Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[ Transcriber's Notes:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation.
Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They
are listed at the end of the text.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
Greek text has been transliterated and marked with ~tildes~.
]
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD
AS A FIELD FOR SCIENTIFIC METHOD
IN PHILOSOPHY
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
Second Edition.
Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net.
THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
Demy 8vo, 16s. net.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
Seventh Impression.
Cr. 8vo, 5s. net; Limp, 3s. 6d. net.
ROADS TO FREEDOM: SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM
Fourth Impression.
Cr. 8vo, 5s. net; Limp, 3s. 6d. net.
THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF BOLSHEVISM
Second Impression.
Cr. 8vo, 6s. net.
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF
THE EXTERNAL WORLD
AS A FIELD FOR SCIENTIFIC METHOD
IN PHILOSOPHY
BY
BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
First published in 1914 by
The Open Court Publishing Company
Reissued by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
1922
PREFACE
The following lectures[1] are an attempt to show, by means of examples,
the nature, capacity, and limitations of the logical-analytic method in
philosophy. This method, of which the first complete example is to be
found in the writings of Frege, has gradually, in the course of actual
research, increasingly forced itself upon me as something perfectly
definite, capable of embodiment in maxims, and adequate, in all branches
of philosophy, to yield whatever objective scientific knowledge it is
possible to obtain. Most of the methods hitherto practised have
professed to lead to more ambitious results than any that logical
analysis can claim to reach, but unfortunately these results have always
been such as many competent philosophers considered inadmissible.
Regarded merely as hypotheses and as aids to imagination, the great
systems of the past serve a very useful purpose, and are abundantly
worthy of study. But something different is required if philosophy is to
become a science, and to aim at results independent of the tastes and
temperament of the philosopher who advocates them. In what follows, I
have endeavoured to show, however imperfectly, the way by which I
believe that this _desideratum_ is to be found.
[1] Delivered as Lowell Lectures in Boston, in March and April 1914.
The central problem by which I have sought to illustrate method is the
problem of the relation between the crude data of sense and the space,
time, and matter of mathematical physics. I have been made aware of the
importance of this problem by my friend and collaborator Dr Whitehead,
to whom are due almost all the differences between the views advocated
here and those suggested in _The Problems of Philosophy_.[2] I owe to
him the definition of points, the suggestion for the treatment of
instants and "things," and the whole conception of the world of physics
as a _construction_ rather than an _inference_. What is said on these
topics here is, in fact, a rough preliminary account of the more precise
results which he is giving in the fourth volume of our _Principia
Mathematica_.[3] It will be seen that if his way of dealing with these
topics is capable of being successfully carried through, a wholly new
light is thrown on the time-honoured controversies of realists and
idealists, and a method is obtained of solving all that is soluble in
their problem.
[2] London and New York, 1912 ("Home University Library").
[3] The first volume was published at Cambridge in 1910, the second in
1912, and the third in 1913.
The speculations of the past as to the reality or unreality of the world
of physics were baffled, at the outset, by the absence of any
satisfactory theory of the mathematical infinite. This difficulty has
been removed by the work of Georg Cantor. But the positive and detailed
solution of the problem by means of mathematical constructions based
upon sensible objects as data has only been rendered possible by the
growth of mathematical logic, without which it is practically impossible
to manipulate ideas of the requisite abstractness and complexity. This
aspect, which is somewhat obscured in a merely popular outline such as
is contained in the following lectures, will become plain as soon as Dr
Whitehead's work is published. In pure logic, which, however, will be
very briefly discussed in these lectures, I have had the benefit of
vitally important discoveries, not yet published, by my friend Mr Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
Since my purpose was to illustrate method, I have included much that is
tentative and incomplete, for it is not by the study of finished
structures alone that the manner of construction can be learnt. Except
in regard to such matters as Cantor's theory of infinity, no finality is
claimed for the theories suggested; but I believe that where they are
found to require modification, this will be discovered by substantially
the same method as that which at present makes them appear probable, and
it is on this ground that I ask the reader to be tolerant of their
incompleteness.
Cambridge,
June 1914.
