1. _Hume on Causal Efficacy._
It is the thesis of this work that human symbolism has its origin in the
symbolic interplay between two distinct modes of direct perception of
the external world. There are, in this way, two sources of information
about the external world, closely connected but distinct. These modes do
not repeat each other; and there is a real diversity of information.
Where one is vague, the other is precise: where one is important, the
other is trivial. But the two schemes of presentation have structural
elements in common, which identify them as schemes of presentation of
the same world. There are however gaps in the determination of the
correspondence between the two morphologies. The schemes only partially
intersect, and their true fusion is left indeterminate. The symbolic
reference leads to a transference of emotion, purpose, and belief, which
cannot be justified by an intellectual comparison of the direct
information derived from the two schemes and their elements of
intersection. The justification, such as it is, must be sought in a
pragmatic appeal to the future. In this way intellectual criticism
founded on subsequent experience can enlarge and purify the primitive
naïve symbolic transference.
I have termed one perceptive mode ‘Presentational Immediacy,’ and the
other mode ‘Causal Efficacy.’ In the previous lecture the mode of
presentational immediacy was discussed at length. The present lecture
must commence with the discussion of ‘Causal Efficacy.’ It will be
evident to you that I am here controverting the most cherished tradition
of modern philosophy, shared alike by the school of empiricists which
derives from Hume, and the school of transcendental idealists which
derives from Kant. It is unnecessary to enter upon any prolonged
justification of this summary account of the tradition of modern
philosophy. But some quotations will summarize neatly what is shared in
common by the two types of thought from which I am diverging. Hume[1]
writes:—“When both the objects are present to the senses along with the
relation, we call _this_ perception rather than reasoning; nor is there
in this case any exercise of the thought, or any action, properly
speaking, but a mere passive admission of the impressions through the
organs of sensation. According to this way of thinking, we ought not to
receive as reasoning any of the observations we may make concerning
_identity_ and the _relation_ of _time_ and _place_; since in none of
them can the mind go beyond what is immediately present to the senses,
either to discover the real existence or the relations of objects.”
The whole force of this passage depends upon the tacit presupposition of
the ‘mind’ as a passively receptive substance and of its ‘impression’ as
forming its private world of accidents. There then remains nothing
except the immediacy of these private attributes with their private
relations which are also attributes of the mind. Hume explicitly
repudiates this substantial view of mind.
But then, what is the force of the last clause of the last sentence,
“since ... objects?” The only reason for dismissing ‘impressions’ from
having any demonstrative force in respect to ‘the _real_ existence or
the relations of objects,’ is the implicit notion that such impressions
are mere private attributes of the mind. Santayana’s book, _Scepticism
and Animal Faith_, to which I have already referred, is in its earlier
chapters a vigorous and thorough insistence, by every manner of
beautiful illustration, that with Hume’s premises there is no manner of
escape from this dismissal of identity, time, and place from having any
reference to a real world. There remains only what Santayana calls
‘Solipsism of the Present Moment.’ Even memory goes: for a
memory-impression is not an impression of memory. It is only another
immediate private impression.
It is unnecessary to cite Hume on Causation; for the preceding quotation
carries with it his whole sceptical position. But a quotation[2] on
substance is necessary to explain the ground of his explicit—as distinct
from sporadic implicit presuppositions—doctrine on this point:—“I would
fain ask those philosophers, who found so much of their reasonings on
the distinction of substance and accident, and imagine we have clear
ideas of each, whether the idea of substance be derived from the
impressions of sensation or reflection? If it be conveyed to us by our
senses, I ask, which of them, and after what manner? If it be perceived
by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the
palate, a taste; and so of the other senses. But I believe none will
assert that substance is either a colour, or sound, or a taste. The idea
of substance must, therefore, be derived from an impression of
reflection, if it really exist. But the impressions of reflection
resolve themselves into our passions and emotions; none of which can
possibly represent a substance. We have, therefore, no idea of
substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities,
nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning
it.”
