondary” qualities of things. Geometrical form,

for instance, is imperceptible apart from sight or touch; motion, again,

and consequently change of configuration, and similarly mass, which is a

ratio of accelerations, require either sight or touch for their

perception. Of course, we can think of motions and masses which we are

not actually perceiving, just as we can think of an absent colour or

smell, and in both cases we can in reasoning about motions or masses or

colours or smells abstract altogether from the presence of a percipient.

But this does not affect the fact that the mathematical qualities of

body are just as dependent for perception upon the presence of a

percipient with suitable sense-organs as anything else. Configurations,

extensions, and motions which no one perceives by sight or touch or any

other sense are exactly in the same case as a colour which no one sees

or a sound which no one hears. The argument from the indispensability of

a perceiving organ ought logically to tell just as much in the one case

as the other.[78]

Again, and this is a point of the first importance, experience never

gives us the “primary quality” by itself. What we get in actual

experience is always the conjunction of primary and secondary qualities

in a concrete perception. Thus we never perceive extension apart from

some special visual or tactual filling of the “secondary” kind. The

extended has always some quality of colour, or texture, or resistance.

An extension which is totally devoid of colour, tactual quality, and

everything which belongs to the so-called sensible, non-mathematical, or

“secondary” properties of body, is an unreal abstraction, got by leaving

out an aspect which in actual experience appears inseparable from it,

and therefore presumably illegitimate. Illegitimate, that is, when

offered as an account of the fundamental reality of body, however useful

for the special purposes of natural science. Thus the attempt to take

the so-called primary qualities as the unitary “substance” which has or

“possesses” the secondary qualities, and to dispose of these latter as

“subjective,” leads to no satisfactory result. The former, too, must be

merely qualities possessed by a more ultimate substance.

§ 5. Hence it constantly happens that the same writers who treat

substance as identical with the primary qualities of things, alternate

this view with another according to which substance is an unknowable

unit of which we can say no more than that it, whatever it may be, is

what is presupposed in all propositions about the behaviour of things as

the “unknown substratum” of their various qualities. According to this

view, the many qualities of the thing in some inexplicable manner “flow”

either from the nature of its own unknown substratum or substance, or

from the relations in which this substratum stands with that of other

things.[79] Our knowledge is then held to be confined to these

consequences of the unknown ultimate character of real things; we are

ignorant, it is said, of the substance both of physical and of mental

existence, we know only its attributes or manifestations. Or it is

otherwise phrased thus: we do not know what things really are, we know

only their effects on one another and on our own senses. This is, for

instance, the view represented by those portions of Locke’s Essay in

which emphasis is laid upon our inability in the last resort to know the

true substance of things.

Now, such a general doctrine as this is manifestly open to grave

objections. (1) If we are serious in maintaining the unknowable

character of the substratum of a thing’s qualities, it is hard to see

how the assertion of its existence can be any addition to our knowledge

of the thing. To say that we are entirely ignorant of the nature of this

substratum only amounts to saying in other words, that we have really no

idea how the many qualities can be qualities of a single thing. If this

is so, it does not appear what we gain by talking of the single thing at

all as the owner or possessor of its qualities. It would, we might

think, be better to abandon the confessedly unintelligible notion of a

single substratum in which the qualities “inhere,” and say that the

thing, for our intellect, is simply the many qualities themselves. How

this view would have to be reconciled with the tacit assumption of the

thing’s unity as a substance, which underlies all the judgments in which

its attributes are predicated of it, we shall have to discuss more fully

in the next section.

(2) A still more serious difficulty remains behind. Not only is an

“unknowable substratum of qualities” a superfluous luxury in

metaphysical theory, but the nature of the supposed relation between

such a substratum and the attributes which “flow” from it is

unintelligible. We can understand neither what a substance or substratum

totally devoid of qualities could possibly be, nor yet how the various

qualities of the world of things presented to our experience could

“flow” as secondary consequences from one or more such substrata. We

cannot conceive how things could first “be” without this being of theirs

possessing any definite character, and then subsequently, in virtue of

their relations among themselves, give rise to their qualities or

characteristic modes of being. Nothing can be at all without being in

some determinate way, and this “being in some determinate way” is

precisely what we mean by the qualities of a thing. A thing cannot be

without behaving in special ways towards its environment, and these

special ways of behaving are the thing’s qualities. We cannot,

therefore, divorce the being or _that_ of a thing from its determinate

mode of being or _what_, and regard the latter as something which

supervenes on or is derived from the former, or the former as something

which can exist without and apart from the latter. Things are not first

there and afterwards in some mysterious way clothed with qualities;

their qualities are simply their special way of being there. As Lotze

well puts it, all such attempts to formulate a theory of the way in

which the _what_ of things flows from a mere _that_, are attempts to

answer the absurd question how Being is made.[80] The notion that things

have a _that_ or substance prior to their _what_ or quality, and

consisting simply in “being” which is not this or that determinate mode

of being, is thus unmeaning as well as superfluous.

§ 6. Accordingly the whole notion of a substantial unity in things

behind the multiplicity of their states or qualities has been regarded

with disfavour by many students of positive science. The qualities being

all that interests us in things, and the notion of an indeterminate

substratum contradictory, we ought, it is argued, to identify the thing

and the series of its states and qualities without more ado. From this

point of view the thing ceases to be an unknown somewhat, which in some

mysterious way _has_ properties; it becomes the properties themselves

thought of as a collection. It is no longer the unperceived _this_ which

_has_ warmth, redness, etc., it is the warmth, the redness, and the rest

of the sensible qualities taken collectively. For phenomenalist

Metaphysics, as for associationist Psychology, the thing is a “bundle of

attributes” and nothing more.

When we ask how, if a “thing” is merely the series or sum of its

attributes, and possesses no underlying unity to which the attributes

belong, the whole of our ordinary language about things comes to be

constructed on the contrary assumption, how it is that we always talk

and think as if every “bundle” of attributes were owned by something of

which we can say that it _has_ the quality, we are met by the

phenomenalist with a reference to Psychology. Owing to the fact, which

Phenomenalism and Associationism are content to accept as ultimate, that

sensible qualities are always presented to our perception in definite

groups, it is argued that the thought of any one member of such a group

is enough to revive by association the thought of the other qualities

which have regularly been presented simultaneously with itself or in

immediate succession to it. Hence, because thus associated in our

perception, the group comes naturally, though illegitimately, by one of

those mental fictions of which Hume treats so fully, to be thought of as

one, though it is actually a discrete multiplicity. The unity of the

thing thus lies not in itself, but solely in our way of perceiving and

thinking.

A more recent version of the same doctrine, which avoids the old

associationist mistake of treating perception as a merely passive

reception of a given material, is that the unity of the one subject of

many predicates is ultimately derived from the unity of our own acts of

attention. The qualities appear to belong to “one” thing because _we_

attend to them together as one in a single moment of attention. Thus the

unity of substance which common sense believes itself to find in its

objects has really been put into them by the perceiving mind itself.

What is “given” to it is a disconnected plurality of qualities; by

attending to groups of them as one it makes those groups into the

attributes of a single reality. This is the essence of the doctrine of

Kant, according to which the concept of “substance” is simply one form

of the “synthetic unity of apperception” _i.e._ the process by which we

project the unity of our own acts of attention into their objects, and

thus create an orderly world for our own thought out of sensations which

as they are given to us are a chaos. In principle, Kant’s doctrine,

though intended as a refutation of Hume’s Associationism, only differs

from Hume’s in the stress it rightly lays on the element of subjective

interest in perception; the two theories agree on the main point, that

the bond which unites the many qualities of sense perception into one

thing is a subjective one,—in Hume’s expressive phrase, a “fiction of

the mind.”[81]

With the psychological aspects of this doctrine we are not directly

concerned in the present inquiry. For us the problem is not by what

precise steps the mind comes to “feign” a unity in its objects which is

not really there, but whether this conception of a feigned or subjective

unity imposed by the mind upon a number of actually disconnected

qualities is itself ultimately intelligible. Thus the metaphysical issue

may be narrowed down to the following question: Can we intelligibly hold

that a thing is in reality simply a number of qualities, not in their

own nature connected, which we arbitrarily regard for our own purposes

as one?[82] In other words, can we say the thing is simply identical

with its qualities considered as a mere sum or collection, and any

further unity of the kind the old Metaphysics denotes by “substance” a

mental addition of our own to the facts?

Now there are two considerations—both ultimately reducible in principle

to one—which seem fatal to the identification of a thing with its

qualities, considered as merely discrete. (1) There can be no doubt that

it is largely true to say that a given group of qualities appear to us

to be the qualities of one thing because we attend to them as one. And

again, attention is undoubtedly determined by, or, to put it in a better

way, is an expression of, our own subjective interests. But these

considerations do not in the least show that attention is purely

arbitrary. If we take any group of qualities to form one thing because

we attend to it as one, it is equally true that we attend to it as one

because it affects our subjective purposes or interests as one. That

group of qualities is “one thing” for us which functions as one in its

bearing upon our subjective interests. What particular interest we

consider in pronouncing such a group one, in what interest we attend to

it, may be largely independent of the qualities of the group, but the

fact that the group does function as one in respect to this interest is

no “fiction” or creation of our own thought; it is the expression of the

nature of the group itself, and is independent of “our mind” in

precisely the same sense in which the existence and character of any

single member of the group of qualities is independent. There is no

sense in assigning the single quality to “the given,” and the union of

the qualities into a single group to “the work of the mind”; in one

sense both are the “work of the mind,” in another both are the

expression of the nature of the “given.”[83]

(2) Again, the insufficiency of the simple identification of the thing

with its qualities considered as a mere collection, may be illustrated

by considering what the group of qualities must contain. The group of

qualities is obviously never present in its entirety at any moment of

experience. For the majority of what we call the qualities of a thing

are simply the ways in which the “thing” behaves in the presence of

various other things, its modes of reaction upon a number of stimuli.

Now, at any moment of the “thing’s” existence it is only actually

reacting upon a few of the possible stimuli, and thus only exhibiting a

few of its qualities. The vast majority of its qualities are at any

moment what Locke calls “powers,” _i.e._ ways in which it _would_ behave

if certain absent conditions were fulfilled. Thus the thing to which we

ascribe a number of predicates as its qualities is never the actual

group of predicates themselves. Grass is green, but its greenness is not

a fact in the dark; the sun is capable of melting the wax, and this

capacity qualifies it permanently, but it does not actually melt the wax

unless the wax is there, and various other conditions are also given; a

man is temperamently choleric, but he is not actually at every moment of

his existence in a passion. He is only predisposed to fly into a passion

readily on the occurrence of provocation. Most of a thing’s qualities

thus are mere possibilities; the nature of the thing is to act in this

or that way under certain definite conditions which may or may not be

realised in actual existence. Thus the collection of qualities with

which Phenomenalism identifies a thing has itself no real existence as a

collection. The collection is just as much a “fiction of the mind” as

the unity which we attribute to it. Yet the fact that the thing’s

qualities are mainly mere possibilities does not destroy the existence

of the thing. It actually is, and is somehow qualified by these

possibilities. And for that very reason its existence cannot be

identified with the actual realisation of these possibilities in a group

or collection of events. We might add as a further consideration, that

the number of such possibilities is indefinite, including not only the

ways in which the thing has behaved or will behave on the occurrence of

conditions at present non-existent, but also all the ways in which it

would behave on the occurrence of conditions which are _never_ realised

in actual existence. But the previous argument is already in itself

sufficient, the moment its significance is fairly grasped, to dispose of

the notion that anything can be merely identical with a group of

actually existing sensible qualities. The being of the things must be

sought not in the actual existence of the group of sensible qualities,

but in the law or laws stating the qualities which would be exhibited in

response to varying sets of conditions.[84]

§ 7. Considerations of this kind compel us to forego the attempt to find

the substance or being of a thing in the mere sequence of its different

states considered as an aggregate. To make Phenomenalism workable, we

are forced to say at least that the thing or substance to which the

various attributes are assigned is the “_law_ of its states,” or again

is “the _mode of relation_ of its various qualities.” Such a definition

has obviously a great advantage over either of the two we have just

rejected. It is superior to the conception of the thing as an unknown

substratum of qualities, since it explicitly excludes the absurd notion

of a world of things which first _are_, without being in any determinate

way, and then subsequently set up determinate ways of existing among

themselves. For a law, while not the same thing as the mere collection

of occurrences in which it is realised, has no existence of its own

apart from the series of occurrences which conform to it. Again, every

law is a statement of possibilities, a formula describing the lines

which the course of events will follow _if_ certain conditions are

operative; no law is a mere register of actually observed sequences.[85]

Hence, in defining the thing as the “law of its states,” we avoid the

difficulty dealt with in the last paragraph, that the collection of the

thing’s states never actually exists as a “given” collection. Thus for

ordinary practical purposes the definition is probably a satisfactory

one.

Yet it should be evident that in calling the thing the “law” of its

states, we merely repeat the metaphysical problem of the unity of

substance without offering any solution of it. For, not to dwell on the

minor difficulty that we might find it impossible to formulate a

_single_ law connecting _all_ the ways in which one thing reacts upon

others, and thus ought more properly to speak in the plural of the laws

of the states, we are now left with two distinct elements or aspects of

the being of the thing, namely, the successive states and the law of

their succession, and how these two aspects are united the theory fails

to explain. We have the variety and multiplicity on the one hand in the

states or qualities of the thing, its unity on the other in the form of

the law connecting these states, but how the variety belongs to or is

possessed by the unity we know no better than before. Thus the old

problem of substance returns upon us; the many qualities must somehow be

the qualities of a single thing, but precisely how are we to conceive

this union of the one and the many?[86]

At this point light seems to be thrown on the puzzle by the doctrine of

Leibnitz,[87] that the only way in which a unity can, without ceasing to

be such, contain an indefinite multiplicity is by “representation.”