CONTENTS
LECTURE PAGE
I. Current Tendencies 3
II. Logic as the Essence of Philosophy 33
III. On our Knowledge of the External World 63
IV. The World of Physics and the World of Sense 101
V. The Theory of Continuity 129
VI. The Problem of Infinity considered Historically 155
VII. The Positive Theory of Infinity 185
VIII. On the Notion of Cause, with Applications to
the Free-will Problem 211
Index 243
LECTURE I
CURRENT TENDENCIES
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and
achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning. Ever since
Thales said that all is water, philosophers have been ready with glib
assertions about the sum-total of things; and equally glib denials have
come from other philosophers ever since Thales was contradicted by
Anaximander. I believe that the time has now arrived when this
unsatisfactory state of things can be brought to an end. In the
following course of lectures I shall try, chiefly by taking certain
special problems as examples, to indicate wherein the claims of
philosophers have been excessive, and why their achievements have not
been greater. The problems and the method of philosophy have, I believe,
been misconceived by all schools, many of its traditional problems being
insoluble with our means of knowledge, while other more neglected but
not less important problems can, by a more patient and more adequate
method, be solved with all the precision and certainty to which the most
advanced sciences have attained.
Among present-day philosophies, we may distinguish three principal
types, often combined in varying proportions by a single philosopher,
but in essence and tendency distinct. The first of these, which I shall
call the classical tradition, descends in the main from Kant and Hegel;
it represents the attempt to adapt to present needs the methods and
results of the great constructive philosophers from Plato downwards. The
second type, which may be called evolutionism, derived its predominance
from Darwin, and must be reckoned as having had Herbert Spencer for its
first philosophical representative; but in recent times it has become,
chiefly through William James and M. Bergson, far bolder and far more
searching in its innovations than it was in the hands of Herbert
Spencer. The third type, which may be called "logical atomism" for want
of a better name, has gradually crept into philosophy through the
critical scrutiny of mathematics. This type of philosophy, which is the
one that I wish to advocate, has not as yet many whole-hearted
adherents, but the "new realism" which owes its inception to Harvard is
very largely impregnated with its spirit. It represents, I believe, the
same kind of advance as was introduced into physics by Galileo: the
substitution of piecemeal, detailed, and verifiable results for large
untested generalities recommended only by a certain appeal to
imagination. But before we can understand the changes advocated by this
new philosophy, we must briefly examine and criticise the other two
types with which it has to contend.
A. The Classical Tradition
Twenty years ago, the classical tradition, having vanquished the
opposing tradition of the English empiricists, held almost unquestioned
sway in all Anglo-Saxon universities. At the present day, though it is
losing ground, many of the most prominent teachers still adhere to it.
In academic France, in spite of M. Bergson, it is far stronger than all
its opponents combined; and in Germany it has many vigorous advocates.
Nevertheless, it represents on the whole a decaying force, and it has
failed to adapt itself to the temper of the age. Its advocates are, in
the main, those whose extra-philosophical knowledge is literary, rather
than those who have felt the inspiration of science. There are, apart
from reasoned arguments, certain general intellectual forces against
it--the same general forces which are breaking down the other great
syntheses of the past, and making our age one of bewildered groping
where our ancestors walked in the clear daylight of unquestioning
certainty.
The original impulse out of which the classical tradition developed was
the naive faith of the Greek philosophers in the omnipotence of
reasoning. The discovery of geometry had intoxicated them, and its _a
priori_ deductive method appeared capable of universal application. They
would prove, for instance, that all reality is one, that there is no
such thing as change, that the world of sense is a world of mere
illusion; and the strangeness of their results gave them no qualms
because they believed in the correctness of their reasoning. Thus it
came to be thought that by mere thinking the most surprising and
important truths concerning the whole of reality could be established
with a certainty which no contrary observations could shake. As the
vital impulse of the early philosophers died away, its place was taken
by authority and tradition, reinforced, in the Middle Ages and almost to
our own day, by systematic theology. Modern philosophy, from Descartes
onwards, though not bound by authority like that of the Middle Ages,
still accepted more or less uncritically the Aristotelian logic.
Moreover, it still believed, except in Great Britain, that _a priori_
reasoning could reveal otherwise undiscoverable secrets about the
universe, and could prove reality to be quite different from what, to
direct observation, it appears to be. It is this belief, rather than any
particular tenets resulting from it, that I regard as the distinguishing
characteristic of the classical tradition, and as hitherto the main
obstacle to a scientific attitude in philosophy.