This passage is concerned with a notion of ‘substance,’ which I do not
entertain. Thus it only indirectly controverts my position. I quote it
because it is the plainest example of Hume’s initial assumptions that
(i) presentational immediacy, and relations between presentationally
immediate entities, constitute the only type of perceptive experience,
and that (ii) presentational immediacy includes no demonstrative factors
disclosing a contemporary world of extended actual things.
He discusses this question later in his ‘Treatise’ under the heading of
the notion of ‘Bodies’; and arrives at analogous sceptical conclusions.
These conclusions rest upon an extraordinary naïve assumption of time as
pure succession. The assumption is naïve, because it is the natural
thing to say; it is natural because it leaves out that characteristic of
time which is so intimately interwoven that it is natural to omit it.
Time is known to us as the succession of our acts of experience, and
thence derivatively as the succession of events objectively perceived in
those acts. But this succession is not pure succession: it is the
derivation of state from state, with the later state exhibiting
conformity to the antecedent. Time in the concrete is the conformation
of state to state, the later to the earlier; and the pure succession is
an abstraction from the irreversible relationship of settled past to
derivative present. The notion of pure succession is analogous to the
notion of colour. There is no mere colour, but always some particular
colour such as red or blue: analogously there is no pure succession, but
always some particular relational ground in respect to which the terms
succeed each other. The integers succeed each other in one way, and
events succeed each other in another way; and, when we abstract from
these ways of succession, we find that pure succession is an abstraction
of the second order, a generic abstraction omitting the temporal
character of time and the numerical relation of integers. The past
consists of the community of settled acts which, through their
objectifications in the present act, establish the conditions to which
that act must conform.
Aristotle conceived ‘matter’—ὑλγ—as being pure potentiality awaiting the
incoming of form in order to become actual. Hence employing Aristotelian
notions, we may say that the limitation of pure potentiality,
established by ‘objectifications’ of the settled past, expresses that
‘natural potentiality’—or, potentiality in nature—which is ‘matter’ with
that basis of initial, realized form presupposed as the first phase in
the self-creation of the present occasion. The notion of ‘pure
potentiality’ here takes the place of Aristotle’s ‘matter,’ and ‘natural
potentiality’ is ‘matter’ with that given imposition of form from which
each actual thing arises. All components which are _given_ for
experience are to be found in the analysis of natural potentiality. Thus
the immediate present has to conform to what the past is for it, and the
mere lapse of time is an abstraction from the more concrete relatedness
of ‘conformation.’ The ‘substantial’ character of actual things is not
primarily concerned with the predication of qualities. It expresses the
stubborn fact that whatever is settled and actual must in due measure be
conformed to by the self-creative activity. The phrase ‘stubborn fact’
exactly expresses the popular apprehension of this characteristic. Its
primary phase, from which each actual thing arises, is the stubborn fact
which underlies its existence. According to Hume there are no stubborn
facts. Hume’s doctrine may be good philosophy, but it is certainly not
common sense. In other words, it fails before the final test of obvious
verification.
2. _Kant and Causal Efficacy._
The school of transcendental idealists, derived from Kant, admit that
causal efficacy is a factor in the phenomenal world; but hold that it
does not belong to the sheer data presupposed in perception. It belongs
to our ways of thought about the data. Our consciousness of the
perceived world yields us an objective system, which is a fusion of mere
data and modes of thought about those data.
The general Kantian reason for this position is that direct perception
acquaints us with particular fact. Now particular fact is what simply
occurs as particular datum. But we believe universal principles about
all particular facts. Such universal knowledge cannot be derived from
any selection of particular facts, each of which has just simply
occurred. Thus our ineradicable belief is only explicable by reason of
the doctrine that particular facts, as consciously apprehended, are the
fusion of mere particular data with thought functioning according to
categories which import their own universality in the modified data.
Thus the phenomenal world, as in consciousness, is a complex of coherent
judgments, framed according to fixed categories of thought, and with a
content constituted by given data organized according to fixed forms of
intuition.
This Kantian doctrine accepts Hume’s naïve presupposition of ‘simple
occurrence’ for the mere data. I have elsewhere called it the assumption
of ‘simple location,’ by way of applying it to space as well as to time.