Experience, in fact, presents us with only one example of a unity which

remains indubitably one while embracing an indefinite multiplicity of

detail, namely, the structure of our experience itself. For the single

experience regularly consists of a multiplicity of mental states, both

“focal” and “marginal,” simultaneous and successive, which are

nevertheless felt as one single whole because they form the expression

of a coherent purpose or interest. And this conscious unity of feeling,

determined by reference to a unique interest, is the only instance to

which we can point when we desire to show by an actual illustration how

what is many can at the same time be one. If we can think of the thing’s

qualities and the law of their connection as standing to one another in

the same way as the detailed series of acts embodying a subjective

interest of our own, and the interest itself which by its unity confers

a felt unity on the series, we can in principle comprehend how the many

qualities belong to the one thing. In that case the thing will be one

“substance” as the embodiment of an individual experience, determined by

a unique subjective interest, and therefore possessing the unity of

immediate feeling. Its many qualities will “belong” to it in the same

sense in which the various constituents of an experience thus unified by

immediate feeling are said to “belong” to the single experience they

constitute. And thus our idealistic interpretation of the general nature

of Reality will be found to contain the solution of the problem of

Substance and Quality.

Now it is fairly clear that some such idealistic solution is already

contained in germ in the pre-scientific view of the world of things.

There can be little doubt that our original notion of the unity of the

thing as contrasted with the multiplicity of its qualities has been

obtained by “introjectively” ascribing to whatever groups of qualities

act upon us as one in respect of some interest of our own, the same

conscious unity of feeling which we know in ourselves and our fellows.

We shall have frequent opportunities, as we proceed, of discovering the

enormous extent to which the whole pre-scientific view of the world is

based upon the interpretation of all existence in terms of our own.

Systematic Idealism will thus gradually be found to be no more than the

consistent and deliberate carrying through of that anthropomorphic

interpretation of Reality which lies at the bottom of all man’s attempts

to make his surroundings intelligible to himself. It will follow, if our

general attitude towards the problem of substance is tenable, that only

what we have already defined as an individual experience can truly be

called a “substance,” and that such experiences are “substances,” if the

word is to be retained in our philosophical vocabulary, to the same

degree to which they are truly individual. And thus we should be led in

the end to the distinction between the one infinite substance which

forms the whole of Reality and the finite and imperfect substances which

are its components.

Again, we should have once more to remember that since, in general, we

call that group of qualities one which acts on our interests as one, and

our insight into those interests themselves is limited and confused, the

boundaries assigned by us to the group of qualities we ascribe to a

single substance as “its” states will be more or less arbitrary, and

dependent upon the degree of our actual insight. It is possible for us

to group together as states of the same thing qualities which a

profounder insight would have disjoined, and _vice versâ_. And in the

end, if all that is is contained in a single coherent self-determined

system, it is clear that, speaking rigorously, there will ultimately be

only one “substance”—the central nature or principle of the system

itself—of which all subordinate aspects or parts of existence will be

the attributes.

§ 8. _The Problem of Relation._—More perplexing than the problem of

Substance and its Qualities is the question to which the pre-scientific

assumption that the world consists of a number of _interrelated_ things

gives rise. This problem of Relation becomes still more prominent when

reflection upon the problem of Substance and Quality has made it

manifest that what we call the qualities of things are one and all

dependent upon their relations either to our perceptive organs or to

other things. Put quite simply the problem is as follows: Things stand

in a variety of relations to one another, and what we commonly call the

qualities of each are dependent on (_a_) its modes of relation to other

things, (_b_) its relation to our percipient organism. Again, the

various qualities of one thing stand in relation among themselves. To

begin with, they all exhibit the relations of identity and difference.

They all so far possess a common nature as to be capable of being

compared in respect of the special ways in which they manifest that

nature, and are thus so far identical; again, they can be discriminated

and distinguished, and are so far in the relation of difference.

Further, the qualities of one thing are interconnected, as we have

already seen, by various special laws or modes of relation, which

exhibit the changes in the behaviour of the thing corresponding to

changes in the surrounding circumstances.

Thus Phenomenalism, when it has banished the notion of a substantial

unity in things, has to identify the world of things, as we have already

seen, with qualities in relation to one another. But now the question

arises, How are we to understand the conception of qualities in

relation? Can we, on the one hand, reduce all qualities to relations or

all relations to qualities, or, on the other, can we form an

intelligible idea of the way in which a single whole or system can be

formed by the union of the two? There are, of course, other questions of

great though relatively secondary importance connected with the problem

of relation, _e.g._, the question as to the number of ultimately

irreducible kinds of relation, but the scope of the present work will

permit of nothing beyond a brief discussion of the central difficulty.

We will take the various alternatives in order.

(1) Philosophers have often been tempted to evade the difficulty of

showing how qualities _and_ relations together can make up a system by

suppressing one member of the antithesis altogether. Thus it has been

maintained, on the one hand, that the world of real things consists

entirely of simple unrelated qualities, and that what we call relations

between these qualities are merely our own subjective ways of

apprehending them. On the other hand, it has been suggested that there

may be nothing in the real world except relations, and that what we call

qualities of various kinds are nothing but forms of relation. But

neither of these views seems seriously tenable.

For (_a_) reality cannot consist of _mere_ relations. Every relation

implies two or more terms which are related. And these terms cannot be

created by the relation itself. In every relation the terms have _some_

character of their own over and beyond the mere property of being terms

in that relation. Thus, to take a simple example, the successive terms

of the series of ordinal numbers express in themselves nothing beyond

determinate position in an ordered series, but when they are applied to

the actual arrangement of any content in serial order, that content is

(_c_) not created by the arrangement of it in an ordered series of

terms, and (_b_) is dependent for the actual order of its terms upon

some positive character of its own. In other words, whenever you

actually count you count something other than the names of the numbers

you employ, and you count it in an order which depends on the character

of the particular things counted.[88] And so generally of all relations.

A question has been raised which presents considerable difficulty and

cannot be discussed here, whether there are or are not merely _external_

relations (_i.e._ relations which are independent of the special

qualities of their terms). But even if we admit that there may be such

merely external relations, which do not depend upon the nature of the

terms between which they subsist, it is at least clear that there cannot

be relations without _any_ terms, and that the terms are not created out

of nothing by the relation between them.[89] Perhaps it might be

rejoined that what I call the terms of a certain relation, though no

doubt not created by that particular relation, may be themselves

analysed into other relations, and those again into others _ad

indefinitum_. Thus it might be said that the term A of the relation A-B

may no doubt have a quality of its own which is not created by this

relation. But this quality, call it A_{1}, is found on analysis to be

resoluble into the relation C-D, and the quality C_{1} of C again into

the relation E-F, and so on without end. This would not, however, amount

to a reduction of qualities to mere relations. For it would give us, as

the unit of our scheme of things, a pair of terms or qualities in

relation; and however often we repeated the process of analysis, we

should still always be left with the same type of triad, two terms and a

relation, as the result of analysis. Whatever its worth, this particular

solution falls under our second alternative, and must be considered in

connection with it.

(2) But again, it is even more manifest that we cannot reduce all

reality to qualities, and dismiss the relations between them as simply

_our_ subjective mode of apprehension. This line of thought is capable

of being worked out in two slightly different ways. We might hold that

what really exists is disconnected simple qualities, each distinct from

all others as red is from sweet, or loud from hot, and that the whole

network of relations by which everyday and scientific thought bring

these “reals” into connection is a mere intellectual scaffolding to

which nothing in the real world corresponds. Something like this would

be the logical outcome of the Humian doctrine that all relations are

“the work of the mind,” and that reality is the residuum left after we

have removed from our conception of the world everything which is of our

own mental fabrication. The grounds upon which this doctrine was

advanced by Hume and his followers have already been destroyed by the

progress of Psychology and the consequent abandonment of the old

hard-and-fast distinction between sensation and mental construction. It

was the belief of Hume, and apparently of Kant, that what is given in

“sensation” is single uncompounded qualities, and that all relations

between these psychical atoms are produced by a subsequent process of

subjective synthesis. But the advance of Psychology, by leading to the

recognition that sensation itself is a continuous process containing a

multiplicity of “marginal” elements which in all sorts of ways modify

the character of its central or “focal” element, has made it impossible

any longer to maintain an absolute distinction between the sensory and

the intellectual factor in cognition.

And apart from the illusory nature of the distinction on which the

theory was based, it is sufficiently condemned for Metaphysics by its

own inherent absurdity. For the fundamental presupposition of

Metaphysics, as of all serious science, is that Reality is a coherent

system. But, according to the view which regards relations as pure

“fictions of the mind,” just that element in our thought which gives it

its systematic character is an unwarranted addition of our own to the

real. Order and system are in fact, on this view, mere illusion. And, as

has often been pointed out by the critics of Hume, it is quite

inconceivable how, in a world where nothing but disconnected simple

qualities exist, the illusion should ever have arisen. If even our own

inner life is simply incoherent, it is quite impossible to see how we

can ever have come, even by a fiction, to read system into the world of

fact.

A more plausible attempt to reduce all relations to qualities proceeds

on the following lines. Relations, it is said, are of subjective

manufacture, but they are, for all that, not mere fictions. For every

relation between two terms, say A and B, is based upon the presence in A

and B of certain qualities, which are called the _fundamenta relationis_

or basis of the relation. These qualities may be the same in both the

terms, in which case the relation is called symmetrical; such a case is

that, _e.g._, of the equality of A and B, a relation having for its

_fundamentum_ the fact that A and B have both the same magnitude. Here

the real fact is taken to be that A has this magnitude, and again that B

has it. The subjective addition to the facts is thought to come in in

the voluntary comparison of A and B in respect of this property and the

consequent assertion of their equality. Or the qualities which are the

foundation of the relation may be different in each of the terms, in

which case the relation is technically called asymmetrical. Examples of

such asymmetrical relations are, _e.g._, A greater than B, B less than

A, or again, A father to B, B son to A. Here the actual facts would be

taken to be A possessed of magnitude _x_, B of magnitude _x_-_y_, A

qualified by the circumstance of begetting B, B by the circumstance of

being begotten by A. The subjective addition would come in, as before,

when we brought A and B under one joint of view by comparing them in

respect of these properties.

The inherent difficulties of the reduction of relations to qualities

are, however, only thinly disguised in this version of the doctrine. To

argue that the establishment of judgments of relation presupposes

subjective comparison of the related terms from a more or less

arbitrarily chosen point of view, is metaphysically irrelevant. The

whole question is as to whether the result of the process is to make

things more intelligible as a systematic whole; if it is, the

subjectivity of the process is no ground for discrediting the result as

truth about the real. If it is not, the philosophers who insist on the

subjectivity of relations should explain how we can coherently think of

a systematic whole of reality in terms of quality apart from relation.

This they have never been able to do, and that for obvious reasons. It

is manifestly impossible to give any intelligible account of the

qualities which we recognise as _fundamenta_ of relations without

introducing previous relations. Thus the possession of the common

magnitude _x_ may be assigned as the foundation of the relation of

equality between A and B; but when we ask what is meant by predicating

of A and B possession of the magnitude _x_, we find that we are thrown

back upon a relation between A, B, and some third term S, which we take

as our unit of measurement. A and B are both of magnitude _x_ because

each contains S, let us say, _x_ times exactly. So again the fact “A

begetter of B” was assigned as the _fundamentum_ of the asymmetrical

relation of paternity between A and B, and the same fact under another

name as the _fundamentum_ of the asymmetrical relation of filiation

between B and A.

But now what is meant by saying that the _same_ fact qualifies A and B

in _different_ ways? Any answer to this question plunges us back at once

into a perfect network of relations. For first, that a fact x may be

known to qualify A and B differently, A and B must themselves be

discriminated, _i.e._ they must be compared and found different, and

without relation difference is unmeaning. For ultimately two terms are

different only when they also possess a common character which admits of

their comparison with reference to a common standard. Thus only things

which are like can be different, and the problem of the relation of

their likeness to their difference is inevitably forced upon us by the

very existence of the difference. And similarly, the common fact _x_

qualifies either term in a definite way, which can be discriminated from

the ways in which other facts qualify the same term, and this

discrimination leads in precisely the same manner to the assertion of

various relations among the different qualities of A and again of B.[90]

It is not difficult to see the common source of the difficulties which

beset both the attempt to reduce all reality to qualities, and the

attempt to identify it with mere relations. In actual experience our

world always comes to us as at once many and one, never as merely single

nor as merely discrete. If you pay exclusive regard to the aspect of

unity and interconnection, you will naturally be tempted to dwell on the

relations between your elements to the exclusion of the various elements

themselves; if you think solely of the aspect of variety, it is equally

natural to treat the elements as real and their relations as fictions.

But in either case you arbitrarily concentrate your attention on a

single aspect of the experienced fact taken in isolation from the other,

and are thus led to results which are bound to collide with the whole

facts. A true view, if possible at all, can only be got by impartial

adherence to the whole of the facts.

§ 9. We are thus brought to the second of our alternatives. Can we

conceive of Reality as _qualities in relation_ or qualities _and_ their

relations? This is really, in a somewhat more developed form, the same

problem as that suggested by the definition of a thing as the “law of

its states.” We are now to take the qualities as fixed terms with a

character of their own which stand in or support further relations, and

we have to ask if the view of the world thus formulated is entirely

intelligible. And it speedily becomes clear that such a view is

confronted by a formidable difficulty. For suppose that A and B are two

qualities which stand in any relation C. (For simplicity’s sake we might

suppose this relation C to be, _e.g._, that of being discriminated, and

we might take as instances of A and B, say, two definitely discriminated

shades of the same colour.) Then A and B, standing in the relation C,

are not identical with A and B as they would be apart from this

relation. (A, for instance, as qualified by contradistinction from B, is

not the same thing as _mere_ A not in any way affected by B, a fact

which is frequently brought home to us with startling force by the

effects of contrast.) At the same time the relation C cannot create its

own terms; A, which is qualified in some special way by its standing to

B in the relation C, may also exist out of this relation, and the mere

fact of our recognising it as A shows that, both in the relation C and

outside it, it has a recognisable identical character. (_E.g._, A as

discriminated from B is not precisely the same thing as A before

discrimination, but the difference of A from B has not been created by

the act of discrimination; it must previously have been different in

order to be discriminated.)