The nature of the philosophy embodied in the classical tradition may be
made clearer by taking a particular exponent as an illustration. For
this purpose, let us consider for a moment the doctrines of Mr Bradley,
who is probably the most distinguished living representative of this
school. Mr Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_ is a book consisting of
two parts, the first called _Appearance_, the second _Reality_. The
first part examines and condemns almost all that makes up our everyday
world: things and qualities, relations, space and time, change,
causation, activity, the self. All these, though in some sense facts
which qualify reality, are not real as they appear. What is real is one
single, indivisible, timeless whole, called the Absolute, which is in
some sense spiritual, but does not consist of souls, or of thought and
will as we know them. And all this is established by abstract logical
reasoning professing to find self-contradictions in the categories
condemned as mere appearance, and to leave no tenable alternative to the
kind of Absolute which is finally affirmed to be real.
One brief example may suffice to illustrate Mr Bradley's method. The
world appears to be full of many things with various relations to each
other--right and left, before and after, father and son, and so on. But
relations, according to Mr Bradley, are found on examination to be
self-contradictory and therefore impossible. He first argues that, if
there are relations, there must be qualities between which they hold.
This part of his argument need not detain us. He then proceeds:
"But how the relation can stand to the qualities is, on the other side,
unintelligible. If it is nothing to the qualities, then they are not
related at all; and, if so, as we saw, they have ceased to be qualities,
and their relation is a nonentity. But if it is to be something to them,
then clearly we shall require a _new_ connecting relation. For the
relation hardly can be the mere adjective of one or both of its terms;
or, at least, as such it seems indefensible. And, being something
itself, if it does not itself bear a relation to the terms, in what
intelligible way will it succeed in being anything to them? But here
again we are hurried off into the eddy of a hopeless process, since we
are forced to go on finding new relations without end. The links are
united by a link, and this bond of union is a link which also has two
ends; and these require each a fresh link to connect them with the old.
The problem is to find how the relation can stand to its qualities, and
this problem is insoluble."[4]
[4] _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 32-33.
I do not propose to examine this argument in detail, or to show the
exact points where, in my opinion, it is fallacious. I have quoted it
only as an example of method. Most people will admit, I think, that it
is calculated to produce bewilderment rather than conviction, because
there is more likelihood of error in a very subtle, abstract, and
difficult argument than in so patent a fact as the interrelatedness of
the things in the world. To the early Greeks, to whom geometry was
practically the only known science, it was possible to follow reasoning
with assent even when it led to the strangest conclusions. But to us,
with our methods of experiment and observation, our knowledge of the
long history of _a priori_ errors refuted by empirical science, it has
become natural to suspect a fallacy in any deduction of which the
conclusion appears to contradict patent facts. It is easy to carry such
suspicion too far, and it is very desirable, if possible, actually to
discover the exact nature of the error when it exists. But there is no
doubt that what we may call the empirical outlook has become part of
most educated people's habit of mind; and it is this, rather than any
definite argument, that has diminished the hold of the classical
tradition upon students of philosophy and the instructed public
generally.
The function of logic in philosophy, as I shall try to show at a later
stage, is all-important; but I do not think its function is that which
it has in the classical tradition. In that tradition, logic becomes
constructive through negation. Where a number of alternatives seem, at
first sight, to be equally possible, logic is made to condemn all of
them except one, and that one is then pronounced to be realised in the
actual world. Thus the world is constructed by means of logic, with
little or no appeal to concrete experience. The true function of logic
is, in my opinion, exactly the opposite of this. As applied to matters
of experience, it is analytic rather than constructive; taken _a
priori_, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives
more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed _prima
facie_ possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the
world _may_ be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world _is_. This
change, which has been brought about by an internal revolution in logic,
has swept away the ambitious constructions of traditional metaphysics,
even for those whose faith in logic is greatest; while to the many who
regard logic as a chimera the paradoxical systems to which it has given
rise do not seem worthy even of refutation. Thus on all sides these
systems have ceased to attract, and even the philosophical world tends
more and more to pass them by.
One or two of the favourite doctrines of the school we are considering
may be mentioned to illustrate the nature of its claims. The universe,
it tells us, is an "organic unity," like an animal or a perfect work of
art. By this it means, roughly speaking, that all the different parts
fit together and co-operate, and are what they are because of their
place in the whole. This belief is sometimes advanced dogmatically,
while at other times it is defended by certain logical arguments. If it
is true, every part of the universe is a microcosm, a miniature
reflection of the whole. If we knew ourselves thoroughly, according to
this doctrine, we should know everything. Common sense would naturally
object that there are people--say in China--with whom our relations are
so indirect and trivial that we cannot infer anything important as to
them from any fact about ourselves. If there are living beings in Mars
or in more distant parts of the universe, the same argument becomes even
stronger. But further, perhaps the whole contents of the space and time
in which we live form only one of many universes, each seeming to itself
complete. And thus the conception of the necessary unity of all that is
resolves itself into the poverty of imagination, and a freer logic
emancipates us from the strait-waistcoated benevolent institution which
idealism palms off as the totality of being.