I directly deny this doctrine of ‘simple occurrence.’ There is nothing
which ‘simply happens.’ Such a belief is the baseless doctrine of time
as ‘pure succession.’ The alternative doctrine, that the pure succession
of time is merely an abstract from the fundamental relationship of
conformation, sweeps away the whole basis for the intervention of
constitutive thought, or constitutive intuition, in the formation of the
directly apprehended world. Universality of truth arises from the
universality of relativity, whereby every particular actual thing lays
upon the universe the obligation of conforming to it. Thus in the
analysis of particular fact universal truths are discoverable, those
truths expressing this obligation. The given-ness of experience—that is
to say, all its data alike, whether general truths or particular sensa
or presupposed forms of synthesis—expresses the specific character of
the temporal relation of that act of experience to the settled actuality
of the universe which is the source of all conditions. The fallacy of
‘misplaced concreteness’ abstracts from time this specific character,
and leaves time with the mere generic character of pure succession.
3. _Direct Perception of Causal Efficacy._
The followers of Hume and the followers of Kant have thus their diverse,
but allied, objections to the notion of any direct perception of causal
efficacy, in the sense in which direct perception is antecedent to
thought about it. Both schools find ‘causal efficacy’ to be the
importation, into the data, of a way of thinking or judging about those
data. One school calls it a habit of thought; the other school calls it
a category of thought. Also for them the mere data are the pure
sense-data.
If either Hume or Kant gives a proper account of the status of causal
efficacy, we should find that our conscious apprehension of causal
efficacy should depend to some extent on the vividness of the thought or
of the pure intuitive discrimination of sense-data at the moment in
question. For an apprehension which is the product of thought should
sink in importance when thought is in the background. Also, according to
this Humian-Kantian account, the thought in question is thought about
the immediate sense-data. Accordingly a certain vividness of sense-data
in immediate presentation should be favourable to apprehension of causal
efficacy. For according to these accounts, causal efficacy is nothing
else than a way of thinking about sense-data, given in presentational
immediacy. Thus the inhibition of thought and the vagueness of
sense-data should be extremely unfavourable to the prominence of causal
efficacy as an element in experience.
The logical difficulties attending the direct perception of causal
efficacy have been shown to depend on the sheer assumption that time is
merely the generic notion of pure succession. This is an instance of the
fallacy of ‘misplaced concreteness.’ Thus the way is now open to enquire
empirically whether in fact our apprehension of causal efficacy does
depend either on the vividness of sense-data or on the activity of
thought.
According to both schools, the importance of causal efficacy, and of
action exemplifying its presupposition, should be mainly characteristic
of high-grade organisms in their best moments. Now if we confine
attention to long-range identification of cause and effect, depending on
complex reasoning, undoubtedly such high-grade mentality and such
precise determination of sense-data are required. But each step in such
reasoning depends on the primary presupposition of the immediate present
moment conforming itself to the settled environment of the immediate
past. We must not direct attention to the inferences from yesterday to
today, or even from five minutes ago to the immediate present. We must
consider the immediate present in its relationship to the immediate
past. The overwhelming conformation of fact, in present action, to
antecedent settled fact is to be found here.
My point is that this conformation of present fact to immediate past is
more prominent both in apparent behaviour and in consciousness, when the
organism is low grade. A flower turns to the light with much greater
certainty than does a human being, and a stone conforms to the
conditions set by its external environment with much greater certainty
than does a flower. A dog anticipates the conformation of the immediate
future to his present activity with the same certainty as a human being.
When it comes to calculations and remote inferences, the dog fails. But
the dog never acts as though the immediate future were irrelevant to the
present. Irresolution in action arises from consciousness of a somewhat
distant relevant future, combined with inability to evaluate its precise
type. If we were not conscious of relevance, why is there irresolution
in a sudden crisis?
Again a vivid enjoyment of immediate sense-data notoriously inhibits
apprehension of the relevance of the future. The present moment is then
all in all. In our consciousness it approximates to ‘simple occurrence.’
Certain emotions, such as anger and terror, are apt to inhibit the
apprehension of sense-data; but they wholly depend upon a vivid
apprehension of the relevance of immediate past to the present, and of
the present to the future. Again an inhibition of familiar sense-data
provokes the terrifying sense of vague presences, effective for good or
evil over our fate. Most living creatures, of daytime habits, are more
nervous in the dark, in the absence of the familiar visual sense-data.