Thus we seem forced to split up the quality A, which we took as one of

the terms of our relation, into two aspects, A (A_{1}) the quality as it

was before the establishment of the relation, and A (A_{2}) the quality

as it is after the establishment of the relation. And the two aspects

thus discovered in what we took for the single quality A must again be

somehow in relation to one another. Hence within A (A_{1}) and A (A_{2})

itself the same process will be repeated, and what we began by regarding

as the fixed terms of the relation will turn out to be themselves

systems of qualities in relation, and this process will have no limit.

The classification of the contents of experience into fixed terms with

relations between them, it is contended, is no solution of the problem

how the experienced world can be both one and many but a mere

restatement of it. “We have to take reality as many and to take it as

one, and to avoid contradiction.... And we succeed, but succeed merely

by shutting the eye which if left open would condemn us.” Hence the

conclusion is drawn that “a relational way of thought ... must give

appearance and not truth. It is a makeshift, a device, a mere practical

compromise, most necessary but in the end most indefensible.”[91]

§ 10. The foregoing reasoning, which has been condensed from the fuller

exposition in Mr. F. H. Bradley’s _Appearance and Reality_, demands most

careful examination, as the consequence to which it leads is of supreme

importance for our whole metaphysical view of the nature of ultimate

Reality. If the conclusion of Mr. Bradley is sound, it is clear that our

discursive thought with its scheme of predication, which is from first

to last relational, can never give us adequate insight into the nature

of the union of the one and the many. We shall then have to conclude

that it is not in thought about Reality, but in some mode of experience,

if such there is, which enables us to transcend the separation of

subject from predicate, and is therefore suprarelational, that we come

nearest to experiencing the real as it really is. We should thus be more

or less in sympathy with the traditional Mysticism which has always made

the transcending of the distinction of subject from predicate the

keynote of its special way of experiencing the Divine. On the other

hand, if the relational scheme of ordinary knowledge could be defended

as a self-consistent way of regarding the facts, we should have the

advantage of being able to construe the absolute Experience in terms of

our own intellectual life much more completely than Mysticism allows.

How, then, might the interpretation of the world as a system of

qualities in relation be defended against Mr. Bradley’s powerful

formulation of the mystic’s objection, and what is the worth of

the defence? Two possible lines of argument suggest themselves as

sufficiently plausible to call for examination. (1) The edge of

the objection would be turned, as far as it rests upon the

unsatisfactoriness of the indefinite regress, if we could regard

_all_ relations as “external,” that is, as making no difference in

the qualities they relate. Now, some relations, it has been

asserted, are merely external, _e.g._, relations of position and

again of _sense_ in the geometrical meaning of the word (like the

difference between a right-hand and a left-hand glove). Why, then,

may this not ultimately be the case with all relations? But if all

relations are external, we can no longer argue that the related

terms must contain a further relation between themselves as the

basis and themselves as the result of the first relation, and so

the whole anti-relational case falls to the ground.

Such a view seems, however, to suffer from fatal deficiencies. For (_a_)

it is at least hard to see how any relation can be ultimately external

to its terms. For you cannot hold two terms in a relation of any sort

without discriminating them; until they are at least discriminated as

two they cannot be terms with a relation between them. Thus

discrimination, and therefore the relation of distinction, is

fundamental in all relation. But where we can distinguish there must

already be in the discriminated terms some difference to afford a basis

for discrimination. Only what is already different can be distinguished.

And with this admission the door is once more opened for the indefinite

regress.

(_b_) And even if this were not so, it seems unthinkable that _all_

relations should be in the end external to their terms. If no relation

in the end makes any difference to its terms, and thus has no foundation

in their nature, it becomes a standing miracle how or why the terms

should enter into relations to which they are all the time absolutely

indifferent. The logical consequence of such a view would surely be the

dismissal of all relations as pure illusion, and the reduction of real

existence to a chaos of disconnected reals which we by some inexplicable

intellectual perversity persist in taking for a system. The now

universally recognised failure of Herbart’s attempt to work out a theory

of Realism on these lines seems ominous for the success of any future

doctrine of the same kind.

(2) Much more subtle is the line of thought suggested by Professor Royce

in the Supplementary Essay appended to his book, _The World and the

Individual_, First Series. Professor Royce admits the indefinite regress

as an inevitable consequence of the reduction of the world to terms in

relation, but denies that it affects the soundness of the reduction. On

the contrary, he regards it rather as a proof of the positive

correctness of the interpretation of existence which gives rise to it.

His argument, which is based upon the modern doctrine of infinite

series, may be briefly summarised as follows:—It is a recognised

characteristic of an infinite series (and of no others) that it can be

adequately “represented” by a part of itself. That is to say, if you

take any infinite series you please, you can always construct a second

series such that it consists of a selection, and only of a selection,

from the terms of the first series, and that every term is derived from

and answers to the corresponding term of the first series according to a

definite law. And this second series, as it is easy to prove, is itself

infinite, and therefore capable of being itself represented adequately

in a third series derived from it in the same manner as it was derived

from the first, and so on indefinitely.

For instance, let the first series be the infinite series of the natural

integers 1, 2, 3, 4, ... then if, _e.g._, we construct a second series,

1^2, 2^2, 3^2 ... of the second powers of these integers, the terms of

this second series are derived by a definite law from those of the first

to which they correspond, and again they constitute a selection out of

the terms of the first series. Every one of them is a term of the first

series, but there are also terms of the first series which are not

repeated in the second. Again, if we make a third series from the second

in the same way as the second was made from the first, by taking the

terms (1^2)^2, (2^2)^2, (3^2)^2, and so on, the terms of this third

series fulfil the same conditions; they correspond according to a fixed

law with the terms of the second, and are also themselves a selection

from those terms. And thus we may go on without end to construct

successive infinite series each of which “adequately represents” the

preceding one. And we are led into this indefinite regress by the very

attempt to carry out consistently a single definite principle of

correspondence between our original infinite series and its first

derivative. In constructing the first derived series in our illustration

1^2, 2^2, 3^2 ... we necessarily also construct the series (1^2)^2,

(2^2)^2, (3^2)^2, ... and the other successive derivatives. Therefore

Prof. Royce claims that any consistent attempt to make an orderly

arrangement of the terms of an infinite whole _must_ lead to the

indefinite repetition of itself. Hence that each term of every relation

on analysis turns out itself to consist of terms in relation, is no

valid objection to the soundness of our principle of interpretation, but

a necessary consequence of the infinity of Reality.[92] Any consistent

attempt to exhibit an infinite whole as an orderly system of terms

_must_ lead to the indefinite regress.

Now it strikes one at once that Professor Royce’s conclusion is in

danger of proving too much. You certainly do not show a method of

dealing with facts to be sound by showing that it leads to the

indefinite regress. It is a common experience that the liar who tells

his first lie must tell a second to back it, and a third to support the

second, and so on indefinitely. And you cannot put a quart of liquor

into a pint pot without first putting half the quart into half the

space, and so forth _ad indefinitum_. Yet these considerations do not

prove that lying or putting quarts of liquor into pint pots is a

consistent way of dealing with reality. A purpose may lead in execution

to the indefinite regress because it is self-contradictory and therefore

self-defeating, as these familiar illustrations suggest. And this raises

the question whether the purpose to arrange an infinite whole in an

ordered system of terms may not lead to the indefinite regress for the

same reason, namely, that the treatment of a true whole as a sequence of

terms is incompatible with its real nature. It is at least worth while

to ask whether Professor Royce’s own treatment of the subject does not

contain indications that this is actually the case.[93]

To begin with, we may note one point of some importance in reference to

which Prof. Royce’s language is at least ambiguous. He speaks of the

indefinite succession of infinite series which arise from the single

purpose of “representing” the series of natural integers adequately by a

selection out of itself as if they could be actually constructed in

pursuance of this purpose. But this is clearly not the case. All that

you can actually do is to construct the various series _implicitly_ by

giving a rule for their formation. The actual construction of the series

would be a typical instance of a self-defeating and therefore internally

contradictory purpose, inasmuch as it would involve the actual

completion of an unending process. Hence we seem forced to make a

distinction which Prof. Royce has perhaps unduly neglected. If your

purpose of ordering the number series on a definite plan means no more

than the formulation of a rule for obtaining any required number of

terms of the successive series, it can be executed, but does not involve

the indefinite regress; if it means the actual completion of the process

of formation of the series, it does involve the indefinite regress, but

is therefore self-contradictory and cannot be realised in act.

Similarly, we may say of the scheme of qualities in relation, that if it

is taken for no more than a rule for the systematic arrangement and

organisation of a finite material, it does not involve the completion of

an infinite process, and is both workable and useful; but if presented

as an account of the way in which a completed all-embracing and

perfectly harmonious experience of the whole of Reality is internally

organised, it involves the completion of the infinite process, and is

therefore self-contradictory and finally inadequate.[94]

This reflection may serve to lead up to another which seems to take us

into the heart of the matter. The researches upon which Prof. Royce’s

defence of the relational scheme is based were in the first instance

investigations into the significance of the number-series. As such they

start with the conception of a system which is a whole of _parts_

external to one another[95] as the object of inquiry. Consequently,

while such investigations are of the highest philosophical importance as

bringing out the implications of this concept, they are only valid as an

analysis of ultimate Reality, provided that the concept of whole and

part is an adequate expression of the way in which the whole Reality is

present in its constituents and they in it. But if, as we ourselves

urged in a previous chapter, the conception of a whole of parts is

entirely inadequate to express the intimate union between the absolute

experience and finite experiences,[96] the proof that the indefinite

process is logically implied in the relation of whole and part does not

show it to belong to the structure of ultimate Reality. Rather, we

should be inclined to urge, the fact that the relational scheme leads to

the indefinite process proves that the conception of whole and part upon

which it is based does not truly represent the mode of union between a

completed experience and its components. And therefore the attempt to

interpret this union in terms of the number-series cannot stand the test

of criticism.

At the same time, Professor Royce’s argument in any case throws

considerable light upon the problem of relation. For it shows _why_ the

attempt to construct the world as a system of qualities in relation

leads to the indefinite regress. For a complete experience embodying at

one stroke the whole of existence, such a construction would, as we have

seen, because essentially incomplete, be impossible. But when _we_ try

to piece together the data of our fragmentary experience into a

connected whole, we inevitably have to start with more or less isolated

facts as fixed terms and weld them together by a relation. In doing so

we unavoidably put ourselves at the point of view from which the

numerical series arises; we unavoidably treat existence _as if_ it were

a whole of mutually external parts. And so the indefinite regress

involved in the nature of the number-system inevitably parades the whole

of our discursive and relational thinking about existence. But its

presence is due to the inadequacy of the conception of Reality with

which discursive thought has to work.

On the whole, then, it seems that Prof. Royce’s investigations only make

it more apparent than before that the relational scheme which discursive

thought uses does not adequately express the true nature of the real,

and that the mystics of all ages have been so far justified in their

contention that the form of our experience which presents the truest

analogy to the experience of the Absolute must be supra-relational, or,

in other words, that the most real type of finite experience must be one

which transcends the distinction of subject and predicate. To admit this

is, however, not to admit that we are altogether ignorant how the one

and the many are united in Reality. For there are many other types of

human experience besides that which is dominated by the discursive and

relational intellect.

In immediate simple feeling we have obviously a type of conscious

experience in which distinction and relation have as yet not emerged.

And I have tried in Bk. I. chap. 2 to show how in the direct intuition

of an æsthetic whole by trained artistic perception we have at a higher

level an experience which contains the results of an elaborate process

of distinction and relation, but contains them in a way which transcends

the relational form and reverts in its directness to the unity of

immediate feeling. While again we have in the personal love which is one

with mutual insight a form of experience that, if translated into the

language of the intellect, would require for its description a whole

world of relations and predicates, and is yet, as experienced, an

intimate unity no relational scheme can more than faintly adumbrate. And

it is worthy of consideration that religious emotion in all ages has

borrowed from these forms of experience its favourite expressions for

the highest modes of communion between the finite and the infinite, the

“beatific vision,” the “love of God,” etc.

It seems indeed as if the function of the mere intellect were always

that of a necessary and valuable intermediary between a lower and a

higher level of immediate apprehension. It breaks up, by the relations

and distinctions it introduces, the original union of the _what_ and the

_that_ of simple feeling, and proceeds to make the _what_, which it

deals with in its isolation, ever more and more complex. But the

ultimate issue of the process is only reached and its ultimate aim only

satisfied so far as it conducts us at a higher stage of mental

development to the direct intuition of a richer and more comprehensive

whole in the immediate unity of its _that_ and its _what_. The besetting

philosophical sin of the mere mystic is not so much his refusal to

accept the work of the mere intellect as the highest and truest type of

human experience, as his tendency to satisfy his demand for the fuller

union of the _what_ with the _that_ by reverting to the lower forms of

immediacy upon which intellectual reflection has not done its work,

instead of pressing on to the higher in which the effect of that work is

preserved though its form is transcended.

These reflections may serve to obviate the objection that to reject the

relational scheme when it is offered as the ultimate truth is to deny

the value and significance of the scientific work we accomplish by means

of it. Though the scheme of relations cannot adequately express the mode

of union between the finite and the infinite, there is no fresh addition

to the system of relations into which scientific analysis translates the

real world of experience that does not increase our knowledge of what

the real world must contain, though it may fail to explain how it

contains it. And, in conclusion, let it be remembered that it is true

not only of the religious mystic’s special experience of union with

deity, but of all direct experience, that the relational scheme is quite

inadequate to explain how it holds its double aspects, its unity and its

multiplicity, its _that_ and its _what_, in complete interpenetration.