Another very important doctrine held by most, though not all, of the
school we are examining is the doctrine that all reality is what is
called "mental" or "spiritual," or that, at any rate, all reality is
dependent for its existence upon what is mental. This view is often
particularised into the form which states that the relation of knower
and known is fundamental, and that nothing can exist unless it either
knows or is known. Here again the same legislative function is ascribed
to _a priori_ argumentation: it is thought that there are contradictions
in an unknown reality. Again, if I am not mistaken, the argument is
fallacious, and a better logic will show that no limits can be set to
the extent and nature of the unknown. And when I speak of the unknown, I
do not mean merely what we personally do not know, but what is not known
to any mind. Here as elsewhere, while the older logic shut out
possibilities and imprisoned imagination within the walls of the
familiar, the newer logic shows rather what may happen, and refuses to
decide as to what _must_ happen.
The classical tradition in philosophy is the last surviving child of two
very diverse parents: the Greek belief in reason, and the mediaeval
belief in the tidiness of the universe. To the schoolmen, who lived amid
wars, massacres, and pestilences, nothing appeared so delightful as
safety and order. In their idealising dreams, it was safety and order
that they sought: the universe of Thomas Aquinas or Dante is as small
and neat as a Dutch interior. To us, to whom safety has become monotony,
to whom the primeval savageries of nature are so remote as to become a
mere pleasing condiment to our ordered routine, the world of dreams is
very different from what it was amid the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline.
Hence William James's protest against what he calls the "block universe"
of the classical tradition; hence Nietzsche's worship of force; hence
the verbal bloodthirstiness of many quiet literary men. The barbaric
substratum of human nature, unsatisfied in action, finds an outlet in
imagination. In philosophy, as elsewhere, this tendency is visible; and
it is this, rather than formal argument, that has thrust aside the
classical tradition for a philosophy which fancies itself more virile
and more vital.
B. Evolutionism
Evolutionism, in one form or another, is the prevailing creed of our
time. It dominates our politics, our literature, and not least our
philosophy. Nietzsche, pragmatism, Bergson, are phases in its
philosophic development, and their popularity far beyond the circles of
professional philosophers shows its consonance with the spirit of the
age. It believes itself firmly based on science, a liberator of hopes,
an inspirer of an invigorating faith in human power, a sure antidote to
the ratiocinative authority of the Greeks and the dogmatic authority of
mediaeval systems. Against so fashionable and so agreeable a creed it may
seem useless to raise a protest; and with much of its spirit every
modern man must be in sympathy. But I think that, in the intoxication of
a quick success, much that is important and vital to a true
understanding of the universe has been forgotten. Something of Hellenism
must be combined with the new spirit before it can emerge from the
ardour of youth into the wisdom of manhood. And it is time to remember
that biology is neither the only science, nor yet the model to which all
other sciences must adapt themselves. Evolutionism, as I shall try to
show, is not a truly scientific philosophy, either in its method or in
the problems which it considers. The true scientific philosophy is
something more arduous and more aloof, appealing to less mundane hopes,
and requiring a severer discipline for its successful practice.
Darwin's _Origin of Species_ persuaded the world that the difference
between different species of animals and plants is not the fixed,
immutable difference that it appears to be. The doctrine of natural
kinds, which had rendered classification easy and definite, which was
enshrined in the Aristotelian tradition, and protected by its supposed
necessity for orthodox dogma, was suddenly swept away for ever out of
the biological world. The difference between man and the lower animals,
which to our human conceit appears enormous, was shown to be a gradual
achievement, involving intermediate beings who could not with certainty
be placed either within or without the human family. The sun and planets
had already been shown by Laplace to be very probably derived from a
primitive more or less undifferentiated nebula. Thus the old fixed
landmarks became wavering and indistinct, and all sharp outlines were
blurred. Things and species lost their boundaries, and none could say
where they began or where they ended.
But if human conceit was staggered for a moment by its kinship with the
ape, it soon found a way to reassert itself, and that way is the
"philosophy" of evolution. A process which led from the amoeba to man
appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress--though whether
the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known. Hence the cycle
of changes which science had shown to be the probable history of the
past was welcomed as revealing a law of development towards good in the
universe--an evolution or unfolding of an ideal slowly embodying itself
in the actual. But such a view, though it might satisfy Spencer and
those whom we may call Hegelian evolutionists, could not be accepted as
adequate by the more whole-hearted votaries of change. An ideal to which
the world continuously approaches is, to these minds, too dead and
static to be inspiring. Not only the aspirations, but the ideal too,
must change and develop with the course of evolution; there must be no
fixed goal, but a continual fashioning of fresh needs by the impulse
which is life and which alone gives unity to the process.