But according to Hume, it is the very familiarity of the sense-data
which is required for causal inference. Thus the sense of unseen
effective presences in the dark is the opposite of what should happen.
4. _Primitiveness of Causal Efficacy._
The perception of conformation to realities in the environment is the
primitive element in our external experience. We conform to our bodily
organs and to the vague world which lies beyond them. Our primitive
perception is that of ‘conformation’ vaguely, and of the yet vaguer
relata ‘oneself’ and ‘another’ in the undiscriminated background. Of
course if relationships are unperceivable, such a doctrine must be ruled
out on theoretic grounds. But if we admit such perception, then the
perception of conformation has every mark of a primitive element. One
part of our experience is handy, and definite in our consciousness; also
it is easy to reproduce at will. The other type of experience, however
insistent, is vague, haunting, unmanageable. The former type, for all
its decorative sense-experience, is barren. It displays a world
concealed under an adventitious show, a show of our own bodily
production. The latter type is heavy with the contact of the things gone
by, which lay their grip on our immediate selves. This latter type, the
mode of causal efficacy, is the experience dominating the primitive
living organisms, which have a sense for the fate from which they have
emerged, and for the fate towards which they go—the organisms which
advance and retreat but hardly differentiate any immediate display. It
is a heavy, primitive experience. The former type, the presentational
immediacy, is the superficial product of complexity, of subtlety; it
halts at the present, and indulges in a manageable self-enjoyment
derived from the immediacy of the show of things. Those periods in our
lives—when the perception of the pressure from a world of things with
characters in their own right, characters mysteriously moulding our own
natures, become strongest—those periods are the product of a reversion
to some primitive state. Such a reversion occurs when either some
primitive functioning of the human organism is unusually heightened, or
some considerable part of our habitual sense-perception is unusually
enfeebled.
Anger, hatred, fear, terror, attraction, love, hunger, eagerness,
massive enjoyment, are feelings and emotions closely entwined with the
primitive functioning of ‘retreat from’ and of ‘expansion towards.’ They
arise in the higher organism as states due to a vivid apprehension that
some such primitive mode of functioning is dominating the organism. But
‘retreat from’ and ‘expansion towards,’ divested of any detailed spatial
discrimination, are merely reactions to the way externality is
impressing on us its own character. You cannot retreat from mere
subjectivity; for subjectivity is what we carry with us. Normally, we
have almost negligible sense-presentations of the interior organs of our
own bodies.
These primitive emotions are accompanied by the clearest recognition of
other actual things reacting upon ourselves. The vulgar obviousness of
such recognition is equal to the vulgar obviousness produced by the
functioning of any one of our five senses. When we hate, it is a man
that we hate and not a collection of sense-data—a causal, efficacious
man. This primitive obviousness of the perception of ‘conformation’ is
illustrated by the emphasis on the pragmatic aspect of occurrences,
which is so prominent in modern philosophical thought. There can be no
useful aspect of anything unless we admit the principle of conformation,
whereby what is already made becomes a determinant of what is in the
making. The obviousness of the pragmatic aspect is simply the
obviousness of the perception of the fact of conformation.
In practice we never doubt the fact of the conformation of the present
to the immediate past. It belongs to the ultimate texture of experience,
with the same evidence as does presentational immediacy. The present
fact is luminously the outcome from its predecessors, one quarter of a
second ago. Unsuspected factors may have intervened; dynamite may have
exploded. But, however that may be, the present event issues subject to
the limitations laid upon it by the actual nature of the immediate past.
If dynamite explodes, then present fact is that issue from the past
which is consistent with dynamite exploding. Further, we unhesitatingly
argue backwards to the inference, that the complete analysis of the past
must disclose in it those factors which provide the conditions for the
present. If dynamite be now exploding, then in the immediate past there
was a charge of dynamite unexploded.
The fact that our consciousness is confined to an analysis of experience
in the present is no difficulty. For the theory of the universal
relativity of actual individual things leads to the distinction between
the present moment of experience, which is the sole datum for conscious
analysis, and perception of the contemporary world, which is the only
one factor in this datum.