For _no_ living experience is a mere whole of parts, and none,

therefore, can be fully represented by a scheme based upon the concept

of whole and part.[97]

_Consult further_:—F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chaps. 1-3,

15, 27; L. T. Hobhouse, _Theory of Knowledge_, pp. 172-181 (Qualities

and Relations), 540-557 (Substance); H. Lotze, _Metaphysic_, bk. i.

chap. 1 (The Being of Things), chap. 2 (The Quality of Things), chap. 3

(The Real and Reality); J. Royce, _The World and the Individual_, First

Series, Supplementary Essay; B. Russell, “The Concept of Order” (_Mind_,

January 1901), and article on “Position in Space and Time” (_Mind_, July

1901); G. F. Stout, “Alleged Self-contradictions in the Concept of

Relation” (_Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, New Series, vol.

ii. pp. 1-14, with the accompanying discussion, pp. 15-24).

-----------------------

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER IV.

DR. STOUT’S REPLY TO MR. BRADLEY’S CRITICISM

OF THE CONCEPT OF RELATION.

Since the preceding chapter was written, I have had the opportunity of

studying Dr. Stout’s paper in the current volume of _Proceedings of the

Aristotelian Society_. I have not thought it necessary to make any

alterations in the text of Chapter 4, in consequence of Dr. Stout’s

criticism, but I may perhaps be permitted to add the following remarks,

which must not be regarded as a systematic appreciation or examination

of Dr. Stout’s views. The latter, as he himself pleads, cannot indeed be

finally judged until he has worked out the theory of Predication for

which his present paper merely prepares the way.

1. Dr. Stout begins by admitting what to my own mind is the essence of

the anti-relational argument. “No relation or system of relations can

ever constitute a self-subsistent and self-contained Reality. The

all-inclusive universe cannot ultimately consist in (? of) a collection

of interrelated terms” (_op. cit._, p. 2). This being once conceded, I

should have thought it an inevitable consequence that a “collection of

interrelated terms” cannot give us the final truth about the nature of

anything. For the whole idealist contention, as I understand it and have

tried to sustain it in the present work, is that the structure of the

whole is so repeated in any and every one of its members that what is

not the truth about the whole is never the _ultimate_ truth about

anything. precisely because there is ultimately nothing apart from the

whole, and the whole again is nothing apart from its members. So much, I

had thought, we have all learned from Hegel, and therefore Dr. Stout’s

dilemma that any proposition asserting relation (p. 5) must be false,

unless the relational scheme, so long as it is not affirmed of the

ultimate whole itself, gives us truth, does not seem to me to possess

any real cogency. With Mr. Bradley himself, as quoted by Dr. Stout, I

should urge that if the relational scheme is not itself internally

discrepant, there remains no valid ground for disputing its

applicability to the whole.

2. Dr. Stout’s introduction into a “relational unity” of the third

term,—_relatedness_ does not seem to me to remove the difficulties

inherent in our problem. And the illustration by which he supports it

appears to be unsound. He argues that when my hat is on my head this

state of things implies (1) the two related terms, the hat and the

head,(2) a relation of _on_ and _under_. (3) the fact that the terms

stand in this relation—their relatedness. For (1) and (2) by themselves

would be compatible with my hat being on the peg and my head bare. But

surely there is here a confusion between the relation of _above_ and

_below_, and the very different relation of _on_ and _under_. The latter

relation includes, as the former does not, immediate contact as part of

its meaning. If there are (1) a hat and a head, and (2) the relation

_on_ and _under_—in this sense—between the two, there is surely no need

of a third factor to complete the concrete actuality of “hat on head.”

If the hat is not actually on the head, then (2), the supposed relation,

is not there at all. And if (2) is there the whole fact is already

there. In a word, Dr. Stout seems to me to count in the concrete fact of

“thing exhibiting related aspects” as a third constituent in itself,

precisely as popular Logic sometimes counts in the actual judgment,

under the name of _Copula_, as one factor of itself.[98]

Then to Dr. Stout’s use of his distinction between the relation and the

fact of relatedness, I think it may be replied that it leaves us

precisely where we were before. The hat is qualified by being _on_ the

head, the head by being _in_ or _under_ the hat, and hat and head

together by the relation of _on_ and _under_ between them. But how these

various aspects of the fact are to be combined in a single consistent

view we are no nearer knowing.

3. _The endless regress._ I think it will be seen from the preceding

chapter that in my own view a genuine endless regress is evidence of the

falsity of the conception which gives rise to it, and that I hold this

on the ground that the endless regress always presupposes the

self-contradictory purpose to sum an admittedly infinite series. Hence I

could not concur, so far as I can see at present, in Dr. Stout’s

distinction between the endless regress which does and that which does

not involve self-contradiction. As to his illustration of endless

regress of the second kind, the infinite divisibility of space (p. 11),

I should have thought that there is no actual endless regress in

question until you substitute for infinite divisibility infinite actual

_subdivision_, and that when you make this substitution it commits you

at once to the self-contradictory completion of an unending task. (Cf.

what was said above, § 10, with reference to infinite numerical series.)

4. Dr. Stout goes on to deny that there is any endless regress,

self-contradictory or not, involved in the relational scheme. According

to him, what connects the relation with its terms is not another

relation (which would of course give rise to an endless regress), but

their relatedness, which is “a common adjective both of the relation and

the terms” (p. 11). I have already explained why this solution appears

to me merely to repeat the problem. The relatedness, so far as I can

see, is a name for the concrete fact with its double aspect of quality

and relation, and I cannot understand how mere insistence upon the

concrete unity of the fact makes the conjunction of its aspects more

intelligible.

5. Dr. Stout further supports his contention by a theory of the nature

of continuous connection which I have perhaps failed to understand.

Replying in anticipation to the possible objection of an opponent, that

if the “relatedness” connects the terms with their relation there must

be a second link to connect the term with its relatedness, he says

“there is no intermediate link and there is need for none. For the

connection is continuous, and has its ground in that ultimate continuity

which is presupposed by all relational unity” (p. 12, cf. pp. 2-4). And,

as he has previously told us, “so far as there is continuous connection

there is nothing between [_i.e._ between the connected terms], and there

is therefore no relation.”

Now there seems to me to be a contradiction latent here. Continuous

connection, of course, implies distinct but connected terms which form a

series. Where there are no such distinct terms there is nothing to

connect. Now it is, as I understand it, part of the very nature of a

continuous series that any two terms of the series have always a number

of possible intermediate terms between them. And therefore, in a

continuous series, there are _no_ immediately adjacent terms. Dr.

Stout’s own illustration brings this out—

│ │ │

──────┼──────┼──────┼──────

β │ α │ _a_ │ _b_

M

In a diagram like the accompanying _b_ and β are, he argues, “mediately

conjoined,” but _a_ and α are “immediately co-adjacent.” Surely Dr.

Stout forgets here that what can be intelligibly called “co-adjacent”

are not lines but points or positions on the lines. And between any

point in α and any point in _a_ there are a plurality of intermediate

positions, except for the special case of the extreme left point of _a_

and the extreme right point of α. These, of course, coalesce in the

single point M, and there is therefore no connection, mediate or

immediate, left in this case.[99] The illustration, I think, may serve

to reveal a serious discrepancy in Dr. Stout’s theory. He sees that

relations presuppose a unity which is supra-relational, and which he

calls “continuous,” on the ground of its supra-relational character. At

the same time, to save the relational scheme from condemnation as

leading to the endless regress, he has to turn this supra-relational

unity itself into a sort of relation by calling it an immediate

connection between _adjacent_ terms, and thus ascribing to it the

fundamental character of a _discontinuous_ series. And I cannot help

regarding this procedure as unconscious evidence to the truth of the

principle, that what is not the truth about the whole of Reality is not

ultimately the truth about any reality.

-----

Footnote 73:

See the admirable account of the “natural conception” of the world in

the final chapter of Avenarius, _Der Menschliche Weltbegriff_.

Footnote 74:

May I say here once for all, that when I oppose _practice_ to

intellectual speculation, I must be understood to mean by practice the

alteration by myself of some datum of given existence. The activity of

thought is thus for me not practical, precisely because the “truths”

which I know or contemplate are not _quà_ truths given existences

operated upon and altered by the act of thinking.

Footnote 75:

Such a view of the mental life of the animal seems to have been

actually held, for instance, by the late Professor T. H. Green. Yet

see Green, Works, ii. 217.

Footnote 76:

Strictly speaking, the “solidity” or “impenetrability” of the ultimate

particles of matter, which is with Locke and Newton one of the most

prominent “primary” qualities, is not a “mathematical” property, but

it still owes its inclusion in the list to the conviction of these

philosophers that it is, like extension and form, fundamentally

important for mathematical Physics. The explanation of the “secondary”

qualities as _subjective_ appears to go back to Democritus.

Footnote 77:

See the further elaboration of this analogy in Bk. III. chap. 3, § 2

ff.

Footnote 78:

Professor Sidgwick’s defence of the Lockian view (_Philosophy: its

Scope and Relations_, p. 63 ff.) seems to me to ignore the point at

issue. namely, that in any sense in which “secondary” qualities get

their meaning from the content of sensation, primary qualities do the

same. The whole point is that the sensation is not merely (as process)

the _occasion_ of our cognition of, _e.g._, hardness or softness, but

also (as content) furnishes the very meaning of “hard” or “soft.” Cf.

with what follows, _Appearance and Reality_, chap. 1.

Footnote 79:

The former alternative is that of scholasticism; in modern science the

latter has been more or less consciously adopted by those thinkers who

retain the notion of substances. The various qualities are on this

view consequences of the relations in which each substance stands

(_a_) to other interacting substances, and (_b_) in particular to the

unknown substratum of our “consciousness.”

Footnote 80:

See chaps. 1 and 2 of bk. i. of his _Metaphysic_.

Footnote 81:

The reader who desires to study Kant’s doctrine in detail may begin by

taking up Kant’s own _Prolegomena to the Study of any future

Metaphysic_, which may be profitably consulted even by those who find

the _Critique of Pure Reason_ too diffuse and technical. The latest

and cheapest translation is that included in the Open Court Publishing

Co.’s series of Philosophical Classics.

Footnote 82:

“Arbitrarily” because it is, as all recent psychology insists, the

direction of our attention which determines _what_ qualities shall be

presented together, and thus become “associated.”

Footnote 83:

In Psychology this comes out in the rejection by the best recent

writers of the whole associationist account of the process of

perception, according to which the perception of a thing as a whole

was taken to mean the actual presence in sensation of one of its

qualities _plus_ the reinstatement by association of the “ideas” of

the others. For the modern doctrine of the perception of a whole, as

distinct from the mere perception of its constituent parts, consult

Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, bk. i. chap. 3, or _Manual of

Psychology_,^3 bk. i. chap. 3.

Footnote 84:

This is just as true of the so-called primary qualities of things as

of any others. Thus the mass and again the kinetic energy of a

conservative material system are properly names for the way in which

the system will behave under determinate conditions, not of modes of

behaviour which are necessarily actually exhibited throughout its

existence. The laws of motion, again, are statements of the same

hypothetical kind about the way in which, as we believe, particles

move if certain conditions are fulfilled. The doctrine according to

which all events in the physical world are actual motions, rests on no

more than a metaphysical blunder of a peculiarly barbarous kind. Cf.

Stallo, _Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics_, chaps. 10-12.

Footnote 85:

Thus, _e.g._, so fundamental a proposition in our current mechanical

science as the “first law of motion” is avowedly a statement as to

what _would_ be the behaviour of things under a condition which, so

far as we know, is never actually realised. On the thing as the “law

of its states,” see Lotze, _Metaphysic_, I. 3. 32 ff. (Eng. trans.,

vol. i. p. 88 ff.), and L. T. Hobhouse, _The Theory of Knowledge_, pp.

545-557.

Footnote 86:

Mr. Hobhouse (_op. cit._, p. 541 ff.) thinks that the solution is

simply that those qualities belong to one “substance,” which are

apprehended together as occupying one space. As a working criterion of

what we mean by one bodily thing, this account seems satisfactory, and

has probably suggested itself spontaneously to most of us. But it

leaves untouched the more fundamental question how the identification

of a certain sight-space with a certain touch-space is effected, and

what are the motives which lead to it. Mr. Hobhouse is content to take

the identification as “given in adult perception,” but it seems to me

to emerge from his own good account of the matter that it is the still

more primitive apprehension of my own body as a felt unity upon which

the synthesis between sight and touch spaces is based. If so, the

ultimate source of the “unity of substance” must be sought deeper than

Mr. Hobhouse is willing to go for it. And _quaere_, whether his

account, if accepted as ultimate, would not lead to the identification

of substance with space? For the difficulties which arise when you say

the substance is the space and its filling of qualities, see

_Appearance and Reality_, chap. 2, pp. 19, 20 (1st ed.).

Footnote 87:

_Monadology_, §§ 8-16, 57-62.

Footnote 88:

This is true even where we merely count a number of qualitatively

equivalent units in order to ascertain their sum. It is their positive

character of being qualitatively equivalent which makes it permissible

in this case to take any one of them indifferently as first, any other

as second, etc. Whenever you apply the numerical series to the

arrangement in order of the qualitatively dissimilar, the nature of

your material as related to the character of your special interest in

it decides for you what you shall call first, second, third, etc.

Footnote 89:

As to the possibility of relations which are in this sense external to

their terms, see B. Russell, _The Philosophy of Leibniz_, p. 130, and

the articles by the same writer in _Mind_ for January and July 1901.

Footnote 90:

See the elaborate discussion of the relational scheme implied in any

assertion of difference in Royce, _The World and the Individual_,

Second Series, lect 2.

Footnote 91:

Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, chap. 3. Compare also chap. 15,

“Thought and Reality.”