Ever since the seventeenth century, those whom William James described
as the "tender-minded" have been engaged in a desperate struggle with
the mechanical view of the course of nature which physical science seems
to impose. A great part of the attractiveness of the classical tradition
was due to the partial escape from mechanism which it provided. But now,
with the influence of biology, the "tender-minded" believe that a more
radical escape is possible, sweeping aside not merely the laws of
physics, but the whole apparently immutable apparatus of logic, with its
fixed concepts, its general principles, and its reasonings which seem
able to compel even the most unwilling assent. The older kind of
teleology, therefore, which regarded the End as a fixed goal, already
partially visible, towards which we were gradually approaching, is
rejected by M. Bergson as not allowing enough for the absolute dominion
of change. After explaining why he does not accept mechanism, he
proceeds:[5]
"But radical finalism is quite as unacceptable, and for the same reason.
The doctrine of teleology, in its extreme form, as we find it in Leibniz
for example, implies that things and beings merely realise a programme
previously arranged. But if there is nothing unforeseen, no invention or
creation in the universe, time is useless again. As in the mechanistic
hypothesis, here again it is supposed that _all is given_. Finalism thus
understood is only inverted mechanism. It springs from the same
postulate, with this sole difference, that in the movement of our finite
intellects along successive things, whose successiveness is reduced to a
mere appearance, it holds in front of us the light with which it claims
to guide us, instead of putting it behind. It substitutes the attraction
of the future for the impulsion of the past. But succession remains none
the less a mere appearance, as indeed does movement itself. In the
doctrine of Leibniz, time is reduced to a confused perception, relative
to the human standpoint, a perception which would vanish, like a rising
mist, for a mind seated at the centre of things.
"Yet finalism is not, like mechanism, a doctrine with fixed rigid
outlines. It admits of as many inflections as we like. The mechanistic
philosophy is to be taken or left: it must be left if the least grain of
dust, by straying from the path foreseen by mechanics, should show the
slightest trace of spontaneity. The doctrine of final causes, on the
contrary, will never be definitively refuted. If one form of it be put
aside, it will take another. Its principle, which is essentially
psychological, is very flexible. It is so extensible, and thereby so
comprehensive, that one accepts something of it as soon as one rejects
pure mechanism. The theory we shall put forward in this book will
therefore necessarily partake of finalism to a certain extent."
[5] _Creative Evolution_, English translation, p. 41.
M. Bergson's form of finalism depends upon his conception of life. Life,
in his philosophy, is a continuous stream, in which all divisions are
artificial and unreal. Separate things, beginnings and endings, are mere
convenient fictions: there is only smooth, unbroken transition. The
beliefs of to-day may count as true to-day, if they carry us along the
stream; but to-morrow they will be false, and must be replaced by new
beliefs to meet the new situation. All our thinking consists of
convenient fictions, imaginary congealings of the stream: reality flows
on in spite of all our fictions, and though it can be lived, it cannot
be conceived in thought. Somehow, without explicit statement, the
assurance is slipped in that the future, though we cannot foresee it,
will be better than the past or the present: the reader is like the
child who expects a sweet because it has been told to open its mouth and
shut its eyes. Logic, mathematics, physics disappear in this philosophy,
because they are too "static"; what is real is an impulse and movement
towards a goal which, like the rainbow, recedes as we advance, and makes
every place different when we reach it from what it appeared to be at a
distance.
Now I do not propose at present to enter upon a technical examination of
this philosophy. At present I wish to make only two criticisms of
it--first, that its truth does not follow from what science has rendered
probable concerning the facts of evolution, and secondly, that the
motives and interests which inspire it are so exclusively practical, and
the problems with which it deals are so special, that it can hardly be
regarded as really touching any of the questions that to my mind
constitute genuine philosophy.