The contrast between the comparative emptiness of Presentational
Immediacy and the deep significance disclosed by Causal Efficacy is at
the root of the pathos which haunts the world.
‘Pereunt et imputantur’
is the inscription on old sundials in ‘religious’ houses:
‘The hours perish and are laid to account.’
Here ‘Pereunt’ refers to the world disclosed in immediate presentation,
gay with a thousand tints, passing, and intrinsically meaningless.
‘Imputantur’ refers to the world disclosed in its causal efficacy, where
each event infects the ages to come, for good or for evil, with its own
individuality. Almost all pathos includes a reference to lapse of time.
The final stanza of Keats’ _Eve of St. Agnes_ commences with the
haunting lines:—
‘And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
Those lovers fled away into the storm.’
There the pathos of the lapse of time arises from the imagined fusion of
the two perceptive modes by one intensity of emotion. Shakespeare, in
the springtime of the modern world, fuses the two elements by exhibiting
the infectiousness of gay immediacy:—
‘... daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; ...’
(_The Winter’s Tale_, IV, iv, 118-120.)
But sometimes men are overstrained by their undivided attention to the
causal elements in the nature of things. Then in some tired moment there
comes a sudden relaxation, and the mere presentational side of the world
overwhelms with the sense of its emptiness. As William Pitt, the Prime
Minister of England through the darkest period of the French
Revolutionary wars, lay on his death-bed at England’s worst moment in
that struggle, he was heard to murmur,
‘What shades we are, what shadows we pursue!’
His mind had suddenly lost the sense of causal efficacy, and was
illuminated by the remembrance of the intensity of emotion, which had
enveloped his life, in its comparison with the barren emptiness of the
world passing in sense-presentation.
The world, given in sense-presentation, is not the aboriginal experience
of the lower organisms, later to be sophisticated by the inference to
causal efficacy. The contrary is the case. First the causal side of
experience is dominating, then the sense-presentation gains in subtlety.
Their mutual symbolic reference is finally purged by consciousness and
the critical reason with the aid of a pragmatic appeal to consequences.
5. _The Intersection of the Modes of Perception._
There cannot be symbolic reference between percepts derived from one
mode and percepts from the other mode, unless in some way these percepts
intersect. By this ‘intersection’ I mean that a pair of such percepts
must have elements of structure in common, whereby they are marked out
for the action of symbolic reference.
There are two elements of common structure, which can be shared in
common by a percept derived from presentational immediacy and by another
derived from causal efficacy. These elements are (1) sense-data, and (2)
locality.
The sense-data are ‘given’ for presentational immediacy. This given-ness
of the sense-data, as the basis of this perceptive mode, is the great
doctrine common to Hume and Kant. But what is already given for
experience can only be derived from that natural potentiality which
shapes a particular experience in the guise of causal efficacy. Causal
efficacy is the hand of the settled past in the formation of the
present. The sense-data must therefore play a double rôle in perception.
In the mode of presentational immediacy they are projected to exhibit
the contemporary world in its spatial relations. In the mode of causal
efficacy they exhibit the almost instantaneously precedent bodily organs
as imposing their characters on the experience in question. We see the
picture, and we see it with our eyes; we touch the wood, and we touch it
with our hands; we smell the rose, and we smell it with our nose; we
hear the bell, and we hear it with our ears; we taste the sugar, and we
taste it with our palate. In the case of bodily feelings the two
locations are identical. The foot is both giving pain and is the seat of
the pain. Hume himself tacitly asserts this double reference in the
second of the quotations previously made. He writes: “If it be perceived
by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the
palate, a taste; and so of the other senses.” Thus in asserting the lack
of perception of causality, he implicitly presupposes it. For what is
the meaning of ‘_by_’ in ‘_by_ the eyes,’ ‘_by_ the ears,’ ‘_by_ the
palate’? His argument presupposes that sense-data, functioning in
presentational immediacy, are ‘given’ by reason of ‘eyes,’ ‘ears,’
‘palates’ functioning in causal efficacy. Otherwise his argument is
involved in a vicious regress. For it must begin again over eyes, ears,
palates; also it must explain the meaning of ‘by’ and ‘must’ in a sense
which does not destroy his argument.