Footnote 92:

The reader who desires further knowledge of the researches in the

theory of Numbers upon which Prof. Royce’s doctrine is based, may

profitably consult Dedekind, _Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen_, and

Couturat, _L’Infini Mathématique_.

Footnote 93:

Professor Royce’s own illustration of the map of England executed upon

a portion of the surface of the country is really a typical instance

of a self-contradictory purpose. He argues that such a map, to be

theoretically perfect, must contain a reduced facsimile of itself as

part of the country mapped, and this again another, and so on

indefinitely. But the whole force of the reasoning depends on

overlooking the distinction between the surface of England as it is

before the map is made, and the surface of England as altered by the

presence of the map. Prof. Royce assumes that you set out to represent

in the map a state of things which can in fact have no existence until

after the map is made. The previous existence of the map at a certain

spot is falsely taken to be one of the conditions to which the

map-maker is to conform in executing it. Every one of the supposed

“maps within the map” will thus involve distortion and

misrepresentation of the district it proposes to map. It is as if

Hamlet had chosen “Hamlet” as the subject of the “play within the

play.” The professor’s illustration thus does less than justice to his

theory.

Footnote 94:

The fundamental defect in Professor Royce’s reasoning seems to me to

lie in the tacit transition from the notion of an infinite _series_ to

that of an infinite completed _sum_. Thus he speaks of the series of

prime numbers as a “whole” being present at once to the mind of God.

But are the prime numbers, or any other infinite series, an actual sum

at all? They are surely not proved to be so by the existence of

general truths about any prime number.

Footnote 95:

See, _e.g._, Dedekind, _op. cit._, § 2: “It frequently happens that

different things _a_, _b_, _c_ ... are apprehended upon whatsoever

occasion under a common point of view, mentally put together, and it

is then said that they form a _system_; the things _a_, _b_, _c_ ...

are named the _elements_ of the system”; and § 3 (definitions of

_whole_ and _part_).

Footnote 96:

_Ante_, Bk. II. chap. 2, § 5.

Footnote 97:

It is no answer to this view to urge that as soon as the intellect

undertakes to reflect upon and describe Reality it unavoidably does so

in relational terms. For it is our contention that the same intellect

which uses these relational methods sees _why_ they are inadequate,

and to some extent at least how they are ultimately merged in a higher

type of experience. Thus the systematic use of the intellect in

Metaphysics itself leads to the conviction that the mere intellect is

not the whole of Reality. Or, in still more paradoxical language, the

highest truth for the mere intellect is the thought of Reality as an

ordered system. But all such order is based in the end on the

number-series with its category of whole and part, and cannot,

therefore, be a perfectly adequate representation of a

supra-relational Reality. Hence Truth, from its own nature, can never

be quite the same thing as Reality.

Footnote 98:

Or does Dr. Stout merely mean that there may be a hat and a head, and

also a relation of on and under (_e.g._, between the _hat_ and the

_peg_), and yet my hat not be on my head? If this is his meaning, I

reply we have not really got the _relation_ and its _terms_; if the

hat is not on the head, hat and head are not terms in the relation at

all. I do not see why, on his own principles, Dr. Stout should not add

a fourth factor to his analysis, namely, qualified_ness_, or the fact

that the qualities are there, and so on indefinitely.

Footnote 99:

If you consider the _lines_ _a_ and α, as Dr. Stout prefers to do, I

should have thought two views possible. (_a_) There are not two lines

at all, but one, the “junction” at M being merely ideal. Then there

remains nothing to connect and there is no relation of “immediate

connection.” Or (_b_), the junction may be taken as real, and then you

have a perfectly ordinary case of relation, the terms being the

terminated lines _a_ and α, and the relation being one of contact at

M. On every ground (_a_) seems to me the right view, but it is

incompatible with the reduction of continuity to “immediate

connection.” Thus the source of the difficulty is that (1) immediate

connection can only hold between the immediately successive terms of a

discontinuous series, and yet (2) _cannot_ hold between them precisely

_because_ they are discontinuous.

-----

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD OF THINGS—(2) CHANGE AND

CAUSALITY

§ 1. The conception of things as interacting leads to the two problems

of Change and Causality. The paradoxical character of change due to

the fact that only what is permanent can change. § 2. Change is

succession within an identity; this identity, like that of

Substance, must be teleological, _i.e._ must be an identity of plan

or end pervading the process of change. § 3. Thus all change falls

under the logical category of Ground and Consequence, which becomes

in its application to succession in time the Principle of Sufficient

Reason. § 4. _Causality._ Cause—in the modern popular and scientific

sense—means the ground of a change when taken to be completely

contained in preceding changes. That every change has its complete

ground in preceding changes is neither an axiom nor an empirically

ascertained truth, but a postulate suggested by our practical needs.

§ 5. In the last resort the postulate cannot be true; the dependence

between events cannot be one-sided. The real justification for our

use of the postulate is its practical success. § 6. Origin of the

conception of Cause anthropomorphic § 7. Puzzles about Causation.

(1) _Continuity._ Causation must be continuous, and yet in a

continuous process there can be no distinction of cause from effect.

Cause must be and yet cannot be prior in time to effect. § 8. (2)

_The indefinite regress_ in causation. § 9. (3) _Plurality of

Causes._ Plurality of Causes is ultimately a logical contradiction,

but in any form in which the causal postulate is of practical use it

must recognise plurality. §10. The “necessity” of the causal

relation psychological and subjective. §11. Immanent and Transeunt

Causality: Consistent Pluralism must deny transeunt Causation; but

cannot do so successfully, §12. Both transeunt and immanent

Causality are ultimately appearance.

§ 1. The fourth of the features which characterise the pre-scientific

view of the world we found to be the belief that things act and are

acted upon by one another. The problems to which this belief gives rise

are so vast, and have been historically of such significance for

Metaphysics, that they will require a separate chapter for their

discussion. In the conception of the interaction of things as it exists

for the naïve pre-scientific mind, we may distinguish at least two

aspects. There is (1) the belief that things _change_, that within the

unity of the one thing there is a succession of different states; and

(2) the belief that the changes of state of various things are so

inter-connected that the changes in one thing serve as occasions for

definite changes in other things. We thus have to discuss, first, the

general notion of change as an inseparable aspect of the being of

things, and next the concept of systematic inter-connection between the

changes of state of different things.

(_a_) _Change._ The problem presented by the apparently unceasing

mutability of existence is one of the earliest as well as one of the

most persistent in the whole range of Philosophy. In itself it might

seem that the successive presentation in time of various states is

neither more nor less noteworthy a feature of the world of experience

than the simultaneous presentation of a like variety, but the problem of

mutability has always appealed with special force to the human

imagination from its intimate connection with our personal hopes and

fears, ambitions and disappointments. Tempora mutantur, _nos_ et mutamur

in illis; there is the secret of the persistence with which our

philosophic thought has from the first revolved round this special

problem. There, too, we may find a pregnant hint of the central paradox

implied in all mutability—namely, that only the identical and permanent

can change. It is because the self which changes with the flux of time

and circumstance is still in some measure the same old self that we feel

its changes to be so replete with matter for exultation and despair.

Were we completely new-made with each successive change in our self,

there would no longer be ground for joy in transition to the better or

grief at alteration for the worse.

The thought that only what is permanent can change has affected

Philosophy in different ways at different periods of its history. At the

very dawn of Greek Philosophy it was the guiding principle of the Ionian

physicists who sought to comprehend the apparent variety of successive

phenomena as the transformations of a single bodily reality. As the

difficulties inherent in such a materialistic Monism became more

apparent, the felt necessity of ascribing unity of some kind to

existence led Parmenides and his Eleatic successors to the extreme view

that change, being impossible in a permanent homogeneous bodily reality,

must be a mere illusion of our deceptive senses. While yet again the

later Ionian physicists, and their Sicilian counterpart Empedocles,

sought to reconcile the apparent mutability of things with the criticism

of Parmenides by the theory that what appears to the senses as

qualitative change is in reality the mere regrouping in space of

qualitatively unalterable “elements” or “atoms”—μεῖξις διάλλαξίς τε

μιγέντων.

At a more developed stage of Hellenic thought, the necessity of taking

some account of the mutability as well as of the permanence of existence

impelled Plato to draw the momentous distinction between two worlds or

orders of being—the real, with its eternal unvarying self-identity, and

the merely apparent, where all is change, confusion, and instability. In

spite of Plato’s manifest failure to make it intelligible how these two

orders, the eternal and the temporal, are ultimately connected, this

distinction in one form or another has continued ever since to haunt all

subsequent metaphysical construction. Even our modern scientific

Materialism, with its loudly avowed scorn for all merely metaphysical

questions, shows by its constant endeavour to reduce all material

existence to a succession of changes in a homogeneous medium, both the

persistence with which the intellect demands a permanent background for

change, and the difficulty of finding logical satisfaction for the

demand.

Yet there have not been wanting attempts to get rid of the paradox by

denying its truth. As the Eleatics sought to escape it by reducing

change itself to a baseless illusion, so some at least of the disciples

of Heracleitus seem to have evaded it by refusing to admit any permanent

identity in the changeable, and they have not been entirely without

imitators in the modern world. Incessant change without underlying unity

has had its defenders in the history of Metaphysics, though they have

not been numerous, and we must therefore briefly consider what can be

urged for and against such a concept. Apart from the general difficulty

of seeing how what changes can at the same time be permanently identical

with itself, the only special argument in favour of the doctrine that

only incessant change is real seems to be the appeal to direct

experience. In any actual experience, it is contended, however

contracted its limits, we are always presented with the fact of change

and transition; we never apprehend an absolutely unchanging content.

Even where the object before us exhibits no succession, self-examination

will always detect at least alternating tension and relaxation of

attention with the accompanying fluctuations of bodily sensation.

Now there can, of course, be no gainsaying these facts of experience,

but the conclusion based on them evidently goes much further than the

premisses warrant. If experience never gives us mere persistence of an

unchanging content, neither does it ever give us mere change without

persistence. What we actually experience always exhibits the two aspects

of identity and transition together. Usually there will be, side by side

with the elements which sensibly change in the course of the experience,

others which remain sensibly constant throughout it. And even when,

through inattention, we fail to detect these constant elements, the

successive states of the changing content itself are not merely

momentary; each has its own sensible duration through which it retains

its character without perceptible changes. Experience thus entirely

fails to substantiate the notion of mere change apart from a background

of permanent identity.

The positive disproof of the notion must, however, be found in its own

inherent absurdity. Change by itself, apart from a background of

identity, is impossible for the reason that where there is no underlying

identity there is nothing to change. All change must be change of and in

some thing. A mere succession of entirely disconnected contents held

together by no common permanent nature persisting in spite of the

transition, would not be change at all. If I simply have before me first

A and then B, A and B being absolutely devoid of any point of community,

there is no sense in saying that I have apprehended a process of change.

The change has been at most a change in myself as I passed from the

state of perceiving A to the state of perceiving B, and this subjective

transition again can only be called change on the assumption that the I

who am qualified first by the perception of A and its various emotional

and other accompaniments, and then by that of B and its accompaniments,

am the same. And where you have not merely a change of perception but an

actual perception of change, the case is even clearer. What we perceive

in such a case is “A changing into B,” the two successive states A and B

being held together by the fact that they are successive states of some

more permanent unity [gamma]. Apart from the presence of this identical

[gamma] in both the earlier and later stages of the process, there would

be no meaning in speaking of it as one of change.

§ 2. Change, then, may be defined as succession within an identity, the

identity being as essential to the character of the process as the

succession. In what way, then, must we think of this identity or common

nature which is present throughout the whole succession of changes? It

should be clear that this question—how that which changes can be

permanent?—is simply our old problem of quality and substance, how the

many states can belong to one thing, considered with special reference

to the case of states which form a succession in time. Thus, whatever is

the true nature of the unity to which the many states of one thing

belong, will also be the true nature of the identity which connects the

successive stages of a process of change.

Now we have already seen in what the unity to which the many states

belong must be taken to consist. We found that this unity is essentially

teleological; that group of states, we saw, is one thing which functions

as one in regard to an end or interest, or, as we may also say, is the

embodiment of coherent structure. The same is true of the process of

change. The earlier and later stages of the process are differences in

an identity precisely because they constitute one process. And a process

is one when it is the systematic realisation of a single coherent end.

To be one process means to be the systematic expression in a succession

of stages of a single coherent plan or law. The succession of stages is

thus welded into a unity by the singleness of the plan or law which they

embody, and it is this systematic connection of each stage with all the

rest which we express by saying that whatever changes possesses an

underlying permanent identity of character. It would amount to precisely

the same thing if we said the successive states of anything that changes

form a connected system.

We must be careful here, as we were in dealing with the problem of

Substance, not to be misled by taking symbolic aids to imagination for

philosophical truths. Just as it is easy to imagine the “substance” of

things as a sort of material substratum, it is easy to imagine the

identity which pervades all changes as that of a number of pieces of

matter, and to think of the changes as constituted by their motion

through space. But such a representation must not be taken for anything

more than an aid to imagination. It helps us to make a mental diagram,

but it throws absolutely no light upon the real nature of the connection

between the identity and the succession. For the same problem breaks out

within each of the “self-identical” pieces of matter; we have to say

what we mean by calling it one and the same throughout the series of its

changing positions, and the necessity of answering this question shows

us at once that the identity of a material particle throughout its

motion is only one _case_ of that identity pervading succession which

belongs to all change, and in no sense affords any explanation of the

principle it illustrates.[100] As a recent writer puts it, “it seems to

be a deeply rooted infirmity of the human mind ... that it can hardly

conceive activities of any sort apart from material bases, ... through

habitually seeking to represent all phenomena in mechanical terms, in

terms of the motion of little bits of matter, many of us have come to

believe that in so doing we describe the actual events underlying

phenomena.”[101] This “disease of the intellect,” as the same writer

aptly calls it, is nowhere more insidious than where we are dealing with

the problem of Change.