(1) What biology has rendered probable is that the diverse species arose
by adaptation from a less differentiated ancestry. This fact is in
itself exceedingly interesting, but it is not the kind of fact from
which philosophical consequences follow. Philosophy is general, and
takes an impartial interest in all that exists. The changes suffered by
minute portions of matter on the earth's surface are very important to
us as active sentient beings; but to us as philosophers they have no
greater interest than other changes in portions of matter elsewhere. And
if the changes on the earth's surface during the last few millions of
years appear to our present ethical notions to be in the nature of a
progress, that gives no ground for believing that progress is a general
law of the universe. Except under the influence of desire, no one would
admit for a moment so crude a generalisation from such a tiny selection
of facts. What does result, not specially from biology, but from all the
sciences which deal with what exists, is that we cannot understand the
world unless we can understand change and continuity. This is even more
evident in physics than it is in biology. But the analysis of change and
continuity is not a problem upon which either physics or biology throws
any light: it is a problem of a new kind, belonging to a different kind
of study. The question whether evolutionism offers a true or a false
answer to this problem is not, therefore, a question to be solved by
appeals to particular facts, such as biology and physics reveal. In
assuming dogmatically a certain answer to this question, evolutionism
ceases to be scientific, yet it is only in touching on this question
that evolutionism reaches the subject-matter of philosophy. Evolutionism
thus consists of two parts: one not philosophical, but only a hasty
generalisation of the kind which the special sciences might hereafter
confirm or confute; the other not scientific, but a mere unsupported
dogma, belonging to philosophy by its subject-matter, but in no way
deducible from the facts upon which evolution relies.
(2) The predominant interest of evolutionism is in the question of human
destiny, or at least of the destiny of Life. It is more interested in
morality and happiness than in knowledge for its own sake. It must be
admitted that the same may be said of many other philosophies, and that
a desire for the kind of knowledge which philosophy really can give is
very rare. But if philosophy is to become scientific--and it is our
object to discover how this can be achieved--it is necessary first and
foremost that philosophers should acquire the disinterested intellectual
curiosity which characterises the genuine man of science. Knowledge
concerning the future--which is the kind of knowledge that must be
sought if we are to know about human destiny--is possible within certain
narrow limits. It is impossible to say how much the limits may be
enlarged with the progress of science. But what is evident is that any
proposition about the future belongs by its subject-matter to some
particular science, and is to be ascertained, if at all, by the methods
of that science. Philosophy is not a short cut to the same kind of
results as those of the other sciences: if it is to be a genuine study,
it must have a province of its own, and aim at results which the other
sciences can neither prove nor disprove.
The consideration that philosophy, if there is such a study, must
consist of propositions which could not occur in the other sciences, is
one which has very far-reaching consequences. All the questions which
have what is called a human interest--such, for example, as the question
of a future life--belong, at least in theory, to special sciences, and
are capable, at least in theory, of being decided by empirical evidence.
Philosophers have too often, in the past, permitted themselves to
pronounce on empirical questions, and found themselves, as a result, in
disastrous conflict with well-attested facts. We must, therefore,
renounce the hope that philosophy can promise satisfaction to our
mundane desires. What it can do, when it is purified from all practical
taint, is to help us to understand the general aspects of the world and
the logical analysis of familiar but complex things. Through this
achievement, by the suggestion of fruitful hypotheses, it may be
indirectly useful in other sciences, notably mathematics, physics, and
psychology. But a genuinely scientific philosophy cannot hope to appeal
to any except those who have the wish to understand, to escape from
intellectual bewilderment. It offers, in its own domain, the kind of
satisfaction which the other sciences offer. But it does not offer, or
attempt to offer, a solution of the problem of human destiny, or of the
destiny of the universe.
Evolutionism, if what has been said is true, is to be regarded as a
hasty generalisation from certain rather special facts, accompanied by a
dogmatic rejection of all attempts at analysis, and inspired by
interests which are practical rather than theoretical. In spite,
therefore, of its appeal to detailed results in various sciences, it
cannot be regarded as any more genuinely scientific than the classical
tradition which it has replaced. How philosophy is to be rendered
scientific, and what is the true subject-matter of philosophy, I shall
try to show first by examples of certain achieved results, and then more
generally. We will begin with the problem of the physical conceptions of
space and time and matter, which, as we have seen, are challenged by the
contentions of the evolutionists. That these conceptions stand in need
of reconstruction will be admitted, and is indeed increasingly urged by
physicists themselves. It will also be admitted that the reconstruction
must take more account of change and the universal flux than is done in
the older mechanics with its fundamental conception of an indestructible
matter. But I do not think the reconstruction required is on Bergsonian
lines, nor do I think that his rejection of logic can be anything but
harmful. I shall not, however, adopt the method of explicit controversy,
but rather the method of independent inquiry, starting from what, in a
pre-philosophic stage, appear to be facts, and keeping always as close
to these initial data as the requirements of consistency will permit.