This double reference is the basis of the whole physiological doctrine
of perception. The details of this doctrine are, in this discussion,
philosophically irrelevant. Hume with the clarity of genius states the
fundamental point, that sense-data functioning in an act of experience
demonstrate that they are given _by_ the causal efficacy of actual
bodily organs. He refers to this causal efficacy as a component in
direct perception. Hume’s argument first tacitly presupposes the two
modes of perception, and then tacitly assumes that presentational
immediacy is the only mode. Also Hume’s followers in developing his
doctrine presuppose that presentational immediacy is primitive, and that
causal efficacy is the sophisticated derivative. This is a complete
inversion of the evidence. So far as Hume’s own teaching is concerned,
there is, of course, another alternative: it is that Hume’s disciples
have misinterpreted Hume’s final position. On this hypothesis, his final
appeal to ‘practice’ is an appeal against the adequacy of the then
current metaphysical categories as interpretive of obvious experience.
This theory about Hume’s own beliefs is in my opinion improbable: but,
apart from Hume’s own estimate of his philosophical achievement, it is
in this sense that we must reverence him as one of the greatest of
philosophers.
The conclusion of this argument is that the intervention of any
sense-datum in the actual world cannot be expressed in any simple way,
such as mere qualification of a region of space, or alternatively as the
mere qualification of a state of mind. The sense-data, required for
immediate sense-perception, enter into experience in virtue of the
efficacy of the environment. This environment includes the bodily
organs. For example, in the case of hearing sound the physical waves
have entered the ears, and the agitations of the nerves have excited the
brain. The sound is then heard as coming from a certain region in the
external world. Thus perception in the mode of causal efficacy discloses
that the data in the mode of sense-perception are provided by it. This
is the reason why there are such given elements. Every such datum
constitutes a link between the two perceptive modes. Each such link, or
datum, has a complex ingression into experience, requiring a reference
to the two perceptive modes. These sense-data can be conceived as
constituting the character of a many-termed relationship between the
organisms of the past environment and those of the contemporary world.
6. _Localization._
The partial community of structure, whereby the two perceptive modes
yield immediate demonstration of a common world, arises from their
reference of sense-data, common to both, to localizations, diverse or
identical, in a spatio-temporal system common to both. For example,
colour is referred to an external space and to the eyes as organs of
vision. In so far as we are dealing with one or other of these pure
perceptive modes, such reference is direct demonstration; and, as
isolated in conscious analysis, is ultimate fact against which there is
no appeal. Such isolation, or at least some approach to it, is fairly
easy in the case of presentational immediacy, but is very difficult in
the case of causal efficacy. Complete ideal purity of perceptive
experience, devoid of any symbolic reference, is in practice
unobtainable for either perceptive mode.
Our judgments on causal efficacy are almost inextricably warped by the
acceptance of the symbolic reference between the two modes as the
completion of our direct knowledge. This acceptance is not merely in
thought, but also in action, emotion, and purpose, all precedent to
thought. This symbolic reference is a datum for thought in its analysis
of experience. By trusting this datum, our conceptual scheme of the
universe is in general logically coherent with itself, and is
correspondent to the ultimate facts of the pure perceptive modes. But
occasionally, either the coherence or the verification fails. We then
revise our conceptual scheme so as to preserve the general trust in the
symbolic reference, while relegating definite details of that reference
to the category of errors. Such errors are termed ‘delusive
appearances.’ This error arises from the extreme vagueness of the
spatial and temporal perspectives in the case of perception in the pure
mode of causal efficacy. There is no adequate definition of
localization, so far as what emerges into analytic consciousness. The
principle of relativity leads us to hold that, with adequate conscious
analysis, such local relationships leave their faint impress in
experience. But in general such detailed analysis is far beyond the
capacity of human consciousness.