Change, then, involves two aspects. It is a succession of events in

time, and these events are connected by a systematic unity in such a way

that they form the expression of a plan or law of structure. The series

of successive states which make up the history of a thing are the

expression of the thing’s nature or structure. To understand the thing’s

structure is to possess the key to the succession of its states, to know

on what principle each gives way to its successor. And similarly, to

have complete insight into the nature or structure of Reality as a whole

would be to understand the principles according to which every

transitory event in the history of the Universe, regarded as a series of

events in time, is followed by its own special successor.

It is evident that, in proportion as our knowledge of any thing or

system of things approaches this insight into the laws of its structure,

the processes of change acquire a new character for us. They lose their

appearance of paradox, and tend to become the self-evident expression of

the identity which is their underlying principle. Change, once reduced

to law and apprehended as the embodiment in succession of a principle we

understand, is no longer change as an unintelligible mystery. We should

bear this in mind when we reflect on the doctrine of Plato that the

physical world must be unreal because the scene of incessant change.

Such a view is only to be understood by remembering that before the

invention of the mathematical methods which have enabled us with such

conspicuous success to reduce physical phenomena to orderly sequence

according to law, the physical world necessarily appeared to the

philosopher a scene of _arbitrary_ change following no recognisable

principle. Change, so far as understood in the light of its principle,

has already ceased to be mere change.[102]

§ 3. _Ground and Consequence._ In the technical language of Logic, the

underlying principle of any system is called its _Ground_, the detail in

which the principle finds systematic expression is called its

_Consequence_. Ground and Consequence are thus one and the same

systematic whole, only considered from two different points of view. The

Ground is the pervading common nature of the system, thought of as an

identity pervading and determining the character of its detail; the

Consequence is the same system, looked at from the point of view of the

detail, as a plurality of differences pervaded and determined by an

identical principle. The understanding of a process of change thus

clearly consists in bringing it under the principle of Ground and

Consequence. In so far as we are successful in detecting a principle in

the apparently arbitrary succession of events, these events become for

us a system with a common principle of structure for its Ground, and a

plurality of successive states as its Consequence.

Change is not, however, the only instance of the principle of Ground and

Consequence. These two aspects may also be found in systematic wholes

which contain no element of succession in time, _e.g._ in a body of

logical deductions from a few fundamental premisses. The special

peculiarity of the case of Change is that it is the principle of Ground

and Consequence as applied to a material which is successive _in time_.

As thus applied, the principle has received the special name of the

_Principle of Sufficient Reason_, and may be formulated thus: _Nothing

takes place unless there is a sufficient reason why it should occur

rather than not_. It is clear that such a proposition is a mere result

of the application of the conception of Reality as a systematic whole to

the special case of the existence of the successive in time. It is

therefore simply one case of the fundamental axiom of all knowledge, the

axiom that what truly exists is a coherent whole.[103] We must of course

observe that the principle does nothing to solve the perhaps insoluble

problem _why_ succession in time should be a feature of experience. This

is a question which could only be answered if we could show that

succession in time is a logical consequence of the existence of any

multiplicity forming a systematic whole. Until we are able to establish

this result, we have simply to accept succession as a datum of our

experience. (Yet for some light upon the problem, see _infra_, Bk. III

chap. 4, § 9)

§ 4. _Causality._ So far we have said nothing of a concept which is much

more familiar in the popular treatment of the problem of Change than

that of Ground and Consequence, the concept of _Cause_. In proceeding to

discuss this concept, it is necessary in the first place to explain

which of the numerous senses of the word we are taking for examination.

There was an old scholastic distinction, which still reappears

occasionally in philosophical writings, between the _Causa cognoscendi_,

or reason for affirming a truth, and the _Causa existendi_ or _fiendi_,

the cause of the occurrence of an event. It is this latter meaning of

the word “cause,” the meaning which is predominant wherever the term is

used in modern scientific language, that we shall have in view in the

following sections.

The _Causa cognoscendi_, or logical _reason_ for the affirmation of a

truth, as distinguished from the psychological factors which lead a

particular individual to affirm it, is clearly identical with what

modern logicians call the _Ground_. A given proposition must logically

be affirmed as true in the last resort, because it fills a place in a

wider system of truths which no other proposition would fill. Thus,

_e.g._, a special proposition about the relation between the sides and

angles of a triangle is logically necessitated, because it is an

integral element in the development of a system of geometrical ideas

which repose as a whole upon certain fundamental assumptions as to the

character of spatial order. The original presuppositions cannot be

worked out to their logical consequence in a body of internally coherent

geometrical notions unless the proposition in question is included in

that body. And reciprocally, the logical justification for regarding

these presuppositions rather than any others as sound, lies in the fact

that they yield a body of internally consistent consequences.

Incidentally, we see by means of this illustration that Ground and

Consequence are mutually convertible, which is what we might have

inferred from the way in which we defined them as mutually complementary

aspects of a single systematic whole.

What we are concerned with in the everyday and scientific treatment of

Causation, is not this purely logical relation of Ground and

Consequence, but something partly identical with it, partly different.

The _Causa fiendi_ has no significance except in connection with

occurrences or events in time, and may roughly be said to correspond

with what Aristotle denotes the “Source of Change”—ἀρχὴ κινήσεως or ὅθεν

ἡ κίνησις—and his mediæval followers named the Efficient Cause. Cause,

in the popular sense of the word, denotes the attempt to carry out the

principle of the interconnection of events in a system along special

lines by regarding every event as completely determined by conditions

which are themselves previous events. Widely as the popular and the

scientific uses of the term “cause” diverge in minor respects, they

agree in the essential point. That every event has its cause is

understood, both in everyday life and in the sciences which use the

concept of causation, to mean that the occurrence and the character of

every event in the time-series is completely determined by preceding

events. In more technical language, causation for everyday thought and

for the sciences means _one-sided dependence_ of the present on the

past, and the future on the present.

It is, of course, obvious that the principle of Causation as thus

understood is not a necessary logical deduction from the principle of

Ground and Consequence. It might be the case that all occurrences form a

coherent plan or system, such that if you once grasped the principle of

the system you could infer from it what precise occurrence must take

place at any one moment, and yet it might be impossible to discover this

principle by an examination of the course of events up to the present

moment. In other words, the principle of the systematic interconnection

of events might be valid, and yet the events of the present might depend

on those which will succeed them in the future no less than on those

which have preceded them in the past. In that case it would be

impossible with absolute logical certainty to infer what will occur at a

given moment from the mere examination of what has preceded, _i.e._ the

principle of Causation as used in the sciences would not be logically

valid.[104]

Cause, as currently understood, is thus identical not with the whole

true logical ground, but with the ground so far as it can be discovered

in the train of temporally antecedent circumstances, _i.e._ cause is

_incomplete_ ground. This point is important, as it shows that the

principle of Causation is not, like the principle of Sufficient Reason,

axiomatic. It is no necessary logical consequence of the knowability or

systematic character of the Real that an event should be completely

determined by temporally antecedent events; for anything that is implied

in the systematic character of the Real, the event may be equally

dependent on subsequent occurrences. Again, the principle of Causation

cannot be empirically established by an appeal to the actual course of

experience. Actual experience is certainly not sufficient to show that

every event is absolutely determined by its antecedent conditions; at

most the success of our scientific hypotheses based upon the assumption

of causality only avails to show that events may be inferred from their

antecedents with sufficient accuracy to make the causal assumption

practically useful.

Regarded as a universal principle of scientific procedure, the causal

assumption must be pronounced to be neither an axiom nor an empirical

truth but a _postulate_, in the strict sense of the word, _i.e._ an

assumption which cannot be logically justified, but is made because of

its practical value, and depends upon the success with which it can be

applied for confirmation. In the sense that it is a postulate which

experience may confirm but cannot prove, it may properly be said to be

_a priori_, but it is manifestly not _a priori_ in the more familiar

Kantian sense of the word. That is, it is not a necessary and

indispensable axiom without which systematic knowledge would be

impossible. For, as we have already seen and shall see more fully in the

immediate sequel, it may not be, and indeed in the last resort cannot

be, true.

§ 5. This last statement will possibly appear startling to the reader

who is unacquainted with the history of metaphysical investigations into

Causality. But it is easy to show that it is really the expression of an

obvious truth. For the causal principle, as we have just seen, is an

imperfect expression of the really axiomatic principle of Sufficient

Reason or Ground and Consequence. And it is readily seen that the

expression it gives to that principle, because imperfect, must be

partially false. What the principle of Ground and Consequence says is,

that the whole of existence is a single coherent system in which every

part is determined by the nature of the whole as revealed in the

complete system. But if this is true, each constituent of the system can

only be completely determined by its connections with all the rest. No

constituent can be entirely determined by its relations to a lesser part

of the whole system, in the way presupposed by the notion of one-sided

causal dependence. The “cause” must, if the principle of Ground and

Consequence be valid, be determined by the “effect” no less than the

“effect” by the “cause.” And therefore the causal postulate cannot be

the whole truth.

How this fatal logical defect in the principle of Causation makes itself

felt in the logic of the inductive sciences, and how logicians have

sought without success to avoid it, we shall incidentally see as our

discussion proceeds. At present we must be content to note that, owing

to this flaw, Causation, wherever it is asserted, can only be Appearance

and never complete Reality, and that no science which works with the

concepts of cause and effect can give us the highest truth. Of course,

the logical defects of the concept need not impair its practical

usefulness. Though it can never, for the reason given already, be

ultimately true that any event is absolutely determined by antecedent

events, the assumption may be sufficiently near the truth to yield

useful deductions as to the course of occurrences, precisely as a

mathematical approximation to the value of a surd quantity may, without

being the exact truth, be close enough for practical use. Also, it might

well be the case that the causal postulate approximates more nearly to

the truth in some spheres of investigation than in others, a

consideration which is not without its bearing on the ethical problems

of freedom and responsibility.

If we ask how the causal postulate, being as it must be only imperfectly

true, comes to be made, the answer is obvious. The whole conception is

anthropomorphic in origin, and owes its existence to our practical

needs. To take the latter point first, logically there is no better

reason for treating an event as determined solely by antecedents, than

for treating it as solely determined by subsequent events. Yet when the

latter supposition is made, as it is by all believers in omens and

presages, we all agree to condemn it as superstitious. Why is this? Two

reasons may be assigned. (_a_) Even granting that an event may be

determined by subsequent events, yet, as _we_ do not know what these

events are until after their occurrence, we should have no means of

inferring by _what_ particular events yet to come any present event was

conditioned, and thus should be thrown back upon mere unprincipled

guess-work if we attempted to assign its, as yet future, conditions.

(_b_) A more important consideration is that our search for causes is

ultimately derived from the search for _means_ to the practical

realisation of results in which we are interested. We desire to know the

conditions of occurrences primarily, in order to produce those

occurrences for ourselves by setting up their conditions. It is

therefore essential to us for our practical purposes to seek the

conditions of an occurrence exclusively among its antecedents, and the

causal postulate which asserts that the complete conditions of the event

are comprised somewhere in the series of antecedent events is thus the

intellectual expression of the demand made by our practical needs upon

Reality. We postulate it because, unless the postulate is approximately

realised, we cannot intervene with success in the course of events. We

refuse, except as a pure speculation, to entertain the notion that an

event may be determined by subsequent as well as by antecedent events,

because that notion leads to no practical rules for operation upon our

environment.

§ 6. As might be expected of a postulate so obviously originated by our

practical needs, the concept of cause on examination reveals its

anthropomorphic character. This is particularly obvious when we consider

the concept of Causation as it figures in everyday unscientific thought.

The various scientific substitutes for the popular notion of cause all

exhibit traces of the endeavour to purge the conception of its more

anthropomorphic elements. In the popular use of the concept this

anthropomorphism comes out most strikingly in two ways. (_a_) A cause,

as popularly conceived, is always a person or thing, _i.e._ something we

can imagine as a whole, and into which we can mentally project a

conscious life akin to our own. To the scientific mind it seems obvious

that causes and effects are alike _events_ and events only, but for

popular thought, while the effect is always a quality or state (_e.g._,

death, fever, etc.), the cause is regularly a thing or person (the

bullet, the poison, the tropical sun, etc.).

(_b_) Closely connected with this is the emphasis popular thought lays

upon what it calls the _activity_ of the cause. The cause is never

thought of as merely preceding the effect as an “inseparable

antecedent”; it is supposed to _make_ the effect occur, to bring it

about by an exercise of activity. According to the most coherent

expositions of this type of thought, in causation one thing is always

_active_ in producing a change in another thing which is _passive_. The

origin of this notion is sufficiently obvious. As all philosophers since

Hume have recognised, the “activity” of the cause results from the

ascription to it of the characteristic feeling of self-assertion and

self-expansion which accompanies our own voluntary interference in the

course of events. Similarly, the “passivity” of the thing in which the

effect is produced is only another name for the feeling of coercion and

thwarted self-assertion which arises in us when the course of nature or

the behaviour of our fellows represses our voluntary execution of our

designs.

Science, in its attempt to extend the concept of causal determination

over the whole domain of existence, has naturally felt these

anthropomorphic implications as obstacles. From the effort to expel them

arises what we may call the common scientific view of causation, as

ordinarily adopted for the purposes of experimental investigation and

formulated in the works of inductive logicians. The concept of a thing,

except as the mode of interconnection of states, being unnecessary for

the sciences which aim simply at the reduction of the sequence of

occurrences to order, the notion of causation as a transaction between

two things is replaced in the experimental sciences by the conception of

it as merely the determination of an event by antecedent events.