Although explicit controversy is almost always fruitless in philosophy,
owing to the fact that no two philosophers ever understand one another,
yet it seems necessary to say something at the outset in justification
of the scientific as against the mystical attitude. Metaphysics, from
the first, has been developed by the union or the conflict of these two
attitudes. Among the earliest Greek philosophers, the Ionians were more
scientific and the Sicilians more mystical.[6] But among the latter,
Pythagoras, for example, was in himself a curious mixture of the two
tendencies: the scientific attitude led him to his proposition on
right-angled triangles, while his mystic insight showed him that it is
wicked to eat beans. Naturally enough, his followers divided into two
sects, the lovers of right-angled triangles and the abhorrers of beans;
but the former sect died out, leaving, however, a haunting flavour of
mysticism over much Greek mathematical speculation, and in particular
over Plato's views on mathematics. Plato, of course, embodies both the
scientific and the mystical attitudes in a higher form than his
predecessors, but the mystical attitude is distinctly the stronger of
the two, and secures ultimate victory whenever the conflict is sharp.
Plato, moreover, adopted from the Eleatics the device of using logic to
defeat common sense, and thus to leave the field clear for mysticism--a
device still employed in our own day by the adherents of the classical
tradition.
[6] _Cf._ Burnet, _Early Greek Philosophy_, pp. 85 ff.
The logic used in defence of mysticism seems to me faulty as logic, and
in a later lecture I shall criticise it on this ground. But the more
thorough-going mystics do not employ logic, which they despise: they
appeal instead directly to the immediate deliverance of their insight.
Now, although fully developed mysticism is rare in the West, some
tincture of it colours the thoughts of many people, particularly as
regards matters on which they have strong convictions not based on
evidence. In all who seek passionately for the fugitive and difficult
goods, the conviction is almost irresistible that there is in the world
something deeper, more significant, than the multiplicity of little
facts chronicled and classified by science. Behind the veil of these
mundane things, they feel, something quite different obscurely shimmers,
shining forth clearly in the great moments of illumination, which alone
give anything worthy to be called real knowledge of truth. To seek such
moments, therefore, is to them the way of wisdom, rather than, like the
man of science, to observe coolly, to analyse without emotion, and to
accept without question the equal reality of the trivial and the
important.
Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I have
no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which reveals
it is not a genuine insight. What I do wish to maintain--and it is here
that the scientific attitude becomes imperative--is that insight,
untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth, in
spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is first
suggested by its means. It is common to speak of an opposition between
instinct and reason; in the eighteenth century, the opposition was drawn
in favour of reason, but under the influence of Rousseau and the
romantic movement instinct was given the preference, first by those who
rebelled against artificial forms of government and thought, and then,
as the purely rationalistic defence of traditional theology became
increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to creeds
which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the world.
Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to the
position of sole arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the
opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct,
intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which
subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it
is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other
beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force
rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it
is insight that first arrives at what is new.
Where instinct and reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single
beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no
degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment.
Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom
reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards themselves,
though all admit it in regard to others. Where instinct is least liable
to error is in practical matters as to which right judgment is a help to
survival; friendship and hostility in others, for instance, are often
felt with extraordinary discrimination through very careful disguises.
But even in such matters a wrong impression may be given by reserve or
flattery; and in matters less directly practical, such as philosophy
deals with, very strong instinctive beliefs may be wholly mistaken, as
we may come to know through their perceived inconsistency with other
equally strong beliefs. It is such considerations that necessitate the
harmonising mediation of reason, which tests our beliefs by their mutual
compatibility, and examines, in doubtful cases, the possible sources of
error on the one side and on the other. In this there is no opposition
to instinct as a whole, but only to blind reliance upon some one
interesting aspect of instinct to the exclusion of other more
commonplace but not less trustworthy aspects. It is such onesidedness,
not instinct itself, that reason aims at correcting.
These more or less trite maxims may be illustrated by application to
Bergson's advocacy of "intuition" as against "intellect." There are, he
says, "two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first
implies that we move round the object; the second that we enter into it.