So far as concerns the causal efficacy of the world external to the
human body, there is the most insistent perception of a circumambient
efficacious world of beings. But exact discrimination of thing from
thing, and of position from position, is extremely vague, almost
negligible. The definite discrimination, which in fact we do make,
arises almost wholly by reason of symbolic reference from presentational
immediacy. The case is different in respect to the human body. There is
still vagueness in comparison with the accurate definition of immediate
presentation; although the locality of various bodily organs which are
efficacious in the regulation of the sense-data, and of the feelings,
are fairly well-defined in the pure perceptive mode of causal efficacy.
The symbolic transference of course intensifies the definition. But,
apart from such transference, there is some adequacy of definite
demarcation.
Thus in the intersection of the two modes, the spatial and temporal
relationships of the human body, as causally apprehended, to the
external contemporary world, as immediately presented, afford a fairly
definite scheme of spatial and temporal reference whereby we test the
symbolic use of sense-projection for the determination of the positions
of bodies controlling the course of nature. Ultimately all observation,
scientific or popular, consists in the determination of the spatial
relation of the bodily organs of the observer to the location of
‘projected’ sense-data.
7. _The Contrast Between Accurate Definition and Importance._
The reason why the projected sense-data are in general used as symbol,
is that they are handy, definite, and manageable. We can see, or not
see, as we like: we can hear, or not hear. There are limits to this
handiness of the sense-data: but they are emphatically the manageable
elements in our perceptions of the world. The sense of controlling
presences has the contrary character: it is unmanageable, vague, and
ill-defined.
But for all their vagueness, for all their lack of definition, these
controlling presences, these sources of power, these things with an
inner life, with their own richness of content, these beings, with the
destiny of the world hidden in their natures, are what we want to know
about. As we cross a road busy with traffic, we see the colour of the
cars, their shapes, the gay colours of their occupants; but at the
moment we are absorbed in using this immediate show as a symbol for the
forces determining the immediate future.
We enjoy the symbol, but we also penetrate to the meaning. The symbols
do not create their meaning: the meaning, in the form of actual
effective beings reacting upon us, exists for us in its own right. But
the symbols discover this meaning for us. They discover it because, in
the long course of adaptation of living organisms to their environment,
nature[3] taught their use. It developed us so that our projected
sensations indicate in general those regions which are the seat of
important organisms.
Our relationships to these bodies are precisely our reactions to them.
The projection of our sensations is nothing else than the illustration
of the world in partial accordance with the systematic scheme, in space
and in time, to which these reactions conform.
The bonds of causal efficacy arise from without us. They disclose the
character of the world from which we issue, an inescapable condition
round which we shape ourselves. The bonds of presentational immediacy
arise from within us, and are subject to intensifications and
inhibitions and diversions according as we accept their challenge or
reject it. The sense-data are not properly to be termed ‘mere
impressions’—except so far as any technical term will do. They also
represent the conditions arising out of the active perceptive
functioning as conditioned by our own natures. But our natures must
conform to the causal efficacy. Thus the causal efficacy _from_ the past
is at least one factor giving our presentational immediacy in the
present. The _how_ of our present experience must conform to the _what_
of the past in us.
Our experience arises out of the past: it enriches with emotion and
purpose its presentation of the contemporary world: and it bequeaths its
character to the future, in the guise of an effective element forever
adding to, or subtracting from, the richness of the world. For good or
for evil,
‘Pereunt et Imputantur.’
8. _Conclusion._
In this chapter, and in the former chapter, the general character of
symbolism has been discussed. It plays a dominant part in the way in
which all higher organisms conduct their lives. It is the cause of
progress, and the cause of error. The higher animals have gained a
faculty of great power, by means of which they can define with some
accuracy those distant features in the immediate world by which their
future lives are to be determined. But this faculty is not infallible;
and the risks are commensurate with its importance. It is the purpose of
the next chapter to illustrate this doctrine by an analysis of the part
played by this habit of symbolism in promoting the cohesion, the
progress, and the dissolution of human societies.
Footnote 1:
‘Treatise’, Part III, Section II.
Footnote 2:
Cf. Hume’s ‘Treatise’, Part I, Section VI.
Footnote 3:
Cf. _Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of Knowledge_, by Norman Kemp
Smith, Macmillan and Co., London, 1924.