Similarly, with the disappearance of things as the vehicles of causal

processes falls the whole distinction between an active and a passive

factor. As it becomes more and more apparent that the antecedent events

which condition an occurrence are a complex plurality and include states

of what is popularly called the thing acted upon as well as processes in

the so-called agent, science substitutes for the distinction between

agent and patient the concept of a system of reciprocally dependent

interacting factors. These two substitutions give us the current

scientific conception of a cause as the “totality of the conditions” in

the presence of which an event occurs, and in the absence of any member

of which it does not occur. More briefly, causation in the current

scientific sense means sequence under definitely known conditions.

Indispensable as this notion of the determination of every event by a

definite collection of antecedents and by nothing else is for practice,

regarded as a logical formulation of the principle of the systematic

unity of existence, it is open to grave objections, most of which will

be found to have made themselves felt in the logic of the inductive

sciences quite independently of conscious metaphysical analysis. In

dealing with these difficulties, we shall find that their general effect

is to place us in the following dilemma. If we wish to state the causal

principle in such a way as to avoid manifest speculative falsehood, we

find that it has to be modified until it becomes identical with the

principle of Ground and Consequence in its most universal form, but as

thus modified it is no longer of any service for the purposes of the

experimental sciences. You seem driven to take it either in a form in

which it is true but practically useless, or in one in which it is

useful but not true. To illustrate the way in which this dilemma arises,

we may examine three of the main problems which have actually been

created by the scientific use of the principle,—(_a_) the puzzle of

continuity; (_b_) the puzzle of the indefinite regress, (_c_) the puzzle

of the plurality of causes.

§ 7. (_a_) _The Puzzle of Continuity._ Continuity is, strictly speaking,

a property of certain series, and may be defined for purposes of

reference much as follows. A series is continuous when any term divides

the whole series unambiguously into two mutually exclusive parts which

between them comprise all the terms of the series, and when every term

which so divides the series is itself a term of the series. From this

second condition it obviously follows that a number of intermediate

terms can always be inserted between any two terms whatever of a

continuous series; no term of the series has a _next_ term. This is the

peculiarity of the continuous with which we shall be specially

concerned. Thus the series of points on a straight line is continuous

because (1) any point P on the line divides it into two collections of

points in such a way that every point of the one is to the left of every

point of the other, and every point of the second to the right of every

point of the former; and (2) every point which divides the line in this

way is a point on the line. Again, the whole series of real numbers is

continuous for the same reason. Every member of the number-series

divides it into two classes, so that every number of one is less than

every number of the other, and every number which thus divides the

series is itself a term of the number-series.

But the series of _rational_ real numbers is not continuous, because it

can be divided into mutually exclusive classes by terms which are not

themselves members of the series. (_E.g._ √2 is not a member of the

series of rational numbers, but we can exhaustively divide all rational

numbers into the two mutually exclusive classes, rational numbers _less_

than √2 and rational numbers _not less_ than √2.)[105] From the

continuity of the series of real numbers it follows that any other

series which corresponds point for point with the terms of the

number-series will be continuous. Now one such series is that of the

successive parts of time. Every moment of time divides the whole series

of moments into two mutually exclusive classes, the moments _before_

itself and the moments which are _not before_ itself. And whatever thus

divides the time-series is itself a moment in that series. Hence from

the continuity of the time-series it follows that any puzzles created by

this property of continuousness will apply to the case of Causation. In

what follows I shall not discuss the general problem of the continuous,

a problem which requires special mathematical equipment for its

efficient handling, but shall confine myself to the difficulties

introduced by continuity into the scientific concept of causal relation.

We may conveniently attack the problem by taking it up in the form in

which Hume bequeathed it to modern science. As any careful reader of

Hume must perceive, Hume’s whole doctrine of Causation is based on the

assumption that the causal process is not continuous. Experience is

supposed by him to come to us not in an unbroken stream, but in isolated

separate pieces which we subsequently proceed to link together

artificially by the notion of Causation. We are supposed to begin by

observing the sequence of an event B on a previous distinct event A, and

the problem of Causation thus becomes that of discovering the nature of

the link by which the originally distinct A and B are connected in our

scientific thought. In more technical language, Hume thought of the

series of events as one in which every member has a next term, and this

way of conceiving it has coloured the whole subsequent treatment of

Causation by the inductive logicians who have commonly got their

metaphysical doctrines from Hume.

Now, recent Psychology, in deserting the old notion of the atomic

sensation for that of the “stream of consciousness,” has completely

destroyed the supposed empirical foundation for this Humian theory of

the discontinuity of the course of events. The real problem for the

inductive logician we can now see to be not to discover the link by

which an originally separate A and B have got joined together in

thought, but to find the source of the distinction we habitually draw

within what comes to us as one continuous process between an earlier

stage A which we call cause, and a later stage B which we call effect.

We are not, however, concerned here with the psychological weakness of

Hume’s doctrine, but with the logical difficulty to which it gives rise.

We may state the difficulty thus: (1) Causation cannot possibly be

thought of as discontinuous, _i.e._ as the sequence of one distinct

event upon an assemblage of other events without gross contradiction. To

think of it as discontinuous, we must conceive the _cause_ A to exist

first in its completeness, and then to be suddenly followed by the

effect B. (That the cause A consists of a number of conditions, _a_,

_b_, _c_ ... which themselves come into existence successively, and that

A is not there until the last of these conditions has been realised,

makes no difference to the principle.) Now this seems to be what is

actually implied by the language of those inductive logicians who insist

that in all Causation the cause must _precede_ the effect. But what can

such precedence mean? It can only mean that after the complete

realisation of the conditions included in the cause A, there must

intervene a space of empty time _before_ the effect B enters on the

scene. However brief and “momentary” you take this gap in the stream of

events to be, the gap must be there if your language about the cause as

being _before_ the effect is to have any meaning. For if there is no

such gap, and the entrance of B is simultaneous with the complete

realisation of its conditions A, it is no longer true to say that the

cause A is _before_ the effect B. A does not exist as A until _a_, _b_,

_c_ ... are all present, and as soon as they are present B is present

too. And thus the relation between A and B is not that of the sequence

of a later event on an earlier. They are actually _together_.

In fact, the doctrine that the cause precedes the effect rests upon the

notion that the time-series is one in which each member has a next term.

And this seems inconceivable. For not only can you subdivide any finite

time, however small, into two mutually exclusive parts, but the point at

which the division is effected is itself a moment in the time-series

lying _between_ the beginning and the end of the original interval. Time

therefore must be continuous, and if causation is not equally

continuous, we must suppose that gaps of empty time are what separate

the first event, the cause, from the subsequent event, the effect. Yet

_if_ this could be regarded as a defensible doctrine on other grounds,

it would then follow that the assemblage of events A is not the totality

of conditions requisite for the occurrence of B. The “totality of

conditions,” _i.e._ the _cause_ as previously defined, would be the

events A _plus_ a certain lapse of empty time.[106] And so the cause

would once more turn out not to precede the effect, or we should have to

suppose the end of the interval of empty time included in it as

separated from the beginning of B by a second lapse, and so on

indefinitely.

(2) These difficulties, in a more or less clearly apprehended form, have

led many recent writers on inductive Logic to modify the definition

which was still satisfactory to Mill. Cause and effect, we are now told,

are not distinct events, but earlier and later stages in a continuous

process. The real business of science is not to discover “laws of

connection” between distinct events or “phenomena,” but to invent

general mathematical formulae by the aid of which we may trace the

course of continuous processes. The discovery of causes, from this point

of view, is reduced to the construction of formulæ which exhibit some

quantity as a function of a time-variable. Fully worked out, this view

of the nature of experimental science leads to the so-called

“descriptive” ideal of scientific explanation, advocated by such eminent

thinkers as Kirchhoff, Mach, and Ostwald among physicists, and, with

various modifications, Avenarius, Münsterberg, Royce, and James Ward

among recent philosophers. According to this doctrine, the ultimate

ideal of science, or at any rate of physical science, is simply the

description of the course of events by the aid of the fewest and

simplest general formulæ. _Why_ things happen as they do, it is now

said, is no proper question for science; its sole business is to enable

us to calculate _how_ they will happen. With the general epistemological

questions raised by this doctrine we must deal later in our third and

fourth books. At present we are concerned only with its bearing on the

notion of Causal Relation.[107]

The important point for our immediate purpose is that the reduction of

all events to continuous processes really does away with Causation

altogether, as is recognised by those adherents of the theory who openly

propose to expel the word “cause” from the language of science.[108] For

in a continuous process it is purely arbitrary where we shall mentally

draw the dividing line which is to mark the boundary between the

“earlier” and the “later” stage. What the descriptive formula, with the

aid of which we trace the course of the process by giving a series of

successive values to our time-variable presents, is not the “cause” of

the process but the “law” of it. Instead of looking upon the later

stages of the process as determined by the earlier, we are now looking

upon the process as a whole as the expression in detail of a single

principle. We have, in fact, abandoned the category of cause and effect

for that of Ground and Consequence. We are seeking the ground of the

whole process not in a set of temporally preceding events, but in its

own pervading principle.

From this point of view the one-sided dependence of effect on cause,

characteristic of the causal relation, disappears. Whether we shall

infer the later stages of the process from the earlier, or the earlier

from the later, depends simply upon our choice of positive or negative

values for our time-variable. For “descriptive” science, what we

suggested at first as a paradoxical possibility is the actual fact. The

past is determined by the future in precisely the same sense in which

the future is determined by the past, namely, that as both are stages of

the same continuous process, if once you know the principle of the

process you can start equally well with either and reason to the

other.[109] Thus, within the limits of experimental science itself, the

conception of causal relation has given way to the conception of events

as logically connected into a system in virtue of their underlying

ground or principle. For practical purposes experimental science has, in

its application of this conception, to be guided by two postulates,

neither of which can be metaphysically justified. It has to assume (_a_)

that the course of events is composed of a plurality of more or less

independent continuous processes, each of which has its own ground

within itself, at least to such an extent as to be capable of being

treated for our purpose as independent of others; (_b_) that the

underlying ground or grounds of all events can be adequately expressed

in terms of mathematical symbolism.

As to the first of these points, our discussion of the unity of Reality

convinced us that there must in the end be a single ground of all

existence, and therefore the complete reason of any partial process

cannot be entirely within itself. The independence of the various

processes must be relative, and even the belief that it is sufficient to

enable us to treat them for our own special purposes as self-contained

and independent, must be a postulate prompted by our practical needs,

and justified in the end by its success. The second point will engage

our attention more fully in subsequent chapters. At present one remark

upon it must suffice. The calculability of the laws of continuous

processes depends upon our ability to reduce them to numerical and

quantitative forms. Wherever we have the appearance, at any stage in a

process, of a new quality, we have in fact an apparent breach of

continuity, and it ceases to be in our power to exhibit the new stage of

the process as a mere transformation of what was already expressed in

former stages. Hence the success of natural science in reducing all

sequences of events to continuous processes depends upon the assumption

that we can establish equations between qualitatively different

magnitudes.

Now this assumption is even more evidently than the preceding a

postulate. We have to make it, if we are to calculate the course of

events, but we have no guarantee that it will succeed beyond the fact of

its actual success. If it fails anywhere, as we shall hereafter contend

that it does in the critical case of the sequence of psychical on

physical events, and _vice versâ_, two results will follow, one

practical, the other speculative. The practical consequence of the

failure is that in such cases we cannot apply the concept of continuous

process, and have to fall back upon the cruder notion of causal

sequence. Thus, in attempting to create a science of Psychophysics we

cannot hope to exhibit the whole of a psychophysical process as the

continuous realisation of a single principle; we must be content to

establish laws of causal connection between the physical and the

psychical sides of the process. The speculative consequence is that the

principle of Ground and Consequence is only imperfectly represented by

the conception of a continuous process, inasmuch as that conception is

only applicable where qualitative differences within the consequences of

a single ground can be disregarded. This hint will prepare us for

subsequent criticism of the concept of continuity when we come to deal

with the metaphysics of the time-process.[110]

#§ 8 (_b_). _The Indefinite Regress._ The defects of the causal

postulate as a principle of explanation may also be exhibited by showing

the double way in which it leads to the indefinite regress. The

indefinite regress in the causal series is an inevitable consequence of

the structure of time, and, as we please, may be detected both outside

and inside any causal relation of two events, or two stages of a

continuous process. For it follows from the structure of the time-series

(_a_) that there are an indefinite number of terms of the series between

any two members, between which there is a finite interval, and (_b_)

that there is also an indefinite number of terms before or after any

given member of the series. Like the series of real numbers, the

time-series, because it satisfies the definition of a continuous

infinite series, can have neither a first nor a last term, nor can any

member of it have a next term.[111] Applying this to the case of

Causation, we may reason as follows:—

(1) The same reasons which lead us to demand a cause A for any event B,

and to find that cause in an assemblage of antecedent events, require

that A should be similarly determined by another assemblage of

antecedent events, and that this cause of A should itself have its own

antecedent cause, and so on indefinitely. Thus the causal principle,

logically applied, never yields an intelligible explanation of any

event. Instead of exhibiting the transition A-B as the logical

expression of a coherent principle, it refers us for the explanation of

this transition to a previous instance of the same kind of transition,

and then to another, and so forth without end. But it is impossible that

what is not intelligible in one instance should become intelligible by

the mere multiplication of similar unintelligibilities.

(2) Similarly if we look within the transition A-B. This transition

being continuous must have its intermediate stages. A becomes B because

it has already become C, and the transition A-C-B is again “explained”

by showing that A became D which became C which became E which became B.

And each of the stages A-D, D-C, C-E, E-B can be once more submitted to

the same sort of analysis. But in all this interpolation of intermediate

stages there is nothing to show the nature of the common principle in

virtue of which the stages form a single process. We are, in fact,

trying to do what we try to do wherever we establish a relation between

terms, to answer a question by repeating it. And we decided at the end

of our last chapter that this kind of repetition is never an answer to

any question. How entirely it fails to answer the question we ask

whenever we look for a cause is obvious. We want to know why B exists,

and we are told that B exists because it is determined by the previous

existence of A. But why does A exist? Because of the previous existence

of C. And so ultimately the existence of everything depends on the

existence of something else, and this again on the existence of still

something else. If this is so, since nothing can exist until its cause

has existed, and the cause again not until its cause has existed, then,

as this unending series has no first term, nothing can ever come into

existence at all. This inevitable introduction of the indefinite regress

whenever we try to think out the causal principle to its logical

consequences, has sometimes been treated as proving the inherent

defectiveness of the human mind. What it proves rather is that Causality

is not a proper formulation of the real principle of the unity of all

experience.