The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and on the
symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a
point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may
be said to stop at the _relative_; the second, in those cases where it
is possible, to attain the _absolute_."[7] The second of these, which is
intuition, is, he says, "the kind of intellectual _sympathy_ by which
one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is
unique in it and therefore inexpressible" (p. 6). In illustration, he
mentions self-knowledge: "there is one reality, at least, which we all
seize from within, by intuition and not by simple analysis. It is our
own personality in its flowing through time--our self which endures"
(p. 8). The rest of Bergson's philosophy consists in reporting, through
the imperfect medium of words, the knowledge gained by intuition, and
the consequent complete condemnation of all the pretended knowledge
derived from science and common sense.
[7] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, p. 1.
This procedure, since it takes sides in a conflict of instinctive
beliefs, stands in need of justification by proving the greater
trustworthiness of the beliefs on one side than of those on the other.
Bergson attempts this justification in two ways--first, by explaining
that intellect is a purely practical faculty designed to secure
biological success; secondly, by mentioning remarkable feats of instinct
in animals, and by pointing out characteristics of the world which,
though intuition can apprehend them, are baffling to intellect as he
interprets it.
Of Bergson's theory that intellect is a purely practical faculty
developed in the struggle for survival, and not a source of true
beliefs, we may say, first, that it is only through intellect that we
know of the struggle for survival and of the biological ancestry of man:
if the intellect is misleading, the whole of this merely inferred
history is presumably untrue. If, on the other hand, we agree with M.
Bergson in thinking that evolution took place as Darwin believed, then
it is not only intellect, but all our faculties, that have been
developed under the stress of practical utility. Intuition is seen at
its best where it is directly useful--for example, in regard to other
people's characters and dispositions. Bergson apparently holds that
capacity for this kind of knowledge is less explicable by the struggle
for existence than, for example, capacity for pure mathematics. Yet the
savage deceived by false friendship is likely to pay for his mistake
with his life; whereas even in the most civilised societies men are not
put to death for mathematical incompetence. All the most striking of his
instances of intuition in animals have a very direct survival value. The
fact is, of course, that both intuition and intellect have been
developed because they are useful, and that, speaking broadly, they are
useful when they give truth and become harmful when they give falsehood.
Intellect, in civilised man, like artistic capacity, has occasionally
been developed beyond the point where it is useful to the individual;
intuition, on the other hand, seems on the whole to diminish as
civilisation increases. Speaking broadly, it is greater in children than
in adults, in the uneducated than in the educated. Probably in dogs it
exceeds anything to be found in human beings. But those who find in
these facts a recommendation of intuition ought to return to running
wild in the woods, dyeing themselves with woad and living on hips and
haws.
Let us next examine whether intuition possesses any such infallibility
as Bergson claims for it. The best instance of it, according to him, is
our acquaintance with ourselves; yet self-knowledge is proverbially rare
and difficult. Most men, for example, have in their nature meannesses,
vanities, and envies of which they are quite unconscious, though even
their best friends can perceive them without any difficulty. It is true
that intuition has a convincingness which is lacking to intellect: while
it is present, it is almost impossible to doubt its truth. But if it
should appear, on examination, to be at least as fallible as intellect,
its greater subjective certainty becomes a demerit, making it only the
more irresistibly deceptive. Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most
notable examples of intuition is the knowledge people believe themselves
to possess of those with whom they are in love: the wall between
different personalities seems to become transparent, and people think
they see into another soul as into their own. Yet deception in such
cases is constantly practised with success; and even where there is no
intentional deception, experience gradually proves, as a rule, that the
supposed insight was illusory, and that the slower, more groping methods
of the intellect are in the long run more reliable.
Bergson maintains that intellect can only deal with things in so far as
they resemble what has been experienced in the past, while intuition has
the power of apprehending the uniqueness and novelty that always belong
to each fresh moment. That there is something unique and new at every
moment, is certainly true; it is also true that this cannot be fully
expressed by means of intellectual concepts. Only direct acquaintance
can give knowledge of what is unique and new. But direct acquaintance of
this kind is given fully in sensation, and does not require, so far as I
can see, any special faculty of intuition for its apprehension. It is
neither intellect nor intuition, but sensation, that supplies new data;
but when the data are new in any remarkable manner, intellect is much
more capable of dealing with them than intuition would be. The hen with
a brood of ducklings no doubt has intuitions which seem to place her
inside them, and not merely to know them analytically; but when the
ducklings take to the water, the whole apparent intuition is seen to be
illusory, and the hen is left helpless on the shore. Intuition, in fact,
is an aspect and development of instinct, and, like all instinct, is
admirable in those customary surroundings which have moulded the habits
of the animal in question, but totally incompetent as soon as the
surroundings are changed in a way which demands some non-habitual mode
of action.