A word may be said about the attempts which philosophers have made to

extricate themselves from the difficulty without giving up Causality as

an ultimate principle of explanation. The least philosophical method of

escape is that of arbitrarily postulating a first cause with no

preceding cause, which amounts to the same thing as a beginning of

existence or a first moment of time. This way out of the difficulty

obviously amounts to an arbitrary desertion of the causal principle at

the point where it becomes inconvenient to remain faithful to it.

Whatever the nature of the event you pitch upon as your “first cause,”

the causal principle, if logically valid at all, is just as applicable

here as anywhere else Your “first cause” must have had a previous cause,

or else the whole causal scheme must be, as we have contended that it

is, the illogical and imperfect perversion of a genuine principle of

systematic connection, useful and indeed indispensable in practice, but

quite indefensible in theory.

It would not help you out of the difficulty to distinguish between a

first event and a first moment of time, by postulating a first cause

with an indefinite lapse of empty time before it. For the causal

principle would then require you to look for the determining conditions

of the first event in the preceding lapse of empty time. But this lapse,

because merely empty, cannot contain the determining conditions for any

special occurrence in preference to others. This is why the conception

of a beginning of the causal series in time, with an empty lapse before

it, has always led to the insoluble riddle, “Why did God create the

world when He did, rather than at some other point of time?”

Nor can the difficulty be escaped by taking refuge in the continuity of

the stream of events. For (1) as we have seen, the recognition of events

as continuous processes necessarily leads to the surrender of the causal

principle as inadequate to express the real connection of facts.

Causality, as a special form of the category of Ground and Consequence,

must stand or fall with the view of occurrences as sequences of

discontinuous events. And (2) even apart from this consideration, the

appeal to continuity can at best only be worked as a rejoinder to the

internal analysis of a sequence into an infinite process. When it is

urged that, on the causal principle, there must be an infinite number of

intermediate stages between the cause and the effect in any given case,

it is possible to retort that the stages are not “really” distinct, but

only distinguished by an artificial abstraction, that the process is

actually one and continuous, and therefore does not involve an infinite

regress, except for the logician who erroneously construes it as

discontinuous. But with the external regress _in indefinitum_ you cannot

deal in this way. The absence of a beginning follows as necessarily from

the principle of explaining the later stages of a continuous process as

conditioned by the earlier, as it does when the stages are taken to be

distinct events. (This is easily seen from the simple consideration that

the time-variable in your formula for the successive stages of the

process may have an unlimited range of possible values from -[infinity]

to +[infinity].)

In short, whether the succession of events be taken as continuous or

not, the attempt to translate the axiom that whatever happens has its

ground in the nature of the whole system to which it belongs, into the

doctrine that the posterior in time is completely determined by and

dependent on the prior, leads straight to the infinite regress. And, as

we said in our last chapter, the occurrence of the infinite regress is

always a sign that there is imperfection somewhere in the thought which

sets it up. For it always implies the formal contradiction of the actual

summation by successive increments of an infinite series. Further

considerations on this point may be deferred till we come to treat of

the continuity of time.[112]

§ 9 (_c_). _The Plurality of Causes._ The indefinite regress may be

shown to be inherent in Causation by a different line of argument,

without appealing to the principle of the continuity of time. As the

reader is doubtless aware, it was a favourite doctrine of John Stuart

Mill, that whereas the same cause is always followed by the same

effect—in the absence of counteracting circumstances—the same effect

need not be preceded by the same cause. An effect may be “produced” on

different occasions by entirely different sets of antecedents. Thus

death may be due either to disease or to violence, and both the disease

and the violence may have very different forms, yet the result is the

same, namely, death. Heat may ensue from friction, percussion, chemical

combination, and so forth. This doctrine of the Plurality of Causes is

an obvious result of generalisation from the important practical

consideration that different means will often lead us to the same end,

so that where we cannot employ one we can often fall back on another.

Mill’s critics have not failed to point out that his doctrine is based

on the rather illogical combination of a concrete cause with an abstract

effect. He considers the “effect” in its utmost generality simply as a

state or quality, _e.g._, “heat,” “death,” and rightly contends that

this general state or quality may issue on different occasions from

different combinations of conditions. But he fails to observe that in

any concrete case this effect exists in a special form, and with special

modifications corresponding to the special character of the antecedents.

Death, for instance, may result from a thousand circumstances, but the

total effect in each case is never mere death, but death in some one

special shape. A man who is shot and a man who is drowned are both dead,

but one is dead with the special symptoms of death by drowning, the

other with those of death by shooting. The water will kill you and a

bullet will kill you, but death with a bullet-hole does not come from

drowning, nor death with one’s lungs filled with water from a gunshot.

If you take cause and effect at the same level of concreteness, they are

always strictly correlative. Any variation in the one must have a

corresponding variation in the other, for circumstances which vary

without affecting a result are by definition no part of its conditions.

So far Mill’s critics among the inductive logicians. But we can push the

argument a step further, and show that it leads logically to a dilemma.

(1) There cannot really be more than one “cause” for one “effect”; yet

(2) in any sense in which we can single out one “effect” from the rest

of the contents of the universe, and assign it its “cause,” there is

_always_ a possibility of the Plurality of Causes. We will consider the

alternative of this dilemma separately.

(1) Cause and effect must be strictly correlative. For to say that there

may be variations in the cause not followed by corresponding variations

in the effect, is to say that there can be conditions which condition

nothing; and to admit variation in the effect without variation in the

cause, is to allow that there are occurrences which are at once, as

effects, determined, and yet again are not determined, by the assemblage

of their antecedents. Thus Plurality of Causes is excluded by the very

conception of a cause as the totality of conditions. Following up this

line of thought further, we see that it leads to a perplexing result.

The “totality of conditions” is never a real totality. For there are no

such things as isolated effects and causes in the world of events. The

whole fact which we call an effect is never complete until we have taken

into account its entire connection with everything else in the universe.

And similarly, the whole assemblage of conditions includes everything

which goes to make up the universe. But when we have thus widened our

conception of the cause and the effect, both cause and effect have

become identical with one another and with the whole contents of the

universe. And thus Causation itself has disappeared as a form of

interconnection between the elements of Reality in our attempt to work

out its logical implications.

This is an inevitable consequence of the continuous interconnection of

all Reality established by our examination of the problem of the One and

the Many in Chapter II. In other words, you never have reached the full

cause of any event until you have taken into account the _totality_ of

its conditions, _i.e._ the totality of its connections with all the rest

of existence. But this totality cannot be obtained in the form

presupposed by the phrase “totality of conditions” as a plurality of

events. For to obtain it in this fashion would mean to sum an infinite

series. But when you abandon the form of the infinite series, cause and

effect alike become identical with the systematic whole of Reality.

(2) On the other hand, the _usefulness_ of the causal postulate depends

entirely upon our ability to establish single threads of Causality

within the stream of events, _i.e._ on our ability to assign particular

assemblages of events, less than the “totality,” to particular

subsequent events as their necessary and sufficient condition. Unless we

can do this we can formulate no rules for the practical employment of

means for the production of a desired result, and, as we have already

seen, it is the necessity of knowing the means to our ends which is the

primary, and indeed the sole, motive for the establishment of the causal

postulate. Now, to effect this assignation of particular causes to

particular effects, we have to make use of a distinction which is more

practically necessary than theoretically defensible. We distinguish

between indispensable conditions and accessory circumstances, which may

or may not be present without affecting the nature of the special result

in question.

Now it is clear that the making of this distinction depends upon the

separation of a certain part of the “total” stream of events from the

rest, and its isolation as “the special result in question.” And this

isolation, as we have seen, must always rest upon arbitrary abstraction.

When once this arbitrary abstraction of some one part or aspect of the

stream of events from its context has been made, we are compelled to

recognise the existence of the context from which we have abstracted by

saying that any effect may enter into or form part of a variety of

different larger effects, according to the nature of the context in

which it occurs. And, from the very principle of the complete

correlation of condition and conditioned, it follows that what we call

the special or partial effect will be preceded by varying conditions,

according as it enters into different larger wholes or contexts. Thus

any form of the causal postulate of which we can make effective use

necessitates the recognition of that very Plurality of Causes which we

have seen to be logically excluded by the conception of cause with which

science works. As we contended above, any form of the principle in which

it is true is useless, and any form in which it is useful is untrue.

The final result of our discussion, then, is that the causal postulate

according to which events are completely determined by antecedent events

leads to the belief that the stream of events is discontinuous. This

belief is inherently self-contradictory, and therefore ultimately

untrue. The principle of Ground and Consequence cannot therefore be

adequately represented by the causal postulate, however indispensable

that postulate may be in practice. Whether the conception of a

continuous stream of events affords any better formulation of the

principle of the systematic interconnection of all Reality, we shall be

better able to judge after the discussions of our third book. If it does

not, we shall have to recognise that the conception of temporal

succession itself is not adequate to express the way in which the Many

and the One of real existence are united, _i.e._ that time is not real,

but only phenomenal.

§ 10. A word may be said here as to the nature of the “necessity” which

we ascribe to the connection of cause and effect. There can be little

doubt that the origin of this “necessity” must be found in our own

feelings of constraint when our action is dictated from without. It is

clear, however, that we have no right to ascribe this feeling of

constraint to the event which is determined by its connection with the

rest of the system of Reality. All that is meant in science by the

“necessity” of the causal relation is that given the conditions the

result follows, and not otherwise. In other words, _if_ you assert the

existence of the conditions, you are logically bound to assert the

existence of the result. The constraint thus falls within ourselves, and

is of a hypothetical kind. So long as your purpose is to think

logically, you feel constraint or compulsion when, after asserting the

condition, you seek for any reason to escape asserting the result. It is

one of the conspicuous services of Hume to philosophy, that he for the

first time brought out clearly this subjective character of the

“necessity” of the causal relation, though it must be admitted that he

went on to complicate his argument by an admixture of error when he

sought to base the necessity of the logical inference from Ground to

Consequence on the psychological principle of Association.

§ 11. Before closing our discussion of Causality, we must briefly take

note of certain special difficulties by which the problem has been

complicated in the systems of some eminent philosophers. A distinction

has often been drawn between Transeunt and Immanent Causality. In so far

as the changes of state of one thing are regarded as occasions of change

of state in others, the relation has been technically called one of

Transeunt Causality; the determination of a thing’s change of state by

its own previous changes has, on the other hand, been named Immanent

Causality. As a consequence of this distinction, grave difficulties have

arisen in connection with the notion of Transeunt Causality. Such

Causality, _i.e._ the determination of the changes of one thing by the

changes of others, is of course an essential feature in the

pre-scientific view of the world of experience as a multiplicity of

interacting things.

For systematic Pluralism this conception inevitably presents insoluble

difficulties. For it is impossible to reconcile the ultimate absolute

independence of the various real things with the admission that the

sequence of states in any one depends upon sequences of states in any of

the others. If a plurality of things are ultimately independent of each

other, it is manifest that each must form a complete whole,

self-determined and containing the ground of its details entirely within

itself. Conversely, if a thing cannot be explained by a principle of

purely internal systematic connection, but requires for its complete

explanation reference to an outside reality with which it stands in

interconnection, its independence can be only partial. Hence Pluralism,

in its more consistent forms, has always sought to deny the reality of

Transeunt Causality, and to reduce all causal relations to the internal

determination of the states of a thing by its own previous states.

Historically, the principal devices which have been adopted for this

purpose are (_a_) Occasionalism, and (_b_) the theory of a

Pre-established Harmony.

(_a_) _Occasionalism._ Occasionalism has appeared in the history of

Philosophy as a professed solution of the special problem of the

apparent interaction between body and mind, taken as two entirely

disparate and independent realities, though it is equally applicable in

a wider sense to the more general problem of the apparent connection of

any two independent real things. The doctrine is most closely associated

with the names of the Cartesians, Arnold Geulincx and N. Malebranche,

but was in part also adopted by Berkeley as a consequence of his belief

in the pure passivity of non-mental things. Starting from the Cartesian

conception of mind and body as two entirely independent and disparate

kinds of reality, Geulincx and Malebranche were confronted by the

apparent fact that mental states lead to modifications of bodily state

in voluntary motion, and _vice versâ_, bodily states determine the

occurrence of mental states whenever a sensation follows upon a

stimulus.

The “natural view of the world” unhesitatingly accepts these cases as

instances of interaction or Transeunt Causality on exactly the same

level as the origination of change of state in one body by change in

another, and Descartes himself had acquiesced in this interpretation.

But such a view, as his successors saw, is quite incompatible with the

alleged disparateness and independence of the two orders of existence,

the bodily and the mental. Geulincx and Malebranche accordingly took

refuge in the doctrine that the interaction is only apparent. In reality

there is a complete solution of continuity wherever the series of

changes in the one order terminates and that in the other begins. What

really happens, they taught, is that God adapts the one series to the

other. On the occurrence of the bodily stimulus, God intervenes to

produce the sensation or emotion which is required to harmonise our

action with our environment. Similarly, on the occurrence of a volition,

God interferes to set the corresponding movement going in our bodily

organism.

Thus the change in the one order is merely an occasion for the

intervention of God, who is the actual cause of the corresponding change

in the other. Within each order the series of changes once initiated are

then supposed to be causally connected. The divine interference only

comes in where the two orders come into contact. Berkeley adopted half

of this doctrine without the complementary half. Inasmuch as, according